by Warhammer
‘Thank you, Snorri,’ he said.
He levered up onto his elbow, then hissed and nearly vomited as agony stabbed through his arm. The pain of Kat chewing on him had continued after the rest of the dream had faded, and he looked down. The bandage Tauber had wrapped around his wounds was now brown with dried blood and crusted with river mud, and the skin around it purple and bulging. He drew his dagger and cut off the gauze, then felt nauseous all over again. The deep gouges left by the bat’s claws were like volcanic fissures that spewed a lava of stinking pus, and there was a network of black lines spreading under the inflamed skin around them. The volcano analogy was apt in another way too, for it felt as if his forearm had a molten core – as if his bones were white-hot – and were radiating heat like a stove.
Snorri clucked like a hen. ‘Snorri thinks that might be infected.’
‘Possibly,’ said Felix. ‘Yes.’
Felix turned to Gotrek, who lay unmoving beside him. The Slayer looked paler than Felix had ever seen him, and his lips had a faint bluish tinge.
‘Is… is he…’
Snorri shook his head. ‘No, young Felix. But he still won’t drink any beer.’
Felix sat up, wincing and fighting dizziness as he moved his arm, then put his ear to the Slayer’s chest again. The faint slushy sound of his heartbeat was still there, but even weaker than before, and he couldn’t hear the Slayer’s breathing at all.
Felix groaned and lay back. After his years of fighting and hard travel he could dress a wound well enough, even set a bone if he had to, but he had no idea how one fixed glassy slivers that crept through the heart and lungs. He was helpless to save Gotrek, just as he was helpless to save Kat. He doubted he could even save himself.
Still, he had to try. With a grunt he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. ‘Come, Snorri,’ he said. ‘We have to find food.’
But as he took a step towards the door, nausea and dizziness overcame him again and he found himself face-first on the floor, the world going black around him.
‘Stay here, young Felix,’ said Snorri out of the darkness. ‘Snorri will find the food.’
After that, Felix was unable to follow the passage of time. He drifted restless and uneasy between consciousness and unconsciousness, between waking nightmares and nightmares that seemed reality.
He woke to find Snorri standing over him, waving something in his face. ‘Look, young Felix. A turnip!’
He woke to sunlight stabbing him in the eyes and the worst thirst of his life. The jar of beer was a mile away. He spilled it when he reached it.
He woke to find his fever gone and Gotrek healed. Under cover of darkness, they and Snorri went back to the castle to rescue Kat, dodging zombies and killing ghouls before slipping across the dry moat and stealing a siege ladder. Felix led the Slayers over the walls and they found Kat bound for sacrifice in the defiled temple of Sigmar. Felix killed Kemmler while Gotrek and Snorri killed Krell, and they were all reunited until he woke again and found it was still day, and Snorri had brought him another carrot.
He woke to throbbing agony. The bruised lines in his forearm had spread to his neck and chest, and his pulse boomed in his ear like an orc war drum, shaking him with every beat. He was as hot as the jungles of Lustria, sweat beading on his brow and pouring down his neck, and yet, at the same time, as cold as he’d been that night he’d fallen through the ice in the Drakwald and nearly frozen to death. His teeth chattered like dice in a gambler’s cup and he couldn’t hold the jar of beer Snorri gave him, and had to let the old Slayer pour it into him with a patient hand.
He woke to his brother limping into the cottage with his gold-handled walking stick and tsking over him.
‘Well, you’ve certainly made a mess of things this time,’ he said, his chins wobbling with disapproval.
‘Aye,’ said his father, who lay beside him, his face torn with terrible scratch and bite marks. ‘Just the sort of end I expected you to come to, you ne’er-do-well.’
Ulrika knelt down beside him and took his arm in her cool white hands. ‘Let me kiss you, beloved,’ she said, ‘and we can live together forever, with no pain, and no partings.’
Felix looked up at her and thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He wanted to open his mouth to say yes, but then Kat was at his other side, also dead, but not nearly as well preserved.
‘Will you live on after I’ve died, Felix?’ she asked. ‘Weren’t we to die together?’
