by Warhammer
‘Ha!’ barked Gotrek. ‘To the shaman!’
The runes on the Slayer’s axe flared white-hot as he turned, and Felix didn’t wonder why. Entering the circle of menhirs was like stepping into an arcane furnace. Chaos energy radiated from the blazing blue veins of the herdstone in great pulsing waves, making his skin itch as if he was being eaten by ants and filling his mind with chittering, bird-like voices.
Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri ran directly for Urslak, and Felix and Kat followed. There was no one to stop them. The crooked-horned shaman continued his invocation, entirely unaware of their presence. The rest of the chanting initiates remained transfixed as well, and the guardians remained at the edge of the circle, fearing to come in. Felix’s heart pounded with unexpected hope. They were going to make it!
But then, into the circle charged Gargorath the God-Touched, the hulking black-furred, blue-eyed war-leader, with five blue-painted, heavily armoured gors at his back.
Gargorath roared a challenge at the Slayers, his hate-filled eyes glowing with the same fire that emanated from the herdstone as he raised his vulture-headed axe above his head. Felix heard the weapon scream – the high, harsh shriek of a bird of prey. He shivered as he recalled poor Ortwin’s last words – the axe ate what it killed. He wasn’t sure what that meant, and he hoped he would never find out.
The Slayers answered the challenge with roars of their own, and with a deafening crunch of steel and bone the two sides slammed together. Felix and Kat swung at a brass-armoured elk-man as Snorri, Gotrek and Rodi piled into the others. The elk-man smashed aside Felix’s puny attacks with a crusty black iron mace that likely weighed more than Kat. Felix staggered back, his hands stinging from the impact. Kat leapt aside, one of her axes snapped in half, and before they could recover the elk-man was on them again, sending them diving away. Felix’s palms turned slick with fear. The elk-man was stronger and more skilled than any other beastman he had ever faced – an actual warrior, rather than just a brawling animal.
The Slayers were having the same difficulty. Gotrek blocked Gargorath’s strike but was driven back several feet by the strength of the blow, the vulture-headed axe screaming in his face. Snorri was bleeding from a deep cut on his arm and was backing away from two bellowing beasts. Rodi’s face was a mask of blood as he fought two more. Red sprayed from his braided beard with every swing of his axe.
‘Felix! Look out!’
Kat shoved Felix and he staggered aside just as the elk-man’s club whistled past his cheekbone, so close it made him blink. He returned his attention to the fight, aiming a cut at the beastman’s eyes as Kat swiped at its ankles. The gor jumped back before this coordinated attack, and they pressed forwards.
On the other side of the fight, Gotrek’s and Gargorath’s axes met blade to blade and Gotrek’s axe was caught in the vulture-headed weapon’s beak notch. Gargorath tried to twist Gotrek’s axe out of his hands, but the Slayer reversed the twist, his muscles bulging, and Gargorath’s axe spun past Snorri’s head to land on the ground.
The Slayer aimed a cut at the defenceless Gargorath, but when the big beastman leapt aside, Gotrek charged past him, straight for the shaman.
Felix stole glances from his own fight as Gargorath chased after the Slayer. Gotrek swiped behind him with his axe, ringing it off the war-leader’s leg armour, but the beast caught him by the neck and shoulder and lifted him over his head.
‘Gotrek!’ cried Felix. Then to Kat, ‘We have to help him!’
He and Kat jumped back from the elk-man and ran to Gotrek’s aid, but before they could take three steps, they saw the Slayer chop down wildly at Gargorath’s head. His rune axe sheered off one of the war-leader’s curling horns and part of his ram-like snout. The beast howled in agony and flung the Slayer from him as hard as he could – right at the herdstone.
‘No!’
Felix and Kat chopped at Gargorath as Gotrek sailed over the chanting shaman’s head to crash down hard at the base of the looming herdstone. Kat’s axe glanced off the war-leader’s steel and brass breastplate, not even scratching it. Karaghul bit into the armour but did not touch flesh. The massive gor flattened them both with a careless backhand, then ran to snatch up his fallen axe.
Felix struggled up, trying to block Gargorath’s way, but the elk-man was on him again and he had to fall back, the mace shivering his blade and turning his arms to jelly. Behind him, Kat sat up, shaking her head woozily.
