[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  “You want to go with them,” said Kat, looking at him.

  “I don’t want to,” said Felix. “But…”

  Kat nodded. “But you have to.”

  Felix grunted, angry with himself. “It’s ridiculous. I don’t understand it. I should be running away with you.”

  “You have known the Slayer for a long time,” said Kat, smiling sadly. “You can’t leave him now.”

  “But…” But, nothing. She was right. As stupid as it was, she spoke the truth. Felix sighed. “Go back to the stairs,” he said. “Get away from here. This is a fool’s death.”

  Kat shook her head. “My life began with you, Felix,” she said, looking at him steadily. “It will end with you.”

  “Kat,” said Felix. “Don’t be an ass. Live your life—”

  But she was already screaming down the hill after the slayers.

  “Kat!”

  She did not slow. With a groan he charged down after her, but he cried no war cry.

  In the minute since they had first looked down upon the battle it had become even worse. Plaschke-Miesner’s and von Volgen’s combined forces were completely surrounded by the herd, and the firing of the cannons and handguns was even more sporadic, as the gunners tried to aim around the central melee. But despite the insanity of the position the two young lords had put them in, Felix had to admit that their troops were maintaining good discipline. The wings of their formations had folded back and around as the beasts had swarmed them, and the army was now a neat square, bristling with spears on all four sides, with the sea of beastmen breaking against it and falling back as if it were a stone pier. Unfortunately, this formation had completely hemmed in the knights and mounted men-at-arms, making them almost useless. Felix saw a wedge of them struggling to reach Gargorath and his lieutenants on foot, their warhorses left with their squires in the centre of the square. At this rate, the army could not hope to last — and of course, the slayers were driving right towards it.

  With their longer legs, Felix and Kat caught up to Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri just as they reached the edges of the herd. The beastmen were facing away from them, all pushing north to get at the soldiers who had dared to attack them, and thus the slayers’ first charge was more murder than melee. Gotrek’s and Rodi’s axes severed spines and hamstrung legs as Snorri’s warhammer crushed skulls and rib cages. Felix and Kat stabbed and chopped to their left and right.

  But as the beastmen in the last ranks died, those before them turned, enraged, and fell upon the dwarfs in a frenzy. The slayers laughed and pushed forwards to meet them, axes and hammer blurring as they blocked and countered a score of strikes. Felix and Kat stayed at their backs, guarding their flanks from the beasts that pressed in from the sides.

  Gotrek looked over his shoulder as Karaghul deflected a spear tip meant for his neck. He glared at Felix.

  “You shouldn’t have followed, manling,” he said. “I know, Gotrek,” said Felix.

  Gotrek nodded and carried on fighting. No more needed to be said.

  As the slayers pressed deeper into the herd, more beasts swept in behind them, cutting off their retreat. The slayers had done exactly what Plaschke-Miesner and von Volgen had done, but as Rodi had said, they were slayers. This is what they did.

  Unfortunately, Felix and Kat were with them, and for a moment it seemed that they would be slaughtered as the beasts surrounded them. But then Rodi and Snorri turned and stepped in front of them, cackling as they slashed at the flankers. Felix and Kat edged back gratefully, and found themselves in the centre of a moving triangle formed by the three slayers. In this way the five companions fought slowly through the beasts — a three-headed snapping turtle crawling through a pack of wild dogs, with Felix and Kat stabbing out from within the slayers’ protection wherever they were needed. Felix shivered at the turtle metaphor, for he knew that, without the hard shell that Gotrek, Snorri and Rodi provided, the soft middle that was Kat and himself would die instantly. His chainmail and Kat’s light leather armour would be no protection against a full-on strike from one of the gors’ massive weapons.

  After that there was no time for thought. Felix fell into the clanging rhythm of the battle, letting his eyes and ears tell him where his sword needed to be and taking his mind out of the equation — a block, a parry, a stab, a slash, a hop to the right, a twist to the left, over and over. Kat and the slayers did the same. No one spoke a word. They worked together silently — a ten-armed threshing machine.

