by Warhammer
Then a horrendous thump and chorus of wild shouts from above made Felix look up. Euler’s blade snaked for his throat. Felix back-pedalled furiously. Unfortunately there was a footstool behind him and he toppled backwards over it, slamming his breath out as his back hit the fine Estalian carpet.
Euler stepped over him, white flakes of plaster floating down around him from the ceiling. ‘I will send your body back to your father,’ said Euler, shouting to be heard over the rumpus coming from above, ‘as a token of my admiration.’
Felix struggled to get his limbs to respond as Euler put his sword-cane to his throat. Then, suddenly, the shouts from above became screams, and there was a horrendous crashing from the stairs.
Euler and Felix looked towards the noise and saw a large square object bounce down out of the stairwell in a shower of wood, plaster and dust, and hit the entryway floor with an impact that shook the house. It was quickly followed by a rain of flying footmen, all spinning down and slapping loosely on the floor around it.
‘My safe,’ said Euler, blinking.
After the footmen tumbled Gotrek, landing shoulders first on a heaving velvet-clad stomach. He staggered up and shook his fist up the stairwell. ‘Come down here, you cowards!’ He was bleeding freely from the back of his skull.
Felix took advantage of Euler’s distraction to roll out from under the point of his sword and stand.
Euler was beside himself. ‘My floor!’ he cried. ‘My panelling! Manann’s scales, the expense!’ He turned on Felix, eyes blazing. ‘I’ll send your corpse back to your father with a bill for damages!’
He thrust at Felix with his cane-sword and Felix blocked and kicked the footstool at him.
‘Gotrek!’ he called. ‘Here!’
The Slayer swung around and started towards him. One of the fallen men tried to rise, lifting a dagger at him. Gotrek backhanded his face with his cast and kept walking. The strike sounded like a pistol shot, and Felix thought for a moment that he had shattered the man’s skull. But it was the cast that had split, a zigzag crack that ran the length of the thing. With a grunt of satisfaction Gotrek tore it off and flexed and shook out his arm.
‘About time,’ he growled, stepping into the back parlour and starting around the red brocade couch towards Euler. The merchant danced back, trying to keep both Felix and Gotrek in front of him. Just then, there was a rumble of boots from the spiral stair and two men ran into the room, then skidded to a stop behind the couch when they saw Gotrek.
‘Sigmar’s hammer, he lives!’ said the one on the left, who held a blood-spattered fireplace poker.
Gotrek growled in his throat and beckoned them forwards. ‘Try that again,’ he rasped. ‘I dare you.’
‘Kill them!’ screeched Euler, backing behind an elegant Tilean harpsichord.
‘I’m not going near him,’ said the one with the poker. ‘He’s mad!’
‘He threw the safe at Uwe!’ said the other, who was none other than One-Ear, still on his feet and now carrying a sailor’s cutlass.
‘Kill them or all your back pay is forfeit!’ Euler shouted.
Felix stepped beside Gotrek as the two towering footmen eyed them warily.
‘Can I use my axe now?’ rumbled Gotrek.
‘Now would be a good time, yes,’ said Felix.
‘Good,’ said the Slayer, and drew it off his back.
One-Ear leaned towards his companion and said something out of the side of his mouth that Felix couldn’t hear.
‘What are you waiting for?’ called Euler.
Then, before Felix could understand what they meant to do, the two giants threw aside their weapons, picked up the massive couch as if it weighed nothing, and charged Gotrek and Felix with it.
Felix stumbled back, surprised. But Gotrek roared and hacked at the brocade barrier with his axe as it raced towards them. The rune weapon bit deep, smashing through the wooden frame and the horsehair depths of the upholstery, but not deep enough.
The couch hit Felix and the Slayer amidships and drove them back towards the rear wall of the house. They tried to push back, but it was no use, the loose carpet under their boots slid across the polished floorboards and gave them no purchase. Felix’s heels hit the baseboard and then, with an enormous explosion of diamond-paned glass, he and Gotrek flew backwards out of the window, trailing velvet curtains and a few red brocade couch cushions.
