by David Guymer
Felix pulled up a stool of his own and sat. He noticed Thomas wandering the perimeter of the room, crumbling lumps of subtly discoloured suet along the length of the skirting.
Gregor saw his quizzical look. ‘Black hellebore,’ he explained. ‘For the rats.’
‘Got some right big’uns,’ Thomas added with pride, brushing fatty grey spigots from his fingers.
‘Aye,’ Gregor agreed, shooing the lad away. ‘Go wash yer hands in the stream. And don’t tarry visiting yer mother, run right back. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours.’ Thomas hurried off, following his elder brother’s path out the back door. Gregor watched him go, wringing his own hands through his apron. He returned to Felix. ‘Sometimes you see packs of ‘em, particularly over yonder hill.’ He gestured vaguely south-west. ‘Sylvania way. Big enough to bring down a ram, oftentimes.’
Felix shuddered at the mention of that benighted province. The shadows suddenly seemed a little bit darker, and he did not think it would necessarily kill anyone for Gregor to start a fire.
‘Good meat on ‘em though,’ Gregor continued.
Felix looked up, horror creased into the lines of his face. ‘You eat them?’
‘We ain’t animals. But come winter, ground up in grain, the goats won’t turn their noses.’
And who then eats the goats, Felix wondered? He knew he should not judge poor folk for finding food wherever and however they were able, but even a starving man should think twice before considering the meat of a giant rat from the corrupted fields of Sylvania. Perhaps their forebears had been more wise, before generation after generation on the threshold of evil had softened their minds to its dangers. He regarded the tavern-keeper warily. He despised himself for the sudden wash of moral indignation. It reminded him so much of his father, and of the priests the old man had paid to school him and his brother, but Felix was all too familiar with the pernicious influence of Chaos. Without realising it, he found himself scanning Gregor’s body for any outward symptom of mutation.
He pulled his gaze away and cleared his throat nervously. ‘Why is it that the villagers think you will bring the Beast here?’
‘Aye!’ said Gotrek, slamming his fist on the table. ‘I’d hear more of this monster before I kill it.’
‘Kill it?’ said Gregor, incredulous. He shook his head slowly, eyes closed. Felix felt pity for him then. These people had lived so long under a cloud they could not believe there might be light behind it. ‘No one has gotten a good look at it, nor knows what it is or why its come. I’ll say no more. It knows, they say, and it’ll hunt down any that see its face or speak its name.’
Felix looked Gregor in the eye. ‘Is that why the villagers are afraid? Did Rudi see the creature? Do they fear it will come after him?’
Gregor had turned white.
Gotrek cackled into his ale. ‘It must be some creature, to have snatched the spine from so many.’
‘It is that, master dwarf, that and much worse.’ Gregor gulped, head sweeping from side to side as though he feared the walls were closing in. ‘Near every village I know has been hit bar thissen. There’s been word from nowhere for nigh on a month. Not unusual for the time o’ year, but no good neither.’ He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the bar. ‘Now, I see yer’re hunting this beast, so yer can stay this one night, but come morning I want yer gone. Yer’re right, Rudolph was with the baron’s men when they ran the Beast to ground on the borders of the Totenwald. Do you know how many men survived?’
Gotrek fingered the golden links of his nose chain thoughtfully. ‘So it makes its lair in the forest, you think?’
Gregor pushed himself from the bar with an angry scowl. He would say no more, however Gotrek goaded, and busied himself filling a second tankard which he then slammed onto the table in front of Felix. Its contents splashed over Felix’s hand. He licked the spillage from his fingers, wincing at the unexpected sourness.
He drank anyway. The long road had bred into him a craving for ale, however foul.
Thomas returned from his errand, but stayed only a moment to share a whisper with his father before departing to secure the back door and join his elder brother. Gregor came and went to replenish their ales and, though not asked, Felix gave the man his last two coppers. They were Bretonnian, about a hundred years old, salvaged from some barrow or other. He smiled ruefully at the ungodly places Gotrek had dragged him through since that night in Altdorf when he had sworn an oath to record the Slayer’s doom. Gregor moved on, ignorant of Felix’s reminiscences, getting down onto hands and knees to stack fresh wood within the fireplace. After a few minutes of scraping and muttering, Felix felt warmth on his back.
