by Warhammer
‘Hope this doesn’t take too long,’ said Abelung, hunching into the tunnel after Felix and Kat. ‘The zombies will be coming over the top soon.’
‘I think you’ll get your fair share down here,’ said Felix.
As they all crouched along towards the distant ringing of picks on hard earth, Felix felt a tension in his chest that had nothing to do with the prospect of fighting zombies in cramped quarters. After a whole day and night of digging, would Gotrek’s problem be worse? Would he be able to fight? Would he retire if he couldn’t? Felix knew the answer to that, and it worried him.
After passing three lanterns, they saw the Slayers in the distance, still swinging away. Now it was Snorri and Rodi at the workface, and Gotrek behind, shovelling the dirt into a barrow. Felix eyed him uneasily, but to his relief, the Slayer’s earlier breathlessness seemed to have passed.
About five paces back from the workface Felix and Kat came to a strange arrangement of logs and rope that Felix surmised must be the Slayers’ blast door. A sturdy log that looked like it had once been a dock piling stretched across the top of the tunnel, with both ends well set into the walls. Hanging from it by means of heavy ship’s cables was a thick wooden door propped open by a spear. The contraption reminded Felix of the sort of trap a hunter made by propping up a heavy rock with a stick and placing food under it, hoping that an animal would nudge the stick and bring the rock down on itself.
‘Nothing could possibly go wrong here,’ Felix muttered, edging around the precarious spear.
‘Oh no,’ agreed Kat. ‘Perfectly safe.’
Abelung laughed like a cat being strangled as he and his men squeezed in behind them.
There was a clink and clatter of falling stone, and suddenly a freezing, foetid wind blew in Felix’s face. He and Kat and the spearmen choked at the smell.
‘That’s done it,’ said Rodi. ‘We’re through.’
Tattered grey hands were reaching through a ragged black hole in the workface and clawing at the dirt from the other side. Not all were human. Some were the huge, gnarled claws of beastmen.
Rodi and Snorri put down their picks and picked up their axe and hammer as Gotrek tossed aside his shovel and took up his rune axe. Felix and Kat drew as well, watching as the hole got rapidly larger.
Gotrek looked over his shoulder. ‘Stay back and make sure the ones who fall down stay down.’
The zombies must have heard them talking, or smelled them, for their clawing became suddenly frantic, and there was a mournful groaning from the other side of the workface. One of the spearmen flinched back.
‘Steady,’ said Abelung, licking his lips.
A huge impact rocked the tunnel, and a beastman’s horned head smashed through the workface in an explosion of dirt, making a big hole. Snorri caved in the beast-corpse’s skull with his hammer as Rodi cut it off at the knees. It toppled forwards and a tide of zombies surged through the hole to crawl over its back into the narrow tunnel, groaning and swiping with claws and broken swords.
The three Slayers slammed into them with axe, hammer and shoulder, and quickly drove them back into their tunnel, then followed them in. Rodi was first, cutting down a dead knight without breaking stride, then Snorri and Gotrek followed, smashing aside a beast and a bowman, and vanished into the darkness beyond.
‘Right,’ said Felix, taking a breath. ‘In we go.’
He pulled a lantern from a hook and stepped to the hole with Kat while the spearmen crept hesitantly after. The zombies’ tunnel was at least four times as wide as the Slayers’ narrow one, more than twice as high, and was filled wall to wall, for as far back as Felix could see, with dead men and beastmen.
In the lantern’s flickering light they jumped into sharp relief as they swarmed forwards – a vision out of a nightmare, their teeth and claws flashing yellow, their shadows raking the walls and ceiling behind them as they attacked. Maggots crawled from holes in their faces and chests, and flies buzzed around their heads. Their eyes were wilted grapes, and their hair and fur was falling out in patches, while rips in their skin showed decaying, pus-leaking meat. The smell of them was like a hammer to the face, quite literally staggering.
Kat retched, then tied her scarf over her nose and mouth to block the smell. Behind her some of the spearmen were vomiting, though they spewed only water. There was nothing else in their stomachs.
The Slayers spread out across the width of the tunnel as they butchered their way into the shambling throng, but without the wall at their backs, the zombies started to edge around their flanks, and the spearmen saw their duty.
‘Come on, lads,’ Abelung quavered. ‘Fill in their line.’
