by Various
Felix coughed, blushing. He turned to Gotrek. ‘Gotrek, as we must wait until tomorrow…’
The Slayer shrugged. ‘Do what you will, manling. I’m going to see how much sorghum beer it takes to get me drunk.’ He pounded on the bar again. ‘Barkeep! Where’s that piss water?’
Unclothed but for her veil and her shimmering belt, the dancer’s golden-brown curves were even more astounding. Felix swallowed convulsively as she took his hand and drew him toward the bed, a low, cushioned dais in the centre of her small, opulent room, piled high with silk pillows and overhung with a sheer canopy.
Felix cleared his throat. ‘Aren’t you going to remove your veil?’
‘My veil?’ She smiled as she knelt before him. ‘That would be immodest.’ She began unbuckling his belt. ‘Now, please, tease me no more. I must see what you have in your coin pouch…’
‘Oh, devil of the north,’ cried the dancer a while later. ‘You shake me to my core!’
She clutched Felix to her in ecstasy.
‘Er,’ said Felix, pausing. ‘I think that was the building shaking, actually.’
‘Indeed,’ purred the dancer. ‘So powerful. So potent.’
The room shook again, and this time Felix heard a crash from below.
‘Ah, I think there might be some trouble.’
The dancer pouted. ‘The men fight. They always fight. Forget them, beloved.’ She ground against him. ‘Come, I hunger for you.’
Felix was hungry too, but just as he returned to her embrace, there came a thunderous crash, then a muffled, ‘By Grimnir’s beard, you’ll pay for that!’
More thuds and smashes followed, along with angry cries and the high-pitched shrieks of frightened women.
‘Sigmar curse him!’ groaned Felix. He disentangled himself from the dancer’s arms and reached for his clothes.
‘You leave me, noble warrior?’ she moaned, dismayed. ‘Where do you go?’
‘To speak with a Slayer about timing,’ growled Felix.
‘Sigmar take you, Gotrek!’ cried Felix, still buckling on his sword belt and stamping his left foot into his boot as he shoved through the angry sailors and merchants and artisans who were all trying to come to grips with the dwarf. ‘Can you not go one night without stirring up trouble? I’d only just–’
He paused. Gotrek looked awful. Though he fought like a badger, he was sweating and pale – almost green – and his eyes were unfocused.
Felix ducked as a tribesman swung a stool at him, then kicked the man in the knee. ‘Gotrek?’
Gotrek heaved a merchant in loose breeches into the crowd. Five men went down, but Gotrek almost did too. He was reeling.
‘Gotrek?’ said Felix again as he tripped one man into another. ‘Are you drunk?’
Gotrek shook his head. Sweat sprayed from his beard. ‘Something…’ He punched a man in the stomach, then kneed him in the face when he doubled up. ‘Something wrong… with the beer.’
Felix frowned. ‘Wrong?’
Gotrek swung at a man with fierce eyes and fiercer moustaches. He missed! The man kicked Gotrek in the chest to no effect. Gotrek shoved him unsteadily to the floor and staggered back. ‘My head… hurts.’
The barkeep was shouting at the crowd. His nose was twice its normal size and streaming blood, and he had two alarming black eyes. He pointed to the door.
The brawlers started pushing Gotrek and Felix toward the street like they were flotsam floating on a sweaty sea. Felix was tempted to draw his sword and even the odds a bit, but dared not. The local authorities might forgive a tavern brawl. Murder they would not.
Unfortunately, some of the brothel’s patrons didn’t share his compunction. A tribesman was drawing a curved dagger. Gotrek caught his wrist and gave him an uppercut that snapped his teeth together with a crack like a pistol-shot.
The barkeep roared in his native tongue, waving his hands, and Felix saw other men reluctantly sheathing knives and scimitars. Must be fastidious about blood on his flagstones, he thought.
Gotrek spun a herdsman around by his belt and tossed him into the crowd. Felix punched a black-bearded trader in the face and dodged a kick from a brawny labourer. He heard a shout behind him and turned. Four men were running at them with one of the low tables tipped on its side like a shield. Gotrek tried to get his axe out to split the table, but he fumbled it. The table bashed into them and forced them backwards.
