Felix looked around in the sudden silence. All the beastmen and their lesser followers were dead or fled, and he and at least some of the others still lived. Such an outcome hadn’t seemed possible a moment ago. They had the archer to thank for that.
He and Gotrek started towards the figure as Ortwin knelt beside the fallen templar.
“Nice shooting,” said Gotrek.
“Thank you for the help,” added Felix.
The archer stood from prying the second axe from the other beastling and flipped back dirty, matted hair to peer at them. Felix stopped short, surprised.
Though she was bundled in thick leather armour and furs, with a scarf up to her narrow chin against the cold, and though her face was mottled with grime and scarred from hairline to the corner of her full lips on her left side, there was no mistaking the archer’s sex at close range. Her fierce brown eyes flashed keenly under her unruly mass of hair, which was all black but for a lock over her left eye that was as white as snow. “I… I have sworn an oath to…” Her words faded away as she looked closely at Gotrek for the first time.
“You,” she said, staring. She turned and looked at Felix. “And you!” Felix exchanged a puzzled glance with Gotrek. Gotrek shrugged. He didn’t know her either. Suddenly the filthy girl fell to her knees before them. She grabbed Felix’s hand and kissed it. “My heroes!” she said.
FOUR
Felix stared down at the young woman as she covered his hand with kisses. He felt slightly dizzy. First Ortwin and now this strange forest creature. Had everyone read his books? Was he truly this famous?
“So… so you’ve read them too?” he asked.
She looked up at him curiously. “Read? Read what?”
“My books,” he said. “You’ve read my books.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how to read.”
Felix felt even dizzier. “Then how… uh, that is, why are we your heroes?”
She blinked, confused. “You… But, I’m Kat. Katerina. You rescued me from the beastmen. You rescued me from… that woman.”
Felix looked at Gotrek again. The Slayer shrugged.
“We… we did?”
“Yes!” said the archer, a slight edge of desperation creeping into her voice. “In Flensburg! It is because of you that I have become a slayer of beasts!” She looked worried now. “You… you don’t remember?”
Suddenly, with a flood of images and emotions, he did remember. The massacred village. The frightened little girl, hiding in the ruins of the inn. The desperate fight with the beastmen in the woods. The defence of Flensburg. The hideous strength of the woman with the white streak in her hair as she closed her hand around his throat. The little girl again, her eyes wide as she held the sword that had killed the woman, then once more as she begged and pleaded with Felix and Gotrek to take her with them, and then hugged them goodbye.
“You,” he said.
“You,” said Gotrek, and an uncharacteristic smile cracked his hard expression. “You seem to have become a hero yourself, little one.”
Kat flushed at that, though it barely showed through the patina of dirt on her cheeks. “I have vowed to rid all of the Drakwald of beastmen,” she said into her scarf.
“A noble ambition,” said Felix, his mind still reeling. “I… I can’t believe, after all this time…”
“Friends!” came Ortwin’s voice from behind them. “Help me. Sir Teobalt is sorely wounded.”
They turned. Ortwin was still kneeling by the old knight, who lay flat on the ground. Gotrek and Felix hurried towards them, Kat tailing behind.
On the way, Felix looked around at the aftermath of the battle and totalled the cost. Two guards dead and the other two wounded, one so badly he couldn’t stand Both of the ale cart horses mauled to death. Sir Teobalt’s cart wedged between two trees, its wheels smashed and its horses missing. Ortwin’s pony dead with its skull caved in, and Sir Teobalt’s charger pacing nervously nearby with deep claw marks in its flanks. It occurred to Felix that if the beastmen hadn’t been so hungry for horseflesh the battle might have gone much worse. At least the beer had been saved — and the beer merchant, it seemed, for Herr Reidle was groaning to his feet behind his wagon and peering around anxiously.
Sir Teobalt looked up as they gathered around him. He had a deep gash across one cheek where the edge of his helmet had cut him, and his armour was covered in dents. “Right glad I am to see you alive, friends,” he said feebly “Valiantly fought.”