Gargorath roared by her, axe in hand, charging towards Gotrek and the stone as Felix parried another brutal blow from the elk-man.
Gotrek stood to meet the war-leader, beckoning with his off hand and swinging his arm back in preparation for a powerful slash. As he did, his rune axe grazed the herdstone – the merest touch – but there was a sudden sparking crack and a flash of pure white light, and the ground slipped sideways beneath Felix’s feet.
Felix caught himself before he fell and blinked his eyes to clear the after-images that danced before them. He looked around, his head throbbing. Gotrek was doubled up, his right arm cradled against his chest, while his axe lay smoking at his feet. Everybody else – man, dwarf and beastman – stood frozen, looking up at the herdstone. It was steaming and hissing, and little crumbling shards were flaking from it and raining down on the ground while the blue quartz veins that ran through it flickered and flashed like a torch in a windstorm.
The first to recover his composure was the beast-shaman, Urslak, who backed away and pointed a clawed finger at Gotrek, shrieking for his blood. The ring of robed initiates heeded his call, casting down their fetishes and drawing crude weapons as they surged forwards, braying their rage. Gargorath and his lieutenants added their voices to the howl and charged for the Slayer, but Rodi and Snorri had recovered as well, and leapt to stop them.
‘Unfaithful beasts!’ roared Rodi. ‘You are my doom!’
‘And Snorri’s!’ called Snorri.
Felix and Kat joined the Slayers, slashing at Gargorath and the elk-man and trying to keep them from Gotrek until he recovered, but the war-leader was too strong. He knocked Felix aside and he and the elk-man bounded over Kat towards the stunned Slayer while Snorri and Rodi engaged the others.
‘’Ware the leader, Gotrek,’ called Felix from the ground.
But Gotrek paid Gargorath and his followers no attention. Instead, as he shook off his shock, he looked from his axe to the herdstone and back again, a cunning glint kindling in his single eye.
Felix knew that look of old, and it never boded well for anybody in the vicinity.
‘Gotrek, that is a very bad idea,’ he shouted, picking himself up.
Gotrek snatched up his axe and dodged Gargorath’s charge, laughing darkly. ‘No, manling,’ he laughed. ‘It is a very good idea.’
Gargorath and the elk-man slashed down at the Slayer with their weapons. Gotrek knocked both attacks aside with a whistling backhand, then swung upwards, decapitating the elk-man’s mace and tearing through its armour and flesh like a plough through soft earth. As the beast toppled to the ground in an explosion of blood, Gotrek aimed another cut at Gargorath. The beastman desperately threw himself back to avoid the strike and it clashed off his breastplate, raising sparks and knocking him flat on his back.
Gotrek did not follow up. Instead, he turned to the herdstone again and swung his axe at it with all his might.
For a brief second Felix thought the world had ended. The thundercrack flash of the strike blinded and deafened him, and he lost all sense of up or down. He opened his eyes to find himself sprawled on the ground, along with all his friends and foes. The beasts lay everywhere, writhing and clutching their horned heads. The shaman was shrieking as if he’d been stabbed in the eyes. Kat was curled in a ball. Gotrek was flat on his back, spread-eagled, his eyebrows and the ends of his beard and crest smoking, ten feet from the stone. His axe lay beside him, the head glowing as if it had just left the forge.
The herdstone was shaking itself to pieces. Large chunks were breaking off and crumbl
ing to dust as they fell, and the quartz veins were starred with fissures, like thick glass under pressure. Felix felt an unnatural wind blowing – not from the stone, but towards it – and he saw that the dust and pebbles that were falling from the stone were being sucked into the cracks in the quartz.
Gotrek groaned and sat up, as stiff and slow as an old man. He took up his axe and used it to lever himself to his feet. ‘One more ought to do it,’ he grunted.
‘Wait, Gotrek!’ shouted Felix over the wind and the rising hum of the stone. ‘You’ll kill us!’
‘Then you’d better run, manling,’ said Gotrek, and he limped towards the stone as if his legs were made of lead.
