by Various
‘Gotrek!’ Felix cried. ‘You’ll–’
The last few coils whipped off Gotrek like a chain going through a pulley and the cable sprang free again.
‘All part of the plan, manling,’ said Gotrek, as Felix and Agnar swung again to a stop in the middle of the shaft.
‘I’m relieved to hear there is a plan,’ said Felix.
Gotrek coiled up the loose rope and made to throw it at him. ‘Catch it and pass it around you, then throw it back.’
Felix caught it with a wild grab, then passed it behind him to Agnar, who handed it back to him on the other side.
‘Now lift it so it is above your heads,’ said Gotrek as Felix heaved the remaining length back to him.
Agnar and Felix took the rope, which was at their waists, and edged it up over their shoulders and heads until it was wrapped around nothing but the cable.
Gotrek nodded approvingly, then threaded the loose end of the rope through the lattice and started hauling at it, winching them closer and closer to the side with every pull.
Finally, Felix was able to grab the lattice and pull himself closer. Gotrek swiftly tied off the rope, then used his rune axe to cut through Felix and Agnar’s bonds, and they were all clinging like flies to the side of the shaft.
‘To the door,’ said Gotrek.
Though Felix’s knees ached and his arms shook, and his head spun with vertigo, he climbed with the slayers to the folding gate. It was closed, and locked with a geared hook, but one swing of Gotrek’s axe and the lock fell away in pieces. Felix crawled gratefully out onto an iron bridge as the slayers pushed the doors open, and into a room very similar to the one in which they had entered the shaft, except that this one was in better repair. He sighed with relief as he reached the floor. It felt good to have solid stone under his feet again.
The room had a large arch on its north wall, but it had been sealed up with granite blocks, and recently, if the footprints and blobs of dried mortar around its base were any indication. The sounds of a big battle came from behind it – the roar of orcs, the battle chants of the dwarfs, the clash of weapons and the thunder of cannons – all muffled, but still loud.
Gotrek grunted. ‘They’ve already begun. Come on.’
He and Agnar started for a smaller open door in the west wall. Felix followed, confused. It looked hardly large enough for him to fit through, let alone a rat-ogre.
‘The skaven are coming here?’ he asked. ‘I thought Lanquin had kept a passage open for them.’
‘You didn’t look at the map,’ said Gotrek. ‘They are exiting the stair one level down and coming up from the north, behind the thane.’
‘Ah,’ said Felix, chagrined. He had looked at the map, but he didn’t have a dwarf’s perfect recall of such things. ‘I must have misread it.’
Gotrek stepped into the narrow passage. ‘This funnels into the path Thorgrin left open for the greenskins. Part of the plan to make sure they could approach the battlefield from only one direction.’
Felix swallowed. ‘So we’ll be entering the great hall on the orc side of the battle?’
Agnar smiled, an evil glint in his eye. ‘Aye. Right at their backs.’
14
After a few twists and turns in the dark, the passage opened into a grand promenade, fully thirty paces wide, and five times Felix’s height. It was decorated in high dwarf style, with towering ancestor figures holding massive braziers in outstretched hands, and great battle scenes laid out in mosaic on the wall panels between them – and it reeked of orcs.
The signs of their passage were hard to miss – grimy footprints in the dust, greasy smears where their hands and shoulders had rubbed against the walls, discarded bones where they had eaten on the march – and the sounds of their advent came loud from the north.
Gotrek and Agnar started towards the noise at a trot and Felix followed, drawing Karaghul. Ahead, an arch as wide and tall as the promenade flickered with fire and movement, and as they jogged through it into the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild, it resolved into a scene of furious battle.
The dwarfs had set huge bonfires around the great hall to illuminate it for the battle, and in their hot orange light, Felix could see Stinkfoot’s orc army swarming the tight dwarf front. As Engineer Migrunssun had pointed out to him before, Thorgrin had chosen his position carefully, lining up his dwarf and human infantry four-deep across the narrow end of the great hall with the walls at either end protecting his flanks. This limited the number of orcs that could face his dwarfs at one time, and left a lot of the greenskins crowded together behind their comrades, all scrabbling and shoving at each other to get to the front.
