Gotrek and Felix - City of the Damned

by David Guymer

  Rejoice, went the unspoken cry, the Dark Master will rise.

  A bent mutant in grey livery lumbered from the temple to take Golkhan’s reins. The champion acknowledged him with a nod, then swung his leg over the daemon’s rear to dismount. He thumped its hindquarters. Respect, if not affection.

  Squashed into the saddle of a flesh and blood stallion with one of the Anointed’s lieutenants, Morzanna remained mounted. And not by choice. The horseman’s bladed riding gauntlets enclosed her like a cage. She glared at the warriors and worshippers that turned the temple’s courtyard into a bazaar. She had been the Master’s chosen, her body moulded into his dark likeness. At what point had his eye alighted upon Golkhan? When had she become a canary in another champion’s cage?

  A black-cloaked figure appeared before Golkhan and pulled back its hood. Its eyes were dry and cold, like machined rubies. When it spoke it was with all the feeling of a reflection.

  ‘Our task is done. Kill-work many creatures, but portal to shadow-paths is found-found. Master’s temple-cage is open-free.’

  Golkhan raised a fist, turning triumphantly to his men. They cheered him, as though their lord had just returned victorious from a joust.

  ‘And the relics,’ Golkhan shouted above his followers’ acclaim. ‘Are they prepared?’

  ‘As we speak-squeak,’ answered the overseer.

  Golkhan rounded on Morzanna, arms spread wide, and laughed. Even distorted by hell-steel, it was the truest sound she had ever heard from him. His arms flexed back, armoured fingers scraping beneath his helm’s seal. With a grunt of pain, he began to pull.

  Morzanna watched in fascination. She knew as well as any that the gods’ gifts were not readily returned.

  Golkhan the Anointed howled in agony as the helm wrenched from his face in rivulets of blood. The howl became a cathartic roar as he hurled the device from the acropolis, then sank into a cold laugh. He turned to Morzanna and smiled.

  The man beneath the helm was gaunt, grey-eyed, older than Morzanna had imagined, but handsome in a severe sort of way. The flesh of his cheeks and forehead were red raw. His raven hair was crushed where the helm had sat. And she recognised him.

  ‘You…’ she whispered.

  ‘The End Times come,’ said Golkhan, ignoring her. ‘The pieces are ready and it is time for the pawns to move.’ He gave his mount one last clap, meeting Morzanna’s eyes with his for one fierce instant. It was a sight more terrible than any mask ever bound to the souls of daemons.

  ‘See that it is done.’

  Water lapped soullessly at the gritty shore. The burned pilings of a jetty were blackened and crisp, the tips sharpened to brittle points. It was not quite real, ephemeral as the spirits that lingered on the breeze. Rudi held his breath, layer upon layer of unease settling upon his shoulders like a weighted shroud. His gaze swept the ruin before him. The evidence of rebuilding was everywhere if a man was careful enough to look for it. Rubble had been cleared from the streets to construct new walls. The buildings themselves had been fortified with layers of rock.

  This had been somebody’s home long after the calamity was supposed to have cleansed the city of its sins.

  Was it possible that Sigmar had selected a handful to live on? Perhaps to earn absolution. Or maybe not all the residents of the damned city had been equal in their impiety. It was a strange and unsettling thought. But then, in this place, most were.

  The ruined burgh slumped into the river, surrounded by the remnants of a wall that looked to have been demolished brick by brick. The east wall had taken the heaviest punishment. Lumps of stone carved with gargoyles and delicate engravings lay broken and scattered over the nearby streets. They had no place there, unless hurled from above by catapult and Sigmar’s wrath.

  The wind whistled through what remained and Rudi shivered. Somewhere within the desolation, a rock cracked against another.

  Probably just the wind.

  ‘What was this place?’

  ‘Even Sigmar will miss a few fleas when His mighty hammer crushes rats. That way.’ Caul’s knife indicated the broken east wall.

  The whispers followed them from the river as the two men picked their way through the stricken township. The rubble underfoot was fluffy with ash snow. Fog spilled from rusted embrasures, sweeping doorway to doorway and away down alleys. Rudi took a tense grip on his blade.

