by Warhammer
‘So you found the cannon?’ he asked. His voice came out in a croaking whisper.
‘Yes,’ Messner said. ‘It’s an eerie thing. They say it feels as warm to the touch as flesh. Dark sorcery involved, for sure. We’ve sent for a priest to exorcise it. If that doesn’t work, the old duke will send a wizard.’
‘But the beasts are all dead.’
‘Yes, we’ve hunted down every one of them. Gotrek just got back at dawn. He says that’s the last.’
The two of them were just talking to keep Kat quiet and they both knew it. Neither wanted to let her get a word in. Still, this news gladdened Felix. It seemed that the beasts had lost heart and fled when word of their foul leader’s death had got out. The rout had turned into a massacre as the foresters had pursued them. Now it looked like Kat had saved the whole town by her actions. She was a heroine and everybody told her that. Right now, she didn’t sound much like one.
‘I still want to go with you,’ the girl said. Even after two days of argument she hadn’t given up.
‘You can’t, Kat. Gotrek and I are bound for dangerous places; we can’t take you. Stay with Messner.’ He didn’t want to tell her there was a price on his and Gotrek’s heads. Not with a ranger present.
‘You do that, girl,’ Messner added. ‘There’s a place for you here with me and Magda and the kids. And you’ll have friends among the other little ones, for sure.’
Kat looked at Felix imploringly. He shook his head and forced his features to remain stern and calm. He was not sure how much longer he could manage it when he heard the Slayer clump up. Gotrek grinned evilly. From his look Felix guessed he had added to the huge tally of deaths he had inflicted in the battle.
‘Time’s a-wasting, manling. We’d best be off.’
Felix got up slowly. Messner advanced and shook hands. Kat hugged first Felix and then the Slayer. Messner had to pull her away in the end.
‘Goodbye,’ she said tearfully. ‘I’ll always remember you.’
‘You do that, little one,’ Gotrek said softly.
They turned and walked away from Flensburg. The path was steep and the road rocky. Ahead lay Nuln and an uncertain future. At the top of the slope Felix turned and looked back. Below them Messner and Kat were two small figures, waving.
THE MUTANT MASTER
‘It must sometimes occur to the readers of these pages that my companion and I were under some sort of curse. Without any effort on our part, and without any great desire on my part, we somehow managed to encounter all manner of worshippers of the Dark Ones. I myself have often suspected that we were somehow doomed to oppose their schemes without ever really understanding why. This sort of speculation never seemed to trouble the Slayer. He took all such events in his stride with a grunt and a fatalistic shrug, and dismissed any speculation along these lines as vain and useless philosophising. But I have thought long and hard on this matter, and it seems to me that if there is a power in this world which opposes the servants of Chaos, then perhaps it sometimes guided our steps, and even shielded us.
Certainly, we often stumbled across the most outrageous and wicked schemes perpetrated by the most unlikely of evildoers…’
— From My Travels with Gotrek, Vol. II,
by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)
When he heard the snap of the twig, Felix Jaeger froze on the spot. His hand groped instinctively for the hilt of his sword, as his keen eyes searched his surroundings and spotted nothing. It was useless, Felix knew – the light of the fading sun barely penetrated the thick canopy of leaves overhead and the forest’s dense undergrowth could have hidden the approach of a small army. He grimaced and ran his fingers nervously through his long blond hair. All of the peddler’s warnings came back to him in a flash.
The old man had claimed there were mutants on the road ahead, packs of them, preying on all who travelled this route between Nuln and Fredericksburg. At the time, Felix had paid no attention to him, for the peddler had been attempting to sell him a shoddy amulet supposedly blessed by the Grand Theogonist himself, a sure protection for pilgrims and wanderers – or so the merchant had claimed. He had already bought a small throwing dagger in a concealable wrist sheath from the peddler, and he had not felt inclined to part with more money. Felix rubbed his forearm where the sheath chafed, making sure the knife was still secure.
Felix wished he had the amulet now. It had most likely been a fake but at times like this any weary traveller on the dark roads of the Empire would feel the need for a little extra protection.
