No birds sang here, and Felix saw no tracks of animals in the patches of snow that hid in the shadowed valleys. Even the light that came through the grey clouds seemed thin and sickly, as if not even the sun could bear to look directly upon such dismal desolation. It seemed a blighted land, nearly as lifeless as the deserts of Khemri. At least the herd’s trail was still clear. The tread often thousand hooves had churned up a wide swathe of the hills’ dry, powdery earth, and it wound away towards the horizon for as far as the eye could see.
“Long ago it was a lovely place,” said Hans, looking wistfully out over the stark landscape. “The Green Hills, men called them, all meadows and lakes and the like. But then old Morrslieb spat a nasty green gob down in the middle of it, and everything for leagues around twisted and died — never to recover. Too bad, too bad. All dead.” He giggled suddenly. “Though that’s good for my business, isn’t it?”
“Morrslieb spat?” Felix asked, sceptical.
“Aye,” said the hermit. “A great flaming gobbet. Straight out of the sky.” He made a gesture like an arrow falling to earth.
“You sound as if you saw it,” said Kat.
Hans tittered. “Oh, dearie me, child. Do I look as old as that?”
Huntzinger shrugged, making a face. “Might have been beautiful once,” he said. “But it’s ugly now.”
“At least there aren’t any trees,” said Rodi, cheerily.
“And no cover either,” said Kat with a shiver.
Felix turned and saw that she was eyeing the vast space before her like a mouse peeking out from its hole. It occurred to him that, living from girlhood in the Drakwald, she might never have seen so open a place in her whole life. He reached out and squeezed her arm reassuringly as they started forwards again.
“Not to worry,” he said. “They don’t have any cover either. We’ll see them from miles away.”
She gave him a grateful smile in return, and they followed the others, walking side by side.
But though he had done his best to reassure Kat, Felix was far from being at ease himself. He had hoped that once they left the forest, the itchy feeling of being watched would cease, and he would be able to relax again, but it failed to go away. Even more so than before he felt that malevolent eyes were upon him, watching his every step, but when he looked around, he still saw nothing. It was impossible that anyone was following them or spying on them. As Kat had said, there was nothing to hide behind, and yet every time he turned his head he felt as if someone had just ducked out of sight a second before. Nor was the lack of trees a relief from the hemmed-in feeling of the forest. What with the grim grey sameness of the bleak hills below and the dull charcoal sky like a lowering ceiling above, Felix felt crushed between two vast millstones, and he found himself hunching his shoulders like he was carrying a heavy burden.
They saw the smoke of the beastmen’s camp on the afternoon of the next day. It looked at first like the smoke from the chimneys of a small city — hundreds of narrow grey ribbons rising above the low hills — and Felix fancied they might find some mundane town there, Barrensburg, perhaps, with a wall and a gate and tavern named after the local landmark — but he knew he would not. There were no towns in this terrible place.
They went more cautiously then, looking for scouts and hunting parties and taking advantage of what meagre cover they could find. The land here was littered with the burial mounds and standing stones of long-forgotten races — lumpy grass-covered barrows like tumours rising from the turf, and lichen-blotched menhirs sticking up like rotting teeth bursting from an abscess — and the scouting party did their best to keep in their shadows, despite the miasma of ancient menace that seemed to emanate from them.
At last there was only one more ridge, and they crept up it through the dry snow and brittle grass on their bellies until they reached the crest and could look down the other side into a slayer’s dream come true.
A diamond-shaped valley lay below them, perhaps a mile long and a half-mile wide, and narrowing at each end between the swelling flanks of the rolling hills, and it was filled from end to end and side to side with beastmen. Felix swallowed and shrank back at the sight. When he had seen the herd before, the forest had hidden its true size. Here, spread across the valley floor, its numbers were staggering. There had to be nearly ten thousand of the beasts — one vast camp made up of hundreds of smaller camps, each with a bonfire and a grisly standard stuck into the ground to let the others know who held sway there.
“Snorri thinks Rodi Balkisson was right,” said Snorri, “There are enough beastmen for everybody.”
