“Felix!” cried Kat.
Orenstihl’s gors stabbed down at him. He flung himself aside inches ahead of their points. Kat hauled him to his feet and they danced back, blocking desperately as the beasts hacked at them.
“Hold on, Sir Teobalt!” Felix cried, trying to go around the gors and get back to the templar.
Suddenly a handful of arrows thwacked into the beastmen and they screamed and twisted. The archers had rallied!
Kat cheered, and she and Felix cut down two of the pin-cushioned beasts before they could recover. Kat shattered the teeth of a third with her axe and it fell back spitting blood.
Together she and Felix leapt the dying gors and ran for Sir Teobalt. They were seconds too late. With a sickening thud, the beast-templar slammed his club into the old knight’s breastplate and folded him up like a rag doll.
“Sir Teobalt!” cried Felix.
The knight’s sword fell from his limp fingers as Orenstihl lifted the club, and Teobalt with it. Felix gaped, his stomach churning as he saw that a foot of flaming steel jutted from the back of Teobalt’s cuirass. The beast had impaled him on the club’s sword-spike, and was now raising it to shake him off.
“Sir Teobalt!” cried Kat. “No!”
Felix charged forwards with her and slashed at Orenstihl’s head as she hacked at his knees. The changed templar stumbled back, wrenching the club’s burning blade from Teobalt’s body, and nearly decapitating Kat with a backswing. She ducked and dodged behind his legs. Felix shouted to the archers. “Shoot it! Shoot the beast!”
But unfortunately the corrupted templar was too closely engaged with Kat for them to shoot. In fact, the damned girl had leapt on the beastman’s back, and was clinging to his breastplate with one hand while trying to bury her remaining axe in his skull with the other!
Orenstihl roared and reached for her. She hacked at his fingers and sent one spinning. The beast howled, but still caught her wrist and flung her down on the ground in front of him. She landed hard on Sir Teobalt’s body and bounced to the dirt, dazed, her axe flying from her hand as the beastman raised his terrible club to strike her.
“No, you cursed goat!” cried Felix, running forwards and slashing for the thing’s unprotected waist.
Orenstihl turned his swing and the flaming sword-spike whipped towards him like the point of a scythe. Felix blocked the blade, but the end of the club glanced off his shoulder and slammed him to the dirt beside Kat.
“Are…?” he said, unable to draw a breath to finish the question.
“I’m…” She stopped and nodded, also unable to breathe.
They crabbed back from the beast-templar as he advanced, then scrambled to their feet as he swung at them.
“Now!” shouted Felix, glancing towards the archers. “Shoot it!”
But the bowmen had turned to fire on another fight and didn’t hear.
Kat made a desperate lunge for Orenstihl’s ankles, but his club swung down and she dived aside, crying out.
“Kat!” called Felix. Was she hurt? “Keep away from her!” He slashed at the beast-knight, trying to keep him from turning to finish her.
It worked too well. Orenstihl gave Felix all his attention, swinging the pierced club at him in an impenetrable X pattern that smashed away Felix’s every attempt to stab through. Each blow felt like it was breaking his arms, and forced him back and back.
Then, just as Felix felt he couldn’t raise his sword to meet another strike, the corrupted templar cried out and stumbled, throwing his left arm out to one side for balance. Felix took the opening, and stabbed him in the armpit through the gap between his vambrace and his breastplate. Orenstihl howled and raised his club for a last strike, but something flashed between his legs from behind and buried itself in his crotch with a sickening chunk.
Felix pulled his sword from the monster’s ribs and jumped back as he whimpered, then toppled forwards onto his face. Kat was standing behind him, barehanded. Her axe was sticking up from beneath the beast-templar’s loincloth like a wooden tail.
“Well struck,” said Felix, swallowing. It was the first time he had ever felt sympathy for a beastman. She gave him a weary grin as she recovered the axe. They hurried to Teobalt, and Felix was surprised to see that the old templar still clung to life.
He lifted his trembling head, looking blindly around. “Is… is it slain?”
“Aye, Sir Teobalt,” said Felix. “It is dead.”
“And the banner? The sword?”
