Gotrek & Felix- the Fourth Omnibus - Nathan Long

by Warhammer

  ‘I hope for your sake the plan worked and Pragarti is dead,’ Gotrek said, his face mere inches from Ulrika’s. He pressed the blade against her neck, drawing blood.

  ‘Damn skaven interrupted us. I don’t know if she escaped or not.’

  ‘A pity. So, vampire, why should I not kill you right now?’

  ‘Felix will not let you!’ Ulrika insisted.

  Felix didn’t relish this. He was mad at Ulrika for what she had put him and the Slayer through. But her heart – cold and unbeating as it was – was in the right place. The threat to the Empire had been averted.

  ‘Let her go,’ Felix said.

  ‘You do not tell me what to do, manling!’ Gotrek thundered.

  ‘I’m not telling you, Slayer. I’m asking you.’

  For a moment Gotrek seemed about to slice Ulrika’s head clean off. Then he growled in frustration and released her. She was on her feet in a second, but smart enough not to draw her weapon. She touched the fine cut on her neck and then licked the blood from her fingers.

  ‘You had best stay away from us in future,’ Felix warned. ‘Next time I may not ask Gotrek to spare you.’

  Ulrika scowled at them, and then she was gone.

  Gotrek and Felix sat by the river as the first rays of dawn crept across the forest floor.

  ‘Next time, I will ensure your funeral is more fitting,’ Felix promised the Slayer.

  ‘Aye, manling. Though I wonder if I am capable of dying.’

  ‘Let’s never stop trying to find out, eh, Gotrek?’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  SLAYER’S HONOUR

  Nathan Long

  1

  ‘What a cesspit,’ said Gotrek Gurnisson.

  Felix Jaeger had to agree. They had smelled it before they topped the last rise in the road – a heady reek of rotting garbage, raw sewage, burnt meat and stale beer. Now that they were walking through its weathered wooden gates, Felix thought the sight of the place as offensive to the eye as the odour had been to the nose.

  Deadgate squatted at the end of a narrow valley in the shadow of the ruined dwarf hold, Karak Azgal, which loomed on a rocky eminence above it. To Felix, the settlement’s spread of crude, shingled roofs and dirty streets looked like a crusty brown stain seeping down the slope from an ancient granite cistern.

  This was near enough the truth, to hear Gotrek speak of it. When the dwarf lords who ruled Karak Azgal had stopped trying to win the hold back from the orcs and goblins and other monsters that had taken up residence in its depths, they had instead thrown it open to adventurers, letting them delve into it in search of its fabled treasures – for a fee, of course. Word spread of this great opportunity and, despite the fact that Karak Azgal lay far from civilized lands, deep in the remote southern tail of the Worlds Edge Mountains, the valley was soon crawling with fortune hunters, all hoping to come away with dwarf gold, ancient weapons of great power, and gems the size of apples. To service these newcomers, a human settlement had grown up outside the hold. At first it was just a trading post, selling food and supplies for those going underground, but places to spend what loot the adventurers brought back to the surface quickly sprang into being – taverns, fighting pits, gaming parlours, brothels, mortuaries – until it became Deadgate, not so much a town as a clapboard abattoir, designed to flense gold from pockets before their owners made it out of the valley.

  Garish signs assaulted Felix’s eyes as he and Gotrek walked down the muddy main street, all painted on the fronts of the buildings or swinging over their open doors – the Painted Lady, the Red Rooster, the Pit of Blood, the Palace – each with its bill of fare beneath it, whether this were beer, wine, gambling, fighting, or female companionship.

  Below the signs, barkers in flashy clothes sang out those same bills of fare to the hard-faced men who wandered the streets, trying to entice them within, while in the street, costermongers, charm sellers and professional criers were all making their pitches at the top of their voices.

  ‘Gold-hunting canaries! Take one into the deeps and it will lead you to treasure!’

  ‘Pears from the Badlands! One fresh for two pfennigs! Ten rotten for one!’

  A human man holding a banner with a rearing dragon emblazoned upon it was shouting the loudest. ‘Thane Thorgrin Dragonslayer needs you to fight the greenskin menace! Apply at the hold to join his throng. One gold coin per day of fighting, and free access to the deeps for a month. Make your fortune and save the hold!’