All in all it was as neat and tidy a battle line as Felix had ever seen, but unfortunately, he and the slayers were on the wrong side of it, and there was no way to reach it except through the orcs. The closing off passages that had forced the greenskins to attack from the front had brought Gotrek, Agnar and himself to the same place – and there were more dangers than just rabid orcs in the way.
On the east side of the room, the cannons and gunners that Migrunsson had placed in the minehead firing platform had perfect position to rake these frustrated tag-alongs in the flank, and mangled orc bodies splashed up like green spray every time a cannon fired and the huge iron balls skipped through them. Felix looked at them askance as the slayers advanced. He didn’t fancy being blown to bits by cannons he had helped to place.
More cannons and muskets boomed behind Thorgrin’s line, firing over the dwarfs’ heads from a balcony above the archway that led to the stairs to the surface, while Lanquin’s mercenaries – those he hadn’t sent to the depths to die – held the west end of the line, keeping the orcs at bay with spears and swords.
As Felix scanned the mercenaries, he saw Henrik behind them, gesturing feverishly as he talked in Lanquin’s ear. Agnar saw him too, and changed course towards their position.
‘There you are, rememberer,’ he growled and picked up his pace.
‘Manling,’ said Gotrek as they followed. ‘When we’re through the line, go to the thane. Tell him the ratkin will attack from behind his guns, from the balcony.’
‘Aye, Gotrek.’
Ten paces on, the Slayers charged into the back of the massed orcs. The greenskins didn’t hear them coming. All their attention was focused on the dwarfs and humans ahead of them, and the bite of Gotrek and Agnar’s axes severing their spines was their first indication that they were flanked.
Five died before the rest even knew the slayers were among them. Then flying blood and body parts alerted them and they turned, roaring, upon their whirling, slashing foes. It was then that Felix attacked, hacking at their necks and backs as they closed on the slayers. He killed two in as many seconds, and hamstrung a third as he dodged through the press.
An orc with a rusty cleaver swung at his head. Felix ducked and Gotrek’s rune axe arced up and smashed through the brute’s lantern jaw from below. Felix sidestepped to avoid its falling corpse and stabbed over Gotrek’s shoulder into the neck of another.
It fell, spraying blood from a severed artery, and they pressed on, carving a red swathe through the green tide, step by step, until only one last rank of orcs stood between them and Lanquin’s mercenaries, and these, attacked from both in front and behind, died quicker than the rest.
‘Who are you?’ barked a dark-browed sergeant as Felix and the slayers stepped over the corpses of the last orcs.
‘We have news for Lanquin!’ called Felix before the slayers could say anything undiplomatic. ‘News from the deeps.’
‘Aye,’ muttered Agnar as the man waved them impatiently past and the line closed up behind them. ‘News of his death.’
Gotrek and Agnar pushed through the mercenaries and started immediately for Lanquin and Henrik. The two men stared in shock at the slayers, then backed away, pointing and shouting. Felix grinned at their reaction as he turned and ran for Thane Thorgrin, who was fighting at the centre of the dwarf line. It was a fool�
�s game betting on a slayer’s demise, as the two traitors were learning to their cost.
Thorgrin, for all Gotrek’s grumbling that he was a soft-handed, surface-dwelling brigand who had grown fat by charging others to fight his battles for him, was still dwarf enough to lead from the front when forced to war. He stood upon a broad shield held aloft by two sturdy shieldbearers, and was hewing away at the front line of Stinkfoot’s black orc retinue with a will. Stinkfoot, by contrast, was hanging back and kicking his rotting foot in Thorgrin’s direction, but it seemed its magic had abandoned him, for the thane did not fall.
‘Thane Thorgrin,’ Felix called from the back of the ranks. ‘You are betrayed. Louis Lanquin has sided with the skaven and is going to let them attack your rear! They will come from the balcony.’
The battle was too loud. Thorgrin didn’t hear, but Sergeant Holdborn was in the second row of the Hammerers who protected the thane’s right side. He heard.
‘What is that, rememberer?’ he asked, stepping back from his troops. ‘Where is Engineer Migrunsson? Where are the other engineers?’
‘Killed by a skaven trap,’ said Felix. ‘Two survivors were to have come back and told you.’
