by William King
“Fair clears the head it does,” Rudi added, with no trace of irony.
“I can see that,” Felix said.
“We’re going to sweep through the area where the sarge got taken,” Rudi said. “We decided it last night. We want to see if we can find the scumbag who deals with the skaven. And maybe if we can’t find him we’ll find some of his pink-tailed little friends.”
“And what if they’ve got more of those gas bombs?” Felix asked.
“Not to worry. Gotrek’s an old tunnel fighter. He explained how to deal with it.”
“Oh, did he?”
“Yes. We soak our scarves in piss and breathe through them. That cuts out the gas.”
“I knew it would be something like that,” Felix said, glaring at the Trollslayer, wondering if the others were really convinced by Gotrek’s claims or whether they were simply humouring him. One look at their haggard, determined faces convinced him that it was the former.
“It’s true, manling. My ancestors fought the skaven at Karak Eight Peaks and it worked for them.”
“If you say so,” Felix said. He could tell it was going to be a long day.
They followed the route of the previous day towards the area beneath the Old Quarter. As they went, Felix had time to reflect on how strange his life was. His brother’s house was somewhere above his head and he had not known it. He had not even known Otto was in the city. The fact that his brother had found him was certainly a testimony to the efficiency of his spy network.
Felix suspected that such things were necessary to anyone who wanted to do business in Nuln nowadays. What Otto had said about Schaffer and the countess’s secret police was worrying too. Felix was sorry for the old man but he was more worried about himself. Both he and the Trollslayer were wanted by the law for their part in the great Window Tax riots in Altdorf. If the secret police were so efficient here, and he and Gotrek were really so recognisable, then they too might vanish. He consoled himself with the thought that the capital was a long way away and that the local authorities would probably not be interested in what happened outside their jurisdiction.
In a way it was even more reassuring that they were part of the sewer watch. It was tacitly understood that the watch did not look too closely into the backgrounds of those who volunteered for it. Indeed it was said to be a sure way of having them ignore your previous crimes. All of the others had been involved in acts of criminal violence at some point in their lives, or so they claimed. No, there wasn’t too much to worry about. He hoped.
More immediately worrying was the prospect that they might actually come across some skaven. He did not fancy facing such vicious foes in their own environment. Frantically he tried to recall what Gotrek had told him of the rat-men, hoping to remember something that would give him an edge if it came to a fight. He knew that they were a race of vicious mutant rats, products of warpstone in ancient times. They were said to inhabit a great, polluted city called Skavenblight, the location of which nobody knew. Rumour had it that they were divided up into clans, each of which had their own function: the practice of sorcery, the making of war, the breeding of monsters and so forth. They were lighter than a man but faster and more vicious, and possessed of a feral intelligence which made them deadly enemies.
He could recall one book he had read about the battles of the ancients that described their few interventions on surface battlefields: their terrifying charges in great, chittering hordes, their twisted evil and their penchant for torturing their prisoners. It had been a skaven horde which had undermined the walls of Castle Siegfried and broke the siege after two years of trying. Legend said that Prince Karsten had paid a terrible price for the service of his allies. Sigmar himself destroyed an army of them before his ascension to the heavens. It had been one of his less well-known exploits.
Felix himself had seen some evidence of the skaven’s handiwork in Karak Eight Peaks. The thought of the warpstone-polluted wells and the great mutated troll gave him the chills even after all this time. He hoped that he would not have to face any more of their monstrous creations in his lifetime. Looking at the others he could tell that they did not share his hope.
Until yesterday, Felix had never given a second thought to the number of rats in the sewers. Now he saw that they were everywhere. They scuttled away from the lights as the watchmen approached and he could hear the pitter-patter of their feet behind them after they had gone. Their eyes caught the reflection of the lantern and glittered like tiny stars far off in the darkness of the undercity.
