“It is possible,” muttered Gotrek. “Aye,” said Rodi, nodding. “Only a handful to kill before we reach the old goat — if we’re quick. After that…” He shrugged and smiled savagely.
“Snorri is ready,” said Snorri eagerly. “Snorri thinks this is going to be a good fight.”
Gotrek and Rodi exchanged another glance, then backed towards the stairs, beckoning to Snorri to follow.
“Come here, Snorri Nosebiter,” said Gotrek, looking uncomfortable. “I want to speak of your part in this.”
A look of impatience passed over Snorri’s ugly face, but he followed Gotrek, stepping past Rodi, who hung back behind him. “Why waste time talking?” said Snorri. “Snorri knows what to—”
With a sound like a cannon ball hitting a wooden floor, Rodi struck Snorri with the heavy iron pommel of his axe, just below the lowest nail on the back of his skull. The old slayer’s eyes rolled up into his head and he sank to his knees, then pitched forwards, flat on his face. Rodi looked down at him, shame and sadness mixing in his eyes.
“Sorry, Father Rustskull,” he said. “It had to be done.”
“Have…?” said Kat. “Have you killed him?”
“Do you think a little tap like that could kill Snorri Nosebiter?” asked Gotrek.
But nevertheless, the Slayer felt Snorri’s pulse, then he and Rodi lifted his limp body and rolled him down the stairs.
The two slayers stood for a long moment, looking down into the darkness at their friend, then Gotrek turned to Kat.
“You have the horn?”
She unslung it from where it hung at her waist and held it up.
“Good,” said Gotrek, then looked to Felix and fixed him with a hard bright eye.
“And you know what to do?”
“Aye, Gotrek,” said Felix. “I do.”
Gotrek nodded, then turned with Rodi towards Tarnhalt’s Crown, running his thumb down the blade of his axe so that it bled, but then, after a step, he paused and turned back. He crossed to Felix and held out his hand. Felix took it, a lump suddenly constricting his throat.
“Goodbye, manling,” said Gotrek. “You have been a true dwarf-friend.”
“Thank… thank you, Gotrek,” said Felix, hardly able to speak. “I—”
But Gotrek had already turned away and joined Rodi as he pushed towards the edge of the thicket.
Felix looked at his hand. There was a streak of blood across the back of it where Gotrek’s sliced thumb had pressed it. He blinked his eyes and turned away, emotion threatening to overwhelm him, only to find himself facing Kat, looking up at him with sad eyes. He turned from her too, afraid she was going to say something comforting, but she seemed to know better. She only put her hand on his back and kept silent. “Now!” came Gotrek’s harsh whisper. Felix looked up in time to see Gotrek and Rodi streaking out of the bushes fast and low, straight for the two outer circle guards who stood between them and the stone circle.
The noise of the chanting and the darkness near the bushes covered the slayers’ approach, and the gors were dead before they even knew they were being attacked. Gotrek cut the legs out from under his, then chopped off its head as it hit the ground. Rodi gutted his with the leading blade of his double-headed axe, then severed its spine with the back blade as he shouldered past it.
The slayers ran on. Felix looked around. It seemed none of the other beastmen had noticed them yet. He clenched his sword in anxiety. They just might make it. If they could get through the robed beastmen that stood within the stones—
A roar from the right brought his head around. One of the outer guardians had seen the slayers and was running after them, calling to its comrades.
Kat sent an arrow at it. The gor stumbled but kept going. More were following him. She drew another arrow.
Gotrek and Rodi reached the circle and slammed into the backs of the chanting initiates who danced in the gaps between the stones. Three went down instantly, taken completely by surprise, but three more turned and gave battle, striking out with staves and sickle-shaped daggers. Bellows of anger came from those in nearby gaps as they saw what was happening to their fellows, and a few surged towards the slayers, but the old shaman in the centre was too focused on his ritual to notice, and most of the chanters were the same, so transported by the frenzy of their invocation that they continued on, oblivious.
The two slayers were making short work of the robed beastmen, but not short enough. The blue-painted guardians were coming swiftly behind them and would reach them before they were clear. Kat poured more arrows into the guards and a few fell, but she was only one archer. Most did not.