  It was a precarious business. Despite the slayers’ prowess, if the beastmen had mounted one concerted rush at them they would have been dead in seconds, knocked flat by the sheer mass of the gors’ huge bodies, and then run through before they could recover. Fortunately, the beastmen didn’t seem capable of such united effort. Instead, in their eagerness to kill, they fought each other almost as much as they fought the enemies in their midst — pushing, shoving and getting in each other’s way — and the five companions were thus able to fight them in ones and twos, rather than as a single overwhelming unit.

  Another thing that helped keep Felix, Kat and the slayers alive — though it terrified Felix almost more than the beasts themselves — was the sporadic firing of Plaschke-Miesner’s mortars. His gunnery crews had found their range and were lobbing shots over the encircled army into the mass of beasts pressing towards them — in other words, they were aiming right where the five companions were fighting.

  Every few moments a huge iron shell would whistle down out of the sky, then explode with a thunderous boom, splashing broken beastmen in every direction. One of these explosive rounds landed so close to the companions that the shock of the blast jarred Felix to his knees and threw Kat to the ground. Fortunately, the wall of beasts took the brunt of the impact and they had time to recover. Another time, a thrown beastman crashed into Felix and Kat’s opponents and knocked them in all directions. Kat cut the throat of one before it stopped rolling, and Felix beheaded two more — then it was back to the endless dance as more rushed in to take their place.

  That was the terrible, inescapable truth that gnawed at the back of Felix’s mind. It didn’t matter how many beasts they killed. There would always be more. Felix, Kat and the slayers would eventually be ground down by weariness and exhaustion and die not because the gors could out-fight them, but because they could outlast them. Already Felix’s arms were tired. Already his legs ached. Already his breath was harsh in his throat, and they had not killed a thousandth of the beastmen who filled the field.

  Strangely, he was content. There was no fear anymore, and no regret. If he died here, he died among friends, in a fitting conclusion to his life. He could have wished that there were others at his side — Max, Ulrika, Malakai — but it was selfish to want them to die here too just so that his circle could be complete, so he did not begrudge them their absence. This was a good death. They had already done a great thing today, no matter what else they had accomplished, and to go down fighting by Gotrek’s side felt fitting. He would be complete here. The notes from his journal — if it was ever found — all led up to this battle, and the rest could be filled in by some other chronicler, and the more exaggerated and legendary they made it, the better, Felix thought. A grand finish to a mad life.

  He welcomed it.

  A moment later they chopped their way through to von Volgen and Plaschke-Miesner’s lines, and were nearly attacked by the terrified spearmen who faced them. Felix could see by the men’s faces and their ragged line that their initial discipline was fading fast. If there had been anywhere to run, they would have broken. There wasn’t, so they fought on, but hopelessly, mechanically, knowing — as Felix knew — that they were only prolonging the end.

  Desperate fights raged to either side of them as the five companions slipped through the spear ranks to the inside of the square. To the left, Felix could see Lord von Volgen leading his knights, his eyes mad with battle lust as he wheeled his horse and slashed at Gargorath. To the right, Lord Plaschke-Miesner, his helmet
gone and his pretty face hideously marred by a cut that showed his back teeth, fought a pack of blue-daubed beastmen with a half-dozen young knights at his back. Further on, one of the towering, tree-felling minotaurs was sweeping its man-high axe through the ranks of a sword company and killing handfuls with every swing.

  Gotrek started towards Gargorath, growling low in his throat. “Time to finish what I started,” he said.

  “Snorri wants to fight the big one,” said Snorri, turning towards the massive minotaur.

  “Not if I get there first,” said Rodi, hurrying after the old slayer and trying to get ahead of him.

  Felix knew where he should be, and followed Gotrek. Kat came too. But as they moved down the back of the spear line to reach von Volgen, Felix saw a familiar figure fighting at the head of a sword company that was retreating hastily before a press of beastmen. “Sir Teobalt!” Felix cried.

  The gaunt knight was unable to fall back as fast as his terrified companions, and he was in danger of being surrounded. Felix and Kat pushed through the ranks of the fleeing swordsmen and ran to him.

