by Warhammer
The three stood transfixed as they watched this bizarre resurrection. Not even Gotrek seemed capable of movement. He watched in fascination as white flesh enveloped the man-like form and glossy black hair erupted from its scalp. It dawned on Felix’s shocked brain that what he had just witnessed was like watching the decomposition of a corpse only at great speed and in reverse. Slowly the pale creature rose to its feet and smiled at them revealing long white teeth.
Felix recognised the thing at once although his stunned mind refused to accept what he was seeing. ‘Mannfred von Carstein,’ he breathed.
‘True,’ said the vampire count in a low well-modulated voice. ‘And I thank you for your part in my resurrection. It was not quite what Herr Schtillman intended I think, but nonetheless the results are satisfactory.’
‘Undead scum, prepare to die,’ said Gotrek.
The vampire gestured with one long claw-like hand and Gotrek froze on the spot. Veins bulged in his forehead. Great muscles swelled on his chest and arms. He looked as if he were struggling in the grip of an invisible giant. The only sign of this contest was a look of strain on the vampire count’s face.
‘No, Slayer,’ he said. ‘I would be foolish indeed to face such an axe as yours in my newly reborn state. I think I shall forgo the pleasure of humbling you till another evening. For the moment farewell.’
With a mighty roar Gotrek threw himself forward, overcoming his invisible bonds. Even as the slayer sprang the vampire shimmered and his form came apart in a cloud of black mist. Gotrek’s axe cleaved through the fog and Felix thought he heard a slight cry of pain. Droplets of blood congealed on the edge of the axe. Then with faintest trace of mocking laughter the cloud slithered up the stairs and was gone.
Gotrek bounded after it, howling oaths and curses. Felix turned to look at the girl. He took off his cloak and draped it round her shivering form. She looked stunned.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. The girl nodded. After a moment she said. ‘He was rather handsome. The count, I mean.’
Felix groaned and headed for the stairs. The sooner they got out of this accursed place, the happier he would be.
THE TWO CROWNS OF RAS KARIM
Nathan Long
ONE
‘The Lurking Horror?’ chuckled a merchant in orange robes. ‘A tale to frighten children. It does not exist.’
‘It exists,’ said a hard-faced man in the garb of a river pilot. His accent was almost impenetrable. ‘Not a year ago it made off with half the sheep of my tribe and ate my cousin Amduj.’
‘Do you know where it dwells?’ asked Felix.
The pilot shrugged. ‘It is everywhere and nowhere. It steps from behind the night, and can open a door in a shadow.’
Gotrek growled, annoyed. ‘Very helpful.’
Felix sighed and looked around the low, arched common room, trying to gauge who else in this foreign place might speak Reikspiel. He and Gotrek were in the Forbidden Garden, a house of ill repute in Ras Karim, a port some hundred leagues east of Copher, asking after a legendary monster said to haunt the desert south of the city.
They had first learned of the beast on Sartosa, where Gotrek had overheard an Arabyan pirate bragging that he had seen it kill fifty men, and that it had a hide of black iron that no mortal weapon could pierce. The tale had worked upon the Slayer like a red cape to an Estalian bull. He bought passage on the first ship heading south, and they had followed the rumour of the Horror from Lashiek, the corsair city, to Copher, the spice port, and now to Ras Karim. But though everyone they spoke to in their travels had heard of it, none could agree where it lived, or what it was, or if it was anything more than a myth.
The mellow glow of intricately pierced tin lamps pushed back the darkness of the hot, dry evening, revealing clusters of men reclining on satin cushions around knee-high tables, drinking fragrant mint tea from tiny cups and sipping smoke from water-filled pipes. The air was heady with smoke and the cloying scent of night jasmine, blooming in the courtyard garden that gave the place its name.
In the centre of the tables, veiled, bare-midriffed dancers in gauzy pantaloons swayed to whining flutes and pattering drums, while other women served and sat with the men, murmuring seductions in their ears and leaning lasciviously against them as they fed them chunks of spiced lamb.
Not all eyes were on the dancers, however. More than a few men glanced furtively at Gotrek and Felix. Felix tried to convince himself that this was only natural. Men of the Empire were not often seen this far south and east, and dwarfs were undoubtedly rarer still, particularly bare-chested, red-crested, one-eyed dwarfs with shoulders wider than many doorways.
