Gotrek & Felix- the Second Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer

  Felix shook his head and gently removed her hand. It would be a very bad thing to be marked out as one of the duke’s spies and agent provocateurs in this rough quarter. A crowd might gather and lynch him. Felix had seen such things happen before.

  ‘Then you’re just a ghoul and I don’t have to tell you nuthin’. The woman coughed and he heard the phlegm rasping through her lungs. Whatever she had, he hoped it was not contagious. She did not look like a well woman. Felix looked at her coldly. He was chilled to the bone, he was tired and he was not really in the mood to be the focus of this sick madwoman’s anger. He stood up straight and said, ‘You’re right. Deal with this yourself!’

  He turned to go, and noticed that a small crowd had gathered. To his surprise he felt a tug at his wrist, and turned to see the streetgirl looking up at him and crying once more. ‘I told her not to go with him,’ she said after another hacking cough. ‘I told her, I told Maria, but she wouldn’t listen. I told her he was a bad ’un, and there have been all these killin’s recent, but she wouldn’t listen. Needed the money for medicine for the little ’un she said. Now who’ll look after him?’

  Felix wondered what the woman was babbling about. He felt the urge to walk away as quickly as possible. He had seen many corpses in his life but there was something about this one that sickened him. He was not sure why, but he just knew that he wanted nothing further to do with this. And yet…

  And yet he could not just walk away. The meaning of the woman’s words passed into his numbed brain, just as he heard a commotion at the back of the crowd and the sound of marching feet crunching snow underfoot. He turned to see a squad of halberdiers in winged lion tabards had forced their way through the gathering crowd, hard-faced veterans of the city watch, led by a grey-haired sergeant. He looked at Felix and said, ‘You find her?’

  Felix shook his head. ‘Just passing by,’ he said.

  ‘Then keep on passing,’ said the sergeant. Felix stepped to one side. He wanted no arguments with the duke’s guards. The sergeant bent down over the corpse and muttered a low curse. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Another one.’

  ‘That’s Red Maria, sarge,’ said one of the troopers. ‘From Flint Street.’

  ‘Have you seen something like this before?’ Felix asked.

  The sergeant looked up at him. Something about his expression made it clear that he was not in the mood to give answers to any passing civilians. Felix wasn’t sure why he had asked. This was surely no business of his. But something about the man’s tone rankled him, and something about this killing niggled at the back of his mind. He knew it would most likely go unsolved anyway. He had been a watchman himself in his time, back in Nuln, what seemed a lifetime ago, and he knew the watchmen were not likely to expend any more effort on a murdered streetgirl than to carry her to the funeral pyres. Looking down at the corpse he began to see her as a person finally.

  Who were you, he wondered? What was your life like? Why did you die? Who killed you? Your friend said you had a child. Did you love him? Must have or you would not have gone out with a deadly stranger on a winter night and walked off to your death.

  He felt a faint familiar surge of anger at the sheer injustice of it. Somewhere out there a monster was free and a child was most likely going to die for want of food, and there was not much he could do about it. He reached down to his waist and fingered his purse. It was a bit flat, but there was gold in it. He turned so his body covered the action, and pushed it into the woman’s palm.

  ‘Take that, find the child and look after it. Should see you for a while. Take it to the orphanage at the Temple of Shallya. They’ll care for it, if you give them a donation.’

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, he told himself. The woman will most likely keep the money herself. Or will be robbed, or the child is already dead. But what else could he do? He was a fool, he knew, but at least he had done something, made some small gesture in the face of the vast uncaring universe.

  ‘Same as the one down on Temple Street two nights ago,’ he heard one of the troopers murmur. He turned in time to see the man make the sign of the wolf’s head against evil. First finger and little finger extended, middle two fingers pressed into the palm by the thumb. The guard was a follower of Ulric then, like most of these Kislevites.

  ‘Another lunatic most likely,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Or a daemon,’ said the soldier superstitiously. Rumour had it that some of the daemons summoned when the Chaos horde attacked the city were still at large. Felix knew this was unlikely. He had sat through enough of Max’s lectures on the subject to know why. There was simply not enough magical energy in the area to support one now.

  ‘It would not be a daemon,’ he said.

