Trollslayer

by William King

  The door leading into the cellar was thrown open. A shaft of light illuminated the darkness. Heavy footsteps marked the approach of the wizard, Voorman. He held a lantern in his hand and leaned on a heavy staff. He twisted his head up to look Felix in the face.

  ‘Having an interesting chat with the monster, were you, boy?’

  Something in the man’s tone rankled. ‘She’s not a monster. She is only a sad, deluded young woman.’

  ‘You would not say that if you knew the truth, boy. If I were to remove those shackles binding her, your sanity would be blasted in an instant.’

  ‘Really,’ Felix said with some irony. The magician tittered.

  ‘So sure of yourself, eh? So ignorant of the way the world really is. What would you say, boy, if I told you that cults devoted to the worship of Chaos riddle our land, that soon we will overthrow all that exists of order here in the Empire.’

  The wizard sounded almost boastful.

  ‘I would say that you are, perhaps, correct.’ He could see that his reply surprised the sorcerer, that Voorman had expected the usual casual denial of such things one expected from the educated classes of the Empire.

  ‘You interest me, boy. Why do you say that?’

  Felix wondered why he had said that himself. He was admitting to knowledge that could get him burned at the stake if a witch-hunter overheard him. Still, right now, he was cold and tired and hungry and he did not like being patronised by this irritating and supercilious mage.

  ‘Because I have seen the evidence of it with my own eyes.’

  He heard a sharp intake of breath from the wizard, and sensed now that perhaps for the first time he had got his full attention.

  ‘Really? The Time of Changes is coming, eh? Arakkkai Nidlek Zarug Tzeentch?’ Voorman paused as if expecting a reply. His head tilted to one side. He rubbed his nose with one long bony finger. His foul breath filled Felix’s nostrils.

  Felix wondered what was going on. The words were spoken in a language he had heard before, during the rituals of depraved cultists that he and Gotrek had interrupted one Geheimnisnacht. The name ‘Tzeentch’ was all too familiar and frightening. It belonged to one of the darkest of dark powers. Slowly the air of expectancy passed from Voorman.

  ‘No, you are not one of the Chosen. And yet you know the words of our Litany, or some of them. I can see that in your eyes. I don’t think you are part of the Order. How can this be?’

  It was obvious that the sorcerer did not expect an answer, that the last question was asked more of himself than of Felix. Suddenly there came the sound of the baying of many wolves outside the keep. The wizard flinched and then smiled. ‘That will be my other guest arriving. I must go soon. He slipped through the net earlier but I knew he would come back for the girl.’

  The wizard checked the chains that held Magdalena. He inspected the runes on them closely and then, apparently satisfied with what he saw, he smirked and turned and limped away. As he passed he looked at Felix. The younger man felt his flesh crawl. He knew that the wizard was deciding whether or not to kill him. Then the sorcerer smiled.

  ‘No – there’s time enough later. I would talk more with you before you die, boy!’

  As the wizard shut the door behind him, the light died. Felix felt horror mount within his soul.

  Felix was not aware of how long he lay there with despair growing in his heart. He was trapped in the dark with no weapons and only a madwoman for company. The wizard intended to murder him. He had no idea where the Trollslayer was or if he had any hope of rescue. It was possible that Gotrek was lost in the woods somewhere. Slowly it dawned on him that if he was going to get out of this, he was going to have to do it for himself.

  It did not look good. His hands were chained behind his back. He was hungry and tired and ill with cold and weariness. The bruises from the beating earlier pained him. The key to his chains was on the belt of the wizard. He had no weapon.

  Well, one thing at a time, he told himself. Let’s see what I can do about the chains. He hunkered into a squat, drawing his knees up to his chest. The chains pooled around his ankles, then by dint of wriggling and squirming, he drew his arms underneath him so that they were in front of his body. The effort left him breathing hard and he felt like he had pulled his arms from his sockets, but at least now he could move more freely and the length of heavy coiled chain he held in his hands could be used as a weapon. Experimentally he swung it before him. There was a swishing noise as it cut through the air.

