by Warhammer
Flanking the leader was a lanky creature taller than Felix. Its ear was notched from a vicious bite taken in some internecine squabble. A long thin strip of hair drooped like rotting lichen from atop its narrow, near-shaven skull. It howled a challenge as it raised its rusty scimitar high above its pointed head. Felix could see its incisors were fanged like a wolf’s.
An elk-headed giant paused and raised a great curling horn to its lips. Another thunderous blast rang out across the blasted landscape, then the mutant let the instrument swing once more from the chain round its neck and continued to charge, head forward, antlers down.
Behind them came a ragged horde of surly-faced followers. Each bore some stigmata of Chaos. Many were marked with weeping sores. Some had the faces of wolves, goats or rams. Some had claws or tentacles or great bludgeons of bone instead of hands. One had its head protruding from its belly, its neck a mere stump. Another had a hump on its back in which a great mouth glistened. The mutants brandished a motley assortment of crude weapons; spears and clubs and notched scimitars scavenged from forgotten battlefields. Felix estimated the number of attackers as somewhere above ten and below twenty. They were not odds that he relished, even though he knew the Slayer’s awesome physical prowess.
Felix cursed silently. They had been so close to escaping from the Black Mountains to the lowlands of the Empire’s southernmost province. From the brow of the pass the previous evening Felix had made out the lights of a town of men. He had been looking forward that very evening to a warm bed and a cold jack of ale. Now fear coursed through his veins like ice-water; he must fight for his life again. Involuntarily he let out a little moan.
‘Get up, manling. Time for some bloodletting,’ Gotrek said. He spat a huge gob of phlegm onto the rocks at his feet and ran his left hand through the massive red crest of hair that rose above his shaven tattooed skull. His nose chain tinkled gently; a strange counterpoint to his mad rumbling laughter.
With a sigh of resignation Felix threw his faded red cloak back over his broad right shoulder, freeing his sword arm for action, then he drew his longsword from its ornate scabbard. Reddened dwarfish glyphs blazed along the length of the blade.
The mutants were close enough now for him to hear the soft slap of their unshod feet and individual words in their harsh guttural voices. He could see greenish veins in yellowish, jaundiced-looking eyes and count individual studs on the rims of leather shields. Reluctantly he raised himself from behind his cover and prepared to fight.
He glanced at Gotrek, and to his horror saw a slingstone impact on the dwarf’s massive skull. He heard the crack and saw the Slayer sway. Fear filled the man; if the dwarf went down he knew he had no chance of survival against the swarm of assailants. Gotrek reeled but remained upright, then reached up and felt the wound that the shot had left. A look of surprise passed over his face when he saw the blood on his fingertips. It was replaced in an instant by an expression of terrible wrath. The Trollslayer let out a mighty roar and charged towards the cackling mutants.
His ferocious attack took them off guard. The fat leader only just managed to duck back as the Slayer’s axe whistled past his head. His agility surprised Felix. With a terrible crunch the axe tore through the chest of the thin lieutenant and then lopped off the head of a second attacker. The backstroke tore through a leather shield and sliced away an attached tentacle.
Without giving them time to recover, Gotrek tore among them like a deadly whirlwind. The fat leader scuttled well out of the reach of the lethal axe as he gibbered orders to his followers. The mutants began to surround the dwarf, kept at bay only by the great figure of eight described by Gotrek’s battleaxe.
Felix launched himself into the fray. The magical blade he had taken from the dead Templar Aldred felt as light as a willow wand in his hand. It almost seemed to sing as he clove a mutant’s skull from behind. The runes glowed bright as it cut away the top of the head as easily as a butcher’s cleaver cutting a joint of beef. The mutant’s brains fountained messily forth. Felix grimaced as the jelly splattered his face. He forced himself to ignore his disgust and keep on hacking at another mutant. A shock passed up his arm as he rammed his blade underneath a mottled ribcage into the creature’s rotten heart. He saw the mutant’s eyes go wide with fear and pain. Its wart-covered face wore a look of horror and it whimpered what might have been a prayer or a curse to its dark god as it died.
