Gotrek and Felix - City of the Damned

by David Guymer

‘Kurt,’ the man murmured as though to himself, shivering with some private chill.

  ‘Marten!’

  The shout made Felix flinch on instinct, turning to see Nils fleeing the house. A missile shot from the roof and missed the man by inches, cracking the bricks between his feet. The man impulsively dropped low, swivelling about to catch a burst of chittering laughter before the shadow dispersed back into the fog. The mercenary snarled, unslinging his crossbow and trying to ram a stiff bolt into the track as he ran towards Felix and the others. The first thing he did was slap the wolf paw from Marten’s hand.

  ‘Put that damned thing away and put a weapon in your hand.’ The man looked dazed and Nils shoved him against the wall with the others. ‘And take cover, you dolt.’

  Startled, the man came around, his face undergoing the subtle shift from incomprehension to confusion. He let go of the paw of his wolf cloak, as if it burned. Deliberately, as though acting out a dream, he unslung his crossbow.

  Felix wondered if he was the only one to notice that he was not loading it.

  ‘Sorry captain,’ said the mercenary. ‘It was…’ his eyes glazed, turned shadowy, and then cleared, ‘it was a gift.’

  ‘Gift,’ Nils snorted, abandoning the crossbow to hang by its strap from his shoulder and unhitching a hand-axe instead. ‘Straight from the back pocket of Morr.’ He turned to Felix, something almost pleading in his manner, as though desperate for someone to bring order to this chaos. ‘I was down in the vaults with Schlanger, just looking, when I heard…’ He waved a hand over the cloister, flinched from another banshee shriek and shrank into the cloister wall. ‘Ulric’s teeth, is this the plan? Is this what we planned?’

  Felix shushed the man with a wave and edged nearer to the arch. The men had done a good job clearing it, the earlier blockage now just a hump of brick. He could make out Nikolaus’s voice above the twisted birdsong and the crack of slingshots but, judging by the corpse trail that disappeared into the fog, the flagellant could have precious few of his followers left with him.

  This was probably the worst ambush that Felix had ever been party to.

  ‘What possessed them to go out there?’ Felix hissed.

  ‘Something about helping the dwarf,’ one of the crossbowmen answered with a nervous shrug.

  ‘As if Gotrek is the one needing help,’ Felix muttered, but no one was listening.

  ‘Back inside,’ Nils snarled, sweeping his axe back to the house. A bullet whistled overhead to crack against the gable. ‘There are doors in the vaults. We’ll get Caul, we’ll find Bernhardt and the others, we’ll bar the doors and wait them out.’

  Felix backed away and looked to the house. It did sound tempting, but something stopped him.

  ‘Nikolaus said there were more bones down there,’ he said, feeling something grim clench his guts into knots. ‘Lots of them, I think he said.’

  He swallowed, stumbling further back over the rubble as a faint but shrill whisper from the murk behind the wall grew steadily louder, bringing with it the first inkling of just how misguided the mercenary’s plan was.

  Shadows were sprinting across the rooftops, converging on the sanatorium, bypassing entirely the road and Nils’s carefully lain traps. Like grapnels, the first wave of bloodthirsty shrieks were cast over the walls and the creatures leapt after them. Black cloaks bit into the wind, their dark arc bearing them the dozen feet from the final roof and well across the accidental glacis of crumbled brick that surrounded the sanatorium walls.

  ‘Run!’ Felix screamed, finding his voice and spinning away.

  Just as the first murder of cawing shadows sank claws into the parapet at his back.

  The whine of whipcord was loud enough to drown out Nikolaus’s prayers. A ferocious volley from the fog ahead mowed down three men, driving the survivors onto a side street. Brüder Henke was the last through. A missile thumped under his armpit and burst out from his back. The wall behind him flourished with the blood of the holy and the man himself then slumped against it. Bullets continued to chew the corner wall to dust as Brüders Friedrich and Arnulf hauled him clear.

  Nikolaus knelt beside him. The man moaned as Nikolaus stuck his fingers into the bloody puncture under his arm. Fingers slick with blood, he traced Ghal-maraz over the man’s sackcloth robe. The man ground his teeth, staring at Nikolaus with wide, grateful eyes.

