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

by Warhammer

  Gotrek stepped through the door. Felix closed it. Gotrek threw the orator to the ground, then began piling the dead cultists against the door. Fists pounded on it from the other side, but could not budge it.

  Gotrek picked up the orator and slung him over his shoulder again. ‘Come on, manling.’

  He carried the orator through the tenement and out onto the street, then immediately entered another tenement on the opposite side and found the stairs to the cellar.

  They went down, and Gotrek dropped the man onto the dirt floor amid heaps of trash and broken furniture. He knelt on his chest with one knee and lowered his axe to the man’s neck.

  ‘Who are your leaders?’ he rasped.

  The orator blinked up at him, dazed and frightened. He swallowed. ‘I… I have no leaders. I am the leader.’

  Gotrek broke his nose with his bony fist. ‘Who are your leaders?’

  Blood spilled across the orator’s cheeks like a red river. ‘I… I don’t know! They wear masks!’

  Gotrek raised his fist.

  Felix winced and stepped forward, holding up a hand. ‘Who do you think they are?’

  The man’s eyes went wide. ‘I dare not! I cannot!’

  Gotrek punched him again, further shattering his nose. He screamed.

  ‘Do you dare now?’ growled Gotrek.

  The orator spat blood and glared up at Gotrek. A mad light had come into his eyes. ‘Do your worst, dwarf. Pain ends with death, but if I betray my masters, death is only the beginning of pain.’

  Gotrek leaned forward, crushing the man under his enormous weight. He pressed the blade of his axe into the man’s neck. ‘And what if death is a long time coming?’

  ‘It comes now!’ cried the orator, then thrust his head forward and twisted, so that he cut his own throat against the axe blade.

  Felix gasped as the man’s head slumped back and the clean-edged wound gaped open like a second mouth. Blood pumped from it in a torrent.

  Gotrek sat back, annoyed.

  Felix let out a breath. He disliked this sort of business. ‘A wasted effort,’ he said. ‘We know nothing more than when we started.’

  ‘Killing seven servants of the Ruinous Powers isn’t a waste,’ said Gotrek, standing. ‘But you are right. These rankers know nothing. We will learn nothing of their masters from them.’

  Felix nodded. ‘And I don’t think we’ll find their masters in the Maze.’

  Gotrek cleaned his axe on the shirt of the orator, his brow furrowed. ‘They have protected themselves well, curse them.’ He put his axe on his back and turned to the stairs. ‘Come on, manling. A drink will help me think.’

  As they turned the corner onto the street that the Blind Pig occupied, Gotrek grunted as if he’d been shot. Felix looked up, then gaped. The tavern was gone – reduced, along with most of the other buildings around it, to charred beams and mounds of smouldering black rubble. In the street before it, sitting slumped on an overturned water bucket, was Heinz, his face buried in his arms. His clothes were stained with soot. The backs of his hands were burned.

  Gotrek stopped in the middle of the street, staring at the sad tableau. Felix stopped behind him. A carriage pulled to an abrupt halt behind them.

  ‘Someone will die for this,’ said Gotrek.

  Felix nodded, but a nagging voice in his head wondered again if he and Gotrek were responsible for the fire. And if they were, would the Slayer kill them?

  ‘Hello, Felix,’ said a familiar voice behind them. ‘Hello, Slayer.’

  Felix turned. Leaning out of the window of the carriage behind them was a heavily hooded and veiled figure. A shock of white hair shone through the black lace of the veil.

  ‘Ulrika,’ said Felix. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I have been looking for you,’ she said. ‘My mistress wishes to speak to you. To ask a favour of you.’

  Gotrek tore his eyes from the ruins of Heinz’s tavern and glared up at her. ‘The oath breaker wants a favour?’ There was a dangerous note in his voice.

  ‘It pertains to the Cleansing Flame, and may help uncover their leaders and what they have done with the powder.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Gotrek stared levelly at Ulrika for a long moment, then turned back to the Blind Pig. ‘You go,’ he said to Felix. ‘I have things to do.’

  ‘Me?’ Felix didn’t like the idea of walking into the den of the vampire countess alone. She had dealt honourably with him before, but one never knew with vampires. ‘But this might be the information we have been looking for.’

