Gotrek and Felix - City of the Damned

by David Guymer

  That at least was something.

  Coughing and with chest burning for want of clean air, Felix staggered into the antechamber and through it to the stairwell just as the ceiling began to groan. Footsteps and distant squeals echoed from above the cry of tortured rock and Felix made after them as swiftly as his limp allowed. He had made a turn and a half when there came an earth-tearing crash. Rock dust erupted from the opening below, causing Felix to hack up what precious life his lungs had been holding onto. Grit flew into his eyes and he blundered on, not daring to open them. The walls shuddered in his hands, bleeding mortar, caving inch by inch. Felix pressed his hands to both walls, as if he supported them rather than the other way around. Eyes still shut and weeping rock dust, Felix took a step that was not there and fell heavily into the temple of Sigmar. He opened his eyes and blinked away the grit. His gloves were prickled with stained glass.

  Gotrek was waiting for him.

  ‘Up you get, manling. Dwarf-made it may be, but this place has stood up to about all it’s going to.’

  The windows had been shattered, throwing coloured glass like caltrops across the floor. Sturdy walls shook, the great silver hammer swinging so hard on its chain that cracks spread through the marble walls with each successive blow. The hammer whirred several feet above Felix’s head but still he hunched under its swing as he limped after Gotrek and out into the open air of the acropolis.

  Felix did not know what he had been expecting.

  But not this.

  The sky shuddered and stalled, one moment flickering black and white, then exploding through a mad spectrum of colour. The sun gave a fitful glow, spitting like a fire in the rain as it faded, shifted across the sky or simply vanished altogether only to bleed back a moment later. Felix felt rain on his face, but before he could catch glimpse of black clouds they had burst apart, descending on the city in a rain of ash. The city itself was just as maddening; piles of rubble, buildings, entire streets blinking in and out, falling into ruin and rebuilding as time’s shackles were cast off and broken. Roads ripped themselves from the earth. Iron and brass screamed across the sky.

  On the road towards the bridge, a row of houses sunk into the earth, the ground unable to support the mass as stone after stone after stone contested the single point in space. The buildings exploded. A mountain of stone and an iridescent storm of the eight colours of magic cascaded over neighbouring districts.

  Felix ran to the edge, swaying with the shaking of the acropolis, and looked out into the wide bowl of the amphitheatre. Black-cloaked skaven were fleeing across the arena, sheltering in the open pit as the structure around them crumbled. The sand beneath their feet rippled like molten lead. Something was rising. Felix looked away, unable to stomach the short-lived screams as the space their bodies occupied was suddenly claimed by mortar and stone. The towering edifice of the Stadtverwaltung stormed up from the arena, barging aside the ramshackle terraces before both crumbled like ash before Felix’s eyes.

  Mordheim was tearing itself apart.

  The river and the wall of fog that surrounded it were the only constants in sight. Fog lay over the eastern and southern walls of the city like extensions to its ramparts, obscuring his view of the stone beneath. They were much closer than the river, but he had no idea if the walls were gated or where a gate could be found if they existed. He did not even know if the mists could be crossed anywhere but the bridge. That left only one option, and Gotrek was already moving, his expression one of rigid determination as he pounded down the marble flight from the acropolis. The steps trembled underfoot, eventually giving way to a paved road. A wide avenue led through groaning ruins to the distantly glimpsed turrets of the bridge towers. The road was not twisting in on itself as it had before, which Felix supposed was something but, as he watched, weeds took root between the flagstones, flourished and then died, bursting apart in showers of jade to seed the earth with shivering motes of power.

  Rudi stirred, blinking in confusion at the tattooed back that was his reward for regaining consciousness. Gotrek grumbled something dwarfish and set the boy down. Rudi stumbled, unready for the shaking ground. Gotrek watched him for a second then gave an approving grunt.

  ‘I can’t hear the voices,’ Rudi mumbled, face awash with colour as he gawped at the sky.

  ‘No,’ said Felix, briefly smiling. He had not had chance to notice, but it was true.

  Rudi turned back, looking up the steps to where the temple was slowly beginning to come apart. ‘Brüder Nikolaus?’

  ‘Talk later,’ Gotrek growled. ‘If you can flap your lips, you can move your legs.’

  ‘Move?’

