by Warhammer
Felix, Gotrek and Ortwin stared at the devastation.
‘What happened here?’ asked Ortwin, stunned.
Kat spat. ‘This was the path of the army of Strykaar, one of Archaon’s lieutenants. They say there were more than five thousand in his train.’ She indicated the burned area with a sweep of her arm. ‘Men from Stangenschloss met them here. They waited in ambush – archers and spearmen and men-at-arms. They wanted to strike and retreat into the woods, then continue to harry the marauders’ line as they moved west.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘But Strykaar had things of Chaos with him, whispery things that could move through the woods like wind, dogs with skin like red scales, flying things. The men’s first attack was their last. They could not retreat far enough or fast enough. They were hunted down and killed like vermin. Only a few made it back to Stangenschloss to tell the tale.’
Felix shivered as he pictured desperate men scrambling through the thick wood, running from silent, loping shadows.
‘But their deaths were not in vain,’ Kat continued as they started across the ugly burn. ‘Their attack killed many of Strykaar’s champions, and slowed his advance, giving Middenheim and the forts further east more time to prepare.’
Gotrek cursed and kicked the distorted skull of a dead Kurgan. ‘Another worthy doom missed,’ he muttered as it bounced across the snow. ‘Damned weak-willed Kurgan. They couldn’t have held on another two months.’
For the rest of the day the Slayer was in a foul mood, cursing under his breath and speaking to no one.
Just after noon on the fourth day, they found the remains of a much more recent fight.
Kat, as usual, was scouting far out in front, and saw it first. Felix saw her go on guard, crouching and drawing her axes from her belt, then creep forwards steadily around a bend in the path.
‘On guard, manling,’ said Gotrek, and pulled his axe from his back.
Felix and Ortwin drew too, and they all moved quickly ahead, staring and listening all around them. As they came around the bend they saw what Kat had found.
She stood looking down at the ground beside a twisted line of smashed wagons, some of which had been tipped on their sides, all of them missing their horses and the supplies they had carried. As Felix got closer he saw that there were bodies lying by the carts, each covered in a thin white blanket of snow. Broken spears and bent swords littered the ground, and arrows stuck from the surrounding trees. But Kat was looking at none of it, only staring at a body at her feet – a middle-aged man in the colours of Averland.
‘You know him?’ asked Felix, approaching her.
‘He was my friend,’ she said, nodding listlessly. ‘Sergeant Neff. He was a quartermaster for Stangenschloss. They left Bauholz a few days before you arrived.’
Sergeant Neff’s left arm lay a few feet from the rest of him, and both he and it had been partially eaten by some forest predator. His face hadn’t been touched, however, and looked up at Felix from under a cap of snow with an accusatory stare.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Felix.
Kat shrugged. ‘It’s what happens in the Drakwald,’ she said. But as she turned away, Felix could see tears glittering on her cheeks.
‘Did beastmen do this?’ asked Ortwin, looking angrily around at the white-cloaked carnage.
‘Kurgan,’ said Gotrek. He held up a horned helmet that had a sword cut through it.
Felix swallowed and looked around at the woods at the mention of the northmen. Even in the middle of the day the shadows beneath the trees were impenetrable, and they might hide anything. He shivered as he imagined the mad red eyes of crazed barbarians staring at him from their depths. It took an effort of will to turn away from the trees and return his attention to the wagons.
As he walked around them, he counted seven bodies. It didn’t seem enough. ‘How many men guard these convoys?’ he asked.
‘Twenty, and two ostlers for each wagon,’ said Kat.
‘Then where are they?’ asked Felix.
‘Taken,’ said Kat. ‘For slaves.’
‘Your friend was lucky, then,’ said Gotrek.
Kat shuddered. ‘Aye.’
‘Do we go after them?’ asked Ortwin.
Kat shook her head. ‘This happened before it snowed, three days ago. They could be fifty miles from here, and the snow will have covered their trail.’ She sighed and turned north again. ‘I only hope someone got away to warn the fort.’
‘Shouldn’t we at least bury them?’ asked Ortwin, as Kat started away from them. ‘It goes against Morr’s law to leave them here for the wolves.’
