by Warhammer
‘Don’t go,’ said the old woman. ‘Ye’ll just get yourselves killed. Best come with us. Stephansdorp is just a couple of days’ walk south of here. It’s less than a day without the snow.’
‘If it has not been burned to the ground too,’ said Gotrek, somewhat unhelpfully. A couple of the children whimpered. One or two of the men looked as if they were fighting back tears themselves. Felix could not blame them. Doubtless only the thought of sanctuary among their kin in the nearby village had kept them going. Even as Felix watched, one man collapsed onto his knees, letting his pitchfork fall from numbed fingers. He made the sign of Shallya on his breast and bowed his head. Two of the children went over to him and began to tug his sleeves, whispering, ‘Da-da.’
‘Best get going if we’re going to overtake these beastmen,’ said Gotrek. Snorri nodded agreement. Wulfgar shook his head. ‘We will guard these folk en route to their kin,’ he said. ‘We must find a place for our wounded.’
He looked almost shamefaced as he said it. Felix did not blame him, though. The Kislevites had been sorely demoralised by the death of Ivan, and the events at Drakenhof had been enough to dent the courage of even the bravest. Gotrek stared at Wulfgar for a moment. Felix feared the Slayer was about to give the horse soldier the benefit of a few well-chosen words concerning the courage and hardiness of Kislevite humanity, but he just shrugged and shook his head.
‘What about you, Max?’ Felix asked. The wizard considered for a moment before saying, ‘I will come with you. These beastmen should be cleansed from our land.’
The tone of the wizard’s voice worried Felix. He seemed well nigh as bitter and full of rage as Gotrek. Felix hoped that he was not becoming unhinged by grief over what had happened with Ulrika. On the other hand, he was glad Max was coming with them. The wizard was worth a company of horse archers when it came to a fight.
Briefly, Felix considered sloping off with the horse archers himself, but decided against it. Not only would it have gone against the oath he had sworn to follow the Slayer, but Felix felt far safer in the company of Gotrek, Snorri and Max than he would in the company of the Kislevites, even if they were going hunting for beastmen.
‘Best be getting on then,’ he was surprised to hear himself saying, ‘if we want to get there by nightfall.’
‘This place has certainly changed since we were last here,’ said Felix, looking at the still smouldering ruins of what had once been a walled village. Nobody paid him the slightest attention. They were all too busy looking at the wreckage for themselves.
There was not much left. Most of the hovels had been made of wattle and daub with thatched roofs. Their walls had been kicked in, their roofs burned. Only the inn had been a more substantial structure, of timber and stone. It had taken a fair time to collapse, he guessed. The flames must have been fierce indeed to consume the structure. A pity it was gone, he thought, for the weather was already starting to worsen.
Even as he watched, shadowy figures moved within it. They were too big and too misshapen to be human. There was only one thing that looked like that. Beastmen! Snorri almost howled with joy when he realised what they were seeing and brandished his axe and his hammer in the air. Gotrek raised his axe, ran his thumb along the blade until it drew blood and then spat a curse.
If this intimidated the beastmen, they gave no sign. A group of them emerged from the ruins of the inn. Some of them possessed bovine heads, while others had the heads of goats or wolves or other beasts. All of them were massive and muscular. All of them were armed with crude spears, massive spiked clubs or hammers. They were an incongruous sight. The last time Felix had passed through this place, the Green Man had been occupied by humans and he had passed an evening in bizarre conversation with the vampiric countess. Now the whole small village surrounding the inn had been swept away. In his lifetime Felix had seen a great deal of slaughter and a number of villages razed, but he knew he would never get used to it. The senseless carnage fuelled his anger and his resentment.
The dozen beastmen swept forward. They obviously felt no fear at facing such a small group of opponents. Answering calls came from elsewhere, from the snow-girt woods around the sacked hamlet. Felix hoped he and the others had not bitten off more than they could chew.
As the beastmen loped forward, Gotrek and Snorri raced to meet them. Raced was probably the wrong word under the circumstances, Felix decided. The dwarfs’ short legs carried them at what would have been a comfortable jog for Felix. In any case, the distance between them closed swiftly. Felix looked at Max to see if the wizard was going to cast a spell. Max scanned their surroundings looking for other attackers. He seemed confident that the Slayers could handle the beasts.
