by William King
‘Begone, abomination,’ the Trollslayer rasped in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘Depart, I am yet among the living.’
The thing laughed. Felix realised that it made no sound. He heard its voice within his head.
‘Aid us, Gotrek, son of Gurni. Free us. Our tombs are desecrated and a terrible warping power rests within our halls.’ The spirit wavered and seemed about to dissipate like mist. With a visible effort it maintained its form.
Gotrek tried to speak but could not. The great muscles in his neck stood out, a vein throbbed at his temple.
‘We have committed no crime,’ said the spirit in a voice that held ages of suffering and loneliness. ‘We had departed to join our ancestral spirits when we were brought back by the desecration of our resting place. We were wrenched from eternal peace.’
‘How can this be?’ Gotrek asked, in a voice that held both wonder and terror. ‘What can tear a dwarf from the bosom of the ancestors?’
‘What else has the strength to upset the order of the universe, Trollslayer? What else but Chaos?’
‘I am but a single warrior. I cannot stand against the Dark Powers.’
‘No need. Cleanse our tomb of that which lies there and we will be free. Will you do this, son of Gurni? If you do not we shall not be able to rejoin our kin. We will gutter and vanish like candle-flames in a storm. Even now we fade. Only a few of us are left.’
Gotrek looked at the anguished spirit. Felix saw reverence and pity flicker across his face. ‘If it is within my power, I will free you.’
A smile passed across the spirit’s ravaged face. ‘Others we have asked, including our descendant Belegar. They were too fearful to aid us. In you I find no flaw.’
Gotrek bowed, and the spirit reached out a glowing hand to touch his brow. It seemed to Felix as if sudden insight flooded into the Trollslayer. The ghost dwindled and faded as if receding to a vast distance. Soon it was gone.
Felix looked around at the others. They were all awake and gazing at the dwarf in astonishment. Aldred looked at the Trollslayer with something akin to reverence. Gotrek hefted his axe.
‘We have work to do,’ he said in a voice like stone grinding against stone.
Like a man in a trance, Gotrek Gurnisson led them down the long corridors in the depths below the old city. They passed into an area of wide, low tunnels lined by defaced statues.
‘Greenskins have been here,’ Felix observed to Jules Gascoigne next to him.
‘Yes, but not so recently, my friend. Those statues were not broken recently. See the lichen growing on the breaks. I like not the way it glows.’
‘There is something evil about this place. I can sense it,’ Zauberlich said, tugging at the sleeve of his robe and peering around nervously. ‘There is an oppressive presence in the air.’
Felix wondered whether he could sense it too or whether he was simply receptive to his companion’s forebodings. They turned a corner and moved along a way lined by mighty stone arches. Strange runic patterns were carved between each archway.
‘I hope your friend is not leading us into some trap laid by the Dark Powers,’ the sorcerer whispered quietly.
Felix shook his head. He was convinced of the spirit’s sincerity. But then again, he thought, what do I know of such things? He was so far beyond the realms of his normal experience that all he could do was trust to the flow of events. He gave a fatalistic shrug. Things were beyond his control.
‘I hate to bother you, but our pursuers have returned,’ Jules said. ‘Why have they not attacked? Are they afraid of this area?’
Felix looked back towards the redly glowing eyes of the greenskin company. He made out the hideous standard.
‘Whatever they were afraid of, they seem to have plucked up courage now.’
‘Maybe they’ve been herding us here for sacrifice,’ Zauberlich said.
‘Yes, look on the bright side,’ Jules said.
Eventually they passed over another chasm-bridge and into a further corridor lined with decorative arches. Gotrek halted at a particular huge open archway. He shook his head like a man waking up from a dream.
Felix studied the arch. He saw a great groove made for a barrier to slide along. On closer reflection, Felix thought that if the opening were closed it would be invisible, blending into the pattern of the way along which they passed. Felix lit his lantern, driving back the shadowy darkness.
Beyond the opening lay an enormous vault, lined on either side with great sarcophagi carved to resemble the figures of sleeping dwarfs of noble aspect. To the right were males, to the left females. Some of the tops of the stone coffins had been removed. In the centre of the chamber was a huge pile of gold and old banners mingled with yellowing, cracked bones. From the middle of the heap protruded the hilt of a sword, carved in the shape of a dragon.
