by Warhammer
‘I’ve come for what is mine!’ the Harbinger rumbled, shaking four of its squirming victims at Gotrek as it stuffed a fifth into its maw.
‘Let them go, fish!’ bellowed Gotrek, sprinting to the end of the dock and swiping at one of the extended tentacles. ‘Fight me!’
The beast howled in pain and jerked the tentacle back as Gotrek’s axe bit deep. It glared at the Slayer. ‘Very well,’ it said. ‘They will wait.’
It tossed the captives aside and whipped its tentacles at Gotrek, trying to sweep him off the dock.
The Slayer rolled between two sturdy pilings, then lashed out at the Harbinger’s limbs from their cover. Felix ran forward to help him, but leapt back again immediately as a tentacle nearly knocked his legs out from under him. He swiped wildly at it as it passed, opening a red groove in it. The monster roared and grabbed for him, but he dodged out of reach.
Gotrek, however, was in the middle of a tentacle hurricane. Some tried to knock him from between the pilings. Some tried to squash him to the dock. Some tried to grab him. He countered them all, making the beast pay for each attack with bloody, trench-deep gashes. It howled at every strike, but kept flailing. Its tentacles were too thick now to be severed with one blow, and to Felix’s horror, the wounds grew closed in the time it took for it to draw back and strike again. It seemed impossible that Gotrek could kill it before it found some way to pry him from his cover.
A tentacle slammed into the dock, smashing through the planks at Gotrek’s feet. It had found a way.
The Slayer jumped back. Another tentacle slapped down and more planks caved in. Gotrek fell back again. The Harbinger came on, hauling itself out of the water with its tentacles and stomping forward on huge human legs that shook the dock with each step.
Felix backed towards the stone embankment with the Slayer as the tentacles swatted at them, inches away.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘The fish-woman said the bracelet gives it its power,’ Gotrek rasped. ‘If I can take it, I wager I can kill it.’
They reached the embankment and ducked behind a wall of crates.
‘But how will you get past its tentacles?’
The Slayer shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’
The monster tore down the crates and hurled them away. Gotrek and Felix dove to the ground as they bounced over their heads and smashed to pieces beyond them. People fled screaming. Felix and Gotrek picked themselves up and joined them. The Harbinger lumbered after them on its tentacles like an ape on its knuckles.
A handful of sailors appeared at the rail of the ship to their left, all armed with long guns. They fired. The beast writhed as the bullets tore into its body, but kept on, not turning from its prey.
Gotrek looked up at the ship and paused, almost taking a tentacle in the small of the back. He spun and lopped off the tip of the thing, then started up the ramp to the big cargo dock. ‘Lead it this way.’
There was no time to wonder what Gotrek’s plan was. The Harbinger was pulling itself up the ramp faster than they could run. Felix slashed behind him at a questing tentacle and missed, then had to leap like a scalded cat to avoid being flattened by a barrel it flung after them.
‘Faster, manling,’ said Gotrek.
Felix grunted, he was going faster.
They topped the ramp and stumbled on, weaving through piles of cargo as the towering mutant smashed barrels and crates into the water. Gotrek looked up as they ran under the pallet of grain sacks that dangled high over the dock, and Felix suddenly knew what the Slayer intended.
Gotrek looked over his shoulder. The Harbinger was just ducking under the pallet.
Gotrek chuckled evilly. ‘Away, manling!’
The Slayer veered left, sprinting for the winch that held the pallet and raising his axe. Felix dived over a pile of rolled carpets and looked back.
He gaped as Gotrek fell flat on his face, inches from the base of the winch. A tentacle jerked the Slayer up off the ground by the ankles and raised him high.
‘You think I’m such a fool?’ laughed the monster.
It stepped out from under the dangling pallet, more tentacles wrapping around Gotrek as it lowered him towards its gaping mouth. The Slayer wrenched his axe arm free and slashed around, but the limbs healed as fast as he cut them and didn’t let go.
With a grunt, Gotrek threw his axe at the Harbinger of Stromfels’s head. The weapon spun through the air and chunked into its shark-like snout, right between its oval nostrils, and stuck.
The beast bellowed and staggered back, cracking its head on the pallet as it blundered under it.