Somehow the crackling glow afforded the tavern no additional cheer, serving if anything merely as highlight to the gloom.
‘Forget this den of cowards,’ said Gotrek. ‘First thing in the morning, we head for the forest.’ His chuckle was hollow. ‘It’s good to have a direction at last. I can take my own measure of this creature.’
Felix took another sip, deep in thought. Something that Gregor had said was troubling him. He had said that Rudi encountered the Beast as part of a deliberate engagement of the baron’s troops. And if the baron himself was treating such rumours seriously…
He forced himself to swallow his mouthful of ale before it could grow any staler.
It could only mean there was some truth to the wild tales. Perhaps there truly was a Beast after all. It was not a reassuring notion.
In spite of his troubled thoughts, Felix felt his eyelids grow heavy. The road had been long, and heat and ale were a potent alliance that his tired body could not resist. His body ached at the thought of a straw pallet in the coaching yard, much less a proper bed in an actual room.
‘Meinen herr,’ Felix began, forcing his eyes to stay open. ‘This baron you all speak of, is he a good man?’
‘An educated one like yerself might not think so, but I’d say aye.’ Gregor nodded to the bent little hammer mobile that twisted slowly above the door. ‘We do right as men of Sigmar, and der Kreuzfahrer will do right by us.’
‘What do you mean?’
Gregor’s gaze lingered on the icon of Sigmar, his attention distracted by whatever he could see through the gaps in the blocked out window. Felix wondered if the village-folk were still out there. ‘The baron has Sigmar in his gut; eats, drinks, and sleeps it. He never slacks from scouring the moors of evil. He’ll not be idle while the Beast lives. Not von Kuber. If nowt else, we can sleep easier for that.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Gotrek repeated, downing his vile brew in one long draw. His tone brooked no dissent. ‘We’ll show this baron of yours how it’s done.’
The sun sank behind the hills, burnishing the west-facing slopes a ruddy amber. On the roof of the smokehouse, cloaked in the effluvia of its chimney stack, a bird that was not a bird emitted a shrill, off-key whistle. The call was copied and carried. A hooded spectre looked up from a freshly killed goat and crept into the lengthening shadows of the graveyard. It bared its bloodied fangs and voiced its own cry.
Within their homes, villagers hugged their children near and together trembled as the eerie dusk chorus spread.
On the darkened eastern hill overlooking the village, unwitnessed by man or star, dark creatures heard the signal and keened their excitement. Blades were brandished. Bellies growled. They slunk downhill, a sussurant whisper of lowered voices and black cloaks, converging on the gloom that pooled amongst the drab stone structures of the valley floor. From the rooftop, one more cry burst out, and then was silent. There they waited, pressed against walls and under covered windows, impatient, eager, silent as death itself.
Soon.
But something did see. What appeared at first nothing but a boulder, crouched from the sun under the lee of a gorse-strangled outcropping of rock and thin soil, slowly shifted. Knifelike claws drew back from eyes that burned a volatile red and conjured simulacra from the night; shades from the aethyr that swarmed the valley’s rare constan
cy like a rash of blisters.
The Beast directed his notice from his followers and to the village below, a penumbral wash of impermanence and illusion.
‘Master. It is time.’
The speaker hunched before him. It was small, temporary, a mural in fractured glass. It came with others, all on one knee and cloaked in black, eyes averted. The Beast cinched his own cloak tight.
Do not look at me!
The thought arrived in his throat, a bass rumble that rattled the bowels of those gathered. They trembled but did not dare flee.
‘It… it is time.’
Time.
The fools should know better. Soon it could be over. Except soon would never come.
Not for one of the Damned.
Ever ephemeral, his thoughts dispersed, ugly flakes of self that spiralled into divergent streams of subconsciousness. It was maddening. Some atavistic core of intellect bellowed and raged, grasping at the glimmering foil of madness with conceptual claws. Stiffly, his body one that no sane god had ever intended to move, he rose. Bones ground as his horrendous form pulled free of its earthen cocoon. His minions fell back with startled cries.