  ‘That way,’ said Felix, pointing across the tortured tenements towards the bridge. From the confused maze of streets ahead, there came the rumble of musket-fire. Gotrek started to move and Felix was right alongside him, turning back to shout. ‘Quickly!’

  ‘Quickly,’ Rudi agreed, stumbling the first few steps but swiftly recovering the knack of it.

  Together, the three of them tore down the ever-changing street, Felix and Rudi more than once relying upon the other to catch them as a weed materialised around their ankle to trip them or flagstones gave way to potholes. Gotrek ploughed through it all.

  At a crossroads, they paused for a heartbeat.

  Between the blinking of an eye, Felix saw that the torn ruin on the far right corner was packed with tattooed goblins. Their shrill war cries sounded in a sudden burst as they cavorted through the broken walls, feathered bandanas waving, slinging arrows into some other group of men that took cover behind a cart in the street and returned fire. Felix flinched. An arrow flew towards him. The next instant it was all gone. The ruin itself was heaving at its foundations as if it might rise up and crash through the streets to freedom.

  It was as if the city’s disparate times had been pressed into one place but not stuck, and it was uncertain which it was meant to occupy.

  Felix blinked, still staring into the swelling building as Gotrek dragged him down the left-hand avenue. They cleared the crossroads just as the structure burst apart. The explosion annihilated the surrounding buildings, scouring the crossroads with shrapnel while arcs of chromatic energy tore the air like lightning. Again, Felix and Rudi had each other to thank as the ground bucked and pitched them into each other’s arms. A wave of ozone crashed over their heads. They kept running, turning another bend, trusting to Gotrek’s instincts as the dwarf led them through an alley and onto another wide street.

  The air reeked of blood, a cloud of gunpowder smoke prickling its way up Felix’s nose and down his throat. He coughed, gripping his sword as Gotrek charged from the alley to behead a black horror that had been busy feasting on a corpse.

  It was the corpse of a man.

  His garb was plain, undyed woollen smock and breeches with a felt cap upon his bloodless head. A pitchfork lay beside him, broken at the haft and covered under the peasant’s spilled guts. There were more of them, hundreds, torn open and lain out like crops before the changeling sky. Gotrek stepped over the body. The vanquished daemon was already beginning to fade.

  The clangour of blades and human cries could be heard from ahead. Another musket round made the ash cloud quiver. Someone was clearly still alive. Felix ran into the open, avoiding treading on corpses where he could, squinting into the fog for signs of life. A pair of black horrors gibbered as they saw him, loping in from the right. Gotrek barked a laugh, swinging his axe as he spun away to face them. The daemons went for him, leaving Felix and Rudi to come upon the battered war wagon alone.

  Felix had not seen the like in the Empire’s armies for years. And this one would not be riding to war anytime soon. The horses had been butchered, the lamellar plates of their barding had been peeled back to expose the meat and were frothed with blood. The wagon itself looked as though it had been mauled. It had collapsed onto its rear axle, the wheels ripped clean off, its ablative flanks gouged to the wood beneath. But someone had hoisted a banner in the lee of
the armoured forecastle. It was iron grey, emblazoned with the twin-tailed comet, and it was from there that the sounds of fighting came.

  Felix and Rudi shared a look, then ran through the sulphurous murk to the savaged flanks of the wagon. Handholds were easy to find, and Felix hauled himself up, getting his fingers around the rim of a shield and pulling himself onto the wagon’s ramparts.

  The wagon’s interior resembled a ghoul’s abattoir. Bits and pieces that had once been living things lay everywhere, the battlements pasted with blood up to an inch thick. A black horror spun through the charnel reek and snarled, bunching as if to pounce.

  Still straddling the rampart, Felix kicked it in the face. The daemon sprawled onto its back and Felix jumped into the wagon after it, moving to finish it off. He had taken one step and lifted his head when the daemon’s chest erupted in a shower of black gristle and a crack like a splitting stone. Powder smoke rushed hungrily over the fading corpse, making Felix cough and his eyes sting.

  A soldier in torn cloak and bloodied mail jumped over the body, swinging his pistol like a club. Felix cried out in alarm and ducked back. The gun stock struck the reinforced wood and split. The soldier snarled, tossing the ruined weapon aside and drew up his sword.

  ‘Konrad,’ Felix shouted, holding up a hand for peace.

