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

by Warhammer

‘A small force is all it will take to hold us in the passes. Even if I take all my warriors it would be impossible to force passage against determined resistance.’

  ‘I am a wizard of great power. It would be difficult but not impossible, I am sure.’

  ‘I don’t care if you wield the power of the gods, I am not going with you,’ said Bran. ‘Even if you entered the valley, it will be full of orcs.’

  ‘If we can get into the valley, I believe I can conceal us from prying eyes, at least for as long as it takes to reach the temple.’

  ‘And if you cannot? I will join the High King at the Stones of Ogh and we will deal with the greenskins in force.’

  ‘The land may not live that long,’ said Murdo. ‘If the power within the temple is fully unleashed…’

  ‘No, Murdo,’ said Teclis. ‘I can see noble Bran’s mind is made up. Do not press him. We shall go forward on our own. After all, when we reach the Chamber of Secrets, it will be all the fewer to share in its treasures…’

  ‘Treasures?’ said Bran, an entirely new note entering his voice. ‘Tell me about these treasures!’

  ‘No. Your mind is made up. Why do you wish to hear about treasure?’

  ‘Why does any man wish to hear about treasure; speak on, elf!’ Gotrek gave him a look of disgust but Felix could see that he paid attention too.

  The night wore on. Morag drifted away. Felix got drunker and drunker until he could barely keep his eyes open. He found a shadowy spot under a huge wooden support and wrapped himself in his cloak. Despite the sound of drinking, he plunged into an exhausted sleep almost immediately.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  In the wan morning sunlight of the mountain valleys, the events of the previous night seemed like a dream. Felix did his best to ignore his aching head and churning stomach. No more whisky for me, he thought. Still, at least the elf’s tales of treasure had done the trick. Felix vaguely remembered roaring drunken toasts being made to the treasures of the Old Ones. He wondered if they really existed or were merely bait for Bran’s greed. Did anybody here really think they were going to get their hands on ancient treasures? The odds were a thousand to one against.

  He glanced over at the Slayer. Despite the enormous amounts of alcohol he had consumed, Gotrek looked none the worse for the night’s drinking. Felix wished fervently that he felt the same way. He glanced back along the path. There were many of the mountain men there, and the swamp dwellers of Crannog Mere, as well as the Oracle’s maiden-guard. The elf strode along conversing casually with Siobhain, seemingly completely unaware of the admiring glances of the women, and the jealous glances of many of the men. Felix began to understand why elves were so disliked. The resentment of the men was almost palpable.

  At this point they moved along the side of a sheer drop, and he was not taking the risk of anyone accidentally pushing him over the edge. They had taken a very narrow path up the mountainside. It was very cold now and there were clouds visible below them. Felix squinted sidelong at the Slayer. He appeared surprisingly jaunty.

  Well, why not, Felix thought? We are back in the bloody mountains, and the prospect of a suicidal quest into enemy lands is before us. Soon his doom will be upon him most likely. Felix shrugged. With this hangover, he did not really care. He continued to trudge wearily up the mountainside, feeling about a thousand years old.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked the woman, Siobhain. She seemed concerned.

  ‘Many things. None of which I can talk about now,’ he said. She held her peace, although Teclis could tell she was desperate to know more. Teclis wondered if he was doing the right thing. This was all going too slowly for his liking. He could feel the mad raging power ahead of them now. It seemed so palpable that he was surprised the others could not, even without his sensitivity to magic.

  What he was attempting now was madness. These mountains were full of orcs. The temple was full of Chaos worshippers and all he had was this small band of barbarians, a dwarf and a reluctant Imperial swordsman. The odds against success were immense. Still, what could he do?

  What were his options? He could leave this small army and make his own way to the temple. By wrapping himself in spells of warding and concealment, he could conceivably make his way through undetected into the heart of the temple complex, but what then?

  Kelmain and Lhoigor were both powerful mages, and would be fighting on a battlefield of their choosing, most likely woven round with their own protective spells. Perhaps they might even have subverted the defences of the Old Ones to their will.