The world was broken. It flickered and shimmered and swam before eyes filled with hurt. He saw the village, as it had been and how he would remake it. A growl rose from his belly as he strode. It was a word, a name, his name, all that he still knew to be true.
‘Huurrrlk.’
Chapter 2
The Shadow of the Beast
Felix snapped free of his doze. Momentarily confused by the unfamiliar surrounds, he pulled himself upright, rubbing his knuckles against his eyelids to clear them of sleep. He paused mid-motion and set his palm over his forehead. His head felt as though some manner of creature had crawled into his ear to lay eggs. He groaned with feeling.
Gotrek was sitting across from him, still drinking, tattoos twisting under the dying light of the hearth.
‘You were dreaming, manling. Like a dog.’ The dwarf’s ugly face creased into a grin. ‘It looked like you were killing.’
Felix massaged his temples. ‘Dying would be more like it,’ he croaked.
‘Did you hear it?’ whispered Gregor. ‘Is that what woke you?’ The tavern-keeper was crouched by the nearest window, eye pressed to the gap between the boards, as though straining to squeeze it through. Sweat glazed his smooth pate.
‘Hear what?’ Felix asked.
‘Bah,’ said Gotrek, then belched, dribbling a trickle of ale into his beard. ‘He soils his britches over a squawking bird.’
Now that Felix listened he could hear what sounded like harsh calls. A raven or a jay, perhaps, though he had always been more interested in fencing and poetry than natural philosophy as a boy and he really did not have a clue.
Gregor was not listening either way. He shivered as though the fire’s embers had turned frosty. ‘Maybe birds sing at night where yer’re from, but here they do it at dawn.’
Felix frowned. That did make an unpleasant kind of sense.
‘It’s the Beast,’ Gregor breathed, wilting to the floor. ‘It’s come for us!’
Gotrek smeared spilled ale unhurriedly over his chin on the back of his trunk-like arm and then rose, only a little unsteadily. ‘Typical manling courage. Sooner shoot a thirsty dwarf in the street than offer ale, but a gibbering wreck when a pack of winged rats start yapping. I tell you, manling–’
A deep, animal, roar set the hammer mobile hung from the ceiling to tinkling. Gregor covered his ears and whimpered. Gotrek broke off from what he was about to say and grinned.
‘Gotrek, I don’t think that that was a bird.’
The dwarf was already tugging on his boots and reaching for his axe. He gave a sharp laugh and bolted the weapon to his bracer. He sniffed the rim of the axe blade lustily. ‘If it is, manling, then it’s one I’d like to meet.’
‘Are you both mad?’ Gregor crawled on hands and knees to the door, blocking it with his own quavering body. There was another bellow, and this time a child’s scream. Gregor scrunched his eyes tight and buried his face into his apron. ‘It’s the Beast. It’s going to kill us all.’
‘Move aside,’ Gotrek growled, his axe menacing.
‘I won’t.’
‘You picked a strange spot to finally take a stand.’
Gotrek swung his axe. Gregor screamed. At the same moment, another wail of pain sounded from without, and the axe whisked over the man’s head to thunk into the door. Chips flew where the runic blade bit. Gotrek twisted and pulled, the door’s cheap panelling coming away as he wrenched the axe free.
‘Get him out of my way, manling,’ he spat in Felix’s general direction. ‘I’m going round him or over him, and I’m not greatly minded which.’
Felix dragged the limp tavern-keeper aside as Gotrek shortened his grip on his axe and smashed the door’s lock to flinders. The double doors bowed out under the blow but the crossbar held them shut. Gotrek gave the heavy beam a kick from beneath that knocked it from its bracket, then put his boot through the doors to send them crashing wide. Felix stiffened at the sudden gust of cold.
‘Please, master dwarf,’ Gregor sobbed, skin clammy in spite of the cold. ‘Don’t let it have Rudi.’
Gotrek rounded on the two men.
‘I’m going to feed the monster’s neck to my axe! What it does next is its business. Coming, manling?’
Without waiting for Felix’s answer, Gotrek ran into the street, axe leading, bellowing a string of insults to whomever it was that might be listening. Felix rushed to the door, staring into the grey embers of twilight.