  As they walked past a gaudy tavern called the Grail, Gotrek and Felix were accosted by a smiling villain who bowed and scraped before them. ‘Come right in, mein Herr and Herr dwarf. This way. It’s a long, dusty road from the Badlands to the Worlds Edge Mountains. Why not wet those dry throats with a few mugs of real dwarf ale? Or if your navel is touching your spine, we can fill you up. We have sausages and pies and–’

  ‘Dwarf ale?’ asked Gotrek, stopping.

  ‘Indeed, Herr dwarf,’ said the tout. ‘Bugman’s Best. Six kegs, brought up through the pass just this morning.’

  The Slayer glared at the man. ‘If you are lying, I’ll come back here and feed you the mug.’

  ‘No lie, friend,’ said the man, holding up his hands. ‘We aren’t so foolish as to try to fool those who know. Indeed, there’s another of your kin within, and he can’t get enough of the stuff.’

  Gotrek grunted and pushed through the swinging double doors. Felix followed him into the smoky interior, looking around warily. It did not look like the sort of place that would serve Bugman’s – and if it didn’t, there would be trouble. It was decorated in a shoddy attempt at Bretonnian courtly style, with arched doors and heraldic tapestries and high-backed chairs – but the patrons did not look like they would be at home reciting chivalric poetry at the High Castle of Couronne. A harder, more scarred collection of sell swords and fortune hunters Felix had never seen. Nor did the thick-necked bruisers who manned the bar look like they had been hired for their knowledge of viticulture.

  ‘Are you sure you want to die in a town this ugly?’ Felix asked as he and Gotrek stepped around a pair of bouncers dragging an unconscious patron to the door.

  ‘I won’t die here,’ said Gotrek, pushing to the bar. ‘The spider is in the deeps, so that jeweller said.’

  ‘Ah, the deeps,’ said Felix. ‘I’m sure they’ll be much more attractive.’

  ‘They will be dwarf halls,’ said Gotrek. ‘A fitting place for a Slayer to die.’

  ‘Not so fitting for a poet, unfortunately,’ said Felix with a sigh, then signalled the barman. ‘Two Bugman’s, please.’

  They had first heard of the dread spider known as the White Widow in the dwarf hold of Ekrund, where they had ended up after their misadventures in the Black Gulf left them stranded south of the Dragonback Mountains. A dwarf jeweller there, Harn Taphammer, had told them of it as he was appraising the few gems they had salvaged from the shipwreck. He said a human adventurer had come to him to have a ruby the size of a knuckle bone set into a medallion. The man had no left arm and no ears, and walked with a limp – all wounds, he said, from the guardian of the treasure trove from which he stole the ruby, the White Widow, an albino cave spider the size of a hay wagon that made its nest in the deepest reaches of Karak Azgal.

  Naturally, Gotrek had set off for the Worlds Edge Mountains the next day. Naturally, Felix had gone with him.

  The barman set two froth-capped mugs down in front of them. ‘A silver shilling each, please.’

  Gotrek scowled, incredulous. ‘You’re selling Bugman’s Best for only a shilling?’

  ‘Aye, Herr dwarf. Good beer at fair prices, that’s the Grail’s motto.’

  Gotrek slid two shillings across the bar then picked up his mug. His single eye glittered sceptically as he lifted the mug to his nose. He inhaled, then grunted, noncommittal, and stuck his flame-red moustache in the foam and drank. Almost immediately he choked and coughed and held the mug at arm’s length, staring at it.

  ‘Grun
gni,’ he breathed. ‘It is Bugman’s.’

  Felix blinked, surprised, and tried his. It was cool and clean and crisp, with a taste that brought to mind wheat fields and mild autumn days, and it went down his throat like golden light. It was quite possibly the best beer he had ever drunk.

  ‘How does a hole in the wall tavern at the godforsaken arse-end of nowhere have Bugman’s Best on tap?’ he asked as he came up for air.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ said someone at his shoulder.

  Felix turned. A wiry man with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail stood beside him, waving to the barman. He had a nose like an axe blade and an engaging smile, and was dressed in stained, sturdy travelling clothes.

  ‘Very good,’ said Felix.

  The man’s blue eyes took in Gotrek then darted back to Felix. ‘A Slayer and his rememberer, am I right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Felix. The Grail was proving a place of wonders. First Bugman’s Best at rotgut prices, and now this. Many men knew what a Slayer was, but few knew the position of rememberer. Felix was more used to explaining what he did than acknowledging it. ‘I’m surprised you know the word.’