A thin man at Felix’s elbow coughed politely. His head was shaved, and gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose. ‘Noble foreigners, if you truly seek the Horror, it would be wiser to enquire on the morrow in the Street of Scholars.’ He sniffed in the direction of the other men. ‘There you will receive science and fact, not rumour and tall tales.’
‘Thank you, learned sir,’ said Felix, bowing and hoping he’d got the honorific right. ‘We will do so.’ He looked at Gotrek. ‘Tomorrow then?’
Gotrek shrugged. ‘Aye. Though the sooner I find my doom, the sooner I can stop drinking this piss water.’ He made a face as he finished his mug. ‘Worst beer I’ve ever had.’
‘That is because it is not beer,’ said the merchant. ‘Ras Karim is not rich in wheat like your northern lands. It is tialva, made from sorghum.’
‘Sorghum?’ Gotrek choked. ‘Valaya preserve me.’ He glared behind the bar. ‘Do they have anything else?’
The merchant nodded. ‘Try the arag, our native drink. It is made with anise, and very potent.’
‘Anise.’ Gotrek shuddered. He turned away from the merchant and pounded the bar. ‘Barkeep! More piss water!’
Felix cringed and looked around to see if anyone had taken offence. They were still being scrutinised, but thankfully no one seemed to have understood Gotrek’s words.
As he turned back to tell Gotrek to keep his voice down, Felix noticed a pair of dark eyes looking at him. He stopped, held by their gaze. They belonged to one of the women of the house. She leaned against a fat pillar, staring boldly at him. Behind her translucent veil her full lips curved into a knowing smile. The rest of her voluptuous charms were revealed beneath an equally transparent sleeveless top and pantaloons. Felix gulped. It had been a long, dry journey to Ras Karim. Very dry.
She stepped toward him, her belt of coins jingling softly with each sway of her hips.
‘Greetings, esteemed foreigner,’ she said in a low, honeyed voice.
‘Greetings,’ said Felix, awkwardly. His tongue seemed suddenly too big for his mouth.
‘Would you like to add a coin to my belt?’ she asked, looking up at him through black lashes. She smelled of vanilla and smoke. ‘I have never had the coin of a northman before. I hear they are large, and of very hard metal.’
Felix coughed, blushing. He turned to Gotrek. ‘Gotrek, as we must wait until tomorrow…’
The Slayer shrugged. ‘Do what you will, manling. I’m going to see how much sorghum beer it takes to get me drunk.’ He pounded on the bar again. ‘Barkeep! Where’s that piss water?’
Unclothed but for her veil and her shimmering belt, the dancer’s golden-brown curves were even more astounding. Felix swallowed convulsively as she took his hand and drew him toward the bed, a low, cushioned dais in the centre of her small, opulent room, piled high with silk pillows and overhung with a sheer canopy.
Felix cleared his throat. ‘Aren’t you going to remove your veil?’
‘My veil?’ She smiled as she knelt before him. ‘That would be immodest.’ She began unbuckling his belt. ‘Now, please, tease me no more. I must see what you have in your coin pouch…’
‘Oh, devil of the north,’ cried the dancer a while later. ‘You shake me to my core!’
She clutched Felix to her in ecstasy.
‘Er,’ said Felix, pausing. ‘I think th
at was the building shaking, actually.’
‘Indeed,’ purred the dancer. ‘So powerful. So potent.’
The room shook again, and this time Felix heard a crash from below.
‘Ah, I think there might be some trouble.’
The dancer pouted. ‘The men fight. They always fight. Forget them, beloved.’ She ground against him. ‘Come, I hunger for you.’
Felix was hungry too, but just as he returned to her embrace, there came a thunderous crash, then a muffled, ‘By Grimnir’s beard, you’ll pay for that!’
More thuds and smashes followed, along with angry cries and the high-pitched shrieks of frightened women.
‘Sigmar curse him!’ groaned Felix. He disentangled himself from the dancer’s arms and reached for his clothes.
‘You leave me, noble warrior?’ she moaned, dismayed. ‘Where do you go?’
