by Various
‘Well met, slayer,’ he said. ‘I mourn that you did not find your doom as your comrade did, but I thank you for slaying the orc and the White Widow. I – we – are in your debt.’
Gotrek bowed his head over Agnar as if Thorgrin wasn’t there. ‘You have restored your honour, Arvastsson, and died as a slayer should,’ he said. ‘May Grimnir welcome you to his halls.’
Felix stepped forward to lay Agnar’s axe on his chest, but Gotrek took it. ‘No, manling,’ he said, standing and turning towards the door. ‘That axe has a vow to keep.’
Thorgrin bowed and tried again to thank him. ‘Is there any reward we could offer you? Two months’ entry into the hold with the licence waived, perhaps? Lodgings at the Golden Mug?
Gotrek stepped past him and through the door without slowing. ‘Your war isn’t over, brigand. There are still more rats to kill.’
The Grail appeared to be closed when Gotrek and Felix reached it. The front door was locked and barred, and the gate to the stable yard was chained shut. Sounds of frantic activity drifting over the high fence, however, suggested that it was not entirely empty.
Gotrek sheared through the chain with one swipe of his axe and pushed the gate open. In the yard, still soupy with mud from the recent rain, Louis Lanquin and Henrik Daschke were busily saddling and bridling a pair of horses and throwing heavy-laden saddle bags over their rumps. A pack mule was already loaded with satchels and trunks. They looked up at the noise of the gate and froze as they saw Felix and the Slayer sloshing towards them.
Henrik backed to his horse, scrabbling blindly for the reins with one hand and his sword with the other. ‘Ride,’ he said. ‘Now. The dwarf is a maniac. We must not face him.’
Lanquin smiled. ‘And we won’t.’ He drew a pair of heavy pistols from his saddle holsters and aimed them at Gotrek and Felix. ‘You should have taken my gold, dwarf. You might have died as a slayer should.’
Gotrek sneered. ‘By poison gas? That is not a slayer’s death.’
Lanquin’s cool amusement faltered as Gotrek kept walking towards him, undaunted. Henrik clutched the innkeeper’s shoulder.
‘Come on! Let’s fly!’
Lanquin shook him off. ‘I have more saddlebags to pack.’ He thumbed back the hammers on the guns. ‘Stand where you are, curse you!’
‘A loaded gun is no threat to those who are ready to die,’ growled Gotrek.
Felix wanted to remind him that some present were not quite ready to die, but at that moment Lanquin turned both guns on the slayer.
‘Then I shall unload them,’ he said.
Gotrek hurled his axe as the Bretonnian squeezed the triggers. The axe hit first, smashing into Lanquin’s shoulder, and the pistols went off at wide angles as he crashed to the mud, screaming in pain. Felix ran forward to kick the pistols from Lanquin’s hands, but Henrik leapt in his way, slashing with his sword. Felix parried the blow, then raised Karaghul to riposte.
‘Hold, manling,’ said Gotrek.
Felix held, on guard, and glanced back at him. ‘You want me to spare him? After all he’s done?’
‘Agnar Arvastsson swore that this betrayer would die by his axe. It would not be fitting to let a slayer’s last oath go unfulfilled.’ Gotrek pulled Agnar’s long axe from his back and stood before Henrik.
‘Step aside, manling.’
‘You’re going to kill me in cold blood?’ squealed the rememberer. ‘That’s murder.’
‘You have your sword. Defend yourself,’ said Gotrek.
Henrik stepped back, shaking.
‘Defend myself? Against you? That’s still murder! You know I can’t win!’
‘You should have thought of that before you betrayed the oath you took to your slayer,’ said Gotrek. ‘Now fight.’
‘No listen, slayer,’ whined Henrik. ‘I was wrong, I know that. But you don’t know–’
He stabbed for Gotrek’s throat with his sword, trying to take him by surprise. The slayer was too quick. He knocked the thrust aside with such force that the blade snapped, then buried his axe in Henrik’s chest.
Henrik coughed blood all over Gotrek’s hands as his body went rigid, then his head slumped forward and he sagged to his knees in the mud.
Felix heard splashing behind him as Gotrek pulled Agnar’s axe free, and turned to see Lanquin staggering for the back gate, his left arm red to the wrist from Gotrek’s axe cut, which had laid him open to the bone. Felix leapt after him and put himself between the Bretonnian and escape.