He found himself wondering now if there was any connection between the rats and the skaven. He started to imagine the little ones as spies for their larger brethren. It was a madman’s fantasy, he knew, one straight out of the tales of sorcery he had read as a boy, but the more he thought of it the more terrifying the prospect became. Rats were everywhere in the great cities of man, living amid the garbage and refuse of civilisation. They could see much and overhear much and go, if not unnoticed, at least unsuspected.
He began to feel their cold eyes staring malevolently at him even as he walked. The walls of the sewer seemed to close in about him threateningly and he imagined himself caught in a vast warren. Thinking of the skaven out there, it suddenly seemed possible to him that he was in a vast burrow, that he and the others had been shrunk to the size of mice and that the skaven were ordinary rats, walking upright and dressed in a fashion that aped man.
The fantasy became so vivid and compelling that he began to wonder whether the fumes of the stew were going to his head or whether the scent-deadening narcotics prescribed by the city alchemists had hallucinatory side-effects.
“Steady, manling,” he heard Gotrek say. “You’re looking very pale there.”
“I was just thinking about the rats.”
“In the tunnels your mind creates its own foes. It’s the first thing a tunnel fighter learns to guard against.”
“You’ve done this sort of thing before then,” Felix said, half sarcastically.
“Yes, manling. I was fighting in the depths before ever your father was born. The ways around the Everpeak are never free of foes and all the citizens of the King’s Council do their share of military service in the depths. More young dwarfs die that way than any other.”
Gotrek was being unusually forthright, as he sometimes was before moments of great peril. Danger made him garrulous, as if he wanted to communicate with others only when he realised he might never get another chance. Or perhaps he was simply still drunk from the night before. Felix realised he would never know. Fathoming the dwarf’s alien mind was nearly as far beyond him as was understanding a skaven.
“I can remember my first time in the tunnels. Everything seemed cramped. Every sound was the tread of some secret enemy. If you listen with fearful ears you are soon surrounded by foes. When the true foe comes you have no idea from which quarter. Stay calm, manling. You’ll live longer.”
“Easy for you to say,” Felix muttered as the hefty Slayer shoved past. All the same, he was reassured by Gotrek’s presence.
With some trepidation they approached the place where Gant had been killed. Mist rose from the surface of the stew and in places a slow current was evident in the sludge. The area of the fight looked very much the same as Felix remembered it, except that the body was gone. The area where the corpse had lain was disturbed.
There was a trail in the slime that suddenly ended at the ledgeside, as if the body had been dragged a short way, then dumped. He knew they should have shifted it yesterday, when they had the chance, but they had been too shaken, disturbed and excited by what had happened to do so. No one had wanted to carry the mangy, rat-man body. Now it wasn’t there.
“Someone took it,” Hef said.
“Wonder who?” Spider said.
Gotrek scanned the ledge where the body had been. He bent down and peered closely at the tracks, then rubbed his eye-patch with his right fist. The hatchet which had killed the skaven came dangerously close to his
tattooed scalp.
“Wasn’t a man, anyway. That’s for sure.”
“All sorts of scavengers in the sewers,” Rudi said. He voiced the common belief of all sewerjacks. There are things you wouldn’t believe living in the stew.”
“I don’t think it was any scavenging animal,” Gotrek said.
“Skaven,” Felix said, voicing their unspoken thoughts.
“Too big. One of them was anyway. The other tracks might be skaven.” Felix peered out into the gloom; it suddenly appeared even more menacing.
“How big?” He cursed himself for taking on the same monosyllabic way of speaking as the others. “How large exactly was this creature you referred to, Gotrek?”
“Perhaps taller than you, manling. Perhaps heavier than Rudi.”
“Could it be one of the mutants you say the skaven breed? A hybrid of some sort?”
“Yes.”
“But how can all those prints simply vanish?” Felix asked. They can’t all have thrown themselves in the stew, can they?”
“Sorcery,” Hef said.
“Of the blackest sort,” Spider added.
