[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  As he walked beside the cart, Felix leaned in towards Gotrek, who sat beside the old knight. “I’ve never seen you take such an interest in defending the common man when there wasn’t a monster or daemon involved,” he said.

  “It wasn’t the common man I was defending,” said Gotrek, licking his lips. “It was his beer.”

  “Ah,” said Felix, and they travelled on.

  North of the little village of Leer, the road became no more than a track, with the trees drawn in closer on either side, making even high noon dark and full of shadows. Sir Teobalt ordered Ortwin to don his armour and helmet and to keep his sword at the ready. With the squire’s help he did the same himself, strapping on his cuirass and vambraces and setting his helmet beside him on the buckboard. The merchant and his guards belted their leather jacks tighter underneath their woollen cloaks and heavy scarves. Felix followed their example, shrugging into his ringmail and loosening Karaghul in its scabbard, then tugging his old red cloak close around his shoulders. Gotrek had no armour to don, but he held his axe across his knees, not on his back.

  At the same time it began to grow colder, with a few dry flakes of snow drifting down through the interwoven firs above them, and the thick mud of the track freezing into lumpy ridges and making it hard going for the carts. There were many times when they were obliged to get out and push, or lift their wheels out of some deep depression.

  This was no problem with Teobalt’s cart, which was almost empty, but the ale wagon was another matter, and the merchant, whose name was Dider Reidle, had many opportunities to thank Gotrek for his strength and Felix for his assistance; and that first night north of Leer, when they made camp, rewarded them all by broaching a cask of his precious cargo as they sat down to their dinner around the fire, and filling their cups and jacks.

  Gotrek pronounced it “not bad”, which was high praise coming from a dwarf.

  Felix saluted the merchant. “Thank you, Herr Reidle,” he said. “It’s very good.”

  Reidle bowed his head. “Thank you, sir. Without you I would have none to share.”

  “I don’t understand why you made the journey if it is so dangerous,” said Felix. “Can the profit be so great that it’s worth the risk?”

  Reidle sighed. “Well, had I been able to take the river, there would have been little risk, but all the boats are spoken for, and since I had already been partly paid for the shipment I felt I must try, dangerous though it may be.”

  “Is Bauholz so large that it needs all this beer?” asked Sir Teobalt.

  “Only recently, m’lord,” said Reidle. “It was a tiny little village by all accounts, but since the war it has become a booming place. It is the last good port on the Zufuhr, and so has got a lot of traffic lately, with soldiers going one way, and refugees going the other. Before they had no inn, and only Taal’s bower for a tavern. Now they have three inns, and beer and sausages for sale in every shack and tent that can hold two people.”

  Sir Teobalt made a face. “It sounds like a place of sin and depravity.”

  “Oh aye,” said Reidle with a smile.

  “But good for business.”

  For four more days they continued north into the woods towards Bauholz, and with every step Felix felt like he was pushing deeper into some web that he would not be able to walk out of again. He could not shake the feeling that the forest was watching them — that unseen presences were waiting for them to let down their guard so that they might pounce. He never saw anything, or heard anything more than birdcalls and the yelp of foxes or the bay of distant wolves, but always there was the same tingling between his shoulder blades that felt like hungry eyes upon him.

  They spent their third night at a lumber camp on the banks of Zufuhr, little more than a few tents and stacks of trimmed tree trunks inside a temporary wooden palisade. The wood cutters knew Reidle from previous trips and welcomed him warmly, particularly after he rolled the broached barrel off the back of his cart and invited them all to share.

  “Well worth it,” he whispered to Felix as they were sitting down to eat a hearty venison stew in the camp’s mess tent, “for the security of sleeping inside walls.”

  Though he knew the safety of the camp was largely an illusion, Felix was inclined to agree. The feeling of being watched had diminished as soon as they had entered the palisade, and his shoulders had relaxed for the first time since they had left Leer.

  “And with luck we’ll be in Bauholz and journey’s end before dark tomorrow,” Reidle continued. “As long as the weather holds.”

  It was too bad Bauholz was only the beginning of his journey, thought Felix. Sigmar only knew where Sir Teobalt’s search for the missing templars would lead them. He had a sudden fantasy of finding them all waiting for them at the gates of Bauholz, healthy and happy and ready for Teobalt to lead them home. He chuckled at the foolishness of the vision. It was never that easy.

