Gotrek & Felix- the Third Omnibus - William King & Nathan Long

by Warhammer

  Murdo dropped to his haunches beside Dugal. His ran his hands over the wound and muttered an incantation. A light passed from his tattooed fingers to the wound. Dugal’s eyes closed and his breathing became even shallower. The old man shook his head.

  Teclis drifted down to earth like a falling leaf and knelt beside Murdo. ‘A fine casting. There’s not much more I can do at the moment – without the right herbs or access to an alchemical laboratory. All I can do is slow the spread of the poison.’

  ‘It might be enough,’ said Murdo. ‘If we can get him to the Oracle in time. There is no one quite as skilled at healing as she.’

  A slightly sullen expression passed over the elf’s face. Surely he was not so vain, Felix thought. He held up his own hands and looked at them, wondering if there was any chance that the bile of the spider thing could have poisoned him too. They were dyed bluish and hurt very badly.

  The elf looked at them, and spoke a word. A spark passed from his hand to Felix’s. The blue colouring hardened, cracked and flaked away, taking what looked like the top layer of skin with it. Felix’s hands now looked pinkish and raw, and felt even more painful, like a graze swabbed with alcohol. Liquid fire coursed through the veins on the back of his hands. The tendons jumped and spasmed and were still.

  ‘If there was any poison, it is cleansed now, Felix Jaeger,’ said the elf.

  ‘Thanks, I think,’ said Felix. His hands still stung and it was painful for him to hold a sword. Still if the alternative was death, this was preferable.

  ‘There is nothing here for us now,’ said Teclis, glancing backwards into the pit. ‘We’d best be going. Quickly.’

  Gotrek looked wistfully after the spiders, and Felix could tell he was considering hunting them down. At this point, it was not something he felt like doing. Eventually, though, the dwarf shook his head and turned to follow them. Culum carried Dugal as easily as a baby. His expression managed to tell Felix that somehow this was all his fault.

  They emerged into the moonlight. It gleamed in the dark oily waters covering the semi-sunken structures. The remaining tribesmen greeted them worriedly.

  ‘We wondered if the daemons had taken you,’ said a short squat man even more tattooed than the others. ‘I was going to come looking for you.’

  ‘No need, Logi,’ said Murdo gently. ‘We’re back.’

  ‘Dugal disnae look well,’ said Logi.

  ‘Bitten by one of the lurkers within.’

  ‘That isnae good.’

  ‘No.’

  Felix saw that the tribesmen were all staring hard at him, as if they too blamed him for what had happened to their kinsman. It took him a few fraught seconds to realise that they were actually looking past him at the elf. The wizard gave no sign of either noticing or caring, although he could not have been unaware of the hostile crowd. Felix envied him his self-possession, or perhaps it was simply arrogance.

  Without saying a word, the elf moved over to Dugal, who now lay on the soaking wooden boards at the foot of the barge. He cocked his head to one side as if considering something, and then began to slowly chant what sounded like a dirge. At first nothing happened, then Felix noticed that the beams of the greater moon all appeared to be drawn to his staff. Slowly it grew brighter with a gentle radiance. He noticed that over and over again the elf invoked the name of Lileath, doubtless some god or goddess of his pantheon. The others watched, hands on weapons, not quite sure what was happening. Despite the stinging in his hands, Felix did the same. He noticed that his skin was starting to tingle, and felt the hair stand on the nape of his neck. He sensed strange presences, hovering just outside the line of his vision, but whenever he turned his head, he could see nothing, and merely got the maddening feeling that whatever it was, it was still there, just out of sight.

  Eventually a web of light spun itself out from the elvish staff. Long silver threads, seemingly woven from moonbeams, unravelled away from it, as from a spindle. They leapt from the staff to Dugal’s twitching, moaning form, and entwined it, until he shimmered like the moon reflected on water, then slowly they began to fade, leaving him seemingly unchanged. Felix wondered if he was the only one who had noticed that the man’s chest had ceased to rise or fall. He did not have long to wait.

  ‘You’ve killed him,’ said Culum, lifting his hammer menacingly.