  The old templar was wheezing terribly as they fell in to either side of him, and seemed to be favouring his right leg. A heavy axe blow from a beast splintered his shield, sending him stumbling back, and he barely turned a spear thrust from another with his sword.

  Felix stabbed at the axe-wielding gor while Kat swung at the head of the second. Felix’s beastman turned on him, snarling, and the axe blade crashed against Karaghul’s crossguard, nearly driving the sword back into his face.

  It was reprieve enough. Teobalt thrust forwards with his long sword and drove it through the beastman’s neck. Felix hacked through its ribs. It fell and he turned to the other beast.

  Kat had left her axe in its back, and was dodging away from the questing point of its spear. Teobalt backhanded the thing with an off-balance slash and Felix sliced through its hamstrings. It fell shrieking, and Kat rolled aside and retrieved her axe.

  The old templar fell against Felix, sucking air in great gasps. “Thank… thank you, Herr Jaeger,” he said. “I have not the… breath I once had.”

  “Keep your feet, sir,” said Felix, trying to walk him back to the sword line as he lashed out at encroaching beasts. “We must get you to safety.”

  Kat put Sir Teobalt’s sword arm over her shoulder and they carried him back through the line, shoving the swordsmen aside.

  Sir Teobalt groaned as they set him down behind. “There is no safety. We will not… leave this place, thanks to those two… young fools.”

  “Why did they attack like this?” asked Kat, opening her canteen and giving it to him. “It was madness.”

  “Madness?” said Teobalt after he had taken a drink. “More like possession. I’ve never seen the like. One moment they stared at the flashes on the hill, biting their hands in fear like the poltroons they are. Then, when the bright light went out and the thunderclap came, they started raging like berserks, screaming for the attack to be sounded and howling for the blood of the beasts.” He shook his head. “I urged them to wait for von Kotzebue, or at least hold to a defensible position, but they would have none of it, and led their knights in at a gallop, leaving all the rest to follow as they might.” He spat on the body of a dead beastman. “Never have I seen lords show such flagrant disregard for the lives of their troops.”

  To the west, Felix heard Gotrek’s roar and looked up. The Slayer was charging Gargorath’s retinue from the rear as the black-furred war-leader continued to trade blows with von Volgen. Gargorath looked back as his lieutenants screamed and fell, and von Volgen took advantage, hacking at the war-leader’s neck with all his might. Had Gargorath stood still, it would have been a clean strike, but the beast lunged at the Slayer, enraged, and von Volgen’s blade only glanced off his steel and gold armour, leaving the young lord half off his saddle and overbalanced.

  With an annoyed bray, Gargorath lashed out behind him with the bird-headed axe. Von Volgen was fighting to stay on his horse and could not defend himself. The evil weapon ripped through his armour and bit deep into his chest. Felix shivered as he heard the axe scream like a vulture and saw its sapphire eyes glow bright blue. Von Volgen shrieked and clawed the air as the notched beak of the axe seemed to inhale the life out of him. The young lord’s eyes collapsed into their sockets like dried peas and his face grew hollow and gaunt.

  “Sigmar preserve us,” said Teobalt, making the sign of the hammer.

  “It eats what it kills,” whispered Kat, her eyes wide with horror.

  “And feeds its master,” gagged Felix, staring aghast.

  As they watched, the blue glow from the axe’s eyes spread across Gargorath’s body and his myriad wounds knit together as if they had never been. Only the gash on his snout and the severed horn that Gotrek had given him did not heal, but all the rest were gone. He appeared at full strength again.

  “Filthy magic,” Felix heard Gotrek shout as he swung at the huge war-leader. “I’ll give you a cut you won’t recover from.”

  Gargorath ripped the vulture-headed axe from von Volgen’s chest and blocked Gotrek’s attack with deafening clang. The fight was on. Behind them, von Volgen toppled from his horse, nothing more than parchment-covered skeleton in armour, as his knights wailed and cursed and called his name.

  “I must go to Gotrek,” said Felix, standing.

  But before he could take a step, a handful of beastmen broke through a line of spearmen to their left, roaring in triumph and attacking a company of unprepared archers who had been firing over the spear company’s heads.