  Never.

  The next morning, as they shared a breakfast of river trout, porridge and beer with the camp foreman, Felix watched with interest as the wood cutters laid dozens of tree trunks side by side on the bank of the river, then lashed them together with sturdy ropes.

  By the time they’d finished eating and hitched the horses again to the wagons, these log rafts had been pushed out onto the water, and as Felix and Gotrek and the rest rode out of the compound and turned north towards Bauholz, they had begun drifting south down the river towards Ahlenhof, each carrying two men armed with long hook-tipped poles who stood at the forward corners.

  They’re going the right way, thought Felix, as the flotilla vanished around a bend in the river, and the feeling of being watched settled between his shoulder blades once again, just as strongly as before.

  By late afternoon it was clear that, though the weather had held, in all other ways, Reidle’s luck had failed him. With the light of the sun turning from red to purple, they were still hours away from Bauholz and trying, for the fifth time that day, to rock the ale cart out of a deep frozen rut.

  They were having little success.

  Gotrek was under the wagon, muddy to the knees and lifting with his back-pressed against the bottom of the bed, while Felix and Reidle hauled at the spokes of the back wheels and the rest pushed at the tail. Squire Ortwin held the leads of the carthorses while Sir; Teobalt directed the whole operation from the side.

  “Ortwin,” cried the old knight. “On my mark, lead them forwards while the rest push. Ready? Heave!”

  Felix heaved at the wagon along with Gotrek and the others, his feet slipping in the icy muck. It rolled forwards almost to the lip of the rut, then slid back again like it had the last seven times.

  “Better,” called Teobalt encouragingly. “Once more and we shall have it. Ready?”

  Felix wiped mud from his eye and put his shoulder to the wagon again with the others, but just as Sir Teobalt was raising his hand to call heave one of the horses whickered and backed nervously in its traces while the other neighed and plunged ahead.

  The wagon jolted forwards. Gotrek was knocked flat as the axle clipped his back and the others staggered and fell. Felix slipped too, banging his shoulder against the wheel and landing in the mud.

  He jumped up cursing and rubbing his shoulder as Ortwin tried to calm the horses. “Damn this cart!” he said. “Damn these horses! We should take the damned barrels off and roll them to Bauholz!” He kicked the wagon wheel. “I’ve had enough of this…”

  “Quiet, manling,” said Gotrek, crawling out from under the wagon. He picked up his axe and looked around at the surrounding woods.

  Felix stopped and listened as well, though it was hard to hear anything over the worried whickering of the wagon’s horses. Their distress seemed to have spread to the other animals as well. Sir Teobalt’s carthorses were throwing their heads and rolling their eyes, while Ortwin’s pony was pulling at its lead. Only Sir Teobalt’s charger remained calm, though its ears turned alertly.

  Reidle’s guards drew their swords, thei
r heads on swivels.

  “What is it?” whispered Reidle. “Bandits?”

  “Wolves?” asked one of his guards.

  “Worse,” said Gotrek.

  Sir Teobalt clapped on his helmet and took up his shield, then motioned them all to get between the two wagons. “Face out from the centre. They may come from any side.”

  They gathered behind Sir Teobalt’s cart, which was in front of the ale wagon, and turned to either side, weapons at the ready. Teobalt began praying and Ortwin and Reidle’s guards picked it up. “Lord Sigmar grant us your strength in this our hour of need. Let us smite our enemies like your hammer. Let us push back the powers of darkness.”

  Behind them, Reidle took his horses from Ortwin and did his best to calm them, whispering, “There now, Bess. Nothing to be afraid of,” and “Here, Pommertz, who’s a brave boy then.”

  For a moment, his murmurs and the shifting of the horses and the harsh breathing of the men was all that could be heard. The silence was unnerving. Felix and the others stared into the murk of shadows under the trees, their breath trailing away in steaming clouds, waiting for Sigmar only knew what. The tension made Felix grind his teeth.

  “Which way are they coming from?” murmured Ortwin, adjusting a helmet that looked too big for him.

  “Where are they?” asked one of the guards.

  “Maybe the horses only spooked themselves,” said another.

