Gotrek - One, Untended - David Guymer

by Warhammer

  Contents

  Cover

  One, Untended – David Guymer

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  One, Untended

  David Guymer

  Master,

  The artefact is within my grasp, but there have been complications and I am unable to report to you as requested. I can only hope that this note will be recovered by another of your agents and returned to you in my stead. I am still within the bounds of the Twin-Tailed City and appear likely to remain so for some time. I just need more time.

  I will not fail you.

  Still and eternally the faithful servant of Azyr,

  Maleneth Witchblade

  ‘Get back, aelfling,’ Gotrek scowled. ‘This is not something that your pretty little eyes need to see.’

  Maleneth rolled her ‘pretty little’ eyes as Gotrek bent over the open sewer that ran along the back yard of the Missed Striking, one hand on the ivy-scrawled corner of a brick wall. She watched with a casual anatomist’s fascination as the immense muscle groups that corded his back rippled and flexed. The duardin turned to look over the single plate of black armour fixed across his left shoulder.

  His one good eye was virulently bloodshot, his preternaturally aged skin slacker and more haggard even than usual. His huge blade of gold-struck orange hair drooped over the armour’s leonine features, sodden with stale beer where he had slept with his head against a trestle table. ‘I told you–’ His throat suddenly clenched. His face blanched. Red light from the street lamps slithered across it. ‘Grungni’s beard.’

  Then he was violently, messily sick into the sewer.

  Maleneth patted the thickly creased skin at the back of his head.

  ‘There, there.’

  ‘I hate you, aelfling,’ Gotrek said between ructions. ‘I hate you and all your darkling kin.’

  ‘I know.’

  After a few minutes the duardin’s heaves subsided, and he spat the last chunks of a green sausage and ghyrvole egg supper into the ditch.

  ‘This has never happened to me before.’

  ‘I am sure that you say that to all of the girls.’

  Gotrek glared at her.

  ‘A joke,’ she said.

  ‘I think there was something nasty in my beer,’ Gotrek complained.

  Maleneth nodded sympathetically. There had indeed been something nasty in the Slayer’s beer. Several somethings. Duardin were notoriously resistant to poisoning, but the amount of gravelock, heartcease and scarlet clover that Gotrek Gurnisson had obligingly consumed over the last day and a half would have killed a gargant. He should have been curled up on the weed-filled yard bleeding out of every orifice rather than complaining of an upset stomach.

  Maleneth looked up at the night sky, trying to judge the time.

  The moons were swathed in autumnal colours. Even the realm’s cohort of satellites responded to the life song of the Everqueen, and on a clear night Maleneth could see foliage stirring in another world’s winds. This was not such a night. Scraps of dark cloud raced across their faces. A thin mist shrouded the creaking wooden tenement runs and lean-tos of the Stranglevines, and even Maleneth’s inhumanly chill breath fogged the air in front of her face. It was past midnight.

  She sighed as the Slayer began to dry retch over the ditch. He should have been dead three times over already. But even in his current condition she was not sure that she wanted to risk hurrying things along. She had fought the duardin twice before, and on both occasions had barely escaped with her life. And that had been before he had acquired the fyreslayers’ master rune, multiplying his already formidable strength severalfold. The rune smouldered quiescently from the scarred, fire-ruined meat of his chest. Occasionally, when the Slayer had drunk enough to pass out and sleep, it also whispered, though not in any language that Maleneth had ever heard. No. She belonged to a fantastically long-lived race. Barring a knife in the back she could afford a little patience.

  ‘Come on, Gotrek,’ she said. ‘I think you left a beer untended in there.’

  ‘Give me a moment here, damn you.’

  Before she could try to cajole the duardin any further, the tavern’s back door opened. Another posse of drunks stumbled through the rectangle of wobbly warmth and light and into the moonlit yard. They appeared to be armed, in some distress and without exception, drunk. Not an agreeable combination in Maleneth’s experience, even in the most salubrious of establishments. And even in the Stranglevines of Hammerhal Ghyra, establishments did not come more insalubrious than the Missed Striking. Gotrek had found his way through its doors the way a blind woman found her own bed.

