Berthold's Beard
Page 2
‘What is this?’ Felix said.
‘Just do your job, Jaeger. Do what I paid you and your stunted companion to help me do–’
A familiar shape flew through the air, broken beak clacking. The hairy bird thing that had nearly done for Felix earlier fell down towards them, claws flailing. Felix lashed out with his sword, knocking it to the side. It flopped bonelessly into the fire, the coiling black tendril that had been manipulating it like a hand puppet writhing as the flames licked at it for a moment before its thrashing doused them. A horrid smell, like burning hair, filled Felix’s nostrils as everything went dark.
Light dripped down from the thin sliver of moonlight visible above. Felix gagged on the smell and spun, holding his sword in both hands. There was a sound like a nest of serpents rubbing across the floor. ‘Aldrich,’ he said, then, ‘Gotrek?’
He could hear the grunts of the latter and the wet chop of Gotrek’s axe as it sank into dead flesh. They had faced the walking dead before, but this was something different. Fouler somehow... Something brushed his face. Felix let slip a cry of disgust and lashed out. ‘Aldrich, relight the fire, or Gotrek – somebody!’ More somethings slithered around his legs and waist and arms, snagging him in warm coils that felt like hemp rope.
He was yanked off his feet and slammed to the floor. Karaghul slipped from his hands and as he clawed for it he found himself being dragged roughly and swiftly across the floor. He crashed through the piles of debris as he tried to dig his fingers into the floor. Splinters bit into his fingers and he cried out as he struck the wall. He felt the wall buckle and mould drifted down on him like snow.
A dark shape loomed over him suddenly and he heard the whistle of metal cutting the air. Suddenly he was free. A strong hand grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him into the air. ‘Are you alive, manling?’ Gotrek said.
‘For the moment,’ Felix gasped. ‘What are these things?’
‘Whatever they are, they’re making me angry,’ Gotrek snarled. He dragged Felix away from the wall and back towards the fire pit. Contrary to Felix’s earlier observation, there was still a red glow to the embers in the pit. Gotrek threw a chunk of wood in and stirred it with his axe. There was a sudden burst of light and heat. Felix looked down and uttered a grunt of revulsion.
‘Gah, get it off me!’ He beat at his arms and chest, trying to dislodge the coils that still clung to him. Gotrek snatched one up and bounced it on his palm. Felix grimaced. ‘What is it?’
‘Hair,’ Aldrich said. Felix half rose to his feet and Gotrek tensed as Aldrich stepped around the fire pit, his pistol in one hand and Felix’s sword in the other. ‘Don’t twitch, master dwarf... I’d hate to bring your quest to such an ignominious end.’
Gotrek growled wordlessly and made to start forwards, but Felix grabbed his arm. The dwarf glared at him, but paused nonetheless. ‘What’s going on, Aldrich?’ Felix said. ‘Did you bring us here to feed us to... whatever that thing was?’
‘If need be,’ Aldrich said. ‘You weren’t my first choice, if that helps.’
Felix recalled the look on the other man’s face when he’d found the boot. ‘Who were they? Not friends, I hope,’ Felix said.
Aldrich’s face twisted into a sneer. ‘More like employees. They were effective at murder, but not so much at monster-fighting.’
‘You killed your own kin,’ Gotrek rumbled. As the Slayer spoke, it all fell into place in Felix’s head.
‘You murdered the rest of your family for the inheritance!’ he burst out. Beneath his feet, the floorboards clattered as if something immense were moving beneath them.
‘Murder? It was a service,’ Aldrich hissed. ‘If you knew what I know, you wouldn’t accuse me of murder... you’d thank me.’ He stabbed Felix’s sword into the floor and held out his hand. ‘Give me the hair.’
Gotrek gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Come and take it, kinSlayer.’
‘Don’t force me to waste a bullet on you, Slayer, or your companion,’ Aldrich said. He cocked his head, listening to the sounds of the ruin. ‘Can you hear it? They kept it here all this time. That’s why they left, the poxy bastards... not because of beasts, but to escape their own taint.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘My taint too, I suppose. The money will ease the pain.’ He began to back away. ‘You’ll want to keep that fire lit,’ he said. ‘It hates the light. I’d hate it too, living in darkness for all those centuries.’
The eaves and beams shifted and sighed. Felix heard the water-rumble again, only louder this time. It was like a wave approaching from all directions.
‘It recognises its own, that’s the only thing I can figure. That’s the only way they could have done it,’ Aldrich continued, licking his lips. ‘The beastmen worshipped it and fed it, but when a Berthold came, it kept them safe. But not me... it knew. Somehow, it knew what I had done and it came for us. For me,’ he hissed, his eyes rolling in their sockets. ‘But I escaped! Or maybe it let me go.’ The panicked orbs swivelled, fixing on Gotrek. ‘I thought that was it, but then I saw you, master dwarf and I knew you might just be what I was looking for.’
‘Star Hall,’ Gotrek said, his one eye blinking slowly.
‘What?’ Aldrich said.
Gotrek held up the lock of evilly glistening hair and sniffed it. ‘Ha!’ he growled. ‘I thought I smelled warpstone.’ He grinned at Aldrich. ‘This house must be sitting on a nest of the stuff. I thought only the ratkin were mad enough to build their lairs in such sour places...’
