by Warhammer
No town would take them in. Armed warriors had threatened battle unless they moved on to untenanted land. The trail had become interminable. It seemed as if they had been riding forever and would never come to rest. Even the knowledge that someone in the train had freed the undead beneath the hills had ceased to be alarming, fading into cold suspicion when no culprit could be found.
Felix looked at Gotrek guiltily, expecting Kirsten’s sneeze to produce his usual crass comments about human frailty, but the Trollslayer was silent, staring towards the Worlds Edge Mountains with a fixity of purpose unusual even for him.
Felix wondered when he would pluck up the courage to tell Gotrek that he wasn’t continuing onwards with him, that he was settling down with Kirsten. He was worried about what the dwarf’s reaction would be. Would Gotrek simply dismiss it as another example of human faithlessness – or would he turn violent?
Felix felt miserable. He was fond of the Trollslayer, for all his black moods and bitter comments. The thought of Gotrek wandering off to meet a lonely doom disturbed him. But he loved Kirsten and the thought of being parted from her was painful to him. Perhaps Gotrek sensed this and it was the reason for his withdrawn mood. Felix reached over and squeezed the girl’s hand.
‘What are you looking for, Herr Gurnisson?’ Kirsten asked the dwarf. Gotrek did not turn to look at her but continued to stare longingly at the mountains. At first it seemed as if the Trollslayer would not reply but eventually he pointed to the outline of one cloud-swathed mountain.
‘Karaz-a-Karak,’ he said. ‘The Everpeak. My home.’ His voice was softer than Felix had ever heard it and it held a depth of longing that was heart-breaking.
Gotrek turned to look at them and his face held such a look of dumb, brute misery that Felix had to look away. The dwarf’s crest of hair was flattened by the rain and his face was bleak and weary. Kirsten reached past to adjust Gotrek’s cloak about his shoulders, as she would have done for a lost child.
Gotrek tried to give her his ferocious, insular scowl but he could not hold it and he just smiled sadly, revealing his missing teeth. Felix wondered whether the dwarf had come all this way just for that fleeting glimpse of the mountain. He noticed a drop of water hanging from the end of the Trollslayer’s nose. It might have been a teardrop or it might just have been rain.
They continued southward.
‘We can’t leave them just yet,’ Felix said, cursing himself for being such a coward.
Gotrek turned and looked towards the tumbled-down fortified mansion which they had found. He could see smoke rising in plumes from the chimneys of the recently cleared building.
‘Why not, manling? They’ve found clear ground, cultivatable land and the ruins of that old fort. With a little work it should prove quite defensible.’
Felix strove desperately to find a reason. He was surprised that he was trying so hard to delay the moment when he had to tell Gotrek of their parting. The way Gotrek looked at him disapprovingly reminded him of his father at his sternest. He felt once more the need to make excuses, and he hated himself for it.
‘Gotrek, we’re only a hundred miles north of where the Thunder River flows into Blood River. Beyond that is the Badlands and a horde of wolf-riders.’
‘I know that, manling. We’ll have to cross there on our way to Karak Eight Peaks.’
Tell him. Just say it, Felix argued with himself. But he couldn’t.
‘We can’t go just yet. You’ve seen the bodies we found in the mansion. Bones cracked for the marrow. The walls have been burned. Dieter has found the spoor of wolf-riders nearby. The place is not defensible. With your help, with the help of a dwarf, it could be made so.’
Gotrek laughed. ‘I don’t know why you think that.’
‘Because dwarfs are good with stone and fortifications. Everyone knows that.’
Gotrek glanced back at the mansion thoughtfully. He seemed to be remembering a former life. A frown creased his brow and he rested his forehead against the shaft of his axe.
‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually, ‘that even a dwarf could make this place defensible. Typical human workmanship, manling. Shoddy, very shoddy.’
‘It could be made safe. You know it could, Gotrek.’
‘Perhaps. It has been a long time since I worked with stone, manling.’
‘A dwarf never forgets such things. And I’m sure the baron will pay handsomely for your services.’
Gotrek sniffed suspiciously. ‘It had better be more than he pays his mercenaries.’
Felix grinned. ‘Come on. Let’s find out.’