  The girl laughed as if she understood what he was doing. Now he moved forward cautiously, placing one foot ahead of him gently testing the ground like a man might who was on the edge of a cliff. He did not know what he might stumble over in the darkness, but he felt it was wisest to be careful. This would be a bad time to fall and dislocate an ankle.

  His caution was rewarded when he felt a stairway under his foot. Slowly, carefully, he worked his way up the steps. As far as he remembered they had not curved in any way. Eventually his outstretched hands struck wood. The chains clinked together softly as they swung. Felix froze and listened. It seemed to him that somewhere far off he could hear sounds of men fighting and wolves howling.

  Wonderful, he thought sourly. The wolves had somehow got inside the manor. He pictured the long, lean shapes racing through the hunting lodge, and a desperate battle between man and beast taking place mere paces from where he stood. It was not a reassuring thought.

  For long moments he stood undecided and then he pushed against the door. It did not move. He cursed himself and fumbled for a handle. His fingers clutched a cool metal ring. He twisted and pulled towards himself and the door opened. He was looking up a long flight of stairs dimly illuminated by a guttering lantern. He reached out for the lantern, then thought about the girl.

  However strange she was, she was also a prisoner here. He was not going to abandon her to the tender mercies of Voorman. He edged back down the stairs and gestured for her to follow him. He caught sight of her face. It was pale and strained and feral. Her eyes definitely did catch the light like those of some animal. There was a ferocious inhuman aspect to her whole appearance that did not reassure Felix in the slightest. He moved towards the head of the stairs but the girl pushed past him into the lead.

  Felix was glad not to have those fierce eyes burning into his back.

  The sounds of fighting became clearer. Wolves bayed. War-cries rang out. Magdalena opened the door at the head of the stairs. They found themselves once more amid the mansion’s corridors. The place was deserted. All the guards appeared to have been drawn toward the sounds of battle. A line of doorways edged the corridor. At one end a flight of stairs moved upwards. At the other there was a doorway beyond which was the sound of battle. Felix’s nostrils twitched. He thought he smelled burning. Somewhere in the distance horses whinnied with terror.

  Discretion told him to head for the stairs, to get away from the sounds of fighting. He was not part of either faction here, and discovery might prove fatal for him. The longer the others fought, the more the odds against him were whittled down, and the more chance he had of escaping.

  Magdalena, however, felt differently. She moved towards the doorway at the end of the corridor. The one that led towards the battle. Felix grabbed her chains and tugged. She did not stop. Although he was taller and heavier, she was surprisingly strong, stronger perhaps than he was.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing you can do there.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Let us look around. Perhaps upstairs we can find a way to remove these chains.’

  For a moment, she stood undecided but the last point appeared to sway her. Together they moved up the stairs. Behind them the sounds of howling and war-cries reached a crescendo and then abruptly ceased.

  For a
moment, Felix wondered what had happened. Had the wolves overcome the defenders?

  Then he heard men-at-arms begin to shout at each other once more. He heard noble voices tell the men to take the wounded inside and he realised that the men had won – for a while.

  At the top of the stairs a window looked down into the courtyard of the lodge. He could see that there were dozens of dead wolves down there and maybe five dead men. Blood reddened the snow.

  ‘How the hell did that gate get open?’ he heard Count Hrothgar ask. Felix wondered the same himself, for he could see that the wooden gate lay wide open. The wolves had come right through it. Then he saw the thing, and he wondered no more.

  On the roof of the stables lay a grey shape, half man and half wolf. The hairs on the back of Felix’s neck prickled. The man-wolf rose and dropped back out of sight, leaving Felix wondering if he had imagined the whole thing. He offered a prayer to Sigmar that he had done so but somehow, in his heart of hearts, he doubted it. It looked like Ulric’s Children were here.