  The man grinned. ‘I’ve some little experience with it.’ He took two fresh mugs from the barman, then nodded towards the fireplace. ‘My companion Agnar and I have a table by the hearth. Would you care to join us?’

  Felix followed his gaze and stopped, staring. At the table the man indicated sat a Slayer, staring into the fire, his three orange crests bright red in the light of the flames.

  2

  Gotrek stared too, and his brow lowered. Felix knew from experience that Slayers did not always relish the company of others of their kind. They were generally solitary types, brooding on their pasts and singularly focussed on making their futures as short as possible. Gotrek’s closest comrades Snorri Nosebiter and Malakai Makaisson were Slayers, but there had been others of his kind to whom he had taken an instant dislike. Felix, on the other hand, had never met another rememberer before, and the prospect of talking to someone who understood what his life entailed was too tempting to pass up. Despite Gotrek’s wary glare, Felix nodded to the dark-haired man.

  ‘Lead on.’

  In any other company, the grizzled Slayer sitting at the table would have been the most intimidating drinker in the tavern. He was old enough that grey roots were showing at the base of his three red-dyed crests and braided beard, and his oft-scarred, heavily-muscled arms were so covered with fading tattoos that they were nearly solid blue from thick wrists to broad, bulging shoulders. His face was like a wood knot – so gnarled and battered that Felix could barely see his eyes – and he had a drinker’s nose in the centre of it as red and lumpy as a halfling’s fist.

  Compared to Gotrek, however, he was practically puny. Gotrek was the biggest dwarf Felix had ever met. Even without his foot-high Slayer’s crest, he was nearly five feet tall – half a head taller than Agnar – and almost a foot broader in the shoulder, with arm muscles that writhed like mating pythons at his every move. A great red beard flowed down over Gotrek’s broad chest to tuck into a wide leather belt, and a patch covered his missing left eye. The eye that remained was as sharp as an ice-pick, and as bright as the gleaming blade of his ancient rune axe. Felix had known raging drunks twice Gotrek’s size to mumble apologies and quietly leave the room when confronted with the full power of that malefic gaze.

  Agnar looked up at Gotrek as they approached with ill-concealed mistrust, but his rememberer was all smiles.

  ‘Agnar Arvastsson, may I present to you…’ He looked to Felix. ‘Pardon me, who may I present?’

  Felix inclined his head. ‘Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson, at your service.’

  ‘A pleasure,’ said the rememberer. ‘And I am Henrik Daschke, late of Talabheim – and just about every other city in the Empire.’

  Agnar eyed them anew at their names. ‘I’ve heard of you,’ he said in a heavy voice. It sounded like he’d put away quite a bit of Bugman’s already. ‘You went north into the Wastes. You found Karag Dum.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, and took a seat opposite him.

  ‘I heard also that you found your doom,’ said Agnar. ‘In Sylvania.’

  ‘No,’ said Felix, taking the seat to Gotrek’s right as Henrik sat by Agnar and gave him his mug. ‘We were–’ He paused, not wanting to try to explain the tunnels of the Old Ones and Albion and all that had come after. ‘We just got lost.’

  ‘I remember now.’ Henrik raised an eyebrow. ‘But that was years ago. A long time to be a-slaying.’

  Gotrek bristled. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Henrik held up his hands. ‘Nothing, Slayer. Only that you must be indomitable in battle.’

  Gotrek grunted and took another long pull at his Bugman’s.

  Henrik turned to Felix. ‘And I’m surprised you are alive at all,’ he said. ‘The lot of a rememberer is an uncertain one, is it not?’

  Felix shrugged, uncomfortable. Henrik was right, of course. Like Agnar, Gotrek was a Slayer, sworn to redeem himself for some secret shame by dying in battle against the deadliest monsters he could find. Felix had become his rememberer when, in the middle of a drunken binge, he had vowed to immortalise his death in an epic poem. Since then he had found himself the victim of a precarious paradox. How was he to stay close enough to Gotrek to faithfully record the details of his doom, and at the same time escape that doom himself? It was a puzzle that he had thought about often since their travels began, but it felt strange discussing it in front of the Slayers. ‘It has its moments,’ he said at last.