Lanquin held up his hands.
‘Please, I beg you,’ he sobbed. ‘I only want to leave. Take my gold, all of it!’
‘Why would we let you go when we killed Henrik?’ asked Felix. ‘You’re the worst of the lot. You colluded with the skaven to kill the dwarfs. You sent men who had sworn loyalty to you to their deaths. You tried to have us killed in the street.’
‘Yes, but what will you get if you kill me?’ It was a cold day, but the sweat was pouring from Lanquin’s brow like a river. ‘Only what I have here. Spare me and I’ll tell you where I have more. You may have it all. All my wealth!’
Gotrek retrieved his axe from where it had fallen in the mud, then stepped up to Lanquin and cleaned it on his fancy cape before sheathing it on his back beside Agnar’s.
Lanquin swallowed, hope kindling in his terrified eyes. ‘You – you’re not going to kill me?’
‘You don’t deserve a quick death, innkeep,’ rumbled the slayer, then turned towards the stables. ‘Hold him while I fetch some rope, manling. We’ll leave him for the thane.’
Lanquin whined and complained, but a minute later they had tied him to a hitching post and were examining the contents of the saddle bags and trunks as he wept quietly behind them. There was a fortune of gold coins in the satchels, and a treasure trove of jewel-studded crowns, armour and weapons that looked like they had been worn by dwarf kings and princes in the mule’s packs and trunks, items far too fine for the thane to have ever allowed to be taken from the hold.
‘Hmmm,’ said Felix, looking at a jewelled comb that might have bought a townhouse in Altdorf. ‘Take the relics back to Thorgrin and keep the coin?’
Gotrek grunted. ‘It’s more than the brigand deserves, but who wants to lug all that around? Maybe just… this.’
He took a sturdy gold bracelet and slipped it around his wrist, then sealed the saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder. Felix shouldered the other set and grunted to his feet under its weight. He gave Lanquin a sly salute, then led the pack mule out of the stable after Gotrek – where they came face to face with Thane Thorgrin, Sergeant Holdborn, and a phalanx of dwarf constables. A rough crowd of mercenaries and treasure hunters had gathered behind the dwarfs to see what had brought the thane of Skalf’s Keep to the stinking streets of Deadgate.
Thorgrin bowed politely as he looked past them into the yard. ‘It seems we owe you another debt, slayer. You have detained the villain who masterminded this whole false war.’ He nodded to the saddlebags and the pack mule. ‘And I see that you have already chosen your reward. Very good. For all that you have done, you deserve it.’
Gotrek just glared at him, so Felix bowed for the both of them. ‘Thank you, thane. And we have also–’
‘There is the small matter of the tax, however,’ said Thorgrin, speaking over him. ‘As you know, all treasures taken within the confines of Karak Azgal are subject to a ten per cent tax, and if they are of particular historical significance to the hold they may not be taken at–’
‘You mealy-mouthed thief!’ snarled Gotrek. ‘We were bringing it back to you! Here. We don’t want it!’
He took the reins of the mule from Felix and handed them to Thorgrin.
‘It’s all yours.’
The thane stared as the dwarf constables took down and opened the trunks and revealed the great treasures within, then turned back to Gotrek and Felix and bowed again. ‘The return of such important relics is a fine and noble gesture, heroes, and I am humbled by it, but, may I ask, w
hat do you carry in the other saddlebags?’
The veins in Gotrek’s neck were throbbing, and his face was turning a dangerous red. Felix stepped ahead of him, speaking quickly.
‘It is nothing from Karak Azgal. We took it from Lanquin. Gold coins. His profits from the Grail, I would guess.’
‘No doubt,’ said Thorgrin. ‘And you are welcome to it, b-but–’ He stuttered as Gotrek fixed him with his blazing single eye, then continued. ‘But, you seem to be under a misapprehension about the boundaries of Karak Azgal. It is not just the deeps, but also Skalf’s Keep and Deadgate. The tax applies to treasures found here as well. If you would allow us to count–’
Gotrek exploded. ‘You cheap chiseller! I came here to seek my doom, not to hunt treasure.’ He ripped open the saddlebags, then snatched Felix’s from his shoulder and did the same to them. ‘If you want your ten per cent, take it.’
And with that he hurled the open saddlebags over the heads of the thane and the constables and into the crowd. The gold coins flew everywhere, and the mob immediately cried out and dropped to their knees to scrabble in the mud for them.
