by Warhammer
‘But what were they doing with the warpstone?’ asked Felix. ‘Will it worsen the explosions?’
Gotrek shrugged. ‘It might. But worse; it will poison the ground for centuries. Anyone living above will end up twisted and corrupt.’
Felix swallowed, sick and angry and afraid all at once. The Cleansing Flame wasn’t just planning to kill Nuln, they meant to mutilate its corpse as well. The city might never be inhabitable again.
‘How many are there?’ asked Lady Hermione, stepping to them.
Gotrek growled and looked away from her.
‘About fifty, lady,’ said Ulrika. ‘Nearly half of them mutants.’
Madame Mathilda laughed. ‘Only that? We’re more than enough, then. Let’s get to it.’
‘Yes,’ said Felix. ‘But how do we keep them from lighting the powder?’
The vampires paused at that.
‘Oh,’ said Lady Hermione.
‘They won’t light the powder,’ said Gotrek.
The others turned to him.
‘Not if we attack now, before they’re set,’ Gotrek continued. ‘They can’t risk a partial explosion. The school might not come down.’ He turned back towards the chamber. ‘Come on, manling.’
‘Slayer, wait!’ hissed Ulrika. ‘Let us all–’
She paused suddenly and looked into the branching passage. The other vampires did the same. Gotrek and Felix followed their gaze. A glow of lantern light was bobbing towards them, and in it, Felix could see the shadows of walking men.
Quicker than winking, the vampires and their minions vanished silently into the darkness of the tunnel. Gotrek and Felix started after them, but before they got two steps, a voice rang from the passage.
‘Who’s that?’ it said.
Gotrek stopped and turned back. ‘Not him,’ he groaned.
‘Him?’ asked Felix. ‘Him who?’
Out of the passage came Ward Captain Wissen of the city watch, six watchmen at his back. He gaped when he saw Gotrek and Felix. His men went on guard.
‘You!’ he said loudly. ‘What are you doing here? What have you…?’
‘Shhh, captain!’ hissed Felix, looking uneasily down the slope towards the big chamber. ‘They’ll hear you!’
‘Eh?’ said Wissen, just as loudly. ‘Who? What do you…?’
‘The cultists,’ whispered Felix, pointing. ‘Down there, around the corner. They’re priming the powder.’
‘No wonder he never catches them,’ said muttered Gotrek. ‘Stomping around like a drunk ogre.’
Captain Wissen blinked, apparently confused, then his eyes narrowed. ‘The powder? Here?’ He smiled. ‘So you were right after all, eh? They’re going to blow up the Gunnery School? How many of them are there?’
‘Fifty or so,’ said Felix.
‘Hmmm,’ said Wissen. ‘Too many for us. Are you alone?’
‘Too many?’ Gotrek snorted.
Felix looked up the tunnel in the direction Ulrika and the other vampires had gone, searching for some sign of them. They were nowhere to be seen. Had they lost their assistance because of this interruption? Would they not show their faces with Wissen around? Dangerous and uncertain allies they might have been, but given the choice of them or Wissen and his men, there was no question who he would rather have had fighting by his side. He sighed. ‘Ah, yes. We’re alone. Listen. Maybe you’d better go back and get reinforcements. We’ll… we’ll keep an eye on them.’
‘What?’ sneered Wissen. ‘And have you burn down the city again with your clumsiness?’ He waved a hand. ‘Show me where they are. I want to see for myself.’
Gotrek rumbled in his throat. Felix shot him a warning glance. He didn’t like it any better than the Slayer did, but starting a fight with Wissen would only alert the cultists. ‘This way.’
Felix and Gotrek led the way down the slope, then slipped around the corner and edged towards the opening of the chamber with Wissen and his men shuffling behind them. It looked like the two mutants had finished seeding the barrels with the green embers, and the others were nearly done laying all the match cord. Felix swallowed, anxious. If they didn’t attack soon they would have to worry about the cultists lighting the powder after all.
‘You see?’ whispered Felix, pointing to the pillars. ‘They mean to bring down the sewer, which in turn will bring down the Gunnery School. And if we don’t attack right away…’
‘Brothers!’ cried Wissen at the top of his voice. ‘Look! Brave heroes have come to stop our villainous plan!’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Felix and Gotrek spun around. Wissen’s six watchmen had levelled their spears at them. Wissen stood with them, grinning and tugging at the buckles of his breastplate.