  Eager to avoid any trouble with the local ruffians, Maleneth nodded across the yard to them, as though standing over a retching duardin in the dead of night was the most natural activity in Ghyran. To her relief they ignored her utterly, too intent on their own whispered arguments to mark even Gotrek’s outlandish appearance.

  A young woman in a nightdress and a thin shawl ran barefoot into the yard after the gang of armed drunks. Tears streamed down her reddened cheeks as she screamed something about a ‘Tambrin’. It was her distress, rather than her peasant prettiness and state of undress, that made Maleneth forgo her earlier misgivings about attracting attention and turn to watch. She had come a long way from the girl who would murder the row’s cats and kidnap the neighbours’ children, but she still found other people’s pain arresting. A burly man in a sweat-stained linen vest tried to put a coat over her. His head looked like an executioner’s block, all nicks and bloodstains with strange chunks missing. The woman beat her fists against his chest until he gave up. The other drunks, clearly as embarrassed by the display as Maleneth was enthralled, fussed over strappings and buckles.

  There were two of them, both human, both what Maleneth would call old despite being at least a century her junior.

  One was clad in leaves of delicate, lightly scuffed mail that appeared to have more of a decorative function than offering any real protection. A laurel of dried leaves and flowers sat nestled on a coarse stubble of grey hair. He carried a long-handled hammer. The next step in the cultural surrender of Ghyran, Maleneth thought. Azyrite might was irresistible, in all its forms. The old faiths had adapted to and appropriated from the doctrines of Azyr to remain relevant to the new order, or else had simply been assimilated wholesale into the Sigmarite faith. The warrior-priest of Alarielle was an extreme example.

  Maleneth felt herself uniquely qualified to judge – a shadowblade of Khaine, now an agent of the Order of Azyr. Or at least she had been. Her failure to return to the Order with the master rune would have done little to ease her superior’s understandable distrust.

  The second figure was more difficult to make out in detail. She kept to the darkest parts of the yard, as if out of habit. Her hood was drawn tight against the cold, not a single strand of hair falling free. Her cloak was made from woven leaves, and real ones, not the steel likenesses worn by the warrior-priest. They changed colour with the light, turning from black to autumnal red with the streaking of the clouds across the moons. Despite that exotic quality the garment was well worn, stained by sweat, soil and beer, and had probably never been anything but functional to begin with. The only thing to distinguish the woman from another common footpad or down-on-her-luck highwayman was a string of campaign badges on her collar. They marked her as ex-Freeguild. Perhaps even one of the Living City Rangers, judging by the raiment, well known throughout Ghyran as
the best scouts and trackers in the Mortal Realms. Maleneth recognised some of the battles. The most recent had been fought about fifteen years ago.

  ‘What’s going on over there?’ said Gotrek.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Really? Because it sounds as if someone’s mislaid a child.’

  ‘As I said,’ said Maleneth. ‘Nothing.’ But the Slayer was already stomping towards the armed gathering. Maleneth swore. Talk about something that he actually wanted to hear and Gotrek’s ears were as keen as any darkling aelf’s.

  ‘You were supposed to be watching them while I visited the night market, Junas,’ the distraught woman yelled as Gotrek walked over.

  ‘It was a rough-looking crowd tonight, Madga,’ said the big man, Junas, defensively. ‘Helmlan wanted more help on the door. What was I supposed to say?’

  ‘Speaking of rough-looking crowds,’ muttered the warrior-priest, his eyes widening at the sight of Gotrek’s sagging crest. He shuffled smartly out of the Slayer’s way.

  ‘I hear that someone has lost a child,’ said Gotrek, in a tired voice that sounded like a slab of granite dropped into a conversation.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ said Junas. ‘I don’t know who you are.’

  Madga slapped him. Maleneth saw the brawler’s biceps tense. Her hand strayed to her knife belt, but whatever anger he was containing he found room for a little more.

  ‘I know you,’ said the ex-Freeguilder, slowly. ‘You’re the fyreslayer that slept the night on Helmlan’s table.’