“How badly are you hurt, sir?” asked Felix, kneeling beside him.
“Mere inconveniences,” he said. “My shoulder took a heavy blow, and I cannot at the moment move my left leg. Also, my vision is blurred. I fear I will need some rest.”
Felix turned to Kat. “Do you know how far it is to Bauholz?”
“About an hour’s walk,” she said. “No more than two.”
Felix looked up at the few patches of purple sky that showed through the thick canopy of needles above them. “Perhaps we should camp—” he began, but Kat cut him off.
“You must not stay here tonight. There are wolves and other beasts that will smell the blood. You will get no peace.”
Felix looked around, assessing their resources. One horse and a heavily laden wagon — that was all they had in the way of transport. He stood. It would have to do. “Unload Herr Reidle’s wagon and hitch Sir Teobalt’s horse to it. We will lay Sir Teobalt and the other wounded men in it.”
Both Reidle and Teobalt erupted at this.
“Leave the beer?” cried the merchant. “It’ll be stolen!”
“Hitch Machtigto a cart!” complained Teobalt. “Never! He is a warhorse. He has never stooped to such common duty, and never shall.”
“That common duty may save your life,” growled Gotrek.
“And do you expect us to carry your beer to Bauholz?” Felix asked Herr Reidle. “Not even a warhorse has the strength to pull all that.”
“The horses from the other cart might come back,” insisted Reidle.
“They might,” said Felix. “But I’m not waiting all night to find out.”
Both the merchant and the knight continued to complain, but there was little they could do. Gotrek, Felix, Ortwin and the less wounded guard set to unloading the beer from the cart and hitching the warhorse to it as Kat bound the wounds of Teobalt and the maimed guard as best she could with a field kit she wore at her belt. The proud charger complained almost as bitterly as its master when they laid the yoke across its neck, but with Ortwin whispering soothing words in his ears it finally acquiesced. Then they laid Sir Teobalt, the wounded guard and his dead companions on the back, and set off for Bauholz as the hidden sky above turned from violet to cobalt, and the shadows of the trees closed in around them.
Felix had a thousand questions he wanted to ask Kat, for her transformation from a scared, sweet little girl to hardened beastslayer was still a shock to him, but she had insisted on going ahead to scout the way and so he had no opportunity to talk to her. Instead he carried a lantern beside Ortwin as the youth led Machtig down the track. Gotrek took up the rear, keeping an eye out behind them in case more horrors came out of the woods.
After a half an hour or so during which Ortwin remained entirely silent, Felix looked over at him. The poor lad had had his first taste of adventure and it seemed to have stunned him a bit. Felix didn’t blame him. Death and mutilation at close range were a far different thing than death and mutilation in a book. Felix had become somewhat inured to it over the years, but he could well remember the feelings of terror and nausea that used to overcome him before and after a fight. Maybe the boy was having second thoughts about a life of adventure. He hoped so.
“Not quite like it is in books, is it?” he said, smiling sadly.
“I’m sorry, sir?” said Ortwin, lifting his head from his thoughts.
“I was just wondering if our fight just now lived up to your expectations.”
Ortwin shook his head, eyes wide and far away. �
�It was… it was glorious!”
Felix blinked at him, stunned. “Uh… glorious?”
“Oh yes, sir!”
Felix frowned, anger stirring inside him. Was the boy bloodthirsty? Was he cold-hearted? “You weren’t frightened of the beasts? You weren’t troubled by the slaughter of Reidle’s guards, or the horses? Or by poor Sir Teobalt’s grievous wounds?”
“Of course I was,” said Ortwin, not appearing to notice Felix’s hard tone. “I have never been so terrified in my life, Herr Jaeger. They were the foulest creatures I have ever set eyes upon, and they did vile, horrible things. My heart was near frozen with fear. But… but we vanquished them! We looked into the face of evil and though we were sorely tested, we did not flinch. We persevered! We have pushed back the forces of Chaos!”