  ‘Scream, brother, if you would scream. Let Sigmar know you come to his gates.’

  And Henke screamed. He howled with the lungs of two men.

  ‘I say we take them,’ growled Brüder Arnulf, flayed jaw set contemptuously, twin hammers crossed over his chest.

  ‘With pride comes disgrace, with humility vision. Our lives are inconsequential, and with that understanding comes glory.’

  Arnulf lowered his hammers and bowed his head for forgiveness of his pride.

  An animal bellow ripped through the confines of the alley. The surviving penitents turned towards it. Even Brüder Friedrich, earless and largely deaf as he was, hefted his mace and prayed for a swift death. It was close, from the far end of the alley.

  ‘The Beast, brothers,’ Nikolaus roared, drawing the leathern thong that was his one and only weapon before thrashing it across his own back. His followers mumbled their approval. Missile-fire continued sporadically from the street behind them. Nikolaus’s killing days were far behind him, and most of the blood he had shed had been spilled over the open waves, but that did not mean he did not recognise a trap when he saw one. The smaller creatures were feeding them to their master. Nikolaus simply did not care. ‘As Sigmar did throw down the Great Necromancer at the Battle of the Reik, so too will we face this evil unafraid.’

  The flagellants signed the hammer and charged. Nikolaus lashed his back once more and followed, turning once to note the shadows probing at the alley mouth to cut off their retreat. With a smile, Nikolaus grasped his bloodied thong and charged after his brethren.

  There could be no retreat from the End Times.

  Black shadows boiled over the front wall of the cloister, descending on the courtyard with a hissing fury. Curved talons tore through the bony screw, shovelling anything that even remotely resembled a bone into black cloth sacks. A shriek came from the roof of the house. More of the creatures were descending from the eaves and streaming inside. The whole scene put Felix in mind of a sinking ship, dark water spilling in from every side until all aboard were drowned.

  It was only the fact that the invaders clearly had no interest in the men between them and their treasure that meant Felix and his companions were still alive.

  Only the north wall and the brick slope of its fallen tower were currently free of the black-cloaked scavengers. Shadow-creatures flitting past them, Felix and the others ran towards it. There was an unquiet presence around it, a resentment of this intrusion, but the immediacy of their peril forced any misgivings aside. The creatures might be content to ignore them for now, but he did not expect it to stay that way.

  One of the mercenaries turned and drew up his crossbow. He did not even bother to aim, just pointed it into the seething crowd, firing from the hip.

  ‘No!’ Felix threw out an arm to knock the weapon aside, but too late.

  The iron bolt burst through a full sack and into the back of the creature that carried it, throwing both a foot forward and skewering them together to the brick wall. Squirming in its death throes, the creature dissolved. Bones spilled in a foot-long trail from the point of impact to the ruptured sack. A keening wail went up around the cloister and discoloured eyes, glowing with madness and hate, swept up from their bones to regard the living. There was a moment’s peace as each side regarded the other, then a hiss sounded from all around and the shadows surged. The mercenary heaved his crossbow into the charge and bolted for the tower.

  ‘Run,’ Felix yelled, seeing some of the other men standing stunned. ‘Run now!

  Another mercenary loosed, the bolt pitching a sprinting creature from its feet. Half a second into the proc
ess of reloading, he dropped the cumbersome weapon and ran. Felix gave him a foot head start and then followed.

  Inhumanly swift, the shadows closed on the fleeing men like the jaws of death. Felix spun, directing a feint across the front rank of the charge. The shadow-creatures stumbled back with a chorus of squawks. Rudi and the others were already halfway, scrambling on all fours up the slope of loose brick, towards the north tower. Death at his back, Felix sprinted after them.

  The flat of his blade smacked against the pile. Angular chunks tumbled through his fingers and sank around his boots. It was like trying to run up a sand dune, if sand were rust red and bone hard. The creatures were climbing fast, barely slowed by the loose footing and already nipping at his heels.