  A glitter of malice in Gotrek’s one eye made the old veteran step back.

  ‘I am no fyreslayer, woman.’

  ‘My mistake, master duardin.’ The ranger bowed.

  ‘Aye. It was.’

  ‘My name is Madga,’ said the young woman, wiping the tears from her face on the sleeve of her nightdress as though to make herself presentable for the permanently dishevelled Slayer. ‘This is my husband, Junas.’ The tavern brawler crossed his arms over his chest. Maleneth recognised a display of threatened masculinity when she saw one. All bulging neck muscles and scowls. Like a feral alley starwyrm. ‘The priest is Alanaer.’ The older man painstakingly put together a drunken bow, leafmail twinkling under the light of the moons. ‘The Freeguild ranger is called Halik.’ The woman so named nodded curtly. ‘Anyone who drinks often enough in the Missed Striking to be on first-name terms with my husband isn’t the sort I’d want to trust my family to, but anyone who’d drop it all in the dead of night to go looking for a boy can’t be all bad, can they?’

  Maleneth did not think that the girl had intended it as a question, but the hopeful inflection she gave it made it sound like one. The priest, Alanaer, smiled faintly, as if remembering the last time he had been spoken of so highly.

  ‘Do you have children?’ Madga asked.

  Gotrek scoffed. ‘Take another look, girl. If this one ever got her claws on a child, she would probably skin it alive. And eat it.’

  Maleneth nodded.

  The young woman blanched. ‘I… I actually meant you, master duardin.’

  Gotrek grimaced, as though pained by an old tooth. He grumbled something in his own archaic form of the Dispossessed tongue, his breath misting the midnight air. He stamped his boots on the cobblestones, taking small but obvious comfort in crushing the small flowers that sprouted between them.

  ‘It is quite the collection of arms you carry for a missing child,’ said Maleneth.

  ‘Someone saw the boy heading towards one of the catacomb entrances,’ said Halik.

  Gotrek raised an eyebrow, and turned to Junas. He shook his head slowly. ‘You live a stone’s throw from the entrance to such a place and you would leave your child untended?’

  The big man coloured. ‘The entrances are all locked,’ he protested. ‘And patrolled by the watch.’

  ‘It was the ghost of Hanberra!’ Madga wailed. ‘He’s taken my Tambrin.’

  Some of the gloom lifted from Gotrek’s complexion.

  Trust the Slayer to be revived by talk of spirits and monsters, Maleneth thought. ‘Ghost?’ she asked, casting a furtive look over her shoulder.

  There was not much in this world that she truly feared. It was coldness, she often supposed, rather than genuine courage. But as a devotee of the God of Murder, the undead stirred a peculiar revulsion in her which, on a night as dark as this one, might have been mistaken for fear.

  Alanaer shook his head. ‘A folk myth, pedalled by some of the Sigmarites.’

  ‘It’s true though,’ Junas murmured. He touched the small hammer he wore around his neck. ‘Hanberra was a hero of the old city. The one that stood here before Hammerhal. Before the War Storm. He fell defending it from Chaos. Sigmar tried to take him, for his Stormhosts, but he refused, because there were still folk in the city he could save.’

  ‘His children,’ cried Madga. ‘He defied the lightning to go back for his children. And he looks for them still.’

  ‘It’s just an old tale,’ said Alanaer. ‘One the Azyrheimers have latched on to, to warn about what happens to those who turn their backs on Sigmar.’

  Halik, Maleneth noticed, looked unconvinced, but she nodded. ‘True or not, Tambrin was seen alone. Heading towards the Downs.’

  Madga started to sob.

  ‘I’m going to bring him back, Madga,’ said Junas.

  Halik and Alanaer both grunted their agreement.

  ‘Please, master duardin,’ Madga sniffed. ‘Will you help? Please?’

  Gotrek scowled, but nodded. ‘Aye. I’ll help find your boy.’

  Maleneth sighed.

  With any luck, a little light exertion would be just what the various poisons in the duardin’s body needed to do their work. And failing that, there was every chance that the monsters of the catacombs or the ghost of Hanberra could do what she had been unable to.