As the constables strode into the confusion, bellowing for everyone to stop, Gotrek picked up the trunks carrying the ancient crowns and axes and armour and threw them too, spilling the ‘important relics’ into the muck, to the horror of Thorgrin, but the wild delight of the crowd.
Felix laughed as the thane sputtered and gaped. It was worth the loss of the gold to see the look on his face.
‘Slayer!’ Thorgrin cried. ‘This is an outrage! You have deprived the council of its rightful–’
Gotrek pulled Agnar’s axe off his back, and the thane stepped backwards, wary.
‘Will you attack me now?’ he cried. ‘What do you want?’
Gotrek slashed down with the axe and planted its blade in the mud at Thorgrin’s feet. ‘I want you to bury that with the body of Slayer Agnar Arvastsson, the only dwarf or man I met in this cesspit who wasn’t a thief.’
The slayer turned away from the stricken thane and started for the town gate.
‘Come on, manling. This place stinks.’
A Cask of Wynters
Josh Reynolds
‘Snorri is working up a thirst!’ Snorri Nosebiter shouted as he gleefully brought his hammer down on the pointed skull of a goblin. The goblin made a sound like mud squelching underfoot and dropped to the forest floor. It spasmed as Snorri stepped over it and wrenched his hatchet out of its companion. The second goblin toppled forwards from where Snorri’s thrown axe had impaled it against a scrub pine. Wiping the blade against his breeches, he took in the scene.
The goblins had sprung their ambush with all the cunning of born backstabbers. A full thirty of the stunted humanoids had raced from concealment the moment Snorri and his companions had begun their ascent of the slope. Clad in filthy cloaks and hoods covered in branches and leaves, the goblins were obviously old hands at ambushing merchants brave enough to use a route other than the Old Dwarf Road through Black Fire Pass.
Unfortunately for them, Snorri and his companions were anything but merchants. Case in point, Volg Staahl of Averheim, the leader of the impromptu expedition. Staahl was sometimes called ‘the Voluminous’; he was a big man with an even bigger voice. Clad in battered plate-mail, he roared out a bawdy drinking song as he swept three goblins off their feet with one swing of his massive sword.
‘Haha! Hurry up, Slayer. Winner buys the drinks!’ Staahl bellowed, his ginger beard coated with goblin blood. Near to him, all three of his fellow knights were giving a good account of themselves. But then, the templars of the Order of the Black Bear had had plenty of practice fighting goblins. Indeed, other than halfling coursing, it was their favourite pastime. Staahl and his brother knights had left the warm alehouses of Averheim for the cold peaks of Black Fire Pass on a mission of honour, as well as by the request of the final member of their party.
A few feet away from the knights, the individual in question drove the wicked hook that had replaced his left hand into a goblin’s ear and broke the creature’s scrawny neck with a vicious jerk. He was a dwarf and, like Snorri, a Slayer, though his crest was a small thing yet and his beard had yet to recover fully from its ritual shearing in the Temple of Grimnir. He called himself Grudi Halfhand, though the brothers of the Black Bear knew him by a different name.
Once, Grudi had been Grudi Wynters, son of Olgep Wynters, Master-Brewer and personal friend of Caspian Rodor, former Grandmaster of the Order of the Black Bear. Now, both Rodor and Wynters were dead, and the brewery with them. That was why they were all here today, fighting goblins on the scrub slopes of the Black Mountains.
Whistling cheerfully, Snorri trotted towards the melee, the fading sunlight glinting off the trio of nails hammered into the crown of his skull. ‘Save some for Snorri, fatty!’ he said, picking up speed. The Slayer catapulted himself at the last moment, hurling himself into the goblin ranks like a thunderbolt, his hatchet and hammer swinging.
‘Don’t call me fatty, stumpy!’ Staahl growled, plucking a goblin up and snapping its neck. He tossed the carcass at Snorri and it bounced off the Slayer’s massive shoulders. Snorri laughed unapologetically and stamped on a goblin.
The goblin gave a strangled squeak, and then silence fell on the slope. Snorri looked around, disappointment settling on him like a cloak. ‘Oh. Are they all dead then?’