Felix cursed as he forced himself to his feet – nor was he the only one less than happy with Gotrek’s course of action. Gargorath and his remaining lieutenants were rising and staggering towards him, and Urslak, the shaman, was raising his arms and snarling out a vile incantation as the claw-clutched blue orb at the top of his staff began to glow and pulse. Felix noted with horror that all the bird-claw fetishes that dangled from his robes were clutching and unclutching their talons in time to his chant.
‘Hurry,’ said Felix, lifting Kat to her feet and urging her forwards. ‘Run.’
‘Is he really going to…?’ she asked, looking back.
‘Without a doubt,’ said Felix.
He and Kat turned and ran as Rodi and Snorri lurched up to intercept Gargorath and his warriors, and Urslak stalked towards Gotrek, who was still limping doggedly towards the stone.
The initiate beastmen had recovered now, and were charging forwards again too. Felix and Kat lashed out at them as they came, but the gors hardly paid them notice. All their attention was focused on Gotrek and the stone.
A crazy hope flared in Felix’s heart as the way cleared before them. The stair to the tunnels was only a few paces beyond the stone circle. If they were lucky, and the rest of the beasts ignored them as well, they might just survive this mad folly after all.
Felix looked back. Beyond Rodi and Snorri’s battle with the beastmen, Urslak swung his staff at Gotrek, the blue orb glowing like an azure sun. Gotrek hacked the staff in two, then gutted the shaman and kicked him back before the claw-held orb had stopped bouncing across the rocky ground.
The Slayer spat on the dying shaman, then turned back to the herdstone, raising his axe.
‘Faster!’ said Felix, and sprinted with Kat for the ring of monoliths.
They weren’t fast enough.
With another deafening crack, he and Kat were knocked flat again by a jolt stronger than all the others. It felt as if a giant had hit him in the back with an enormous shovel, knocking the wind out of him and pushing him to the brink of unconsciousness. He thought of trying to move, but it seemed too much effort. Easier to just lie there. Then Kat whimpered beside him. The thought of her galvanised him. He had to get her to safety.
As Felix fought to regain his senses, gasping and groaning and blinking the glare from his eyes, he became aware of a thunderous roaring behind him, and of a hard wind battering his face. He raised himself on shaking arms and looked back – then froze at what he saw.
The towering herdstone was rising from the ground and expanding – the jagged lines that had been the seams of quartz now widened into gaps between huge floating shards of granite that moved outwards from the core of the stone. And through these gaps shone a terrible blue light that bathed the inside of the stone circle in a harsh sapphire glow.
The impossible wind blew towards the widening cracks from all directions, as if they were chimney flues sucking smoke from a fireplace. Felix’s hair streamed towards it. Leaves and branches whirled towards it. The wind tore at the floating granite shards of the herdstone too, crumbling their edges and sucking in the pebbles so that they shrank even as the gaps between them grew ever wider.
Felix squinted into the light that streamed from the expanding cracks, and a sickening dread swallowed all his other fears as he saw its source. Hanging within the core of the fragmenting herdstone was a hole in the world, a gash in reality that looked into some other place. Blue swirls of every shade wove a hypnotising dance inside the rift, blue swirls that looked at him with fierce intelligence, and begged him to join them in their search for ultimate knowledge.
Kat whimpered again beside him. ‘It’s… it’s beautiful.’
Felix turned and clapped a hand over her eyes. ‘Don’t look!’ he cried. ‘It will take your mind.’
He fought to his feet, the unnatural wind pulling at him, then dragged her up too. ‘Come on. Turn away from it. Run!’
And yet, even as he followed her, pushing hard against the rising wind, Felix found it impossible not to look back himself.
The beastmen were running from the stone, the initiates screaming with fear as the sucking wind dragged them back, Gargorath and his surviving lieutenants trampling them and hurling them aside in their eagerness to get away.
Chasing them came Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri, all roaring insults over the shrieking gale.
‘Come back, you cowards!’ called Gotrek.
‘Are you afraid of a little wind?’ bellowed Rodi.
‘Snorri has seen squirrels with more courage!’ shouted Snorri.
Felix could feel the wind trying to lift him off the ground as he leaned against it, and it was getting worse. It was going to suck him into the rift! Only two more yards to the menhirs, but it might have been two miles. He put Kat in front of him to shield her and they pressed on, fighting for every inch. More debris whipped past them, flying towards the vortex. One of the beasts they had killed as they fought their way into the circle rolled by, flopping loosely, over and over.