There was a frozen moment when Felix took in the beauty of the flying shards of glass glittering in the afternoon sun, the intricacy of the decorative brickwork on Euler’s back wall, and the fluffy white clouds above it all, then the canal smacked him in the back and the water closed over his head in a freezing, silty rush.
The shock of it drove sense from his head for a moment, then he was kicking back to the surface, fighting the heavy pull of his saturated clothes. He broke the surface, gasping and kicking to stay afloat, and saw Gotrek to his left, his crest plastered down over his good eye, shaking his axe over his head.
‘Craven humans!’ he roared as he and Felix were drawn down the canal by the slow current. ‘A couch is a coward’s weapon!’
Felix looked up. From the shattered window, Euler was shouting back, his two remaining footmen at his sides, glaring murder down at them.
‘This vandalism will cost you, Jaeger!’ he cried. ‘I will no longer settle for half of Jaeger and Sons! I will have it all!’
Gotrek returned his axe to his shoulder and struck for the side of the canal. ‘Come on, manling, let’s finish these furniture-throwers.’
Felix made to follow, but just then Euler and his men were joined at the window by men in the black-capped uniforms of the Marienburg city watch. Euler shouted and pointed at Felix. ‘That’s the man! He and the dwarf did all this!’
Felix sighed. He was almost ready to cry ‘enough’ and let his father take care of his own dirty business. But he had promised, and Euler had made him mad. The man had tried to murder him. Well, Felix wasn’t going to respond in kind, but he’d find some other way to get the letter. It was a matter of pride now.
‘We’ll come back later,’ he said. ‘I need to think.’
Gotrek grunted, but then nodded. ‘I could use a drink anyway.’ He turned, and he and Felix swam for the far bank.
FIVE
They made their way circuitously back to the Three Bells, taking alleys and lesser bridges to avoid the watch. Felix was miserable the whole way, wet and cold in the windy Marienburg sunshine, with his drenched clothes hanging off him like they were made of lead and his boots squishing with every step. Gotrek, annoyingly, didn’t seem bothered in the least.
Felix slowed as they reached the last corner before the inn, worried that there would be a company of the watch waiting for them at the door. He leaned his head out to have a look, and felt a different sort of chill as he saw that there were indeed Black Caps milling outside the door of the inn. He pulled back instinctively, but then looked again, frowning. If the watch was there for them, what were they doing carrying people out of the inn on stretchers? And why were the landlord and the serving women all talking to them at once?
‘Something’s happened,’ he said.
Gotrek had a look too, then shrugged. ‘As long as they’re still serving.’
He tromped forwards single-mindedly. Felix followed more cautiously, keeping his head down, but the Black Caps didn’t seem interested in him or the Slayer in the slightest. They were too busy helping sickly-looking people out onto the street and interviewing the owner of the Bells. More sick people sat on the cobbles, coughing and retching. A few were weeping. People from neighbouring businesses clustered outside their doorways, talking in hushed tones.
As they neared the inn, Felix staggered, hit by a wave of horrible odour, like rotting eggs and attar of rose mixed together. He covered his nose and mouth, and continued on. Gotrek did the same. The stench was making him dizzy.
A Black Cap held up a hand at the door. ‘You don’t want to go in, mein herr.’ His eyes were s
treaming and he had a kerchief over his mouth.
‘What happened?’ Felix asked.
‘Something in the cellar,’ said the watchman. ‘Came up like smoke, they say, and everybody who got a good whiff fell down like they was dead.’
‘They died?’ Felix was shocked.
‘No, sir,’ said the Black Cap. ‘Only fainted like, and very sick with it.’
‘But what was it?’
‘That’s what the captain is trying to find out.’
‘Sewer gas is what it was!’ said a prosperous-looking merchant who appeared to have been hurried out of the inn in the middle of dressing. ‘Damned city hasn’t fixed those channels in decades. Manann knows what’s growing down there.’
‘It were cultists!’ gasped a barman, looking up with bloodshot eyes from where he sat. He had flecks of bloody foam around his mouth. Felix remembered him from earlier when he had served them in the taproom. ‘Cut a hole in the cask cellar floor. I saw it. Like a green fog it was. Then it got me.’