  The militia captain regarded him, confused. In his other hand, Felix tightened his grip around his weapon. The man’s snarl slackened, some of the animal instinct passing from his eyes. He lowered his sword and, gladly, Felix eased his hold on his.

  ‘Dwarf-friend,’ Konrad breathed. He swallowed as if he had been waiting hours for the chance to do so. His horseshoe moustache clung to anaemic cheeks, adhered by his own blood to his flesh. ‘Is this your doing? Did you and your companions unleash this hell on the city?’

  ‘What?’ Felix hissed, too thrown by the very idea to think what else to say.

  ‘Where is von Kuber?’ the man pressed.

  Felix did not answer right away, time enough for Rudi to scale the wagon’s sides behind him and drop down. Konrad’s blade swept up to cover him. Blood loss and exhaustion made the steel shake.

  Rudi faced the sword down, taking a step forward and palming the weapon gently to one side. Standing on the cusp of collapse, Konrad had not the strength left to try and stop him.

  Felix had not noticed it before, but Rudi was three inches the taller.

  ‘The baron was in the temple,’ said Rudi. ‘Along with others.’ Something firmed within him as he looked past the soldier to where the acropolis lay hidden in the fog. ‘He didn’t make it out.’

  Konrad’s mask sublimed to one of grief. His eyes widened, his jaw softened, a tear moistened the jellied gore that caked the corner of his eyes. And then it was gone.

  ‘His watch is over. There are no more von Kubers and the city must burn.’

  As if choosing that moment to make its point, the fire-blackened tenement to the wagon’s left side suddenly erupted. The three men ducked, shrapnel beating against the wagon’s flanks.

  ‘This city is doing a fine job on its own,’ Felix shouted. ‘The daemon has been banished, the curse is broken. There’s no need to die here.’

  ‘Broken?’ said Konrad, incredulous, the crack of musket-fire from the direction of the forecastle a terse reminder that all was far from peaceful. ‘The Damned haunt the streets in daemon form. A temple to blessed Sigmar is defiled and must be restored. Run you say?’ The soldier chuckled darkly and turned his back. He gazed into the smog. ‘I say no. The City of the Damned will be purged. It will be sanctified and then it will burn.’

  Felix swallowed his rejoinder, shook his head angrily as he turned away and set foot to the rear ramparts to hoist himself up. Even after everything, he still felt the strongest urge to introduce Konrad Seitz to his fist. That was the problem with zealots.

  They would never change.

  ‘Come on, Rudi,’ he called back, noticing that the man was not following.

  The young man moved to Konrad’s side and helped him stay upright. There was a determined set to his jaw, face turned back across the forecastle in the direction of the temple. ‘Captain Seitz is right.’

  ‘Rudi, don’t be–’

  ‘Go, Felix. This isn’t your home, it’s mine. My family. Many of the Damned have been freed but there’s work still to be done here. I don’t have Brüder Nikolaus to do it for me now.’

  Held in the crook of Rudi’s arm, Konrad gave a wolfish grin. ‘We’re sinning men of Ostermark, and there can be no more running. We’ll save them all and burn the rest.’

  Felix stared for a moment, a lump in his throat. Then, unable to think of a word to say, hauled himself over the wagon’s rear. He landed on the bloodied flags with an almighty twinge in his bruised leg and started limping for the bridge.

  ‘Where’s the lad?’ shouted Gotrek. His face and arms were black and glowed faintly with daemonic ichor. Somewhere underneath the belligerence and grime, Felix detected a trace of concern.

  Felix looked back to the wagon, like a beached wreck in the gloom, unsure quite what answer to give. ‘I think he always meant to die here.’

  Gotrek nodded, understanding as only a Slayer could, then clapped his arm, leaving a bloody print on his sleeve. The pair of them ran, leaving the war wagon and its embattled men behind. Felix prayed for them.

  To his surprise, he felt confident that someone listened.

  The bridge was closer now, unchanging while earth, stone and sky shattered and blurred. It was like observing the accelerated passage of seasons; watching trees grow, flowers blossom and then die, creatures shifting too fast to be recognised except by a gut reaction to their presence, only the shape of the land itself to grant constancy.

  Gotrek taking the lead, they emerged onto the courtyard.