“So many,” murmured Kat, staring wide-eyed.
“Aye,” said Rodi, unusually subdued. “This will do.”
“A certain doom,” said Gotrek, his eye gleaming.
Felix had to agree. It would doom all of them, and more than likely all the troops that von Volgen, Plaschke-Miesner and von Kotzebue could bring against them as well. He hadn’t seen so many beastmen in one place since he and Gotrek and Snorri had flown over the Chaos Wastes in the Spirit of Grungni. There were beastmen fighting, beastmen feasting and drinking around the fires, but mostly there were beastmen facing towards the middle of the valley and shaking their weapons and raising their voices in a guttural chant that sounded like the song of the end of the world.
Felix turned to see what was holding their attention.
Out of the centre of the vast herd rose a single low hill long and steeply sloped on its sides like a whale rising from the sea. Upon it, at the place where a whale would spout its steam, jutted an ancient stone circle, its rough black menhirs weathered with age and capped with snow. It was to this that the beastmen had carried their sacred stone from the depths of the Drakwald. Indeed, they were bringing it to the circle even as Felix and the others watched.
The hill was aswarm with beastmen, all thronging around the huge herdstone as it crawled up its flanks, borne upon the backs of its chosen carriers. The scene looked to Felix like ants carrying a dead grasshopper up their mound to the opening of their hole, but the stone did not vanish when it reached the top of the hill. Instead, the beastmen carried it into the centre of the stone circle, and then, with nothing but brute force and sheer numbers, pushed it upright.
Felix prayed to Sigmar that the evil thing would slip from their grasp and shatter upon the menhirs of the ring, but that prayer went unanswered. In the space of ten minutes the beastmen had righted and secured the stone, and the whole valley erupted in a howl of triumph that Felix thought must have been heard in Altdorf. He shivered as the implications of his thoughtless exaggeration sank home. If the slayers and the three armies failed here, the beastmen’s triumph would certainly be felt in Altdorf.
And it seemed inevitable that the men and dwarfs would fail. Even the slayers seemed to have no illusions about that.
“It will be a grand doom,” said Rodi. “But…”
Gotrek cocked his one eye at him. “But? What happened to ‘A doom is a doom is a doom’, Balkisson?”
Rodi grunted morosely. “You’ve infected me with your pride, Gurnisson. Because of you, I want my doom to mean something. And this…” He shrugged. “We may kill many, but we will never reach the shaman. Not by fighting, at least, and I was never any good at sneaking.”
“Not even the best scout in the world could sneak through that,” said Kat. “They are too close together. Even if they didn’t see us, they would smell us.”
“Can we wait until they’re asleep?” asked Felix.
“They will likely carouse all night,” said Kat.
“And the ones on the hill will never sleep,” said Gotrek. “You can be certain of that.”
Felix looked again to the central hill. There was a camp within the camp there — Urslak Cripplehorn’s true herd — more numerous and tightly packed than the rest of the herds at the gathering. Felix could see patrols of massive beastmen circling the camp and the base of the hill, and more standing guard on its slopes. At the top of the hill
, still more danced around and within the stone circle, waving torches and weapons.
“We may win the first charge,” said Gotrek. “But once the alarm is raised, they will all come.”
“Snorri thinks that’s a good idea,” said Snorri.
“Aye, Nosebiter,” said Gotrek, nodding. “We’ll have our doom then, but the stone will stand.”
“What is the date?” asked Felix. “The thirtieth of Vorhexen,” said Sergeant Felke. Felix sighed and rested his chin on his crossed arms. “We have three nights then, to find a way.”
The hermit giggled behind them. “Oh, my masters, have y’forgotten about me so soon? Don’t worry yourselves so. Old Hans knows a way. Of course he does.”
NINETEEN
The party turned to face the hermit, staring.
“What’s this?” asked Gotrek.
“A way to the hill!” Hans cackled. “Without a beastman the wiser!”
“How?” asked Rodi, looking curious in spite of himself.
The old man cackled again and looked sly. “Ye sons of earth may call me grave robber if you like, but if I weren’t, you’d be in a pickle, eh? I know the barrows around these parts like the back of my hand, and the tunnels that link ’em too.”