Felix blinked, uncomprehending. ‘What did you say?’ He looked over his shoulder into the chamber. The cultists were turning and starting towards them, mutants of every size and description intermingled with their human comrades. He looked back at Wissen. Had the man gone mad?
Gotrek lunged forward, slashing at Wissen. ‘Pawn of Chaos!’ he spat.
Wissen’s men jumped in front of him, stabbing at Gotrek and Felix as the captain stepped back. Gotrek chopped through spear shafts and arms. Two men fell. Felix blocked a spear and ducked another, still off balance by this bizarre turn of events.
‘Pawn?’ Wissen laughed. ‘I’m a knight, at the least.’ He let the breastplate fall. For such a trim man, his stomach bulged obscenely. In fact it seemed to be expanding as Felix watched. Then Wissen’s shirt split, and angular black shapes ripped through it, unfolding as they thrust forward.
Felix recoiled, his gorge rising. Wissen was a mutant! Black mantis arms grew from his chest where his nipples should have been. They were covered in coarse fur and tipped with cruel pincers. They darted for Gotrek over the shoulders of his men. Gotrek lashed out at one, but it jerked back, faster than the eye could see. The Slayer missed.
The thud of approaching boots was loud in Felix’s ears. He and Gotrek whipped around. The cultists from the chamber had reached them, mutants to the fore. Gotrek lurched to one side and gutted a giant humanoid slug as it lumbered past. It squashed Wissen’s remaining watchmen as it fell, an evil smelling, custard-like ooze pumping from its belly wound. Felix ducked the claws of a thing like a skinned ape, then chopped through its corded neck with his runesword and ended up back to back with Gotrek in the centre of a frenzied sea of men and mutants. Swords, clubs, pincers and tentacles came at them from every corner.
Wissen laughed maniacally from behind his comrades. ‘You see? You should have stayed with Makaisson! I tried to save you.’ He lashed out again from behind the others. ‘Kill them, brothers!’ He seemed to have no interest in leading from the front.
Gotrek roared with something that sounded suspiciously like joy as he lashed out all around him, doing terrible damage to all who came near. Felix, on the other hand, fought down a rising surge of panic. They were surrounded. Two against more than fifty. Gotrek might have faced such odds before and won, but Felix was wounded and weary, and hadn’t the Slayer’s strength, quickness or stamina to begin with. He was quickly becoming overwhelmed. Where in Sigmar’s name was Ulrika? Would she come at all? Would the other vampiresses?
The press of the cultists’ attacks pushed Gotrek and Felix into the big chamber. The massive, cat-furred mutant swung at Gotrek with the glowing cauldron. Gotrek dodged back and the mutant kept spinning, the weight of the cauldron pulling it around. It clobbered a handful of its comrades with it, staggering wildly. Felix ducked the huge pot as it came around again and felt his skin crawl and his mind twitter as it breezed past him. The warpstone inside it radiated Chaos like a fire radiated heat.
Gotrek darted in and buried his axe in the furred mutant’s spine. It shrieked like a scalded baby and crashed to the ground, its cauldron bouncing noisily away into the chamber, sprinkling warpstone embers as it went.
Felix cut down a thing with legs like a stork, then whipped around to parry attacks from two normal
-appearing men. He found that his left hand was bleeding, but he wasn’t sure from what. He hacked madly in all directions, though there didn’t seem to be any point. The tide of men and mutants was endless.
But then the cultists at the edges of the melee began to cry out and turn. Through clawing limbs, Felix saw Lady Hermione’s gentlemen charging from the dark tunnel, swords high. Madame Mathilda’s villains were running forward too, led by a huge black wolf bitch with a scar twisting one side of her long snout. She leapt at a massive mutant and ripped out one of its throats. The giant bearded alley basher waded into a pack of cultists, swinging his stone-headed hammer mightily. Mutants and men flew left and right, their heads and ribcages crushed to pulp.
Felix exhaled, relieved, though it was a strange feeling to be glad for the arrival of a host of thralls and a skin-changing vampiress. It was even stranger to realise that his life had become so filled with madness and horror that he could accept the fact that Lady Mathilda had changed into a wolf with little more than a shrug.
Ulrika vaulted a squat cultist, impaling him with her rapier in mid-flight, then dropped beside Felix to guard his back.