Felix’s hand felt wet and sticky now, and he adjusted his grip on the sword to keep it from slipping as he was attacked simultaneously from either side. He ducked the swing of a spike-headed mace and lashed to the right. His blade cut the cheek of a barrel-like mutant, severing the earflap of its leather cap. The helm slid forward on the creature’s face, covering its eyes and momentarily obscuring its vision. Felix kicked it in the stomach with the toe of his heavy Reikland leather boot and it doubled over, foolishly presenting its neck for the stroke that beheaded it.
Pain flashed through Felix’s shoulder as the mace caught him a glancing blow. He snarled and turned, driven to frenzy by the agony. The accursed one caught the look on his face and froze for a heartbeat. It raised its weapon in what might have been a gesture of surrender. Felix shook his head and chopped the creature’s wrist. Blood sprayed all over him. The mutant screamed and writhed, clutching at the stump of its arm, trying to staunch the flow of blood.
Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion now. Felix turned and saw Gotrek swaying like a drunk man. At his feet lay a pile of mangled bodies. Felix followed the slow sweep of the immense axe as it caught another victim, driving the ruined body back into two cringing foes. They fell in a tangled mass. His axe rose and fell in a bloody arc as Gotrek proceeded to hack them to pieces.
All vestiges of humanity and restraint fell away in a wave of bloodlust and fear and hatred. Felix leapt among the survivors. Swift as an adder’s tongue the enchanted blade flickered, the runes growing brighter as it drank more blood. Felix barely felt the jar of impact or heard the howls of pain and anguish. Now he was a machine, intended only to kill. He gave no more thought to preserving his own life. Only to the slaughter of his foes.
As swiftly as it had begun it was over. The mutants were in retreat, fleeing as fast as their legs would carry them, their fat leader fleetest of all. Felix watched them go. As the last of them was beyond reach, he turned howling with frustrated murder-lust and began to hack up the bodies.
After a while, he began to shake. Noticing, as if for the first time, the terrible ruin which he and the Slayer had wrought, he bent double and proceeded to be sick.
The clear cold water of the stream ran red with blood. Felix watched it swirl away and wondered at how numb he felt. It was as if the chill of the water had seeped into his veins. He realised how much he had changed since he had fallen into Gotrek’s company and he was not sure he liked it.
He remembered how he had felt after he had killed the student, Krassner, the very first to fall to his sword. That had been an accident during what had been supposed to be a boyish duel on the field behind Altdorf University. The blade had slipped and the man had died. Felix could remember the look of disbelief on his face and his own feeling of horror and tearful remorse. He had ended a life and he had felt guilty.
But that had happened to someone else, a long lifetime ago. Since then, since he had sworn to follow the Slayer on his doomed quest for a heroic death, he had killed and killed again. With each death, he had felt a little less remorse; with each death, contemplating the next one had become a little easier. The nightmares that had once afflicted him came no more to trouble him. The sense of waste and revulsion had left him. It was as if Gotrek’s madness had infected him and he no longer cared.
Once, as a student, he had studied the works of the great philosopher, Neustadt. He had argued in his great opus De Re Munde that all living creatures had souls. That even mutants were sentient beings capable of love and worthy of life. But Felix knew he had obliterated them without a second thought. They had
been enemies, trying to kill him, and he could feel no real remorse at their deaths, only a wonder at his own lack of feeling. He asked himself where the change had occurred and could find no answer.
Was this why he loathed the altered ones so? Was it because he could see the changes happening in himself and feared that they might have an external manifestation? He found his new coldness sufficiently monstrous to justify it. How could it have happened and when?
Was it after Kirsten, the first great love of his life, died at the hands of Manfred von Diehl? He did not think so. The process was more subtle; a strange alchemy had transmuted him down all the long leagues of his wandering. A new Felix had been born here in these harsh lands by the world’s edge, a product of the bleakness of the place and the hardness of his life and too many deaths seen from too close.