Finally they reached the ring of monoliths and Felix pushed Kat into the shadow of one, where the wind was less, then struggled to pull himself behind it as well. Kat caught his arms and hauled with all her strength. With a final grunt of effort he stumbled behind the stone and collapsed against it, breathing heavily.
The shadow of their stone shelter was as sharp as a knife in the harsh light of the vortex, and stretched away with the shadows of the other stones down the sloping sides of the hill to the valley below. Nothing could be seen within the shadows, but the light that blazed from between the stones illuminated a roiling sea of beastmen backing away from Tarnhalt’s Crown with naked terror showing in their glittering black eyes. Felix couldn’t blame them. If he could have run, he would have been over the hills and gone long ago.
‘Are we safe even here?’ asked Kat.
Felix shrugged weakly. ‘I don’t know. But I can go no further.’
A movement in the corner of his eye made him turn his head. Gargorath and his lieutenants had escaped the circle and were straining to reach the slope down into the valley as the gale tore at their armour and their fur.
Felix put his head around the corner of the standing stone, looking into the circle for Gotrek, Snorri and Rodi. The three Slayers were ploughing on, slowly but steadily, against the wind, cursing lustily all the while.
Behind them, the initiate beastmen weren’t doing as well. Felix saw one fall backwards and roll head over heels towards the howling stone. Another was lifted bodily and spun away through the air to be sucked into the fissures between the shards – breaking up into its component parts as it went. The wind was too loud to hear its screams.
Then Felix saw a lone figure rise before the stone. It was Urslak. It seemed impossible for him to be alive, after the evisceration Gotrek had given him. It seemed even more impossible that he was able to stand steady so close to the stone and the vacuum of the vortex. And yet he did. Though buffeted cruelly by the wind, he straightened his hunched form and spread his arms wide, calling out some incantation that was lost in the roaring rush of air. His claw-festooned robe flapped and fluttered around him like a living thing, and his intestines, which had spilled through the cut made by Gotrek’s axe, streamed out in front of him, drawn towards the glowing void and waving like some grisly banner.
/> Felix wasn’t sure if the old shaman was trying to repair the damage that Gotrek had done, or was simply praying to his god. Whatever the case, neither the wind nor the light diminished. In fact both grew stronger, rising to an unbearable intensity as the granite shards began to crumble away to mere slivers.
The Slayers were on their hands and knees now, crawling with their heads down away from the herdstone. Gotrek was in the lead, only two strides away from Felix, but Felix was afraid they wouldn’t make it.
‘Come on, Gotrek!’ shouted Felix. But he doubted the Slayer could hear him. He couldn’t hear himself.
More of the initiate beastmen fell back and flew away, vanishing into the vortex in flashes of blue-white. Felix felt the massive monolith he leaned against shift under his shoulder as the wind pulled at it. Sigmar! The rift was going to suck in the whole world! It would swallow everything.
Finally, after a handful of lip-chewing seconds, as the wind shrieked louder and the light grew still brighter, Gotrek and Rodi dragged themselves behind the monolith just to the left of the one Felix and Kat hid behind. Only Snorri remained in the light. He looked back over his shoulder and shook his hammer at the vortex, shouting something Felix couldn’t hear. But then big hands reached out of the shadow and jerked him back, and he vanished into the blackness behind the stone.
Felix was sure it wouldn’t matter. They would all be pulled into the glittering void – all their hopes and dreams for the future ended here in a blinding flash of blue. He looked back towards the stone, shielding his eyes from the glare, and saw Urslak still standing there, a black silhouette against the bright blue, his arms wide, chanting ceaselessly as the wind tore at him.
The shaman grew thinner as Felix watched. The light was eating him. He was disintegrating, his flapping intestines and his flesh tearing away in chunks and vanishing into the swirling core, leaving at last nothing but his skeleton, and then that went too, flaking away like ash until there was nothing left.
Felix pulled back behind the monolith, unable to look any more as the light blazed from blue to white and the wind rose to an apocalyptic shriek. He wrapped Kat in his arms and hugged her tight, certain that these were their last moments together, and content – or nearly content – that his life should end that way.