  “Silence,” said Sir Teobalt. “Be ready.” A fine old long sword gleamed in his hand.

  “Be ready for what?” asked one of the guards querulously.

  He was cut off by a bloodcurdling roar from the woods to their left. Everyone jumped. The horses screamed and tore from Reidle’s grasp.

  “Steady!” cried Sir Teobalt.

  With a thunder of hooves, the woods erupted with nightmares made flesh. Felix froze, terror gripping his heart. He had faced them before, but no amount of: familiarity could breed contempt for such monsters. Five towering goat-legged, goat-headed monsters led the charge — two to the left of the carts, three on the right — followed by a swarm of smaller, more human horrors, mutated men with short, budding horns and mouths full of filed teeth. The behemoths rushed in, bellowing, their powerful limbs swinging huge spiked clubs and massive iron maces. Their smaller, scrawnier followers spread out behind them, knives and sickles and clubs clutched in their twisted claws.

  Two of Reidle’s guards died instantly, bodies pulped by a single swing of a beastman’s mace. Gotrek leapt forwards before the monster had finished its swing and buried his axe in its stomach. He tore it out again with a spray of blood and was on the next before the first had begun to topple.

  “Teobalt ran out to meet another of the leaders, crying, To me, foul beast! Come face Sigmar’s wrath!”

  The beastman swung at him with a club that looked like a giant’s femur, and Teobalt took it on his shield. The force of it slammed the old knight to the ground and the beast trampled over him and leapt at Reidle’s horses, ripping old Bess’ throat out with its teeth as the merchant fell back, screaming and throwing up his arms.

  A beastman with a third horn sprouting from its forehead charged Felix. He flinched away from its gore-matted mace and crashed against Teobalt’s cart to fall in the mud again. Three-Horn came on. Felix backhanded desperately with Karaghul and rolled under the cart as the beastman’s sticky mace crashed down, splintering the planks of the cart. Felix hunched down, then lashed out from under the tailgate, hacking at the beastman’s backward-bending legs. It jumped back.

  All around, Felix could hear the screams of men and horses and the roaring cries of the beastmen and their followers. Quick glances showed him flashes of violence in every direction — the two remaining guards fighting for their lives in the midst of a handful of the lesser beasts, Teobalt’s warhorse kicking the brains out of another, a lesser beast on the ale wagon, hacking at the straps that held the barrels tight Gotrek exchanging clanging blows with a beastman three times his height, Reidle the merchant crawling on his belly, weeping like a baby, Ortwin slashing wildly at a pair of beast-followers as he tried to reach Sir Teobalt, who fought the beastman that had trampled him.

  Then, with almost human screams, Teobalt’s carthorses bolted as a pair of the scrawny beastlings leapt on their backs. With the horses went the cart, leaving Felix exposed again. The three-horned beastman loomed above him, swinging down with its mace. Felix rolled to the side and felt the ground shake as the massive iron weapon slammed down beside him. He jumped to his feet slashing blindly around at the beastman’s encroaching followers. The smell of them was overpowering. They reeked like a sewer full of dead dogs.

  The three-horned beastman leapt at him again, swinging for his head. Felix ducked and lunged, stabbing forwards with all his might. Karaghul’s point skidded across the beast’s massive belly shield and punched through its ribs.

  The monster howled and wrenched away violently. Felix held on, but could not pull his sword loose. Enraged and in pain, the beastman swung down at him. Felix let go of his sword and jumped back, slamming into a lesser beast who was trying to brain him from behind.

  He grabbed the thing by its stubby horns and threw it in front of him. The three-horned beastman’s mace crushed it, and it slumped to the ground like a bag of wet meat.

  Three-Horn came on. Felix turned to run and found himself surrounded by its followers, all closing in on him…

  A sword! He needed a sword. One of the dead guards held on to one. Felix rolled to him, ducking a handful of attacks, ripped it from the guard’s slack hand and lashed out all around. The lesser beasts dodged back then advanced again. There seemed no escape. Or was there?

  Screaming he knew not what, Felix charged a man-beast that was between him and the ale wagon. The thing leapt aside and Felix sprang up onto the cart, kicking down the hideous thing that had been cutting at the leather straps. He climbed to the top of the barrels and turned to face his pursuers.