Holdborn scowled suspiciously. ‘No one came back to us. And what is this talk of skaven? We fight the greenskins.’
‘The skaven manipulate the orcs, and Lanquin too, and–’ He broke off with a curse. ‘There’s no time to explain! Tell Thorgrin that Lanquin has cleared a path for the skaven, they will attack from–’
‘Fall back! Retreat! Retreat!’
Felix and Holdborn whipped around to see Lanquin and Henrik running for the archway that led to the surface and shouting over their shoulders for their mercenaries to follow. Gotrek and Agnar were in hot pursuit, but their short dwarf legs could not match the traitors’ pace, and the two men were through the arch before the slayers had crossed half the floor.
The mercenaries ran past them, breaking from the orcs all along the west flank and fleeing after Lanquin. Many died as the greenskins surged after them and cut them down, but just as many made the archway and vanished.
Sergeant Holdborn cursed as a tide of orcs began to sweep around the now undefended west wing of the dwarf line and attack them from the rear. Felix groaned as a realisation struck him. The Slayers may have goaded Lanquin into running earlier than he had planned, but this retreat had always been part of his plan. He had always intended to take his troops to the surface and leave the dwarfs in the lurch. How else to ensure their destruction and leave himself the last man standing? His treachery was now complete.
Gotrek and Agnar abandoned Lanquin and Henrik and turned to stop the orcs, but though they fought like ten dwarfs, they were only two, and could not hold them all back.
‘Thane Thorgrin!’ roared Holdborn. ‘We are flanked! We must shore up the west!’
Thorgrin looked around, and nearly died for it as the black orcs he was facing took advantage of his distraction. Fortunately, his shieldbearers did their job, and backed him out of the arc of the orcs’ cleavers, and he returned to the fight a second later, calling out orders as he parried the greenskins’ blows.
‘Sergeant! Peel off the back rows of the Hammerers and Ironbreakers. Wheel and cap the flank! Tell the Thunderers to turn all their guns to the west!’
Holdborn bawled the orders to his troops and they stepped back and turned towards the new front with practised calm, marching at the crazed orc charge in a perfect line.
The sergeant next looked up to shout orders to the Thunderers on the balcony, but there was no need. They had already turned on their own initiative, and were firing down into the greenskins, while the cannon crews were starting to wheel their field pieces into position.
They died before they could finish the turn.
The closed door behind them smashed open and an enormous rat-ogre roared out, sweeping around with handless arms that ended in metal scythes, severing dwarf heads and impaling dwarf chests. From around the mutated monster a seething swarm of ratmen spilled onto the balcony, and the Thunderers and cannon crews fell to knives in the back and claws across the throat.
Felix cursed and ran for Gotrek and Agnar. ‘Slayers! The skaven! The skaven are here!’
15
Gotrek and Agnar looked up to the balcony as one, then jumped back from their combats and ran for the balcony stairs as the Hammerers and Ironbreakers took their place and tore into the orc advance. The torrent of skaven flooded down the stairs and slammed into the Slayers on the bottom step, but Gotrek and Agnar crushed them back like a fist to the face, snapping brass-tipped spears and rusty swords and making red ruin of the furred limbs that wielded them. Felix fell in behind, hacking down those ratmen who tried to leap over the Slayers to swarm easier prey beyond. He knocked a spearrat out of the air with a swipe from Karaghul, then spitted the belly of another as it flew at him, a verdigrised scimitar clutched in its paws.
‘Go back to the greenskins, Gurnisson,’ said Agnar, as the slayers battled step by step up the flight. ‘This is my doom. Though I did not know it, my actions aided the skaven. I have lost honour a second time, and I will die for it here.’
‘It will take more than you to close that door, Arvastsson,’ said Gotrek. ‘But I will give you the holding of it.’
Agnar nodded, and they fell silent, concentrating on mowing down the skaven and driving them back up the stairs. On the balcony above, the rat-ogre picked up one of the cannons and hurled it over the balustrade at the dwarf troops. It slammed down in the midst of a squad of Longbeards just to the left of Thane Thorgrin, crushing half of them before bouncing into the greenskin lines and flattening as many orcs.