A laugh burst from Felix though he tried to stop it. “We haven’t even given the forces of Chaos a paper-cut. And we didn’t persevere over anything. We were about to die defending a wagonload of beer from a bunch of mindless beasts, when a girl with a good eye and a quick draw saved us. And I flinched plenty.”
Ortwin turned and stared at him, his eyes wide in the lantern light, his mouth open. Felix sighed. He shouldn’t have been so harsh. He had broken the boy’s poor sheltered heart with his hard-won bitterness.
He coughed. “Listen, Ortwin, I…”
But then Ortwin laughed and grinned at him. “Oh, but I see! This is the grim humour that I love so much in your books. The self-mocking jokes you use to disguise the true nobility of your acts.” He smiled, sheepishly. “Forgive me, sir. For a moment I almost; thought you were serious, but I see now that, like all good knights, you are truly humble, and do not wish to be praised for your deeds.”
It was Felix’s turn to stare. The boy really thought he was joking. Felix opened his mouth to tell him that he wasn’t kidding, and that he actually meant what he said, but then he closed it again. What was the point? Ortwin probably wouldn’t believe him anyway, and besides, there was no need to shatter the boy’s delusions about the world so quickly. He would find out for himself soon enough.
“Believe what you like, Ortwin,” said Felix, defeated. “Just keep buying the books.” Ortwin laughed. “Very good, sir. Very good!” Felix sighed and they walked on in silence.
At last an hour into true night, the wagon came out of the forest into a narrow area of cleared land beside the Zufuhr river, and Felix saw, on its banks, the silhouette of a small, palisaded village in the distance, a faint glow of torchlight illuminating the tops of its squat wooden watch-towers. Felix noted that the fields were patchy with dead weeds and stray stalks of wheat, all gone to seed. It appeared that there had been no planting and no harvest this year. How had the village survived?
He turned away from Ortwin, looking around for Kat, and jumped when he discovered that she was already beside him. It was as if she had stepped out from behind a moonbeam. “Oh!” he said, then lowered his voice. “There you are.”
“I must warn you, Fel…” she paused suddenly and looked down. “I… I’m sorry. I don’t know what to call you now.”
Felix smiled as they started towards the town again. What a strange young woman she was, so vicious and yet so demure at the same time. “You may still call me Felix, Kat,” he said. “We’ve known each other for a long time, after all.”
“Thank you, Felix,” she said, smiling shyly.
His heart fluttered uncomfortably in his chest as her smile lanced through him. It seemed wrong to be stirred by someone you last knew as a seven-year-old, but filthy as she was, she was undeniably attractive.
“You’re… most welcome,” he mumbled. “Er, what was it you were saying?”
Her face grew grim and she nodded towards the village. “Bauholz. I wanted to warn you that it is a bad town.”
“Oh?”
“It was good once,” she said. “Before the war. It was my home from the woods. But the war killed it, and now the soldiers and bandits are feeding on the corpse.”
“Soldiers?” asked Felix.
“Aye. A man from the south and his men — Captain Ludeker.” She spat on the ground at the name. “He was like all the others, coming back from the war on his way home, but then he decided to stay and rob all the rest. Now he runs the town.”
Felix frowned. He knew about those kinds of soldiers. They were in every war, and on every side. “What has he done?”
“He steals from the supply boats going north and sells seats on all the boats going south. All the refugees must pay him to board, and he charges a fortune. He has turned the strong house and the temple of Sigmar into taverns, and he runs dice and card games in them, and keeps women upstairs. Every soldier that comes through town has his pocket picked.” She looked up into Felix’s face, her eyes flashing. “Beware of him, Felix, and tell Gotrek too. He will try to take everything you own.”
Felix chuckled, imagining anyone trying to take anything from Gotrek. “I will be sure to warn him,” he said. “But if the town is so bad, why are we going there?”
