by Various
‘A goblin.’
‘A gnoblar,’ Anya corrected him, keeping her voice low. ‘Cousins of the grobi, to be certain, but a separate race. They are both food and slaves to the ogres. If this one has fled the cooking pot, it could very well be our ally.’
‘No dwarf would ally himself with a goblin,’ said Gotrek, vehemently.
‘Our prisoner then,’ said Anya.
‘How do you suggest we capture it?’ asked Felix.
‘The caravan guards call them “magpies” because they dart up and down the length of a caravan, stealing anything that’s not nailed down. Theft is a racial obsession for them. I suggest we camp here for the night,’ she said, unshouldering her pack and letting it thump to the ground. ‘I have a plan.’
The moon had not even risen when Felix heard a stealthy presence creeping into the clearing. Anya had ‘forgotten’ a hunk of dried beef just at the edge of their campsite. To sweeten the trap, she’d unclipped her jade earrings and placed them in a compartment of her backpack, being as obvious as possible about it.
At the sound of icy rustling nearby, Felix cracked an eyelid. A small green creature, slightly larger than a goblin, fumbled with the knot Anya had tied in her backpack. It froze as Gotrek shifted in his cot, waiting patiently until the dwarf’s breathing steadied once more before resuming its work.
With Anya’s earrings clutched in its tiny fingers, it turned to scurry back into the night. Felix tensed, but waited until it came within arm’s reach before hurling himself bodily at it.
Its reactions were lightning fast, and he barely caught hold of one of its arms. Though nothing but skin and bones, the gnoblar displayed surprising strength, squealing and gnashing at its captor. It had almost freed itself when it caught sight of Gotrek, who’d hurled his blanket aside almost as soon as Felix had made his lunge. The creature’s struggles ceased as it became paralysed with fear. Still, Felix had no doubt that if he relaxed his guard for even a second, it would slip off into the darkness and disappear.
Anya knelt in front of the creature, keeping well away from its claws. ‘Who is your ogre, gnoblar?’
‘Let Cabbage go and Cabbage will tell you,’ it whined.
‘Cabbage?’ asked Felix.
Anya looked up at him. ‘Gnoblars are a superstitious bunch. They tend to pick names for themselves that might dissuade an ogre from eating them.’
‘Cabbage?’ Felix asked again.
‘Why eat Cabbage when tasty granite lies nearby?’ squealed the gnoblar. Anya laughed and even Gotrek smirked a little. Felix had never minded the taste of a nicely boiled kohl, but he knew that Gotrek hated it with a passion.
Without warning, the gnoblar twisted in Felix’s grasp and bit down hard on his wrist, just beneath the cuff of his mail. Felix yelped and jerked his hand away, accidentally giving Cabbage just enough leeway to pull free. In a heartbeat, he had darted past Anya towards the darkness at the edge of the camp.
Only Gotrek stood between Cabbage and freedom, but he had a Slayer’s reflexes. He lunged out, snatching the gnoblar by the scruff of his neck and shaking him. A mad smile curled his lip. ‘Bite me, gnoblar, and I’ll pull your head off.’
Cabbage gulped and went limp. Gotrek shook him once more for emphasis then set him down well inside the range of his axe.
‘I no run,’ Cabbage said, looking contrite.
‘Could have fooled me,’ responded Gotrek.
‘Let’s hear him out,’ said Felix, massaging his wrist where Cabbage had bitten him. It was tender, but thankfully the skin was unbroken. Judging from the size of Cabbage’s incisors, he could have easily inflicted real damage had he intended to.
Cabbage nodded furiously. ‘Yes, yes. Gutsnorter want Cabbage find tasty-mens...’ He paused, scratching his bald head. He grunted and snuffled to himself in what Felix assumed was the ogre tongue. Surprisingly, Anya responded with a similar series of barks, and his little eyes lit up. ‘Lady speak ogre?’
Anya nodded and knelt in front of the creature, and they began to converse in the gnoblar’s odd language.
As the conversation went on, Felix had more and more difficulty hiding a smile. He’d never heard the language spoken by a human before: coming from Cabbage, it sounded halfway natural; from a distinguished noblewoman like Anya Nitikin, it sounded like she was trying to talk while slurping cold soup. On several occasions, she burped mid-sentence and Felix had to stifle a laugh. He hated himself for his childish sense of humour, but by the end of the conversation, even Gotrek had let out a few throaty chuckles.