“Tunnels,” said Gotrek, interested at last.
“Aye,” said the hermit, lowering his voice to a whisper. “The old kings, they built not just for the dead, but for the living,” he turned and pointed down the hill, where old mounds snaked through the dead valleys like veins under the skin. “Each barrow was an escape, and a place to hide in times of trouble. All led through secret doors to the old keep, built around yon sacred circle,” he turned back and nodded in the direction of the hill with the stone circle. “Tarnhalt’s Crown they called it then. Named for the last king that lived there.” He giggled again. “His walls are fallen now, as do all works of men, the stones taken by folk for other things — all but the ring stones, which none dared touch — but the tunnels and cellars of the keep still sit under the hill. And there is a way out to the surface. A hidden way, not ten paces from the circle.”
The slayers had gathered around the old man now, drawn by his words, their eyes eager. “Show us the way, hermit,” said Rodi. “Bring Snorri to the beastmen,” said Snorri. “Aye, grave robber,” said Gotrek. “Lead us to these tunnels,” The old man’s eyes narrowed with sudden suspicion. “You will remove the beasts, yes? You’ll smash their stone. You won’t rob old Hans of his treasures, will you?”
Rodi sneered. “Do you think we’ve come all this way to steal from you?”
“What do dwarfs care for human treasures?” said Gotrek. “Your pathetic hoard is safe from us.”
Hans hesitated a moment, stroking his stringy white beard, but at last nodded. “Very well, I will risk it. The beasts must go.” He turned and started down the hill at a sprightly pace that belied his age, lifting the skirts of his robe as he went. “Follow me! Follow me!”
Felix and Kat looked to Gotrek as the scouts muttered amongst themselves. The Slayer shrugged. “It’s worth a try.” Huntzinger and Felke looked less than happy, but finally shrugged, and the party turned and followed the old hermit as he led them down the slope and along the base of the hills until he came to an overgrown old bar-row mound that stuck out from one like a blunt finger, dry old bracken covered the front of the tomb, but it wasn’t growing from the earth. It had been placed there. The old hermit pulled it all aside and revealed a small black hole behind it, low to the ground, and so narrow Felix wasn’t sure the slayers would be able to get their wide shoulders through it.
“There, your worships,” he said gleefully. “There is the hole that will lead you to the hill. Now, if you can give poor Hans a pen and paper, he will draw you a map of the way.”
Gotrek snorted. “Dwarfs need no maps for tunnels, grave robber. We will find the way.”
“No no no!” said Hans, his eyes suddenly wide with alarm. “A map is best, my masters. You don’t want to go where you shouldn’t.”
Everyone paused at that, and Gotrek gave him a dead-eyed stare.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“What are you hiding there?” asked Sergeant Felke.
“Are there ghosts?” asked Huntzinger, biting his lip.
“Traps?” asked Felix.
The old man shrank back, eyes darting from one to the other. “No no! No traps, my masters. Not if you go where I say. I… I only fear that you… that you will try to take my things. I have protected them, and they—”
“They’re trapped,” said Felix.
“Lead us, then,” said Gotrek.
“Aye,” said Rodi. “That’s the best plan. That way we’ll stay out of mischief, and so will you.”
“No!” said the old man, suddenly frantic. “I cannot! I have tarried with you long enough. I must continue my work! I must go!”
“I thought the beasts were keeping you from your work,” said Felix, getting more suspicious by the second.
“There are other barrows,” said Hans. “I work all over these hills.”
“It’ll wait,” said Gotrek. “You’re staying.”
The others encircled the old man. He shrunk away from them, trembling and shielding his head, and for the briefest second, Felix thought he saw a look of pure hatred flash in his eyes, but it was gone before he could be sure, and then Hans was smiling meekly again.
“Very well, your worships,” he bleated. “I will stay. I will stay.”
With old Hans in tow, the party scouted the valleys around the beastmen’s gathering place until they found a suitable site to stage the armies of the three nobles when, and if, they arrived. Then von Volgen’s and Plaschke-Miesner’s messengers readied their horses for their run back to their masters at the Monastery of the Tower of Vigilance so that they could tell them that the slayers had found a way to reach the shaman and kill him, and that it would be safe to engage the herd.