“They’re not going to make it,” she said.
Felix knew it, and he fought the urge to rush out and help them. It was wrong for him not to be at the Slayer’s side. He felt guilty and ashamed, but Gotrek had told him to stay with Snorri, and he had sworn he would do so.
“Where are the dirty beastmen that hit Snorri on the head?” said a blurry voice behind them.
Felix and Kat turned to see the old slayer standing at the top of the stairs, rubbing the back of his head with a meaty hand and weaving slightly as he blinked around.
“Ah! There they are!” he said, squinting ahead. “And Snorri’s friends are taking them all!”
The old slayer started forwards, wading through the brush towards the fight, a lump the size of an apple on the back of his skull.
TWENTY
“Snorri, wait!” hissed Felix, dogging the slayer’s steps as he pushed through the brambles. “You can’t go, remember? You must recover your memory first.”
“Aye, slayer,” said Kat, following on his other side. “You won’t be allowed into Grimnir’s hall.”
“Snorri knows,” said Snorri. “He’ll take care of that just as soon as he sorts out these beastmen.”
“But the beastmen will sort you out!” said Felix, exasperated. “You’ll meet your doom here, Snorri!”
“And it will be too soon,” said Kat.
“But there are beastmen,” said Snorri, breaking through the last of the bushes.
Felix looked around to see if any beastmen had noticed them. They were all looking towards Gotrek and Rodi. He grabbed Snorri’s arm as Kat caught the wrist of his hammer hand.
“Snorri, please!” said Felix.
Snorri shrugged off Felix as if he were a fly, then gently pried Kat’s hand away, all without breaking stride. “You don’t have to hold Snorri back,” said Snorri. “There are plenty of beastmen for all of us.”
Felix and Kat made another grab for him, but just then Snorri swept his hammer up over his head and charged forwards, bellowing a Khazalid war cry.
Felix groaned, all his dreams of escaping Gotrek’s doom and starting a new life vanishing in an instant. The cheese-brained old idiot had ruined everything. He turned to Kat. “I… I’m sorry. I have to protect him. I promised.”
Kat shrugged and gave him a sad half-smile as she settled her bow over her shoulders and drew her axes. “And I promised to fight at your side.”
He wanted to tell her no, and send her back to the stairs, but there was no time for argument. If this suicide was going to mean anything, he had to help the slayers reach the shaman. As one, he and Kat sprinted after Snorri into the fight, roaring and screaming and slashing at the backs of the blue-painted beastmen that surrounded Rodi and Gotrek. Felix was so full of rage that he cut down two beastmen in one savage stroke. He just imagined they were Snorri.
As the beasts fell, Felix saw Gotrek look up from slaying a beast-initiate to see Snorri fighting beside him. Gotrek snarled and looked around. He found Felix and glared at him with his one angry eye.
Felix shrunk from his displeasure. “He woke up,” he called, ducking a huge club. “I couldn’t—”
Gotrek cursed and gutted another beastman with an unnecessarily vicious twist of his axe. Beside him, Snorri dashed out the brains of another, while Rodi head-butted a third between the legs. All at once they were through the in
itiates and stumbling into the middle of the stone circle. Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri turned to face the blue-painted guardians who had been fighting so hard to stop them from entering it, but the beastmen skidded to a stop at the line of standing stones, staring at the huge glowing herdstone in abject fear, and would come no further.
“Ha!” barked Gotrek. “To the shaman!”
The runes on the Slayer’s axe flared white-hot as he turned, and Felix didn’t wonder why. Entering the circle of menhirs was like stepping into an arcane furnace. Chaos energy radiated from the blazing blue veins of the herdstone in great pulsing waves, making his skin itch as if he was being eaten by ants and filling his mind with chittering, bird-like voices.
Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri ran directly for Urslak, and Felix and Kat followed. There was no one to stop them. The crooked-horned shaman continued his invocation, entirely unaware of their presence. The rest of the chanting initiates remained transfixed as well, and the guardians remained at the edge of the circle, fearing to come in. Felix’s heart pounded with unexpected hope. They were going to make it!
But then, into the circle charged Gargorath the God-Touched, the hulking black-furred, blue-eyed war-leader, with five blue-painted, heavily armoured gors at his back.