‘Cut it a bit fine, didn’t you?’ Felix said over his shoulder.
‘I apologise, Felix,’ said Ulrika. ‘The others paused to discuss, er, “tactics”.’
‘Ha,’ barked Gotrek.
‘And where are Lady Hermione and Mistress Wither?’ asked Felix dryly. ‘Is their tactic to hide?’
‘Their skills are not in the art of cut and thrust,’ said Ulrika, hacking off the head of a woman with hair like writhing vines.
Felix heard Wissen cursing from somewhere to his left. ‘Where did these come from?’ he cried. ‘This is taking too much time! Leibold, Goetz, Zigmund, break off. Finish setting the charges. We must be ready.’
Three cultists broke away and ran back towards the barrels of black powder. There was no way Felix or Gotrek or Ulrika could go after them. The madmen were four deep around them, fighting with the fearless fervour Felix had noted in them earlier. They seemed to care not at all if they lived or died, so long as the will of their master Tzeentch was done. Some threw themselves on Felix’s sword merely to weigh it down so that others might get a strike in.
Gotrek fought an enormous, naked, bloated thing that smelled like rancid cooking oil. It had the head of a kindly old grandmother perched atop a mountainous, wobbling torso. The hands at the end of its fat arms were like mittens, unable to hold a weapon. The fight should have been over before it started, but every time Gotrek swung at the thing, a gaping, shark-toothed mouth opened in its skin wherever Gotrek had aimed, and bit down on his axe, trapping it, while the heavy arms clubbed him unceasingly. It didn’t matter where Gotrek swung – at the thing’s arms, its stomach, its side – a mouth opened there and snapped at his weapon.
‘Little boys shouldn’t play with axes, dearie,’ it said, in a sweet, quavery voice as it bashed him in the head.
Gotrek swore and slashed at it again, and again a mouth caught his axe.
Beyond this fight, Felix saw the black wolf clamp down on one of Wissen’s insect arms. He slashed her horribly with the other, but then she didn’t let go. Wissen screamed and flailed at her with his sword. She paid the blows no mind.
‘Doctor Raschke!’ Wissen called, his voice tinged with panic.
‘Aye, aye, coming!’ said a harsh voice. ‘Turn about, damn ye! Turn about!’
Felix stole a glance towards the voice. A towering woman with the plump, powerful body of a farm girl was tottering slowly towards the melee on thick legs, a look of blank idiocy on her moon face. Surely it couldn’t have been her that had spoken. She looked slightly less intelligent than a turnip. Then he noticed she had some sort of basket strapped to her back.
‘Turn about, ye great lumbering cow!’ the voice said. ‘Turn about, or I’ll rend your fat for soap!’
Something thin slapped the giantess on the left shoulder and she shuffled in a circle until she was facing away from the battle. There was indeed a basket on her back, and strapped into it, like an infant in a bassinet, was a wizened old man with shrivelled limbs and an enormous bald head that seemed much too heavy for his wrinkled chicken neck. His pale blue eyes flashed with an evil intelligence, and his teeth had been filed to points. He held a horsewhip in one hand, and wore what appeared to be a fortune in gold and lapis lazuli necklaces, pendants, bracelets and rings.
‘Now, skin changer!’ he cried. ‘Feel the wrath of Tzeentch!’
The old man pointed his whip at the black wolf and began to chant in a grating sing-song. A ball of blue and gold light swirled into existence before him. Or perhaps it was a hole in the world that opened into a blue and gold inferno. Felix couldn’t tell. He looked deeper into it. It was fascinating.
A hook gashed Felix’s arm. He blinked and tore his eyes away, cursing, then hacked at the man with the hook. Gods, he hated magic.
With a shriek, the warlock pushed violently at the swirling ball with his splay-fingered hands, and it flew at the black wolf – and entered her.
The wolf leapt back, rolling and howling like she was being attacked by bees, and suddenly she was Madame Mathilda again, screaming and writhing naked on the floor. She came up snarling to her feet, voluptuous curves swaying, and glared at the sorcerer. ‘Ye’ll pay for that, witch-man,’ she snarled.
‘I have the warlock, sister,’ called Lady Hermione from the shadows of the tunnel mouth. ‘Get the others.’ She raised her hands, murmuring under her breath, and squirming shadows began to weave around her fingers.
