by William King
“Are you seriously considering going across the Chaos Wastes in this thing?” Felix asked.
“Yes, manling.”
“And you expect me to come with you?”
“No. That choice is yours alone.”
Felix looked over at the dwarf. Gotrek had not mentioned the oath that Felix had sworn, perhaps because he had felt that no reminder of it was needed—or perhaps because he was genuinely offering Felix the choice. Even after all this time Felix found it difficult to read the Slayer’s moods.
“You have tried to cross the Wastes before, with Borek, and others.”
“Yes.”
Felix drummed his fingers on the cold stone of the battlements. For long moments there was silence and then, just when Felix thought the dwarf was not going to say any more, Gotrek spoke again.
“I was younger then, and foolish. There were many of us, young dwarfs, full of ourselves. We listened to Borek’s tales of Karag Dum and the Lost Weapons and how it would make our people great again if we found them. Others warned us that the quest was madness, that no good would come of it, that it was impossible. We would not listen. We knew better than them.
“Even if we failed, we told ourselves, we would fail gloriously, seeking to restore the pride of our people. If we died, we would give our lives in a worthy cause, and not have to witness the long slow years of attrition which ate away at our kingdom and our kin. Like I said, we were fools, with the confidence only fools have. We had no idea of what we were letting ourselves in for. It was a mad quest but we were desperate for some of the glory that Borek promised.”
“The Hammer of Fate—what is it?”
“It is a great warhammer, about the length of your forearm but weighing much more. The head is made from smooth, impervious rock, inscribed deeply with runes that…”
“I meant, why is it so important to your people?” If Felix had not known better he would have suspected that Gotrek was trying to avoid the subject.
“It is a sacred object. The Ancestor Gods inscribed it with master runes when the world was young. Some think that it contains the luck of our people, that by losing it we brought a curse upon ourselves that we can only remove by recovering it. Certainly since the hammer was lost, things have not gone well for our race.”
“Do you really believe that bringing it back will change things?”
Gotrek shook his head slowly. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. It may be that recovering the hammer will bring new heart to a people who have lost much over the past centuries. It may be that the weapon itself will unleash its magic to aid us once more. Or it may not. Even if not, the Hammer of Fate is said to be an awesome weapon, able to unleash lightning bolts and slay the most powerful foes. I do not know, manling. I do know that it is a mighty quest, and a worthy doom to fall on such a quest. If we can find Karag Dum. If we can cross the Wastes.”
“And the axe?”
“Of that I know even less. It is as ancient as the hammer, but few have ever looked upon it. It was always kept in a secret holy place and brought forth only in times of greatest danger, wielded by the High Runemaster of Karag Dum. In three millennia it was carried into battle less than a dozen times. Some whisper that it was the lost Axe of Grimnir himself. Only the High Runemaster of Karag Dum would know the truth of that for certain and he is dead, lost when the Wastes swallowed that place.”
“Are the Wastes so bad?”
“More terrible than you can imagine. Much more terrible. Some claim they are the entrance to Hell. Some claim they are the place where Hell and Earth touch. I can believe it. In all my days I have never seen a more foul place.”
“And yet you would go back!”
“What choice have I, manling? I am sworn to seek my doom. How could I remain behind when old Borek and Snorri and even that young pup Varek will go? If I remain behind I will be remembered as the Slayer who refused to accompany Borek on his quest.”
It seemed strange to hear Gotrek express doubts or admit that he was considering accompanying the loremaster only because of the way others would remember him. He was usually so terrible and full of certainty that most of the time Felix had come to look upon him as something more than human, more like an elemental force. On the other hand, the Slayer was also a dwarf, and his good name meant far more to him that it could mean to even the proudest human. In this the Elder Race seemed truly alien to Felix.
“If we succeed, our names will live in legend for as long as dwarfs mine the under-mountains. If we fail…”
“You can but die,” Felix said ironically.