Gotrek slurred a dwarfish curse and pushed back. Felix joined him, but they could get no traction.
Felix looked back. They were skidding toward the door.
‘Get around it!’ he called. ‘Gotrek–’
Too late. With a crash, the table hit the edges of the door and shot them tumbling out into the dusty street.
Gotrek surged up, roaring and throwing blind punches, but no one had followed them out. Instead, the Forbidden Garden’s heavy wooden door slammed shut in their faces, and Felix heard bolts shoot shut and locks clack closed.
Felix got painfully to his feet and looked around. They were entirely alone. There wasn’t a soul on the street. And it was quiet. No noise of traffic. No night bird’s cry. Not a sound came from the houses around them. Even the shouting and commotion from inside the brothel had stopped as if it had never been.
Gotrek stood clutching his head and swaying, his legs wide-braced and shaking, as if he struggled under a great weight. ‘Drugged,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Cowards drugged me.’
‘Drugged?’ Felix wondered why. Did they hope to rob the Slayer? The only things of value either of them carried at the moment were their weapons. Their journey to the east had beggared them.
‘Let’s go back to Ishurak’s ship,’ he said. ‘You can sleep it off there.’
Gotrek nodded queasily. ‘Just… point me in the right direction.’
‘This way.’
Felix started toward the docks, Gotrek lurching along behind as if his legs were made of wood. Their steps echoed eerily off the moon-washed stucco buildings that lined the street. Ahead of them a lit window went dark. The shutters of another banged shut, and Felix heard the click of a lock. A baby wailed, then was silenced.
Felix slowed, his hand dropping to his hilt. Something was wrong. Gotrek didn’t look up. All his concentration was focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
There was a tiny sound behind them – the softest scuff of sole on sand. Felix turned. He stared. A semicircle of motionless, identically dressed men stood behind them, heavy tulwars in their gauntleted hands.
2
The men wore bronze breastplates over blood-red livery, and spiked helmets wrapped in blood-red turbans. Their faces were hidden, veils of fine bronze mail draped over their features, obscuring them utterly. They showed no flesh at all.
Gotrek snarled and drew his rune axe, holding it unsteadily before him. Felix drew his sword. The masked warriors advanced in unison, going on guard as one.
A voice cried out a command.
They stopped.
A man in gold-trimmed red robes stepped from behind them. He was tall but hunched, as if his high, column-shaped hat made his head too heavy for his stringy neck. Swinging before his sunken chest was a small silver flute that hung from a long necklace. He looked at Gotrek and Felix with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. ‘Do not hurt our guests,’ he said in a smooth voice, and Felix realised he was speaking Reikspiel for their benefit. ‘The dwarf will fall soon enough.’
Gotrek growled. ‘Fall?’ He was having difficulty forming words. He started forward, axe raised, but his legs were rubber. He listed sideways. ‘Fall?’
With each step, the weight of Gotrek’s impairment seemed to press more heavily upon him. He tripped and caught himself with his axe, then staggered on.
Felix advanced too, aiming for the gold-robed man, but he stepped back, the mail-masked soldiers closing ranks before him.
‘I… will not… fall…’ Gotrek rasped.
He fell, forehead thudding against the rough, dry ea
rth.
At a sign from the tall man, the red warriors moved in.
Felix stood over Gotrek, sword out, ready to protect him to his death. ‘Who dies first!’ he cried.
Pain and sparking fire exploded inside his head, and he felt his shoulders hit the street. The last thing he saw before all went dark was the barkeep standing above him with a cudgel, bowing obsequiously to the man in red, who tossed him a gold coin.
Felix woke with harsh morning light stabbing him in the eyes. It wasn’t his first waking. He had vague recollections of swinging head-down over a uniformed shoulder, of being dropped on a stone floor, of barred doors clanging shut. Now he woke fully, and wished he hadn’t.
He was in a dark cell – more like a cage – with iron bars on three sides and a stone wall on the fourth. Sunlight lanced through an arrow slit in the wall. He sat up to get out of its savage beam and groaned. His head felt like it was made of loosely jointed scrap-iron. It clanged when it moved. He felt his skull gingerly. There was an egg-sized lump behind his ear, and a smaller one on his forehead, and he was thirsty – terribly thirsty. It was as dry and as hot as an oven in that low-roofed space. His skin felt like it might crumble to powder.