Felix was reminded of the cairn they had built for Aldred’s followers on the road to the city. A hideous stench came through the arch and made Felix want to gag.
‘Look at all that gold,’ the Bretonnian said. ‘Why has no greenskin taken it?’
‘Something protects it,’ Felix said. A question crossed his mind. ‘Gotrek, this is one of the hidden tombs of your people you spoke of, isn’t it?’
The dwarf nodded.
‘Why is it open? Surely it would have been sealed?’
Gotrek scratched his head and stood deep in thought for a moment. ‘Faragrim opened it,’ he said angrily. ‘He was once an engineer. He would know the rune-codes. Ghosts only started appearing after he left the city. He abandoned the tomb to despoliation. He knew what would happen.’
Felix agreed. The prospector was greedy and would certainly have ransacked the tomb if he could. He had found the lost horde of Karak Eight Peaks. If that was true, then was the other part of his story true as well? Had he fled from the troll? Did he leave the Templar, Raphael, to fight the monster alone?
While they talked, Aldred entered the tomb and walked over to the treasure heap. He turned and Felix saw the look of triumph on the Templar’s lean fanatic face.
No, get out, Felix wanted to shout.
‘I have found it,’ he cried. ‘The lost blade, Karaghul. I have found it! Sigmar be praised!’
From behind the heap of treasure a huge horn-headed shadow loomed, twice as tall as Aldred, broader than it was tall. Before Felix had time to shout a warning, it tore off the Templar’s head with one sweep of a mighty claw. Gore splashed the ancient stones. The thing lurched forward, pushing through the mound of treasure with irresistible power.
Felix had heard tales of trolls, and perhaps once this had been one. Now it was hideously changed. It had a gnarly hide covered in huge, dripping tumours and three enormously muscular arms, one of which terminated in a pincer claw. Growing from its left shoulder, like some obscene fruit, was a small, babyish head which glared at them with wise malign eyes. It chittered horridly in a language that Felix could not recognise. Pus dribbled down its chest from a huge leech mouth set below its neck.
The bestial head roared and the echoes reverberated through the long hall. Felix saw an amulet of glowing greenish-black stone hanging from a chain around its neck. Warpstone, he thought, placed there deliberately.
He did not blame Faragrim for running. Or Belegar. He stood paralysed by fear and indecision. From beside him he heard the sound of Zauberlich being sick. He knew warpstone had created this thing. He thought of what Gotrek had said about the long-ago war beneath the mountains.
Someone had been so insane as to chain warpstone to the troll, to deliberately induce mutation. Perhaps it was the rat-men, the skaven that Gotrek had mentioned. The troll had been down here since the war, a festering abomination changing and growing far from the light of day. Perhaps it was the desecration of their tombs by this warpstone-spawned monstrosity which had caused the dwarf ghosts to walk? Or perhaps it was the presence here
of the warpstone, of pure undiluted Chaos.
The thoughts reverberated through his mind as the roar of the mad thing echoed through the vault. He stood unable to move, transfixed by horror, as the monster came ever closer. Its stench filled his nostrils. He heard the hideous sucking of its leech mouth. It loomed out of the gloom, its pain-wracked, bestial face hellishly underlit by its glowing amulet.
The troll was going to reach him and slay him and he could not make himself do anything about it. He would welcome death, having confronted this manifestation of the insanity of the universe.
Gotrek Gurnisson leapt forward between him and the monster, hunched in his fighting crouch. His shadow swept out behind him in the green light so that he stood at the head of a pool of darkness, axe held high, runes shimmering with witchfire.
The Chaos-troll halted and peered down at him, as if astonished by the temerity of this small creature.
Gotrek glared up at it and spat.
‘Time to die, filth,’ he said and lashed out with his axe, opening up a terrible wound in the thing’s chest. The creature continued to stand there, studying the wound in fascination. Gotrek struck again at its ankle, attempting to hamstring it. Once again he drew green blood. The creature did not fall.