  At last they arrived at the wall and, at Caul’s insistence, Rudi went first, emerging on the other side and taking shelter behind a jumble of masonry. He looked across the clearing to the thin line of houses at the far side. Mist lay upon the field of ruin like a murderous lover. It pressed itself to lumps of limestone, tightening over the arms and necks of breached breastplates. When Rudi squinted, tried to focus on what looked like a spire or a balcony on the other side, it was as though daemons manifested from the shadows until his eyes jerked back and there was nothing but mist. For a long time he stared. His heart thumped as if to remind him he still lived.

  ‘I don’t think we’re alone,’ he hissed.

  ‘The Damned walk here as they always will,’ Caul whispered back. His garb gave a leathern creak as he crouched down beside Rudi. ‘All who ever lived. All who ever died. Sharing this space in their own time. Aware of us only as we are of them.’ He threw his knife into the air and caught it, proceeding to toss it quietly from hand to hand. ‘In Nuln, folk still speak of the great fire and that was a thousand years ago; in Aquitaine, they whisper the name of the Red Duke, and then only in daylight.’ Caul smiled grimly, eyes unflinching green, blade blinking left to right. ‘Scars live on in a city’s memories, even as those that suffered the cut die and are replaced. This city has suffered as others dare not dream. Dark magic suffuses it – its sewers, its skies, and even the very souls of its people. Magnus came to destroy and he did. But answer me this, Hartmann.’ Caul caught the knife in his left hand, then placed it flat on the ground between them. ‘If you returned to Sigmarshafen to destroy the painted window of its cathedral with only this blade, do you think it could be done?’

  Sensing a trick, Rudi thought for a moment, then cautiously shrugged. ‘Yes. Easily.’

  Caul covered the knife with his four-fingered hand and dragged it back.

  ‘You misunderstand destruction. I speak of the utter annihilation of a thing. Dark magic and violence are a foul mix that Magnus, in his faith and in his blindness, could not begin to comprehend. It was only afterwards that he realised what it was he had done.’ Caul gestured across the ruined vista. The scope of destruction hazed even as the two men watched. ‘The city, like a window, could be broken, but not destroyed. Shards remain, and we are in but one. Beside us lies another, and another, and another; powerful moments, fractured in time without end or beginning.’

  ‘So, Felix…?’

  ‘Is probably here somewhere, in the next shard or the one after, doing as we are doing.’ He picked up his knife and slowly edged from cover. ‘If it’s not too much trouble for the lesser half of Gurnisson and Jaeger.’

  ‘So… are you saying we might be in a… er… other time?’

  ‘Smart boy,’ Caul whispered, recovering his condescending smile. ‘I see now why you chose to flee rather than fight the Beast.’

  Rudi ground his teeth, making the other man’s grin all the broader.

  Caul nodded towards the ash snow that was still falling in fits and starts. He drew deeply through his nose, as though causality was something he could smell. ‘Knowing my history, I would say it looks like Magnus has just been and gone. Would you not agree?’

  Rudi tingled at the thought that his feet might grace the same earth as Magnus the Pious. The scene of spent, but still latent, fury took on a kind of purity, the quiet of a cloister, rather than a crypt.

  A distant crack echoed through the flowing fog and this time both men started.

  ‘Come,’ said Caul, quietly. ‘As we both know, Magnus left something alive here.’

  ‘The Beast,’ whispered Rudi, sweating despite
the chill of the fog, the creeping shadows more menacing than they had been before.

  Caul waved him quiet.

  ‘We don’t stop until we reach the temple.’

  An evil-looking gull tore its hooked bill through a mutant’s belly, gobbling down a lump of flesh before Gotrek startled it into flight with a sweep of his axe. The dwarf set the weapon on a ridge of rock, then planted his backside upon the mutant’s breastplate with a grunt of pleasure. If Gotrek was bothered by the blood and filth that marred his impromptu stool, then it clearly troubled him no more than the corpse it contained. Its arms and legs wiggled with morbid anima as the dwarf bent forward and shook off his first boot. He turned it upside down, releasing a trickle of brown water and an odour that belonged nowhere but the foulest marsh. Felix drew back with a scowl, but the stench concerned his companion about as much as the bodies and blood. Gotrek unplugged his second boot. The tough, hobnailed orc-hide came loose with a slurp and he set down both beside his axe. He looked over the battlefield, airing his toes, giving every indication of judging the nearby feet for a matching size.