  “Shore up! Shore up!” came a sergeant’s cry, and Felix and Kat started forwards to help close the hole before any more gors could enter the square.

  But Sir Teobalt stopped Felix and pointed at the beast-man who led those who had smashed the line — a huge goat-headed gor that fought in a battered breastplate and a filthy loincloth made of some heavy material. Not so different than the rest, but what set the monster apart from ten thousand others was its weapon, a thick wooden club with a sword stuck sideways through it like a spike. Felix blinked. The sword was on fire, its flames blackening the wood of the club.

  “The beast wears the armour of Baron Orenstihl, the grand master of the Order of the Fiery Heart,” said Teobalt. “And that which it has driven through its club is the Sword of Righteous Flame. And the cloth belted around its waist is our banner.” The old templar fought to his feet and stood tall, readying his sword and shield. “If the beast has stolen these things, I will have my revenge upon it. If the beast is Baron Orenstihl himself, I will put his poor tortured soul to rest.”

  And with that, Teobalt charged at the gor and its followers as they pressed the archers back against the nervous mass of abandoned cavalry mounts that strained and squealed behind them.

  “Wait, Sir Teobalt!” called Felix, racing after the limping knight with Kat at his side. “We will help you.”

  “No!” said Teobalt. “This is my fight alone.” Felix gave Kat a look and she nodded in agreement. They continued after Teobalt. The old templar was going to get their help whether he liked it or not. “Grand Master Orenstihl!” cried Teobalt as they neared the melee.

  The big gor turned from the retreating archers, its black eyes glaring, though Felix couldn’t tell whether it recognised the name or was just responding to the noise.

  “If it be you that wear yon sacred banner,” said the old templar, striding towards it, “then lower your club and let me free you from your curse.”

  The beastman cocked its head, as if confused, and dim recognition clouded its goatish face.

  “It is you,” quavered Teobalt. “Sigmar save us.”

  “I prayed to Sigmrr,” snarled the beastman as Teobalt came on. “He wss weak! He did not save me!” He raised the club with the burning sword stuck through it. “Mrr changrr is strongrr!”

  “We shall see,” said Teobalt and rushed to meet him bellowing a prayer.

  Orenstihl roared a r
esponse and a few of his gors turned from pursuing the archers to see what threatened their leader. Felix and Kat ran to block them as Teobalt and the bestial templar slammed together, swinging hard. The gor’s sword-pierced club smashed against the old knight’s blade with the force of an avalanche, and Felix thought the fight was over before it had begun. But Teobalt had been a knight for more years than Felix had been alive. He knew something of swordplay. He gave way before the blow, letting it take his sword around, then came up over the top of his shield and hacked down into Orenstihl’s shoulder, chopping through his pauldron and finding flesh.

  The other gors howled with fury and surged forwards to help the corrupted templar. Felix blocked a spear thrust aimed straight for Teobalt’s head. Kat hamstrung a beast who was raising a mace.

  Felix cast a swift look around as he and Kat fought to keep the knight from being flanked. Things looked grim. Beastmen were pushing back a spear company to their right, as their captain screamed, “Hold the line! Hold the line!” as his soldiers tossed away their weapons and fled. Beyond that, a dozen gors tore Lord Plaschke-Miesner from his saddle as he slashed weakly at them. Near him, Rodi stood over the body of Snorri Nosebiter, defending it against a circle of beastmen. Was the old slayer dead? The massive corpse of a minotaur lay beside him, its skull a red crater, so if he was, he had gone as a slayer should. To the left, Gotrek cursed as Gargorath’s axe fed on another soldier and restored its master’s wounds once again.

  The crunch of a heavy impact brought Felix’s head around. Sir Teobalt was staggering back, his shield split in two, as Orenstihl advanced on him. With a curse, Felix disengaged from his opponent and lunged at the beast-templar, gashing his shoulder. He grunted and swiped the sword-pierced club at him without turning from Teobalt. Felix threw himself to the ground, the flaming blade flashing an inch above his head.