‘To speak with a Slayer about timing,’ growled Felix.
‘Sigmar take you, Gotrek!’ cried Felix, still buckling on his sword belt and stamping his left foot into his boot as he shoved through the angry sailors and merchants and artisans who were all trying to come to grips with the dwarf. ‘Can you not go one night without stirring up trouble? I’d only just–’
He paused. Gotrek looked awful. Though he fought like a badger, he was sweating and pale – almost green – and his eyes were unfocused.
Felix ducked as a tribesman swung a stool at him, then kicked the man in the knee. ‘Gotrek?’
Gotrek heaved a merchant in loose breeches into the crowd. Five men went down, but Gotrek almost did too. He was reeling.
‘Gotrek?’ said Felix again as he tripped one man into another. ‘Are you drunk?’
Gotrek shook his head. Sweat sprayed from his beard. ‘Something…’ He punched a man in the stomach, then kneed him in the face when he doubled up. ‘Something wrong… with the beer.’
Felix frowned. ‘Wrong?’
Gotrek swung at a man with fierce eyes and fiercer moustaches. He missed! The man kicked Gotrek in the chest to no effect. Gotrek shoved him unsteadily to the floor and staggered back. ‘My head… hurts.’
The barkeep was shouting at the crowd. His nose was twice its normal size and streaming blood, and he had two alarming black eyes. He pointed to the door.
The brawlers started pushing Gotrek and Felix toward the street like they were flotsam floating on a sweaty sea. Felix was tempted to draw his sword and even the odds a bit, but dared not. The local authorities might forgive a tavern brawl. Murder they would not.
Unfortunately, some of the brothel’s patrons didn’t share his compunction. A tribesman was drawing a curved dagger. Gotrek caught his wrist and gave him an uppercut that snapped his teeth together with a crack like a pistol-shot.
The barkeep roared in his native tongue, waving his hands, and Felix saw other men reluctantly sheathing knives and scimitars. Must be fastidious about blood on his flagstones, he thought.
Gotrek spun a herdsman around by his belt and tossed him into the crowd. Felix punched a black-bearded trader in the face and dodged a kick from a brawny labourer. He heard a shout behind him and turned. Four men were running at them with one of the low tables tipped on its side like a shield. Gotrek tried to get his axe out to split the table, but he fumbled it. The table bashed into them and forced them backwards.
Gotrek slurred a dwarfish curse and pushed back. Felix joined him, but they could get no traction.
Felix looked back. They were skidding toward the door.
‘Get around it!’ he called. ‘Gotrek–’
Too late. With a crash, the table hit the edges of the door and shot them tumbling out into the dusty street.
Gotrek surged up, roaring and throwing blind punches, but no one had followed them out. Instead, the Forbidden Garden’s heavy wooden door slammed shut in their faces, and Felix heard bolts shoot shut and locks clack closed.
Felix got painfully to his feet and looked around. They were entirely alone. There wasn’t a soul on the street. And it was quiet. No noise of traffic. No night bird’s cry. Not a sound came from the houses around them. Even the shouting and commotion from inside the brothel had stopped as if it had never been.
Gotrek stood clutching his head and swaying, his legs wide-braced and shaking, as if he struggled under a great weight. ‘Drugged,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Cowards drugged me.’
‘Drugged?’ Felix wondered why. Did they hope to rob the Slayer? The only things of value either of them carried at the moment were their weapons. Their journey to the east had beggared them.
‘Let’s go back to Ishurak’s ship,’ he said. ‘You can sleep it off there.’
Gotrek nodded queasily. ‘Just… point me in the right direction.’
‘This way.’
Felix started toward the docks, Gotrek lurching along behind as if his legs were made of wood. Their steps echoed eerily off the moon-washed stucco buildings that lined the street. Ahead of them a lit window went dark. The shutters of another banged shut, and Felix heard the click of a lock. A baby wailed, then was silenced.
Felix slowed, his hand dropping to his hilt. Something was wrong. Gotrek didn’t look up. All his concentration was focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
There was a tiny sound behind them – the softest scuff of sole on sand. Felix turned. He stared. A semicircle of motionless, identically dressed men stood behind them, heavy tulwars in their gauntleted hands.