‘Cabbage did indeed seek us out,’ said Anya at length, not noticing Felix and Gotrek’s poorly disguised mirth. ‘His master is one of Kineater’s remaining relatives named Gutsnorter. Gutsnorter claims that Kineater has gone mad.’ Anya paused, a bitter expression on her face. ‘He wants to marry my sister.’
Gotrek let out an incredulous laugh. ‘An ogre marry a human? That’s like Felix marrying a sliced ham.’
Felix blinked, about to interject, but Anya beat him to it. ‘I’ll thank you not to compare my sister to a sliced ham,’ she said, regarding the Slayer coldly. ‘Kineater is a Tyrant, and though one of the other ogres could challenge him for leadership of the tribe, he’s too powerful.’ Anya stood and stepped away from Cabbage. ‘They say that no ogre worth his salt can see past his own belly. When he steps on a splinter, he must have a gnoblar remove it. This is how Gutsnorter thinks.’
Felix scratched his head. ‘So in Gutsnorter’s mind, your sister is the splinter and we are the gnoblars.’
Gotrek grunted in disgust. ‘I’d like to put my axe in Gutsnorter’s mind.’
‘Gutsnorter,’ continued Anya, ignoring the interruption, ‘is especially devious for an ogre, and has come up with a plan for us to rescue my sister.’
At this point Cabbage chimed in. ‘Cabbage take tasty-mens through secret ways. We sneaks through kitchen and meets Gutsnorter. He steals nasty-bride from Kineater, then tasty-mens takes her away.’
Felix sighed. ‘That’s the plan? The food is supposed to break into the kitchen?’
Anya shrugged. ‘For an ogre, it’s brilliant.’
Cabbage’s ‘secret ways’ turned out to be an old cave-bear dwelling near a scree-covered escarpment at the foot of a mountain. The cave had a wide mouth, clogged with the remains of its former occupant as well as shreds of fur and bone, rotten planks of wood, and even half a caravan wheel. Moisture dripped from the tips of stalactites onto piles of detritus.
The smell of mould and mildew was powerful enough that Anya retrieved a silken handkerchief from her pack, daubed it with fragrant oil, and held it over her mouth and nose. It appeared that they were entering the ogres’ kitchen through the waste chute.
Cabbage had no problem clambering over the piles of refuse, but Gotrek grumbled, muttering words to the effect that ‘only an ogre would befoul a perfectly good tunnel’. Anya followed the Slayer and Felix took the rear, eyeing the shadows uneasily. Cabbage couldn’t be the only gnoblar who knew about these tunnels, and he half expected to see one of the scrawny green creatures dart out of some hidden nook screaming an alarm to its masters.
The tunnel soon sloped upwards towards a half-circle of light far above them. The floor became slick with some foul sludge whose origins Felix tried hard not to guess. At first, Anya hiked up her skirt to keep it out of the muck, but as they trudged ever upwards and balance became more precarious, she gave up and let the hem drag in the gunk.
Felix followed close behind her, his thoughts as dark as their surroundings. Anya’s almost casual dismissal of his journal had affected him more than he cared to admit. For the first time since his university days, he found himself questioning his own abilities as a writer. Anya was smart, beautiful, spoke at least three languages with ease, and her books were famed from Wissenland to Ostermark. Felix was… well, he’d enjoyed some small success in Altdorf, but surely after all this time he had been forgotten.
He winced to think of how arrogant he’d be
en to claim Gotrek’s epic for himself. The Slayer deserved someone better. He deserved someone like Anya.
‘Anya,’ he said. ‘I–’
‘Quiet, tasty-mens,’ Cabbage hissed out of the darkness, ‘or Rumblebelly will hear us.’
Gotrek clutched his axe tightly, his face twisted into a snarl as he trotted along beside Felix. ‘If he calls me a man one more time, I’ll feed him to my axe.’
The tunnel levelled out, broadening into a dimly lit chamber that reeked of peppery spice and spoiled meat. Dozens of dark shapes hung from chains around a large oven that Felix was glad to see was empty; there was no telling what horrors might have been cooking within, otherwise.
Cabbage darted across the room then waited for them at the far entrance. Caught off guard by the gnoblar’s haste, Felix hurried to follow, bumping into one of the hanging shapes and recoiling in disgust. A fleshy, bloodshot eye stared back at him; it was the corpse of a caravan horse. He shuddered, and then caught up with Cabbage.