She pointed across the Zufuhr. “We’re not. We are going to the refugee camp on the other side of the river, but the only bridge is within the town. There is no other way across for miles.”
Felix frowned. “You’re taking us to a refugee camp?”
“Yes,” said Kat. “To Herr Doktor Vinck. He is my friend, he will doctor your friends.”
Felix nodded, though he wondered how qualified a doctor that lived among refugees would be.
Kat turned to him, biting her lip, as the walls of the town loomed before them. “Er, do you have any money?” she asked.
“Ah, a little. Why?”
“Ludeker has made a gate tax.”
“Who’s that, then?” said a voice in the darkness.
Felix peered ahead to the big closed gate and saw two men in dirt-grimed uniforms that suggested they were from a company of Streissen handgunners strolling out from a small torchlit side door, naked swords dangling from casual hands.
“Travellers with wounded,” said Felix. “Please let us in.”
“Wounded?” said the first man suspiciously. He was a thin-faced fellow with lank blond hair. “What happened to ye?”
“We were attacked by beastmen in the woods,” said Reidle from where he sat on the buckboard. “I beg you, sirs, be swift.”
The two men looked out into the night at the mention of beastmen, gripping their weapons tighter.
“There’s beasts about and you want us to open the gate?” said the second man, a square-built tough with a three-day beard. He took a step back towards the little door.
“Please,” said Ortwin, stepping up beside Felix. “They have hurt my master. He requires a doctor.”
“Open the gate, Wappler,” sighed Kat. “The beastmen are dead. You’ve no need to fear.”
Wappler, the thinner man, peered towards her. “Is it the she-beast, then? Brought us some more deadbeat refugees?”
The thick man laughed. “Don’t need any more of those. Town’s full.”
“What are we waiting for?” asked Gotrek, coming from behind the wagon.
The two guards turned to him, then stared, their eyes drawn to the golden bracelets on his wrists, which gleamed warmly in the torchlight.
Wappler licked his lips. “We’ll open the gates, yer worships,” he said. “But first there’s the matter of the taxes.”
“Aye,” said the other, shouldering his sword. “We have a foot tax here in Bauholz — for wear and tear on the public way One pfennig per foot.”
Wappler walked among them, muttering under his breath. “Two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, and four for the horse makes sixteen. Now who do we have in the back?” He peered over the side of the beer wagon where Teobalt and the badly wounded guard dozed between the corpses of the others. “Four more. That makes twenty-four. Two shillings.”
“Two of those men are dead,” said Felix.
“Still got feet, haven’t they?”
“But they
’re not going to make much wear and tear an the public way,” Felix protested.
Wappler shrugged. “I don’t make the laws, mein herr, I just enforce ’em.” He smacked his lips. “Now, there’s also the danger tax — opening the gate when there’s hostiles about. That’s a shilling.”
“And the wounded tax,” said his companion. “Four pennies each for each man who can’t walk through the gate on his own. That’s another eight pennies.”
“Right, that’s three shillings and… aw, just round it up to four shillings, then,” said Wappler cheerily. “That’s easier.”
“A wounded tax?” rasped Gotrek menacingly.
“Aye, herr dwarf,” said Wappler. “A man who’s wounded can’t work, and is therefore a burden on the community. Got to compensate for that, haven’t we?”
Gotrek balled his fists, and his single eye sparked like a lit fuse in the torchlight. “You can take your taxes and shove them up your skinny little human—”
“I’ll pay, sirs!” said Ortwin, stepping forwards hastily. “I would not argue while my master bleeds.”
He took a purse from his belt and shook out four silver shillings. Wappler took the money and signalled behind him, his eyes never leaving Gotrek. “Be glad I didn’t levy a resisting taxation tax on you, dwarf,” he said.
“You should be glad too,” growled Gotrek.
With a creaking of rope and timber, the big gates swung slowly open and the party started forwards into Bauholz.
[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer Page 5