  ‘You’d be an expert on that, I suppose,’ the sergeant said. Felix thought back over his long career as the Slayer’s henchman, and all the vile creatures he had fought, including the great Bloodthirster of Karag Dum.

  ‘More than you would ever guess,’ he murmured.

  ‘What was that?’ the sergeant asked abruptly. Felix snapped his mouth shut. Claiming knowledge of daemons in this city was a sure way to get yourself invited to a witch hunter’s confession cell. He was not ready for the rack and the iron boot just yet.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. The sergeant looked at him as if he really wanted to pick a fight just now. Felix could understand why. The sight of the body was very disturbing, a cause of both fear and anger, and the man was looking for a target to focus his on. Suddenly the streetgirl came to his rescue.

  ‘He’s right. It wasn’t a daemon. It was a man,’ she said. ‘I saw him.’

  ‘Daemons can take human shape,’ said the gloomy soldier. He obviously wasn’t going to give up on his theory without a struggle.

  ‘It was a man,’ she said. ‘A rich man. A nob. With a foreign accent like the stranger here.’

  The sergeant was giving Felix an even harder, appraising stare now. Felix could see what he was thinking.

  ‘Wasn’t him,’ said the girl quickly.

  ‘You sure, Nella? I saw him slip you some money there. Pretty suspicious if you ask me.’

  ‘Wasn’t him,’ she said even more emphatically. She too could see the deep waters they were sailing into now. ‘Was taller, thinner, darker. And there was something about him that just made my flesh creep.’

  ‘There’s something about this one that makes my flesh creep,’ said the sergeant. His witticism drew guffaws from the troops, all except the gloomy soldier who repeated, ‘Daemons make your flesh creep. It was a daemon for sure.’

  ‘Don’t look like a man’s work. Look at her throat. More like a dog did that. Never saw a man kill anyone like that before.’

  ‘I have,’ said the sergeant. ‘Remember Mad Olaf? Chewed his way through quite a few bar girls in his time.’

  ‘Olaf is in the madhouse,’ said the soldier with the daemon theories.

  ‘Who knows?’ said the sergeant. ‘Madhouse burned down in the siege. Who knows if all the loonies burned with it?’

  ‘Does the girl’s description fit Mad Olaf?’ Felix asked, keen now, to divert any hint of suspicion from himself.

  ‘Not at all. Mad Olaf was short, bald and worked in the Street of Tanners. Smell could knock you down at six paces. I’m sure Nella would have noticed it, wouldn’t you, Nella? Unless you’re just making this up to put us off pretty boy here’s tracks.’

  ‘Wasn’t anythin’ like Mad Olaf,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Though he did smell kind of odd…’

  ‘Odd? How?’ asked Felix and the sergeant simultaneously.

  ‘There was a perfume about him, like something the nobs wear but stronger. Like those spices you used to be able to buy down at the Pepper Market. Like cinna... cinnabor... cinna…’

  ‘Like cinnamon?’ Felix finished for her.

  ‘That’s the word.’

  ‘So we’re looking for a tall, dark man, dressed like a noble, smells of cinnamon,’ said the sergeant sarcastically. It was obvious he though
t Felix really was wasting his time now. He glared at Felix as if considering hauling him off anyway.

  ‘Where were you last night, stranger?’ he asked. Felix was glad he had a good answer for that.

  ‘The palace,’ he said. ‘Maybe you would like to ask the duke a few questions while you’re about it.’

  The sergeant looked suddenly a bit more respectful, but only a bit. Felix could tell he was wondering whether he was being mocked. After all, how likely was it that someone as scruffily dressed as Felix would be eating with the ruler of Kislev’s second most powerful city-state?

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to come along to the palace and make sure of what I am saying?’ Felix said. He was confident that things would go his way there. He and Gotrek had been given a heroes’ welcome, along with Snorri Nosebiter, after their heroic stand on the outer wall and their despatch of Arek Daemonclaw. To tell the truth, Felix knew he was probably only welcome because he was associated with the dwarfs. They had, after all, proven to be the Kislevites’ best and only allies in this struggle so far. Their airship had done as much to lift the siege as the entire Gospodar muster.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the sergeant after a long moment. ‘Come on, let’s get this body to the pyres.’