  ‘Let us go on,’ he muttered and turned and headed down the corridor.

  They entered a library. Bookcases so high that one would need a ladder to reach the highest volumes lined the walls. Felix was surprised by the size of it. Count Hrothgar had not seemed to him to be a scholar, but this was worthy of the chambers of one of Felix’s former professors at the University of Altdorf. His guess was that this was the wizard’s place.

  Felix ran his eyes over the titles. Most seemed to be written in High Classical, the tongue of scholars across the Old World. The ones he could see mostly concerned voyages of exploration, ancient myths and legends and lorebooks compiled from dwarfish.

  On the desk ahead of him was an open book. Felix walked over and picked it up. The tome was leather bound and no title was embossed on its spine. The parchment pages were thick and coarse and obviously ancient. For the thickness of the book there were surprisingly few pages.

  It was not a printed volume set in the movable typefaces perfected by the Guild of Printers. It was done in the old style, hand-copied and illuminated around the borders. Felix picked it up and began to read and soon wished he had not.

  Magdalena obviously noticed the look on his face. ‘What is it? What is wrong? What does it say?’

  ‘It’s a grimoire of sorts… it deals with magic of a certain type.’

  Indeed it did. Felix laboriously translated the Classical and a thrill of horror made him shiver. As far as he could tell it appeared to be a spell of soul transmutation, an invocation designed to let a man switch his very essence with that of another, to steal their shape and form. If the claims of the book were true, it would allow the wizard to take possession of another’s body.

  In another time, at another place, Felix would have found the whole thing ludicrous. In this out-of-the-way place, it all seemed rather likely. The madness of it did not seem out of place here.

  None of this reassured Felix. He was trapped in an isolated keep by a group of mad cultists and their men-at-arms. The keep was surrounded by hungry wolves and cut off by a winter blizzard. As if that weren’t bad enough, if his suspicions were true, there were not one but two werewolves within the walls of the fortress. And one of them was behind him.

  Felix’s flesh crawled.

  They moved on through the second floor of the castle, down corridors lit by flickering torches and echoing with the howling of wolves. A faint unpleasant odour, as of wet fur and blood, reached Felix’s nostrils just before they turned a corner. He poked his head round cautiously and saw the corpse of a man-at-arms lying there. The soldier’s eyes were wide open. Great talon gouges ripped his chest. His face was white as that of a vampire. Blood poured from where huge jaws had ripped out his jugular.

  A sword lay near the dead man’s hand. There was a dagger at his belt. Felix turned to look at the girl. She was smiling evilly. Felix felt like taking up the sword and striking her but he did not. The thought occurred to him that maybe he could use her as a hostage and strike a deal with the man-wolf. He turned it over in his mind and then dismissed it as being at once impractical and dishonourable.

  Instead he bent over the man and fumbled for his dagger. It was a long, needle-sharp blade almost as thin as a stiletto. He considered the lock of his chains. It was large and cumbersome and crudely made. He picked the blade up with his right hand and thrust it down into the lock of the manacle on his left wrist. He felt mechanisms move as the point went home. For long tense moments, he twisted and prodded. There was a click and the manacle opened. A weight fell from Felix’s shoulders as the chain slid from his wrist. He tried repeating the process for the right hand chain but his left hand was clumsier and it took him longer.

  Seconds stretched into minutes and he kept imagining that awful wolf-headed shape creeping up on him as he did so. Eventually there was a click and his other hand was free. Smiling triumphantly he turned and the smile faded from his lips.

  The girl was gone.

  Felix moved cautiously through the manor house. The wolves were quiet once more. The sword felt heavy as death in his hands. He had come across two more dead guards in his wanderings through the hall. Both their throats were torn out. Both had died with looks of horror on their face. The strange musk smell filled the air.

  Felix considered his options. He could make a run for it out through the courtyard. That did not seem sensible. Outside, snow covered the ground and wolves filled the woods. Even without their malevolent presence he doubted he would get very far without food or winter gear.

