by Warhammer
Gotrek shook his head, then steadied himself. ‘I want to talk to Heinz.’
‘I’m not sure he wants to talk to you,’ said Felix, but Gotrek was already stumping away into the night. Felix sighed and waved goodnight to Malakai, then followed him.
‘Watch out for the big ’un, young Felix,’ called Malakai. ‘He’s liable to get intae trouble.’
Felix snorted. There was no other possible response.
‘Yer not to come in,’ said the big bouncer who stood, his arms folded across his broad chest, in front of the Blind Pig’s door.
‘Try stopping me,’ growled Gotrek, aiming himself at the door.
The bouncer braced himself, then wavered before Gotrek’s mad, one-eyed glare and stepped aside. He shrugged. ‘Ah, go on. There’s no one to fight anyway.’
Felix followed Gotrek into the tavern and saw that it was true. It was empty but for one lonely barmaid and old Heinz, half asleep on his elbows behind the bar.
The barman’s head came up as he saw Gotrek. ‘I told you not to come back, you wrecker!’ He didn’t seem at all surprised that Gotrek was wrapped in bandages.
‘I stayed away last night, didn’t I?’ said Gotrek. He tossed a gold coin marked with the sigil of Karak Hirn onto the bar. ‘Charge me double for my drinks,’ he said. ‘That’ll pay the damages soon enough.’
Heinz looked at the coin for a long moment, then picked it up and pocketed it. ‘Suppose I can use all the business I can get.’ He turned and drew two pints.
‘What happened?’ asked Felix. ‘Where is everyone?’
Heinz sighed as he set their pints before them. ‘It’s Ward Captain Wissen and his thugs. Since that ruck on the bridge they’ve been prowling Shantytown and the Maze, roughing up anyone they find on the streets, trying to find the leaders of the Cleansing Flame. All my regulars are holing up until it blows over.’ He snorted. ‘I could tell Wissen he’s looking in the wrong place. Those troublemakers ain’t from around here.’
‘Where are they from?’ asked Gotrek. He sounded suddenly much less drunk.
‘They’re toffs,’ sneered Heinz. ‘Altestadt brats with too much time on their hands. See themselves as do-gooders, standing up for the common man. The Torch, their leader calls himself. Gives fiery speeches about how the poor should rise up and kill the priests and the nobles and the factors. But when the folk start smashing things up and the watch come down on them, where are the Torch and his rich mates? Nowhere. They take off their masks and disappear. Cowards, I calls ’em.’
‘I call them worse,’ rasped Gotrek.
‘So why aren’t the watch looking in the Altestadt?’ asked Felix.
‘They don’t know,’ said Heinz. ‘They think they’re all Maze-born rabble rousers.’
‘Why don’t you tell them different?’
Heinz scowled at Felix. ‘No Shantytowner would tell the watch nothing. No matter what it was, they’d find a way to turn it against us.’
‘We’d find them in the Altestadt, then?’ asked Gotrek.
‘If you knew who they were,’ said Heinz. ‘But nobody knows that. Not even their followers. They have a meeting house in the Maze though. Hidden.’
‘Where is it?’ pressed Gotrek.
Heinz turned and looked at him, then shook his head. ‘No, Gurnisson. I don’t want to lose the Pig. They live up to their name, the Cleansing Flame, with them what cross them. Set fire to the houses of many a man they thought betrayed them. Why do you want to know?’
Gotrek raised his bandaged arm. ‘They set me on fire.’
Felix touched his face. ‘Me too.’
Heinz looked from Gotrek to Felix and back. His lips pulled back in a snarl. ‘No one sets my friends on fire and gets away with it!’ Then he paused, uncertain. ‘They’re dangerous men though. A snake with many heads. You’ve friends in the palace, if I recall. Maybe they could help you. Save us all some strife.’
Gotrek just grunted and drank his ale.
Heinz rubbed his whiskery chin, visibly melting in the heat of Gotrek’s withering silence. ‘Of course, there’s no connection between us anymore,’ he said. ‘Been twenty years since you worked for me. And I threw you out two nights ago. Nobody would think it was me who sent you.’ He chewed his lip thoughtfully then sighed. ‘All right. It might stir up trouble, but I’ve weathered trouble before, and I hate them muckrakers almost as much as I hate the watch.’