  The bridge reared vast from the fog, grey-stoned towers proud in spite of their ruination, the black claw-marks of the fire’s touch at their throats. It was raining ash, but Felix ignored it, running ahead of Gotrek and charging for the bridge. A man was sat upon the steps in the ash snow like a hopeless paramour in the rain.

  He had a knife.

  ‘Only two?’ said Caul Schlanger, turning the blade to clean soot from his fingernails. ‘You do make a habit of this, Jaeger.’ He did not look up as Felix marched towards him, lifting the four-fingered hand as if to inspect its cleanliness, then curling them down one by one, ‘Ulisson, Straghov, Varigsson, Magdov–’

  The last name turned into a blast of wind as Felix closed, planted his foot into the seated man’s chest and slammed him back against the trembling steps. Caul snickered drily and set down the knife. Felix did not shift his boot.

  ‘Bastard, Schlanger,’ he hissed. ‘You could have helped us!’

  ‘You think I didn’t?’

  Felix levelled his runesword to the man’s throat. ‘Don’t think I’ll be unduly troubled to have a fifth name on my conscience.’

  Caul winced at that.

  ‘Where have we met, Schlanger? And if I think you’re lying, I swear to Sigmar that I’ll gizzard you like a fowl.’

  The man’s green eyes met his, each unmoved as a frozen lake.

  ‘We have never met, Jaeger, but we share a mutual acquaintance.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Felix pressed, angered by the slow creep of the man’s smile.

  ‘We are members of a secret order, he and I, pledged to the understanding and eradication of Chaos. You will have heard of it. The Golden Brotherhood.’

  ‘Max Schreiber,’ Felix barked. ‘You know Max Schreiber.’

  ‘Like the father I never had,’ Caul smirked, a fastidious show of ordered enamel. ‘He keeps well. In Altdorf, last I heard.’

  Felix turned briefly to Gotrek before withdrawing his sword and sheathing it with a disgusted snort. He stepped back.

  ‘I still don’t know whether to believe a word from your mouth.’

  Caul rubbed his throat, helped himself to his feet and mocked a hammer across the chest whi
ch he finished with a courtly bow and flourish. ‘Like holy Sigmar, a liar is all things to all men.’

  ‘Did Max send you here?’

  ‘Men like Konrad and Gramm would burn us for the knowledge we keep, but we knew something foul dwelt here. Something best left undisturbed. It was easy enough to bring myself to the baron’s notice. He always had positions for killers.’ He grinned, fondling his knife as though recalling something peculiarly delicious. Then he shrugged. ‘I suppose now we know why.’

  ‘You could have mentioned this before. How did you–’

  Caul shook his head, lips tight as though something in this amused him. ‘You can ask me every question you like Jaeger, why Herrcher Schreiber told me of his adventures, or how he knew you were in Osterwald and would come to me. But it won’t matter.’ He stepped back, up to the next step and into the mists, spreading his arm to the bridge. It trembled slightly and even the river, seen this close, bubbled as though it boiled. ‘Because I very much doubt you will remember any of this.’

  Gotrek strode past them, a dozen strides onto the bridge. At the point where the mist began to thicken, he held. His axe pulsed balefully, painting the grim dark red.

  ‘Gotrek, wait,’ Felix shouted, suddenly afraid. ‘Even the daemon wasn’t sure what time he would return to. How can we be?’

  Gotrek chuckled, cold as the mists that pricked goose bumps from his arms. ‘You have something to do tomorrow that can’t wait?’

  Felix blew an exasperated raspberry. His companion did have a point.

  Gotrek clutched his axe in a strong grip, his one good eye glaring into the future.

  ‘I’ve been promised a doom. And a dwarf never forgets.’

  Epilogue

  The sun touched hesitantly upon the ruins of Mordheim, edging the shadows from its jagged spires and down into the alleys, scattering gold upon where the autumnal warmth struck upon leaden frames, flagpoles, shards of glass. A cool breeze from the south pushed the fog from the River Stir and out onto the moors of Ostermark. The light wind made waves that caught the light at their crests, shimmering across its length and breadth, the earth affording an object lesson in beauty to the heavens. Clinging to its silver curve, Die Körnung sank ever so slightly into ruin. Its walls were shattered, its buildings ash and home to freshwater crabs and tough brown algae. The silted flats offered unconditional surrender to the water.