by Warhammer
‘I am not a professor, I am a poet,’ he said, producing his thin pouch and counting out his few remaining gold coins. ‘But I can pay.’
‘Food,’ Gotrek said. ‘And ale.’
At this the old woman burst into tears. Felix stared at her.
‘The hag is discomfited,’ Gotrek said.
The old man nodded. ‘Our Gunter is missing, on this of all nights.’
‘Get me some ale,’ Gotrek said. The innkeeper backed off. Gotrek got up and stumped over to where the peddlers were sitting. They regarded him warily.
‘Do any of you know about a black coach drawn by four black horses?’ Gotrek asked.
‘You have seen the black coach?’ one of the peddlers asked. The fear was evident in his voice.
‘Seen it? The bloody thing nearly ran me over.’ A man gasped. Felix heard the sound of a ladle being dropped. He saw the innkeeper stoop to pick it up and begin refilling the tankard.
‘You are lucky then,’ the fattest and most prosperous-looking peddler said. ‘Some say the coach is driven by daemons. I have heard it passes here on Geheimnisnacht every year. Some say it carries wee children from Altdorf who are sacrificed at the Darkstone Ring.’
Gotrek looked at him with interest. Felix did not like the way this was developing.
‘Surely that is only a legend,’ he said.
‘No, sir,’ the innkeeper shouted. ‘Every year we hear the thunder of its passing. Two years ago Gunter looked out and saw it, a black coach just as you describe.’
At the mention of Gunter’s name the old woman began to cry again. The innkeeper brought stew and two great steins of ale.
‘Bring beer for my companion too,’ Gotrek said. The landlord went off for another stein.
‘Who is Gunter?’ Felix asked when he returned. There was another wail from the old woman.
‘More ale,’ Gotrek said. The landlord looked in astonishment at the empty flagons.
‘Take mine,’ Felix said. ‘Now, mein host, who is Gunter?’
‘And why does the old hag howl at the very mention of his name?’ Gotrek asked, wiping his mouth on his mud-encrusted arm.
‘Gunter is our son. He went out to chop wood this afternoon. He has not returned.’
‘Gunter is a good boy,’ the old woman sniffled. ‘How will we survive without him?’
‘Perhaps he is simply lost in the woods?’
‘Impossible,’ the innkeeper said. ‘Gunter knows the woods round here like I know the hairs on my hand. He should have been home hours ago. I fear the coven has taken him, as a sacrifice.’
‘It’s just like Lotte Hauptmann’s daughter, Ingrid,’ the fat peddler said. The innkeeper shot him a dirty look.
‘I want no tales told of our son’s betrothed,’ he said.
‘Let the man speak,’ Gotrek said. The peddler looked at him gratefully.
‘The same thing happened last year, in Hartzroch, just down the road. Goodwife Hauptmann looked in on her teenage daughter Ingrid just after sunset. She thought she heard banging coming from her daughter’s room. The girl was gone, snatched by who-knows-what sorcerous power from her bed in a locked house. The next day the hue and cry went up. We found Ingrid. She was covered in bruises and in a terrible state.’
He looked at them to make sure he had their attention. ‘You asked her what happened?’ Felix said.
‘Aye, sir. It seems she had been carried off by daemons, wild things of the wood, to Darkstone Ring. There the coven waited with evil creatures from the forests. They made to sacrifice her at the altar but she broke free from her captors and invoked the good name of blessed Sigmar. While they reeled she fled. They pursued her but could not overtake her.’
‘That was lucky,’ Felix said dryly.
‘There is no need to mock, Herr Doktor. We made our way to the stones and we did find all sorts of tracks in the disturbed earth. Including those of humans and beasts and cloven-hoofed daemons. And a yearling infant gutted like a pig upon the altar.’
‘Cloven-hoofed daemons?’ Gotrek asked. Felix didn’t like the look of interest in his eye. The peddler nodded.
‘I would not venture up to Darkstone Ring tonight,’ the peddler said. ‘Not for all the gold in Altdorf.’
‘It would be a task fit for a hero,’ Gotrek said, looking meaningfully at Felix. Felix was shocked.
