Gotrek & Felix- the Second Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer

  Moving so silently he doubted that even a cat could have heard him, Adolphus stalked deeper into the mansion. The magician Benedict had provided him with detailed descriptions and a rough map of the layout before his unfortunate demise. Adolphus had the near perfect memory of the Arisen, which, combined with his darkness-piercing vision, enabled him to navigate the shadowy corridors without difficulty.

  A sense of relief filled him as he put more distance between himself and the battle, and the urge to kill decreased slightly. He had entered the part of the mansion where magical protections were in force. He opened his mage senses to the flow of energy moving around him. There were no magical traps that he could see, simply spells of warding and protection, weaves designed to keep prying eyes from gazing into the place with scrying spells, and wards designed to negate a head-on magical assault. Whoever had cast these spells had known his business, but had drawn the line at using harmful magical energies, just as the builders of the vault had not used any physical traps such as deadfalls.

  Adolphus could understand it. Certainly, there were those who were paranoid enough to use such things but they were a minority. After all, who wanted to dwell in a building where a slight misstep could put you in a pit, or blast you with a firebolt? Despite what mages might tell you about how careful they were, such things did occur. And when they did you were usually not around afterward to complain about the consequences.

  Adolphus fought to keep a smile from his lips. He was making assumptions that might prove fatal. He did not absolutely know this was the case here. It might simply be that the magician who had cast these wards was a better sorcerer than he, and he just could not perceive the traps. It would be best to proceed with the utmost caution until he had established whether this was the case or not.

  He was at the top of the flight of stairs now. He knew they led down through the cellars and into the vaults. He paused for a moment, and allowed himself to savour the anticipation. He was close now, so close he could almost taste it. The thing he had sought so long and so hard for was almost within his grasp, and with it the power to do what none of the Arisen had dreamed of since the time of the Vampire Counts. He would be the one to fulfil the prophecies in the Book of Shadows and the Grimoire Necronium. Surely the time had now come to pass? The armies of Chaos were on the march, the old order was ending, and a new world would be born in fire and blood. Most of all, in blood. He would be the King of the Night, and his reign would be eternal, dark and filled with poisonous beauty.

  He shook his head. Such musing brought him no closer to his goal. It was time to take the last few steps that would lead him to ultimate glory.

  Felix glanced around at the scene of carnage. Dead bodies were piled up all around them. Blood splattered Gotrek and Snorri making them look as if they had been working in an abattoir. Felix guessed that he did not look much better. Not all of the blood belonged to his opponents. He was nicked and cut in half a dozen places though he guessed that none of the wounds were major.

  ‘Hardly a fight at all,’ grumbled Gotrek. ‘Even for humans these were poor warriors.’

  ‘Snorri has killed tougher cockroaches,’ agreed Snorri Nosebiter sourly. ‘Snorri squashed an ant once that put up a better fight. Nasty acid sting it had.’

  Felix could not entirely agree with the Slayers about the toughness of their foes. By virtue of sheer numbers, he had been almost overwhelmed on several occasions, and his body’s aches reminded him that this fight had been dangerous enough. Still, they had a point. These men had not fought as well as many he had faced. It was not just that they were indifferent warriors; it was something more. They had fought like sleepwalkers. Their timing was off, and they had been indifferent as to whether they had lived or died. Their parries and thrusts had possessed a purely mechanical quality. A thought struck him.

  ‘They fought like men who were under a spell,’ he said.

  ‘A spell of being very bad fighters, maybe,’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

  ‘I think you are right, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘Not even humans are usually so bad. They fought as if they did not have all their wits about them.’

  ‘That’s never stopped Snorri from putting up a good fight,’ said Snorri. From the peevish tone, anyone would have thought the men had tried to cheat him out of a copper pfennig. He was obviously still disappointed by the quality of the opposition they had faced.