  Feeling a tug on his boots, Felix rolled onto his back and smacked his boot through a creature’s long snout. It emitted a bark and flapped wildly, unable to prevent itself from pitching backwards and tumbling down the slope. Channelling his terror, Felix ploughed his heel through the brick pile and kicked out. Bricks, as well as small scraps of bone, went tumbling downhill. The creatures below squealed and covered their hooded heads in their hands. With a snarl, Felix kicked off another small avalanche onto their heads. If they were protecting their faces, then they were not climbing. Shovelling brick beneath both boots, he hauled himself backwards. A brick flung from the cloister sailed towards him. Felix saw it with time enough to gasp as it cracked just beside his ear. He ducked, the next striking even closer. The impact peppered his hair in red dust.

  The drizzle of missiles suddenly became a storm. One struck him in the shoulder, summoning a retaliatory surge of pins and needles all the way down to his fingers. Fighting the urge to curl into a ball, he shuffled back onto hands and knees and climbed. Below him, the creatures shrieked their triumph and pursued.

  At the top of the slope there was a crest of ruined brickwork where the remnants of the north wall and a few feet of the tower’s interior floor still stood and adjoined the rubble. The others had already claimed it. Felix could almost reach out and touch the scuffed leather of their boots. Rudi had his knife in one hand and was hurling bricks with the other. Nils was fumbling again with his crossbow and backing away until the twelve foot drop behind him changed his mind. The remaining three mercenaries readied blades and axes, bawling into the black tide as much to bolster their own courage as to dent the enemy’s. One of the men, Felix was too preoccupied to notice who, hooked his arm in theirs and hauled him up. Felix wasted no time getting back to his feet. The men pressed in tight.

  From the roof of the house, to their left, a shadow-creature dropped onto the wall. Nils’s crossbow cracked the air, the bolt punching through the creature’s chest, throwing it against the hanging eaves and off into the fog that cloaked the courtyard. More were pouring down from the roof and dashing along the narrow wall with the assuredness of riggers between masts. Nils unhitched his axe, shuffling from the tower stump towards the top of the wall before it widened enough to admit more than one creature at a time. Exhausted, Felix shook dust from his ears and sank into a ready stance. Rudi stood ready beside him.

  He felt strangely jilted that the majority of the creatures had still not even bothered with them at all. More were coming in all the time, leaping over the walls to rifle through the house and cloister, filling their sacks before departing as expeditiously as they had arrived. That still left more than enough. Twenty or more of the creatures were scrambling up the slope.

  And not a loaded crossbow left between them.

  Now was the time for sword and axe.

  Felix sliced through a pallid wrist as it emerged. The severed limb started dissolving the second his blade exited. Swallowing his disgust at the foul stench of burned fur, Felix kicked the screaming creature back. Another sprang up to replace it, forcing Felix to parry a swift lunge for his belly. The notched blade screeched the length of his sword. With his greater strength he shoved the blade aside, but the creature rolled his counter, dodged his sluggish riposte, and was immediately raking its rusted blade across his mailed vest in an astonishing display of speed. Hastily he backpedalled. An instinctive lurch of vertigo told him his back was to a precipice. His attacker tittered mercilessly as it came on. More followed onto the bridgehead.

  Rudi committed his knife-arm into a diagonal slash. The creature’s spine twisted into a most unnatural contortion and the blade swept over. Seeing its weight rooted, a fighter’s instinct kicked in and Rudi booted it hard in the shin. Bone splintered with a hollow crack. The creature’s howl echoed through the cloister as Rudi jerked its longer blade from its bandaged grip, then sloppily beheaded it in a frothing shower of ichor. The mercenaries cheered to see it fall and Felix nodded his thanks. But it was just one amongst many. The creatures were agile and seemed to possess no fear.

  ‘We have to jump!’ Felix shouted.

  ‘It’s too far,’ Nils returned. His axe blurred with a frenzied zeal. His attackers tittered and danced. Blood spotted his neckerchief. It was all his own.

  ‘Not down, across. To the next roof over.’

  ‘It’s still too damned far.’

  ‘Are you suggesting we stay?’

  Nils punched his blade through a flap of cape, barely avoiding a disembowelling as the creature ducked the lunge and lashed out with a blow of its own. He stepped back, only the presence of Felix behind him keeping him from stepping right off the edge.

  ‘Do it then,’ he snapped, swinging an axe that was dodged with ease.

  ‘What about Caul? And Bernhardt and the others?’ Rudi’s voice was tense enough to snap. With both newfound blades, one low and one high, he thrust forwards only to see both smoothly dodged. ‘Shouldn’t we… go back for them?’