‘Ta, Missy,’ said Mathilda. She snatched up a sword and launched herself into the fray again, naked from head to toe. Her guttersnipes and doxies charged after her, howling.
The shadows around Lady Hermione’s hands grew solid and stretched out towards the warlock. The old man lifted his voice in a counter spell and the air flexed and stiffened between them. A look of strain appeared on Lady Hermione’s face. Her shadow snakes faltered and nosed around as if they had hit a wall. She forced her words out through tightened lips.
‘Brother Wissen!’ cried a wounded cultist. ‘They are too strong! Light the powder now! We cannot risk them defeating us!’
‘No!’ shouted Wissen. ‘Not before the signal! Hold your ground! Only a few more moments!’
Why was it so important to wait for the signal, Felix wondered as he fought on. What was so important about test firing the gun? Were they also going to blow up the testing range? He didn’t understand it.
Beside Felix, Gotrek pulled his axe free from another of the blubbery grandmother-thing’s mouths. He staggered back, swiping around him to fan back more cultists.
The grandmother-thing bobbled after him. ‘Give to mommy,’ it said in its kindly old voice. ‘Be a good boy.’
‘Eat this!’ snarled Gotrek, slashing again.
Another mouth opened under the thing’s left breast, but this time, just as it bit down, Gotrek twisted the axe so that the blade was facing up. The razor-sharp metal cut through the roof of the closing mouth. Gotrek jerked back hard, and ripped the axe out through its belly flesh in an eruption of meat and gore. The thing squealed like a stuck pig.
Gotrek slashed again, and this time found meat. Felix joined him, hacking off one of its arms. Gotrek split its head, and they turned to face new opponents as the battle swirled around them.
Ulrika killed a mutant with a face like an eel. Mathilda’s hairy giant spattered the walls with a cultist’s brains, but he was breathing heavily, already exhausted from wielding his too-heavy weapon. Lady Hermione and the shrivelled warlock continued to strain back and forth, neither able to gain any advantage. Dead mutants and cultists lay everywhere, mostly in a ring around Gotrek, but the fight had not been entirely one-sided. Only half of Hermione’s gentlemen were still on their feet, and less than half of Mathilda’s gutter trash.
Felix found himself fighting a man who looked in every aspect like a counting house clerk, from his spectacles
to his buckle shoes, except for the huge, tentacled tumour that grew from his neck. The thing rested on the clerk’s shoulder, as big and lumpy as a sack of laundry, pushing his head aside at an awkward angle. He staggered under its weight and apologised meekly as the tentacles lashed out at Felix and everyone else around him.
‘Terribly sorry,’ the clerk said with each attack. ‘Can’t control it. Not my doing. Sorry.’
The tentacles sparked with violent black energy wherever they touched. One of Hermione’s men fell, twitching, as one slapped him across the face. One of Mathilda’s doxies jumped back and dropped her carving knife as another caressed her neck. Cultists killed the stricken before they could recover.
Felix hacked at a tentacle as it snaked towards him. A shock ran up his blade and for an instant his whole body stiffened. He staggered back, arm spasming uncontrollably, numb to the shoulder. Ulrika pushed forward to cover him.
‘Apologies,’ said the clerk to Felix as the tentacles reached for Ulrika. ‘I don’t care for it any more than you do.’
‘No iron!’ cried Felix as he massaged his arm and ducked away from more cultists.
Ulrika nodded and whipped her rapier out of the way, then snatched up a fallen spear instead as Felix took his sword in his clumsy left hand and stepped in to defend her flanks. He flailed awkwardly at a mutant as Ulrika swung the butt end of the spear at the clerk. The tentacles caught it. With difficulty, she wrenched it from their clutches and swept the clerk’s legs out from under him. He went down in a heap, tumour first, and she thwacked it with all her strength. It burst, spilling stinking red jelly, and the tentacles slapped at the clerk, shocking him over and over again as he twitched convulsively. Ulrika ran him through. The tentacles flopped, limp, to the floor.
There was no time to take a breath. More cultists attacked them from all sides. Gotrek fought a mutant with axes in each of its four hands. Their fight sounded like a busy foundry. Mathilda’s giant staggered as the transparent blue frog-thing clawed out his eyes from behind. The giant roared and dropped his hammer to grab for it. The frog tore his throat out. The giant toppled, blood pouring down his filthy jerkin from under his beard.