  “Now try me!” he cried, triumphant.

  The three-horned beastman slammed its mace into the cart so hard that it jumped. Felix staggered and almost lost his footing. His skinny followers started to climb the sides. Perhaps this hadn’t been Felix’s best idea.

  A quick glance around told him that the rest of the wagon train was faring no better. Sir Teobalt and the beastman he had fought were both down, while Ortwin stood over the old knight’s body, fighting a handful of lesser beasts. Only one of the guards remained standing, backed up by two more beastlings, and Reidle lay unmoving on the ground next to the ale cart. Only Gotrek was master of his situation, beating back his monstrous opponent with blow after blow.

  Felix hacked at a climbing man-beast with his borrowed sword and bit deep into its shoulder. It screamed and fell off. But then Three-Horn swung again and Felix had to leap up to let the mace pass under his feet.

  He knew before he landed that it would go wrong. His boot heels slipped on the curve of the barrel and he bounced down the side of the pyramid, knocking the wind from his lungs, and just barely catching himself at the wagon’s rail.

  The lesser beasts converged towards him, cackling. He kicked one in the chops and lashed out at another, but he was so precariously balanced that if he tried to move more than that he would fall between the barrels and the rail of the cart and be wedged tight.

  The three-horned beastman pushed through its followers, Karaghul still sticking out of its ribs. Felix scrambled for purchase on the barrels and could find none. Behind Three-Horn he saw Gotrek running to help Ortwin. Couldn’t the damn fool dwarf see that his old friend was in trouble?

  “Gotrek! Help!” he called, but he was too winded, and it came out as a whisper. As Three-Horn loomed over him, raising its mace, Felix held up his short sword, knowing it would be like trying to stop an avalanche with a twig.

  But then, as he waited cringing for the blow to fall, the beastman bellowed and arched its back in pain. Felix blinked. Karaghul was sticking from Three-Horn’s ribs r
ight in front of him. It was like the beastman was offering it to him.

  Felix reached forwards with both hands and wrenched with all his might. The blade came free, causing the beastman to howl even louder. It also threw Felix’s balance off, and he fell, just as he had feared, on his back between the barrels and the cart rail. He was trapped.

  Three-Horn roared above him, blood flowing down its furred side like a river as it raised its mace once again. Felix did the only thing he could do, and thrust up fast and hard with Karaghul, aiming as best he could. The blade punched into the flesh below Three-Horn’s lowest rib and sank deep.

  With a whistling sigh, the beastman staggered side-ways, its knees buckling. The bloody rent in its flesh ripped wider as its weight dragged at the sword, and its guts spilled out and slapped against its belt. It twisted as it fell, and Felix saw something thin and white sticking out of its back — an arrow!

  Felix clawed at the rail, struggling up out of the confining space and looking around. The man-beasts that had been climbing the ale cart were on the ground, all writhing with arrows in their backs and necks.

  As he turned towards Ortwin and Gotrek, he saw them cutting down the lesser beasts around them, half of which were also impaled with arrows, and as he watched, another arrow shot from the woods to the left and pierced the leg of one of the three beastlings fighting the last standing guard. The man killed it as it lost its balance, then turned on the others.

  Felix vaulted the cart rail and ran to help him, but the lesser beastmen, seeing him coming, turned and fled for the woods — straight for where the arrows had come from. A third beastling picked itself up and joined them, squealing in fright.

  Felix and the last guard started after them, but before they could take two steps, another arrow shot from the trees and took one of the man-beasts in the eye, dropping it. The other two kept running for the trees.

  With a wail like a banshee, the hidden archer burst from the underbrush with a long, narrow-headed hatchet in each hand. He was small and quick and bundled in filthy furs, and ran straight at the escaping beastlings. They dodged right and left, too panicked to fight, but the archer side-armed one of the hatchets at the one on the left, then leapt at the one on the right. The thrown axe spun in a perfect arc and split the forehead of the left-hand man-beast. At the same time the archer kicked the right-hand monster full in the face with both feet, knocking it flat, then landed, turned and buried the second hatchet in its chest. The man-beast shrieked and tried to sit up, but the archer stomped on its throat and levered the axe free, then stepped back and let out a sigh of relief.