He looked around. ‘Gotrek, are you…?’
Gotrek wasn’t in the cell. Felix looked through the bars beyond it. His cage was one of hundreds, arranged in neat rows that vanished into the gloom of the dungeon. In every cell, emaciated figures huddled on the floor – asleep or dead, Felix could not tell. Gotrek wasn’t in any of the cells he could see.
The prisoner in the next cell rolled over and looked at him. ‘Ah, the pale one awakes,’ he said, his cultured voice belying his rags and matted beard. ‘A man of the Empire, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Felix nodded, then groaned. His head rang like a gong.
‘Welcome then, honoured friend,’ said the ragged man, sitting up. ‘All that I may call mine is yours.’ He smirked as he scratched himself. ‘I am currently wealthy in fleas.’
‘Where am I?’ asked Felix. ‘And where is Gotrek? The dwarf.’
‘You are in the dungeons of the Palace of Penitence, guest of his divine eminence, Falhedar il Toorissi, Scourge of the Bermini, Conqueror of the Medgidal hill kings, Defender of the Faithful, and Caliph of our fair city of Ras Karim.’ The man scratched himself again and looked down the corridor outside the cells. ‘As for your squat friend, our gracious hosts took him away in chains not a half-hour ago. I know not where.’
Felix slumped back against the stone wall, groaning. Imprisoned in a strange land. They could die here and no one would know what had become of them. Gotrek wouldn’t like it much. Rotting in a cell was not a proper death for a Slayer. But… but perhaps there had been some mistake. Perhaps if they could speak to someone they might be released.
He looked at the man in the next cell. ‘This caliph. Is he a reasonable man? Is he just?’
The prisoner snorted, then chuckled, then guffawed, then bent double in a violent coughing fit, tears turning to mud as they ran down his filthy face. At last he recovered and leaned back, looking at Felix with sparkling eyes. ‘Ah, my friend, I have not laughed like that in…’ His face grew grave. ‘Well, a long time.’ He bowed where he sat, one hand making flourishes. ‘My name is Halim il Saredi. My father once served the old caliph and, until recently, I served his son, Falhedar, your host, who is as cruel and tyrannical as his father was wise and just.’
‘You served him?’ Felix asked. ‘And you’re here now?’
Halim nodded. ‘For a time I thought I could help the people by using my influence to blunt Falhedar’s excesses.’ He sighed. ‘Finally I could no longer pretend that I made a difference. When I dared speak against one of his more villainous edicts he ordered my execution. I escaped into the desert, then returned in disguise not long ago to organise a rebellion with some like-minded friends.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Needless to say, I was caught.’ He looked toward the arrow slit in his cell wall. ‘And soon I will fight the khimar, and die, but only after I am tortured into betraying my conspirators.’ He blinked, lost in thought, then grinned suddenly at Felix. ‘So – to answer your question – no, the caliph is not particularly just.’
Felix sighed. It had been a faint hope. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry for your–’
A roar from the narrow windows drowned him out – the sound of thousands of voices all shouting at once.
‘What was that?’
Halim cringed away from the window, pale beneath his grime. ‘The khimar is about to take another victim.’
‘The khimar? What is that?’ Felix stood and craned his neck to look through the arrow slit. Did the beast, whatever it was, have a thousand throats?
He blinked in the blinding rays of the sun. A hot, dusty breeze blew into his face as details emerged from the glare. The window was nearly level with a broad sandy floor, encircled by high walls, and above the walls, slanting planes of colour, endlessly shifting. For a moment, he didn’t understand, for he could only see a small wedge of the world. Then it came into focus. It was an arena, like an Estalian bull ring, but much larger. The stands thronged with people. It was from them the roar had come.
On the far wall large double doors were rumbling open and something was coming out – something big.
‘The khimar,’ Halim whimpered, peering out of his window as well.