Gotrek looked down at the ledge and cursed in his native tongue. He was angry and his beard bristled. The light of mad violence shone in his one good eye. “They can’t just disappear,” he said. “It’s not possible.”
“Could they have used a boat?” Felix asked. The idea had just struck him. The others looked at him incredulously.
“Use a boat?” Hef said.
“In the stew?” Spider said.
“Don’t be stupid,” Rudi said. Felix flushed.
“I’m not being stupid. Look, the tracks end here. It would be quite simple for someone to step down from the ledge into a small skiff.”
“That’s the daftest thing I’ve ever heard,” Rudi said. “You’ve got some imagination, young Felix. Who’d ever have thought of using a boat down here?”
“There’s a lot of things you’d never think of,” Felix snapped. “But then thinking’s not your strong suit, is it?” He looked at the other sewerjacks and shook his head. “You’re right—a boat doesn’t make sense. Much better to believe they vanished by magic. Maybe a cloud of pixies wafted in and carried them away.”
“That’s right, a cloud of pixies. That’s more like it,” Rudi said.
“He’s being sarcastic, Rudi,” Spider said.
“A very sarcastic fellow, young Felix,” added Hef.
“Probably right though,” Gotrek said. “A boat wouldn’t be too hard to come by. The sewers flow into the Reik, don’t they? Easy to steal a small boat.”
“But the outflows into the river all have bars,” Rudi said. To stop vagrants getting in.”
“And what’s our job, if not hunting down those self-same vagrants when they file through the bars?” Felix asked. He could see the idea was starting to filter into even Rudi’s thick skull.
“But why, manling? Why use boats?” Felix felt briefly elated. It wasn’t often that Gotrek admitted that Felix might know more than him. He considered the matter rapidly.
“Well for a start, they don’t leave tracks. And they might be connected with a smuggling operation. Suppose someone was bringing warpstone in by river, for instance. Our noble skulker yesterday seemed to be paying the rat-man off with it.”
“Boats make me sick. The only thing I hate more than boats is elves,” Gotrek said as they set off again.
They searched for the rest of the day and found no trace of any skaven, although they did find that the bars had been sawn away on one of the outflows to the Reik.
Felix stepped out of the street and into the Golden Hammer. He stepped from reality into a dream. The doorman held the great oak door for him. Servile waiters ushered him away from the squalor of the streets into a vast dining hall.
Richly clad people sat at well-filled tables, and dined and talked by the light that sparkled from huge crystal chandeliers. Portraits of great Imperial heroes watched the diners sternly from the walls. Felix recognised Sigmar and Magnus and Frederick the Bold. The style of the brushwork was Vespasian’s, the most famous Nulner painter of the past three centuries. The far wall was dominated by a portrait of the Elector Emmanuelle, a ravishing raven-haired beauty garbed in a less than modest ball gown.
Felix wished his borrowed clothing fitted him better. He was wearing some of his brother’s old garments. Once, he and Otto had been of the same size and build, but in the years of his wandering Felix had grown thinner and Otto more stout. The linen shirt felt baggy and the velvet vest felt loose. The trousers had been cinched with a leather belt tightened to its last notch. The boots were a comfortable fit, though, as was the cap. He had tilted it to a rakish angle to show off the peacock feather in the band. He let his hand toy idly with the golden pomander that dangled from a chain round his neck. The smell of fine Bretonnian perfume wafted up from it. It was nice to smell something other than the sewers.
The servant led him to a booth in the corner in which Otto sat. He had a leather-bound accounts book in front of him and was ticking entries off in it with a quill pen. As Felix approached he looked up and smiled. “Welcome, little brother. You’re looking much better for a bath and a change of clothes.”
Having studied himself in the great silvered mirror in Otto’s townhouse earlier, Felix was forced to agree. A warm bath, scented oil and a change of clothing had made him feel like a new man. In the looking glass he had seen the foppish young dandy he once had been, albeit with more lines round the eyes and a firmer, narrower set to the mouth.