‘Surely you cannot mean–’
‘What better task for a Trollslayer than to face these daemons on their sacred night? It would be a mighty death.’
‘It would be a stupid death,’ Felix muttered.
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You are coming, aren’t you?’ Gotrek said menacingly. He was rubbing his thumb along the blade of his axe. Felix noticed that it was bleeding again.
He nodded slowly. ‘An oath is an oath.’
The dwarf slapped him upon the back with such force that he thought his ribs would break. ‘Sometimes, manling, I think you must have dwarf blood in you. Not that any of the Elder race would stoop to such a mixed marriage, of course.’
He stomped back to his ale.
‘Of course,’ his companion said, glaring at his back.
Felix fumbled in his pack for his mail shirt. He noticed that the innkeeper and his wife and the peddlers were looking at him. Their eyes held something that looked close to awe. Gotrek sat near the fire drinking ale and grumbling in dwarfish.
‘You’re not really going with him?’ the fat peddler whispered. Felix nodded.
‘Why?’
‘He saved my life. I owe him a debt.’ Felix thought it best not to mention the circumstances under which Gotrek had saved him.
‘I pulled the manling out from under the hooves of the Emperor’s cavalry,’ Gotrek shouted.
Felix cursed bitterly. The Trollslayer has the hearing of a wild beast as well as the brains of one, he thought to himself, continuing to pull on the mail shirt.
‘Aye. The manling thought it clever to put his case to the Emperor with petitions and protest marches. Old Karl Franz chose to respond, quite sensibly, with cavalry charges.’
The peddlers were starting to back away.
‘An insurrectionist,’ Felix heard one mutter.
Felix felt his face flush. ‘It was yet another cruel and unjust tax. A silver piece for every window, indeed. To make it worse, all the fat merchants bricked up their windows and the Altdorf militia went around knocking holes in the side of poor folks’ hovels. We were right to speak out.’
‘There’s a reward for the capture of insurrectionists,’ the peddler said. ‘A big reward.’
Felix stared at him. ‘Of course, the Imperial cavalry were no match for my companion’s axe,’ he said. ‘Such carnage! Heads, legs, arms everywhere. He stood on a pile of bodies.’
‘They called for archers,’ Gotrek said. ‘We departed down a back alley. Being spitted from afar would have been an unseemly death.’
The fat peddler looked at his companions then at Gotrek, then at Felix, then back at his companions. ‘A sensible man keeps out of politics,’ he said to the man who had talked of rewards. He looked at Felix. ‘No offence, sir.’
‘None taken,’ Felix said. ‘You are absolutely correct.’
‘Insurrectionist or no,’ the old woman said, ‘may Sigmar bless you if you bring my little Gunter back.’
‘He is not little, Lise,’ the innkeeper said. ‘He is a strapping young man. Still, I hope you bring my son back. I am old and I need him to chop the wood and shoe the horses and lift the kegs and–’
‘I am touched by your paternal concern, sir,’ Felix interrupted. He pulled his leather cap down on his head.
Gotrek got up and looked at him. He beat his chest with one meaty hand. ‘Armour is for women and girly elves,’ he said.
‘Perhaps I had best wear it, Gotrek. If I am to return alive with the tale of your deeds – as I did, after all, swear to do.’
‘You have a point, manling. And remember that is not
all you swore to do.’ He turned to the innkeeper. ‘How will we find the Darkstone Ring?’
Felix felt his mouth go dry. He fought to keep his hands from shaking.
‘There is a trail. It runs from the road. I will take you to its start.’
‘Good,’ Gotrek said. ‘This is too good an opportunity to miss. Tonight I will atone my sins and stand among the Iron Halls of my fathers. Great Grungni willing.’
He made a peculiar sign over his chest with his clenched right hand. ‘Come, manling, let us go.’ He strode out the door.
Felix picked up his pack. At the doorway the old woman stopped him and pressed something into his hand. ‘Please, sir,’ she said. ‘Take this. It is a charm to Sigmar. It will protect you. My little Gunter wears its twin.’
And much good it’s done him, Felix was about to say, but the expression on her face stopped him. It held fear, concern and perhaps hope. He was touched.
