Gotrek and Felix - Road of Skulls

by Josh Reynolds

  As the Chaos marauders moved to meet the organized dwarf attackers in their midst, the Slayers had been given a relatively clear path to the war-engines. They had chopped and bashed their way through anything and anyone that tried to stand in their way, losing individual Slayers along the way. Now only eight remained, but Gotrek was among them, as was Biter, Berengar and a few others that Felix dimly recognized. Garagrim slapped a Chaos marauder aside and he and Felix joined the group as it made its way towards the engines of the Chaos dwarfs.

  ‘Not dead then, manling?’ Gotrek said. ‘I thought I’d lost you there, for a moment.’

  ‘Almost, but not quite,’ Felix said. ‘Garagrim came to my aid,’ he added, somewhat acidly. It rankled a bit whenever Gotrek abandoned him in the middle of a fight to go haring off on his own. The Slayer had saved his life on numerous occasions, but even so, that sum was outnumbered by the times that he’d led or left Felix to situations where he could have easily perished. Gotrek grunted and nodded, as if he’d expected the War-Mourner to do no less. Felix gritted his teeth and turned his attentions to what awaited them.

  Someone had been busy organizing a defence of the war machines. Chaos marauders were arrayed in defensive groups around the mammoth devices, as were the ogre crew. The latter brutes, scarred and beaten, clutched tools rather than weapons, but they looked no less imposing for all of that. Those that weren’t readying themselves to fight were lugging the cannon around to face the gap in the wall. Behind them, a large mortar set into a brutal-looking wheeled chassis gave a rumbling bellow that set Felix’s ears to ringing and nearly knocked him off his feet. Somewhere behind them, more of the fortress was flattened in an explosion of dust and fire.

  ‘Take them,’ Garagrim said, quietly. The Slayers charged and the Chaos marauders came to meet them. The battle was as short as it was brutal. All around them, horns sounded as the dwarf forces in the outer keep swept the disorganized and disarrayed enemy before them. Somewhere along the way, chain of command had broken down in the enemy army, and now individuals and small bands fought not as an army fights, but for survival.

  Felix blocked a sword-blow and gutted his opponent, looking past him towards the cannon as it was finally turned about, its maw dripping with fiery liquid. Gotrek saw it as well and as the cannon belched a stream of liquid fire, the Slayer turned and grabbed Felix, jerking him out of the way. One of the Slayers wasn’t so lucky and his form was consumed in moments by the deadly blast.

  ‘We have to take that blasted thing out,’ Gotrek growled, releasing Felix. With that, the Slayer launched himself towards the cannon and its ogre crew. The two beasts stomped forwards to meet the Slayer, one swinging a hammer, the other reaching out with blistered and blackened hands.

  Felix’s attention was pulled from the fight as he heard the crack of a pistol and felt something tug at his cloak, nearly spinning him around. As he spun, he saw a grinning Chaos dwarf lower the smoking wheel-lock pistol he held and raise a second, this one aimed unerringly at Felix’s breastbone. The Chaos dwarf shouted something in what sounded like a debased form of the dwarf tongue and fired. Felix lunged forwards and felt what he thought was the bullet burn across his back and tug at his cloak and his mail shirt. The Chaos dwarf’s piggy eyes widened and he tossed aside the pistols and reached for the hammer hanging from his belt.

  Felix stabbed at him with Karaghul and the dwarf roared as the blade danced across a bare bicep, creasing the soot-stained flesh with a line of red. The hammer caught Felix a glancing blow on the side, which was enough to knock him from his feet. He rolled aside as the hammer slammed down, cracking stone. He drove his sword up, piercing the brass-hued scale mail that the Chaos dwarf wore. The dwarf grunted and his weight nearly drove Felix to the ground.

  The dwarf cursed and scrabbled at Felix’s throat with his thick fingers. Even with a sword sawing up through his guts, he was determined to throttle Felix. Then, a bloody hand reached down and fixed itself in the Chaos dwarf’s beard and the weight was hauled up off Felix. Gotrek, covered in ogre blood, dragged the Chaos dwarf up and back, tossing the wounded dwarf back onto the stones.

  Gotrek glared down at the wounded creature as the Chaos dwarf tried to staunch the blood pumping from his belly. The latter returned the Slayer’s glare and spat a curse. Gotrek raised his axe, but hesitated. Felix knew that dwarfs were reluctant to take the lives of other dwarfs, but did it extend even to these twisted mockeries? ‘Gotrek,’ he began.