  Inside the mansion was a sorcerer who wanted to kill him and the Children of Ulric. Plus a whole crew of scared men-at-arms to whom he was a stranger. That did not look too promising either.

  Common sense dictated that he find some place to hide and wait for one side to slaughter the other. Maybe upstairs he could find an attic in which to hide, or maybe there was some quiet room where–

  Voices approached. The door at the end of the corridor started to open. Swiftly Felix pushed the door beside him open and ducked through, pulling it closed behind him. He realised he must be in Count Hrothgar’s study. A massive desk sat under the window. Family portraits glared down from the walls. A burnished suit of armour stood sentry in an alcove. Curtained drapes covered the windows.

  Some instinct prodded Felix to race across the room and dive behind the drapes. He was just in time. The door to the chamber swung open. Two men talked loudly. Felix recognised their voices. One was the count. The other was the sorcerer.

  ‘Damn! Voorman, I thought you said your chains held them fast as the clutches of daemons. How could they have disappeared?’

  ‘The spells were not broken. I would have sensed it. I suspect some more mundane means. Perhaps one of your people…’

  ‘Are you suggesting that one of my men could be in league with those things?’

  ‘Or one of your servants. They stay here all year round. Who knows? The Children of Ulric have lived in this area longer than you. They say the folk about here used to worship them or at least sacrifice to them.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe. But can you find the prisoners? They can’t just have disappeared into thin air. And what about my men? Over half are dead and the other half are frightened out of their wits, jumping at shadows. You’d best do something soon, wizard, or you will have some explaining to do to the Magister Magistorum. Things are not going as you promised the Order they would.’

  ‘Don’t panic, excellency. My magic will prevail and the cause will be stronger for it. The Time of Changes is coming, and you and I will have worked some of blessed Tzeentch’s strongest magic. We will be immortal and unkillable.’

  ‘Perhaps. But right now, at least one of the beasts is loose within these walls. Maybe two if you were wrong about the youth.’

  ‘No matter. The spell of Transmutation is ready. Soon final victory will be ours. I go to find our vesse
l.’

  ‘You go to find our vessel, do you, wizard? You plan treachery, more like. Be careful! The Magister gave me the means to deal with you, should you prove unfaithful to the Order!’

  There was a ringing of steel as a weapon was drawn.

  ‘Put it away, count.’ The wizard sounded nervous now. ‘You do not know the power of such a thing. There will be no need for its use.’

  ‘Make sure that is so, Voorman. Make sure that is so.’

  The door opened, then closed. Felix heard the nobleman slump down into his chair. Briefly he wondered about this Order. Who was this mysterious Magister? Mostly likely the head of some unspeakable cult. Felix dismissed the thought. He had other things to worry about.

  He pulled the curtain to one side and saw the bald spot at the back of the count’s head. A dagger lay on the desk in front of him. It was covered in strange glowing runes. Trying to follow their lines hurt Felix’s eyes. Still, he thought, the dagger might be useful.

  The nobleman rubbed his neck, feeling the cold draft from the window behind him. He began to reach for the dagger. Felix leapt from his place of concealment and brought the pommel of his sword down on Count Hrothgar’s skull. The nobleman fell like a pole-axed ox.

  Gingerly Felix reached out for the dagger. His skin prickled as he brought his hand near the blade. A dangerous energy radiated from the thing. He picked it up by the hilt and noticed that the handle was wrapped with dull metal: lead. He realised that he had seen a glow like the one from the blade before. It looked like warpstone had been used in the creation of this dagger. This was a weapon that could be as dangerous to its user as to its victim. He reached down and found the sheath the count had drawn the weapon from. It was lined with lead. Felix felt a bit better after he had returned the weapon to its sheath.

  Briefly he considered discarding the dagger, but only briefly. In this hellish place, it might prove the only protection he might find. He buckled the sheath around his waist and got ready to move on.