by Warhammer
‘Ironskin,’ rasped Gotrek, as they hopped the rushing falls. ‘You’re down first.’
Narin grunted. ‘Not much on sharing glory, are you?’
Gotrek skidded to a stop next to the rope and turned to face the orcs as they bounded the stream, a silent green avalanche of death. ‘I’ll hold the left,’ he said. ‘The rest of you hold the right. Then down on my call.’
With a roar, the Slayer sprang to meet the charging orcs, chopping down three with his first swing, and another two with his backhand. The orcs swarmed him, slashing at his naked torso with savage silence, but they could not penetrate the net of flashing steel he wove around himself. Orc limbs flew and orc axes shattered as Gotrek blocked and bashed, his orange crest bobbing wildly.
Felix shook his head. He had seen it a thousand times, but it never ceased to amaze him. The Slayer in his element was a terrible and awesome sight. He seemed not to have two arms, but six, and three axes, all moving at blurring speed.
The second group of orcs crashed into Felix and the others from the left, nearly driving them off the cliff. They held just at the brink, parrying and hacking furiously. Felix gored an orc and pulled another past him over the edge as it thrust with a crude spear. It bounced down the bulge and into empty air. Narin and Thorgig dispatched one each, and Leatherbeard hacked down two.
‘Down, Ironskin!’ came Gotrek’s voice from the bloody scrum to their right.
Narin cursed as he gutted another orc, but backed from the combat as ordered, while Felix, Thorgig and Leatherbeard closed ranks. Narin snatched up the rope and started backwards down the cliff. ‘You dare not die here, Gurnisson!’ he shouted over the clash of weapons. ‘You owe my father a fight.’
Felix and the others were pressed back to back with Gotrek as the orcs pushed in on them from all sides, a surging green wall, out of which lashed snapping tusks, massive fists and black-iron axes. Every swing and shift of weight made Felix’s ankle scream. Gotrek fought the leader, a huge, milky-skinned orc whose beady black eyes glittered silently at the Slayer with cold intensity as they fought. Felix frowned. Didn’t orcs have red eyes? Or yellow?
‘Thorgig, down!’ called Gotrek.
‘What?’ cried the young dwarf. ‘Me before the human? I won’t!’
‘Down, or I throw you down,’ growled Gotrek, swinging his rune axe up through the black-eyed orc’s jaw and into his brain. ‘The manling’s fought by me for more than twenty years. He knows his business.’
The strangeness of the orc’s eyes flew out of Felix’s head and he felt a burst of pride as Thorgig started, snarling and reluctant, down the rope. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Gotrek compliment his prowess as a fighter before. He fought with renewed vigour, inspired by the off-hand praise, protecting the Slayer’s flank and rear as he’d always done, while Gotrek dealt brutal death left, right and centre.
On the other hand, he thought sheepishly, he wouldn’t have minded entirely if Gotrek had thought less of him and let him go down first.
Dead orcs lay thick on the ground, but there didn’t seem to be any less pressing them, and with Thorgig and Narin making their way down the cliff, Gotrek, Leatherbeard and Felix fought harder than ever. Felix wondered if even Gotrek could keep the orcs away from the rope alone. A cleaver grazed Felix’s leg, opening up an angry red gash, and a dead orc, falling from Gotrek’s axe, nearly knocked him backwards off the cliff. His ankle throbbed, one pain among many. He felt dazed and numb, the green horde blurred before him. He could hardly hold up his sword.
‘Down, manling,’ Gotrek shouted. ‘It’s Slayers’ work now.’
Felix nodded and backed out of the fight, relieved, and took up the rope. He saw Leatherbeard puff up at Gotrek’s words, just as Felix had a moment earlier, and lay into the orcs afresh, pleased to think that Gotrek counted him his equal. Strange how such a taciturn misanthrope could inspire with an unconsidered word.
As he let himself down, hand under hand, feeling gingerly for footholds with his damaged foot, Felix watched the two Slayers fight back to back, axes flashing crimson in the last rays of the sun, their deep-muscled chests and backs streaked with sweat and blood, their thick legs braced wide before the onslaught of the ravening green horde. And the mad thing was, they were laughing. Inches from the cliff-edge – where a single misstep could send them plummeting – battling scores of savage behemoths that lusted for their blood, and they laughed.