  Confident as he was in his own powers, the odds were not in his favour. Unless he could overcome the Chaos mages quickly, their guardians would be able to overcome him physically. All it would take would be one sword blow, and his long life would be over. And it would not just be swords, he knew. There would be all manner of Chaos-worshipping monsters, and this giant of whom the Oracle had spoken. He needed to have physical protection if he were to close the Paths of the Old Ones and battle hostile magic, and that meant more than magic. He needed an army and he needed Gotrek Gurnisson’s axe, for the moment anyway.

  He considered the pair. The longer he stayed in their company, the longer he saw the hand of destiny at work. Some power watched over them – for good or ill, the elf was not sure, but he was certain that old and powerful forces were at work there, which he could only half glimpse.

  He smiled. He was becoming as superstitious as one of the elves of Athel Loren. Fate or chance or the hand of gods, it did not matter. He knew he would most likely need their help before the end. Up ahead, the unleashed energy of the ancients sent billows of power, visible only to a magician, into the sky. He knew just from looking at it that such power could not be contained for long. He only hoped that they would be in time.

  He would have given a lot to know more about what his enemies were up to right at this moment.

  Kelmain looked down at Magrig from the stone platform in the side of the ziggurat. The giant glared back up at him with its one good eye. You are not a handsome creature, are you, thought Kelmain, studying the mutated face and huge stinking body. Well, I suppose I would not be either if I had fought as many battles as you. The last one with your late and unlamented brother must have been quite a combat, judging by the fact that you lost your eye, and he lost his life.

  ‘The little greenskins came! Magrig kill many but more will come,’ said Magrig in a voice like the rumble of thunder overhead. ‘There are many of them and they have powerful magic. Maybe too many even for Magrig to smash.’

  ‘I am sure you will do your best,’ said Kelmain. He studied the distant hills with their covering of odd mutated foliage. The swamp smell of the surrounding forest assaulted his nostrils almost as much as the giant’s stink. He wondered why the giant seemed so intimidating today. To be sure, he radiated the immense physical power of a being the size of a siege tower, but that was not it – after all, the giant’s tiny mind was still firmly under control of the binding spell. He had been ever since they had surprised him in his sleep when they first emerged from the portals into this ancient complex. No, it was not that they were losing control of him.

  It took a moment for illumination to strike. Of course: with his squatly massive form, his red matted hair and his one empty socket the giant reminded him of a monstrously huge parody of Gotrek Gurnisson. Was that somehow significant, Kelmain wondered? Was there an omen here? Perhaps he should sacrifice one of the captives the beastmen had brought back and search the entrails for signs. Was it possible the dwarf had somehow escaped from the paths? No. Powerful as he was, the dwarf was no magician. He would be trapped there until the end of the world.

  On the other hand, time was getting short. Lhoigor reported that the paths were becoming increasingly hard to control. Some of them vented constant eruptions of Chaotic energy now, and the madness was starting to spread from the Twisted Paths into the unchanged ones. More than one of their acolytes and his warband had failed to return and there were fewer
Chaos warriors here than he would have liked with the greenskin tribes massing in the hills. It seemed their awe and fear of Magrig was starting to wear off. Perhaps this had not been such a good plan after all.

  Why did our masters put us up to it then, he wondered? Why are we keeping that altar below slick with the heartsblood of human sacrifices? Why do we keep our acolytes and ourselves working around the clock against whatever odd force it is that is trying to shut down the paths? Was that the work of the accursed elves, he wondered? Or was it something else, some nasty surprise the ancients had left to prevent interlopers using their toys? If so, they would fail. Chaos rules this world, he thought. Nothing will be denied to us. Nothing.

  Kelmain could sense their awful greenskin magic being worked up in those hills. Perhaps their shamans have some inkling of what we do here, and are trying to stop us, he thought. Much good it would do them.