Could it have been only sewer gas? Felix looked at Gotrek. The Slayer‘s expression said he didn’t think so.
‘When did this happen?’ he asked the barman.
‘Just after lunch, sir,’ he said. ‘Right after you left in fact. I remember, because it was when I went down to bring up a new keg after you finished the old one that I saw the smoke.’
Felix exchanged another uneasy glance with Gotrek. He was willing to bet that their room had been broken into, and he wanted to see if there were any clues as to who had done it, but he didn’t want to poison himself to do it.
‘How long before we can go in?’ asked Felix.
The Black Cap shrugged. ‘Not until the captain blows the all-clear.’
It was an uneasy wait, with Felix watching the ends of the street constantly for Euler’s Black Caps, and Gotrek grumbling about being thirsty, but fortunately, Felix wasn’t the only one who wanted to go back in and get his things, and finally the captain gave in to the besieging guests who clamoured around him in various states of undress and distress, and said that they could all enter to retrieve their belongings, but that the inn would be closed immediately afterwards until it could be searched more thoroughly. The innkeeper looked sullen about this, but everyone else cheered and rushed in.
Gotrek and Felix followed the flow up to the second floor. The interior of the inn still smelled horrible, and the stink was worse in the confines of the narrow upper halls. Felix covered his mouth with his handkerchief, but he still felt the corridor swim around him, and had to brace himself against the wall for balance as they went along. They slowed and drew their weapons as they approached their room. Then Felix stopped altogether. The door was ajar. Had the Black Caps forced it? He certainly hadn’t left it that way.
They crept to it and listened. Felix looked to Gotrek. He shook his head. The lack of noise did nothing to allay Felix’s fears. It might only mean that their enemies were lying in wait. Gotrek raised his axe, then nodded.
As one, they jumped forwards and kicked the door in. It banged open and Gotrek leapt in, slashing left and right. He struck nothing. The tiny room was empty but for the expected furnishings, a bed along each wall, a wash stand and a clothes trunk. The beds had been smashed, the wash stand overturned, and the trunk had been opened and their few belongings strewn about.
Felix followed after Gotrek and closed the door behind them. Things would be awkward should the landlord come by and see the damage. He looked around. The window that was the room’s only source of light was open and there were fresh splinters on the sill, as if someone had gone in or out that way. It would have had to have been a very small and agile someone, for the window was tiny, and high up on the wall. A child might have done it – or a slim woman.
He pushed that thought away and searched through his few clothes. Everything had been ripped and cut, and he feared that his armour was stolen, but then he found it thrown in a corner, still whole, but reeking like everything else from the poisonous stink. Perhaps the vandals had been unable to tear it. The Slayer‘s bedroll had been hacked up too, but he had no clothes to ruin. He owned no other possessions that he didn’t carry on his person at all times.
‘Darts, nets, poison gas,’ said Gotrek. ‘Only cowards use such things.’
Felix looked at him. ‘You think it was the same ones who attacked us in Altdorf?’
Gotrek nodded. ‘And whoever they are, they want us alive.’
Once again the image of Lady Hermione and Mistress Wither looking down at him while he was bound and helpless came unbidden to his mind, and he shivered convulsively.
On their way out, Felix paid the landlord double what they owed him for the room. It was his father’s money, and the least he could do for the trouble they had brought upon his establishment.
As they started down the street, Felix wondered if they might not need to sleep in the open, just so they wouldn’t bring a similar fate to another hostelry. He was beginning to feel like he was the carrier of some deadly plague, and that he should keep away from human society until it had run its course. They needed to face these foes and finish them, but they didn’t even know who they were.
A block away from the inn, someone called their names.
‘Felix! Gotrek!’
Felix and Gotrek turned, their hands drifting towards their weapons. A coach was heading towards them and Max was leaning out the window.
‘I was just coming to find you,’ he said, then noticed that Felix was carrying his armour. ‘Have you left your inn?’
‘Uh…’ Felix paused, uncertain how much to tell him. ‘Our room was burgled,’ he said at last. ‘We decided to look for other lodgings.’
Max shook his head, bemused. ‘Trouble follows you two like a stray dog.’
