Gotrek and Felix - Road of Skulls

by Josh Reynolds

  Canto glanced at his fellow Chaos champion. Yan grinned at him. ‘I know you, Unsworn. Always seeking the advantage, looking to make allies. You’re here to get Hrolf’s replacement, whoever it is, on your side.’

  ‘And is that so unheard of?’ a deep voice gurgled. Both champions turned as two stunted, broad shapes stumped towards them. The face of the first was obscured by a featureless iron and brass mask; a heavy black beard, curled and bound into worm-like plaits, hung below it, fanning out across a deep chest hidden within a heavy cuirass of blackshard iron. The Chaos dwarf wore the heavy armour of the Infernal Guard, and carried a large axe. The axe’s cruel blade was wreathed in runes of torment and death and it steamed and hissed as if it were fresh plucked from the forge.

  It was the second who had spoken. Unlike the first, his face was uncovered, revealing cruel features the colour of fire-blackened stone to the world. Thick tusks jutted from his mouth and small horns protruded from his broad brow over eyes that glowed like forge-struck sparks. A wide, spade-shaped beard, divided into oiled and curled ringlets, jutted from his thick chin. More disturbing than the tusks were the thin cracks that ran through the flesh of his face, and the red light that seeped from them. He wore heavy-looking armour covered in strange runes and grotesque gargoyle faces. Khorreg the Hell-Worker, Daemonsmith of Zharr Naggrund, smiled at the two Chaos champions, displaying teeth the colour and shape of obsidian shards. ‘Indeed, I had feared that none of you possessed even the slightest modicum of cunning, manling,’ the Chaos dwarf sorcerer croaked, nodding to Canto.

  Khorreg was the leader of the small party of dawi zharr whom Garmr had hired for use of their war machines. The Hell-Worker had accompanied the bulk of said engines to Karak Kadrin to oversee their proper testing in battle, leaving two of his assistants to oversee the rest with Garmr. The silent, masked dwarf beside him was called Khul, Canto thought, though he’d never heard the Ironsworn speak.

  Canto had known Khorreg for longer than was entirely pleasant to consider. The creature was not a friend, never that, but familiarity formed its own bonds. It was Khorreg who had crafted his armour, and Khorreg with whom he’d bartered slaves for weapons and devices. And it was Khorreg whom he’d saved in a moment of black cunning at the Battle of Seven Towers, when the vast fortress-leviathans of the dawi zharr had been swept aside by the daemon-princes of the Arashem Conflagration. Canto had acted as Garmr’s envoy to Zharr Naggrund, bargaining with his old acquaintance for use of the war machines that even now pounded the walls of the dwarf fortress.

  Canto returned Khorreg’s nod. ‘You have it?’ he asked. Khorreg grinned and extended the cloth-wrapped bundle he held. Canto took it and quickly unwrapped it, exposing a black-bladed sword that glistened with vile runes and sigils. ‘Beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘A toy,’ Khorreg said, mouth twisting in what was supposed to be a smile. ‘Barely worth the effort, Unsworn.’

  ‘Nonetheless, you have my thanks, Khorreg,’ Canto said gravely, settling the sword in his sheath. It fit perfectly, and he grunted, happy to have a replacement for the sword he’d lost in the shaft.

  ‘It’s not your thanks I want, Unsworn,’ Khorreg said. ‘The second of my debts to you is settled.’

  Canto inclined his head, ignoring Yan’s look of suspicious curiosity, and turned back to the fight. Gurn was on his back, jerking and choking as Harald gnawed at his throat. The gods had blessed Harald with an unholy resilience and a strength that rivalled Hrolf’s own. Harald rose from Gurn’s twitching body and raised a bloody fist in triumph. Then he pointed a crooked finger at the next challenger, a thin, slim-muscled creature called Alfven, whose apparent youth was belied by the cold, calculating look in his unnaturally bright eyes. ‘Come, stripling,’ he hissed, gnashing his teeth. ‘Come get in my belly.’

  ‘All the better to have your heart, Lean one,’ Alfven purred, stepping forwards lightly. His armour was less bulky than that of his fellows, though equally baroque and, it was said, oiled with the unspoiled blood of virgins, though where he’d found them nobody could say. Long hair, greased with blood and offal, hung down his back, tied into a single serpentine lock. His sword hummed like a wasp as it sliced up across the palm of Harald’s too-wide hand as the latter groped for him.