‘Hurry up, manling,’ Gotrek Gurnisson said. ‘There’s an inn in Blutdorf and my throat is as dry as the deserts of Araby.’
Felix regarded his companion. No matter how many times he looked upon the dwarf, the Trollslayer’s squat ugliness never ceased to astonish him. There was no single element that made Gotrek so outstandingly repulsive, Felix decided. It wasn’t the missing teeth, the missing eye or the long beard filled with particles of food. It wasn’t the cauliflower ear or the quiltwork of old scars. It wasn’t even the smell. No, it was the combination of them all that did it.
For all that, there was no denying that the Trollslayer presented a formidable appearance. Although Gotrek only came up to Felix’s chest, and a great deal of that height was made up of the huge dyed crest of red hair atop his shaved and tattooed skull, he was broader at the shoulders than a blacksmith. In one massive paw, he held a rune-covered axe that most men would have struggled to lift with both hands. When he shifted his massive head, the gold chain that ran from his nose to his ear jingled.
‘I thought I heard something,’ Felix said.
‘These woods are full of noises, manling. Birds chirp. Trees creak and animals scuttle everywhere.’ Gotrek spat a huge gob of phlegm onto the ground. ‘I hate woods. Always have. Remind me of elves.’
‘I thought I heard mutants. Just like the peddler told us about.’
‘That so?’ Gotrek showed his blackened teeth in what could have been a snarl or a smile, then he reached up and scratched under his eye-patch, rubbing the socket of his ruined left eye with his thumb. It was a deeply disturbing sight. Felix looked away.
‘Yes,’ he said softly.
Gotrek turned to face the woods.
‘Any mutants there?’ he bellowed. ‘Come out and face my axe.’
Felix cringed. It was just like the Trollslayer to tempt fate like this. He was sworn to seek death in battle with deadly monsters in order to atone for some unmentionable dwarfish sin, and he wasted no opportunity to complete that quest. Felix cursed the drunken night he had sworn his oath to follow the Trollslayer and record his doom in an epic poem.
Almost in answer to Gotrek’s shout there was a further rustling in the undergrowth, as if a strong wind had disturbed the bushes – only there was no breeze. Felix kept his hand clasped on his sword hilt. There was definitely something there and it was getting closer.
‘I think you might be right, manling,’ Gotrek smiled nastily. It occurred to Felix that he had known there was something there all along.
A horde of mutants erupted from the undergrowth, screaming oaths and curses and the vilest of obscenities. The sheer horror of their appearance threatened to overwhelm Felix’s mind. He saw a repulsive slimy-skinned creature that hopped along like a toad. Something vaguely female scuttled along on eight spidery legs. A creature with the head of a crow and greyish feathers screeched a challenge. Some of the mutants had transparent skin through which pulsing organs were visible. They brandished spears and daggers and what looked like rusty kitchen implements. One of them launched itself towards Felix, swinging a notched, blunt-edged cleaver.
Felix reached up and caught the creature’s wrist, stopping the blade a moment before it crunched into his skull. He jabbed a knee into the monster’s groin. As it bent double, he kicked it in the head, knocking it over. Its greenish vomit spewed all over Felix’s boots before it rolled back into the undergrowth.
In the brief respite, Felix ripped hi
s blade from its scabbard, ready to lay about him. He need not have bothered.
Gotrek’s mighty axe had already cleaved a path of red ruin through their attackers. With one blow he cut down three more. Bones splintered under the impact. Flesh parted before the razor-sharp edge. The Trollslayer’s axe flashed again. Two halves of a severed torso flopped down, and, briefly unaware that it was already dead, tried to crawl away from each other. Gotrek’s axe completed its upswing, severing the head of another mutant.
Appalled by the sudden carnage, the mutants fled. Some of them rushed past Felix into the woods on the far side, others turned and ran back into the dark undergrowth from which they had come.
Felix looked at Gotrek speculatively, waiting to see what the Trollslayer did. The last thing he wanted was for them to separate and pursue the creatures into the darkening forest. Their victory had been too easy. It all smacked of a trap.