  Felix ignored him. His mind was already racing ahead, searching out reasons for why this might have happened. This Adolphus Krieger was a magician of some sort, and obviously these men had been in his thrall. The question was why he had sent them to attack now. The answer was obvious.

  ‘This was a diversion,’ Felix said. ‘The magician is already in the building.’

  He and Gotrek exchanged glances. ‘The vault,’ they said simultaneously.

  Adolphus stood before the entrance to the vault. The door was large and very strong and could probably resist a team of men with a battering ram. Not that there would have been room to swing it in these corridors. There were several potent wards on the doors designed to neutralise spells of opening and unlocking. Adolphus doubted that he could overcome them with magic. He was a very knowledgeable mage but not a particularly potent one. The countess, for one, had been much stronger. That would change when he had the talisman.

  He did not need to be a great mage, under the circumstances. The concealment of the dwarf-built pressure pads would have fooled most eyes, but not his. They were far, far keener in the darkness than any human eye could ever be. Even the hairline edges cunningly concealed in the stonework were as clear to him as the edges of a paving stone would be to a mortal.

  He took out his dagger and slid its edge through the narrow gap of the nearest one. He heard a click and the stone slid out, revealing the pressure pad within. He pushed it, and was rewarded with another click that told him the way was partially open. He repeated the process on the other side of the door. There remained only the main lock on the door itself. Fortunately he had an easy solution for that too. He had made his preparations with care.

  Reaching inside his jerkin he carefully pulled out the two containers he had made earlier. He smiled. He might not be the greatest of sorcerers but his knowledge of alchemy was considerable and had been perfected over long centuries. When the contents of the two containers were mixed they would create a powerful corrosive capable of eating through solid metal in a short time.

  Carefully he dribbled some fluid onto the area around the lock. When the green fluid encountered the red fluid, an acrid chemical smoke rose. There was a hissing, spluttering sound and the metal of the lock began to melt away like snow under a soldier’s piss.

  Very soon now, the talisman would be in his grasp.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Andriev nervously. Ulrika looked up. She too had heard the odd bubbling sound. A few moments before they had both heard faint clicks as if someone had been working with the locks. She could only hope it was Felix and the others coming back. Somehow she did not think it was.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. A faint reek as of noxious chemicals reached her nostrils. She was reminded of the scent of alchemical fire but it was not that. She sniffed again. The scent was coming from the direction of the doorway. She thought she heard a faint hissing sound now as well.

  ‘There’s someone outside. I think they are trying to get in,’ she said, raising her sword to the guard position. Andriev clutched his own weapon tighter. Even as they watched, the door began to bend inwards, as if being subjected to a force as slow and irresistible as the action of a glacier.

  ‘Whatever is out there, it isn’t human,’ Andriev said. Ulrika shuddered. She could remember Felix’s tales of his encounters with daemons all too clearly. What was it Adolphus Krieger had sent to collect the talisman?

  Carefully avoiding the spot where the corrosive still bubbled, Adolphus exerted his strength. He was much stronger than any human, and knew in a few heartbeats the weakened door would giv
e way. He could simply have waited for the acid to do its work, but he felt he was running out of time. The sounds of fighting had ceased behind him. That might mean his cats’ paws had succeeded in killing the defenders but somehow he doubted it. It was more likely that the Slayers were coming for him. He was not going to risk a fight now if he could help it, not when he was so close to his goal.

  Inside he could hear the sounds of voices. One of them belonged to Andriev, the other to a young woman. They would not stand against him for long.

  Felix raced through the house, wondering if what he was doing was wise. His legs were longer than the dwarfs’ and he was a much faster runner, so he was outdistancing them by quite a way. What if more of the enthralled warriors were in the house? What if he came upon the mage all by himself? Unless he could take the man by surprise, it would most likely prove to be a fatal encounter. He had no illusions about the outcome of any struggle between himself and a competent sorcerer.