  The axe fell and a bearded head rolled away across the stones.

  The Slayer said nothing, merely turned and glared at the cannon, where it sat untended. ‘It needs to be destroyed, manling. The dawi zharr forge daemons into their engines. It can kill even without the help of a crew.’

  ‘So it can, and so it will, weakling,’ a raspy voice rumbled. ‘My pretty engines will go forth and maim and slay until this ruin stinks of the dead.’

  Gotrek turned, and Felix with him. Behind them, stepping from around the mortar, were two shapes, one big and the other not. The latter was a Chaos dwarf, though broader and more corrupt looking than the one Gotrek had just killed. But the other figure… Felix felt his jaw sag in recognition as he saw the Chaos warrior looming behind the Chaos dwarf who’d spoken. ‘Gotrek, that’s–’

  ‘Aye, the one who got away,’ Gotrek snarled, raising his axe. ‘I see you, coward! Come and taste my axe!’

  ‘I tasted it well enough earlier,’ the Chaos warrior rumbled. ‘Kill them, Khorreg!’

  ‘Don’t rush me, Unsworn,’ the Chaos dwarf, Khorreg, said, licking his blackened lips with a tongue the colour of soot. ‘I want to enjoy this. Khul! See to this dishonoured wretch while I bring that mountain down, eh?’

  Gotrek started for Khorreg, a menacing glint in his eye, when a third form interposed itself. It was another Chaos dwarf, but this one was clad in black plate and a featureless helm. The Chaos dwarf held an axe almost as malevolent-looking as Gotrek’s own and the eagerness of the newcomer’s movement mirrored Gotrek’s. ‘Khul Ironsworn, Captain of the Infernal Guard, dishonoured and disgraced, you will win the right to remove your mask if you bring me this dwarf’s skull,’ Khorreg bellowed. ‘Kill him! Kill them! Kill all of them!’

  Khul lunged and Gotrek met him, their axes striking sparks off one another. Felix could only stare in awe as, for the first time, the Slayer seemed to have found an opponent who matched Gotrek’s incandescent rage and lust for battle. Khul made no sound as he swung and hacked at the Slayer, and neither did Gotrek. For long moments, there was only the sound of the axes screeching against one another and the slap of the duellists’ feet against the stone.

  Then Gotrek roared, ‘Manling, stop them! They’re going to fire the mortar again!’ and Felix was shaken from his reverie. He plunged into motion, diving towards the great war machine. But even as he did so, the Chaos warrior stepped into his path, black-bladed sword shrieking out in an overhanded blow aimed at Felix’s head. Felix stepped aside, but only just and his opponent’s elbow caught him in the jaw, knocking him back against a sagging buttress of stone. The Chaos warrior whirled, lashing out, and Felix ducked. The black blade carved through the stone, showering Felix with debris.

  ‘I intend to see that hold pulled down, stone by stone, and no one is going to stop me,’ the Chaos warrior boomed hollowly. ‘I’ll have something for my trouble, one way or another.’

  ‘Death is something,’ a voice said as an orc-skull mace impacted with the small of the Chaos warrior’s back, knocking him sprawling. ‘Hello Jaeger, I see you and Gurnisson are hoarding all the best dooms again,’ Biter said, waving cheerfully at Felix as he stepped quickly towards the Chaos warrior. Biter let his mace rise and fall, but the Chaos warrior’s sword was there to meet it. The mace crashed against the black blade and it shattered, the orc bone no match for the mystically-wrought iron. Biter stumbled back, gaping at his ruined weapon.

  The Chaos warrior surged to his feet and his next blow caught Biter across the face, bursting hi
s eye like a grape. Biter roared and staggered and Felix rose to his feet, intending to help the Slayer. The Chaos warrior wheeled, whipping the bloody Slayer into Felix by his beard like a cannonball, and they both went down in a tangle. ‘Khorreg, fire that damn thing,’ the Chaos warrior shouted.

  The Chaos dwarf had climbed up onto the mortar, but so had Garagrim and several other Slayers. One of the Slayers died as an axe appeared in Khorreg’s hands and took off his head, but the others closed in on the debased dwarf. Khorreg disarmed a second by chopping through his weapon. The disarmed Slayer had no time to contemplate the destruction of his axe, for Khorreg’s hand closed on the front of his head, crushing his face and skull into an unrecognizable mass in a display of prodigious strength. ‘Bah, soft,’ he said. ‘All soft. Are there no real dwarfs left in these mountains?’