‘Must’ve sent the runts of this litter after us,’ Gotrek observed, spitting on a mutant corpse. Felix looked down to see the Trollslayer was right. Very few of the dead looked as if they would have come up to Gotrek’s chest, and none of them looked taller than the Trollslayer.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Felix said. ‘These things smell awful.’
‘Hardly worth the killing,’ Gotrek grumbled back. He sounded deeply disappointed.
The Hanged Man was one of the most dispiriting inns Felix had ever visited. A tiny cheerless blaze flickered in the fireplace. The taproom smelled of damp. Mangy dogs gnawed at bones that looked as if they had been lost for generations in the carpet of filthy straw. The landlord was a villainous-looking individual, his face tracked with old scars, a massive hook protruding from the stump of his right hand. The potboy was a wall-eyed hunchback with an unfortunate habit of drooling into the beer as he poured it. The locals looked thoroughly miserable. Every one of them glanced at Felix as if he wanted to plunge a knife into the youth’s back but were just too depressed to summon up the energy.
Felix had to admit that the inn was appropriate for the village it served. Blutdorf was as gloomy a place as he had ever seen. The mud huts looked ill-tended and about to collapse. The streets seemed somehow empty and menacing. When they had finally intimidated the drunken gatekeeper into letting them enter, weeping crones had watched them from every doorway. It was as if the whole place had been overcome with grief and lethargy.
Even the castle brooding on the crags above the village appeared neglected and ill-cared for. Its walls were crumbling. It looked as if it could be stormed by a group of snotlings armed with pointed sticks, which was unusual for a town which appeared to be surrounded by a horde of menacing mutants. On the other hand, Felix thought, even the mutants about here seemed a particularly unfearsome bunch, judging by the attack they had attempted earlier.
He took another sip of his ale. It was the worst beer he had ever tasted, as thoroughly disgusting a brew as had ever passed his lips. Gotrek threw back his head and tipped the entire contents of the stein into his mouth. It vanished as fast as a gold purse dropped in a street of beggars.
‘Another flagon of Old Dog Puke!’ Gotrek called out. He turned and glared at the locals. ‘Try not to deafen me with the sound of your mirth,’ he bellowed.
The customers refused to meet his eye. They stared down into their beers as if they could discover the secret of transmuting lead into gold there, if they only studied it hard enough.
‘Why all the happy faces?’ Gotrek enquired sarcastically. The landlord placed another flagon on the counter before him. Gotrek quaffed some more. Felix was gratified to note that even the Trollslayer made a sour face when he finished. It was a rare tribute to the nastiness of the ale. Felix had never seen the dwarf show the slightest discomfort or hesitation in drinking anything before.
‘It’s the sorcerer,’ the landlord said suddenly. ‘He’s a right nasty piece of work. Things have never been the same since he came an’ took over the old castle. Since then we’ve ’ad nothin’ but bother, what with the mutants on the road and all. Trade’s dried up. No one comes here anymore. Nobody can sleep safe in their beds at night.’
Gotrek perked up at once. A nasty grin revealed the blackened stumps of his teeth. This was more to his liking, Felix saw.
‘A sorcerer, you say?’
‘Aye, sir, that he is – a right evil wizard.’
Felix saw that the customers were all glaring at the landlord strangely, as if he was speaking out of line, or saying something they had never expected to hear him say. Felix dismissed the thought. Maybe they were just frightened. Who wouldn’t be, with a servant of the Dark Powers of Chaos in residence over their village?
‘Mean as a dragon with toothache, he is. Ain’t that right, Helmut?’
The peasant who the landlord addressed stood frozen to the spot, like a rat petrified by the gaze of a snake.
‘Ain’t that right, Helmut?’ The landlord repeated.
‘He’s not so bad,’ the peasant said. ‘As evil sorcerers go.’
‘Why don’t you just storm the castle?’ Gotrek asked. Felix thought that if the dwarf couldn’t guess the answer to that from the whipped-dog look of these poor clods, he was stupider than he looked.
‘There’s the monster, sir,’ the peasant said, shuffling his feet and staring down at the floor once more.
‘The monster?’ Gotrek asked, more than a hint of professional interest showing in his one good eye. ‘A big monster, I suppose.’