“This is a very charming establishment,” he said.
“You could dine here every evening if you wished.”
“What do you mean, brother?”
“Simply that there is a place for you in the family business.”
Felix looked around to see if they were being overheard. “You know I’m still a wanted man in Altdorf because of the Window Tax business?”
“You exaggerate your notoriety, little brother. No one knows who the leaders of that riot were. Altdorf isn’t Nuln, you know.”
“You’ve said yourself Gotrek is a very easily recognisable figure.”
“We’re not offering the Trollslayer employment. We’re offering you your birthright.” And there it was; what Felix had half hoped for and half feared. His family would take him back. He could give up the restless uncomfortable life of the adventurer and return once more to Altdorf and his books. It would mean a life chained to the ledgers and the warehouses, but it would be safe. And one day he would be rich.
It was a tempting prospect. No more crawling around in sewers. No more beatings at the hands of thugs. No more catching strange illnesses in terrible, out-of-the-way places. No more muscle-searing treks through wild, savage lands. No more descents into darkness. No more confrontations with the Chaos-worshipping minions of obscure cults. No more adventures.
He wouldn’t have to put up with Gotrek’s sullenness or his whims any more. He could forget his oath to follow the Trollslayer and record his doom in an epic poem. The promise had been made when he was drunk; surely it didn’t count? He would be his own master. And yet, something held him back.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he said.
“What is there to think about, man? You can’t actually tell me that you prefer being a sewerjack to being a merchant, can you? Most people would kill to be given this opportunity.”
“I said, I’ll think about it.”
They ate on in uncomfortable silence. After some minutes, the door to the great room opened and a tall man was led in by the servant. He was clad in black and his monkish robes made him seem out of place in his opulent setting. His face was thin and ascetic, and his black hair ended above his forehead in a widow’s peak.
As he crossed the room, silence spread in his wake. Felix saw that the wealthy diners were afraid of him. As he passed close to the table Felix was shocked to recognise him: it was unquestionably the man he had seen in the sewers with the
skaven. His mind reeled. He had assumed that the man was some kind of sorcerer or renegade. He pictured a cultist or a desperado. He had not expected to see him here in the haunts of Nuln’s wealthiest and most respectable citizens.
“What’s the matter, brother? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Who- who is that man?”
Otto let out a long sigh. “You don’t want to know. He’s not a man that you ask questions about. He asks them about you.”
“Who is he, Otto? Do I have to go over and ask him?” Felix saw a look of alarm and admiration pass across his brother’s face.
“I do believe you would, too, Felix,” he whispered. “Very well. That is Chief Magistrate Fritz von Halstadt, the head of Countess Emmanuelle’s secret police.”
“Tell me about him.”
“There are those who see him as the enemy of corruption everywhere. He is hard-working and no one doubts his sincerity. He sincerely hates mutants and for that reason he has the backing of the Temple of Ulric. His home is guarded by their Templars.”
“I thought the Temple of Ulric had no power here, that the countess disliked it.”
“That was before von Halstadt’s rise to power. He came from being a minor court functionary to the most powerful man in the city-state very quickly. Some say it was by blackmail; some say his enemies have a habit of being found dead under mysterious circumstances. He’s risen far for a man whose father was a minor nobleman in an out-of-the-way province. A callous cunning old swine, by all accounts.
“Von Halstadt is cold, cruel and dangerous, not just because of his influence. He has a deadly blade. He’s killed several people because they’ve insulted the honour of the countess.”
“I would have thought her brother, Leos, did enough of that without him having to.”
“Leos is not always about and rumour has it that our chief magistrate would be prepared to fight him over the countess. Apparently he’s got it hard for her.”
“Then he’s mad. Leos is the deadliest blade in the Empire and Emmanuelle’s not worth fighting over.”