With blinding speed its huge pincer descended, clicking shut. It would have snipped off the Trollslayer’s head if he had not ducked. The troll bellowed angrily and lashed out with a taloned hand. Somehow Gotrek managed to deflect it with a sweep of his axe. He avoided the hail of blows that rained down on him.
The Trollslayer and the troll circled warily, each looking for an opening. Felix noted to his horror that the wounds Gotrek had inflicted were knitting together again. As they did so they made a sound like slobbering mouths closing.
Jules Gascoigne rushed forward and stabbed the troll with his sword. The blade pierced the creature’s leg and remained there. As the Bretonnian struggled to pull it out, the monster hit him with a back-handed sweep that sent him flying. Felix heard ribs break and the scout’s head hit the wall with a terrible crack. Jules lay still in a spreading pool of his own blood.
While the creature was distracted, Gotrek leapt in and struck it a glancing blow to the shoulder. He sheared off the babyish head. It rolled over to near Felix’s feet and lay screaming. Felix managed to put down the lantern, draw his sword and bring the blade down, chopping the head in two. It began to rejoin. He continued to hack until his sword was notched, blunted then broken from hitting the stone floor. He still could not kill the thing.
‘Stand back,’ he heard Zauberlich say. He leapt to one side. The air suddenly blazed. It stank of sulphur and burned meat. The tiny head was silent and did not heal.
As if sensing a new threat, the troll leapt past Gotrek and seized the sorcerer in its giant pincer. Felix saw the look of terror on Zauberlich’s face as he was raised on high. Zauberlich struggled to cast a spell. A fireball erupted, and the shadows fled briefly. The monster screamed. With a reflexive action it closed the claw, chopping the mage in two.
The wizard fell to the ground, clothes blazing. Black despair overwhelmed Felix. Zauberlich could have hurt the thing, burned it with purifying fire. Now he was dead. Gotrek could only hack futilely at the troll but its Chaos-enhanced powers of healing made it all but invulnerable. They were doomed.
Felix’s shoulders slumped. There was nothing he could do. The others had died in vain. Their quest had failed. The ghosts of the dwarfish rulers would continue to wander in torment. It was all futile.
He looked at Gotrek’s sweating face. Soon the Trollslayer would tire and be unable to dodge the creature’s blows. The dwarf knew this too, but he did not give up. A renewed determination filled Felix. He would not give up either. He looked over at the burning body of the sorcerer.
The fire had become more intense, more so than if simply the man’s clothes were burning. Realisation dawned. Zauberlich had been carrying spare flasks of lantern oil in his coat. Swiftly Felix stripped off his pack and fumbled for an oil-flask.
‘Keep it busy!’ he yelled to Gotrek, unstoppering the ceramic bottle. Gotrek uttered a foul dwarfish curse. Felix flicked the flask at the monstrosity, showering it with glistening oil. The thing ignored him as it sought to pin down Gotrek. The dwarf redoubled his efforts, chopping away like a madman. Felix emptied a second flask over it and then a third, always keeping to the monster’s blind side.
‘Whatever you’re going to do, manling, do it quickly!’ the Trollslayer yelled.
Felix ran over and picked up his lantern. Sigmar, guide my hand, he prayed as he threw the lamp at the creature. The lantern impacted on its back, shattering and spreading burning oil. It ignited the fuel with which Felix had already doused the creature.
The troll screamed shrilly. It reeled back. And now, when Gotrek’s axe fell, the wounds did not heal. The dwarf drove the blazing troll back to the pile of gold. It stumbled and fell.
Gotrek raised his axe high above his head. ‘In the name of my ancestors!’ the Trollslayer howled. ‘Die!’
His axe came down like a thunderbolt, severing the creature’s foul head. The troll died and did not rise again.
Gingerly Gotrek picked up the warpstone amulet with the broken shard of Felix’s sword. Holding the thing at arm’s length, he took it outside to throw into the abyss.
Felix sat, drained of all emotion, on top of one of the sarcophagi. Once more it comes to this, he thought, sitting among ruin and corpses after terrible conflict.