‘Huge, sir. Twice as big as a man and covered in all sorts of nasty mut… mut… mut…’
‘Mutations?’ Felix suggested helpfully.
‘Aye, sir, those things.’
‘Why not send to Nuln for help?’ Felix suggested. ‘The Templars of the White Wolf would be interested in dealing with such a follower of Chaos.’
The peasants looked at him blankly. ‘Dunno where Nuln is, sir. None of us ever been more than half a league from Blutdorf. Who’d look after our wives if we left the village?’
‘An’ then there’s the mutants,’ another villager chipped in. ‘Woods is full of them and they all serve the magician.’
‘Mutants as well?’ Gotrek sounded almost cheerful. ‘I think we’ll be visiting the castle, manling.’
‘I feared as much,’ Felix sighed.
‘You can’t mean to attack the sorcerer and his monster,’ one of the villagers said.
‘With your help, we will soon rid Blutdorf of this scourge,’ Felix said shakily, ignoring the nasty look Gotrek threw him. The Trollslayer wanted no assistance in his quest for glorious death.
‘No, sir, we can’t help you.’
‘Why not? Are you unmanly cowards?’ It was a stupid question, but Felix felt he had to ask. It wasn’t that he blamed the villagers. Under normal circumstances he would have been no more keen than they were to confront a Chaos sorcerer and his pet monster.
‘No, sir,’ the villager said. ‘It’s just that he has our children up there – he’s keeping them as hostages!’
‘Your children?’
‘Aye, sir, every last one of them. He and his monster came down and rounded them all up. There was no resisting either. When Big Norri tried, the creature tore his arms off and made him eat them. Nasty, it was.’
Felix did not like the glint that had entered the Trollslayer’s eye. Gotrek’s enthusiasm for getting to the castle and fighting the monster radiated across the room like heat from a large bonfire. Felix wasn’t so certain. He found that he shared the villagers’ lack of enthusiasm for the direct approach.
‘Surely, you must want to free your children?’ Felix asked.
‘Aye, but we don’t want to kill them. The magician will feed them to his monster if we give him any lip.’
Felix looked over at Gotrek. The Trollslayer jerked his thumb meaningfully in the direction of the castle. Felix could see he was keen to be off, hostages or no hostages. With a sinking feeling, Felix realised that there would be no getting out of this. Sooner or later, he and t
he dwarf were going to end up paying Blutdorf Keep a visit.
Desperately, he searched for a way of staving off the inevitable. ‘This calls for a plan,’ he said. ‘Landlord, some more of your fine ale.’
The landlord smiled and fussed about at the bar pouring some more ale. Felix noticed that Gotrek was eyeing him suspiciously. He realised that he wasn’t really showing the proper enthusiasm for their quest. The landlord came back and thumped down two more steins with an enthusiastic smile.
‘One for the road,’ Felix said, raising his ale jack. He swigged away at the beer, which tasted even fouler than it had previously. Because of the taste, he wasn’t quite sure, but he thought there was a faint chemical tang to the beer. Whatever it was, a few more sips left him feeling dizzy and nauseous. He noticed that Gotrek had finished his ale and was calling for another. The landlord obliged and the dwarf swigged it back in one gulp. His eyes widened, he clutched his throat and then he fell back as if pole-axed.
It took Felix a moment to register what had happened and he stumbled forward to examine his companion. His feet felt like lead. His head swam. Nausea threatened to overwhelm him. There was something wrong here, he knew, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It was something to do with the ale. He had never seen the Trollslayer fall over before, no matter how much beer he drank. He had never felt so bad himself, not after so few beers. He turned and looked at the landlord. The man’s outline wavered, as if Felix was seeing him through a thick fog. He pointed an accusing finger.
‘You drudged… I mean drunk… no, I mean you drinked our drugs,’ Felix said and fell to his knees.
The landlord said, ‘Thank Tzeentch for that. I thought they would never go down. I gave that dwarf enough skavenroot to knock out a horse.’
Felix fumbled for his sword but his fingers felt numb and he fell forward into the darkness.