The thing emerged from the shadows of the door, padding on great clawed feet. Felix gasped. Though he had read descriptions of such a beast in books, he had never seen one in life. It had the body of a lion, but much larger – taller than a man at the shoulder, with powerful muscles rippling under its tawny, scar-inscribed fur. It had a lion’s head as well, great golden mane shining in the sun as it roared at the crowd, but the head was not alone. Sprouting from its left shoulder screamed the head of an eagle, its cruel beak snapping, while growing from its right, whipping angrily at the end of a long neck, was the head of a dark red serpent, saliva dripping from its fangs. The monster prowled to the centre of the arena, lion tail lashing, its heads looking in every direction for prey. The crowd roared again.
Felix gaped. ‘A chimera? They feed the prisoners to a chimera?’
‘Not feed,’ said Halim. ‘Fight.’ His wide eyes never left the beast. ‘We are instructed to fight it – unarmed, of course. It is more entertaining that way.’
‘Unarmed? Against that?’ Felix laughed hollowly. He pitied the poor unfortunate who would have to face all those fangs and beaks and claws. It would be a massacre.
There was a fanfare of trumpets and a tall door at the back of a raised platform slowly opened. Behind it, a portcullis rose, curtains parted, and a figure was thrust, stumbling, onto the platform, his wrists shackled in chains, his one eye blinking in the sun.
It was Gotrek.
3
The Slayer looked as if he was still suffering from the drugged drink that had poleaxed him the night before. He stared around stupidly at his surroundings, weaving on his powerful legs as the door closed behind him. The crowd laughed.
The chimera crept toward him, eagle beak shrieking a challenge. Gotrek’s head snapped up. He reached instinctively for his back, then looked around, baffled, at the place where his axe should have been.
Felix choked, then berated himself. Of course Gotrek wouldn’t have his axe. They were prisoners. But it was still a shock to see it. He could not remember a time when Gotrek had been separated from it.
The Slayer back-pedalled, straining to break the chains that hung between his manacles. The links were too thick. The chimera leapt onto the platform. Gotrek dived off – out of Felix’s field of vision. The chimera sprung after him. The crowd roared.
‘What’s happening?’ Felix cried.
‘I can see no more than you, friend,’ said Halim.
Felix leaned left and right, to no avail. Then his eye was caught by a splash of red in the stands. The man in the red robes! He stood in a canopied box, his silver flute winking in the sha
dows. Beside him on an opulent throne sat a plump man, lavishly dressed in white and gold, and wearing a golden circlet on his head that looked like a coiled cobra. They watched the contest with interest.
‘Who is the man in red?’ Felix asked.
Halim growled. ‘Dujedi il Kaadiq. The caliph’s advisor and chief sorcerer, may his soul be flayed by djinn.’
Gotrek ran past, the chimera bounding after him, and was gone again. Felix cursed in frustration.
A second later, the Slayer landed near Felix’s window in a cloud of dust – close enough for Felix to hear him grunt. He was striped across the chest with crimson claw marks. The chimera dropped down on top of him, both snake and lion heads whipping down. Gotrek swung his chains, fists together, and cracked the snake head with the heavy links, knocking it into the lion head. The beast recoiled. Gotrek surged up and headbutted it in the underbelly. It roared and fell backwards, then flipped around like the cat it was and landed on its feet. Bellowing from its three throats, it leapt at Gotrek again.
Gotrek thrust his hands up and apart and blocked the eagle’s beak with the rigid chain. It bit the links and flung Gotrek over its shoulder with a flick of its neck, then pounced after him and was gone.
Felix tried to gauge what was happening by the cheers and screams of the crowd, but he didn’t know if they were cheering Gotrek or the chimera, or just bloodshed in general. The noise rose and rose.
After a moment, the beast galloped by the window again, shaking its heads violently. Gotrek hung from them, struggling to hold away the eagle with one hand and choking the snake with the other. Its slavering fangs snapped an inch from his face. The heel of his boot was crammed in the lion’s maw, forcing it open.
Felix groaned as the combatants disappeared again. That looked like the end. At any moment one of the heads would break free and rip Gotrek to pieces.
There was an intake of breath from the whole arena, and then a roar, louder than any before. Felix cursed. That must have been it. It could have been nothing else.