He looked around warily, despite the fact that there was no one in the place, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘I overheard one of them telling a new recruit how to get there once. They’re in the middle of the Maze, behind a place called the Broken Crown. The fellow said that the building looks like just another old tenement, but it’s built atop an old brewery, and the cellars go down and down. The Flame boys keep an eye on it night and day, so watch yourselves when you get close.’ He dipped his finger in a puddle of ale and began to draw a map on the bar. ‘I’ll show you how to get the Broken Crown. After that, you’re on your own.’
Felix was less than eager to enter the Maze, which was known as the roughest part of the roughest neighbourhood in Nuln, particularly in the dead of night, particularly with Gotrek weaving drunk and him not much better. But he knew nothing could stop a Slayer bent on vengeance, so he followed along warily, one hand on the dragon-figured hilt of his runesword, and his eyes searching every shadow they passed.
The Maze was the haunt of gangsters and cultists and wanted men. There were no street lamps here, and few lights of any kind. Though Mannslieb and Morrslieb were out, the buildings were so crowded together, and so tall – some looming five and six storeys above the alleys – that the moons’ light rarely reached the street. Some of them sagged against each other over the street like drunk lovers and blocked the sky altogether.
In most places, the lanterns over the doors of the lawless taverns and gambling halls and low rent brothels that filled the lower floors of the rickety tenements provided the only illumination. Most of the back alleys were pitch black and Felix had to rely on Gotrek’s keen tunnel-bred vision to lead them safely through the dark. In some places, new structures, even flimsier than the old, were built upon the rubble of the buildings that had burned down during the skaven invasion, twenty years before. In other places the charred timber bones still stood, patched tents and makeshift lean-tos rising in their midst.
Hard-eyed men watched Gotrek and Felix from doorways and windows. Women in low-cut dresses made kissing noises as they passed. Groups of villains lounged outside open-fronted beer stalls, their legs splayed out into the street, deliberately blocking the way.
Gotrek stumped past them all, ignoring them, his one eye looking for the landmarks Heinz had told them to watch for, and turning where he had told them to turn.
After a quarter of an hour they came to a filthy, rubbish strewn street. On the left was a tavern beneath a crude painting of a broken crown. An alley ran down the side of the tavern. Heinz had said that the Cleansing Flame’s meeting house was in a tenement that faced the alley behind the Crown.
‘On tiptoes now, eh?’ said Felix, thinking of the men Heinz had said watched the area night and day.
Gotrek clomped forward as if he hadn’t heard, his boots echoing down the alley. Felix sighed and followed. So much for subtlety. He drew his sword.
Behind the Crown was a crooked alley, so narrow Felix could have reached out and touched both walls at once, if he had cared to soil his hands. To the left and right the alley disappeared into shadow, but across from the rear entrance of the Crown, a slanting slash of moonlight illuminated a dilapidated tenement with a dingy junk shop in its bottom floor, smashed and smoke-blackened furniture and crockery spilling from its unlit but open front. Was this the place? Was it the tenement to the left? The one to the right? Unfortunately Heinz’s knowledge had ended at the Broken Crown. They would have to start sticking their noses into doors and looking around. Felix’s skin crawled at the prospect.
As Gotrek crossed to th
e junk shop and looked into it, Felix peered left and right, trying to see into the shadows of the alley, looking for watchers. He gave up. It was too dark, and if there was anything to see, Gotrek would have seen it.
The Slayer jabbed a thumb at the open junk shop door. ‘A trap,’ he said. ‘An open door, but no footprints.’ He studied the ground again. The alley floor was hard-packed earth, like all the streets in the Maze. Gotrek followed the prints leading to a closed door, then moved further left, to a spot where it looked like scrap lumber had been used to patch a hole in the wall. ‘Here,’ he said, and pulled on the boards.
They resisted. As Gotrek stepped forward to pull harder, Felix heard a whistle from somewhere above and behind them. He turned and looked up. Someone was backing away from an unshuttered window. Below it, the back door of the Broken Crown slammed open and seven men swaggered out, swords and daggers dangling casually from their hands. Each of them wore a yellow cotton mask over his face.