  ‘Is a prince of Karak Kadrin real enough for you, Cursed One?’ Garagrim said, attacking. His axes carved gouges in the metal of Khorreg’s armour as the War-Mourner’s furious assault drove the Chaos dwarf back until Khorreg toppled from the mortar with a strangled squawk of outrage. He clanged as he hit the ground, and he was slow to rise and strange noises escaped from his armour. Dwarfs – not Slayers, but clansmen – approached cautiously, and as Felix struggled to extricate himself from Biter’s groaning form, he realized that the battle was for all intents and purposes over. The sounds of conflict had faded, leaving only the screams of the dying and the crackle of flames. He saw Axeson among them, and he noted that the priest’s eyes were locked on Gotrek’s struggle with Khul, rather than Khorreg.

  ‘On your feet, Hell-Worker,’ the Chaos warrior snapped, lashing out at Garagrim and driving the Slayer back before he could leap on Khorreg. ‘The situation has become untenable.’

  ‘My – ha – my thoughts exactly, Unsworn,’ the Chaos dwarf rasped, glaring about him hatefully. He turned and reached into his robes and drew forth two heavy flasks. With a snarl, he flung them and they exploded when they hit the ground, driving Garagrim and the other approaching dwarfs back with a rush of flames. In the glare of the fire, Felix lost sight of both man and dwarf. From the shouts and curses, Felix thought the dwarfs had as well.

  As he got to his feet, he turned and saw that Gotrek was still locked in combat with Khul. The dwarfs strained against one another, their axes locked between them, neither one budging or giving an inch. Then, impossibly, Gotrek’s foot slipped and Khul shoved him back. Gotrek fell and Khul’s axe hissed as it clove the air on a collision course with Gotrek’s skull. Gotrek’s hand shot up, catching the axe just below the blade, halting its descent inches from his face.

  Khul rolled his shoulders, trying to bring more strength to bear, to force the blade down into Gotrek’s face, but the Slayer’s muscles bunched and he forced the blade up and to the side, where it sank into the stone. Gotrek’s own axe chopped up into the tangled mass of Khul’s beard, and a gush of blood suddenly spurted from within the hair. The Ironsworn staggered back, groping blindly. He sank to his knees and seemed to stare at Gotrek for a long moment, and then he toppled over, unmoving.

  Gotrek looked down at him. ‘Good fight,’ he said. He looked around. ‘What did I miss?’

  ‘I think we won,’ Felix said wonderingly.

  ‘You had doubts?’ Gotrek said.

  ‘Perhaps a few,’ Felix said, stooping to help Koertig haul Biter to his feet. The Slayer had one hand pressed to his ravaged eye-socket. Nevertheless, he still grinned.

  ‘It was quite a fight, eh, Gurnisson?’ he called out. Gotrek ignored him. Biter took his hand away and chuckled weakly. ‘That was my favourite eye, too.’

  ‘Not to mention your mace,’ Felix said.

  ‘Easy enough to get a new one,’ Biter said, ‘or an axe, even. I don’t think Berengar will mind me using his, considering that he got ground into mince. I always fancied it, I must admit.’ He gestured to the body of the Slayer that Khorreg had crushed.

  ‘Using another dwarf’s weapon? Have you no shame?’ Garagrim said, stomping towards them. The War-Mourner looked as if he had bathed in blood, and his axes still dripped.

  ‘I’m a Slayer,’ Biter replied.

  ‘Here,’ Axeson said, handing Biter his own rune-writ axe as he joined them. ‘I shall take Berengar’s weapon and return it to his clan. They shall welcome it, now that his shame has been expunged.’ Biter’s remaining eye blinked.

  Then, he nodded. ‘My thanks, priest. I’ll shed much blood with this,’ he said, turning the axe over admiringly in his hands. Garagrim grunted, apparently mollified, and looked at Gotrek.

  ‘I saw your fight with that… thing, Gurnisson. It was a mighty battle.’ He nodded towards the Chaos dwarf’s crumpled body. The dwarfs were giving it a wide berth, the way Felix had seen men avoid getting too close to the body of a dead mutant or a mad dog, as if even in death, the taint was still dangerous.

  ‘It was a good fight,’ Gotrek said.

