by Various
Gotrek turned to him and Henrik. ‘Darken your lanterns. They’re shooting at the light.’
Felix and Henrik gulped and closed the slots of their lanterns, then crouched in the lee of the huge green corpse-shields as the slayers started towards the south gallery. Henrik started his singing again, but this time Felix had had enough.
‘Stop that,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll hear you!’
‘They already know we’re here,’ said Henrik. ‘And it calms my nerves.’
‘So does poison.’
The skitter of clawed feet in the darkness made Felix freeze. They were coming from all directions. Henrik fumbled for his lamp.
‘Wait,’ said Gotrek. ‘Wait for my word.’
Felix put his finger on the lever that opened the slots, and held his breath. The skittering was closing in all around. It sounded like they were right on top of them. It took all his willpower not to open the lantern.
‘Now!’ said Gotrek.
Felix slapped open the slots, and the light streamed out, revealing a black-clad skaven in mid-leap. It squealed and shielded its eyes at the fire-glow, and Felix slashed with Karaghul, biting deep into its hip. It rolled off into the darkness, yelping, but there were more behind it.
Gotrek heaved his orc at two, flattening them, then shattered the legs of a third with his rune axe as it leapt the green corpse. Agnar shrugged his orc off his shoulders and swung his long axe at two that charged in at him, curved knives glistening green in the flickering light. The dead orc’s back was pincushioned with throwing stars.
Henrik ducked another skaven as it leapt over his head, then slashed after it, but missed by a mile. Two more appeared at the edge of Felix’s vision, hurling more throwing stars. He grabbed the edge of his red Sudenland cape and swept it in front of him, and felt them thud into the heavy wool.
The assassins sprung in after their stars, hooked steel claws strapped to their wrists. They were blindingly fast. Felix parried the claws of the first an inch from his neck, and only his chainmail saved him from those of the second. They cracked across his forearm like hammers, but did not break the rings.
He swept Karaghul in a backhand as they flitted past him, and caught one in the back, sending him sprawling and thrashing, but the second eluded the blow and tossed a glass globe over its shoulder.
‘Oh, bollocks!’
Felix dove for the thing and caught it just before it shattered on the floor, then rolled up and hurled it into the darkness after the skaven who had thrown it. A tinkle of glass and a horrible retching told him he had found his mark.
Gotrek snatched another dart out of the air and threw it at a skaven that fought Henrik, then hurled his axe in the direction the dart had come from. There was a terrible squeal and then a thud, and all the other skaven suddenly froze, then turned and fled, leaving a stinking cloud of animal musk behind.
Felix coughed and spat and squeezed his burning eyes, then followed Gotrek as he strode into the darkness to retrieve his axe. On the floor lay a skaven with a blowgun in one hand and a long-barrelled gun strapped across its back.
‘The one who shot you,’ said Agnar, coming up behind them.
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, pulling his axe from its chest. It had buried itself in its solar plexus. ‘The one who knew we would be in the minehead chamber. The one who led the greenskins and the troll to us.’
Gotrek wiped his axe blade off on the skaven’s black head-wrap, then noticed a roll of parchment sticking from a pouch on its belt. He pulled the parchment free.
‘You shouldn’t touch them,’ said Henrik. ‘They cover themselves in poison.’
Gotrek ignored him and unrolled the parchment.
‘What is it?’ asked Agnar.
Gotrek looked at it, then handed it to Felix. At first what was drawn upon it just looked like a jumble of squares and lines and arrows, but then he realized it was a map of the depths – part of them anyway – with portions marked in the claw-scratch script of skaven writing, but the ratmen weren’t the only ones to have written upon the map. Notes had been scribbled upon it in a human hand, in Bretonnian. A cold chill went down Felix’s spine as he saw them.
‘Lanquin wrote this.’
‘You can’t know that,’ said Henrik. ‘He’s not the only Bretonnian in the world. There’s a whole nation of them.’
‘What does it say?’ asked Agnar.
Calling upon the meagre Bretonnian he had learned while studying poetry at the University of Altdorf, Felix struggled to decipher the words. ‘Apportez votre rongeurs ici. Uh, transport… no, bring, your rats… to here. Nous allons laisser cette voie accessible. We will allow… passage to… No, that’s not right. We will let the path to be… unguarded!’