‘I’ll do my best, frau.’
Outside, the sky was bright with the green witchlight of the moons. Felix opened his hand. In it was a small iron hammer on a fine-linked chain. He shrugged and hung it round his neck. Gotrek and the old man were already moving down the road. He had to run to catch up.
‘What do you think these are, manling?’ Gotrek said, bending close to the ground. Ahead of them, the road continued on towards Hartzroch and Bogenhafen. Felix leaned on the league marker. This was the edge of the trail. Felix hoped the innkeeper had returned home safely.
‘Tracks,’ he said. ‘Going north.’
‘Very good, manling. They are coach tracks and they take the trail north to the Darkstone Ring.’
‘The black coach?’ Felix said.
‘I hope so. What a glorious night! All my prayers are answered. A chance to atone and to get revenge on the swine who nearly ran me over.’ Gotrek cackled gleefully but Felix could sense a change in him. He seemed tense, as if suspecting that his hour of destiny were arriving and he would meet it badly. He seemed unusually talkative.
‘A coach? Does this coven consist of noblemen, manling? Is your Empire so very corrupt?’
Felix shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It may have a noble leader. The members are most likely local folk. They say the taint of Chaos runs deep in these out of the way places.’
Gotrek shook his head and for the first time ever he looked dismayed. ‘I could weep for the folly of your people, manling. To be so corrupted that your rulers could sell themselves over to the powers of darkness, that is a terrible thing.’
‘Not all men are so,’ Felix said angrily. ‘True, some seek easy power or the pleasures of the flesh, but they are few. Most people keep the faith. Anyway, the Elder Race are not so pure. I have heard tales of whole armies of dwarfs dedicated to the Ruinous Powers.’
Gotrek gave a low angry growl and spat on the ground. Felix gripped the hilt of his sword tighter. He wondered whether he had pushed the Trollslayer too far.
‘You are correct,’ Gotrek said, his voice soft and cold. ‘We do not lightly talk about such things. We have vowed eternal war against the abominations you mention and their dark masters.’
‘As have my own people. We have our witch hunts and our laws.’
Gotrek shook his head. ‘Your people do not understand. They are soft and decadent and live far from the war. They do not understand the terrible things which gnaw at the roots of the world and seek to undermine us all. Witch hunts? Hah!’ He spat on the ground. ‘Laws! There is only one way to meet the threat of Chaos.’
He brandished his axe meaningfully.
They trudged wearily through the forest. Overhead, the moons gleamed feverishly. Morrslieb had become ever brighter, and now its green glow stained the sky. A light mist had gathered and the terrain they moved through was bleak and wild. Rocks broke through the turf like plague spots breaking through the skin of the world.
Sometimes Felix thought he could hear great wings passing overhead, but when he looked up he could see only the glow in the sky. The mist distorted and spread so that it looked as though they walked along the bed of some infernal sea.
There was a sense of wrongness about this place, Felix decided. The air tasted foul and the hairs on the nape of his neck constantly prickled. Back when he had been a boy in Altdorf he had sat in his father’s house and watched the sky grow black with menacing clouds. Then had come the most monstrous storm in living memory. Now he felt the same sense of anticipation. Mighty forces were gathering close to here, he was certain. He felt like an insect crawling over the body of a giant that could at any moment awake and crush him.
Even Gotrek seemed oppressed. He had fallen silent and did not even mumble to himself as he usually did. Now and again he would stop and motion for Felix to stand quiet, then he would stand and sniff the air. Felix could see that his whole body tensed as if he strained with every nerve to catch the slightest trace of something. Then they would move on.
Felix’s muscles all felt tight with tension. He wished he had not come. Surely, he told himself, my obligation to the dwarf does not mean I must face certain death. Perhaps I can slip away in the mist.
He gritted his teeth. He prided himself on being an honourable man, and the debt he owed the dwarf was real. The dwarf had risked his life to save him. Granted, at the time he had not known Gotrek was seeking death, courting it as a man courts a desirable lady. It still left him under an obligation.
He remembered the riotous drunken evening in the taverns of the Maze when they had sworn blood-brothership in that curious dwarfish rite and he had agreed to help Gotrek in his quest.