  ‘I’ll bet two horses and a hound on the pretty one,’ Yan said gleefully, rubbing his scarred hands together. Canto said nothing. He had already calculated Alfven’s chances. Harald was a brute, like his late unlamented master, and lacked the finesse and skill of his current opponent, though he did outmatch him in raw strength. But strength alone did not make one the strongest, and only the strongest could lead a warband within Garmr’s horde.

  But, determining who was the strongest was never a simple thing, nor a quick one. Chaos warbands were disorganized things, little more than ambulatory battles where everyone happened to be moving in the same direction. Scouts had reported that tribesmen had already begun killing each other in the crags around the hold, fighting over territories not yet earned. Such was the way of it, and where one group was annihilated, two more waited to take their place.

  Canto shook his head. There was still a wall between them and the object of their siege and their forces were being bled white the longer the dwarfs held out. He needed Hrolf’s men, now more than ever; especially considering that the Dogsson had gotten himself buried in his own trap. Canto had barely made it out alive. He touched the mark on his cuirass where the dwarf’s axe had gouged him. He felt no shame in his flight from the dwarf, nor any regret. The dwarf had been mad, obviously. Practically foaming at the mouth, and that axe… There had been something about that axe that set his hackles to bristling. It hadn’t been a normal weapon, and the dwarf who’d wielded it as if it weighed no more than a feather had been no normal dwarf.

  Canto knew about Slayers. He’d even killed one, once. They barked and howled like broken-backed wolves and fought like devils, but they were mortal, and they died easily enough. But that one hadn’t. He was something else, something that had terrified Canto to his very core.

  He knew enough to listen to his fear and to flee when the fight turned against him, even if flight meant hurling himself into the void. It had only been by sheerest luck that he had slammed into something solid and managed to climb back out into the light.

  Khorreg had seen his gesture, and stepped closer. The Chaos dwarf smelled of burning metal and ash. ‘Proper blackshard iron, this,’ he rasped, running stubby, probing fingers across the mark. ‘To mark it thus must have required great strength and magic, or both.’

  Canto grunted. ‘Yes. He’s the one who did for Hrolf, I’d wager. Little one-eyed maniac.’

  Khorreg grunted. ‘One eye,’ he murmured. ‘An axe, was it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Canto said, stepping away from him. ‘Quite a big, unpleasant one.’

  ‘The best ones always are,’ Khorreg chuckled, grinning nastily. ‘Oh, that’s unfortunate.’

  Canto looked and saw Harald sink to his knees, his thick arms held tight to his belly in a doomed attempt to hold his guts in. Alfven took his head a moment later and gave the still upright body a contemptuous kick. The handsome champion spread his arms and flashed a smug smile. ‘Come, who will challenge me? You, Skrall, or perhaps you, Hrodor?’ he asked, gesturing to two of the other champions.

  Skrall wore a horned, featureless helm and his body was twisted with overlapping scaly plates the colour of dried blood that seemed to grow through the gaps in his armour. Both of his arms terminated in festering, boil-covered bone spikes that glistened with blood and serum. Hrodor was comparatively normal looking, clad in heavy armour festooned with spikes and ridges, and he wore no helm, exposing a hairless head studded with dozens of iron nails that formed strange, nauseating patterns.

  ‘The gods are watching us,’ Alfven said, smiling widely. ‘Bow or fight.’

  Both of the remaining champions stepped back after sharing a look. It was a wise move, Canto knew. Alfven was an old hand at challenges such as t
his, and the Blood God doted on him. Alfven laid the flat of his sword across his shoulder and turned, eyes blazing with infernal pride. Yan gave a wordless shout of encouragement.

  Canto moved, quicker than any of them could react. He lunged forwards, one hand on his sword hilt. It sprang out of its sheath even as he slid past Alfven. The handsome champion lurched forwards, shocked. He staggered around, mouth working, his hand trembling as he reached up to touch the thin red line that grew around his neck. Then, with a ripping sound, Alfven’s head toppled from his shoulders. Canto twitched the blood from his new sword and sheathed it.

  Yan stared at him in shock. Khorreg wheezed laughter and clapped his hands. Canto looked at the remaining champions. ‘I am Canto the Unsworn. I serve no god save ambition, no master save necessity. Follow me or you will be served thus.’ He kicked aside Alfven’s head as he turned and rejoined the others. Yan frowned at him.

  ‘You cannot do that! Alfven won his challenges! The Dogsson’s warband was his by right.’