  On the other hand, Ulrika was in danger and, despite their feelings for each other, he did not want to see any harm come to her. She might be an arrogant, overbearing, inconstant, misguided snob but he did not want to see her dead. To tell the truth, he wondered at the intensity of his own feelings now that he knew she was in danger. Not quite over her yet, he thought, sourly.

  He reached the top of the stairs and halted. From below, he could hear the shriek of tortured metal. It sounded as if the entrance to the vault was being shattered by the application of enormous force. Impossible, he told himself – it would take a siege engine. But the man down there was a magician. Who knew what he was capable of? Perhaps the wards woven on the vault were not quite as strong as Max had claimed, or maybe the magician was a lot more powerful than they had expected. It was not a reassuring thought.

  He listened to see if he could distinguish anything else. He hoped to hear Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter approaching but there was nothing. He could not hear their booted feet ringing on the stonework. He could hear Ulrika’s indistinct voice shouting some sort of challenge, and the murmur of a response too low for him to hear. Then from down below too came an ominous silence.

  Better go and learn the worst, he thought. Reluctantly he padded down the stairs, thinking, perhaps Gotrek will be the one to write the tale of my heroic doom.

  Ulrika watched as the door exploded inwards. Stone screeched against stone. She expected to see a gang of warriors armed with a portable ram or a mage surrounded by the incandescent glow of power. Instead, she saw a tall, stately-looking man, garbed in fashionable clothing. A longsword hung scabbarded at his side. There was an eerie grace about him that she would have associated more with acrobats than a mage. He glanced at her but made no threatening move.

  ‘If you can use that blade, magician, I suggest you draw it. I hate to cut down an unarmed man.’

  To her surprise he smiled, showing gleaming white teeth. His eyes when they met hers were dark and piercing.

  He was a very handsome man, Ulrika thought, almost beautiful. He bore himself with an air of command that a Tsar might have envied.

  ‘And I would hate to kill a young woman so lovely,’ he said pleasantly. He sounded as if he came from the Empire but there was just the faintest trace of a foreign accent in his voice. If she had been forced to guess, she would have said Bretonnian.

  ‘I am not afraid of your magic, wizard,’ she said, and was proud of how steady her voice was. Something about the man’s manner told her she could easily die here. He laughed – an eerie, velvety sound.

  ‘Is that what you think I am?’

  ‘What else could you be?’

  ‘Something beyond your ability to imagine,’ he said.

  Adolphus recognised the woman from that night at the White Boar, just as he recognised the unconscious man lying nearby. What a small world, he thought. Then again, Praag was a small city and not many taverns remained open after the destruction of the siege. Once again he felt the surge of attraction.

  She was certainly beautiful, and she held herself well. There was something about her courage in the face of her obvious fear that he found quite touching. He wished he had had time to talk to her, but he had already wasted enough time. He could see what he had come for. It lay on the table beside the recumbent form of the man in wizard’s robes.

  Adolphus could see the man still lived, but life pulsed so faintly in him that he would not recover any time soon, if at all. No threat there then.

  The only ones who stood between him and the talisman were the young woman and the old man. He would not even need his sword to take them.

  Behind him on the stairs came the footsteps of a man trying to move quietly. A mortal might not have detected him at all, but Adolphus could tell where he was from the sound of his breathing, let alone the soft scuff of boot leather on stone. He smiled. One lone man was no threat to him either.

  ‘Step away from the talisman and I will let you live,’ he told the girl quietly. ‘Interfere with me and you will most assuredly die, and that would give me no pleasure.’

  The woman lunged at him with surprising speed. She was obviously not unskilled with that long blade of hers. Adolphus stepped easily aside. She was quick for a mortal, but compared to him she moved like an arthritic cripple. While she went for him the old man reached for the talisman. Adolphus was not going to allow that.

  He extended his stride and reached the amulet at the same time as the old man. A quick buffet from his open hand sent Andriev flying across the room to smash into the wall. There was a sickening crack and he slid down to the floor. Blood pooled from his broken head. Triumph filled Adolphus as he picked up the amulet.