‘Y’need a key fer that door, stuntie,’ said a tall man with the build of a longshoreman, as the others spread out to encircle them.
‘I have one,’ said Gotrek, drawing his axe and holding it so it glinted in the moons’ light.
Some of the men murmured nervously at the sight of it, but the big man sneered, waving them on. ‘Come on, lads. They was looking for the Cleansing Flame. Let’s not disappoint ’em.’
The masked men lunged forward, swinging their weapons. Gotrek shattered the big man’s sword with a slash, then gutted him with a backhand and turned to face three more. Felix backed into an angle of the alley wall so he would only have to face two. He blocked one and kicked at the other as a third tried to find space between them to attack.
These were alley-bashers, not trained swordsmen. Felix countered their attacks with ease and blooded both his opponents on the first pass. But as he recovered to guard, something buzzed past his ear and stuck in the plaster wall beside him. He flinched away. It was a crossbow bolt.
He risked a look up. Someone was reloading in the second floor window. Then, in an eyeblink, they were gone – vanished! Someone or something had yanked them savagely backward out of sight.
Felix was so surprised he almost took the left-hand basher’s sword through the belly. He lurched right and the blade grazed his hip. The man on the right was stabbing straight for his eyes. Felix batted his sword aside at the last second and it stuck in the plaster wall next to the crossbow bolt. He kicked the man between the legs, then ducked another thrust from the man on the left and ran him through.
As the dead man fell, Felix slashed at his companion, who was still clutching his groin, and cut halfway through his neck. He turned to face the one who had been trying to push through the other two, but to his surprise, the man was falling forward. A crossbow bolt sticking out of his spine.
He looked up to the window again. There was nobody there.
Gotrek was looking up too. All his opponents were dead as well, one from a bolt behind the ear.
‘We have a friend, it seems,’ said Felix.
‘No one in this place is a friend,’ muttered Gotrek. He sidled to the hidden door, keeping his eye on the dark window, then reached back and yanked sharply on the planks. They jerked open with a ping of snapped metal, revealing a pitch black opening. Gotrek stole a quick glance inside, then nodded to Felix while returning his gaze to the window. ‘In, manling.’
Felix stepped cautiously to the opening. He felt equally reluctant to step into the darkness or stay out in the alley at the mercy of a marksman. With a curse he strode across the threshold and into a narrow corridor. Gotrek backed in after him and closed the door behind him. The darkness was absolute, at least for Felix.
Gotrek shifted around in front of him. ‘Put your hand on my shoulder, manling,’ he said. ‘We’ll go without a light.’
Felix reached forward and touched the cloth of Gotrek’s bandages. He switched to the opposite shoulder. Gotrek started forward confidently, the wooden floor creaking beneath his feet. Felix followed behind, fighting the urge to put his sword hand in front of his face to shield off any unseen obstacles.
‘Stairs down,’ said Gotrek, after a few paces. Felix gripped tighter as Gotrek descended, and felt for the edges of each step.
‘There would have been a guard behind the door,’ he said. ‘He must have gone to warn the others.’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘They know we’re coming.’
At the bottom of the steps, Gotrek froze, holding perfectly still. Felix tried to do the same. After a moment Gotrek started forward again.
Felix let out a breath. ‘Do you hear them ahead of us?’
‘No,’ said Gotrek. ‘The front door opened.’
Felix swallowed, and the flesh of his back crawled as he imagined the mysterious sharpshooter from the alley padding down after them in the dark.
Gotrek turned a corner and Felix saw in the distance a faint sliver of flickering orange from under a door. It gave just enough light for Felix to see that the corridor leading up to it had no doors.
‘Keep to the walls,’ said Gotrek. ‘And tread softly.’
The Slayer began edging down the left side of the corridor. Felix went down the right, trying to step on the boards as close to the walls as possible, where they wouldn’t creak so much. When they reached the door, Gotrek put his unburned ear to it and listened. Felix held his breath.