‘Manling, get the–’ A tentacle clamped over Gotrek’s face.
Felix ran for the winch, raising his sword.
The monster saw him and swayed forward unsteadily, shooting a pair of unoccupied tentacles after him. Felix dove, slashing. His sword sliced the rope, making it sing like a harp string, but a few strands still held.
Felix cursed and crashed to the dock. A tentacle wrapped around his leg, lifting him into the air. He swiped at the rope again as he was dragged back.
The last strands parted.
Swinging upside down in the Harbinger’s grip, Felix saw the pallet of grain sacks drop as the rope zipped through the pulleys. The monster lurched out of the way, but not fast enough. The pallet hit it on the hip, crushing its right leg and knocking it into a pile of crates. It crashed to the dock on its back, tentacles flailing for balance, and flung Felix away.
He slammed down on the lip of the dock and almost bounced off into the water. Only catching a wooden piling in the ribs stopped him from going over. He gasped as all the air shot out of him and lay there glaze-eyed, clinging feebly to the post.
The monster shoved feebly at the grain sacks with its tentacles, trying to free its legs. For a moment, Felix couldn’t see Gotrek amidst all the coiling limbs, but then he appeared, climbing the monster’s broad chest and reaching for the bracelet.
‘No!’ it roared.
The Slayer got his thick fingers around the glowing green gem and pulled as tentacles bludgeoned his shoulders and back. Gotrek only tucked his head and pulled harder.
Felix staggered to his feet, clutching his aching ribs, and stumbled forward. He could see the golden wires of the bracelet pulling from the Harbinger’s flesh as Gotrek hauled on it. They stretched and strained, fighting to maintain their grip.
Felix hacked weakly at a flailing tentacle, hoping to divert the monster’s attention. It worked. It swatted him across the dock. Unfortunately, the rest of its tentacles were not distracted.
As Felix sat up, dazed, he saw the suckered limbs wrap around Gotrek’s arms, legs, torso and head, pulling him in eight directions at once. Felix winced. It was like watching someone being torn apart by horses. The Slayer was so wrapped in tentacles that all Felix could see of him was one foot, a bit of orange crest, and his left arm, pinned fast against his back.
With a howl of frustration, Stromfels’ Harbinger pushed Gotrek away from its chest like someone trying to peel off an overly affectionate monkey, but Gotrek was still gripping the gem, and as the monster thrust him away, the bracelet tore from its chest. Felix saw the golden strands waving in the air like the legs of an inverted crab as Gotrek held it high.
The Harbinger screamed and convulsed, whipping its tentacles about in a frenzy and slamming Gotrek down on the deck of a nearby ship like a sack of wet clay. The bracelet spun away from Gotrek’s slack fingers and bounced down to the dock as the massive monster pushed up and looked around, the rune axe still sticking from its snout.
‘My heart!’ the Harbinger roared, as it saw the golden bracelet rolling along the planks.
Felix blanched. The cursed bauble was coming right towards him!
The beast surged up and thundered after it. ‘You will pay for this! All will pay!’
Felix scrambled between some crates as the Harbinger loomed over him, but it only snatched up the bracelet in a tentacle and held it high, its black eyes
glittering triumphantly.
Felix gripped his sword, preparing to dash out and sever the tip of the tentacle that held the evil thing, but then he saw movement above and behind the monster.
Gotrek was running along the rail of the merchant ship. He leapt and landed on the beast’s broad back, clambering up its triangular fin towards its snout. The harbinger spun around, nearly throwing him off, but the Slayer held tight and wrenched his axe free, then hacked down at its skull.
The monster roared and stumbled as the axe struck bone. Its tentacles whipped around, trying to dislodge the Slayer. Gotrek struck again, laughing maniacally, and this time shattered the beast’s bony carapace. Blood and ooze soaked his face and beard as he pulled back for another blow.
Felix’s heart pounded with sudden hope. The Harbinger’s wound was not healing! The bracelet was no longer protecting it!
A third stroke and the monster’s tentacles sagged. It weaved on its legs, then toppled to the deck, crushing a pyramid of wine barrels. A pool of red spread out from beneath it as Gotrek rolled off its back and lay panting on the planks. His skin was marked from head to foot with red, saucer-sized rings.