“Oh no, manling. Not in the Chaos Wastes. There, you really can find fates far worse than death.”
With this Gotrek fell silent and it was obvious that he would speak no more.
“Come on,” Felix said. “If we’re going we’d better get down there and join the others.”
The airship had emerged fully from the hangar now. It was moored, like a galleon at anchor, to the top of the great steel tower. It was only when he stood below it, and looked up at the tower’s enormous metallic height that Felix truly appreciated the sheer size of the thing. It seemed as large as a cloudbank, big enough to block out the sun. It was larger than any ship Felix had ever seen, and he came from Altdorf, where ocean-going traders sometimes moored, sailing up the Reik all the way from Marienburg.
He had changed into clean clothes. His red woollen cloak flapped in the breeze. His pack was slung over his shoulder. He thought that he was packed and ready to go but now, for the first time, standing in the shadow of the immense metal tower with Gotrek and Snorri, he had some inkling of what he was really letting himself in for.
A metal cage descended from the heights, supported by great metal hawsers unwinding from a drum at the structure’s base. The drum was powered by one of the dwarfs steam engines. As it moved it reeled the cable in and out and raised and lowered the cage as needed. It seemed like a mechanical marvel to Felix but Gotrek had remained unimpressed, insisting that such things existed in dwarf mines throughout the World’s Edge Mountains.
The cage stopped next to them and its barred door was opened by one of the engineers. He bowed and gestured for them to enter. Felix felt a surge of trepidation, wondering whether the cable was strong enough to hold the combined weight of all three of them and the cage, wondering what would happen if it snapped, or something went wrong with the mechanism.
“Heh! Heh!” Snorri cackled. “Snorri likes cages. Snorri’s been going up and down in this one all day. Better than riding a steam-wagon it is. Goes much higher!”
He leapt in like a child given an unexpected treat. Gotrek followed him in showing no emotion whatsoever, his enormous axe slung lightly over his shoulder. Felix stepped tentatively inside and felt the metal floor flex under his feet. It was not a reassuring feeling.
The engineer slammed the cage door shut and suddenly Felix felt like a prisoner in a cell. Then another engineer pulled a lever and the engine’s pistons started to rise and fall.
Felix’s stomach gave a lurch as the cage began to move and the ground fell away beneath them. Instinctively he reached out to grab one of the bars and steady himself. He gulped in air as nervous as he had been before the battle with the skaven. He noticed that he could see the ground through the small holes in the floor beneath his feet.
“Wheel” went Snorri happily. The faces of the dwarfs on the ground shrank beneath him. Soon the machines were small as child’s toys and the vast bulk of the airship swelled ever larger above them. Looking down gave Felix a very unsettling feeling. It wasn’t as if they were really going that much higher than the topmost battement of the castle, it just felt so much further.
Perhaps it was something to do with the motion, or the wind whistling past through the bars of the cage but Felix felt very much afraid. There seemed to be something unnatural about just standing there with all your muscles rigid and your knuckles white from gripping cold metal while the girders of the metal tower glided past. His heart almost st
opped as the cage came to rest and all motion ceased save for the slight swaying of the cage on its hawsers.
“You can let go now, manling,” Gotrek said sarcastically. “We’ve reached the top.”
Felix pried his grip loose to allow the engineer at the top to open the cage. He stepped through the opening and out onto a balcony. It was a structure of metal struts that ran around the top of the metal tower. The chill wind whipped his cloak and brought tears to his eyes. He felt suddenly frozen with fear when he saw how high he was above the ground. He could now no longer see all of the airship. It was too large for all of it to fit within his field of vision. A metal gangplank ran between the top of the tower and a door in the lower part of the airship’s side. On the far side of it he could see Varek and Borek and the others waiting for him.
For a moment he could not make himself move. The ground was at least three hundred paces below him and that metal gangplank could not be that firmly attached to the airship or the tower. What if it gave way below him and he fell? There would be no chance of surviving a drop of this magnitude. The pounding of his heart sounded loud in his ears.