Then, across the room, Gotrek got up and slung his axe over his shoulder. ‘Come on, manling,’ he said, glaring back at him. ‘I’ve got a doom to find.’
Felix stared after the Slayer as he stumped out the door. He tried to rise. He tried to speak – tried to tell Ulrika and Kat that he couldn’t go with them. He still had his vow to Gotrek to see to its finish – but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn his head.
TWENTY-TWO
‘Another nightmare, young Felix,’ said Snorri, shaking his shoulder.
Felix peered up at him, having difficulty separating Snorri from the dream. He looked more unreal than the phantoms that had been surrounding him. He was at once too close and far away – his ugly face was glaring inches from his own, but the hand that touched his shoulder was at the end of a long arm that stretched from across the room. Felix looked away, unsettled, but got no relief elsewhere. The walls of the cottage were breathing in and out, and with each inhalation closing in a little closer – and it was blistering hot.
‘Snorri,’ he gasped. ‘What are you playing at? Put out the fire. You’re roasting us alive!’
‘There is no fire, young Felix,’ said Snorri. ‘Snorri hasn’t built it up yet.’
Felix looked past him to the fireplace and saw it was true. The fire was down to ashy embers, and pink light was seeping through the shutters. It was morning – though which morning, Felix had no idea.
He rubbed his greasy brow with the back of his hand. ‘I… How is Gotrek? Has he…?’
‘Still asleep, young Felix,’ said Snorri. ‘Snorri doesn’t know if he’ll wake up again.’
Felix shivered, then tried to sit up. His head swam and his arms wouldn’t support him. The wounded one, which had hurt him so much the day before, now felt numb and distant, but at the same time as fat and full as an overstuffed sausage. His fingers were black, and so thick he couldn’t close them.
Snorri gently helped him to his feet and held him there. ‘Do you need to go to the privy, young Felix?’
Felix shook his head. ‘Take me to Gotrek.’
The old Slayer dutifully put Felix’s arm over his broad shoulders and crutched him over to where Gotrek lay by the hearth. Felix lowered himself unsteadily to the ground beside him, then once again put his ear to the Slayer’s chest.
At first he could hear nothing but his own pulse pounding in his ear, but once he had listened past that, his overheated heart grew cold, for it seemed he could hear nothing at all. He pressed harder with his ear, hoping for anything, no matter how faint.
His heart flared with hope as he heard something at last, very soft, and hardly a beat at all, but something. He listened again to be sure. Yes, it was there, a low continuous vibration, like the roll of a snare drum, or surf, or distant thunder, or–
‘Snorri thinks he hears horses coming,’ said Snorri.
Felix looked up at him, marvelling. He could barely hear Gotrek’s heart with his ear pressed to his chest, and Snorri could hear it standing a pace away. Truly, the senses of the dwarfs were… Then he heard it too – the same sound he had heard while listening for Gotrek’s heart – the rumble of many horses on the move, but coming muffled through the walls of the cottage.
He looked at Gotrek again. What did this mean? Had he heard nothing? Was Gotrek dead? Or had the sound masked Gotrek’s pulse? And how could he listen again if the horses were going to keep getting louder?
Wait.
Wait a moment.
Horses?
Get
ting louder?
‘Snorri!’ he said. ‘Help me up!’
‘All right, young Felix.’
The old Slayer reached down and set him on his feet with one hand, then draped his arm again around his shoulders.
‘Out,’ said Felix. ‘Out to the road.’
Snorri hitched forwards on his hammer crutch and hobbled Felix forwards. Slow and unsteady, they stumbled out the door to the muddy road which ran through the town. Felix looked west, in the direction the sound was coming from. The road turned through a stand of trees beyond the west end of the village, and he could see nothing, but the rumble was getting louder, and birds flew up from the wood.
‘Take cover,’ said Felix, pointing to the side of the village’s last house, ‘until we see who it is.’
Snorri obligingly crutched him to the house and they watched from behind it as the source of the rumble finally appeared from behind the trees. First came ten pistoliers on swift horses, cantering out and surveying the village and surrounding land while woodsmen with longbows crept out of the trees to either side of the road, scouting for dangers in the brush. Then a great company of knights and magisters and warrior priests followed on colourfully barded horses, pacing majestically towards the village, banners flying and lances high.