TWO
The men wore bronze breastplates over blood-red livery, and spiked helmets wrapped in blood-red turbans. Their faces were hidden, veils of fine bronze mail draped over their features, obscuring them utterly. They showed no flesh at all.
Gotrek snarled and drew his rune axe, holding it unsteadily before him. Felix drew his sword. The masked warriors advanced in unison, going on guard as one.
A voice cried out a command.
They stopped.
A man in gold-trimmed red robes stepped from behind them. He was tall but hunched, as if his high, column-shaped hat made his head too heavy for his stringy neck. Swinging before his sunken chest was a small silver flute that hung from a long necklace. He looked at Gotrek and Felix with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. ‘Do not hurt our guests,’ he said in a smooth voice, and Felix realised he was speaking Reikspiel for their benefit. ‘The dwarf will fall soon enough.’
Gotrek growled. ‘Fall?’ He was having difficulty forming words. He started forward, axe raised, but his legs were rubber. He listed sideways. ‘Fall?’
With each step, the weight of Gotrek’s impairment seemed to press more heavily upon him. He tripped and caught himself with his axe, then staggered on.
Felix advanced too, aiming for the gold-robed man, but he stepped back, the mail-masked soldiers closing ranks before him.
‘I… will not… fall…’ Gotrek rasped.
He fell, forehead thudding against the rough, dry earth.
At a sign from the tall man, the red warriors moved in.
Felix stood over Gotrek, sword out, ready to protect him to his death. ‘Who dies first!’ he cried.
Pain and sparking fire exploded inside his head, and he felt his shoulders hit the street. The last thing he saw before all went dark was the barkeep standing above him with a cudgel, bowing obsequiously to the man in red, who tossed him a gold coin.
Felix woke with harsh morning light stabbing him in the eyes. It wasn’t his first waking. He had vague recollections of swinging head-down over a uniformed shoulder, of being dropped on a stone floor, of barred doors clanging shut. Now he woke fully, and wished he hadn’t.
He was in a dark cell – more like a cage – with iron bars on three sides and a stone wall on the fourth. Sunlight lanced through an arrow slit in the wall. He sat up to get out of its savage beam and groaned. His head felt like it was made of loosely jointed scrap-iron. It clanged when it moved. He felt his skull gingerly. There was an egg-sized lump behind his ear, and a smaller one on his forehead, and h
e was thirsty – terribly thirsty. It was as dry and as hot as an oven in that low-roofed space. His skin felt like it might crumble to powder.
He looked around. ‘Gotrek, are you…?’
Gotrek wasn’t in the cell. Felix looked through the bars beyond it. His cage was one of hundreds, arranged in neat rows that vanished into the gloom of the dungeon. In every cell, emaciated figures huddled on the floor – asleep or dead, Felix could not tell. Gotrek wasn’t in any of the cells he could see.
The prisoner in the next cell rolled over and looked at him. ‘Ah, the pale one awakes,’ he said, his cultured voice belying his rags and matted beard. ‘A man of the Empire, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Felix nodded, then groaned. His head rang like a gong.
‘Welcome then, honoured friend,’ said the ragged man, sitting up. ‘All that I may call mine is yours.’ He smirked as he scratched himself. ‘I am currently wealthy in fleas.’
‘Where am I?’ asked Felix. ‘And where is Gotrek? The dwarf.’
‘You are in the dungeons of the Palace of Penitence, guest of his divine eminence, Falhedar il Toorissi, Scourge of the Bermini, Conqueror of the Medgidal hill kings, Defender of the Faithful, and Caliph of our fair city of Ras Karim.’ The man scratched himself again and looked down the corridor outside the cells. ‘As for your squat friend, our gracious hosts took him away in chains not a half-hour ago. I know not where.’
Felix slumped back against the stone wall, groaning. Imprisoned in a strange land. They could die here and no one would know what had become of them. Gotrek wouldn’t like it much. Rotting in a cell was not a proper death for a Slayer. But… but perhaps there had been some mistake. Perhaps if they could speak to someone they might be released.
He looked at the man in the next cell. ‘This caliph. Is he a reasonable man? Is he just?’