Felix understood this to a certain extent. He was not immune to the euphoria of battle, to the mad rush that came with putting one’s life on the line, when pain and weariness and any thoughts of the future went away and one was lost entirely in the glorious violence of the moment. But, for him at least, this was a joy that always teetered on the edge of terror, the excitement always well mixed with fear. The Slayers seemed to have no such qualms. They looked entirely content.
As Felix edged below the bulge, he heard Gotrek shatter that contentment with three little words.
‘Leatherbeard, go down!’
‘Down? No!’ shouted the second Slayer through his mask. ‘The glory is here!’
‘There’s no glory in orcs,’ said Gotrek. ‘You heard what the ranger said. Down!’
‘This is not the respect due to one Slayer from another Slayer!’ said Leatherbeard angrily, but finally Felix felt the rope jerk above him as the masked dwarf began his descent.
Though Felix could no longer see the fight, the sounds of it rang down from the cliff like the clanging of a foundry, harsh cries and the clash of steel echoing through the thin mountain air. He looked down. Narin and Thorgig waited by the first peg, each hanging from his own pegged rope, looking up. The rope from the cliff top was, as Gotrek had requested, doubled pegged at its nether end.
‘Hurry, human,’ said Thorgig. ‘The Slayer can’t hold forever.’
‘I begin to wonder,’ said Narin thoughtfully. ‘He will be a fearsome opponent. If my father dies fighting him, I will become Thane, Grungni save me…’
There was a thunder-crack bang from above. A body with a Slayer’s crest hurtled past Felix, plunging down the cliff into the twilight shadows below. Felix gaped. Had it been Gotrek? Leatherbeard? He looked up.
The rope went slack in his hands.
He fell away from the cliff.
CHAPTER TEN
Felix stared at the loose rope as he dropped, stupid with shock. Another body was falling with him, bellowing. He caught a glimpse of Thorgig gaping at him as he plummeted past him, and thought, ‘I am going to die.’ Then the rope jerked taut, and ripped out of his hands. He spun and slammed upside down into the cliff with teeth-jarring force, stopped short by something that grabbed his left ankle. His leg was nearly pulled out of its socket.
He sucked in a tremulous breath, heart pounding, and body ringing like a bell. His palms were wet with shock sweat. The world was upside down, and dim at the edges.
I’m alive, he thought, though he wasn’t sure how. He should have been spinning down the cliff like a straw doll.
Someone groaned below him. He tipped his head back to look down. Leatherbeard held on woozily to the rope twenty feet further down the cliff, the right half of his mask scraped and scarred and his right shoulder bloody.
If Leatherbeard was hanging from the rope, then it was Gotrek who had fallen. Gotrek was…
A searing pain in his ankle drove the thought away. Well, he had twisted it, hadn’t he? Then he realised it was the other ankle that hurt now. He fought gravity to look up at it. It was caught in a loop of rope – a loop that was being drawn tighter and tighter by the weight of the masked Slayer clinging to it below him. It was agony, a bright fire atop the dull throb of all his other aches and pains.
‘Leatherbeard, get off the–’
Felix snapped his mouth closed, terrified by what he had almost done. The Slayer’s weight was all that kept Felix from falling. If he let go of the rope and clung to the cliff instead, the loop would loosen and Felix would slip away.
‘Hol
d fast, manling,’ came Thorgig’s voice, and the young dwarf rappelled down to stop beside him as Narin dropped down to Leatherbeard.
Thorgig held out his hand. ‘Take it.’
Felix reached out and clasped it hard. Below him, Narin was helping Leatherbeard, swinging his rope towards him. The Slayer caught it and transferred easily. The pressure on Felix’s ankle let up and he dropped again, scraping down the rough cliff face to swing free from Thorgig’s hand.
‘Now, take the rope,’ said Thorgig.
Felix grabbed Thorgig’s rope with his free hand, wrapped his legs around it, and let go of Thorgig’s hand. He and the three dwarfs hung from the ropes and caught their breath. They could hear the orcs marching away above them, as voiceless as ever.
‘The Slayer is dead?’ Thorgig asked, looking down into the darkness below.
‘We’ll know when we get to the bottom,’ said Narin.
‘Surely even Gurnisson can’t have survived a fall like that,’ said Thorgig.
Narin shrugged. ‘If anyone could it would be him.’