“We will wait as long as possible,” Gotrek said. “But if the armies are not here by sunset on Hexensnacht’s eve, we start without them.”
Felke held up the hunter’s horn he had slung around his neck. “I will blow a blast when the shaman is killed,” he said. “That will be their signal.”
Felix stepped forwards. “And be sure to tell them not to attack before they hear it, or…” He shivered remembering Ortwin’s face changing before him. “Or it may not go well.”
The messengers nodded, then mounted their horses and galloped away across the bare hills. At least, thought Felix, they will make good speed on such open ground, and with luck, the armies will make good speed back. The question was, would it be only von Volgen and Plaschke-Miesner, or would von Kotzebue and his four thousand men arrive with them?
“Right,” said Huntzinger, turning away. “Now to find a place to lay low until the time comes.”
“The hermit’s barrow,” said Gotrek without hesitation.
Huntzinger stared at him. So did Felke. Their men murmured uneasily.
“You can’t be serious,” they said in unison.
Gotrek scowled. “I am. It’s warm. It’s out of the wind. It’s close to the beasts’ camp, and they’ll never find us there. It’s perfect.”
“But… but it’s a tomb,” said Huntzinger. “We can’t stay in a tomb.”
“Why not?”
“The old kings,” Huntzinger continued. “They don’t like being disturbed. They’ll wake up and kill us in our sleep.”
“Aye,” said Felke. “I’ll go in at the end, to get to the beasts, but I’ll not make camp there. I’ll not sleep there.”
Their men murmured in agreement.
Gotrek rolled his eyes. “Are you more afraid of a pile of dusty old bones than of ten thousand beastmen?”
Huntzinger and Felke exchanged a glance, then looked back towards Gotrek.
“Aye,” said Huntzinger. “We won’t do it, and that’s that.”
“There are some things a man won’t do,” said Felke.
Rodi and Snorri nodded in agreement.
Felix glanced at Huntzinger and Felke, afraid they’d heard the Slayer. From the scowls on their faces, it appeared they had, but it also appeared that they didn’t look prepared to do anything about it.
After an hour of searching, the scout captains found a deep gorge about a half-mile from the valley that held Tarnhalt’s Crown, and announced that this was where they would make camp. The dwarfs’ silence on the matter was eloquent, as was the fact that they laid out their bedrolls as far from the scouts’ tents as possible. They didn’t go so far, however, as to not take part in the protection of the camp, and stood their watches without complaint.
Felix kept his mouth shut too. As much as he understood the dwarfs’ view that going underground would be the best way to keep out of the way of the beasts, he wouldn’t have relished spending a long period of time in the burial chambers of some ancient king either. He had done that once before. It hadn’t gone well.
The scouts didn’t dare start a fire until after dark for fear that smoke rising above the hills would give away their position. This meant a long day of shivering and stamping their feet, trying to keep out of the steady, ceaseless wind, and glaring at the slayers, who paced around the camp bare-chested, seemingly as comfortable as if they were in a warm tavern.
For their part, Gotrek and Rodi were restless and irritable. They knew their doom was only a few valleys away and it appeared to be testing their patience to wait for it. Only Snorri seemed at ease, following the other two slayers around and telling them stories about his days with Gotrek as if Gotrek wasn’t the one the events had happened to. Felix saw the Slayer’s shoulders hunch at each new tale, but he never snapped at Snorri, only nodded and grunted non-committally, his brow furrowed and his mouth set in a grim line.
Felix did his best to ignore all the tension, and sat in the shelter of a big boulder, updating his journal with shivering hands, and wondering if he would be able to decipher the shaky lines he had written when he reread them later. He wished he could have waited out the day bundled in a tent with Kat — a much warmer and more pleasant way to pass the time — but she was doing her duty with the rest of the scouts, patrolling on a wide perimeter and keeping a constant eye on the herd, so he hardly saw her.
[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer Page 26