Felix felt a chill course through him. His skin suddenly itched where the tendrils of hair had touched him and he was forced to fight off the urge to strip naked and check himself for signs of mutation. ‘What is it, Aldrich? Tell us that at least. What devil is lurking in the darkness?’
‘Haven’t you guessed?’ Aldrich said, stretching out his hand. ‘Are you deaf? Give me that hair!’
‘First tell us what’s moving down there,’ Felix said, his muscles tensing. If he could get to his sword, and Aldrich didn’t shoot him first, they might make it.
‘Bollin,’ Aldrich said hoarsely. ‘Bollin Berthold. He didn’t die, but he was entombed nonetheless.’
A groan erupted from the depths of the manor, sending shivers of nausea shooting up through Felix. Aldrich twitched. ‘The secret shame of the Berthold family, revealed only to those who profit from its wealth,’ he muttered. ‘Something buried here changed him, and the family fled, only to return again and again. But after me, there’ll be no more. I’ll change my name. I’ll go west, to Marienburg, and leave this behind.’ He looked around wildly. ‘I don’t want it, you hear?’ he screamed. ‘I don’t want your damned name!’
Silence fell as the echoes of his cry faded.
And then, the sound of wood snapping as the floor began to buck and heave. Aldrich’s scream was drowned out by a thunderous roar as something vast and hairy burst upwards through the floor, its flabby lips slamming shut on the last Berthold. It was all writhing hair, save for a huge face, all the more horrible for the distinctly human cast to the features, which resembled Aldrich’s, albeit twisted into a brutish and inhuman leer. It was as if someone had stretched and pulled a human face across a jumble of barrels, and the lashing tendrils of its great beard and moustaches stretched out with quivering eagerness. Massive, square teeth ground the pulpy thing that had been Aldrich into a red stain as it heaved itself around, its mad, empty eyes fastening on them.
‘Stoke the fire, manling,’ Gotrek said, raising his axe. ‘It’s time someone put paid to this pest-hole.’ With an inarticulate roar, the Slayer charged towards the monstrous spawn of Chaos, his axe licking out to sever the tendrils that sought to snare him. Felix began throwing wood on the fire, fear lending him speed and strength.
Gotrek was like a man caught in a bramble thicket, hewing and chopping, unable to press forwards more than a few steps at a time. His roars mingled with those of the thing, and a deluge of raw sound hammered at Felix’s ears. His hands bled from splinters as he tossed more and more
broken wood onto the fire. Light drove back the shadows, more fully illuminating the battle.
Gotrek’s flesh was bruised and battered by the pounding, yanking tendrils, but he staggered on. Blindly, he groped out, snagging a handful, and with a snarl he struck out with his axe, letting the haft slide through his palm. The blade of the axe bit deep into the bulbous, pasty flesh of the thing’s cheek, and a fountain of foul-smelling fluid spurted. The Berthold-thing wailed and rolled, nearly pulling Gotrek off his feet.
‘Out of the way, manling,’ Gotrek bellowed. Felix needed no further encouragement. Even as he dove aside, the Slayer set his tree-stump-like legs and every muscle in his arms and chest swelled. Then the Chaos-thing was sliding unwillingly across the broken floor and up off whatever passed for its feet as Gotrek gave a mighty heave and sent it rolling into the fire pit.
There was an ear-splitting wail and a rush of noisome odour and then the greasy crackle of the hungry flames drowned out everything else. The agonised thrashing of the beast sent chunks of burning wood spilling across the floor and walls and very quickly the mouldy structure became engulfed. Bollin Berthold, if that was who the beast had truly once been, burned even as the house he’d built did the same.
‘Up, manling,’ Gotrek said, hauling Felix to his feet. ‘Time to go.’
Felix scrambled to his feet, snatching up Karaghul as he went. Together, he and Gotrek fled the ruin, even as the light of the cleansing flame illuminated the night. The creature’s screams pursued them into the clean night air, fading only after a painful length of time.
Once they were outside, Gotrek watched Star Hall burn, a sour look on his face. ‘No doom and no gold,’ he grunted, his good eye reflecting the firelight.
‘Well, the one can’t be helped, true enough,’ Felix said. He reached down and plucked a thin curl of singed hair from Gotrek’s axe. ‘But as to the other, who’s to say?’ He held up the hair so that Gotrek could see it. ‘When do you think the offices of Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel open up?’
Gotrek laughed and they turned towards Wolfenburg, leaving Star Hall and its secrets to burn.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author of the novels Knight of the Blazing Sun, Time of Legends: Neferata and the forthcoming Gotrek and Felix: Road of Skulls, JOSH REYNOLDS used to be a roadie for the Hong Kong Cavaliers, but now writes full time. His work has appeared in various anthologies, including Age of Legend and several issues of the electronic magazine Hammer and Bolter.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Originally published in the Black Library Weekender Anthology (Saturday) 2012.
Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Winona Nelson
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ISBN 978-0-85787-792-5
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Table of Contents
Cover
Berthold's Beard - Josh Reynolds
About The Author
Legal
eBook license
Table of Contents
Cover
Berthold's Beard - Josh Reynolds
About The Author
Legal
eBook license