  Garagrim scowled. ‘We were not here for your satisfaction, Gurnisson. We were here to break the siege, and we did. We have won a great victory for Karak Kadrin!’ He raised his axes.

  ‘Don’t confuse this victory with winning the war, my prince,’ Axeson said. ‘This was but the merest tendril of the evil we face.’ He swept his hand out. ‘And we have already suffered much.’

  Felix followed the gesture, and had to admit that the priest had a point, however depressing it might be to contemplate it. The dwarfs might have killed their weight in Chaos marauders, but the latter could replace their losses far more easily and far more swiftly than the former.

  Garagrim frowned again. He didn’t like being reminded of the cost of his glorious victory. That was one point where men and dwarfs were far too alike at times, Felix thought. He looked back at the flames where he’d last seen Khorreg and his hulking companion. ‘Where do you think that Chaos warrior and his friend went?’

  ‘Wherever they go, we will follow them,’ Garagrim said, shaking his axe at the enemy. ‘We will harry them back to the Chaos Wastes, if that’s what it takes!’

  ‘Got to find them first, beardling,’ Gotrek muttered. ‘Them and the ones who sent them.’

  Felix glanced at Axeson. The priest’s face was grim, but he was looking at Gotrek, not Garagrim. Felix felt a chill as he recalled the priest’s words. The chill intensified and he heard a snatch of sound; something that might have been laughter, had the wind and distance not muffled it. He turned and his palm was sweaty on the hilt of his sword as he tried to find the source of the sound. A shadow seemed to sweep across the ground, as if something large swooped overhead, but before he could spot whatever had created it, it was gone.

  11

  The Worlds Edge Mountains,

  the Peak Pass

  Garmr watched as Grettir’s ritual ended and the blood and meat of the sacrifice tumbled down in a cascade. Karak Kadrin still stood, thanks to the Doom-Seeker, but that did not matter. ‘They are coming,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ Ekaterina said. Garmr caught the look she shared with several of his other lieutenants and smiled within the protective envelope of his snarling helmet.

  ‘The road will soon be completed,’ he said. ‘Khorne will smile favourably upon us, and the world will drown in fire and blood.’ The thought filled Garmr with a thrill of satisfaction. He felt as he assumed an artisan must, approaching the end of his greatest work. Half-fearful that it was coming to an end and half-frustrated that it wasn’t over yet.

  Idly, he stroked the baroque surface of his cuirass. It had started off unadorned and featureless. As he had walked the Eightfold Path, and taken his first steps on the Eight Stairs, the armour had changed, becoming something other. Faces and worse things grew on the iron, like burrs on a razor. The armour itself set hooks in him, flaying him inside and out, repairing the metal as it became damaged with blood and scabby flesh. The armour was as much a part of him now as his hands or his voice. It enclosed him and was him.

  It was that thing, that voice that was his, and yet
not, that had first whispered to him of the Road of Skulls. It had echoed up out of the depths of his armour and bones, showing him what must be done. It was that voice that had set him on Grettir’s trail, hunting the hunter and binding his sorcerous cousin with chains forged by the daemon-smiths of the East. That voice that had led him deep into the Northern Wastes, where he’d found the God Lights and the vast, uneven slabs of glossy stone rising high into the heavens.

  She had descended from them, wings spread, the shadows of them smothering him even as the tip of her spear caressed his shoulder and laid upon him the burden of Khorne’s gaze. He saw her eyes still, in the darkness that passed for sleep. Her voice was still with him, and her shadow guided his steps as he gathered his army. She led him to his rivals – Hrolf, Ekaterina, the others – and applauded as he defeated them one after the other and made them serve him. Many hands made quick work… His father had said that, he thought, though he could not remember for certain.

  And his work was the road. The last great undertaking that would see the world drowned in eternal war, in oceans of blood. Even now, the bitter tang of the visions that Khorne’s Consort had given him still clung to his lips.

  He had seen the dwarf, mad-eyed and bloated with muscle and hatred, stalk north. Tattoos that burned like blue fire had etched those swollen muscles, and his scalp was bare save for a bristling crest the colour of a dying sun. Daemons had died the true death in his wake, ripped from the bosom of the gods by the cruel curve of his axe. He could not tell whether it had been happening in the past or in the future, for all times were the present in the Wastes. A man could meet his long-dead grandfather and his unborn grandson on the same day and kill them both, leaving no ripple in his memory to mark their passing.