  Felix exchanged looks with Nella, and they went their separate ways.

  Max Schreiber looked around the massive feasting chamber wondering if the celebrations would ever end. It seemed the Kislevites liked to commemorate their victories with enormous meals and endless toasts. It seemed like he had barely gone to sleep when he was woken for the next instalment of the grand debauch. His stomach was so distended it felt as if it would burst. Fortunately, he had decided to drink nothing but water since his embarrassment with Ulrika at Karag Kadrin, and he had stuck to the resolution. It had given him an opportunity to study the Kislevites around him. It had been a long time since he had moved in quite such exalted company.

  At the head of the table, at the place of honour normally reserved for the Duke of Praag himself, sat the Ice Queen Katarina, the Tsarina of Kislev, a cold and perfectly beautiful woman with eyes like chips of blue ice. Today her hair was the colour of winter frost. Max knew it changed at her whim. She had the ageless sculpted beauty of a statue, a perfection of face and form that had something inhuman about it and she appeared none the worse for two days of eating and drinking. Looking at her, Max could easily believe the tales of inhuman blood that was said to flow in the veins of the royal line of Kislev.

  Whatever it was that gave her beauty, it also gave her a fearsome aura of magical power. A wizard of great strength himself, Max could recognise a potent mage when he met one, and the Tsarina was certainly that. No, he thought, that was not quite right. There was something strange and not quite human about her powers as well. She did not feel like any human wizard he had ever encountered, and when he studied her with his magesight he could see the swirls of power surrounding her were quite unlike those of any human mage too. She had a frosty, chill blue aura that seemed to extend outwards beyond his field of vision. Patterns of magical energy swirled around her like snowflakes in a blizzard. She seemed to be connected directly to the cold energy of her land. He doubted that there was anything subtle about the magic she could wield, but he knew it would be effective as a battering ram. She was in receipt of great energies from somewhere.

  She seemed aware of Max’s study and turned her cold gaze speculatively on him. Max had heard rumours of her, and her legion of lovers too, and had no great desire to find out if they were true. He swiftly looked away. A faint mocking smile played across the Tsarina’s lips as if she could read his thoughts. Max stroked his beard with his hand, to hide the flush that came to his cheeks. He was not quite used to the forwardness of Kislevite women. They were very unlike the ladies of his homeland, the Empire.

  Automatically his eyes sought out Ulrika. She sat across the table from him, side by side with her father, the huge old March Boyar, Ivan Petrovich Straghov. Looking at the two of them, Max wondered how it was possible that the massive bear-like man could be the father of such a slender and lovely woman. Ivan Straghov was a giant, huge of shoulder, and just as huge of belly. A long beard, almost dwarf-like, descended to his waist. Sweat shone on his bald forehead. He held a stein of beer in one massive fist. It looked little larger than a delicate wine goblet in that massive ham-like hand.

  His daughter by contrast was slim as a blade, with high cheekbones and wide-set eyes. Her ash-blonde hair was cut short as a man’s and she held herself with a dancer’s poise. She was garbed in tunic and riding britches, the true daughter of one of the horse lords of Kislev. She laughed and joked with her father just like any common trooper and her quips were rewarded with huge bellows of laughter that set the old man’s belly shaking like a jelly.

  Seated beside Max, the duke, a tall, dark saturnine man with long drooping moustaches and sunken cheeks, leaned forward to pour more wine for the Tsarina. A peculiar gleam was in the duke’s eye and Max recalled the rumours that Enrik was not quite sane. Hardly surprising – ruling the haunted city of Praag was likely to drive even the most normal man over the edge. Since the death of his brother at the hands of Chaos worshipping assassins he seemed even sadder and more sardonic than usual. Max wondered if the duke knew of Felix Jaeger’s theory that his brother had been a member of the Chaos cults himself, but knew he would probably never find out. Who was going to risk asking such a loaded personal question of such a high-ranking noble? Not Max, for a certainty.