He looked across at Gotrek. The Slayer sat hunched on a flat plate of rock that jutted out into the stream. A piece torn from Felix’s cloak was wrapped round his head, the red wool blotched a deep black by the dwarf’s dried blood.
Will I become like that eventually, Felix wondered, hopeless and mad and doomed, dying slowly from a hundred small wounds, seeking only a magnificent death to redeem myself? The thought did not disturb him – and that in itself was disturbing.
What had he lost and where had he lost it, Felix wondered, listening to the rush of the water as if it carried some coded answer. Gotrek raised his head and slowly surveyed the scene. Felix noticed that the patch had come away from his ruined left eye, revealing the scarred and empty socket.
Felix himself looked at the tangle of leafless trees and thorny scrub that surrounded them and the cold grey of the rock. He felt dwarfed by the dismal titanic shadow of the great snow-capped mountains and asked himself how they had come to this gods-forsaken spot so many miles from his home. For a second it seemed he was lost in the endless immensity of the Old World, that he had no point of reference in time or space, that he and the Slayer were alone in a dead world, ghosts drifting in eternity bound by a chain of circumstance forged in Hell.
Gotrek glanced over at him. Felix returned his gaze with a feeling almost of hatred. He waited silently for the dwarf to start gloating about his pointless futile victory.
‘What happened here?’ the Slayer asked.
Felix looked at him open-mouthed.
The land was greener now that they had left the mountains. The warm gold sun cast a mellow late afternoon light over the long coarse grass of the plains. Here and there patches of purple heather bloomed. Red flowers blossomed among the grass. Ahead of them, perhaps a league away, a great grey castle loomed above the flatlands, perched on the craggy hilltop. Beneath it Felix could see the walls of a town. Smoke drifted lazily skyward from its many chimneys.
He felt more relaxed. He estimated that they would reach the town before nightfall. Saliva filled his mouth at the thought of some cooked beef and fresh-baked bread. He was heartily sick of the dwarfish field rations they had picked up in the Border Princes; hard biscuits and strips of dried meat. Tonight, for the first time in weeks, he could lie safe beneath a real roof and enjoy the company of his fellow men. He might even sup some ale before retiring to bed. Tension began to ease out of him. He felt his shoulders relax and became aware of just how keyed up he had been during the journey, straining constantly to spot any hidden threat the dangerous mountains might conceal.
He glanced worriedly back at Gotrek. The dwarf’s face was pale and he often stopped to look around them with a look of blank confusion, as if he could not recall quite why they were there, or what they were doing. The blow to the head had apparently taken a lot out of the Slayer. Felix could not tell why. In his time, he had seen Gotrek take a lot worse punishment.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, half expecting the dwarf to snarl at him.
‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ Gotrek said, but his voice was soft and reminded Felix of an old man’s.
After the cool, clear air of the mountains and the scented freshness of the plains, the town of Fredericksburg came as a shock to the senses. From a distance the high narrow houses with their red-tiled roofs and white-washed walls had seemed clean and orderly. But even the dim light of the setting sun could not conceal the cracks in the brickwork and the holes in the slate roofs.
The narrow, maze-like streets were piled high with garbage. Starving dogs wandered from pile of rotting vegetation to heap of ordure, defecating liberally as they went. The cobbled streets smelled of urine and mould and fat dripping into cooking fires. Felix covered his mouth with his hand and gagged. He noticed the red blotch of a fresh flea-bite just above his knuckles. Civilisation at last, he thought ironically.
Vendors had set out lanterns to illuminate the market square. Loose women stood in pools of red light near the doorways of many houses. The business of the day was over, the atmosphere of the place changed as folk came to eat and be entertained. Storytellers gathered little circles round their charcoal braziers and competed with conjurers who made tiny dragons appear in puffs of smoke. A would-be prophet stood on a stool under the statue of the town’s founder, the hero Frederick, and exhorted the crowd to return to the virtues of an earlier, simpler time.