‘Leave off, you pea-brain rodent!’ roared Agnar, as the rat-ogre bent to pick up another cannon. ‘Fight me!’
The rat-ogre ignored him and got the second gun up to his chest. With twin bellows of rage, Agnar and Gotrek redoubled their attacks and surged up the stairs, making mincemeat out of the skaven that stood in their way.
They reached the top just as the rat-ogre got the gun over its head. It roared at Gotrek as he hove up before it, and made to drop the cannon on him, but Agnar darted behind it and hamstrung it. With a howl of pain, it fell, its legs buckling, and the cannon crashed down on its chest, pinning it.
Gotrek hacked its head off and pointed at the door, where a second rat-ogre was bursting onto the balcony at the head of a second wave of skaven. ‘Go, Arvastsson. Hold it until I can seal it shut.’
‘Aye, Gurnisson,’ said the old slayer, his eyes glittering. ‘Take your time.’
And with that he charged.
The rat-ogre slashed at him with wrist-blades the size of scythes. Agnar dodged its left-hand blade and shattered the right with a chopping parry from his long axe, then followed up with an overhand smash. The rat-ogre dodged back to avoid having its head caved in and pressed into the skaven that followed it. They squealed in fear, but some squirmed by and sprang at Felix and Gotrek.
‘How will you close the door?’ asked Felix, slashing at the ratmen. ‘It’s smashed to bits.’
‘Smash it some more,’ said Gotrek.
Felix heard him grunt and risked a look back. The slayer stood under the muzzle of the last cannon, and was pulling down on it with one hand as he swept his axe around at the skaven with the other. His efforts were tipping the cannon forward and lifting its back stock off the ground so it was balanced only on its wheels, and he was leaning on it with all his strength, urging it around.
‘Keep… the rats… clear,’ Gotrek rasped. The cords of his neck stood out like taut rope.
‘Aye, Gotrek,’ said Felix, and laid into the skaven, cutting them down and kicking them out of the path of the cannon’s ponderous turning.
In the door, Agnar battered the rat-ogre back with furious blows, carving red trenches in its grey fur and shearing off its second wrist blade, but it gave as good as it got, rocking the old slayer with bone-knuckled blows and rending his flesh with its chisel-shaped
claws. Agnar was reeling on his feet, and sprays of blood flew from his beard with every swing of his axe.
The lesser skaven squeezed past this titanic battle in ones and twos, ducking the flashing steel and flying fists, and charged on. Felix thought he could hold them – at least until Gotrek got the gun around – but a quick glance to the floor of the great hall and he wondered if it would matter. The dwarfs were in dire shape, with the Hammerers and Ironbreakers who had been sent to stop the flank attack nearly overrun, and Thorgrin’s retinue being pushed back almost to the balcony.
‘The orcs are winning, Gotrek.’
‘One… more… minute…’ grunted the slayer.
Facing back to cut down a pair of leaping skaven, Felix saw that Gotrek had turned the gun so it was pointing directly at the arch, and was now cranking the elevation screw vigorously and raising the barrel higher. Felix wondered if he meant to blow the rat-ogre’s head off.
A second later, he saw there would be no need.
He heard a bellow, and looked over the heads of his chittering opponents. The beast had Agnar in its grip, its claws digging deep into his flesh and snapping his ribs as it lifted him off the ground. It tried to catch his fighting arm with its other hand, but Agnar fought through the pain and swatted at the snatching claw, severing two thick fingers, then chopped down at its neck, cutting though meat and bone and arteries. The monster hissed an airless roar and dropped him to clutch at its throat. Agnar swung again as he fell, gashing open its belly so that its bloated black intestines spilled to the floor. The steaming viscera entangled the old slayer as the rat-ogre toppled. He tried to stand, but the floor was too slick. The monster’s massive skull crashed down, headbutting him and knocking him flat on his back across the threshold of the door with the rat-ogre on top of him.
Immediately, the skaven that had been trapped behind the mutated behemoth flooded out, scrambling over its body and stabbing at Agnar with spears, swords and daggers. He swept at them with his axe and fist, but there were too many, and he was too stunned. Though a handful fell to his deadly flailing, twice as many buried their blades in his naked torso, then surged on as he twitched and gouted blood. And there were more behind them – many more.