‘More like a bat,’ said Felix under his breath, then spoke up. ‘What did you want to see us about?’
‘I have an urgent matter to discuss with you,’ said Max, opening the door to his coach. ‘Will you join me?’
Max said not a word about the urgent matter in the coach as they crossed the many bridges and islands of the city to the Suiddock wharfs.
‘Are we going back to the Jilfte Bateau?’ asked Felix as the coach’s wheels boomed on the wooden planks of the docks.
‘No,’ said Max. ‘Our new companion waits for us at the Pike and Pike.’
‘New companion?’
But Max would say no more.
The coach came to a stop on a busy commercial wharf, with stevedores unloading goods from merchant ships flying the colours of Bretonnia, Estalia and Tilea, as well as dozens of Imperial and Marienburg vessels. They stepped down from the coach and Max led the way to a small tavern with a river pike impaled on a spear over the door. The place smelled, unsurprisingly, of fish, but the odour lessened as they made their way through the noisy taproom to a stair that led up to a small, but neatly furnished private dining room on the first floor.
Felix nodded politely to Claudia, who sat sideways on a cushioned bench by the fire on the left wall, her feet curled underneath her, then stopped dead as he saw the other occupant of the room, sitting ram-rod straight at the head of the table that filled the centre of the room. Gotrek grunted like he’d smelled something foul. It was an elf. Felix understood suddenly why Max hadn’t mentioned this earlier. He wouldn’t have got Gotrek in the coach.
‘Felix Jaeger,’ said Max, ‘Gotrek Gurnisson, may I present Aethenir Whiteleaf, student of the White Tower of Hoeth and son of the fair land of Eataine.’
The elf rose, inclining his head respectfully. He was tall, and as slender as a willow branch in his flowing white robes, but there was an air of youth and nervousness about him that made him look more awkward than graceful. He had the long, haughty features of his kind, but the nervousness showed also in his cobalt-blue eyes, which flicked about the room as he spoke. ‘I am honoured, friends. Your acquaintance enriches me.’
‘An elf,’ Gotrek spat. He turned back to the door. ‘Come
on, manling.’
‘Wait, Slayer,’ said Max. ‘If you still seek your doom, hear him out.’
‘We go into the gravest danger, with you or without you,’ added Claudia.
Gotrek paused at the door, his fists clenching. Felix looked from him to Max to the elf to the seeress, all waiting for the Slayer‘s decision.
At last the Slayer turned back around. ‘Speak your piece, beard-cutter.’
‘That is a myth,’ snapped the elf. ‘It never happened. You–’
Max held up a hand. ‘Friends, please. This is perhaps not the time to bring up old arguments. We have little time.’
‘You are right, magister,’ said Aethenir. ‘Forgive me.’
Gotrek just grunted.
Max offered Gotrek and Felix seats at the table and took one himself. Felix sat, but Gotrek remained standing, arms crossed, glaring at the elf.
‘We met Scholar Aethenir last night,’ said Max, ‘when he came to a gathering of Marienburg magisters seeking their knowledge of the region of the Wasteland to the north and west of here.’
‘The same region that my visions are leading me to,’ said Claudia, leaning forwards meaningfully.
‘A book was stolen from the library of the Tower of Hoeth,’ said Aethenir. ‘A book containing maps and descriptions of the area you call the Wasteland, and the elven cities that once graced it, as it was before the Sundering ravaged both land and sea and changed the coastline forever. I must recover this book.’
‘And…?’ said Gotrek when the elf didn’t continue.
‘And?’ asked Aethenir.
‘Where is my doom in this?’
‘Don’t you see, Slayer?’ said Claudia, speaking up. ‘The book details exactly the same area that my visions have told me will be the birth of the destruction of Marienburg and Altdorf. This is not coincidence. Some great evil is brewing there. We must go and prevent it.’
‘It is my belief,’ said Aethenir, ‘that those who stole the book are agents of the Dark Powers, and seek some ancient elven artefact in one of the ruined cities. I know not what it might be, but an item of great power in the hands of the pawns of Chaos can only spell ruin and despair for the peoples of Ulthuan and the Old World.’