Felix looked back, grimacing. The banner was soaked in gore and caked in filth. The sword was stuck up to the hilt through a heavy wooden club and bent half along the blade. A more degraded set of regalia Felix could not imagine. Nonetheless, he went back and cu the belt that held the banner to the beastman’s body, while Kat grasped the heavy club that held the sword and dragged it back.
“I’m afraid they are… beyond repair,” said Felix, returning to kneel beside the dying templar. He held the banner out to him as Kat turned the club so that the hilt of the sword was at his side.
Teobalt shook his head as he clutched the banner and gripped the sword. “That matters not. They are returned. The honour of the order is restored.”
He coughed wetly, spraying blood, then drew a painful breath and looked up at Felix with his pale blue eyes. “The Order of the Fiery Heart is… grateful, Herr Jaeger. You have done well. You are… worthy of Karaghul,” he patted Felix’s arm with a delicate hand. “All is well,” he said. “All is well.”
Then he laid his head back on the hard ground, folded his arms across the banner, and allowed himself to die.
Felix and Kat bowed their heads over him.
“Morr watch over you, sir,” said Kat.
“Sigmar welcome you,” said Felix.
A thunder of bestial hooves interrupted their prayers. A company of spearmen had broken, and a rush of beastmen was charging into the square. Felix and Kat jumped up, then tried to lift Sir Teobalt’s body and drag it back. There was no time. The beasts were too swift. Felix and Kat turned and ran with the fleeing archers in amongst the herd of screaming, rearing cavalry horses behind them.
Felix looked around as he shoved between the surging beasts. The square was close to collapsing on all sides. The two young lords were dead. The companies were shattered, and the beasts were breaking through everywhere. The day was lost. It would be over in minutes now. He searched for Rodi again and could only see a heap of beastman corpses taller than Kat. He turned in Gotrek’s direction and saw the Slayer still battling Gargorath while a scrum of beastmen and von Volgen’s men-at-arms fought all around them. The black-furred war-leader was staggering from a dozen wounds. The Slayer looked little better. “We must help him,” said Kat.
Felix shook his head. “He will want no help. But I’d like to be at his side at the end.”
“Then let’s go to him,” said Kat.
Felix looked at her smiling, bloodied face, then out at the roiling sea of slaughter that was between them and the Slayer. They would die in the attempt — but on the other hand, they would die standing here just as certainly.
He smiled back. “Aye, let’s.”
He pulled her to him and kissed her as they were knocked this way and that amid the surging horses. Though tinged with blood and dirt, it was as sweet as any kiss he had ever tasted. They broke apart.
“See you in Sigmar’s halls,” said Felix.
Kat grinned. “I’ll race you there.” With twin battle cries they charged from between the horses and dived into the press of beasts and men, sword and axe whirling. Felix cut through a beastman’s neck on his first stroke, and gutted another on his second. Kat severed the spine of a third. It was easy to fight when you had no fear, when you knew the outcome was inevitable, no matter what you did. A strange, savage joy welled up in Felix’s chest as he fought on. Perhaps, he thought, this is what the slayers felt. Perhaps this was why they longed so fiercely for battle.
Ahead of him, through the mad jumble of murde
r that the battle had become, Felix saw Gargorath knock Gotrek back with a brutal blow, then sink his axe into the back of one of his own gors. The surprised beastman screamed, but not as loudly as the vulture-headed axe, which drew its life force from it and fed it to Gargorath.
As Felix and Kat stole horrified glances through their own fights, the war-leader’s wounds once again closed up, and he was as whole as he had been at the start of the fight. Gotrek staggered up to face him again, as weary as Felix had ever seen him, and bleeding from a half-dozen deep wounds, but his single eye still blazing with fury. Gargorath was his exact opposite — for though his body was once again unmarked, and he still fought with unnatural energy, as he strode forwards, his glowing blue eyes registered fear and uncertainty. It was clear that he had expected the fight to be over long ago.