  ‘Stay within the temple and smash anything that comes this way!’ he told Magrig. ‘But come if I call you.’

  ‘I hear and obey, ancient one,’ said Magrig.

  It pleased Kelmain to be addressed by the title the giant must have used to talk to his creators long ago. Once more he sensed the green flash of orcish magic. What can they be up to, he wondered, as he turned and walked back down the steps and into the heart of the ziggurat.

  Zarkhul woke from his trance. He was uneasy even though he could sense the comforting mass of thousands of orcs all around and draw power from their presence. They had come from all over the island to be here. Battled their way to join his clans, summoned by the ancient mass instincts of the orcish kind. Something bad was going on. He sensed it. The weather had worsened. Magrig, the sleeping god they had made offerings to for so long, had turned against his people and now his visions spoke of a time and death and hunger for the tribes.

  Over and over again the twin gods had shown him visions of the land breaking apart and eating the orcs, of the foul beastmen of Chaos emerging from the temple city like maggots from a corpse, of skies the colour of blood that rained fire and foul warpstone dust. Somehow he knew in his very bones that if they did not reclaim the city and cast the outsiders from its sacred stones then disaster would overtake all of his people. The gods had spoken to him. They had granted him conviction and the mantle of authority that made the chieftains listen to him, even though many of them were his sworn enemies, and had often fought him for control of one ziggurat or another.

  Now, like a herd of bison all swinging to face a common threat, the tribes were acting as one. Such things happened to the people when the gods spoke to them. Now they would lay aside their differences and follow him into the great waaargh. They would need to. For in his latest vision he had seen that time was running out and they would need to act soon to avert disaster.

  He sensed a tugging at his thoughts and opened his spirit eyes. The spirit of the shaman Gurag hovered before him, invisible to all eyes save his. He spoke with a voice inaudible to all but Zarkhul. ‘The men of the mountain are coming along the secret paths. They have allied with elves.’

  ‘Take your force and grind them to a pulp! Gorge on their marrow!’ said Zarkhul, speaking in a voice that was not a voice.

  ‘Aye, we will eat manflesh this night, and elf flesh too.’ The spirit shimmered and vanished as Gurag returned to his body. Strange, thought Zarkhul, that one so obese in the flesh should see himself as such a proud and muscular warrior in spirit form.

  Dismissing the thought, the orc war leader gave his attention to the ziggurats of the temple city below. A lifetime of warfare among their streets against his former rivals had gifted him with knowledge of the best lines of attack, as well as the secret ways beneath the city. With luck the newcomers would not know about those. He would build a mountain of their skulls high as one of the ziggurats as an offering to the Twin Gods. At its peak would be the skull of Magrig and his two strange human familiars. Only when he had made this offering would the gods be appeased. Only then would disaster be averted.

  All he needed now was a sign from the shamans to let him know when to begin the attack. He hoped it would not be long in coming.

  In the distance lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. Zarkhul wondered if that was the sign. Probably not, he thought. Such weather was too common around here to constitute an omen.

  Felix strode along the mountain paths, not at all reassured by his conversation with the elf. The air was colder now, the weather changing swiftly as it always did in the mountains. Clouds were visible in the valley below them, and slowly they crept up along the flanks of the mountain until they became a mist that reduced even nearby men to blurred shapes. Felix wondered whether this was some doing of the elf’s or the work of their enemy, then he realised he did not care.

  A squat massive figure appeared out of the gloom before him. He was reassured to hear the dwarf’s gruff voice ahead, muttering something in dwarfish. Suddenly thunder rumbled, and in the distance lightning flashed. The flare was diffused by the mist into a brief intense glow and then vanished. Felix wondered whether it was dangerous and lightning might strike him. He felt very vulnerable, as an insect crawling across a window pane where at any time a great hand might swat him.

  ‘Curse this weather,’ he said.

  ‘It is strange,’ said Gotrek. ‘In all my years in mountains, I have never seen clouds come in so fast and thunder so strong.’