Felix looked at the map again and saw an arrow pointing to a small passage that led into what he recognised must be the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild. It opened up behind where the dwarfs intended to set their battle line. ‘Blood of Sigmar! Whoever wrote this says he will let the skaven come in and attack the dwarfs from the rear!’
‘Let me see that,’ said Henrik, and snatched the map from Felix’s fingers.
‘It must be Lanquin,’ said Felix as Henrik pored over the parchment. ‘Who else would be in a position to promise them such an advantage? How does a man stoop so low!’
‘He’s already done worse,’ said Gotrek.
‘What could be worse than that?’ snarled Agnar.
Gotrek motioned back the way they had come. ‘The room with the poisoned men. The Bretonnian didn’t send the best of his recruits into the deeps to kill Stinkfoot. He sent them to die – in a skaven trap.’
Felix stared at him. ‘But – but why would he do that?’
Gotrek shrugged. ‘To take them out of the fight. To weaken the thane’s army so the orcs win.’
‘That’s insane! He can’t want that! He–’ Felix cut off as another thought blasted that one aside. ‘That’s why he wanted us to take his coin! He wanted us to sign up with him so he could send us to our deaths with the others!’
Agnar shook his head like a confused bull. ‘All that Bugman’s – a trap.’
Felix pointed to the parchment in Henrik’s hands. ‘We have a map. We must use it to find a way back to Thane Thorgrin as quickly as we can. We must warn him of this treachery before the battle begins.’
‘Two of us must,’ said Gotrek. ‘The other two must attack the ratkin where they prepare their attack and slay all that can be slain.’
Agnar grunted in agreement, but Henrik rolled his eyes. ‘And I suppose that’ll be you and Jaeger, then. While Agnar and I run your errands for you.’
‘What?’ said Agnar, looking up. He turned hard eyes on Gotrek and hefted his axe. ‘I’ll be damned if I will.’
11
Gotrek snorted. ‘Put it away, puppet. Your master pulls your strings again.’
‘I am no one’s puppet, Gotrek Gurnisson,’ said Agnar, dangerously. ‘Least of all yours. If you think to send me away while you go to your doom–’
‘Your twister said that,’ growled Gotrek. ‘Not I. Come with me if you wish. The manlings can return to the thane.’
Henrik’s eyes blazed. ‘Now he would deny you your rememberer! He would have you die alone and forgotten, with no one to tell the tale of your last battle!’
Felix had had enough. Henrik’s carping and accusations had worn him raw at last. He shoved the rememberer, sending him sprawling over the corpse of the black-clad rat.
‘You’re talking rubbish!’ he barked. ‘Gotrek denies Agnar nothing he doesn’t deny himself!’
Henrik’s eyes glittered with triumph as he looked up from the floor. ‘Agnar, they lay hands upon us! They mean us harm!’
The old slayer turned towards Felix, raising his long axe. ‘No one touches my rememberer, human. Defend yourself.’
Gotrek snarled and knocked the axe aside with his own. ‘Stand down, fool! You’ve listened to this jackal for too long!’
Agnar brought his
axe back into guard, his eyes blazing and his arms trembling with rage. ‘You strike me now, Gurnisson? You insult me to my face? Henrik is right. It is you I have listened to for too long!’
And with that, he charged, slashing wildly. Gotrek backed away, blocking the attacks, but made none of his own. Nonetheless, Henrik chose to see Gotrek’s retreat as an act of aggression, and leapt at his back, his sword high.
‘Die, coward!’
Felix cursed and whipped Karaghul from its scabbard just in time to block the strike. Henrik grinned like a skull as he turned to face him, slashing high and low.
‘Ah, you show your true colours at last!’ he hissed. ‘All “hail-fellow-well-met” in the tap room, but it’s knives in the back when we’re too deep to call for help. I know your kind!’
Felix parried the blows with difficulty. Ordinarily he would not have called Henrik his equal as a swordsman, but whatever madness was possessing him had given him a frenzied strength and speed, jittery and unpredictable, and it was hard to know where he was going to strike next.