‘No. Some of them buggered off,’ one of the knights said wearily, sinking into a sitting position on a dry log. He removed his helmet and ran a hand through his sweaty hair. Big and blond, Angmar of Nordland was a novice of the order, though his sour expression spoke of a man with more than his share of experiences, and most of those bad. ‘Still alive, brothers?’ he continued. The other two knights answered back, one after the next. They were a motley duo, even among the less than orderly ranks of the Knights of the Black Bear.
‘I yet live, and the ladies of Averheim can rest easy,’ said Flanders Drahl, a beautifully moustachioed student of the Marienburg school of duelling for fun and profit. He carried not a longsword but a rapier, and wore only a light hauberk of leather and ringmail. Near him was Grim Hogan, a Kislevite with a face like a stormcloud and a heavy mace that was stained with blood.
‘Pah. Goblins. They are no threat,’ he grunted. ‘They flee like rats at the slightest sign of resistance.’
‘And why wouldn’t they flee? We are mighty warriors, are we not?’ Grudi Halfhand barked, thumping his bare chest with his hook. He blanched a moment later, and spent a tense few seconds trying to extricate the tip of his prosthesis from the meat of his tattooed chest. Snorri chuckled and the other Slayer glared at him. ‘Well, some of us are mighty warriors,’ he said nastily. ‘Others are just senile old rust-skulls!’
‘Right now Snorri doesn’t feel mighty so much as thirsty,’ Snorri said, ignoring the jibe. ‘Where is this brewery of yours, Grudi Halfhand? Where is the cask of Wynters you promised Snorri?’
‘It is here, Nosebiter. Just up the slope,’ Grudi said, running the curve of his hook across his bristly crest. ‘Right where I left–’ He stopped and flushed. ‘Right where I last saw it.’
Snorri grunted. The two Slayers were as different as night and day: Grudi was young and eager to die, while Snorri was… Snorri.
Bigger and wider than most dwarfs, Snorri Nosebiter was a barrel of muscle covered in equal parts scar-tissue and tattoos. His crest, composed of three orange nails, had once been brightly painted, but it had since become tarnished, chipped and rusty. Grudi wondered whether the latter was at least partially responsible for Snorri’s distinct lack of precociousness. Rust on the brain couldn’t be anything other than harmful. But then, the same could be said of the nails.
‘Snorri thinks we should find that beer, Grudi Halfhand,’ Snorri continued, slapping one tree-trunk thigh with his hammer. ‘Killing goblins makes Snorri thirsty.’
‘Everything makes Snorri thirsty!’ Grudi said, waving his hook under Snorri’s nose. ‘Breat
hing makes Snorri thirsty! If Snorri needed a drink so badly, he should have stayed in Averheim!’
‘And what fun would that have been, when all of Snorri’s friends were here?’ Snorri said.
‘We’re glad to have old Snorri aren’t we, lads?’ Staahl said, clapping a hand on Snorri’s shoulder. ‘Anyone who can outdrink twelve cubs of the order in a single night is a worthy companion on this quest!’
‘I still say he cheated,’ Hogan said. ‘A hollow leg, perhaps.’
‘The only thing hollow on Snorri is his head,’ Grudi said, his hook still waving under Snorri’s nose.
‘Don’t make fun of Snorri,’ Snorri said gently, pushing the hook away. ‘You haven’t earned the right.’ Grudi hesitated, and then drew his hook back. He swallowed thoughtfully. It was easy to forget that the old Slayer had survived more than his share of battles, even as dim as he was. They said Snorri had fought a daemon once, or at least survived an encounter with one. Grudi, in contrast, had had his hand bitten off by an orc. It had been a big orc, but still… Not quite so glorious, all things considered. ‘Only Snorri’s friends can make fun of him,’ Snorri continued, looking around.
‘Snorri must have plenty of friends then,’ Grudi muttered.
‘One or two,’ Snorri said, giving Grudi a gap-toothed grin. The grin faded as the Slayer recalled the last time he had seen Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger. He had been dragged into a glowing portal by a hurricane of daemonic tendrils, and Gotrek had, unfortunately, rescued him. Catapulted out of the portal, he had collided with the wizard Max Schreiber and been knocked unconscious. When he and the wizard had come to, both Gotrek and Felix were gone and the portal had been dark.
Where the duo had gone, or what their eventual fate had been, Snorri did not know. Schreiber’s magic could not find them, and though Snorri had made a pilgrimage of Gotrek’s old haunts, no one had heard from the one-eyed Slayer. It had been three years since then, and Snorri was coming to think that Gotrek had just possibly met his doom at last.