The relief force had come at last!
‘Come on, Snorri,’ said Felix, urging the old Slayer forwards. ‘We must go meet them. No time to spare.’
‘All right, young Felix,’ said Snorri. ‘But it’s only some humans.’
They lurched out from behind the house and started weaving towards the army like a pair of drunks heading home from the tavern. Felix waved and the pistoliers spotted him and galloped forwards, drawing their weapons.
‘Who in Sigmar’s name are you?’ asked a young fellow with a dashing moustache as they thundered up and surrounded them, guns at the ready. ‘Do you live?’ The boy couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
Felix threw up a hand in a limp approximation of a salute. ‘Felix Jaeger and Snorri Nosebiter,’ he slurred. ‘The last defenders of Castle Reikguard.’
The pistoliers looked at each other, and the first one spoke again. ‘Defenders?’ he said. ‘What do you mean, peasant? Y’don’t seem to be defending a damned thing.’
‘I mean,’ said Felix, with elaborate precision, ‘you have come too late, pistolier. Castle Reikguard has fallen.’
The pistoliers cried disbelief at this, and the dashing boy glared at him.
‘What nonsense is this?’ he snarled. ‘Castle Reikguard has never fallen!’
Felix opened his mouth to argue with him, but realised it was pointless. ‘If you would take me to your leader, I will tell him everything that has befallen.’
The pistolier scoffed. ‘Take you, you sick old beggar? To see Horst von Uhland? How do we know you’re not some pawn of Chaos, sent to give him the pox?’
Snorri gripped his warhammer at this, and raised it into a fighting position while balancing on one leg. ‘Snorri Nosebiter is no pawn of Chaos!’ he growled as Felix struggled to stay upright. ‘And he’ll fight any foolish human who says so!’
The pistoliers edged their horses back and thumbed back the hammers of their pistols, but before things could get out of hand, more hoof beats sounded, and Felix saw another contingent of riders trotting out from the main force.
‘Easy, gentlemen,’ called a white-bearded knight in the surcoat of the Reiksguard. ‘Questions first. Shooting later.’
‘My lord general,’ said the young pistolier. ‘’Ware, please! They may be the undead. Or cultists. Or–’
The general barked a laugh. ‘A Trollslayer and a cultist? You need to see more of the world, lad.’
He pulled up in front of Felix and Snorri as his retinue of knights and companions reined in behind him.
‘Now then,’ he said, looking down at Felix and Snorri with a bright-eyed glare. ‘Who are you? And where have you come from? Be quick.’
The eager pistolier saluted. ‘They say they are the last defenders of Castle Reikguard, my lord. They say the castle has fallen.’
The general scowled at him. ‘Why don’t you let them tell–’
‘Felix Jaeger!’ cried a voice from behind him. ‘And Snorri Nosebiter! As I live and breathe!’
Felix frowned and looked past the general. One of his companions, a tall man in a hooded beige travelling cloak, was getting down from his horse and hurrying forwards.
The general and the others looked around at him, surprised.
‘You know them, magister?’
The man pulled back his hood, revealing a silver mane of hair and a lined, worried face. ‘I do, general,’ he said. ‘Though I barely recognised them. Felix, Snorri, you look nine-tenths dead.’
It was Max Schreiber.
Felix’s heart surged. He almost wept. He let go of Snorri’s shoulder and stumbled forwards, reaching out to him.
‘Max!’ he said. ‘Gotrek. Kat. I…’ The world started to spin and dim. His legs wobbled. ‘I think the Slayer has met his doom at–’
‘Felix!’
The ground raced up and smacked Felix in the face. Far away, people were shouting, but he didn’t care. The darkness was closing in around him again. It was warm and soft and lovely.
‘He’s coming around,’ said someone.
‘Thank you, sister,’ said someone else. ‘Now return to the others.’
Felix didn’t want to open his eyes. The darkness had been too comforting, and he knew that leaving it would hurt, but already it was fading of its own accord, and he couldn’t follow it. It was leaving him behind.