‘But what knocked him off?’ asked Thorgig. ‘What was that bang?’
‘Maybe they had a shaman with them,’ said Narin.
‘I saw no shaman,’ said Leatherbeard wearily.
‘Come on,’ said Narin. ‘Down we go. No point in speculating. We’re late for Hamnir.’
Their descent was much quicker than their ascent had been. The dwarfs used lines and pegs the whole way, and rappelled down in grasshopper-like leaps.
Felix took it slower. His ankle would not allow him their long hops, and he went down in silence, his mind struggling to take in the thought that Gotrek, at whose side he had walked for more than two decades, might be dead.
It was too early to grieve – he couldn’t yet believe the Slayer was gone. But the idea of a life without him made his head spin. What would he do? Following the Slayer had occupied almost all of Felix’s adult life. His duty to record the Slayer’s death had gone on for so long that he had a hard time remembering what it had replaced. What had he meant to do with himself before he met Gotrek? Write poetry, plays? Give up his bohemian ways and help his brother with the family business? Marry? Have children? Is that what he wanted now?
How old was he now? Forty? Forty-two? He had lost track of the years during his and Gotrek’s travels in the east. Was it too late to pick up where he had left off? Was a forty-year-old student too ridiculous? Of course, even if Gotrek were dead, Felix still owed him some work before he got on with his life. His vow would not be fulfilled until he had written the epic of the Slayer’s death.
His heart sank at the thought. Gotrek would be furious to have it recorded that he had died at the hands of ‘mere orcs’. It wasn’t a fitting death for a Slayer that had, in his time, killed daemons and giants, an anti-climax of the first order. Gotrek would never let Felix hear the end of it. Except… Felix choked back an unexpected sob as it finally hit him. Except Gotrek was…
‘There he is,’ said Narin, far below him, pointing down.
Felix stared down into the gloom of the cauldron vale, eyes searching, and at last made out a patch of bright red hair on the shore of the churning lake. The Slayer lay motionless on his stomach, half in, half out of the water. Had he fallen there from the cliff, or dragged himself to the shore? Felix almost lost his grip as he hurried to lower himself to the ground.
Narin, Thorgig and Leatherbeard were down before him, but out of some sense of fitness, waited until he had reached the ground before starting around the steep shore of the boiling lake to the broad, prostrate form. At Felix’s limping pace, it seemed to take forever, but at last they stood over him. There was just enough light left in the vale to see that Gotrek’s back and neck were a flaming, angry red, as if a giant hand had slapped him. His one eye was closed, and his crest was limp and bedraggled. Blood ran from his nose and mouth, and pooled on the black shale under his head. There was more trickling from under his shoulder. His axe lay beside him.
‘Gotrek?’ said Felix.
There was no answer.
Felix squatted down and reached out towards the Slayer, but then hesitated. If he touched him he would know, and he was afraid to know. ‘Gotrek… Are you?’
Gotrek’s eye fluttered open. He groaned, and then coughed violently. Water spilled onto the shale.
Felix and the three dwarfs breathed sighs of relief.
Gotrek’s coughing subsided. ‘Slow-pokes,’ he said, barely audible. ‘What took you… so long?’
Narin knelt beside him. ‘Can you move, Slayer? Anything broken?’
Gotrek thought for a long moment, eyes closed, and then opened them again. ‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Just… stings a bit.’ He tried to turn over and sit up, but his arms trembled and he sank back.
Thorgig and Leatherbeard helped him up and sat him on a rock. He hissed with every movement and touch. Felix saw that he had a deep, bloody wound in his left shoulder.
‘What is that?’ he asked, pointing.
Gotrek blinked down at the wound. ‘That?’ He lifted his hand towards it, but seemed too tired. He let it drop in his lap. ‘That is the reason I left the orcs.’
‘Don’t tell me you made that leap on purpose,’ snorted Leatherbeard.
‘Of course he did,’ said Narin. ‘A sparrow insulted his great-great-grandfather, and he leapt off to challenge it.’
Thorgig laughed. They all seemed a bit giddy to find Gotrek alive. ‘Sparrowslayer, they’ll call him.’
‘No,’ Gotrek said, shaking his head heavily. ‘They shot me. Knocked me clean off the cliff.’
‘Shot you?’ asked Thorgig, confused. ‘With what? That’s no arrow wound.’