Gotrek hit the pack slightly ahead of Snorri. His axe hurtled through a tremendous arc, lopping off the arm of the nearest beastman, opening the stomach of another to send a wave of blood and bile spraying to the ground, and smashing through the raised club with which a third attempted to parry. A moment later Snorri took down the disarmed beastman with a stroke of the hammer he held in one hand, and buried his axe in the skull of another. There was a sickening crunch like rotten wood splintering as he drove it home.
Within a few heartbeats five of the beastmen were down. Gotrek and Snorri barely slowed. Gotrek leapt forward and chopped a wolf-headed creature clean in two, sending its upper body one way and its lower body another. Snorri whirled like an Arabyan dervish and brought both his weapons smashing into another Chaos spawn. The hammer tenderised flesh even as the axe smashed ribs and bit deep into the creature’s lungs. It stood for a moment, blowing bubbles of bloody froth from its chest before it collapsed.
The surviving beastmen had not even had time to realise the scale of the casualties they had taken. They swept forward, trying to overwhelm their foes. They obviously had confidence in the sheer brutal power of their blows, but they had reckoned without the strength of Gotrek and Snorri’s stark ferocity. Gotrek whirled his axe in a massive double arc, driving them back. Snorri dived forward to land on his side and hit the snow rolling. He barrelled into the legs of one beastman, tripping it, while his axe took another behind the knee sending it stumbling to the ground. Without breaking stride, Gotrek brought his axe down twice with all the force of a thunderbolt. Felix knew that neither of the fallen beastmen would rise again, given the sickening power of those blows. A heartbeat later, the axe had risen again to behead another beastman.
Now the Chaos creatures were dismayed. They turned and fled. Gotrek’s axe took another in the back. Snorri pulled himself to his feet and lobbed his hammer, catching another on the back of the skull, sending it tumbling forward into the snow. A few moments later, Snorri had reclaimed his hammer and turned the beastman’s skull to jelly with it.
Felix glanced around. More groups of beastmen had emerged from the wood, just in time to witness the rout of their fellows. Felix could see that there were not nearly as many as he had feared. There were three groups with, at most, five members. It looked like the largest part of their force had emerged from the inn. Nonetheless they looked like they were considering a charge when Max raised his arms and began incanting a spell. In seconds a sphere of light brighter than the sun appeared in each of his clenched fists. When he opened his fingers bolts of pure blazing golden power lashed forward. They ravened among the brutes, charring flesh and melting bone. It was all too much for the Chaos creatures. They turned tail and fled into the woods.
Felix was amazed. Events had moved so swiftly, he had not even managed to bloody his sword. He felt almost embarrassed when he considered it. Seeing his expression, Gotrek spoke up.
‘Don’t worry, manling. You will get your chance to kill Chaos spawn when we follow these beasts to their lair!’
‘I was afraid you were going to say that,’ Felix said. He moved into the ruins of the inn. Butchered bodies were everywhere. Human bones lay in the snow, cracked for marrow and gnawed by powerful jaws. He felt like being sick but he controlled himself.
‘Looks like they stopped here for a snack,’ said Gotrek.
Two hours later, massive trees loomed all around them. The snow was falling so heavily that Felix could barely see ten feet ahead of him. They had long ago lost all sight of the beastmen’s tracks. Now it was only a matter of trudging forward through the storm, making sure to keep his eyes fixed firmly on Gotrek’s broad back. The wind whined in his ears. The snowflakes melted in his hair. His breath emerged in frosty clouds. His fingers felt too numb to hold a sword. He was not sure that if he was attacked now, he would even be capable of fighting. He sincerely hoped the Slayers were in a better way. Right now he desperately wished he had gone off with the Kislevites. Now was not the time to be caught in the Sylvanian woods by a sudden blizzard.
They needed to find shelter soon, or they were doomed.