  Kill Gotrek Gurnisson.

  The stairs into the catacombs went down forever. It seemed that way to Maleneth, at least, after a second hour had elapsed with no end in sight.

  Maleneth wondered if Madga was still up there, waiting. Probably. For a moment it had looked as though the peasant woman would come with them, and it had only been a word from Alanaer that had dissuaded her.

  At least there was little chance of her being discovered and moved on by the watch. Their patrols were laughably infrequent, and could almost have been designed to give the entrances to the catacombs as wide a berth as possible. Maleneth had not harboured any elevated expectations of the local law enforcement and so had not been disappointed.

  Maleneth tried to recall the pretty, tear-soaked face that had watched them disappear into the old sewers beneath the Stranglevines Downs, but could not seem to call it back to memory. She sighed. She could have used some cheering up.

  Even this deep under the earth of the city, the brickwork was florid with life. Weeds and scruffy flowers matted the steps. Tuberous roots broke through the walls and ceiling, forcing everyone except Gotrek to walk with a crouch lest they strike their heads. More than once a particular brute of an obstacle funnelled the adventurers down to single file to slither over the crumbling, weed-carpeted steps on their bellies. Maleneth appreciated those interludes even if Junas, Halik, Alanaer and Gotrek manifestly did not. They were a chance for her to sit down and rub her aching thighs while the others caught up, struggling and cursing behind her.

  What sustenance do these plants draw from this grey place? Maleneth wondered. Where do they turn in lieu of sunlight? In Azyrheim, too, the days were often dark. The city had no sun, but bathed in the light of Sigendil, the High Star, at the very heart of the cosmos, it shared in the brilliance of a trillion stars. Perhaps it was the song of the Everqueen alone that bade them grow.

  She could see in near-perfect darkness. Her senses of hearing and intuition were so acute that she could fare reasonably well even without
vision. But even she was starting to miss the cheap, imported illumination of the Stranglevines’ street lamps.

  The ranger, Halik, bore a torch, but she had not lit it.

  There had been no need.

  The only light that had followed them into this forgotten corner of Alarielle’s realm was that of Gotrek’s axe. Zangrom-thaz, it was called, in the language of the unbaki fyreslayers who had crafted it. The forgeflames bound up in the huge fyrestorm greataxe licked at his flesh and at the hairs of his beard without finding a purchase on either. Another effect of the fyreslayers’ ur-gold on his body, Maleneth thought. She could feel the axe’s heat perfectly. Sweat beaded her forehead. The palms of her hands were damp, to the extent that she almost feared she would be unable to draw a weapon should the need arise. The tangling vegetation shrivelled back from him, much to the Slayer’s childish glee.

  The weight of rock above Maleneth’s head seemed to close in. It dawned on Maleneth that it was this, rather than the darkness, that was truly disturbing her.

  In her duties for the Temple there had been no dungeon so deep that she could not penetrate it, no arcane fortress warded so completely that she could not reach its heart. There was an aspect of killer instinct at play there, but largely it came down to preparation. Since she had been an acolyte, Maleneth had known never to open a door without first knowing of at least two others by which she could flee. Following Gotrek wherever the idiot duardin chose to swing his axe denied her that. It was simply not possible to carry the same sigmarite-clad self-assurance that she was accustomed to when she had no idea where she was or what she was supposed to be doing.

  Her hand strayed over the array of knives sheathed to the lightweight, drakespawn leather plate of her thigh. Her neck itched as though she were being watched. Like a zephyrat in a sadist’s maze. She almost feared to look back, stricken by the bizarre certainty that she would see a million tons of Ghyranite rock crashing over the stairs behind her if she did.

  Forcing herself to swallow her phobias and face them, she glanced over her shoulder. Junas walked behind her, hunched, scared, stroking the hammer pendant that hung from his neck and muttering a prayer to Sigmar. For himself or for his child, Maleneth could not quite make out. Maleneth’s hand moved involuntarily from her knife belt to the device at her own neck. The locket was in the form of a silver heart bound in chains. A small window between revealed a quantity of blood inside.