  ‘You’re better off without me,’ said Gotrek. ‘I don’t trust my axe in her presence.’

  ‘I don’t trust my neck in her presence,’ said Felix, but Gotrek was already stumping towards Heinz and didn’t look back.

  ‘All right, I… I suppose I’ll go, then.’

  Felix turned back to the carriage. Ulrika was holding the door open for him. He could see her sharp white teeth smiling through the veil. He swallowed, dread and excitement warring in the pit of his stomach, then shrugged and climbed in.

  Ulrika rapped the ceiling with her knuckles and they started forward. She closed the blinds against the twilight, then removed her hood and veil and leaned back, looking at him, her eyes twinkling in the light of a horn lantern. Her hair had been trimmed very close in order to cut out the sections that had been burned the night before, and she looked even more androgynous than usual.

  Felix shifted uncomfortably, uncertain what to say or where to look. She was so beautiful, and yet so unnerving. So much like the woman he had once known and loved, and at the same time nothing like her at all.

  ‘I remember you with fondness, Felix,’ she said after a moment. ‘Is that how you remember me?’

  Felix frowned. His memories of their times together rose up before his eyes and he could feel desire stirring within him. At the same time, the smug smirk that had twisted her mouth as she asked the question reminded him unpleasantly of her inborn sense of entitlement, which had always rubbed him the wrong way. There had been so many fights, over so little. She had been so foreign to him, even then. A noblewoman. A Kislevite. A born warrior. She had so little in common with an overly educated merchant’s son from Altdorf, who thought himself more poet than soldier. Their ideas of the world had been so dissimilar they might have been different species.

  Now they were.

  And yet, his most lasting memories of her were not the fights and the sullen silences, nor the jealousies and sadness at the end when things were falling apart, but instead of laughing with her, riding with her, rolling with her, fencing with her, both with sword and word, and most of all, of enjoying the challenge of her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘For all our troubles, I still think of you… fondly.’ He coughed as another thought came to him. ‘Ah, have you spoken to… to Max since…’

  Her wide grin flashed again. ‘Still jealous, Felix?’

  ‘Not at all!’ said Felix, hotly. ‘I was just wondering what he thought of… of what has occurred.’

  ‘Of course,’ she purred. ‘Of course. No, I have not spoken to Herr Schreiber since my… “demise”. He is in Altdorf, I believe. Teaching. I am not sure he would welcome a visit and, to be honest, I have not thought to seek him out.’ She frowned and touched her breast. ‘My heart no longer works as it did. Nothing can touch it now.’

  For the first time her mask of sly amusement seemed to slip a little and Felix thought he saw a ghost of pain flit across her face.

  ‘Uh,’ said Felix, into the silence. ‘So, how have you been?’

  Ulrika snorted, then chuckled, then doubled over with laughter. At last she flopped back in her seat and looked at him through half-closed eyes. ‘Oh, Felix, I have missed you.’ She sighed, then gazed up at the red damask ceiling, her long white fingers trailing aimlessly across the leather bench. ‘It is not an easy thing, becoming one of night’s dark masters,’ she said. ‘One must learn first to master oneself, one’s appetites. Thi
s is difficult. The hunger is at times… overwhelming. The urge to rend and kill and drink one’s victims dry…’ She licked her lips and her eyes flicked to Felix’s neck, then swiftly away. She coughed. ‘Well, it is constantly with one. Fortunately, I have had a very wise, very patient teacher, who has opened the wisdom of her centuries-long life to me without stint. Countess Gabriella, despite what your surly companion believes, has lived up to her vow and taught me how to control my animal hungers, how to sip and savour, rather than guzzle and slaughter. She has taught me how to use my newborn powers, and also, more importantly, how to hide them. And she has tutored me in the twisted family trees of the Nehekharan bloodlines, and in the feuds and internecine jealousies that threaten them.’

  Felix frowned. A family tree where no one was related was a strange thing to imagine.