Felix limped out of hiding as the Slayer pulled himself to his feet. They looked down at the massive corpse.
‘This time,’ said Felix. ‘I think it’s finished.’
Gotrek shook his head, then turned to scan the dock. ‘There’s still the bracelet.’
Felix stared at him. ‘You’re not going to keep it?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘Not after this!’
‘No,’ said Gotrek. He crossed to the tentacle that held the jewel and pulled it free. He held it up. The thing had reverted to its original shape – a coil of woven gold holding a sea-green gem. ‘It needs to be destroyed. Cleansed.’
The Slayer turned towards the city. ‘Come on, manling. There has to be a dwarf smith somewhere in this human swamp.’
Three hours later, as a cold wind whipped whitecaps across the harbour, Gotrek and Felix trudged wearily up the gangplank of the Jilfte Bateau, the river boat that would take them up the Reik to Altdorf.
Leaning on the rail at the top of the ramp was their old friend Max Schreiber, smoking a meditative pipe. Beside him was the young seeress, Claudia Pallenberger, still gaunt and weak from their recent adventure on the Sea of Chaos. Max smiled as Felix and the Slayer stepped onto the deck.
‘You two look like you visited every taproom in Marienburg,’ he said.
‘Almost,’ answered Felix, too tired to deny his implication.
‘You nearly missed the boat,’ said Claudia.
‘We were busy,’ said Gotrek. ‘Purifying cursed gold.’
Max smirked and blew a stream of smoke into the air. ‘Some euphemism for drinking beer, no doubt,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Felix. ‘Not really.’
He shuffled with Gotrek towards the door to the cabins. He would explain later. Right now all he wanted to do was sleep all the way to Altdorf.
Just as he ducked through the door, raindrops spattered across the deck and the wind pushed hard at his back. He turned and looked to the west. The sky over the Manannspoort Sea was black with clouds. Felix’s chest tightened as they rolled closer. It looked like a terrible storm was about to hit Marienburg.
SHAMANSLAYER
Nathan Long
‘After our near-fatal encounter with the dark elves, I returned to Altdorf with the Slayer to discover that my greatest fears concerning my father were true. In my rage and guilt I made a vow then to destroy the shadowy nemesis that had killed him, no matter how long it took, or the cost incurred. But fate did not allow me to pursue this new quest. Instead, because of a long-forgotten pledge, the Slayer and I were swept up into a quest of another sort – one that led us into the darkest depths of the Drakwald to face the oldest and bitterest enemies of mankind, and a new threat of staggering proportions.
‘It was as we fought this horror that we were once again reunited with companions from our long ago past, and once again, those reunions were both sweet and bitter, joyous and heartrending, and both would change the nature of my travels with Gotrek for all time.’
– From My Travels with Gotrek, Vol VIII, by Herr Felix Jaeger
(Altdorf Press, 2529)
ONE
Felix Jaeger paused as he looked up at his father’s Altdorf mansion under the grey winter sky. Did it have an empty, shut-up look to it, or was he just imagining it? Surely the marble steps hadn’t been so dirty the last time he had visited. Surely the curtains hadn’t been drawn. He climbed the steps to the door, then stopped again.
Ever since he had found his father’s ring on a cord around the neck of a skaven assassin on a beach by the Sea of Chaos, Felix had burned with fevered impatience to return to Altdorf to find out what the rat-faced villains had done to the old man. But now, on the doorstep of knowledge, he found it difficult to go on.
For more than a month his heart had been filled with dread and uncertainty. How did the skaven come to have the ring? Had they hurt his father for it? Had they killed him? Had they only stolen it and let him be? The questions had chased their tails inside Felix’s head unceasingly as he and his companions had made their too-slow journey back to civilisation. But as much as the helplessness of not knowing had driven him mad, Felix suddenly feared knowing even more. If he knew, he would have to allow the emotions he had been stifling to come to the fore. If he knew, he would have to do something.
He cursed himself and squared his shoulders. He was like a man frightened of having a wound stitched shut – the anticipation was worse than the act. Better to take the pain and close it and heal.