‘Not too close,’ said Felix, holding up a hand. ‘Slayers sometimes, ah, forget themselves in battle.’
Abelung’s eyes widened. ‘Much obliged, mein herr. Right then, lads, stay back and keep them spearpoints busy.’
The spearmen stepped behind the Slayers and began stabbing between them, finding eyes, necks and knees. Felix and Kat capped their line at either end, closing off the space between the Slayers and the sides of the tunnel, and killing the zombies that tried to edge around. Against living opponents, the flashing spears would have been devastating, crippling and blinding them and making them defenceless against the Slayers’ attacks; but even against the unfeeling dead they did enough, blocking the zombies’ flailing claws and making them stumble, so the Slayers never had to worry about defending themselves, only attacking – sending withered limbs and heads and rotting organs spinning away from them like they were red whirlwinds.
It was a glorious slaughter, thought Felix, but how long could it continue? The Slayers would never tire, of course, but the spearmen were as exhausted as he and Kat. Would they have the stamina to fight all the way to the end of the tunnel? It looked like it went back more than fifty feet!
The Slayers took another stride forwards, their boots sinking ankle-deep in rotting entrails as they tromped through the dismembered dead to smash another rank of groaning corpses, and Felix, Kat and the spearmen paced forwards with them. A moment later, two artillerymen ducked through the door behind them, laying matchcord along the walls as they went, then digging holes close to the ceiling of the tunnel. Felix looked back and saw them casting uneasy glances at the undead throng that moaned and flailed only yards away from them, but they kept to their work, and once they had dug their holes, they wedged the pipe charges into them, spliced the matchcord to them and ran back towards the cellar for another load.
They continued in this fashion for what seemed an eternity, Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri carving through more zombies, and Felix, Kat and the spearmen advancing behind them as artillerymen came and went behind them, planting their charges. After a while, Felix felt like he was part of a plough being dragged the length of a farmer’s field by a trio of scarred old plough horses. The Slayers were tilling the ground, while the artillerymen, like bloodthirsty farmers, were sowing bombs in the furrow, which would later sprout into beautiful red and yellow explosions on harvest day.
A gasp from Abelung snapped Felix from his delirious fancy. The young sergeant was fighting spear to spear with a corpse that had somehow stumbled between Gotrek and Rodi unscathed, and he suddenly staggered back, eyes wide.
‘Captain?’ he quavered. ‘Captain Zeismann?’
ELEVEN
Felix looked around as Abelung’s comrades cried out. It was true. The zombie Abelung fought was the corpse of Captain Zeismann, still recognisable though his ready smile had become a lipless grimace, and his kindly eyes were birthing maggots. And he had brought his men with him. They were pushing through to the front, their spears stabbing erratically at the Slayers. Some instinct, perhaps burned into their sinews through training, had kept them together and following their leader, even in death.
‘Captain,’ whimpered Abelung, edging back. ‘Please, captain, don’t–’
The zombie that had been Zeismann stabbed forwards, and Abelung, frozen by shock and grief, did not block
in time. The spear point glanced off his breastplate, then skidded up and punched through his throat. He collapsed, wide-eyed, clutching at Zeismann’s spear as blood bubbled from his neck.
‘Damn you, sergeant!’ shouted Felix, and leapt for Zeismann as the other spearmen shrank back.
The zombie captain thrust straight for Felix’s heart, but though his aim had survived his death, his speed hadn’t, and Felix swept the point aside, then hacked off Zeismann’s head.
The living spearmen moaned as their old captain’s body collapsed, and continued retreating as more of their dead comrades staggered past the hard-pressed Slayers.
‘Don’t be fools!’ shouted Felix, trying to hold back all the dead spearmen by himself. ‘You must kill them to free them! Cut them down! Let them truly die!’
Still the spearmen hesitated, on the tipping point between fight and flight, as Felix decapitated another zombie spearman and dodged three more.
‘On!’ he shouted desperately. ‘For Abelung! For Zeismann! On!’
The names did it. With tears in their eyes and sobs in their throats, the spearmen fell in beside him. ‘For Abelung!’ they shouted. ‘For Zeismann! For Zeismann!’
Their spears flashed forwards, stabbing their dead comrades in the chests, and after a wild few moments, the hole was plugged and their line restored and Felix was able to stagger back to his position behind Gotrek, panting and out of breath.