  ‘Strange company you’ve been keeping,’ Gotrek observed, nodding to the mutants in their battered armour that staggered through the ruins in a daze. Some were already at work stripping the corpses, but most just blinked up at the sky, as if to burn the memory of such destruction from their eyes. He turned back to Felix with a crooked smirk. ‘But a decent scrap, nonetheless. I envy you, manling. I wouldn’t have minded a crack at that champion myself.’

  Felix growled, staring across the field of slaughter towards Die Körnung. These were people that lay dead around them. Families. He said nothing because he knew Gotrek would not care. Suppressing his anger made his next question harsher than he had intended.

  ‘Where have you been anyway?’

  The brow above Gotrek’s one good eye arched. ‘If you wish someone to follow your every footstep then I suggest you find yourself a rememberer of your own.’

  ‘I suppose I should count myself fortunate you came looking for me at all. With the Beast slain you might have just walked back to Osterwald.’

  Gotrek chuckled, making the body beneath him jerk. Sarcasm appealed to the Slayer’s bleak sense of humour.

  ‘Actually, I was looking for the creature’s body when I found these two.’ The dwarf jerked a thumb towards the two flagellants. They strayed amongst the mutants, muttering, clenching and unclenching their fists, regarding their surrounds with a dazed distaste. ‘Wandering like chickens and ankle deep in the river, not that they noticed. They were like those mindless we saw on the other side, only not quite, raving on about holy war and some long march from Praag.’ Peeling bluish blood off his knuckles under his teeth, Gotrek shuffled around on his breastplate to watch them. ‘Shame the witless oafs keep calling me Thangrek.’

  ‘Who’s Thangrek?’

  ‘Grimnir’s hairy arse if I know. It’s not as if they had the sturdiest minds to begin with.’

  The earless flagellant that Felix recalled as Friedrich, stood looking up at the pink sky, calling a name over and over, but Felix could not make it out above the cawing gulls. Felix saw patches of darkness split from the ruins they hid beneath to move within the fog. It could have been the dancing lights of the aurora, but Felix suspected otherwise. He saw one such shadow occupy the same spot as Friedrich, the man’s voice momentarily twinned to another’s before the darkness passed and the penitent clearly stood alone.

  ‘Do you see any of this?’ Felix whispered. ‘Tell me it’s not just me.’

  Gotrek frowned, looking to the burning sky and then back across the corpse-strewn clearing. ‘I don’t think you’re losing your mind if that’s what ails you.’ He rapped his axe with his bare, hairy toes. The runes glowered a dim red. ‘You’re soft, manling, but you’re not mad. There’s something foul afoot here.’

  Felix let out an overly dramatic sigh. ‘Thank you, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Gotrek replied with a grin.

  Felix’s eyes narrowed. The broken walls of Die Körnung wavered even as he watched. It was not fog or settling rubble. It was more than that.

  ‘When I look at something, it’s as if I’m seeing it from different eyes, all at once. It’s like–’ he hesitated, uncertain how to continue. Gotrek regarded him, patient as a cliff face. ‘Do you realise where we are? Or when, I should say.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Gotrek with a slight nod. ‘Two hundred years past, give or take a day or two.’

  Felix gaped, stunned that Gotrek could say something so implausible as if commenting on inclement weather.

  ‘A dwarf always knows where he’s about, manling. And besides,’ Gotrek directed an ugly glare towards the sky. Pink fire ignited and flared back in waves. Suffering in malignant silence, Morrslieb glowered an ugly green. ‘Chaos moon’s as big as a troll’s backside. It’s not passed so near since the end of the Great War. Two hundred years past, give or take a day or two.’

  ‘How is it even possible?’

  ‘You recall Karag Dum?’ Gotrek flexed his toes, studying him archly. ‘Chaos twists time as hard as it does earth and flesh. Trying to understand it is as likely to melt your eyeballs as do anyone any good, so I suggest you just accept it.’

  ‘Accept it?’ Felix spluttered. He did not know what he had expected from his companion. Panic? Helpless rage? But Gotrek faced change in the time-honoured tradition of the dwarfs – ignoring it and waiting stubbornly for it to pass. Felix resisted the impulse to try and strangle him.

  ‘Put your boots back on. We’re not done yet.’