  The elf shook his head. The big man reached down and touched Dugal’s chest. ‘There is no heartbeat,’ he said.

  ‘Wait,’ said Teclis. An expression of baffled concentration clouded Culum’s features. The silence deepened as the long moment dragged on.

  ‘I felt a heartbeat,’ said Culum. ‘But now it is gone.’

  ‘Keep waiting.’ Felix counted thirty more of his own quickening heartbeats before Culum nodded again.

  ‘It’s a spell of stasis,’ Teclis said. ‘I have slowed down his life functions – breathing, heartbeat, everything. For him time passes at a fraction of the speed as the rest of us. The spread of the poison has been slowed, and the time before death increased.’

  ‘His pain has been somewhat decreased as well,’ the elf added, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘But he will still die,’ said Murdo softly.

  ‘Unless this Oracle of yours can do something for him, yes,’ said Teclis.

  ‘Then we had best make speed.’

  ‘You wish to go now?’

  ‘In this light and fog? I do not see how.’

  ‘If you need light, I can give it to you,’ said Teclis.

  Murdo nodded. A huge flash lit the night. For a moment, Felix wondered if Mannsleib had come to earth and settled on the end of the elf’s staff, then he saw it was only the chilly glow of another spell. He flexed his fingers, noticing that the pain was already starting to fade, and the healing had begun at what seemed an unnatural rate.

  The tribesmen settled down at their poles and pushed the boat on through the misty channels. From the ancient, haunted city behind them came the sound of drumming. Felix wondered what it meant, and feared that it boded no good whatsoever.

  ‘Perhaps we will be pursued,’ he said.

  ‘If it’s by those altered things, we have nothing to fear,’ grated Gotrek.

  ‘I suspect there are worse things waiting in this swamp,’ said Felix. The Slayer looked unusually thoughtful. He sniffed the sour air and then ran his thick fingers through the massive crest of dyed hair.

  ‘Aye, manling, I think you might be right,’ he said almost cheerfully. For Felix, that was the worst portent of all.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Dawn came slowly. The wan sunlight had a hazy quality as it shone through the thinning mist. Felix sat slumped in the back of the boat, listening to the slosh of water against bow and pole and the chirruping of the early morning birds. Behind them the drums were fading, but were still evident. To Felix they sounded like the heartbeat of the great monster that was the swamp.

  He ran his fingers through his stubble and rubbed his reddened eyes. He had slept fitfully at best on the hard wet boards of the boat, all too aware that nearby Dugal lay dying. Even though the man’s silence was eerie, he still cast a pall over the entire crew. They all knew how close he was to death too, and it was affecting them. Probably more than it does me, Felix thought. After all, he is virtually a stranger to me, they grew up with him.

  He shook his head and offered up a prayer to Shallya. Even though he no longer believed in her mercy, it seemed old habits died hard. How often have I done this now, Felix wondered. How often have I sat and watched a not-quite-stranger die? It felt like a hundred times. He felt like he was a thousand years old. He felt like he was being worn thin by the constant friction of events. He asked himself, if he had known it would be like this on that drunken night, would he have still sworn to follow Gotrek? Sadly, he knew the answer was yes.

  Dugal might be dying, but Felix was still very much among the living, and keenly aware of it. Even this sour, reeking air tasted sweeter and he could see hints of the strange beauty am
id the swamplands. Monstrous flowers blossomed on long creepers hanging from the branches overhead. Huge lilies floated on massive pads in the channels. Even the weeds that clogged the waterway and impeded their passage gave forth an odd narcotic perfume.

  Ahead on the prow, Teclis stood, immobile as the figurehead of a sailing ship. His strange chiselled features held no human expression, and he showed no more sign of weariness than a wooden carving. As the dawn light filtered through the canopy, he had let his spell dim, and now simply watched as Murdo guided the ship with soft commands, telling the men with the poles to go left or right as their route dictated.

  There was nothing about the elf’s physical appearance to suggest his great age. He looked as fit and fair as a youth of eighteen summers. And yet there was something there that spoke of his years; Felix could not quite tell what. Perhaps it was the controlled expression of his face. Perhaps the aura of wisdom he projected or perhaps, Felix thought, it is simply his imagination.