  Nils laughed once in Rudi’s direction, then finally managed to fell one of his attackers, smashing the haft of his axe through its face. ‘Just for making me laugh, you get to go first. Go on, boy.’ He jerked his head back to indicate the rooftop across the street behind them. ‘Jump.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Felix, forcing his own body between Rudi and the closing shadows, pressing the man ever nearer to the edge. ‘We’ll follow.’

  Not daring to turn his back, Rudi eyed the gulf from the corner of his eyes. The jump was almost ten feet and the roof only about a foot lower than their own position. From a standing start, it looked more like twenty.

  ‘I’ll be lucky to get halfway.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Nils replied, inexpertly smashing aside an incoming thrust. ‘The fall’s not big enough to kill you.’

  ‘Lying with two broken legs in the City of the Damned? If that doesn’t kill you–’

  ‘Just jump!’ Felix screamed, fending off both his and Rudi’s assailant at once. He hissed a small triumph when his parry cut a strip from his attacker’s arm.

  ‘Sigmar spare me,’ Rudi muttered.

  He spun to face the gap and flung his weapons across. The two blades scattered on the rooftop shingles. They slid noisily, coming to a rest about halfway down the harsh surface. He dropped into a crouch and then sprang. The wind struck him side-on with a sudden blast of black hair, red cloak rippling, arms swinging like oars. And then he hit, smacking the roof like a drunk’s fist into a tavern wall. The steep slope turned his ankle, pitching him shoulder-down onto the shingles and into a roll. He spread his arms and legs, ripping his clothes to rags but halting his slide to the edge with a foot to spare. Felix did not catch exactly what he screamed.

  ‘Who’s next?’ said Felix, fencing against four whirring blades. The remaining men exchanged fraught looks.

  Without a word or a glance, the one Nils had called Marten lined himself up. His fur cloak looked too heavy, but the mercenary jumped, sailing the gap without fanfare. Rudi screamed for help, but the man offered none, wrapping himself in his furs and kissing the wolf paw at his collar. The shadows clung to him a little too closely, but a snarl and a flash of grubby steel kept Felix from attending too closely. One after the other, the final tw
o mercenaries leapt. The first slid down the shingles to help Rudi up. His comrade landed in a breathless heap behind him.

  Felix and Nils fought back to back. The Middenlander hissed in through his teeth as a blade opened a red track the length of his forearm. He lunged for the creature only to see it flow away and another take its place.

  ‘All yours,’ he breathed as he spun, then flung himself from the wall.

  Inches too short in his leap, Nils slapped into the gable, his axe spinning down into the clutching fog with a crash. He scrabbled at the ruined brickwork, screaming as it crumbled to ash in his fingers. Slowly he began to fall, only for the swift arm of one of his men to catch him and haul him up.

  Felix’s blade entangled with another. He could have exploited his strength to bring the creature down but he had not the space or the time. He was alone and with nowhere left to run. Felix looked into the snarling faces of his attackers. He snarled back, body and blade flowing to hammer aside a speculative thrust and then, with a berserker cry of which Gotrek would have been proud, spun his longer weapon through a chest-high sweep that sent his assailants scrambling clear. It was just for a moment, but a moment was all he needed. He took two steps forward, close enough to hear his foes’ shrill notes of surprise, then drove the outside of his boots into the broken tower and spun.

  He ran for the edge, sword gripped as though he fled with the power of flight from the gods. His toes dipped into emptiness and he cast off, body flung into open air. The sudden blast of wind struck him like a hammer. Time seemed to slow and he hung there, limbs dangling as though he really did hang. Abruptly time accelerated, the ruined shingles welcoming him like an elf to a dwarfen ale hall. A single punch knocked the air from his ribcage. Groaning agony, he dragged himself over the roof ridge and, straddling it, looked back.

  The shadow-creatures clustered over the courtyard wall, eyeing the jump and then eyeing him. Their hissing speech became a snicker and, one by one, they peeled away to rejoin their industrious kin below. Felix watched in bemusement. He was not too dazed to recall his first encounter with these creatures. He knew full well that the distance between them would be almost less than nothing if they cared to attack.