  ‘Not that I’m complaining, but that’s uncharacteristically keen.’ Gotrek leaned closer and looked into his eye. ‘You’ve not had one of those…’ he waved his meaty fist vaguely, ‘things in you have you?’

  ‘I wish people would stop implying that.’

  With a sigh, Felix located an armoured corpse of his own and sat. Metal creaked like his own joints as his weight spread. He kicked aside a length of spider-leg and then, wearily massaging his aching temples, related to Gotrek all he had learned of the Dark Master, Be’lakor, and of the curse that afflicted this city.

  The dwarf listened with an eager intent. When Felix had finished, Gotrek wore a grin as wide as the Reik and was hurriedly fastening his boots.

  ‘So there’s some truth to that fanciful talk of a daemon that cannot be slain.’

  Felix nodded grimly, spreading his arms in not-entirely-mock surrender. ‘One whose plan all along has been to lure people to its city. And here we are, like rats to its bait.’

  Gotrek gave a sideways leer, pulling his bootlace tight. ‘Sometimes rats bite.’

  ‘The two of us against a Chaos warrior, a sorceress, their army and then, in case that’s not enough for you, their daemon lord? As plans go, I think that even we’ve had better.’

  ‘Even Sigmar did not fight the hordes of Chaos alone.’

  Gotrek craned his neck to look around Felix’s shoulder. Felix swivelled around.

  Nikolaus walked across the ruins towards them. He was sopping wet and the discolouration of his bruises was beginning to blend with his tattoos. A gull disturbed from its feast flapped at his head, but he did not notice. His eyes were distant and, though he spoke, he gave no indication that he knew who it was that listened. Mori shuffled quietly behind him, empty-handed and similarly bedraggled. Fright not yet departed made the girl’s eyes a vivid, sparkling purple. The depth of colour changed as he watched. It was striking. And somehow familiar.

  Boots tied, Gotrek collected his axe, his one eye focusing as he screwed its chain to his bracer and muttered into his beard. ‘Sigmar didn’t want for a mighty doom.’

  Felix lifted his leg and twisted so he rode his corpse side-saddle. He nodded to Nikolaus, but got no response.

  ‘The temple of Sigmar is no place for a child.’

  ‘His grey fortress is for all,’ Nikolaus mumbled, picking at the scabs on his chest as he rocked on his heels. ‘Young and old
and men of all lands. The white lady will forgive me there. Only the sinful will break upon its walls.’

  Felix’s mouth framed the words.

  White lady?

  Felix looked at Mori again. He could not believe he had not seen it before.

  Time was broken here. She could be young and old. She was the sorceress he had seen at Golkhan’s side, the visitor to his and other men’s dreams. His regard made the girl clutch even more firmly to the back of Nikolaus’s thigh. So sweet a child. What horror had driven her to the path she was predestined to take? Her father had been right. Dark Gods demanded a high price. But they were fair.

  He wondered if he should do something, but the idea of what he might have to do sickened him. The thought of what Gotrek, or even Nikolaus in his right mind, would do if he knew offended him even more. As if sensing the course of his thoughts, the girl let go of Nikolaus’s leg and ran back for the ruin of her home. Nikolaus wept though he clearly had no idea why and did not turn.

  Gotrek grunted, a familiar refrain to the weaknesses of men, and stood, planting his hands behind his hips and bending backwards until his spine clicked. He levered upwards and limbered his axe arm with a sweep through the fog.

  ‘Are we moving then or not? Before even I grow old and the Pious finally decides to show up and burn this place down.’

  Felix sighed, checked his sword was secure in its scabbard, and spared a last look to the now-orphaned child. There, at least, was one thing in their favour.

  ‘I doubt that Magnus will be coming.’

  Konrad Seitz awoke with a thundering heart. He sat bolt upright, sheets crumpled and strewn over the wide foot of his bed, his linen nightshirt clinging to his chest with sweat. Stiffly, as if the limb that grasped it belonged to another man, he lowered his sword to the bed. He stared at the blade, his body still living the nightmare they had shared.

  With a breath of cold morning air, the beat of drums and marching columns that had filled his dreams faded into the drumming of rain against his sill. Through the window, high in the baron’s stone manse, Sigmarshafen emerged into a new dawn of fog and misery. Konrad recovered his sword. It shone with a dull lustre in the beclouded sun.