  Max glanced around and looked at the others. This was the high table where the Tsarina, the duke and the favoured few sat to be waited on by court favourites. At the other tables were the leaders of the great muster of Kislev. Leaders of tens, fifties and hundreds of horse-soldiers, formidable warriors all. They looked more like barbarians than nobles to Max, but he kept the thought to himself. These men were allies of his homeland, the Empire, and great nobles in their own land.

  It never paid to antagonise such people under any circumstances. Max had spent enough time around the courts of the rich and the powerful to know this only too well. At the bottom of the main table, looking as uncomfortable as a man waiting his own execution, sat the dwarf Malakai Makaisson, the only Slayer who had bothered to accept the duke’s invitation to dine today.

  Makaisson was short and like all dwarfs very, very broad. Without the great crest of dyed hair rising above his shaven skull, his head would only have come to the top of Max’s stomach, but he outweighed Max by far, and all of that extra weight was muscle. Crystalline goggles, pushed back from his eyes, sat in the middle of his forehead, looking for all the world like the eyes of some giant insect. A leather flying helmet dangled from his neck. A fur-collared leather flying jerkin covered his massive torso. Tattoos depicting entwined dragons covered the back of his hands.

  The dwarf caught Max looking at him and gave him a gap-toothed smile before raising his pitcher of ale. Max answered the smile for he liked Makaisson, who was just about as friendly and outgoing as it was possible for a dwarf Slayer to be, as well as a genius in his own field.

  Max was a sorcerer not an engineer, but he had seen enough of Malakai Makaisson’s work to recognise that the dwarf was master of a power that was, in its own way, quite as great as wizardry. He had seen the massive airship, Spirit of Grungni, break the siege of Praag with the use of alchemical fire. He had seen it resist the attack of a dragon and rout an army of orcs. He had seen the Slayer’s modified firearms slaughter dozens of goblins in seconds. He had heard tales of mighty ships and siege engines created by this dwarf, and he recognised an intellect as great in its own warped way, as anything ever produced by the Universities or Colleges of Magic of the Empire. Quite possibly greater, he admitted.

  ‘It is a pity none of your comrades could be here tonight,’ said the duke sardonically, addressing Malakai Makaisson. ‘They seem insensible to the honour of dining with the Tsarina.’

  If the Slayer was embarrassed he gave no s
ign of it. ‘That wud be their bizness, yer dukeship,’ he said. ‘Ah cannae answer fur them. Gotrek Gurnisson and Snorri Nosebiter are as thrawn a pair o’ dwarfs as ever lived.’

  ‘And that’s saying something,’ said the Ice Queen lightly. The favourites around the table laughed.

  ‘Among dwarfs it wud be considered a great compliment,’ said Malakai Makaisson judiciously, as if no mockery were intended. Perhaps the dwarf was too blunt to notice it, Max thought, or perhaps he chose to ignore it in the interests of diplomacy. Max considered the latter an unlikely eventuality, but you never knew. No one had ever called Malakai Makaisson stupid, just mad.

  ‘Present or not,’ said Ivan Straghov, ‘they did well in the last battle.’

  ‘They did a great service to Kislev, and shall be rewarded for it,’ said the Tsarina. Malakai Makaisson spluttered into his ale. Max wondered if he should explain the situation to the Ice Queen. Gotrek and Snorri did not seek rewards or honours; they sought death to atone for their sins. He decided that it probably wasn’t his place to share the information. Besides, the Tsarina seemed to be an extraordinarily well-informed woman. She probably already knew.

  ‘We shall have great need of such fighters before this war is over,’ continued the Ice Queen. Max shivered. It was war all right, quite possibly the largest in history. Before the siege he had not really had time to take it in, he had only been concerned with the seemingly unwinnable battle to come. Now, he knew that the whole of the Old World had a huge fight on its hands. The massive drift of Chaos worshippers out of the north ensured it. The Ice Queen turned her gaze on Malakai Makaisson once more and it swiftly became obvious why he had been invited to this feast. ‘Have you thought more of our proposal, Herr Makaisson?’

  Malakai took another swig of his beer and met her gaze levelly. ‘If there’s ocht ah can dae, lassie, ah wull dae it. But ma airship and ma services are already spoken fur. Ah must gan back to Karak Kadrin and help the Slayer King muster his forces.’