Unable to sleep, Felix got up quietly. He dressed quickly, not wanting to wake Kirsten. He gently rearranged the cloaks that they used as blankets about her so that she would not get cold, then kissed her lightly on the forehead. She stirred but did not awake. He lifted his sword from where it lay by the entrance of their hut and stepped out into the cold night air. Winter was coming, Felix thought, watching his breath cloud.
By the moons’ light he picked his way through the cluster of hovels which lay in the lee of the new wooden walls surrounding the mansion. He felt at peace for the first time in a long while. Even the night-time noise of the camp was reassuring. The fort had been completed before the first snows; it looked as if the settlers would have enough grain to last the winter and seed a new crop in the spring.
He listened to the cattle lowing and the measured tread of the sentry on the walls. He looked up and saw that a light still gleamed in the window of Manfred’s room. Felix thought about his convoluted destiny. Not a place I would ever have imagined myself settling down, a fortified village on the edge of nowhere. I wonder what my father would think if he could see me now, about to become a farmer. He’d probably die of mortification. Felix smiled.
It was exciting to be here. There was a sense of something about to begin, a community still taking shape. And I will have a place in shaping that community, he thought. This is the perfect place to start a new life.
He walked on towards the guard tower, where he knew he would find Gotrek. The dwarf was unable to sleep, restless and ready to move on. He liked to while away the night watches in the tower he himself had designed.
Felix clambered up the ladder and through the trapdoor in the floor of the guardroom. He found Gotrek staring out into the night. The sight of the dwarf made Felix nervous but he steeled himself, determined to tell the dwarf the truth.
‘Can’t sleep either, eh, manling?’
Felix managed a nod. When he had rehearsed his speech to himself it all had seemed simple. He would explain the situation rationally, tell Gotrek he was staying with Kirsten and await the dwarf’s response. Now it was more difficult, his tongue felt thick and it was as if the words had stuck in his throat.
He found himself flinching inwardly at all the accusations he imagined Gotrek would make: that he was a coward and an oathbreaker; that this was the thanks a dwarf got for saving a man’s life. Felix had to admit that he had sworn an oath to follow Gotrek and record his doom. Certainly, he had sworn it while drunk and full of gratitude to a dwarf who had just pulled him from under the hooves of the Emperor’s cavalry, but an oath was still an oath, as Gotrek was wont to point out.
He moved over to stand beside the Trollslayer. They stared out over the ditch that surrounded the outer wall and which was sided with sharpened stakes. The only easy way over it was the bridge of earth that this tower overlooked.
‘Gotrek…’
‘Yes, manling?’
‘You’ve built well,’ Felix said.
Gotrek looked up and smiled grimly. ‘We’ll soon find out,’ he said. Felix looked to where the Trollslayer pointed. The fields were dark with wolf-riders. Gotrek raised the alarm horn to his lips and sounded a blast.
Felix ducked as an arrow splintered into the wood of the parapet in front of him. He reached down and took a crossbow from the fingers of the dead guard. The man lay with an arrow through his throat. Felix fumbled for a quarrel and strained
to cock the weapon. He eventually slipped a bolt into place.
He leapt up. Fire arrows flashed overhead like falling stars. From behind him came the stench of burning. Felix looked down from the parapet. Wolf-riders circled the camp as a wolf-pack circles a herd of cattle. He could see the green skin of the riders glistening in the light of their burning arrows. The flames highlighted their jaundiced eyes and yellowish tusks.
There must be hundreds of them, Felix thought. He thanked Sigmar for the ditch and the spikes and the wooden walls that Gotrek had made them build. At the time it had seemed needless labour and the dwarf had been roundly cursed. Now it seemed barely adequate provision.
Felix aimed at a wolf-rider who was drawing a bead on the tower with one pitch-soaked arrow. He pulled the trigger on the crossbow. The bolt blurred across the night and took the goblin in the chest. It fell backwards in the saddle. Its blazing arrow was launched directly into the sky, as if aimed at the moons.
Felix ducked back and reloaded. With his back to the parapet he could see down into the courtyard. A human chain of women and children carried buckets from the rain-barrels to the flaming hovels, struggling vainly to extinguish the fires. He saw one old woman go down and others flinch as arrows fell around them like dark rain.