It quickly became apparent that the ‘kitchen’ was actually a cave halfway up the mountain slope. Spread out in the valley below them was the ogre settlement.
It was one of the largest collections of tents and shacks Felix had seen outside of an army camp. They carpeted the valley floor: huge triangular structures made from the crudely cut skins of giant mountain beasts. The snow around them had been trampled into a disgusting yellow-brown slurry spotted with unidentifiable lumps of bone, or worse.
Near the edge of the settlement was a fenced-off area where junk piles were sorted by material – iron with iron, wood with wood – and a wild contraption that resembled nothing more than a catapult rose from between the stacks. The hide of something that looked disturbingly like a dark-skinned man was stretched as tight as a drum on an elaborate structure made of bone and sinew. A gnoblar was painting it with a sticky substance that might have been a kind of dye.
The only permanent dwelling was a haphazardly constructed rectangle of boulders roofed with a ship’s mast and a patched sail, despite the fact that the closest body of water was hundreds of leagues away. A team of shaggy rhinoxen was yoked outside, grunting and snorting at any gnoblar unlucky enough to pass too close.
‘No guards?’ said Gotrek, surveying the surrounding peaks.
‘If they mean to hold the ceremony tonight, they will be dozing in their tents,’ said Anya.
As they watched, an ogre emerged from one of the tents. Greasy black cords of hair hung from its balding pate, and it wore a white apron in a crude mockery of an Altdorf chef.
‘Rumblebelly,’ whispered Cabbage with a shiver.
Most of the gnoblars apparently gave Rumblebelly a wide berth, being especially careful of the notched steel cleaver he carried, but a dozen gnoblar minions followed close behind him carrying various foodstuffs, cracked dishes and bent utensils, and slabs of meat large enough that two together had to carry them on their backs.
But that was not what drew Felix’s attention. Several gnoblars near the back dragged a prisoner in their wake.
‘Talia!’ Anya cried softly. The gnoblars led the younger Nitikin sister by a leash of thick hemp rope which bound her wrists together. Talia was not giving them an easy time of it. She seemed to be especially fond of lulling them into complacency and then tugging sharply on the rope to jerk them off their feet. Though the gnoblars cursed her roundly, they dared not lay a finger on the Tyrant’s future bride.
Eventually, they disappeared into a large tent at the edge of the camp. Judging from the crimson stain in the snow just outside, it had been only recently vacated by its former occupant.
Rumblebelly moved towards several rough-hewn tables which surrounded a deep pit in the centre of the camp. Felix guessed the pit would play a part in the ceremony, since most of the activity was centered there. Already the feasting tables were stacked high with putrid dishes.
Anya noticed his fascination. ‘That pit is a tribute to the ogre god, the Great Maw. Any ogre may challenge Kineater for control of the tribe, and such challenges are frequent at events such as this. Challengers have merely to descend into the pit and face him, unarmed and unarmoured, in single combat.’ She paused to swallow, her face grim. ‘The winner eats the loser.’
‘Where’s your ogre, grobi?’ asked Gotrek, impatiently. The Slayer sounded almost hopeful that Gutsnorter would abandon them and they would be forced to hack their way through the camp.
Cabbage blinked short-sightedly and shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘Can’t see mighty Gutsnorter.’
‘Fine then,’ said Anya. ‘We’ll rescue Talia without him.’
Felix winced. To even get near Talia, they would have to sneak through a swarm of gnoblars, not to mention bypassing the infamous Rumblebelly. ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ he asked.
Anya pushed herself from their rocky perch and headed back into the kitchen.
‘Of course. I have a plan of my own.’
Felix crouched behind the boulders at the base of the slope that led to the kitchen. A gnoblar sentry – if it could even be called that – sat on a nearby rock, watching the preparations not five paces in front of him. It yawned, its enormous nose rising skywards, then scratched its rear and flatulated almost silently. Felix thanked Sigmar that the filthy little creature was more interested in what was going on inside the camp than outside of it.
A few paces away, Anya placed a bag of red powder into Cabbage’s hands, whispering to him in the ogre dialect while Gotrek looked on, disgusted.
‘Any plan that relies on a gnoblar isn’t fit for a dwarf,’ he grumbled, but remained where he was.
