There was a terrible anguished scream, a howl so chilling that Konrad froze for a moment. The cry came from Silver Eye, a cry of despair that his master was dead. The ratman rushed towards Konrad, but the Altdorf officer intercepted him. Their swords rang as they fought.
Konrad cast the bow aside and leapt forward, his sword swinging at the first of the pygmy predators who rushed at him. Its head was lopped off and keep screeching as it flew across the chamber.
Konrad slew more of the ugly pale things as they swarmed through the cavern. They sprang at him from rocks, clawing at his face. Others tugged at his legs, tearing at his flesh, trying to bring him down by sheer weight of numbers. He kicked them aside, pulled them off, stabbed at them, sliced them, squashed them underfoot. The noise they made as they died was more horrendous than the sounds of their feeding.
He reached Litzenreich, and leaned down, tearing the gag away from his mouth. While he was distracted, a few of the shrunken mutants leapt on him, and this time he almost lost his footing. Once he was down on their level, he would stand no chance against so many.
“Magic!” he yelled. “A spell!”
“Free my hand,” he heard the wizard say, weakly.
Konrad threw his painful burdens aside. His sword whirled through the air. Several corrupted heads were severed, spraying blood everywhere. He leaned down again, vainly trying to drag the nail from the magician’s right hand with his fingers.
“Pull the hand, pull the hand!”
Konrad obeyed — and splinters of shattered bone and shreds of gory flesh from Litzenreich’s palm remained attached to the nail as his hand came up. The wizard screamed, then threw out his right arm, the scream lowering in pitch and becoming transformed into a spell. A bolt of lighting flashed from his blood-stained index finger.
His chant was answered by a demented shriek as the first of his torturers erupted in a ball of incandescence. Then another monstrosity began to burn, and another, and the cave filled with the stench of roasting flesh.
Slaying several more of the hunched troglodytes as he did so, Konrad moved across to where Ustnar lay. He slid his blade below the head of one of the wrist nails, rested the sword point on the ground, and levered the nail free. Ustnar reached up and grabbed one of his assailants by the neck, crushing its throat, while Konrad freed his other hand.
There were fewer of the misbegotten brutes now, fewer of them still alive, yet they still attacked with the same maniacal fury. By the time Konrad was releasing Ustnar’s second ankle, Litzenreich was on his feet, having freed himself. Konrad’s sword snapped in two as the final nail slid from the rock.
He glanced around. The Altdorf officer was down, and from the twisted angle of his body he must have been dead. There was no sign of Silver Eye, nor of Gaxar. The skaven must have escaped and taken his master’s human corpse with him. The figures on the ledge beyond the stream seemed to have gone. All the pygmy deformities were now dead or dying in flames, victims of Litzenreich’s incendiary revenge, and the air stank of charred flesh.
Konrad, Litzenreich and Ustnar stood and looked at each other, blood dripping from all of their wounds. They were alone within an arena of death and destruction. The only sound was their own heavy breathing and the infantile wailing of the fatally maimed blood beasts.
But then there came another noise, from deep within one of the tunnels that led off from the chamber. It was a noise that Konrad could not fail to recognize: the distant warcries of Chaos marauders. These beastmen would not be undersized, they would not be unarmed, and there would be more of them than could be counted.
“The river!” ordered Konrad. “It’s our only chance of getting out!”
They hurried to the edge of the river. In appearance, it was like any other swift stream, its foam-flecked waters rushing through a channel worn away in the rock. It vanished into a low arch at the edge of the cavern.
“I hate water!” said Ustnar — and he jumped in.
He vanished beneath the surface, then reappeared after a few seconds, already halfway out of the chamber. Litzenreich seemed hesitant, and so Konrad shouldered him. The wizard dropped, splashing under the water, bobbing up again before disappearing down the tunnel.
Konrad threw his helmet aside, tore his cloak free, pulled his cuirass off, kicked his first boot away, started to remove his second, but there was no time. He caught a glimpse of gleaming red eyes approaching through one of the passages, then another pair, and another. That was enough. He sprang into the cold river, staying beneath the surface as he allowed the fast flow to carry him towards the tunnel.
A second before he was swept into the culvert, his head broke the surface, and he gazed up. There were still two figures on the ledge above. He could see them properly now.
And the first of them was Skullface!
There could be no mistake this time. Even after five years, he could remember the creature as clearly as if it were yesterday. The same thin body, the same bald head which seemed to have no flesh on the bone.
By his side stood someone else Konrad had not seen for half a decade, someone else who he could never forget, although for different reasons. She was older now, but she was instantly recognizable.
For a brief moment their eyes met, his green and gold, hers jet black.
Elyssa…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Ferring was born on a small island called Britain, from which he escaped by running away to sea. His first writing job was typing out passenger menus, but he soon began making up imaginary dishes. Critical reaction to his early literary work was mixed, and he jumped ship in New York. Claiming to read Japanese, he was hired to translate the captions of scores of manga books. Instead, he made it all up.
He wrote his first Warhammer novel, Konrad, after he stopped producing gags for nightclub crooners in Las Vegas; Shadowbreed was written when he gave up devising plot-lines for an Australian soap opera; and Warblade was written one-handedly in Hong Kong, after he broke his right arm during a stunt in a Jackie Chan movie — and he’d only been on set to compose a few lines of dialogue for the European villain…
Now living on his native isle, David Ferring is still making up things.
Scanning, formatting and basic
proofing by Undead.
[Konrad 02] - Shadowbreed Page 22