Kat turned on him, eyes dark. ‘There is no time for things like that here. The ground is too frozen to dig, and we have too far to go.’
Ortwin looked for a moment like he was going to protest again, but then finally joined Gotrek and Felix as they followed the heavily bundled little figure north again.
The rest of the day passed without incident, and they made camp as usual just a few paces off the trail, collecting firewood and starting a fire as the light of the day began to turn from gold to red. A little while later, Kat brought them two squirrels, a rabbit and a pigeon, and set to cleaning and skinning them.
‘Another day to Stangenschloss,’ she said as she flensed the fur from the rabbit with quick, deft strokes of her hunting knife. She was always careful with these, because she sold the pelts of every one she ate. ‘I wish I wasn’t bringing bad news.’
‘Another day still?’ asked Ortwin. He looked around at the encroaching forest. ‘I would have thought we’d have been in the Chaos Wastes by now.’
‘That’s because you’ve never left Altdorf,’ said Felix with a smile.
‘That’s not true!’ said Ortwin. ‘I went to Carroburg once.’
Felix chuckled at that, but just then Gotrek rose from his seat and held up a hand.
‘Quiet,’ he said.
Everyone froze and looked around. Felix strained his ears. At first he heard nothing but the usual sounds of the forest – the crackling of the fire, the wind in the branches, the cries of wild animals in the distance. But then he heard it – a clash of steel, very faint, then another, and then an angry cry.
‘Fighting,’ said Ortwin.
‘North and east,’ said Kat. ‘Deeper in the woods.’
‘Shut up!’ growled Gotrek.
They listened again. More clashes and clangs, then a howl of pain and a hoarse roar of triumph.
Gotrek pulled his axe off his back and turned in the direction of the sounds. ‘That was a dwarf,’ he said.
‘Follow me,’ said Kat, drawing her bow and diving into the woods.
Gotrek and Ortwin were right behind her. Felix snatched a burning branch from the fire for a torch, then hurried after them.
Running through the untamed forest was nothing like walking along the trail. The ground was a lumpy tangle of roots, creepers and dead branches that caught their feet and tripped them constantly. Thick undergrowth grew shoulder-high in places, but Kat led them unerringly around the worst of it, and they never had to stop or turn back. Still, thorns and nettles caught at them like claws and branches whipped their faces. The light of Felix’s makeshift torch was almost more disorientating than it was helpful, for its bobbing, flickering light caused the shadows to dance, making it seem that the trees were looming out at them and jumping in their way.
Creatures of the night skittered away from them, screeching and yipping. An owl shot up in front of Felix, wings battering him as it tried to get away – and behind the crashing and thudding of their passage, still the ring and roar of distant battle.
Kat danced through it all without a mis-step, as if she had run this exact path a thousand times and knew every inch of it by heart. The others were not so nimble. Ortwin put a foot wrong and staggered to the side, slamming into a tree. He recovered and hurried on, weaving slightly. Felix jolted down into a hidden hollow, snapping his teeth shut and putting his foot into freezing mud. Gotrek hacked through the underbrush with
his axe, clearing away great masses of black vines and leafless shrubs and shouldering on implacably.
Seconds later they could see an orange glow ahead, segmented by the vertical black bars of trees – a fire. They pounded on, and with each tree they passed, the light got brighter and the noise of battle louder, until, after dodging around the trunk of an ancient oak, Felix could see naked flames and surging shadows in a clearing up ahead, and make out individual voices in the torrent of sound.
‘Stay together, curse you!’ bawled an Empire voice. ‘Hold your line!’
‘Down here, you painted ape!’ rasped a dwarf voice.
Kat paused at the edge of the clearing, laying an arrow to the string of her bow. Gotrek, Felix and Ortwin stopped around her, readying their weapons and catching their breath as they stared at the mad battle before them.
On the far side of a huge fire, a dozen or so Empire spearmen stood in a curving line before a clump of towering Kurgan marauders, who drove them back towards the trees with swipes from massive swords and axes. On the near side of the fire, two dwarf Slayers fought back to back in the centre of four more Chaos warriors. To one side, horses bucked and screamed against their tethers and chained prisoners huddled together, the fire reflecting in their terrified eyes as they watched the fight. The ground was littered with the corpses of both men and marauders, all horribly mutilated.