  ‘Unless you’re planning to challenge my actions, Yan, I’ll thank you to shut your mouth and rejoin your men. We have a fortress to take and we have wasted enough time with this spear-shaking ritual nonsense,’ Canto grated, not looking at him. ‘Garmr has charged us to take this fortress and I will do so, with your help or without it.’

  Yan growled wordlessly and strode off, one hand on his falchion, leaving Canto with Khorreg and Khul. Behind them, Canto’s new lieutenants fell to squabbling over the armour and weapons of their dead companions. Soon enough, Alfven’s fine armour and sword would decorate the frame of another warrior, as would the gear of Gurn and Harald. Canto left them to it.

  ‘Well done, Unsworn,’ Khorreg said, his weird eyes glittering with malice and cunning. ‘You are cunning indeed. Almost as cunning as my people.’

  ‘High praise indeed,’ Canto said in a tone that implied anything but. If Khorreg took offence he gave no sign. Instead he gave another gurgling chuckle and he turned his gaze towards the fortress keep. Horns blew as Kung pulled the horde back. ‘One wall left.’

  ‘There will be nothing left, if you let me unleash my pets,’ Khorreg said. Canto grunted at the mention of ‘pets’. The Chaos dwarf was talking about the siege-giants he’d brought from Zharr Naggrund. The idiot brutes had been the work of the daemonsmiths of Zharr Naggrund; Garmr had traded a thousand captives for each of the beasts, and they were, next to the Hell-Worker’s war-engines, some of the Gorewolf’s most prized weapons.

  ‘And then you can get your engines in position to attack the hold proper?’ Canto asked. Khorreg smiled cruelly.

  ‘If your warriors can hold the bridge, we can knock down our cousins’ paltry walls. But we must do so quickly. If they have time to fall back, they will destroy the bridges that lead to the hold, and your army will be trapped on this side, now that the Underway is lost to us.’ Khorreg looked at him. Canto nodded. The Chaos dwarf was right, of course. With the explosion that had killed Hrolf, they had lost access to the Underway. Barely a score of men had escaped the subsequent collapse of the caverns, and they were still down there, as far as he knew. There was no way to retrieve them, and he wasn’t inclined to waste time doing so in any event.

  It would take too much time to burrow through those collapsed caverns, time they didn’t have. If Garmr were here, perhaps, but he wasn’t and there simply weren’t enough men to simultaneously see to clearing the tunnels as well as taking the walls of the outer keep. If they lost the bridge as well, the siege was as good as done. The dwarfs could sit behind their walls forever, and Garmr’s forces would tear themselves apart out of boredom.

  ‘Bring your pets up, Hell-Worker,’ Canto said. ‘That fortress must fall.’

  Baragor’s Watch,

  Karak Kadrin

  The palace occupied part of the central plaza of the inner keep. Like the rest of Baragor’s Watch, it was a thing of hard angles and rough artisanry. It had been built as a fortress within a fortress, rather than a place of opulence and comfort. It reminded everyone who entered that the fortress was the first line of defence from any assault from the north. Gotrek had mentioned once that the king used it for greeting guests away from the sacred confines of the hold proper. Here, Ungrim Ironfist could meet with foreign dignitaries, merchant-princes and the like, without risking the secrets of Karak Kadrin.

  The throne room was large, almost grandiose in its sweeping, vaulted ceiling. Pillars lined the entryway and led the eye to the throne of the Slayer King. That the king had chosen to meet them here, rather than someplace more sensible given the circumstances, told Felix that whatever was going on, it had more weight than he’d first thought.

  Around the throne was arrayed a small bodyguard; not Slayers these, but elite hammerers, as the dwarfs called them. Heavily armoured and wielding two-handed war-hammers, they looked capable of taking on twice their weight in opponents. Felix was momentarily bemused by the thought of acting in such a capacity for a king who had taken the Slayer’s Oath. Were the bodyguards there for his protection, or to keep him from getting himself killed? Was there any difference?

  The Slayer King was a brooding, squat figure, seated upon a throne of stone, gnarled fingers tapping out a martial rhythm on the armrests. Like his son, Ungrim Ironfist was a Slayer, though in deference to his title and position, he wore a weighty crown which cast some slight shadow on his heavy features. His nose was thin and hooked, like the beaks of the eagles that inhabited the peaks and crags of the mountains, and his eyes burned with a feverish intelligence. When he spoke, his voice was as deep and as resonant as the Mourning Bells of the Grand Temple of Morr in Altdorf.