Gargorath roared a challenge at the slayers, his hate-filled eyes glowing with the same fire that emanated from the herdstone as he raised his vulture-headed axe above his head. Felix heard the weapon scream — the high, harsh shriek of a bird of prey. He shivered as he recalled poor Ortwin’s last words — the axe ate what it killed. He wasn’t sure what that meant, and he hoped he would never find out.
The slayers answered the challenge with roars of their own, and with a deafening crunch of steel and bone the two sides slammed together. Felix and Kat swung at a brass-armoured elk-man as Snorri, Gotrek and Rodt piled into the others. The elk-man smashed aside Felix’s puny attacks with a crusty black iron mace that likely weighed more than Kat. Felix staggered back, his hands stinging from the impact. Kat leapt aside, one of her axes snapped in half, and before they could recover the elk-man was on them again, sending them diving away. Felix’s palms turned slick with fear. The elk-man was stronger and more skilled than any other beastman he had ever faced — an actual warrior, rather than just a brawling animal.
The slayers were having the same difficulty. Gotrek blocked Gargorath’s strike but was driven back several feet by the strength of the blow, the vulture-headed axe screaming in his face. Snorri was bleeding from a deep cut on his arm and was backing away from two bellowing beasts. Rodi’s face was a mask of blood as he fought two more. Red sprayed from his braided beard with every swing of his axe.
“Felix! Look out!”
Kat shoved Felix and he staggered aside just as the elk-man’s club whistled past his cheekbone, so close it made him blink. He returned his attention to the fight, aiming a cut at the beastman’s eyes as Kat swiped at its ankles. The gor jumped back before this coordinated attack, and they pressed forwards.
On the other side of the fight, Gotrek’s and Gargorath’s axes met blade to blade and Gotrek’s axe was caught in the vulture-headed weapon’s beak notch. Gargorath tried to twist Gotrek’s axe out of his hands, but the Slayer reversed the twist, his muscles bulging, and Gargorath’s axe spun past Snorri’s head to land on the ground.
The Slayer aimed a cut at the defenceless Gargorath, but when the big beastman leapt aside, Gotrek charged past him, straight for the shaman.
Felix stole glances from his own fight as Gargorath chased after the Slayer. Gotrek swiped behind him with his axe, ringing it off the war-leader’s leg armour, but the beast caught him by the neck and shoulder and lifted him over his head.
“Gotrek!” cried Felix. Then to Kat, “We have to help him!”
He and Kat jumped back from the elk-man and ran to Gotrek’s aid, but before they could take three steps, they saw the Slayer chop down wildly at Gargorath’s head. His rune axe sheered off one of the war-leader’s curling horns and part of his ram-like snout. The beast howled in agony and flung the Slayer from him as hard as he could — right at the herdstone.
“No!”
Felix and Kat chopped at Gargorath as Gotrek sailed over the chanting shaman’s head to crash down hard at the base of the looming herdstone. Kat’s axe glanced off the war-leader’s steel and brass breastplate, not even scratching it. Karaghul bit into the armour but did not touch flesh. The massive gor flattened them both with a careless backhand, then ran to snatch up his fallen axe.
Felix struggled up, trying to block Gargorath’s way, but the elk-man was on him again and he had to fall back, the mace shivering his blade and turning his arms to jelly. Behind him, Kat sat up, shaking her head woozily.
Gargorath roared by her, axe in hand, charging towards Gotrek and the stone as Felix parried another brutal blow from the elk-man.
Gotrek stood to meet the war-leader, beckoning with his off hand and swinging his arm back in preparation for a powerful slash. As he did, his rune axe grazed the herdstone — the merest touch — but there was a sudden sparking crack and a flash of pure white light, and the ground slipped sideways beneath Felix’s feet.
Felix caught himself before he fell and blinked his eyes to clear the after-images that danced before them. He looked around, his head throbbing. Gotrek was doubled up, his right arm cradled against his chest, while his axe lay smoking at his feet. Everybody else — man, dwarf and beastman — stood frozen, looking up at the herdstone. It was steaming and hissing, and little crumbling shards were flaking from it and raining down on the ground while the blue quartz veins that ran through it flickered and flashed like a torch in a windstorm.