People were everywhere, their lively movements dazzling Felix’s eyes. Hawkers tugged at his sleeve offering lucky charms or trays of small, cinnamon-scented pastries. Children kicked an inflated pig’s bladder in the mouth of a narrow alley and ignored their mothers’ cries to come inside out of the dark. Over their heads, ragged washing sagged on lines stretched from window to window across the narrow alleyways. Carts now empty of produce rumbled towards the draymen’s yards, clattering over ruts and dislodging loose cobbles.
Felix stopped by an old woman’s food stand and bought a piece of stringy chicken she had cooked over a charcoal burner. Warm juices filled his mouth as he gobbled it down. He stood for a moment trying to centre himself in the riot of colour and smell and noise.
Looking at the swarm of people he felt dislocated. Men-at-arms in the tabards of the local burgermeisters moved among the crowd. Richly dressed youths eyed the street-girls and exchanged quips with their bodyguards. Outside the entrance to the Temple of Shallya, beggars raised their scabrous stumps to passing merchants who kept their eyes carefully focused on the middle distance and their hands on their purses. Ruddy-faced peasants rolled drunkenly through the streets gazing in wonder at buildings more than a single storey high. Old women, heads wrapped in tattered scarves, stood on doorsteps and gossiped with their neighbours. Their wizened faces reminded Felix of sun-dried apples.
Fredericksburg was a mere hamlet compared to Altdorf, he told himself; there was no need to feel daunted. He had lived in the Imperial capital most of his life and never felt out of place. It was just that he had become used to the quiet and the solitude of the mountains. He was unused to feeling enclosed. Still, it should take him mere hours to adjust to being back among men.
Standing in the crowd he felt lonely, just one more face in a sea of faces. Listening to the babble of voices he heard no friendly words, just haggling over prices and coarse jokes. There was an energy here, the vitality of a thriving community, but he was not part of it. He was a stranger, a wanderer from the wilderness. He had little in common with these folk, who had probably never ventured more than a league from their homes in their lives. He was struck by how strange his life had become. He suddenly felt a tremendous longing to be at home, in the comfortable wood-panelled halls of his father’s house. He rubbed the old duelling scar on his right cheek and cursed the day he had been expelled from university into a life of petty crime and political activism.
Gotrek wandered slowly through the marketplace, gazing stupidly at the stalls selling cloth and amulets and food, as if he did not quite understand what was going on. The Slayer’s one good eye was wide and he seemed dazed. Disturbed by his comrade’s behaviour, Felix took him by the shoulder and guided him towards the tavern door. A lazy-looking painted dragon beamed down at them from the sign above
the door.
‘Come on,’ Felix said. ‘Let’s get a beer.’
Wolfgang Lammel pushed the struggling barmaid from his knee. In her attempt to resist his kiss, she had marred the high velvet collar of his jerkin with rouge from her cheeks.
‘Begone, slut,’ he told her in his most imperious voice. The blonde girl stared at him angrily, her face flushed beneath its inexpertly applied mask of powder and paint, annoyance distorting her peasant-pretty face.
‘My name is Greta,’ she said. ‘Call me by my name.’
‘I’ll call you whatever I like, slattern. My father owns this tavern, and if you would keep the job you so recently acquired you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head.’
She bit back a retort and hurried beyond his reach.
Wolfgang smirked. He knew she would be back. They always came back. Father’s gold saw to that.
He brushed the rouge carefully from his clothing with one well-manicured hand. Then he studied his bearded aquiline features in his small silver hand-mirror, checking to make sure none of the girl’s make-up marred his soft white skin. He ignored the titters of his sycophants and the amused looks of the bully-boys he employed as his bodyguards. He could afford to. By virtue of his father’s wealth he was the undisputed leader of the clique of fashionable young fops who patronised this tavern. From the corner of his eye he could see Ivan, the tavern keeper, scolding the girl. The man knew he could not afford to offend the owner’s son and heir. He saw the girl bite back an angry rejoinder and begin to come back across.
‘I’m sorry for marking your raiment,’ she said in a soft voice. Wolfgang noticed the two points of colour on her otherwise pale cheeks. ‘Please accept my most humble apologies.’