  Henrik laughed. ‘Moments indeed. How many times have I followed Agnar into some deadly melee in order to witness his last moments, only to find that they were likely to be mine too. It’s enough to make one want to stay at the inn and make up a doom out of whole cloth, hey?’

  He clapped Felix on the shoulder, and Felix smiled weakly, then shot a glance at Agnar to see how he was taking it. He was shaking his head, but did not look particularly put out.

  ‘Always with the jokes, manling,’ he said. ‘One day you’ll take it too far and I’ll slay you.’

  ‘Then who would do your remembering for you?’ asked Henrik.

  Agnar just chuckled and had another drink. Gotrek eyed him with an expression halfway between pity and disgust. Felix felt a similar emotion, and was going to make his excuses when Henrik turned to him again.

  ‘And what brings you to Karak Azgal?’ he asked. ‘Going after some horror of the deeps?’

  ‘A spider called the White Widow,’ said Felix. ‘We heard rumour of it in Ekrund. As big as a steam tank, they said.’

  ‘You’re here for the same?’ asked Gotrek.

  Henrik laughed. ‘Fear not, Slayer. There are dooms for all in the halls of the Dragon Crag. No, we came hoping to fight a monster of Chaos it is said lurks in the very deepest part of the mines, but another menace has risen that prevents us from descending.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Felix.

  ‘Orcs,’ said Agnar.

  ‘Did you not hear old Thorgrin’s criers in the street as you came in?’ asked Henrik.

  ‘“Make your fortune and save the hold”?’ asked Felix.

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Henrik. ‘And it needs saving. Thorgrin is desperate. Apparently, a warboss by the name of Gutgob Stinkfoot has conquered all the orcs that live in the lower depths, and is stirring them up to make war on the hold above. Thorgrin fears Gutgob has the numbers to wipe out Karak Azgal and Deadgate both and he’s recruiting everyone who can hold a weapon to help him make a stand.’

  ‘The orcs stand between us and our dooms?’ asked Gotrek.

  ‘And Thorgrin,’ said Henrik. ‘He has forbidden entry into the hold until the greenskins are dealt with. The only way to get in is to sign up with his throng.’

  Gotrek snorted. ‘Let me hunt this spider, and I’ll kill any orcs I find on the way.’

  ‘He wants an army,’ said Agnar, shaking his head. ‘An
yone acting alone lessens the troops he can field.’

  Gotrek growled and took another drink.

  ‘But he’ll let anyone who fights into the depths afterwards, without paying the treasure hunting licence?’ asked Felix.

  Henrik nodded. ‘It’s not a bad deal. But I know a better one.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Gotrek.

  Henrik jerked his thumb at the bar. ‘Louis Lanquin, who owns this place, has got Thorgrin’s go-ahead to raise a regiment of his own, to fight alongside the dwarfs. He’s paying twice what Thorgrin is paying, and he’ll pay the licence fee for any who are in at the kill.’

  ‘And why would he spend all this coin?’

  ‘A simple matter of economics, friend dwarf,’ said an accented voice behind Felix.

  Felix turned and saw a richly dressed man with oiled blond hair and lace at his throat and cuffs stepping towards the table. He had a paunch and a double chin, but the breadth of his shoulders and the scar that crossed his nose at the bridge spoke of a more vigorous past. His eyes too had the keen alertness of a fighting man, no matter that he tried to hide it with a merry twinkle.

  ‘I am Louis Lanquin of Quenelles, at your service,’ he said, bowing with a flourish of his hand.

  Felix inclined his head politely. ‘Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson, at yours,’ he said. ‘And my compliments to your cellar. We were surprised to find Bugman’s here.’

  Lanquin quirked a smile. ‘Another enticement to woo men – and dwarfs – to my cause. Those who sign with me will drink free in my establishment for the rest of their lives.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Gotrek again.

  Lanquin put his hand to his breast. ‘Thane Thorgrin is not the only one to have a stake in the survival of this town. The dwarfs may rob the treasure seekers coming and going with their tolls for entry and their taxes on what is taken from the hold, but there is still enough left in their pockets afterwards for a poor innkeeper to make a living. I do well here, and I would like to continue to do well, and I do not have the confidence that Thorgrin’s few recruits will guarantee that. Thus–’ He produced a stack of four gold coins between his fingers as if by magic, then set it on the table. ‘I am willing to make a substantial outlay now, in order to assure continued return in the years to come.’