‘A long-gun,’ said Gotrek.
‘Orcs don’t have guns,’ scoffed Narin. ‘They barely have fire.’
‘A dwarf long-gun,’ finished Gotrek.
The dwarfs fell silent.
‘These are very strange orcs indeed,’ said Thorgig at last.
Felix’s memory flashed back to the orc lieutenant’s glittering black eyes. He had to agree.
Thorgig opened Druric’s field kit and brought out bandages. He bound Gotrek’s shoulder as best he could as the others saw to their own hurts.
When he was all patched, Gotrek tried to stand. He swayed like a wheatstock in the wind and sat back down. ‘Curse it. Leatherbeard, your shoulder. We can’t wait.’
Leatherbeard helped Gotrek up and slipped his shoulder under his arm.
Gotrek cocked an eyebrow at Felix as they started around the pool. ‘All right, manling? You look a little pale.’
Felix coughed. ‘I… I’m just glad I didn’t have to make “knocked off a cliff by orcs” sound heroic.’
‘Didn’t think I was dead, did you?’
‘It… it crossed my mind.’
Gotrek snorted. ‘You should have more faith.’ He hissed and stumbled. Leatherbeard caught him and they continued. ‘Good thing that pool was deep though.’
They hurried as fast as they could around the base of Karaz Hirn. This wasn’t very fast at first, but Gotrek recovered himself after about half an hour, and was able to walk on his own. They made better time after that, though it was still hard going, pushing through the rough terrain and dense undergrowth of the pine forests in almost utter darkness. The dwarfs, not wanting to draw the attention of any more grobi patrols, disdained the use of lanterns, and navigated the woods with the keen tunnel-born sight of their race. Felix, however, was constantly cracking his head on low branches, or re-twisting his ankle on protruding roots.
After a further hour of difficult travel, the five companions came to the valley through which ran the old dwarf road that led to Karak Hirn’s front door. As they pushed through a thick wood towards the road, Leatherbeard stopped and held up a hand.
‘Someone’s on the road,’ he whispered.
They listened. The clinking and rumbling of an army on the march reached their ears, and here and there torchlight winked through the tan
gle of branches.
‘It can’t be Hamnir,’ said Thorgig. ‘The forward position is a mile north at least. He can’t still be getting into position.’
‘Who else can it be?’ asked Narin tugging on the burnt piece of the Shield of Drutti in his beard. ‘Reinforcements from another hold?’
‘Orcs coming up from behind?’ asked Leatherbeard.
‘We won’t find out by talking,’ said Gotrek. He pushed forwards and the others followed, more cautiously, unlimbering their weapons as they went.
Soon the wood thinned, and they looked out at the road from its shadows to see a dwarf army marching slowly south.
‘It is Hamnir!’ said Thorgig. ‘What has happened? ‘He’s going the wrong way!’
Leatherbeard pointed to the tail of wounded and dead on stretchers and pony carts trailing behind the main column.
‘Did the fool attack without our signal?’ asked Narin.
‘Prince Hamnir is not a fool!’ said Thorgig angrily.
‘He is if he attacked a buttoned-down hold,’ said Gotrek. ‘Come on.’
The dwarfs stepped out of the wood and walked up the weary column to its head. Along the way, various dwarfs glared at them, faces hard and angry. Some of them spat at the sight of them.
‘Ah, the hero’s welcome,’ said Narin.
‘What are we supposed to have done?’ asked Thorgig.
When they reached the front, they found Hamnir marching grimly with Gorril and his other lieutenants. Hamnir had a cut on his forehead, and his chainmail was rent in two places. Gorril and the others were similarly battered. They looked utterly exhausted.
Hamnir gave Gotrek a flat glance as he fell in step with him. ‘So, you live. I am sorry to hear it.’
‘So am I,’ said Gotrek. ‘Wasn’t through lack of trying.’
Hamnir ignored him. ‘Dead, you would have been a hero – the brave Slayer who tried and failed to win his way into the hold to open the door for the army. Alive… alive, you have a lot to answer for.’ He looked at Thorgig sadly. ‘As do you, Thorgig.’
‘The grobi discovered us, prince,’ said Thorgig, hurt. ‘We would not have reached the front door to open it. We did our best to remain alive in order to return and warn you not to attack.’