Gotrek wished his name remembered and his deeds recalled. When he had found out that Felix was a poet, the dwarf had asked Felix to accompany him. At the time, in the warm glow of beery camaraderie, it had seemed a splendid idea. The Trollslayer’s doomed quest had struck Felix as excellent material for an epic poem, one that would make him famous.
Little did I know, Felix thought, that it would lead to this. Hunting for monsters on Geheimnisnacht. He smiled ironically. It was easy to sing of brave deeds in the taverns and playhalls where horror was a thing conjured by the words of skilled craftsmen. Out here, though, it was different. His bowels felt loose with fear and the oppressive atmosphere made him want to run screaming.
Still, he tried to console himself, this is fit subject matter for a poem. If only I live to write it.
The woods became deeper and more tangled. The trees took on the aspect of twisted, uncanny beings. Felix felt as if they were watching him. He tried to dismiss the thought as fantasy but the mist and the ghastly moonlight only stimulated his imagination. He felt as if every pool of shadow contained a monster.
Felix looked down at the dwarf. Gotrek’s face held a mixture of anticipation and fear. Felix had thought him immune to terror but now he realised it was not so. A ferocious will drove him to seek his doom. Feeling that his own death might be near at hand, Felix asked a question that he had long been afraid to utter.
‘Herr Trollslayer, what was it you did that you must atone for? What crime drives you to punish yourself so?’
Gotrek looked up to him, then turned his head to gaze off into the night. Felix watched the cable-like muscles of his neck ripple like serpents as he did so.
‘If another man asked me that question I would slaughter him. I make allowances for your youth and ignorance and the friendship rite we have undergone. Such a death would make me a kin-slayer. That is a terrible crime. Such crimes we do not talk about.’
Felix had not realised the dwarf was so attached to him. Gotrek looked up at him as if expecting a response.
‘I understand,’ Felix said.
‘Do you, manling? Do you really?’ The Trollslayer’s voice was as harsh as stones breaking.
Felix smiled ruefully. In that moment he saw the gap that separated man from dwarf. He would never understand their strange taboos, their obsession with oaths and order and pride. He could not see what would drive the Trollslayer to carry out his s
elf-imposed death sentence.
‘Your people are too harsh with themselves,’ he said.
‘Yours are too soft,’ the Trollslayer replied. They fell into silence. Both were startled by a quiet, mad laugh. Felix turned, whipping up his blade into the guard position. Gotrek raised his axe.
Out of the mists something shambled. Once it had been a man, Felix decided. The outline was still there. It was as if some mad god held the creature close to a daemonic fire until flesh dripped and ran, then had left it to set in a new and abhorrent form.
‘This night we will dance,’ it said, in a high-pitched voice that held no hint of sanity. ‘Dance and touch.’
It reached out gently to Felix and stroked his arm. Felix recoiled in horror as fingers like clumps of maggots rose towards his face.
‘This night at the stone we will dance and touch and rub.’ It made as if to embrace him. It smiled, showing short, pointed teeth. Felix stood quietly. He felt like a spectator, distanced from the event that was happening. He pulled back and put the point of his sword against the thing’s chest.
‘Come no closer,’ Felix warned. The thing smiled. Its mouth seemed to grow wider, it showed more small sharp teeth. Its lips rolled back until the bottom half of the face seemed all wet glistening gum and the jaw sank lower like that of a snake. It pushed forward against the sword until beads of blood glistened on its chest. It gave a gurgling, idiotic laugh.
‘Dance and touch and rub and eat,’ it said, and with inhuman swiftness it writhed around the sword and leapt for Felix.
Swift as it was, the Trollslayer was swifter. In mid-leap his axe caught its neck. The head rolled into the night; a red fountain gushed.
This is not happening, thought Felix.
‘What was that? A daemon?’ Gotrek asked. Felix could hear the excitement in his voice.
‘I think it was once a man,’ Felix said. ‘One of the tainted ones marked by Chaos. They are abandoned at birth.’
‘That one spoke your tongue.’
‘Sometimes the taint does not show till they are older. Relatives think they are sick and protect them till they make their way to the woods and vanish.’