CHAPTER TWO
‘I want to kill Gotrek Gurnisson myself,’ said Grume of Night Fang. He loomed out of the shadows like a small mountain of metal and armour. The intricate net of potent enchantments on his armour was almost dazzling to Kelmain’s mage sight. The warlord had been like a man demented ever since the defeated scouts had returned out of the blizzard, bearing word of the dwarf’s presence. Kelmain wished he had never mentioned it now, but he had been at Praag and knew from the descriptions of their adversaries that only Gotrek Gurnisson and his associates matched the scouts’ descriptions.
‘Why?’ asked the Chaos wizard, just to be contrary. Kelmain looked around the stone walls of the ancient antechamber, trying to gather his patience. The runes fascinated him and so did those bizarre carvings, but the smell was so distracting. He covered his mouth and his nose with one clawed hand. Grume stank of sweat and the old blood and congealed brains that covered his armour. Normally Kelmain did not consider himself fastidious, it was not something anyone in his line of work could afford to be, but this was the limit.
‘Because his axe killed Arek Daemonclaw and I want it for my own. Such a weapon would be worthy of me. All considered Arek’s armour unbreachable,’ Grume’s deep voice bellowed.
Outside, the wind and snow whirled past, deflected by the spells Kelmain had woven around them.
Kelmain gazed into the hovering crystal and saw his identical twin, Lhoigor, reflected within. He might as well have been standing in the room, not a thousand leagues away within that dreary temple on the island of Albion. Tall, thin, vulpine of features, pale of skin. The difference was that Lhoigor was clad in gold instead of black, and had a runestaff of gold as opposed to his own staff of ebony and silver. Lhoigor flapped a hand beneath his nose and then raised a hand to his mouth. Kelmain knew what he meant. Why, of all the Chaos warlords gathered, did it have to be Grume who accompanied him on this reconnaissance, he wondered? Why could it not be Kestranor the Castrator? At least the musky scent of the Slaanesh worshipper was pleasant. Even Tchulaz Khan, the festering follower of Nurgle, was almost preferable to this. It was a pity he had drawn the short straw and been forced to accompany this scouting mission. He would even have preferred the miserable wet weather of that pestilential island to this. Still, he told himself, someone had to do it. Their acolytes were all busy shepherding forces through the paths, and if truth be told, the idea of using the ancient web of extra-dimensional roadways had excited him.
‘That is a very dangerous weapon,’ said Kelmain, and immediately wished he had not opened his mouth. The stench almost made him gag. Perhaps there was something sorcerous to it. He was not normally so squeamish. Or perhaps it had something to do with that hideous weapon the Khorne worshipper carried. Just looking at it with his mage sight made the wizard squirm. That was not something he wanted to be killed with. Death would be the least of his worries then.
‘All weapons are dangerous, but I am a follower of Khorne,’ said Grume with a grin of contempt. He was every inch the great warlord, talking down to his wizardly minions.
Idiot! Kelmain thought. Why did they always have to work with these muscle-headed buffoons? He sometimes suspected that the Great Powers of Chaos chose their warrior champions for their stupidity – particularly the Blood God.
Indeed he is, murmured Lhoigor’s voice within his head, and Kelmain knew his twin was thinking exactly the same as he was.
‘I do not like working with you followers of the Changer of Ways, any more than you like working with me,’ said Grume, ‘but the Great Ones have spoken and daemons have brought me their words. The time has come for us to unite and overthrow the weak kingdoms of men.’
Indeed it has, thought Kelmain. And I wonder if you realise how much the place in which we stand has to do with this. He glanced around at the remains of the ancient arch that dominated the chamber. Here was spellwork of great cunning, god-like in its complexity, so intricate that even when dormant it threatened to overwhelm his mind. The Paths of the Old Ones, Kelmain marvelled. We have opened them, or rather our masters have, and we may use them as we will. Soon, he thought, they will put this entire ancient and corrupt world within our grasp, and we will reshape it to fit our dreams. But to do this we must work with idiots who want to use us only for their own stupid purposes.