  ‘She has not always been the kindest mistress,’ Ulrika continued, and a flicker of some emotion came and went in her eyes that Felix thought might have been pain or anger or fear. ‘She is sometimes cruel. It is, I think, part of our nature. And there have been times when I have cringed under the lash of her displeasure. She is wary, as anyone in her precarious position must be – always on guard against betrayal, or incautious words and actions that might expose what she really is. Because of these concerns, she has occasionally scolded me for taking unnecessary risks, or for befriending people not fully under my control.’ She shrugged. ‘But I owe her my life – or my undeath, rather. For had she not taken me under her wing after that mad idiot Adolphus Krieger turned me, I would have been dead – truly dead – within the day, either by the sun, or Gurnisson’s dread axe, or some peasant’s bonfire, so I cannot speak too harshly against her.’ She chuckled. ‘In that, I suppose I feel for her like any daughter feels for her mother, eh?’

  All at once, she leaned forward, her face troubled. ‘Listen, Felix. You have met her before. Indeed, you knew her before I did. She was cautious then. But you should be aware before you speak to her again that, due to the crazed schemes of Adolphus Krieger and other deluded madmen among our aristocracy, this tendency towards caution has grown. She is, in her way, as suspicious as the Slayer, and extremely unwilling to let live those she feels threaten her existence. So…’ She hesitated, then shrugged apologetically. ‘So, be polite, eh, Felix?’

  Felix swallowed. ‘I… I will do my best.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, then chuckled. ‘I must say, I am very glad Gotrek decided not to come.’

  After riding east on Commerce Street through the Reik Platz and on past the squat grey pile of the Nuln town hall, Ulrika’s coach turned south into the tidy streets of the Handelbezirk, still alive with wealthy merchants closing up their offices and walking to their clubs or homes, or chatting and drinking in the cafes and taverns that lined the streets.

  Another turn to the east, and the coach was rolling down a quiet side street, flanked on both sides by prosperous, well kept townhouses. The warm glow of lamp light shone from diamond-paned windows. The coach made a right down a side alley and pulled at last through a coach yard gate.

  Felix stepped out of the carriage behind Ulrika and looked up at the rear of a sturdy, respectable four storey townhouse. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it wasn’t this. It was certainly nothing like Krieger’s vast, brooding castle in mist-shrouded Sylvania. There was a distinct lack of towering basalt walls and leering gargoyles and dark foreboding.

  Ulrika led the way to the rear door as grooms came out of a coach house and began unhitching the horses. ‘It would have been more correct to receive you at the front door,’ she said. ‘But there are prying eyes everywhere, as the countess says, and she doesn’t want any connection to be made between you, for both your sakes.’ She paused with her hand on the latch and looked back at Felix. ‘One more thing I forgot to mention. Here in Nuln, the countess is not Countess Gabriella of Sylvania, but Madame Celeste du Vilmorin, late of Caronne, a Bretonnian noblewoman.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Felix, unsure what he was to make of this information.

  Ulrika opened the door and led him into a small room with dark passages leading off into shadows. From further in the house Felix could hear female laughter and quiet music. Ulrika stepped to a narrow winding stair in the left wall and began to ascend. Felix followed.

  ‘The countess…’ He caught himself. ‘Sorry, Madame du Vilmorin is entertaining?’

  ‘Her ladies are,’ said Ulrika.

  ‘Oh,’ said Felix. He blushed. ‘Oh, I see.’

  Ulrika smiled. ‘There is no better thief of secrets than a harlot.’

  The stairs wound past three more floors, and at each Felix could hear laughter and singing and more intimate sounds.

  The fourth floor was much quieter. A thick red Araby carpet ran down the centre of a wide, panelled hallway. Beaded crimson lamps hung from the walls at regular intervals, casting a ruby glow over every surface. Ulrika stepped to a door halfway along the hall and tapped softly at it. After a short wait, the door opened and a young girl in a blue silk dress looked out. Felix almost gasped. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, a little porcelain doll with blonde ringlets, a knowing smile, and enormous blue eyes. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

  ‘Herr Jaeger,’ murmured Ulrika, ducking her head.

  The blonde girl curtsied to Felix. ‘Welcome, sir. You are expected. Please come in.’

  Felix looked uncertainly at Ulrika.

  She smirked. ‘Perfectly harmless, Felix. I assure you.’ She started down the hall. ‘I’m going to get out of my hunting clothes. I will join you shortly.’

