by William King
Gotrek lay on a bed of straw across from him, snoring loudly. In sleep his face had a peculiar innocence. The harsh lines eroded into his craggy features vanished, leaving him looking almost young. For the first time Felix wondered about the Slayer’s age. Like all dwarfs he had about him an aura of self-assurance that suggested great experience. Certainly everything about the Slayer hinted that he had endured suffering enough for a human lifetime.
Felix wondered about the life-spans of dwarfs. He knew they were not near immortal, as elves were said to be, but they were long-lived. How old was the Slayer? He shook his head. It was another mystery. It was surprising how little he knew of his companion, for all the time that they had travelled together. Certainly, in his present condition Gotrek would be unable to provide him with any answers.
He poked the Slayer with the toe of his boot, noticing how scuffed the once-fine leather had become. He cast a glance around at the score of tramps and beggars who had lined up in front of the priestess and filled the air with the sound of hawking and coughing and spitting. He looked at the shabbiness of his surroundings and of his clothing and realised to his horror that he fitted in here. The priestess did not give him a second glance. He and the Slayer looked at home amidst the beggars.
He thought of Gotrek’s desire to be remembered as an epic hero. Would he want this mentioned in the poem, Felix wondered? Had Sigmar or any of the other great heroes endured this?
Certainly the balladeers never mentioned it. In those tales everything always seemed clean and clear-cut. The only time Sigmar ever visited a flophouse was in disguise as part of some cunning plan. Well, he thought, perhaps when I work this episode into the tale that is how I will tell it. He smiled ironically when he thought of all the tales of wandering heroes he had read as a youth. Perhaps the other storytellers had made similar decisions. Perhaps it had always been this way.
The old woman coughed loudly and long. It seemed to go on forever, rattling within her chest, as if bones had come loose. She was thin and pale and obviously dying and just for a second, looking at her, Felix saw his mother’s face – though Renata Jaeger had been finely clad and married to a wealthy merchant.
He looked once more at the mural of the goddess overhead and offered her a silent prayer for the healing of the Slayer and the soul of his mother. If Shallya heard she gave no sign. Felix prodded Gotrek once more.
‘Come, hero. It’s time to move. We must get out of here. We have mountains to climb and a long way to go.’
The tavern was nearly empty except for the innkeeper and a drunk in the corner still fast asleep, his body curled around the ashes of the fire. An old woman was on her hands and knees cleaning the wooden floor, her face obscured by the veil of grey hair falling across it. Gotrek’s immense axe was still propped up by the fireside where he had left it.
In the daylight, filtering in through the small dimple-glass panes, the place looked completely different from the night before. The dozen tables that had initially appeared so welcoming looked abandoned. The cruel sun showed every scar and scratch on the bar top and revealed the dust on the clay grog bottles behind the counter. Felix thought he could see dead insects floating on the top of the ale barrel. Maybe they were moths, he decided.
No longer full of people, the tavern looked larger and more cavernous. The cloying scent of tallow candles and spitted, roasted meat filled the air. The place stank of stale tobacco and soured wine. The lack of babbling drunken voices made the place seem to echo when someone spoke.
‘What do you two want?’ the landlord asked coldly. He was a big man, running to fat, his hair swept sideways across his head to cover a bald patch. His face was ruddy and tiny broken veins showed in his nose and cheeks. Felix guessed he sampled too much of his own wares. Ignoring both the owner and the aching in his muscles, Felix walked over and picked up the axe. Gotrek stood where Felix had left him, gazing blankly around him.
Its weight surprised him. He could barely move it one handed. He shifted his grip so that he could use both hands to lift it and tried to imagine swinging it. He could not. The momentum of its massive head would have overbalanced him. Remembering how Gotrek could use it in short chopping strokes and change the direction of his swing in an instant, Felix’s respect for the dwarf’s strength increased greatly.
Moving it gingerly with both hands he studied the blade. It was made of star-metal, which resembled no steel of this earth. Eldritch runes covered the bluish-silver material. Its edge was razor keen, although Felix could never recall having seen Gotrek sharpen it. Having satisfied his curiosity he gave the axe to the Slayer. Gotrek took it easily in one hand, then turned it in his grip as if inspecting it to see what it was for. He seemed to have forgotten all about how to use it. It wasn’t a good sign.
‘I said, what do you want?’ The landlord stared at them. Felix could tell that beneath his bluster he was nervous. His face was flushed and a faint moustache of perspiration was visible on his upper lip. The slightest of tremors was evident in his voice. ‘We don’t need your sort here. Coming in and causing trouble with our regular patrons.’
Felix went over and leaned on the bar, resting himself on folded arms. ‘I didn’t start any trouble,’ he said softly. There was menace in his voice. ‘But I’m thinking about it now.’
The man swallowed. His eyes shifted so that he was looking over Felix’s head, but his voice seemed to gain some firmness. ‘Hrmph… penniless vagabonds, come in from the wilderness, always causing trouble.’
‘Why are you so afraid of young Wolfgang?’ Felix asked suddenly. He felt himself getting angry now. He was not in the wrong. It was obvious that Wolfgang had some influence in this town and that the innkeeper was taking sides out of self-interest. Felix had seen such things before in Altdorf. He had not liked it there either. ‘Why do you lie?’