  ‘The weather here in Albion is a curse,’ said Felix.

  ‘You could be right, manling. Something twists it here, that’s for sure.’

  Murdo emerged from the mist, silent as a wraith. ‘The Stones of Ogham.’

  ‘I take it that has some significance,’ said Felix.

  ‘Sometimes. In the areas of the stone rings the weather is often warped. In recent years it has become much worse.’

  ‘These stones hold great magical power then?’

  ‘Aye, they are the work of the ancients.’ He looked as if he could say more if he wanted to, but had no intention of doing so. Maybe he did. It was always hard to tell with any sort of wizards. Sometimes they were deep and mysterious because they knew something. Sometimes because they were hiding their ignorance. As a layman Felix was in no position to judge.

  ‘Why have the orcs come here at the same time as us? It cannot be coincidence?’

  ‘Who can tell with the greenskins? Sometimes a mass madness seems to come over them and for no discernable reason they do things in a mass. It’s like lemmings throwing themselves off a cliff or the migration of birds. Maybe their gods speak to them. Perhaps the stones are holy to the orcs as well. In places of power it is often easier to attract the attention of the gods and great spirits. ‘

  ‘Well, tonight would be a night for that,’ said Felix. ‘This weather is certainly not natural.’

  ‘No,’ said Murdo. ‘It is not. Perhaps when you have succeeded in your task the world will return to normal, if what the elf says is true.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Felix.

  There was another brilliant flare of light diffused through the mist, then a thunderclap, this time much closer, and the whole mountain seemed to shake. It was all Felix could do to keep from flinching, so sudden and violent was the outburst. He wondered how great the chances of avalanches were here, then decided he did not want to know. The way things were going he knew the kind of answer he would get. A few moments later a drizzle of rain hit his face. It was chill as mountain ice.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Just what I needed to make this day complete.’

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth when a scream echoed through the gloom.

  ‘As ever, I spoke too soon,’ he said, turning towards its source.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Felix raced through mist and confusion. Some of the highland warriors had drawn their huge swords, others brandished their spears as they looked around for the new menace. Howling war cries emerged from the gloom all around, great bellowing roars that told of the presence of massive bull
orcs and the yips and gibbers that spoke of goblins.

  Suddenly the clang of weapon on weapon rang through the gloom, followed by the crunch of bone and the screams of wounded men. Felix ran into something big and bounced. It took him a second to realise that he had run smack into the back of an orc. It took him another heartbeat to plunge his sword into its spine. Now was not the time for chivalry, he thought.

  The fight was a nightmare. He had only heartbeats to decide whether the shadow emerging from the clouds was a man or a monster. If it was an orc, he struck, if it was a man he tried to hold his blows. He was not entirely sure that he succeeded every time. His flesh crawled. At any moment he expected a blow from some unexpected direction to smash into his flesh and send his soul screaming to Morr’s dark kingdom. He knew from the sounds all around him that it was happening often enough.

  He needed to move cautiously, for he knew that the edge of the path hung over a vertiginous drop. It would be pointless to avoid the strike of a foe only to plunge to his death in the abyss below. The image almost paralysed him. He stood frozen on the spot for a moment, petrified by the thought of dropping into the gloom below. Somewhere off to his left there was a flash of light, a golden glow that was not lightning, but the casting of an elvish spell. He knew that Teclis was fighting for his life out there in the dark.

  Closer yet came Gotrek’s fierce bellow. It was followed by the butcher-shop sounds of an axe hitting flesh. From force of habit, Felix made his way towards the noise, knowing that in a wild melee like this, the Slayer’s side would be the safest place to be.

  Teclis cursed the mist and the strange flows of magic through the mountains of Albion. His ward spells had given him only a heartbeat’s warning of the attack. In that instant he had thrown a shield spell around himself.

  ‘Stay with me,’ he told Siobhain and drew his sword. It was not pure chivalry on his part. He needed someone to guard his back and he was sure the woman would not plunge a spear into it.