It was chaos.
While the majority of dwellings remained locked and barred, a dozen or more men and women with their makeshift weapons had flooded the street in response to those initial screams. He saw Gotrek’s orange crest forging through an anarchic swell of men and livestock. From his vantage at the far end of the long street, Felix caught a shadow of something on the rooftops, of several somethings, sinister patches of darkness that seemed to merge and split and dart from point to point without ever deigning to transition the space between. He began to see a pattern to their movements: they were fanning into a ring to corral the milling villagers.
Just as this revelation came the air was torn by a tremendous whine. He shouted a warning to Gotrek and the villagers to get down, but it was too late.
Blood gouted from impact craters in skulls, chests, backs. Bodies fell, some wailing agony, others already dead, to be crushed into the cobbles by their animals. The survivors screamed and ran, but there was no order to it, no plan, and another volley of unseen hail sent more bodies flapping to their deaths. In the midst of the massacre, Gotrek bellowed a war cry, but there was nothing in reach of his axe. His frustrated roars were answered with a redoubled barrage from the rooftops.
Felix scanned the sloping roofs in desperation. It was possible he could scale the uneven walls to reach them, but he was not sure what he would do once he got there. The mystery assailants were almost themselves a part of the darkness, like ghosts. And that was all assuming nothing tried to fire at him the minute they saw him trying.
A bowel-twisting bellow of primal bloodlust rent the night. For a brief instant, the attention of all was diverted to the far end of the street. Felix looked too, almost unwilling to believe his own eyes as they fixed on the brooding monstrosity that prowled the verges of the village’s graveyard. It stood massive in the distance, almost as tall at the shoulder as the house that abutted the garden of Morr.
The Beast.
It was surrounded by more industrious scraps of shadow, but they were too far away for Felix to make out what they were up to. Gotrek unleashed a torrent of curses and started to shove his way through the crowd in that direction. The rooftop attackers unleashed another salvo, throwing the surviving villagers into a frenzied rush for safety. Gotrek swore as they barged into him from all sides, running amongst the stampeding villagers with his axe held high. With dawning horror, Felix realis
ed that they were being herded like sheep; right down the throat of the Beast. The rooftop shadows kept up their attack. Felix saw a bullet strike the back of the Slayer’s head. The dwarf staggered, but kept on going, falling further to the rear of the longer-legged humans with every stride as more and more of the deadly rain became focused on him.
Felix dropped down to Gregor’s side, gripping the man’s shoulder tightly enough for the pain to distract him from his terror. ‘Find somewhere safe, friend, and stay there. Trust me that my companion is fearsome as he is belligerent.’ Karaghul slid from its scabbard and he swept back his cloak to free his right arm.
Felix darted from his shelter, took a deep breath, and broke into a sprint.
Most of the shadows had followed after Gotrek, but from the nearest rooftops where the streets had been purged of the living, he saw a few descend from the eaves as though on wings. They bore pitchers of oil that they cast over doors, boarded windows, and other wooden parts of those houses where people still hid inside and then, with shrill calls and demented laughter, they hurled their torches.
The houses went up like tormented daemons, windows ablaze like roiling eyes, doorway mouths screaming with heat. Felix tried to drown out the cries as women and children roasted in their homes. He charged for the nearest shadow-creature, but its alertness was superhuman and it was scaling the wall more swiftly than Felix could run over level ground. Flames consumed the house’s frontage and he recoiled from the heat. There was nothing he could do to save it.
He left it to its death and hurried after Gotrek.
There were more dead bodies lying in the street, but no longer so many screams. He ran, eyes burning from the fire. Smoke pumped into the street like blood. The hellish light had robbed the attackers of their ethereal illusion. They were solid enough, draped in all-encompassing cloaks of midnight blue and black. He saw them silhouetted against the flames. He could not count how many. Shadows ran over rooftops on either side of him in pursuit, sprinting with ease along treacherous slate roofs, leaping acrobatically from roof to roof to keep pace. There was a whir and snap as one of them let loose with a slingshot. Its aim was poor. Felix did not even hear the bullet miss.