The innkeeper put down the glass he was polishing and turned to look at Felix. ‘Don’t come in here to my own tavern and call me a liar. I’ll throw you out.’
Felix felt the nervous flutter in his stomach he always got when he could see violence coming and was forewarned of it. He put his hand on the pommel of his sword. He wasn’t really afraid of the innkeeper but in his weakened state he wasn’t sure whether he could handle the big man. But his pride still smarted from the beating he had taken the night before and he wanted to pay back someone for it. ‘Why don’t you do just that?’
He felt a tug at his arm. It was Gotrek. ‘Come on, Felix. We don’t want any trouble. We’ve got to make a start for the mountains.’
‘Yes, why don’t you listen to your little friend and go, before I teach you a lesson in manners.’
He felt his feet slide and fail to gain traction as Gotrek dragged him irresistibly towards the door.
‘Why is it that everyone I meet around here offers me a lesson in manners?’ Felix asked as he was dragged outside.
Greta was waiting for them on a street corner near the gate. She stood beside a striped canvas stall that a pastry maker was erecting in anticipation of the day’s custom. Her eyes had a puffed, swollen look as if she had been crying. Felix noticed a bruise on her neck where someone had gripped her very tight. The scratch of nail marks was present too. Her hair was in disarray and her dress looked torn, as if someone had tried to remove it in a hurry.
‘What’s wrong?’ Felix asked. He was angry with the innkeeper still and it came out too abruptly. She looked at him as if she wanted to cry but her face became set and hard.
‘Nothing,’ she said. The streets were starting to fill with freemen farmers come in to sell eggs and produce. The early morning passers-by stared at them; the beaten-up youth and the distressed tavern girl. A night-soil collector’s cart rumbled by. Felix covered his mouth against the stench. Gotrek just stared blankly at the cart’s wheels as they rumbled past, fascinated.
‘Did someone attack you?’ he asked, trying to sound more gentle, now that
he saw how upset she was.
‘No. No one attacked me.’ Her voice was empty of expression. He had seen similar looks on the faces of survivors of the Fort von Diehl massacre. Maybe she was in shock.
‘What happened last night?’
‘Nothing!’
The anger smouldering within him began to focus on her, her deliberate lack of communication making her a target for his barely suppressed fury. He realised how upset he was by the beating he had taken. He was upset not just because of the pain but because of his own feelings of helplessness. He fought not to take his anger out on her.
‘What do you want from me then, Greta?’ His voice had an angry bitter edge. He wanted to be about his business and have nothing to do with someone else’s problems. Pain and tiredness and anger had impaired his ability to sympathise.
‘You’re leaving town, aren’t you? Take me with you.’ It was almost a plea, as close to an expression of emotion as she had come since the conversation started.
‘I’m going into the mountains to get the sunblossom for Kryptmann. It will be dangerous. The last time I was there we met hordes of mutants. I can’t take you now. But I’m coming back to get Gotrek cured. We’ll be going north then. You can come with us then if you like.’
He did not really like the thought of taking the girl with them on the long, dangerous route to Nuln. He did not like either the risk or the idea of having to watch over her en route but he felt he owed her something, that he had to at least make the offer. Even if she was going to be a burden to them.
‘I want to come with you now,’ she said. She was close to tears. ‘I can’t stay here any longer.’
Again Felix felt the slow burn of anger and surprised himself with his own callousness. ‘No. Wait here. We’re just going to the mountain. We’ll only be gone for a day. We’ll come back for you. Looking out for Gotrek is going to be bad enough. I really can’t take you with us now. It’s too dangerous.’
‘You can’t leave me here, not with Wolfgang,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s a monster…’
‘Go to Kryptmann’s. He’s your friend. He’ll look after you till we get back.’
It looked like she wanted to say something more but she saw the unyielding expression on his face and turned and fled. The sight of her disappearing down the street made Felix feel guilty. He wanted to call out, to tell her to come back, but by the time he had come to that decision she was gone.
Felix shrugged and headed for the gate.
Felix was glad to leave the town behind him. Once out in the rolling fields, Gotrek shuffling blankly alongside him, he sniffed the clean air and felt free from the corruption and poverty of Fredericksburg. Looking at the peasants at work in their long strips of land, he was glad he was not like them, shackled to the earth and a life of backbreaking toil.
Entire families worked the long, curving, cultivated strips. He saw stooped women, babies slung in pouches across their shoulders, bending to pick the crops. As he watched he saw a man stand up and rub his back; his entire spine seemed to be curved, as if the long years of working the fields had permanently affected his posture. A swineherd drove his bristle-covered pigs along the road in the direction of the distant village. From the unworked strips came the scent of excrement, fertiliser made from the town’s night soil.
Felix lifted his gaze from the fields towards the distant horizon. Beyond the worked lands he could see the forest stretching to the mountains. In the daylight they were beautiful, mighty towers rising proud above the plain, piercing the cloud. They formed a barrier across the horizon, like a wall that the gods had raised to keep men out of the divine realm and penned within lands more suitable to them.