Grume opened his visor to reveal his bloated and ugly features. A glint of feral cunning showed in the warlord’s small pig-like eyes. Kelmain could almost read his thoughts. The Axe of Gotrek had become a legend among the followers of Chaos. At the Siege of Praag, it had breached the supposedly invincible armour of the great Chaos Warlord Arek Daemonclaw. The death of that mighty champion had led to the breaking of his army and the siege of the City of Heroes. Rumour whispered that the dwarf had even destroyed the physical form of one of the Great Daemons of Khorne in the lost city of Karag Dum.
Kelmain was one of the few in a position to know exactly how true those rumours were. Grume already had several powerful weapons forged with the imprisoned souls of mighty daemons and champions. It was obvious that he wanted to add the dwarf’s axe to his collection. It was equally obvious that when the time came, after the forces of Chaos were triumphant, he fully intended to use the weapon against those who opposed him.
It was a plan admirably suited to one of his utter stupidity, but who prided himself on his cunning. It would hardly do, thought Kelmain, to explain to him the full perils of trying to use that axe. There, indeed, was a weapon that would take enormous power to pervert to the ways of Chaos, and a tremendous understanding of magic. Grume had absolutely no knowledge of such things. Kelmain did, although he was loath to risk using his powers in so dangerous a pursuit at so critical a time. They were needed to oversee the use of the Old Ones’ devices and ensure that they served Chaos well. Still, perhaps Grume’s ambition could be put to another use? He glanced into the crystal once more to see if his brother was following his thoughts. Lhoigor’s answering smile showed that he was.
‘Do you know what happened to the last wizard who mocked me?’ Grume asked, his voice full of menace. He had the confidence of one who knows he has a small army of beastmen close at hand. The casualties the Slayer and his comrades had inflicted had reduced their numbers only by a fifth or so. Kelmain stifled a yawn.
‘I believe his soul went to feed the daemon that resides in your bludgeon,’ he said. ‘Or did you not offer him up as a snack to your patron daemon prince? I forget. One meets so many mighty champions of Chaos these days, one simply cannot remember all the dreadful punishments they meted out to those who mocked them.’
‘You play a dangerous game, wizard,’ said Grume. Wrath twisted his bestial features. He loomed over the mage, nearly twice his height. His hand rested on the hilt of the odd magical mace that normally dangled from his wrist. ‘By Khorne, you will pay the ultimate price.’
‘You are showing the lack of intellect for which the followers of Khorne are so justly renowned,’ said Kelmain in a tone of apology and abject grovelling that clearly confused the Chaos warrior. ‘If you were to kill me or feed my soul to your mighty weapon, there would be no one to open the Paths of the Old Ones for you… or locate the Slayer o
n your behalf.’
‘Then you will do what I command,’ said Grume, self-satisfaction evident in his voice. He had chosen to listen to the tone, and not the words, as Kelmain had known he would. Here was a brute used to bullying his way forward over the objections of others.
‘Why not? If you succeed, we will have one enemy less. I have no love for Gotrek Gurnisson and would be glad to see him dead.’
‘I will give you enchantments to let you locate the Slayer and his axe,’ said Kelmain. ‘When you find him… kill him.’
‘If you can,’ he added, so quietly that Grume did not hear.
Kelmain watched Grume’s force assemble within the antechamber. The carved heads of obscene toad-like gods seemed to watch them mockingly. Looking into the viewing crystal, he met the gaze of his brother. Lhoigor looked a little weak. Using the spell of speaking over so vast a distance was draining even to a mage of his power.
‘You have found Gotrek Gurnisson,’ said Lhoigor. It was not a question.
‘Yes. My divinations show our fleeing beastmen were right. He is near where we are, at the Sylvanian nexus. One would almost think it was fate,’ said Kelmain.
‘Perhaps it is. Destiny seems to have marked that one. Or the powers that oppose us.’
‘It will most likely prove unfortunate for that giant idiot,’ he added, gesturing at Grume with his staff. The huge Chaos warrior ignored him and concentrated on bullying a score of his troops into position. ‘I should close this portal and leave him to get cold feet treading through the winter snows of the Empire.’
‘Call him back, brother, and you could always send him to Lustria, if you are worried about his health in the winter.’ Lhoigor’s smile was cold but there was an evil humour in it.