Felix turned and fired again, missing. The night was filled with a cacophony of sound. The screams of the dying, the howling of wolves, the deadly cutting whisper of arrows and crossbow bolts. He heard Gotrek singing happily in dwarfish, and somewhere far off the baron’s dry, rasping voice giving orders in a firm, calm voice. Dogs barked, horses whinnied in terror, children cried. Felix wished he were deaf.
He heard the scratching of claws on wood nearby and lurched to his feet. He looked over the parapet and almost lost his face. The jaws of a wolf snapped shut below him. The creature had leapt the ditch, ignoring the stakes which were covered by the bodies of its fallen comrades.
He smelled the stench of its breath as it fell, saw its rider hanging on grimly as it gathered itself for another spring. Felix let fly with a crossbow bolt. It thunked into the creature’s chest, and the wolf fell. Its rider rolled clear and scuttled off into the night.
Felix saw Frau Winter climb up into the watchtower, to stand at Gotrek’s shoulder. He hoped she would do something. In the howling chaos of the night it was impossible to tell, but Felix sensed that things were not going well for the defenders. The ditch seemed to be filling with the bodies of their attackers, and the guards were falling like flies to the incessant barrages of arrows in spite of the protection of the parapet.
When Felix looked again, he saw a group of heavily armoured orcs, bearing a sharpened tree trunk, racing towards the gate. A few crossbow bolts landed among them but others were deflected by the shields of those who ran alongside the rammers. He heard the juddering sound of the tree’s impact on the gate.
Felix fumbled for his sword, preparing to leap from the walls into the courtyard and hold the gate. If it fell, all he could do was sell his life dearly; they were too badly outnumbered to delay the besiegers long. He felt fear twist in his gut. He hoped Kirsten was safe.
Frau Winter’s calm, clear voice rang out. She chanted like a priest at prayer. Then the lightning came.
Searing blue light leapt through the night. The air stank of ozone. The hair on the back of Felix’s neck prickled. He tried to watch as the lightning flashed among the ram-carriers. He heard them scream. Some danced back, capering like clowns, dropping the treetrunk. They fell to earth, bodies smouldering. The disgusting burned-meat smell of scorched flesh filled the air.
Again and again the lightning lashed out. Wolves howled fearfully, the hail of arrows slackened, the sickening smell increased. Felix looked at Frau Winter. Her face was drawn and pale, her hair stood upright. As her face alternated black and blue in the nightmarish flashes, she looked daemonic. He had not suspected any human being could wield such power.
The wolf-riders and the orc infantry retreated, howling in terror, to beyond the reach of those appalling thunderbolts. Felix felt relieved. Then he noticed, off in the distance, a glow of light.
He peered into the darkness, making out an old greenskin shaman. A red nimbus played around his skull, illuminating the wolfskin head-dress and the bone-staff he held in one gnarled claw. A beam of blood-coloured light flickered from his head and lashed out at Frau Winter.
Felix saw the sorceress moan and totter back. Gotrek reached out to support her. He watched her grimace in pain, her face a pale mask. She gritted her teeth, and sweat beaded her brow. She seemed to be locked in a supernatural contest of wills with the old shaman.
The wolf-riders rallied around their braver leaders. Cautiously they began to return, although their renewed attacks lacked the wild ferocity of their initial onslaught. All through the night the struggle continued.
In the first light of dawn, Felix approached Gotrek where he stood with Manfred, Dieter and Frau Winter. The woman looked weary beyond endurance. People crowded around her, gazing at her in awe.
‘How are we doing?’ Felix asked Gotrek.
‘As long as she holds out, we can. If she can call the lightning.’ Manfred looked at Gotrek and nodded agreement.
There was a commotion from the other side of the courtyard.
‘Frau Winter, come quickly,’ Doctor Stockhausen called. ‘The baron has been gravely wounded. An arrow, maybe poisoned.’ Wearily, the sorceress walked into the mansion. From the crowd Felix saw Kirsten move to help her. He smiled at her, glad they were both alive.
With a sound like sudden thunder, the gate rocked back on its hinges. Another blow like that and it will fall, Felix thought. He looked over at Gotrek who was testing the edge of his axe experimentally with his thumb. On this second night of the siege the Trollslayer was looking forward to the hand-to-hand combat to come. Felix felt a tug on his shoulder. It was Hef. The big man looked deathly afraid.