‘You describe yourself!’ said Felix, retreating before the torrent. ‘You invite us to drink with you, you fight by our side, and now you attack us on the flimsiest of pretexts. I begin to wonder if you are a pair of rogues in disguise, or–’
Felix faltered as something clicked in his head. Henrik saw the opening and gashed his leg. It stung, but not as sharply as Felix’s epiphany. Not a pair of rogues, no. Agnar was a true slayer, of that there was no doubt. But Henrik? Who had suggested Gotrek and Felix take Louis Lanquin’s coin? Who had had a barely credible ‘change of heart’ when Gotrek and Felix joined Thorgrin’s throng? Who had sung an annoying little tune before every appearance of the skaven?
‘You’re with Lanquin!’ cried Felix, attacking Henrik with new vigour. ‘You never changed sides! You joined Thorgrin’s horde to keep an eye on us, to make sure we died in the depths! You are with the skaven!’
Henrik choked. ‘The skaven? You’re mad! No dwarf would side with the ratkin!’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Do you hear him, Agnar? Now he calls you a traitor to your–!’
He broke off with a yelp as Felix took advantage of his distraction and sliced open his arm above the elbow, then knocked his blade from his hands.
Agnar roared at this and tried to fight past Gotrek. ‘Let me by!’
Felix advanced on Henrik, sword extended. ‘I said nothing of Agnar Arvastsson, you conniver. You tricked him too. You’re pitting him against Gotrek, hoping both will die.’
‘Don’t listen to him, Agnar!’ cried Henrik. ‘You know I am your truest friend. I would never–’
Felix put Karaghul to his throat.
‘Talk, rememberer,’ he said. ‘What are Lanquin’s plans? Why is he colluding with the skaven?’
Henrik put his hands up and opened his mouth as if to comply, then turned and fled across the huge room like a scalded dog. Felix cursed and pounded after him, but Henrik was younger, slimmer and less heavily armoured, and outran him with ease.
‘Rememberer!’ called Agnar. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Goodbye, Agnar,’ Henrik called over his shoulder. ‘I will sing the song of your doom in the taproom of the Grail. It will be the greatest doom ever remembered – hundreds of skaven, thousands! Men will weep to hear it.’
‘But… but the skaven didn’t kill me.’
‘Oh, they will,’ laughed Henrik as he sped for an archway on the western wall. ‘That I promise you! They’ll kill all of you.’ And with that he began singing his annoying song again as loud as he could manage.
Felix slowed to a stop as Henrik ran under the archway into the corridor, and quickly vanished but for the bobbing glow of his lantern. Felix watched it dance out of sight, then sighed and started back towards the slayers. They were no longer fighting. Agnar was staring at the archway with a look so blank and stunned that it would have been comical if it hadn’t been heartbreaking. Gotrek put a hand on his shoulder, but had the decency not to say anything.
‘Five years,’ said Agnar. ‘Five years, he was my rememberer.’ His brow lowered. ‘I must find him. I must slay him.’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘But his villainy must be stopped first. Time enough for vengeance after the skaven are slaughtered.’
Agnar hesitated, then nodded. ‘Very well. But who will warn the thane?’
‘I’ll go,’ said Felix, though he had no idea how he’d manage it. He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know how to get to the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild, the place was crawling with orcs, skaven, trolls and Sigmar knew what else, and…
Felix groaned. ‘Henrik has the map. That tricky little–’
Noises to the east brought his head up. Hunched shadows were moving in the darkness at the east end of the chamber, spilling out of the tunnels that fed into it. He swallowed. ‘Maybe the map is the least of our problems.’
Gotrek and Agnar looked around, and Agnar started forward, growling under his breath.
Gotrek stopped him. ‘We must make sure the manling gets away first.’
Agnar shot him a look that had some of his old animosity in it, but then nodded, and he and Gotrek started for the western end of the hall, jogging as fast as their short legs could carry them.
Felix struggled to shorten his pace so that he wouldn’t swiftly outdistance them. ‘Are they after us?’ he asked, looking warily over his shoulder. He heard no squeals of challenge.
Gotrek shook his head. ‘They head for the same shaft as we do. It is the quickest way to the upper levels.’
Felix stared at him. ‘How do you know where they’re going? How do you know where we’re going?’