He lifted his eyelids and looked around, and for a moment was confused. He knew the roof beams above him from earlier wakings. He was back in the cottage. Had the coming of the relief force only been another dream? Had Max been a dream?
A balding, white-bearded man hove into his field of vision and looked down at him, his eyes hard, then Max stepped in to his right, followed by an anxious, dark-haired young man in armour, and… and… Felix blinked, thinking he was still hallucinating. Two men stood at Max’s side, one in the black robes of a priest of Morr, the other in the midnight-violet robes of a wizard of the Amethyst College, but they both had the same long, sad face and shaved skulls. They were identical.
‘Herr Jaeger,’ said the white-bearded man, who Felix now recognised as the Reiksguard general without his helmet – von Uhland, the pistolier had called him. ‘Are you well enough to talk? We have little time.’
Felix pulled his eyes from the unsettling twins and did a mental check of how he felt. Disorientated, certainly. In pain, oh yes, quite a bit, but not so much as before. And the freezing, fevered sweating had stopped, so, relatively speaking, not so bad.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Good,’ said the general, and sat, then motioned for the others to do the same.
Felix looked around as they did. He was lying in a military cot, his arm neatly bandaged and his fingers nearly returned to their normal size and colour. In the background, a Sister of Shallya was moving about, and through the door he could see that the village was teeming with soldiers. Gotrek’s axe was propped near the hearth where Snorri had set it, but the Slayer wasn’t there. Felix’s heart thudded with sudden panic.
‘We’ll try to be as brief as possible,’ said the general, as a scribe at his shoulder began to make notes in a big book. ‘But we must ask you some–’
‘Where is the Slayer?’ asked Felix. ‘Gotrek. Is he–’
Max leaned in, cutting him off. ‘He’s with the surgeons, Felix. They’re doing everything they can.’
‘No,’ said Felix, heart thudding. ‘You don’t know. They don’t know. The axe. Krell’s axe. It struck him. It left poisoned slivers in the wound. They’re killing him!’
The sombre twins raised their heads, and Max’s eyes widened.
‘Poisoned slivers?’ he asked.
Felix nodded. ‘The Slayer said they burrow to the heart. I fear they ha
ve already reached it.’
Max paled and turned to the general. ‘My lord, if you would excuse me.’
‘Go,’ he said. ‘We will make record of our conversation here.’
Max stood and hurried from the cottage. Felix wanted to get up and go with him. He should be with Gotrek, not here, talking.
General von Uhland turned back to him. ‘He will be well taken care of, Herr Jaeger. I promise you. Now, we had the story from your friend with the – the nails in his head, but it was a bit confused. We’d like you to–’
‘My father and mother,’ broke in the dark-haired young man, leaning forwards with anxious eyes. ‘Do they still live?’
Felix looked at him, bewildered. ‘I– who are your father and mother?’
‘This is Master Dominic Reiklander,’ said the general. ‘Son of the graf and grafin.’
Felix’s face fell as he remembered the last time he saw them, when the undead graf had torn his wife’s throat out. The boy read his expression and looked away before he could speak.
‘I’m sorry. They…’ Felix didn’t want to go into details. ‘They didn’t survive.’
Dominic nodded, then stood abruptly and crossed to the hearth to stare into the fire.
Von Uhland looked at him, then turned back. ‘This Krell you mentioned. He is the leader of the undead?’
Felix shook his head. ‘Krell is a lieutenant. The necromancer who raised the horde is named Kemmler. I know little about him, but he is capable of raising thousands of undead, and blighting food and drink, and–’
‘I know of him,’ said the general, grim. ‘Though I had heard he was dead, killed by Duke Tancred of Quenelles in Bretonnia.’ He cursed, then looked back at Felix. ‘And his plans? The message General Nordling sent said the fiend meant to march on Altdorf. Do you know his numbers?’
‘I would guess more than eight thousand,’ said Felix. ‘Perhaps as many as ten. Men and beastmen alike, as well as picked troops of ancient warriors, giant bats, ghouls, spirits. And…’ He looked apprehensively at Dominic’s back. ‘And, I fear he has some further plans for the graf and grafin.’