Then, with alarming suddenness, it was over. Felix caught a flash of inspiration in Gotrek’s eye as he blocked another of Gargorath’s brutal slashes. The Slayer backed away, feigning weakness, then, as the war-leader slashed again, Gotrek turned his axe so that the blade met the haft of the daemon weapon edge on. With an inhuman shriek and a blinding flash of blue light, the head of the vulture-headed axe was severed from its haft and spun away to bite the bloody ground with its glowing eyes fading to black.
Gargorath was left holding a sizzling stick.
With a triumphant roar, Gotrek charged in, bringing his axe up in an overhand swing that bit into the beast-man’s gold and steel breastplate so deeply that the rune-inscribed head disappeared entirely. Gargorath grunted and staggered back, tearing the axe from Gotrek’s grip. He looked down at the weapon, blinking stupidly, then, with the slow majesty of a stone tower collapsing, toppled backwards to land flat on his back. Gotrek chuckled, than stepped up onto the dead beast’s massive chest, levered his axe free and spat in his face. “Heal that, you overgrown sheep,” he rasped.
The other beasts had fallen back from Gotrek at the death of their invincible leader, but now they surged in again, howling for his blood. He roared in response and rushed to meet them.
Kat and Felix raced to him and fought at his side, still in the blissful trance of nothing-left-to-lose — though Felix was slightly sad for the Slayer. He almost wished that Gargorath had killed the Slayer, for it was certainly a grander doom to die fighting a great leader then to be laid low by the faceless numbers of the endless herd. He also grieved for Snorri, who would not now be supping I in Grimnir’s halls, but instead would wander as a forlorn ghost for the rest of eternity. But these were passing concerns, as all his being was taken up with the sheer physical joy of block and parry, strike and counterstrike. He took a terrible cut on the leg, but didn’t feel it. A club numbed his offhand. He didn’t feel that either. He was content to go down fighting in the middle of the great swirl of battle, knowing that he went with his friends at his side.
Then, at the edge of his consciousness, he heard a boom, and then another boom, and then a blare of horns and a roar of voices all raised in unison. He killed a beastman who looked away from him, craning its neck to find the source of the sounds.
For a moment, Felix could not conceive of what was happening. Since he had raced down into the battle from Tarnhalt’s Crown, the scope of his world had been no more than the beasts around him and the short time he had to fight them, so this strange intrusion of distant sounds was as alien to him as air would be to a fish. But then, above the rising roar, he finally understood the words the far-off voices were shouting.
“Von Kotzebue! Von Kotzebue! The Empire! The Empire!”
TWENTY-TWO
It struck Felix as funny how quickly all his fear and pain and worry for the future came back with the knowledge that help had arrived. Hope was an evil thing. Without hope he had been at peace, knowing that his death was inevitable. With hope, suddenly he was desperate to stay alive and keep alive those that were nearest and dearest to him. Suddenly his heart was hammering with anxiety, and his limbs aching with fatigue. Could he stay alive long enough for von Kotzebue’s army to reach them? Could he protect Kat? Could Snorri be saved? Was the old slayer still alive?
The wounds that hadn’t troubled him when he knew that they were only momentary precursors to death now nearly crippled him with their agony. He felt faint and sick and weak, and wasn’t sure he could continue to fight — something that hadn’t mattered in the least only seconds before.
Over the horned heads of the beastmen that surrounded him and Kat and Gotrek, Felix saw columns of ranked cavalry pouring down over the hills to the east and west, with wide ranks of spearmen racing down after them, snare drums rattling and banners waving as cannons and mortars belched fire over their heads. A great cheer rose from the throats of the beleaguered men in the centre of the thronging beastmen at the sight, and Felix and Kat raised their voices as well.
Felix couldn’t see the impact when the two prongs of von Kotzebue’s army slammed into the flanks of the herd, but he could feel it and hear it — a heavy shuddering crash that shook the ground and caused a ripple effect in the beastmen, like a boulder being thrown into a swamp.
All around Felix and Kat, von Volgen’s and Plaschke-Miesner’s soldiers and sergeants were calling encouragement to each other and fighting with renewed vigour.
“Hold on, lads!” cried one. “Help’s on the way!”
“Saved, by Sigmar!” called another.
“Look sharp, now!” shouted a third. “Don’t want those damned Middenlanders seeing us look beat, do we?”