  Felix hesitantly followed the diminutive beauty into a lushly appointed ante-chamber. Tiny, feminine chairs were gathered around low, lacquered tables, all crowded with vases of lush flowers and exquisite statuettes. Crystal chandeliers cast shards of gentle light across the accoutrements of the life of a woman of leisure – a harpsichord, an embroidery frame, a book open to an illustration of a flower. Everything seemed too delicate to be touched.

  ‘Please have a seat, Herr Jaeger,’ said the blonde girl. ‘I will inform madame that you have arrived.’

  She disappeared into a further room and Felix lowered himself warily into one of the filigree chairs, trying to keep his scabbard from bumping into anything. The chair held. He let out a breath, and looked around. There was something wrong with the room. Though it appeared calculated to seem peaceful and exquisite and feminine, it unnerved him somehow, and he didn’t know why. What was the discordant element? His eyes roamed from place to place. An enamelled clock ticked quietly on the mantelpiece. Paintings of young lovers walking down sunlit lanes and girls in flower-garlanded swings hung on red brocade walls. A golden ewer and cups sat on a sideboard.

  Then it struck him. There were no windows. It wasn’t just that the windows had been blocked or curtained. They had been removed entirely.

  The inner door opened. Felix turned and made to stand, then stopped, halfway to his feet, paralysed by the sight that met his eyes. Filing out of the inner room was a line of young women, all in simple, elegant white dresses, like novitiates at a Shallyan convent, except that their heads were uncovered, and that they were all astonishingly, painfully, beautiful.

  Felix’s heart stopped as the first in line looked him in the eye. She was the most gorgeous girl he had ever seen, a dark eyed brunette with lush red lips and a figure to match. Then his gaze was caught by the eyes of the girl that followed her. His heart stopped. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, an ethereal blonde with the regal nose and statuesque bearing of a princess from a fairytale. The girl behind her…

  He tore his eyes away and gathered up his jaw. He was making a fool of himself. But what man would not? Each was more bewitching than all the others, and each in an entirely different way. Where had they come from? And why were they here? He couldn’t help looking after them as they glided by and sashayed out into the hallway.

  ‘Madame will see you now, Herr Jaeger,’ sai
d a voice behind him.

  Felix jumped and turned guiltily, nearly knocking over a spindly little table which held a Cathay vase. He grabbed at the vase as it tottered, and nearly succeeded in upsetting it entirely before he managed at last to steady it.

  The little blonde girl held the inner door open, a hand over her mouth to hide an amused smile. ‘This way, Herr Jaeger,’ she said.

  Felix followed her through the doorway into a warm, candle-lit boudoir. This was a much darker, more sombre, room, though no less feminine. Books and paintings of beautiful women in ancient dress lined every wall. Rich velvets and brocades in burgundy and cobalt upholstered graceful couches and chairs. A massive canopied bed stood like an altar upon a dais at the far end. Its canopies were closed.

  To one side, before a grand fireplace surrounded by a baroquely carved mantelpiece that rose, urn upon corbel upon pillar, all the way to the ceiling, was a luxurious tasselled and fringed chaise longue, upon which reclined the woman Felix knew as Countess Gabriella of Nachthafen, dressed in a robe of crimson silk that spilled off onto the floor like a flow of blood. She had not changed physically in the slightest since the last time he had seen her. She still appeared to be an alabaster-skinned beauty of perhaps thirty, with thick black hair and sparkling black eyes. Her figure was petite but exquisite, and her smallest move full of fluid, feline grace.

  ‘Welcome, Herr Jaeger,’ said the countess, her voice silky with soft Bretonnian consonants. ‘You have not aged a day.’ She raised her hand to him.

  ‘Nor have you, madame.’ Felix smiled as he took her hand and bent over it. She had had an Altdorf accent when last they met. It appeared she took her Bretonnian imposture seriously.

  The countess motioned behind him. ‘Please sit.’

  ‘Thank you, madame.’ Felix sank into a velvet covered chair.

  ‘Astrid,’ said the countess, as the little blonde girl appeared at Felix’s side and placed a glass of wine and a tray of sweets at his elbow, ‘Please make sure that Captain Reingelt still slumbers, and then you may retire.’