‘On, on,’ said Ortwin, between gasps. ‘Before another man falls.’
‘Do not help the Slayers,’ said Gotrek, starting forwards. ‘They will not thank you.’
There was a thrum at Felix’s ear and one of the Kurgan who faced the spearmen barked in pain, an arrow sprouting from his back.
‘Go,’ whispered Kat. ‘Go!’
Gotrek, Felix and Ortwin charged out of the trees, running low as more of Kat’s shafts whistled past their heads. The Kurgan howled and turned as the shafts pin-cushioned them. Felix grimaced. They were hideous – impossibly muscular gargantuans in furs and rusty armour – but their bearded faces were painted up like fright masks. Felix hurled his flaming branch at one with striped cheeks and purple eyelids, then slashed at him with his sword. Ortwin dodged a blow from one with black lips and pink matted hair. Gotrek smashed through the shield of one who fought entirely naked, but with so many iron rings piercing his flesh that he looked like he wore chainmail.
The Empire spearmen cheered as they saw their enemies flanked, and the line pressed forwards with renewed energy.
‘On them!’ shouted a captain. ‘Keep the advantage!’
The eyes of the painted Kurgan shone with berserk frenzy, and though the arrows had caught their attention, they didn’t seem to have slowed them down. Felix blocked an axe blow from his opponent that nearly shivered Karaghul from his hands. Ortwin’s blade bit deep into the pink-haired one’s sword arm, but the giant only moaned as if in ecstasy and struck back savagely, knocking the boy to the ground with a blow that sent his helmet bouncing across the trampled earth. Felix cursed. He had forgotten how hard to kill the Kurgan were. They had hides like iron, and when their battle-madness was upon them, they seemed to feel no pain.
Gotrek killed the pierced one with a chop under the ribs that sunk to his spine, then backhanded the one who had flattened Ortwin, shearing through his pitch-smeared armour and biting into his back.
Felix stabbed his painted opponent through the leg, but he didn’t even flinch, and Felix had to leap back ungracefully to avoid being gutted by his double-headed axe. As the huge weapon whipped by, Felix gashed the madman across the back of the wrist, cutting him to the bone. That the Kurgan felt. He howled and dropped his axe, but then drew two daggers the size of short swords and leapt again at Felix, still screaming wordlessly. Felix stabbed him in the sternum, trying to keep him at a distance, and felt Karaghul grate against thick bone. The marauder came on, pressing his breastbone against the tip of the sword and forcing Felix back with his weight as he swiped at him with his daggers, just out of range.
Suddenly Kat screamed up beside Felix and hacked the painted berserker in the shoulder with one of her hatchets. He swung a dagger at her face.
‘No!’ cried Felix, but the girl ducked it neatly and slashed at the marauder’s knees.
The berserker jumped back and Kat and Felix advanced, pressing him back towards the Empire spearmen.
‘Come on, then!’ shouted Felix, trying to keep his attention fixed forwards.
It worked. The berserker didn’t hear the spearmen behind him, and as he raised his axe to strike at Felix, a spearhead burst from his abdomen. He turned, roaring in pain and fury, and Felix jumped forwards and decapitated him with a whistling slash. The Kurgan’s painted eyes stared with surprise as his head tumbled from his slumping body.
The head rolled to a rest against Ortwin just as the boy was sitting up and looking around. He yelped as it hit his leg and scrambled up, kicking at it.
Felix and Kat turned, searching for more opponents, but there were none. The spearmen had capitalised on the Kurgan’s confusion and had slaughtered the rest while they were distracted. On the far side of the fire, however, the battle between the two Slayers and their massive opponents still continued.
The spearmen turned towards it.
‘Leave them be,’ said Gotrek, holding out a warning hand.
‘Not to worry, Slayer,’ said the captain, a long-jawed veteran with a battered helmet and a bloody face. ‘We know the rules.’ He grinned at Kat, throwing her a jaunty salute. ‘’Lo, Kat. Might have known. It is proof of Sigmar’s grace that you found us in time.’
‘It was Gotrek that heard the fight, Captain Haschke,’ said Kat, humbly, then turned to watch the Slayers fight.