Privately, Felix agreed with him. He didn’t trust Cabbage, and he disliked the fact that the gnoblar’s vaunted patron, Gutsnorter, had apparently disappeared. Anya had explained that any gnoblar without an ogre patron usually ended up in the cooking pot. As time had passed and Gutsnorter still did not appear, Cabbage had grown visibly nervous. Now, the gnoblar seemed to disagree with the set of instructions he was receiving and shook his head vigorously, pushing the bag back into Anya’s hands.
Suddenly all of the rage and impotence Felix had been feeling since the attack on the caravan, and all of the frustration and resentment towards Anya for insulting his work, boiled to the surface. He pushed himself close to Cabbage until he was eye-to-eye with the terrified creature.
‘Listen, you filthy little scallywag,’ he hissed, barely restraining himself to a venomous whisper. ‘You led us into this mess, and you’ll lead us out again. You think being eaten by an ogre is bad? When I’m done with you, there won’t be enough left for an appetiser.’
Cabbage snivelled loudly, his dark eyes wide with terror. For a moment, Felix thought he might forget the plan entirely and run, squealing, into the camp, but instead the gnoblar snatched up the bag and stepped out into the open.
‘Scallywag?’ asked Gotrek, arching his eyebrow.
Felix said nothing. He was a little embarrassed by his outburst. Throwing tantrums wasn’t his department – it was Gotrek’s.
Shivering like a beanpole in a high wind, Cabbage proceeded into the camp, clutching the bag to his chest. He skirted the feasting tables and the oblivious Rumblebelly with his cleaver, instead heading towards the pair of shaggy white rhinoxen. Though he drew a curious eye from some of the other gnoblars, Rumblebelly ignored him.
It occurred to Felix that despite sending Cabbage on his way, he had no idea what was in the bag, so he asked Anya.
‘Just some noxious powder I found in the kitchen,’ she said with a grin. ‘Ogres may be stupid, but they take their meals seriously enough to recognise a good spice when they loot one.’
‘What good will that do?’ asked Felix.
Anya smiled mischievously. ‘Watch.’
Cabbage now stood directly under the flaring nostrils of the closest rhinoxen. It shook its shaggy head and a long pink tongue snaked out to lick at its own snout. It smelled the spice, and didn’t like it. Cabbage looked back towards them nervo
usly.
Gotrek grinned evilly and ran a thumb along the blade of his axe.
Cabbage immediately deflated and Felix didn’t blame him. The blood of brave men ran cold when the Slayer bared his teeth.
The gnoblar turned back towards the rhinoxen, shrugged, and then swung the bag in a wide arc right at the beast’s nose. Red powder exploded into the air, swirling around them both, and Cabbage scampered out of sight.
The beast and its mate bellowed and reared up into the air, then leapt forwards, straining at their harnesses. The chain that stretched from their collars to the central mast-pillar of the storage building pulled taut, and the crack of splitting wood rent the air – the pillar shifted, bringing the building’s patched-sail roof canopy collapsing down. The crash of the mast hitting the ground only goaded the rhinoxen to new levels of terror, and they stampeded straight towards Rumblebelly and his tables full of food.
The massive ogre merely grunted and casually tossed one of the tables aside, then set himself to receive the charge. In a feat of strength the likes of which Felix had never seen before, Rumblebelly grabbed one of the charging rhinoxen by the horn and forced its head down into the icy ground, and then cupped his fists together and brought them down hard upon the back of the other beast, snapping its spine in one blow.
‘Stay here,’ Felix shouted to Anya, struggling to be heard over the commotion. She nodded, stepping back under cover.
Once she was safe, Gotrek and Felix dashed over to the tent where the gnoblars had taken Talia, and Felix drew Karaghul as he approached the entrance. He reached for the flap, but Gotrek beat him to it, lowering a shoulder and barreling right through the opening.
A dozen gnoblars awaited them, screeching in alarm as the Slayer burst in. Gotrek laid about himself with his axe, felling four of the diminutive creatures in a heartbeat.
Assuming his traditional position just behind the Slayer, Felix stabbed out, disembowelling a screaming green body and then batting aside another gnoblar’s primitive club with a quick parry. A third enemy assailed him, its face covered in greasy pink powder that he supposed could only have been makeup. Felix parried a dagger thrust and returned with one of his own, and the gnoblar reeled backwards, its eye a wounded wreck. He quickly put it out of its misery.