  He was disappointed to feel no surge of power, no enormous burst of magical energy. Thunder did not roar. Lightning did not flash. The world did not change in an instant. He had been foolish to expect any such thing. The talisman would need to be studied and attuned before he could use it. There was no doubt he had found what he had come for in his mind though. It was exactly as described in the grimoire and the Lost Book of Nagash. There could not be more than one artefact fitting this description in the world now. He had what he came for. It was time to leave.

  He turned just in time to see the woman racing towards him, and a tall blond man filling the doorway. Surely these fools did not intend to try and stop him?

  Felix did not think he had ever seen a man move so fast. His swiftness was eye-blurring. Some sort of spell must be enhancing his speed. At least there was only the sorcerer. It was a small mercy. Watching the man, he knew that there was no way he could stand against him if he drew his sword. Best not to give him the chance to then, he thought, and advanced into the room.

  Ulrika raced forward too, aiming a slash at the man’s neck that would have severed his head from his shoulders if it had connected. It didn’t. Krieger ducked and the blade passed above his head. With a motion like a tiger pouncing on a deer, he sprang forward. In an instant he had Ulrika immobilised, his arm around her neck; her struggles were as weak as those of a mouse in the grip of a cat.

  ‘Ulrika,’ Felix shouted.

  The man looked up at him, and Felix was in no way surprised to see the red glow in his eyes. Mage, he thought, and then realised that there was something naggingly familiar about the man. Felix suddenly put his finger on it. He was the wizard in the tavern, the one who vanished just as Max and Ulrika came in.

  Felix could hear Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter on the stairs. Help was on its way.

  ‘If you care about this girl, stand back,’ said Krieger. ‘Or I will snap her neck like a twig.’

  ‘If you harm her in any way I will kill you,’ said Felix, and was surprised to find that he meant it. Whatever it took, however long, he would hound this man to his grave.

  ‘Somehow I doubt that,’ said Krieger in his suave tone.

  ‘If the manling doesn’t then I will,’ said Gotrek, from beside Felix. There could be no doubt at all that he meant it.

  The tall man laughed but hell
was in his eyes. ‘It’s been tried before, by your kin, and they did not succeed either. Now stand aside or the girl dies.’

  The Slayer glared at the dark magician. Felix wondered if Gotrek was going to attack and let Ulrika die anyway. He knew he could not allow it.

  FOUR

  ‘Snorri thinks we should take him,’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Felix. ‘If we do, he will kill Ulrika.’

  ‘And then Snorri will kill him,’ said Snorri, his battle lust unsated by his encounter with the magician’s minions. He was ready to attack no matter what Felix said. Felix looked at Gotrek pleadingly. No sign of any understanding entered the Slayer’s one mad eye. The silence lengthened. Gotrek and Krieger glared at each other. An odd glow appeared in the mage’s eyes once more. There seemed to be some sort of contest of wills going on. Neither looked away.

  Felix’s mouth felt dry. The room stank of dust and death and the faintest hint of something else, cinnamon perhaps. Andriev lay near, his broken head testimony to how fragile life could be. Max did not look much better.

  ‘Kill him,’ gasped Ulrika. ‘Don’t worry about me. I would rather die than be dishonoured.’

  Her words were cut off abruptly as Krieger tightened his grip on her throat. For a magician, he was strong. Felix was not at all sure he would like to face him with a sword in his hand. Ulrika’s face was very pale now. Felix could see she was having trouble breathing. The Slayer continued to glare. Felix could feel that things had come to a very delicate pass, it might go either way now. There was a tension in the room that begged for violent action. Unfortunately, Felix knew that when the explosion came it would end up with Ulrika dead.

  ‘Let her go and you have my word you can leave here,’ he said, hoping to sway the Slayers with talk of honour and oaths. This approach usually worked on dwarfs. Gotrek tensed. The Slayer did not like what he was doing. The magician merely laughed.