“What is Felix waiting for?” he heard Snorri ask.
“Move, manling,” he heard Gotrek say and then a powerful shove sent him stumbling forwards. “Just don’t look down.”
Felix felt the fragile metal bridge strain under his weight and for a moment thought that it was going to give way. He virtually bounded forward on to the deck of the airship.
“Welcome aboard the Spirit of Grungni,” he heard Borek say.
Varek grabbed him and pulled him further past. “Makaisson wanted to call this ship the Unstoppable,” the dwarf whispered, “but for some reason my uncle wouldn’t let him.”
Felix slumped beside Makaisson at the helm of the airship. He had been forced to duck as he came below. The airship had been designed with dwarfs in mind and so the ceilings were lower and the doors wider than they would have been for humans.
The engineer was dressed differently today. He wore a short leather jerkin with a massive sheepskin collar raised against the cold. A leather cap with long earflaps covered his head. There was another flap cut in the top for Makaisson’s crest of hair. Goggles covered the dwarfs eyes, presumably as some protection against the wind if the front window was to shatter. Heavy leather gauntlets enclosed the dwarfs large hands. Makaisson turned and looked up at Felix, beaming with all the pride a father might show when pointing out the achievements of a favourite child.
As far as Felix could tell, some of the controls resembled those of an ocean-going ship. There was an enormous steering wheel which looked rather like a cartwheel, except that it had handgrips around the rim at strategic intervals to allow the pilot a comfortable grip. Felix imagined that by swinging the wheel the pilot could alter the direction of the craft. Beside the wheel were set a group of levers and a square metal box bearing all manner of strange and alarming gauges. Unlike with a ship, the pilot stood at the bow of the craft behind a shield of glass so that he could see where he was going. Looking out the window over the prow Felix could see there was a figurehead, some bearded and roaring dwarf god, which Felix presumed was the dwarf god, Grungni.
“Ah can tell yer impressed,” Makaisson said, glancing over at Felix. “An so ye should be—this is the biggest and best airship ever built. Actually, as far as ah ken it’s only the second one ever built.”
“You’re certain that this thing will fly?” Felix asked nervously.
“As certain as ah am that ah had ham fur breakfast. The balloon, that big thing above yer heed, is full of liftgas cells. There’s enough o’ the stuff up there to keep twice oor weight airborne.”
“Liftgas?”
“Och, ye ken, it’s stuff that’s lighter than air. It naturally wants to rise skyward, and as it does it taks us way it.”
“How did you manage to collect the stuff if it’s lighter than air. Wouldn’t it just float away?”
“A sensible enough question, laddie, an’ one that shows ye hay the makin’ o’ an engineer. Aye, it’s naturally rarer than hen’s teeth but we make the stuff oorselves doon there in the toon. At least oor alchemist dae. Then we pipe it intae the balloon above us.”
“The balloon.” The thought worried Felix even more. It made him think of the tiny hot air balloons he had made of paper as a child. It seemed inconceivable that such a thing could lift a weight of solid metal, and he said so.
“Aye well, is a lot stronger than hot air and the balloon above yer heed is no made o’ metal, nae metter what it looks like. It’s made of mare resilient stuff. Alchemists made that as weel.”
“What if the gas leaks out?”
“Och, it woudnae dae a thing like that! Ye see inside that big balloon are hunnerds o’ wee balloons. We call them gasbags or cells. If yin bursts it disnae metter much, we’ll still hae plenty o’ lift. Ivver half they wee balloons would hae tae burst before we lost altitude and even then it would be gradual. It just woudnae be natural for them tae aw burst at yince.”
Felix could see the sense of this arrangement. If the balloon above held thousands of smaller balloons, it was indeed unlikely that they could all be burst at once—even if they were attacked with hundreds of arrows, only the gasbags on the outside would be punctured, if arrows could even penetrate the outer structure of the balloon. Clearly Makaisson had given considerable thought to the safety of his creation.