Gotrek shrugged. ‘I read the map.’
There was a shriek of dismay behind them. Felix looked back, but all he could see was milling shadows.
‘They have found the bodies of their assassins,’ said Agnar, without looking back.
‘Now they’re after us,’ said Gotrek.
Gotrek led Felix and Agnar through the corridors of the vault level with the shrill cries of the skaven growing steadily closer behind them. The passages were high and wide in this area, with few twists and turns, and it felt to Felix as if they were trying to outrun a cresting wave. At last he and the slayers ran through a crumbling arch into a large square chamber that made Felix’s skin prickle and his shoulders hunch with fear as soon as he entered it.
A ghostly grey glow illuminated a scene out of a builder’s nightmare. It looked as if some drunk giant had constructed a house of cards within the chamber and hadn’t been too neat about it. Scrap-wood scaffolding rose up in uneven layers along all four walls, and a precarious forest of supports held up portions of the mortared stone ceiling, which looked as if it might come down in a heap if someone sneezed. The walls behind the scaffolding showed signs of battle damage – shattered marble, scorched granite, and broken bas-reliefs – and it seemed the scaffolding had been erected to attempt repairs, but it must have all happened a long time ago, for the wooden joists were warped and sagging under the weight of stone they supported, and the whole thing was covered in dust and thick with spiderwebs.
It was from these webs that the light emanated, a pale putrid pearlescence that made the scaffolding look as if it were covered in spectral shrouds. Lumpy cocoons hung from the beams as well, tethered by thicker strands. Some were the size of dwarfs. Some were the size of orcs. All glowed like misshapen moons.
In the centre of the room, a more well-constructed structure rose amidst the cobwebbed scaffolding. It was a square column of iron latticework, roughly twenty feet to a side, that vanished up into darkness through a wide hole in the ceiling, as well as down into a corresponding hole in the floor. Felix had seen such cage-lifts in other dwarf holds, but none so elaborate or ornate. On this one, in addition to the metal cage enclosed within it, an iron stairway wound around the outside of the shaft, going both up and down.
The slayers ran for the wide iron bridge that extended fro
m the edge of the hole to the shaft, but as they got closer Felix saw they were too late. The lift cage was already rising.
Henrik’s grinning face appeared between the bars as it rattled up towards the darkness. ‘Weep not, Agnar! You are no worse a dupe than the fools who stand beside you, or Thorgrin and his kin, or the orcs who go to fight him. We duped them all! Duped the skaven into helping Stinkfoot become warboss so he would rise against the dwarfs. Duped the dwarfs into fighting back. And once they wipe each other out, it will be Lanquin and I who rule Skalf’s Keep and collect the taxes, while our skaven partners rule the deeps. A mutually beneficial relationship.’
‘If you believe that,’ snarled Gotrek, ‘you’re more a dupe than any of us.’
‘Rememberer!’ roared Agnar. ‘You will die by my axe for your treachery! I swear it!’
‘Treachery?’ called Henrik as he vanished through the roof. ‘I have given you a certain doom! What more could a slayer want from his rememberer?’
The rainstorm patter of hundreds of clawed feet behind them turned Felix and the slayers around. The ratmen were spilling through the scaffolding-supported archway in a gibbering, chittering tide – spearskaven in rags and human-skin hoods; swordskaven in rusty armour and brass helms, towering, hideously mutated rat-ogres with crude weapons grafted to the stumps of their wrists and giant mutant rats the size of bulldogs, all spreading to the right and left to surround them.
Gotrek stepped to the base of the iron stairway and readied his rune axe. ‘This is their route to the top. Manling, go to the thane. We’ll hold them here.’
Felix looked up. The stairs were endless. He wondered if he would die from exhaustion climbing them. It was at least a less certain death than fighting a hundred skaven with his back to a bottomless precipice. He swallowed as he realised that he and the slayer were parting ways at last. ‘Are you sure, Gotrek? I will not witness your doom. My vow–’
‘Your vow is fulfilled. You know what my doom will be,’ said the slayer. ‘Write it well.’
‘Write mine too,’ said Agnar, snarling. ‘And shove it down Henrik Daschke’s throat.’