  Gotrek slumped with his back to the wood of the hull, as immobile as the elf, and as watchful. Whatever he had sensed the night before had not shown up, but that had not reduced his wariness. Rather, it seemed to have increased it. His coarse rough-hewn features might have belonged to some primordial statue. He looked aged and powerful as some warrior god from the morning of the world. The axe looked older still. What stories might it not be able to tell if it had a voice, Felix wondered?

  He rose slowly and walked the length of the ship, carefully avoiding the men sprawled in sleep. The men of Crannog Mere had taken watches and rested in shifts. They seemed determined to keep the barge moving until they reached their final destination, and perhaps succoured their comrade. Felix could almost feel Culum’s eyes boring into his back. It was starting to get on his nerves. He felt like saying, ‘All I did was talk to her’, but he knew that it would not help. He had met Culum’s type before. The big man had made up his mind to dislike him, and nothing Felix could say would change his mind.

  Well, he thought, if there’s going to be violence between us, then there will be violence. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment. Still, in that instant, he could not help envying the elf his magical powers.

  Teclis stood in the prow and drank in everything he saw. He knew he might never pass this way again, and he wanted to fix it in his memory. It was rare these days for him to experience a completely novel situation, and he wanted to milk it for everything it was worth.

  He looked at the slippery branches dripping with creepers and large evil-looking blooms. His eyes were keen enough to pick out the lurking millipedes and the noxious spiders as well as the glittering jewel-eyed dragonflies resting on the leaves. He could see the shadow and silver shapes of the fish moving in the murky mere. He could smell at least seven different kinds of narcotic bloom, and vowed that if he got the chance he would come back here, and sample and catalogue them. If he lived, there would be plenty of time.

  He could feel the resentful gaze of the humans on him, and it amused him. He felt like an adult surrounded by a pack of angry children. They might bristle and look surly but there was nothing they could do to hurt him. He fought to keep a smile off his face. He knew he was starting to behave like all the elves he so despised, in the way they looked down on all the younger races. How easily it crept up on you, he thought.

  Perhaps it was merely a response to the events of the night before. He had been shocked to encounter creatures so resistant to his magic. They had obviously been intended to be so. Doubtless guardians left by the Old Ones to deal with any intruders in their temple-fortress. It had been a long time since Teclis had encountered anything against which his magic could not protect him, and it had left him feeling more unbalanced than he would have believed.

  Still, in a way, he welcomed it. There had been a thrill to that combat he had not experienced in some time, a sense of having laid his life on the line that had become rare in his life. It almost made him feel young again. Almost.

  He considered the nature of last night’s foe. His theory was not quite pure speculation on his part. Certain hidden books had hinted that the Old Ones had left guardians, but those things had been tainted by Chaos. Was it possible that millennia of exposure to the energies seeping through the portal beneath the tower could have changed them? Yes, he supposed it was. No matter how resistant the Old Ones had made their creations, they were no less likely than the paths to be tainted. Chaos warped living things far more easily than it warped unliving matter. He supposed the same thing might happen to elves, given time. After all, Ulthuan had a heavier density of magical portals, gates and ways than almost any other place on the planet, as well as a higher concentration of magical energy.

  Perhaps, he thought, the change has already happened. Perhaps the split between the dark elves and his own people was rooted in a simple physical cause. Or perhaps, his own people had been changed as well. Perhaps over the millennia they had altered too. Certainly in some ways this was the case. Fewer elves were born now. Were there other changes? Only Malekith and his dreadful mother would be in a position to know for certain, and somehow he doubted he would ever get the truth from them, even if they met somewhere other than on a battlefield.

  Not for the first time, he felt the temptation of the darker side of his nature tug him. Perhaps he could arrange such a visit sometime. Perhaps knowledge might be exchanged. He almost laughed at his own folly. The only knowledge he would ever be able to extract from a visit to Naggaroth would be the intimate knowledge of pain inflicted on him by the dark elf torturers. No, that was a path that was closed for all time.