‘Empty,’ breathed Gotrek. He tried the latch. It was locked. He put his palm and shoulder against the door and pushed. The door was much sturdier and better mounted than the hidden door above. Felix could hear the deadbolt groaning with complaint as Gotrek pressed harder and harder. Finally, with a sharp pang, the lock gave way and the door flew open. Gotrek jumped forward and caught it before it slammed against the wall. Then he stepped cautiously inside, his axe held at the ready. Felix followed.
The room within was little more than a wide space in the hall. It looked to Felix like a guard station. A low table and two stools sat along one wall. They had not been abandoned long. There was a charcoal brazier on the floor next to them with two sausages cooking on it. A half-eaten loaf of bread sat on the table. A yellow mask was crumpled beside it.
Gotrek glanced around at the walls. ‘Hidden panels everywhere,’ he muttered.
He stepped forward, peering down the hall beyond the room, then froze and looked back over his shoulder towards the corridor from which they had just come. He motioned Felix to hide to the right of the open door, then took up position to the left. He put a finger to his lips. Felix nodded.
They waited for what seemed to Felix an eternity. From where he stood he could not see through the door, and though he strained his ears, he could hear nothing but the sounds of an old building: creaks and groans, a faint sound of muffled voices, either far above them or far below them, the drip of water from somewhere nearby, the scrabbling of rats inside the walls.
And yet Gotrek remained tensed, axe ready, legs bent to spring, his eye fixed firmly on the frame of the open door. He must be hearing something, but what?
Then, with a movement too swift to see, Gotrek’s free hand shot forward through the doorway and pulled a figure into the room, spun it around and slammed it into the side wall. His axe was at its neck. Just as swiftly, a stiletto was at his.
Felix gasped. It was the white-haired figure – the mysterious phantom he had seen in Big Nod’s cold cellar and at the riot on the bridge. It raised its shock-haired head, revealing ice-blue eyes and skin like white silk. It smiled, revealing gleaming incisors.
‘Hello, Gotrek,’ it said, in a voice like honey and sand. ‘Hello, Felix. You haven’t aged a day.’
It was Ulrika.
CHAPTER SIX
Felix stared at her, a hundred conflicting emotions warring within him: surprise, longing, loathing, anger, regret, nostalgia, bitterness, hope, happiness, grief.
She was beautiful – more beautiful, perhaps, than she had been in life. All her flaws had been polished away. Her sk
in glowed with the soft lustre of alabaster. Her short-cropped hair, once a sandy blonde, was now snow-white, her eyes were a more piercing blue, her lips a wanton red. A black neckerchief was knotted loosely around her graceful, corded neck. She was as tall as ever, and both slimmer and harder under her tight-fitting black doublet and breeches, and looked the same age as when he had seen her last – twenty-one or twenty-two years old. A bone handled rapier hung low at her trim waist, and black leather cavalry boots encased her long legs to mid-thigh. The hand that held the needle-thin stiletto to Gotrek’s throat wore black kid-skin gloves of the finest quality.
And yet, for all her beauty, there was something subtly repellent about her as well. Her perfection was that of a statue, lacking entirely in humanity. And as mesmerising as her eyes were, they were equally as unnerving. They looked at him with the unwavering intensity of a hunting cat’s – like she saw him only as prey. She smelled wrong as well. The cloying scent of cinnamon could not hide the coppery tang of blood that hovered about her, nor the faint echo of cold, wet earth.
‘The bloodsucker.’ Gotrek spat on the floor. He did not lower his axe.
‘You spared me once,’ she said, calmly. ‘Will you break your oath and kill me now?’
Felix noted that she still had her slightly slurred Kislevite accent. It was still bewitching.
‘Have you broken your oath?’ countered Gotrek.
‘I made no oath,’ said Ulrika. ‘I was unconscious at the time, if you recall. But if you mean the promise that my mistress made, to teach me to harm no one…’ She smiled again, showing long incisors. ‘I wager I have killed one for every hundred you have slain in the last eighteen years. And none that didn’t deserve it.’
Gotrek snarled and pressed his axe closer to her neck. At the same time, her stiletto pricked the skin of his. A bead of blood ran down and disappeared beneath his beard.