‘Where is Frau Winter?’ he asked. He nodded at the gate. ‘That’s no battering ram. That’s the staff of that old devil. He’ll have all our heads for his lodge afore the night’s out unless the witch can stop him!’
Felix looked from Hef to the rest of the pitifully depleted band of defenders. He saw tired warriors; wounded men who could barely carry a sword, teenage boys and girls armed with pitchforks and other improvised weapons. From outside the howling of the wolves was deafening. Only Gotrek looked calm.
‘I don’t know where she is. Dieter went to get her ten minutes ago.’
‘Well, he’s takin’ his time ’bout it.’
‘All right,’ Felix said. ‘I’ll go and get her.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Hef said.
‘Oh no you won’t,’ Gotrek said loudly. ‘I trust the manling to return. You’ll stay here. The gobbos will pass this gate over our dead bodies.’
Felix made for the mansion. He knew that Kirsten was with the sorceress. If things went as badly as he feared, he would at least see her before the end.
He had barely reached the door when he heard a splintering sound from behind him and the heart-stopping crash of the gate falling in. He heard Gotrek bellow his war-cry, and the screams of terror from some of the warriors. Felix turned and saw a terrible sight.
In the gateway, mounted on a great white wolf, was the shaman. Around his head crackled a halo of ruddy light. It played from the tip of his bone staff, staining the faces of all around like blood. From the wall a quarrel flashed but it was turned aside by some force before it could hit the sorcerer.
Flanking the shaman were six mighty orcs, mail-clad, axe-armed and fierce. Beyond them was a sea of green faces and wolves. Gotrek laughed aloud and charged for them. The last thing Felix saw before he stepped inside was the Trollslayer running forward, axe held high, beard bristling, towards the source of that terrible light.
Inside, the mansion was strangely quiet, the roar of sound outside muffled by the stone walls. Felix ran through the corridor, shouting for Frau Winter, his voice ringing eerily in
the quiet halls.
He found the bodies in the main hall. Frau Winter had been stabbed through the chest several times. Her clean, grey dress was red. She had a look of surprise on her face, as if death had taken her unawares. How had the goblins got inside? Felix thought crazily. But he knew no goblin had done this.
Another body lay near the door, stabbed through the back as she had struggled to open it. Not wanting, not daring to believe it, Felix advanced, heart in his mouth. Gently he turned Kirsten’s body over. He felt a brief flicker of hope as her eyes opened, then noticed the trickle of blood from her mouth.
‘Felix,’ she sighed. ‘Is that you? I knew you’d come.’
Her voice was weak and blood frothed from her lips as she spoke. He wondered how long she had lain there.
‘Don’t talk,’ he said. ‘Rest.’
‘Can’t. Have to talk. I’m glad I came down Thunder River. Glad I met you. I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ he said, for the first time, then he noticed her eyes were closed. ‘Don’t die,’ he said, rocking her gently in his arms. He felt her body go limp and his heart turned to ash. He laid her down gently, tears in his eyes, then he looked towards the door she had tried to open and cold fury filled him. Felix stood and raced down the corridor.
Dieter’s body lay in the doorway to the baron’s room. The side of the big man’s head had been caved in. Felix pictured him rushing through the doorway in anger and being hit from the side by his prepared enemy.
Felix sprang over the body like a tiger, rolling as he hit the ground and leaping to his feet. He surveyed the room. The old baron lay in bed, a knife through his heart, blood soaking the bandages on his chest and the sheets of the bed.
Felix glared over at the chair in which Manfred sat, his gore-smeared sword red across his lap.
‘The curse is fulfilled at last,’ the playwright said in a tight voice that held the shrill edge of hysteria. He looked up and Felix shuddered. It was as if Manfred’s face were a mask through which something else stared, something alien.
‘I knew it was my destiny to fulfil the curse,’ Manfred said as if passing the time of day. ‘Knew it from the moment I killed my father. Gottfried had him imprisoned when he started to change. Locked him up in the old tower, took him all his food himself. No one else was allowed into that tower except Gottfried and Frau Winter. Nobody else went there until the day I did. Ulric knows, I wish I hadn’t.’