The first to recover his composure was the beast-shaman, Urslak, who backed away and pointed a clawed finger at Gotrek, shrieking for his blood. The ring of robed initiates heeded his call, casting down their fetishes and drawing crude weapons as they surged forwards, braying their rage. Gargorath and his lieutenants added their voices to the howl and charged for the Slayer, but Rodi and Snorri had recovered as well, and leapt to stop them.
“Unfaithful beasts!” roared Rodi. “You are my doom!”
“And Snorri’s!” called Snorri.
Felix and Kat joined the slayers, slashing at Gargorath and the elk-man and trying to keep them from Gotrek until he recovered, but the war-leader was too strong. He knocked Felix aside and he and the elk-man bounded over Kat towards the stunned Slayer while Snorri and Rodi engaged the others.
“Ware the leader, Gotrek,” called Felix from the ground.
But Gotrek paid Gargorath and his followers no attention. Instead, as he shook off his shock, he looked from his axe to the herdstone and back again, a cunning glint kindling in his single eye.
Felix knew that look of old, and it never boded well for anybody in the vicinity.
“Gotrek, that is a very bad idea,” he shouted, picking himself up.
Gotrek snatched up his axe and dodged Gargorath’s charge, laughing darkly. “No, manling,” he laughed. “It is a very good idea.”
Gargorath and the elk-man slashed down at the Slayer with their weapons. Gotrek knocked both attacks aside with a whistling backhand, then swung upwards, decapitating the elk-man’s mace and tearing through its armour and flesh like a plough through soft earth. As the beast toppled to the ground in an explosion of blood, Gotrek aimed another cut at Gargorath. The beastman desperately threw himself back to avoid the strike and it clashed off his breastplate, raising sparks and knocking him flat on his back.
Gotrek did not follow up. Instead, he turned to the herdstone again and swung his axe at it with all his might.
For a brief second Felix thought the world had ended. The thundercrack flash of the strike blinded and deafened him, and he lost all sense of up or down. He opened his eyes to find himself sprawled on the ground, along with all his friends and foes. The beasts lay everywhere, writhing and clutching their horned heads. The shaman was shrieking as if he’d been stabbed in the eyes. Ka
t was curled in a ball. Gotrek flat on his back, spread-eagled, his eyebrows and the ends of his beard and crest smoking, ten feet from the stone. His axe lay beside him, the head glowing as if it had just left the forge.
The herdstone was shaking itself to pieces. Large chunks were breaking off and crumbling to dust as they fell, and the quartz veins were starred with fissures, like thick glass under pressure. Felix felt an unnatural wind blowing — not from the stone, but towards it — and he saw that the dust and pebbles that were falling from the stone were being sucked into the cracks in the quartz.
Gotrek groaned and sat up, as stiff and slow as an old man. He took up his axe and used it to lever himself to his feet. “One more ought to do it,” he grunted.
“Wait, Gotrek!” shouted Felix over the wind and the rising hum of the stone. “You’ll kill us!”
“Then you’d better run, manling,” said Gotrek, and limped towards the stone as if his legs were made lead.
Felix cursed as he forced himself to his feet — nor was he the only one less than happy with Gotrek’s course of action. Gargorath and his remaining lieutenants were rising and staggering towards him, and Urslak, the shaman, was raising his arms and snarling out a vile incantation as the claw-clutched blue orb at the top his staff began to glow and pulse. Felix noted with horror that all the bird-claw fetishes that dangled from his robes were clutching and unclutching their talons in time to his chant.
“Hurry,” said Felix, lifting Kat to her feet and urging her forwards. “Run.”
“Is he really going to…?” she asked, looking back.
“Without a doubt,” said Felix.
He and Kat turned and ran as Rodi and Snorri lurched up to intercept Gargorath and his warriors, and Urslak stalked towards Gotrek, who was still limping doggedly towards the stone.
The initiate beastmen had recovered now, and were charging forwards again too. Felix and Kat lashed out at them as they came, but the gors hardly paid them notice. All their attention was focused on Gotrek and the stone.
[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer Page 29