The peaks held the promise of silence and cold, of escape – of peace. Overhead a hawk soared, spread out on the thermals, a bright speck free from mortal concern. It drifted below the clouds and Felix saw it as a messenger of the mountains, part of their spirit; he wished that he could be up there with it, above the world of men, apart and free.
But even as he watched, the hawk swooped. Impelled by hunger or perhaps simple killing lust, it plummeted from the sky. A rabbit burst from the undergrowth and hurtled towards him frantically. The hawk struck it. Felix heard the crack of the animal’s back breaking. Sitting atop its prey, the hawk gazed around with bright fierce eyes before it began to tear gobbets of flesh from the carcass.
He noticed the riders, oblivious to the damage their horses caused as their hooves churned the soil, thundering across the empty fields towards where the hawk had landed. He had been mistaken. The hawk was not a messenger of the mountains but part of the corruption about him, a wild thing trained to kill for sport.
Felix saw with a shudder that among the riders was Wolfgang, and the others were his cronies from the night before.
The juddering pace of the horse was almost too much to bear. Wolfgang felt sick, and not just from the after-effects of too much wine and too much weirdroot. He was nearly ill with fear. What had the girl seen when he removed his robe? Had she seen the mark of Slaanesh? By all the gods, if she had and she told someone, the consequences could be simply dreadful.
He wished he could remember more. He wished he had not indulged in such a potent mixture of alcohol and narcotic drugs. His head felt as if it were an egg and some daemonic chick was pecking its way out. Slaanesh take them both, he wished that Otto and Werner would return soon with news of the girl. He wished he could forget the awful moment when he woke up from his drunken swoon and realised that she was not there.
Where had she gone when she had broken free of his fumbled first attempt at an embrace and left him sprawled on his bed? His groin still hurt from her well-placed knee and the movement of the horse wasn’t helping any. He would make her pay for that injury a thousand times over.
Where could she be hiding? She definitely wasn’t in the common rooms of the tavern or in the single room shared by three barmaids. Had she gone to the temples to seek a priest and report him? The thought made him tremble.
Get a grip, he told himself. Think.
Damn Heinrich! When would the fat fool stop his infernal prattling? Was the only time he shut his mouth when he chewed food? It had been an awful mistake to come hawking this morning. It had not distracted him from his worries, as he had hoped. It had merely forced him to endure the torture of Heinrich’s company.
At dawn Heinrich had shown up with his offer of sport. He had really been hoping for a sniff at the peasant girl but, of course, she had not been there. Now he assumed that Wolfgang wanted to keep her to himself and had her hidden away somewhere. All morning Wolfgang had been forced to tolerate his inane innuendos and schoolboy jokes. Pride kept him from asking for his associate’s aid in finding Greta. Wolfgang could not abide losing face to such a loathsome toady as Heinrich.
‘Look, Wolfgang, there are those two vagabonds you had ejected from the tavern. Didn’t the dwarf look stupid when Otto and Werner threw him in the ale barrel? Come, let us have some more sport.’
Heinrich led the procession of horsemen towards the two strangers. By chance the hawk, Tarna, had landed near them and sat ripping flesh from her prey. Typical of fat Heinie’s birds to be eating, thought Wolfgang. The whole damnable family has trouble with their appetites, so why not their birds too?
He brought his steed to a halt as close to the blond-haired young man as possible. He got some slight satisfaction from watching him trying not to flinch as the massive beast loomed over him. The dwarf stepped back, obviously intimidated by the horse’s bulk.
‘Good morning,’ Wolfgang said as cheerily as he could manage with his stomach heaving. ‘Recovered, I see. We must have had equally rough nights. I trust you are not feeling so unsociable this morning.’ Wolfgang glanced left and right at Heinrich’s bodyguards just to let the worm know who was in control here.
Anger warred with common sense on the young man’s face. ‘I’m
fine,’ Felix said eventually.
Wolfgang heard the strain needed for self-control in the man’s voice. The youth didn’t like him, that was obvious.
‘No need to worry about your girlfriend either. Wolfgang is taking care of her.’
By Slaanesh! Heinrich was repulsive when he was being triumphant, thought Wolfgang. Then what he had said percolated into Wolfgang’s brain. Yes, Greta had left the tavern just after the stranger had been thrown out. And he had not seen her again until she had shown up at his door. Perhaps Heinrich was not so stupid after all.
‘What girlfriend?’ The blond-haired man looked genuinely puzzled. He rubbed the old duelling scar on his right cheek. A frown marred his smooth brow.
‘The lovely Greta,’ Heinrich crowed. ‘You must have thought she’d taken a shine to you when she followed you out into the street. Maybe you imagined her soft peasant heart had been warmed by your plight. Well, she spent last night warming Wolfgang’s bed.’
Wolfgang winced. If only it were true.
The tramp’s hand moved to the pommel of his sword. It stayed there, too, in spite of the fact that Heinrich’s men had drawn their weapons. With what looked like a habitual motion he glanced at the dwarf. The dwarf had stopped inspecting the hawk. He glanced blankly up at the men on horse. The axe was held loosely in his hands, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.