But as he did, he realised that his wasn’t the only breathing he could hear. Though Gotrek fought on beside his fellow Slayers as tirelessly as ever, and had lost no strength or speed that Felix could see, his breath was once again raw and thick, as if fluid filled his lungs. And while he seemed in no way impaired by the constant rasping, his face was even redder than usual, and his single eye angrier, as if he was furious at his body’s sudden betrayal.
Again the image of the black slivers burrowing through the Slayer’s organs forced its way into Felix’s mind and he couldn’t push it out again. He suddenly feared that Gotrek’s next strike or block might be the one to jar the flecks through his heart and kill him. He wanted to tell the Slayer to step back, to let him fight at the front for once. But Gotrek would never allow that. Nor would he care about the slivers. If they killed him in the middle of battle, so be it. He would have died a Slayer’s death, and all would be well.
Felix glanced ahead and grunted with relief as he saw that the tunnel mouth was only a few paces ahead. They were almost there. He shot a questioning glance at Kat, on the far side of the tunnel. She gave him a weary nod and took another step through the reeking swamp of decapitated corpses, but as Felix did the same, a deep rumbling shook the tunnel, jarring him sideways and nearly knocking Kat and the spearmen off their feet.
‘What is it?’ asked Kat, as the noise grew louder and the shaking more violent.
‘The siege towers,’ said Gotrek. ‘The attack has begun.’
From behind came footsteps and shouting.
‘Slayers! Spearmen! Fall back!’ called an artilleryman. ‘We are needed at the cannons! Sappers, plant your last charges! We are lighting the fuses now!’
Gotrek and Rodi nodded to Felix, Kat and the spearmen as the artillerymen holding the last two charges shoved them hastily into their holes and hurried back down the tunnel.
‘Start running,’ said Gotrek. ‘We will follow.’
‘But there are still zombies,’ said Snorri.
‘Plenty more on the walls, Father Rustskull,’ said Rodi.
Felix and Kat backed away with the spearmen, leaving the three Slayers alone against the roiling wall of zombies, then turned and ran – although ‘running’ was perhaps too fine a term for what they were doing. They were so weary from fighting, and the floor so littered with butchered zombies, that they stumbled and swerved like drunks passing through a slaughterhouse.
A young spearman crashed down behind his comrades, tripping on the crushed skull of a beastman and twisting his leg. Felix and Kat hauled him up and he limped on, hissing and lame.
From the direction of the cellar came a distant cry. ‘Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!’
Felix got the boy’s left arm over his shoulder and Kat did the same with his right and they staggered after the rest towards the narrow hole to the Slayers’ tunnel. Two sparking flames raced out of the hole as the spearmen squeezed through it, and Kat cried out in alarm. Two of the matchcords that were laid along the walls of the tunnel were sizzling towards their charges.
‘That bastard Volk!’ cried the spearman. ‘He’s blowing us up too!’
Felix’s heart lurched with fear, but the matchcords burned past the first charges and sparked towards the end of the tunnel.
‘No,’ he panted. ‘He’s lit the furthest ones first.’
‘Still cutting it damned fine,’ said the spearman.
Kat and Felix helped him through the hole as two more sparks sizzled past them. A shout and heavy thud boomed down the tunnel from the direction of the cellar. Felix couldn’t see what had happened. The tiny space was filled with the sulphuric smoke of burning matchcord, but someone was screaming.
They stumbled on and the haze thinned, and Felix could see that the heavy log-built blast door had fallen closed, pinning a spearman to the ground. Shouts and pounding came from the other side of the door, and three more spearmen were trying to lift it from this side, but it wasn’t moving.
Felix, Kat and the limping spearman hurried to help them, and all of them together lifted the door enough to get it off the pinned man’s back. Someone pulled him clear, but they couldn’t raise the door any further. Two more flames hissed under their feet and sped down the tunnel towards the bombs.
‘You on the other side!’ called Felix. ‘Heave on my count. One, two, three!’
Muffled groans came from beyond the door, and Felix could feel pressure from the other side adding to their lift. They had it up to their knees.
‘Go, Kat,’ said Felix. ‘Get under.’
‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘Not alone.’
‘Damn you, girl! There’s no reason–’
‘Stand aside, manling.’