“All be over soon,” said a fourth.
Of course, there was a lot more fighting to be done before it was all truly over, but at least the tide had turned. Felix and Kat and Gotrek lined up with a company of swordsmen, and they presented a united front against the panicking beasts.
For a time, the gors fought savagely against the three fronts that were ranged against them, and hundreds of Von Kotzebue’s men fell after the initial charge, as well as hundreds more in the deteriorating square of troops trapped in their centre, but after less than a quarter of an hour, as withering volleys of arrow fire ate away at their edges, and the spears of the infantry and the lances of the knights pressed in on them on both sides, the beasts finally could take no more and turned and fled south, clawing and killing one another in their desperation to be away.
After that it was butchers’ work, with von Kotzebue’s lances riding down fleeing packs of beasts, while his infantry closed the jaws of their pincer movement to catch the rest in the middle. It was not easy work, however. In fact, this was the hottest fighting of the battle for the survivors in the remains of the square, for the beastmen in their terror fought with the frenzy of trapped rats, and tried to tear a hole through the Empire lines in a desperate attempt to escape. There were a terrible few minutes where many men who had thought salvation was at hand were felled by flailing horns and clubs and axes. But finally von Kotzebue’s men cut down the last few gors and the rescuers met the survivors in the centre of the blood-soaked and eerily silent field.
“Well met, cousins,” said a greatsword captain in blue and grey who stood beneath von Kotzebue’s banner.
“Aye,” said a Talabecland sergeant. “If a little late.”
The captain ignored his comment and looked around. “Do Lord von Volgen and Lord Plaschke-Miesner still stand?”
“Yer a bit late for that too,” said a voice from the ranks.
“But too soon for me,” muttered Gotrek under his breath, as the conversation between the armies continued. “Another few minutes and I would have found my doom.”
Felix rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry you were disappointed.”
Then his pain caught up with him and he groaned and looked for a place to sit and bind his wounds. Kat did the same, as did the rest of the army. All around them the soldiers sank down in weariness and pain, calling for surgeons and drinking from canteens and flasks. The cries of the wounded and dying were pitiful to hear.
Then a deeper voice boomed over the res
t. “Gurnisson! Here!”
Gotrek, Felix and Kat looked up. Rodi was waving a torch at them from beside the pile of beastman corpses he and Snorri had made. He held Snorri’s warhammer in his hands. Gotrek grunted, then stumped heavily towards him. Felix and Kat exchanged a look, then rose again and limped after him. Felix was certain they would find Snorri dead, and was saddened by it. What a terrible irony that only the one who could least afford to die had perished.
“Is he dead?” asked Gotrek, as they approached.
Rodi shook his head and Felix breathed a sigh of relief.
The young slayer was covered in gashes from head to foot, the worst being his left cheek, which was opened to the bone, but he seemed to be unbothered by any of them. “He lives,” he said. “But I broke my axe on a beast-man’s skull, and have need of yours.”
Without further explanation he turned and crawled up and over the ring of dead beastmen, using Snorri’s hammer to balance himself. They followed, wobbling on the loose and uncertain ground.
In the centre of the ring lay Snorri, alive, but only barely. He was whiter than any dwarf Felix had ever seen, and bruised and cut all over.
He grinned weakly when he saw them. “Snorri got the big bull,” he said.
“Aye, Father Rustskull,” said Rodi, pointing with the head of the warhammer. “But the big bull got you too.”
Felix blanched as he looked where Rodi indicated. Snorri’s right leg was a mangled mess from just below the knee — a tangle of shredded meat and shattered bone. His foot was missing entirely. A tourniquet had been tied above the knee to stop the flow of blood, but there was already too much on the ground.
“The minotaur hit him with its axe,” said Rodi. “But it was dull from chopping trees. He needs a good, clean cut.”
Gotrek nodded. Felix winced, though he knew it had to be done.
Gotrek wiped his axe as clean as he could on the shirt of a dead soldier, then took Rodi’s torch and held it under the cutting edge until both sides were black with carbon, then handed the torch to Kat.
[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer Page 32