  He could feel the dwarf’s eyes boring into his back. He considered Gotrek Gurnisson. There was an enigma there that would need solving some day. The axe he bore was a weapon of awesome power, and it had changed the dwarf in many ways. The signs written all over his aura had become far clearer last night during the battle when dwarf and weapon had seemed to become almost as one. Power had flowed both ways during that conflict, he was certain, although the manner in which it had done so had baffled even him. The knowledge of those ancient dwarven runesmiths had been enormous. The Old Ones had revealed mysteries to them they had kept even from the elves. Oh, for a year to study that weapon. He smiled. That was an eventuality as likely as him gaining knowledge from the Witch King of the dark elves, and only marginally less dangerous.

  Still, the dwarf would make a mighty ally in whatever trials lay ahead. The encounter with the spider daemons had shown Teclis that there were areas where an axe might come in handy. Nor was the human, Felix Jaeger, to be discounted. The man was brave and resourceful. Perhaps the gods had sent them to aid him.

  He considered the dying man, for so Teclis thought of him. Unless this Oracle was skilled beyond all reason, Dugal’s fate was already sealed. All Teclis had done was delay it, and that had been as much a matter of political expediency as charity. He had needed to be seen to help the man, otherwise the blame for his fate could quite easily have fallen on Teclis and he still needed the men of Crannog Mere as allies, at least for the present. And it would not do any harm for the tribesmen to think that the fate of their companion was linked to the wizard’s under the present strained circumstances.

  Of course, should Dugal die, that would change. It was a hurdle he would leap when he came to it. He did not wish Dugal or the tribesmen any harm, but if it came to a choice between survival for himself and Ulthuan, or their lives, then there was no choice at all. Teclis knew he would sacrifice all of those present, including himself, and ten thousand times more if need be to preserve the kingdom of the elves.

  He could almost feel the dwarf’s cold stern eye judging him. Nonsense, he told himself, you are merely projecting your own doubts outwards. Under the circumstances Gotrek Gurnisson would make the same choices as you. Not that it mattered what the dwarf thought anyway. At the present moment, he was simply another tool to be used to achieve Teclis’s ends.

  The thought amused him. Perhaps the
dwarfs are right to judge us as they do. He considered this for a moment and saw that in this he was the dwarf’s superior. No dwarf would ever admit that an elf might be right about such a thing. They were stern, inflexible, judgemental and unforgiving, always had been and always would be.

  Still, even that had its uses.

  Felix looked up at the open sky. At last the swamp was behind them, and the rains had ceased. Even the midge and mosquito bites seemed momentarily less troubling. Ahead of them now lay a range of low barren foothills, rising to huge snow-capped peaks. Down the mountain’s flanks ran hundreds of small rivers and streams, transporting the near-constant rains and depositing them in the swamp. Some spears of sunlight had managed to break through the leaden clouds and pierce the gloom. This land had a cruel beauty, he thought, but a beauty nonetheless.

  The men of Crannog Mere had fallen silent. They seemed to be nervous now, as if leaving the swamp had the opposite effect on Felix as it had on them. They looked around shiftily like city dwellers suddenly deposited in the middle of a wood. Felix realised that they were leaving the lands they knew for parts more or less unknown, and it was affecting them. Felix had made such transitions so many times now himself that often he barely noticed them. Had it only been days ago he had walked the snow-covered forests of Sylvania? Somehow it seemed much longer. It was amazing how swiftly the mind could accept changes in circumstance when it had to.

  He studied his companions. The Slayer looked grim and stolid as ever. Teclis looked quite genuinely pleased to see the sun. He stretched his arms almost in greeting. Murdo looked less nervous than the others, like a man making a journey he had done many times before. Culum simply glared at Felix as if quietly hating him just for being there. Suddenly the day seemed less bright, and the wind a fraction more chill.

  They poled the barge across the open lake towards the shore. Felix could see the grey rocks of the bottom. Some were sharp as sword blades and would gut the boat if they hit them. Murdo guided them warily with short terse commands. Ahead of them the mountains loomed. Overhead a single huge eagle stretched its wings to catch the breeze, lazily scanning the land below for prey.