Two of the marauders were down, one with his bald head cleft down to the neck, the other with his guts spilling out of his stomach and sizzling in the fire, but though the two Slayers still stood and fought strongly, Felix could see they had paid for their victories.
The shorter, broader Slayer, who wore his scarlet beard woven into two long thick plaits, and whose two side-by-side crests arced over his bald head to match, had a huge lump on the right side of his head and seemed to be having trouble remaining upright. He swung furiously but unsteadily at his enemy with a double-bladed axe, his head tilted at an odd angle. The taller, rounder Slayer, who had a braided crest and a beard like an orange haystack, was bleeding freely from the stumps of two missing fingers on his right hand, and had a diagonal gash on his scalp that was flooding his eyes with blood. He could barely see to swing his long-hafted warhammer.
Still, both seemed to be in high spirits.
‘Take a rest, Argrin,’ said the double-crested Slayer. ‘I can take ’em both.’
‘And give you my doom?’ scoffed the braid-crested Slayer. ‘No fear, Rodi.’
Felix could see the spearmen inching forwards, wanting to help the dwarfs, but apparently their captain had schooled them, for they held back, though he could see it pained them to do it.
‘Be ready if the Slayers fall,’ murmured Captain Haschke.
Then, abruptly, it was over. Rodi, the double-crested one, weaved drunkenly out of the way of an axe swing and found himself standing almost under the legs of his towering opponent. He hacked savagely at the marauder’s inner knee with his axe, but overbalanced and cut off the Kurgan’s foot instead.
The giant screamed and tried to take a step, but collapsed when he put his weight on his stump and crashed into the other Kurgan, sending him stumbling into the path of Argrin’s warhammer. The massive weapon caught the second marauder in the ribs, knocking him flat. Argrin jumped up onto his chest and crushed his skull with a sickening pop, just as Rodi planted his axe deep in the chest of the first marauder, sending up a fountain of gore.
The spearmen cheered. The Slayers didn’t seem to notice. They were too busy complaining to each other.
‘See now, Rodi Balkisson?’ said Argrin, turning to Rodi, who was decapitating the footless Kurgan, just to be sure. ‘You interfered in my fight. Yo
u’ve cost me another doom.’
Rodi sneered as he wiped his axe on his Kurgan’s furs. ‘You’ve a way to go before you reach the number of times you’ve cost me my doom, Argrin Crownforger. Nine times! I’ve kept count.’ He turned to survey the rest of the clearing. ‘Now where did…’ He broke off as he saw Gotrek. ‘Another Slayer!’ he said.
Argrin wrapped a cloth around the stumps of his two missing fingers and peered around. ‘Where? Oh, so there is. By Grimnir, where did he come from?’
‘No idea,’ said Rodi. ‘But where’s old Father Rustskull? I lost track during the fight.’
‘There he is,’ said Argrin, pointing to a heap of dead Kurgan who lay piled on top of each other near the fire. Felix looked closer and saw that there was a pair of short, thick legs sticking out from under them.
The two Slayers limped forwards and grabbed the dead marauders by the arms and legs.
Rodi beckoned to the others. ‘Hoy. Help us shift these fat pig Kurgan.’
Gotrek, Felix and Ortwin and some of the spearmen came forwards to help. The Kurgan were unbelievably heavy, as if they were made of oak, not flesh, but finally, working together, they succeeded in rolling them off the dwarf who lay at the bottom of the pile, unmoving, his eyes closed.
Felix stared, stunned. The unconscious dwarf was a Slayer with a huge white beard, an enormous warhammer held slack in one gnarled hand, an oft-broken nose, a cauliflower ear on one side of his head, no ear at all on the other, and a crest made of dozens and dozens of big iron nails, all rusted to a dirty brownish orange.
‘Snorri Nosebiter,’ said Gotrek softly. ‘As I live and breathe.’
SEVEN
‘I think he’s dead,’ said Argrin.
‘The lucky bastard,’ said Rodi. ‘Found his doom at last.’
Gotrek grunted. ‘He’s not dead. He’s out cold.’ He slapped Snorri’s cheek. It sounded like a pistol shot. ‘Wake up, Nosebiter.’
Snorri didn’t move.