Somewhere at the rear of the ship a bell rang out. Felix looked around to see that the gangplank had been slid into place and a railing had been swung back round to cover the gap. He felt marginally safer.
“That’s the sign that we’re supposed to be awa’,” Makaisson said. He pulled one of the smaller levers close to hand and a steam-whistle sounded. Suddenly engineers swarmed across the ship to take up positions all around. From the ground below Felix heard cheering.
“Brace yersel!” shouted Makaisson and tugged another lever. From somewhere below the ship came the sound of engines starting up. Their roar was almost deafening. At the sides of the ship the dwarfs were starting to reel in the hawsers on great drums, for all the world like a horde of sailors weighing anchor. Slowly Felix began to sense movement. Currents of air stroked his face. The airship began to rise and to move forward. Almost unwilling, he moved to the side of the ship and looked out through the porthole. The ground was starting to slip away below them, and the Lonely Tower complex fell away behind. The tiny figures of the dwarfs on the ground waved up at them and on impulse Felix waved back. Then he was overwhelmed by a sickening sense of vertigo and had to step back from the window.
For the first time it came home to him that he really was on a flying ship heading out for parts unknown. Then he started to wonder how they were ever going to land again. There were no hangars and no great steel towers that he knew of out in the Chaos Wastes.
Varek led him down a metal stepladder which had been welded into the structure of the airship. Felix was glad to be off the command deck, away from the mass of excited dwarfs. The drone of the engine was audible even through the thick steel of the vehicle’s hull, and occasionally for no reason that Felix could detect the floor flexed beneath his feet.
Suddenly the whole vessel lurched to one side. Instinctively Felix reached out with his hand to steady himself against the wall. His heart leapt into his mouth and for a moment he was convinced that they were about to plummet to their doom. He realised that he was sweating, in spite of the chill.
“What was that?” he asked nervously.
“Probably just a crosswind,” Varek said cheerfully. Seeing Felix’s confusion, he began to explain: The part of the ship we’re in is called the gondola. Its not rigidly attached to the balloon above us. We’re actually dangling from hawsers. Sometimes the wind catches us from one side and the whole gondola starts to swing in that direction. Nothing to worry about. Makaisson designed the airship so that it could fly through a gale if need be—or so he claims.”
“I hope he
did,” Felix said, finding the nerve to put one foot in front of the other once more.
“Isn’t this exciting, Felix?” Varek asked. “Uncle says we’re probably the first people ever to fly at this altitude in a machine!”
“That just means we have further to fall,” Felix muttered.
Felix lay on the short dwarfish bed and stared at the riveted steel ceiling of his stateroom. He found it difficult to relax with the thought of the long drop below him and the occasional motion of the vessel. He was pleased to discover that the cramped bunk had been bolted to the floor of the chamber to prevent it from moving about. The same was true of the metal storage chest in which he had thrown his gear. It was a good design and showed that the dwarfs had thought of things that he never would have. Which, he admitted, was typical; as a people, they were if nothing else thorough.
He turned on his stomach and pressed his face against the porthole, a small circle of very thick glass set in the airship’s side. A chill communicated itself almost immediately to the tip of his nose and his breath misted the pane. He wiped it away and saw that they had risen still higher and that below them lay clouds in a near-endless rolling sea of white.
It was a view which Felix had imagined that only gods and sorcerers had ever seen before, and it sent a thrill of fear and excitement coursing through his whole body. Through a sudden gap in the clouds he could see a patchwork quilt of fields and woods spread out far below. They were so high that, for a moment, he could read the surface of the world like a map, glancing from peasant village to peasant village with a turn of his head. He could follow the course of streams and rivers as if they were the pen-strokes of some divine cartographer. Then the cloud closed again, to lie below him like a snow field. Above them the sky was an incomparable blue.