Felix looked around. The three Slayers were striding up the narrow tunnel in single file, Gotrek at their head. Felix shifted aside and Gotrek lifted the door over his head as if it weighed no more than a window sash.
‘Run,’ he said.
Kat, Felix and the spearmen all ducked gratefully under the logs and staggered along the tunnel as fast as they could go. Felix looked back and saw Rodi and Snorri side-step past Gotrek through the door as calmly as if they were squeezing through a crowded market. Then the Slayer stepped forwards and dropped the door behind him.
The logs banged closed and the world turned upside down. It was as if the slamming door had struck a trigger, for just as it hit, the tunnel shook and a battering-ram of hot air punched Felix off his feet. He and Kat and the spearmen tumbled down the tunnel like leaves before a wind as an enormous boom battered his ears and made everything else go silent.
He came to rest on top of Kat with the spearmen on top of him, and someone’s knee in his kidneys. The tunnel was swirling with grey smoke. He looked back along it. He couldn’t see the Slayers.
‘That… was loud,’ said Kat.
Felix coughed and rolled off her, then pushed to his feet. ‘Gotrek? Rodi? Snorri?’
Nobody answered him. He limped down the tunnel, afraid of what he would find. A squat body lay on the floor.
‘Gotrek?’
The body coughed and sat up, shaking its nail-studded head. It was covered head to toe in grey dust. ‘What was that, young Felix?’
‘Nothing, Snorri,’ said Felix. ‘I thought you were Gotrek.’
‘Say again? Snorri can’t hear you.’
Felix edged past him, peering into the smoke.
‘Gotrek? Rodi?’
Two short, sturdy silhouettes staggered out of the cloud, slapping dust off themselves. One was waggling a finger in his ear.
‘Why are you whispering, manling?’ asked Gotrek.
‘Do you hear bells?’ asked Rodi.
A muffled tantara of rally horns and the thunder of cannon echoed from above. The two Slayers cocked their ears and looked up. They could hear that well enough.
‘Come, manling,’ said Gotrek, sucking in a breath and striding past with Rodi. ‘Time for some real fighting.’
Felix, Kat and the spearmen followed the Slayers out of the officers’ residence and into hell. In every direction was noise, flames and confusion. Lobbed missiles arced out of the night sky to crash down all over the courtyard – boulders, flaming corpses and dead cattle that exploded in showers of rotting entrails. Fires roared wherever Felix looked. The upper storey of the knights’ residence was ablaze, as was the remaining river boat, and the hoardings were catching too. On the parapet, the knights, spearmen and handgunners fought off an endless tide of zombies that poured over the battlements as swooping bats slashed at any who tried to shove or steal their ladders away. And under all the shouting and shrieking, under the crack of the guns and the boom of the cannons, came the deep rumble of the approaching siege towers.
Gotrek was looking at none of it. Instead, his one eye swept the sky, glaring at it as if demanding an answer.
‘Where is he?’ he rasped. ‘Where is the coward?’
‘Don’t be picky, Gurnisson,’ snorted Rodi, brushing by him with Snorri and starting for the stairs. ‘There are plenty of dooms here.’
Gotrek grunted and started after them, still looking at the sky. ‘I already have my doom.’
Felix scanned the walls to see where they were most needed as he, Kat and the spearmen followed the Slayers across the courtyard and up the stairs. On the far side of the main gatehouse, the westernmost section of the wall was thick with the mustard and burgundy surcoats of von Volgen’s Talabeclanders, fighting in a tight line at the battlements, with spearmen detachments ranked behind them and stabbing over their shoulders. On the eastern walls, von Geldrecht called encouragement to Castle Reikguard’s household knights, who were lined up like the Talabeclanders, with ranked spearmen backing them up, while closest to the gatehouse, Bosendorfer and his greatswords had staked out a section of wall for their very own, and were slashing wildly at the zombies with no spearmen to back them up. And on the towers, Volk’s crews, shirtless and sweating, were loading, priming and firing the castle’s great-cannons while Hultz’s handgunners clustered around them, blasting away at the giant bats that harried them and tried to ruin their aim. Even Draeger’s militiamen were on the walls, dragged out of their cells as von Geldrecht promised, but apparently not entrusted with weapons. They ran amongst the others, wielding hooked ropes and boarding pikes to steal and shove back the ladders of the zombies all along the wall.