He heard Gotrek’s running footsteps coming closer. Panting, the dwarf entered the chamber.
‘The gobbos come, manling,’ he said.
‘How many?’ Felix asked.
Gotrek shook his head tiredly. ‘Too many. At least I have disposed of that tainted thing. I can die happy here amid the tombs of my ancestors.’
Felix went over and picked up the dragon-hilted sword. ‘I would have liked to have returned this to Aldred’s people,’ he said. ‘It would give some meaning to all this death.’
Gotrek shrugged. He glanced to the door. The archway was filled with green-skinned marauders, advancing behind their grinning moon banners. Felix slid the Sigmarite sword smoothly from its sheath. A thrilling musical note sang out. The runes along its blade blazed brightly. For a second the goblins hesitated.
Gotrek looked over at Felix and grinned, revealing his missing teeth. ‘This is going to be a truly heroic death, manling. My only regret is that none of my people will ever get to hear of it.’
Felix looked back at the oncoming horde, positioned himself so that his back was to a sarcophagus. ‘You don’t know how sorry I am about that,’ he said grimly, making a few trial swipes with the blade. It felt good, light and well-balanced, as if it had been made for his hand alone. He was surprised to find he was no longer afraid. He had gone beyond fear.
The standard bearer halted and turned to harangue his troops. None of them seemed to be anxious to be the first to meet the Trollslayer’s axe or the glowing runesword.
‘Get on with it!’ Gotrek bellowed. ‘My axe thirsts.’
The goblins roared. The leader turned and gestured for them to advance. They surged forwards as irresistibly as the tide. This is it, thought Felix, steeling himself, preparing to lash out, to take as many foes as he could into the lands of the dead with him.
‘Goodbye, Gotrek,’ he said and stopped. The goblins had halted and stood, looking panic-stricken. What’s going on? Felix wondered. Cold green light streamed over his shoulders. He looked back and hesitated at the sight. The chamber was filled with ranks of regal dwarfish spirits. They seemed fierce and terrible as they advanced.
The goblin standard bearer tried to rally his troops but the ghostly dwarf lords reached him and touched his heart. His face drained of colour, and he fell, clutching his breast. The spirits surged into the goblins. Spectral axes flickered. Greenskin warriors fell, no mar
k upon their bodies. A hideous keening filled the air, a thin reedy imitation of dwarfish war-cries. The remaining tribesmen turned and fled. The ghostly warriors swept after them.
Felix and Gotrek stood in the empty vault, surrounded by the towering sarcophagi. Slowly the air in front of them coalesced. Tendrils of greenish light drifted back through the entrance, took dwarfish shape. The spirits looked different.
The ghost who had spoken to Gotrek earlier stood there. She had changed somehow – as if a terrible burden had been lifted from her ethereal heart. She regarded Gotrek.
‘The ancient enemies are gone. We could not leave them to despoil our tombs now that you have cleansed them. We are in your debt.’
‘You have robbed me of a mighty death,’ Gotrek said almost sourly.
‘It was not your destiny to fall here this day. Your doom is far greater and its time is approaching.’
Gotrek looked quizzically at the ancient queen.
‘I may say no more. Farewell, Gotrek, son of Gurni. We wish you well. You shall be remembered.’
The ghosts seemed to coalesce into one cold green flame that glowed like a star in the darkness. The light changed from green to warm gold and then became brighter than the sun. Felix averted his eyes and still was dazzled. When his sight returned he looked upon the tombs. The place was empty except for himself and Gotrek. The dwarf frowned thoughtfully. For a long moment a strange expression gleamed in his one good eye, then he turned and looked upon the treasure.
Felix could almost read his mind. He was considering taking the wealth, desecrating the tomb himself. Felix held his breath. After long minutes, Gotrek shrugged and turned away.
‘What about the others? Shouldn’t we lay them to rest?’ Felix asked.
‘Leave them,’ Gotrek said over his shoulder as he strode away. ‘They lie among the mighty. Their bodies are safe.’
They stepped through the arch, and Gotrek paused to touch the runes according to the ancient pattern. The tomb was sealed. Then they made their way up through the old darkness towards the light of day.