He knocked on the door.
There was no answer. He knocked again, and waited again, trepidation rising in his heart. Then, just as he was wondering if he should find some way to break in, he heard locks turning and bolts drawing back. The door opened and the grave, grey face of his father’s butler looked out at him.
‘Is he…?’ asked Felix hesitantly.
‘Your father is dead, sir,’ said the butler. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
A hot rush of anger and regret flooded through Felix. He had known it, of course – known it all along – but it was one thing to know it in one’s heart and another to hear it spoken as fact.
‘And…’ he stammered. ‘And how did it happen?’
The butler paused, a brief flash of fear disturbing his solemn features, then spoke again. ‘Your brother is here, sir. Perhaps you should speak to him.’
Felix blanched. Otto was here? Speaking to him was the last thing he wanted to do! On the other hand, he would have to see him sometime. There were no doubt legalities to be attended to. He sighed. No point in avoiding the inevitable.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Show me to him.’
The butler pushed open the door to Felix’s father’s study, a long dark room lined with ledger-filled bookcases and lit by a small fire in a large fireplace. Near the meagre blaze was a broad desk, almost buried in ledgers, stacks of papers, scrolls and leather folios, and surrounded by chests and strongboxes, all spilling even more papers and books. At the desk, almost entirely obscured by this mountain of paper, sat Otto, quill in one pudgy hand, bald head down, peering myopically at an open ledger by the light of a candle perched on top of the mess and muttering under his breath.
Felix stepped in and the butler closed the door behind him. Otto didn’t look up. Felix paused, then cleared his throat and started forwards. Still Otto didn’t look up, only kept murmuring and ticking things off with his quill.
Felix reached the foothills of the desk’s clutter. He cleared his throat again. There was still no response.
‘Ah, Otto…’
‘Thirty-two thousand, nine hundred and… and… Damn you! You made me lose my count!’ Otto looked up, his bearded jowls quivering with anger. ‘Why couldn’t you…?’ He froze as he saw who he addressed. ‘You.’ Then again after a few seconds, ‘You!’
‘Hello, brother,’ said Fe
lix. ‘I’m sorry to–’
‘You dare to show your face here, you… you murderer!’ said Otto, recovering.
‘I didn’t kill him!’ exclaimed Felix, though he was suddenly bathed in a guilty sweat.
‘Didn’t you, by the gods? Didn’t you?’ cried Otto, rising up and stabbing towards him with his quill. ‘You come to see him for the first time in over twenty years and that very night he is found butchered in his bed! Do you count that coincidence? No? You might not have done the cutting, but, by Sigmar, you brought the knives!’
Felix hung his head at that, for he could not deny it. Though he had not known it at the time, the skaven had been tailing him. They must have followed him to his father’s house. ‘What did they do to him?’
Otto glared at him. ‘Schmidt found him in his bed, bound at the wrists and ankles. He… he had been tortured. There was no fatal wound. He seemed to have died of terror.’
Felix shuddered, remembering what the decrepit skaven seer had done to Aethenir and imagining it being done to his frail old father. Gustav Jaeger had not been a good man, but not even the worst of men deserved a death like that.
‘I’m sorry, Otto. It was indeed my enemies that–’
‘Sorry?’ interrupted Otto. ‘Do you think an apology will suffice? You caused the death of your father! Sigmar’s blood, you’re like a curse! I told you once before I never wanted to see you again. Everywhere you go, death and destruction follow. You can take your “sorry” and be damned with it. Now go, before you kill me too.’
Felix sighed. He couldn’t blame Otto, really. He was right. He was a curse. He had exposed Otto and his family to danger, had nearly got him killed in an attack on the street in Nuln, and then had come to Altdorf and led his enemies to his father’s house, where they had tortured him to death. And it wasn’t just his own family Felix’s presence had destroyed. He and Gotrek had been in a fight that had burned down an entire neighbourhood in Nuln, the crew of the Pride of Skintstaad had been slaughtered, thousands of innocent slaves had drowned with the sinking of the black ark of the dark elves, and there were more – many more – an army of dead who marched behind him, pointing at his back and whispering, ‘I would yet live if not for you…’