  ‘Greetings, Gotrek, son of Gurni. Greetings, Felix Jaeger,’ Ironfist said. The words and tone were measured and polite, in contrast to Garagrim’s snarling.

  Felix was tempted to bow, but when he saw Gotrek remain standing, he resisted the urge. Instead, he stood just behind the Slayer, his hands at his sides. ‘I am told that we have you to thank for the defence of the Engineers’ Entrance,’ Ironfist went on. ‘Though in an unorthodox fashion,’ he added.

  ‘Good riddance,’ one of the hammerers said. He was as broad as he was tall, and had the heavy white length of his beard tucked into his wide leather belt.

  ‘Snorri, Son of Thungrim,’ Ironfist said, gesturing. ‘He is my hearth-warden and Reckoner. My right hand, even as my son is my left. It is on his counsel that you stand here, Gotrek, son of Gurni. His and that of Oleg Axeson, priest of Grimnir, warden of the temple.’

  ‘Axeson,’ Gotrek muttered, his eye flashing. His knuckles popped as his massive hands clenched.

  ‘Aye, you know him, and he knows you, Gurnisson, and neither of you have much liking for the other, of that I am well aware.’ Ironfist leaned forwards on his throne. ‘But it is because of that dislike that I heeded his words. He asked that we send a messenger to you, before…’ He gestured. As if to emphasize his point, another thunderous boom sounded. The hammerers shifted uneasily. ‘Well, but it seems that won’t be necessary now.’ His eyes glittered. ‘You are here and they are here and it seems the portents were correct.’

  Gotrek blinked and said, ‘Portents?’

  Felix felt a chill sweep through him at the word. He thought he heard something, just at the limits of his hearing. A throaty, purring laugh that demanded he risk a glance. But he saw nothing save the shadows coiling in the spaces between the great pillars. Nonetheless he could not shake the feeling that his every thought and action was being observed.

  ‘Portents and prophecies, Gurnisson, that concern you and us, and the army that currently sheds its foul blood on our walls,’ Ironfist said.

  ‘Where did it come from, if I might be so bold, mighty king? This army, I mean? We heard nothing about it travelling from Stirland,’ Felix said. Rumours travelled fast on the rivers, carried by peddlers and merchants and mercenaries. And Chaos armies were notorious for being less organized military undertakings than natural disasters, spilling over into ne
ighbouring lands like a spreading wildfire. Even this far from the Empire, the rumours of its movements should have been flying fast and thick through frontier towns like Wurtbad.

  ‘Why would you have?’ Garagrim spat. ‘They besiege us, not your precious provinces.’

  Ironfist raised his hand and his son fell silent. He looked at Felix with a measuring gaze. ‘They keep to the crags, these ones,’ he said finally. ‘They do not stray far afield, as such forces are normally wont. They are unusually focused, and on Karak Kadrin. We first got word of them some weeks ago, and we sent a throng to deal with them. In vain, as it turned out. They perished, to a dwarf.’

  Gotrek was silent. Then he nodded. ‘So what’s this got to do with me, then?’

  ‘Everything, unfortunately,’ a deep voice growled. Felix turned.

  The dwarf who’d spoken was as broad as Gotrek and his face looked as if it had been set into storm-clouds, such was the sheer mass of silvery-grey hair that he possessed; though from his features, Felix thought he was too young for it, even for a dwarf. His beard was forked and curved, jutting out like a defensive palisade, and his eyebrows were parapets. He wore thin robes over a heavy, ornate cuirass. From the front of the cuirass, a symbolic representation of Grimnir’s scowling features glared at them. From that, Felix knew he was the priest that Ungrim had mentioned.

  Oleg Axeson matched Grimnir’s scowl when he caught sight of Gotrek. ‘Well, I see you’re still alive,’ he said as he strode past Ungrim’s guards, who made no move to stop him, to join them.

  ‘Not for lack of trying,’ Gotrek grunted.

  ‘Try harder,’ Axeson said.

  Gotrek growled and his axe twitched in his hand. Garagrim stepped forwards, before Gotrek could reply. ‘I have brought him, Axeson, as you asked.’

  ‘I see that, Garagrim,’ Axeson said. Garagrim’s cheek twitched. ‘And you didn’t bring him. He came of his own will, didn’t you?’ Axeson looked at Gotrek, eyes narrowed speculatively.

  Gotrek glowered at Axeson, but said nothing. Uncomfortable, Felix stepped forwards. ‘If I might be so bold, why did you ask King Ironfist to send for us?’