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

by Warhammer

  The warlock’s incantation was reaching a crescendo. He gashed his unmutated arm with the gold dagger, then raised both arms over his head as blood welled from the cut. With a final cataclysmic syllable, he pressed his arms together. The blackened flesh touched the bleeding wound. There was a sizzling hiss, and the scent of burned flesh, and Lichtmann cried out, doubling up in pain.

  Gotrek rushed him, but the sorcerer threw himself backward over a cannon and crashed down behind it. Felix hurried forward. Lichtmann was down. This could be their chance.

  But before he could reach him, he gagged and stumbled, eyes watering. The air was suddenly full of the scent of sulphur and spoiled meat, and there was a noise in the centre of the room like stew on the boil.

  Felix looked up through his tears. Gotrek turned.

  The blooded guns were glowing brighter now – a pulsating green corona that hurt the eyes. Arcs of arcane energy leapt between them, humming and crackling, and growing stronger by the second. Felix’s skin crawled as the feeling that the guns were looking at him overcame him. Their malevolence was tangible.

  Gotrek spat, ‘Sorcery.’

  There was movement in the midst of the guns. The bodies of the men Lichtmann had sacrificed were twitching and flopping like dying fish as blood gushed from their severed necks in arcing streams. There was too much blood. Gallons of it. Human bodies did not contain so much blood. It made a spreading pool on the deck in the centre of the big guns.

  Felix stepped back involuntarily as the pool began to bubble and splash. The smell of sulphur and death got thicker, and Felix’s sense of foreboding became a cloud of oppression that threatened to crush his soul. Foul whispers tickled his brain. The splashing blood rose higher and higher, like some grisly ornamental fountain, until it was the height of a man, and still it rose. At the same time, it became more viscous, like red honey, and the streams became ropy and thick. The students on the landing screamed in terror and scrambled for the door.

  ‘Sigmar save us,’ choked Felix. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Food for my axe,’ said Gotrek. He started towards the thing, growling deep in his throat.

  Felix wanted to scream and run as the students had, but knew that he could not. His vow to Gotrek wouldn’t allow it. He clamped down on his sanity, willing the mad whispers to be silent. He looked to where Lichtmann had fallen. The warlock was gone.

  Felix turned, on guard, searching for him, and found him circling on the other side of the Chaos thing, laughing maniacally. The shapeless horror picked up the two dead crewmen with two dripping pseudopods, then drew them within the frothing, flowing column of blood that was its body. The gore flowed all around the corpses, taking on their structure – arms, legs, torsos – and thickening them with layers of red putrescence until the thing looked like a pair of hulking, headless conjoined twins, fused at the spine, made entirely of running red candle wax. Faces and mouths formed on every part of the four-armed, four-legged horror, then melted away again to appear elsewhere, and Felix heard screams of unimaginable anguish join the vile whispers in his brain. The thing had not just consumed the crewmen’s corpses, but their souls as well. He shuddered.

  ‘Malakai told me that you have been seeking your doom for many years, Slayer,’ Lichtmann called. ‘Well, now you’ve found it.’

  ‘Promises, promises,’ growled Gotrek, pushing through the ranks of cannon.

  For once, Felix had reason to share Gotrek’s scepticism. As huge and horrible as the thing was, he had seen the Slayer destroy bigger daemons before with little trouble. The daemon-powered siege towers that had threatened the walls of Praag during Arek Daemonclaw’s invasion, for instance, had literally exploded at the merest touch of the his axe. This thing looked puny by comparison.

  Gotrek charged it, slashing, and opened a great trench in its torso. The horror howled in agony as its gelatinous blood boiled away from the touch of the axe. Felix leapt back, expecting an explosion of gore and pink fire.

  It didn’t come. The wound melted together again as if it had never existed.

  Gotrek blinked, nonplussed. An arm like a sack full of wet sand backhanded him across the face. He flew back, drenched in clotted red mucus, and slammed against a gun carriage. Felix ran to him, aghast. What had happened? The daemon should have vanished in a burst of brimstone.

  ‘All right, Gotrek?’

  Gotrek lifted his head. Stinking red slime ran down his face. He growled savagely, glaring at the thing with his single eye. ‘Nothing’s right with this filth.’

  ‘You will not banish it so easily from this plane, Slayer!’ cried Lichtmann from behind the horror. ‘Not when the warpstone in the guns strengthens it. Not when the souls of the greatest sorcerers of the age will it to remain!’

  Sorcerers? Felix didn’t understand. He looked around, almost expecting a phalanx of wizards to step out from behind the cargo crates like the villains in a pantomime. ‘What sorcerers are these?’

  Gotrek wiped his blistered face with the back of his hand. ‘They’re in the guns, manling. More foul sorcery.’ He pulled himself slowly to his feet.

  ‘In the guns?’ Felix said.

  Lichtmann laughed. ‘Do you think we would sully such fine weapons with the bones of mere soldiers? Some of the most powerful sorcerers of Tzeentch have sacrificed themselves to join with these guns. It was their ashes that were added to them. It is their wills that will turn the gunners of Middenheim against their brothers and bring the Fauschlag down from within.’

  As Lichtmann spoke, the bubbling horror reached out its massive, constantly mutating arms to four of the glowing, pulsing cannon, while at the same time a ropy tentacle stretched out from its chest towards a mortar. As the dripping limbs touched the guns, their flowing crimson flesh spilled down over them, covering them, ingesting them. The arms and the tentacle strained and bulged. The chains that held down the cannons snapped, and the horror lifted them out of their carriages as if they were enormous armoured gauntlets. The long tentacle retracted, settling the mortar between the thing’s powerful shoulders. Streams of crackling green bale-fire arced between the mortar and the four cannons, forming a glowing cage of eldritch power around the horror. It roared a challenge from a dozen melting mouths as the mortar swivelled towards Gotrek and Felix like the eye of a cyclops. Felix could feel its hate like heat from a furnace.

  Gotrek ran at it. Felix gulped and followed, praying to Sigmar for strength. The daemon swung an iron arm. They slashed at it together. Felix’s sword clanged off ineffectually and his hands throbbed painfully as it touched the green energy, but the Slayer’s axe struck home. The thick slime of sulphurous red matter that covered the gun splashed away from the runed blade like mud after a stone has hit it, showing a bright wound on the cannon’s polished surface, then flowed closed again instantly.

  Two more iron arms struck down. Felix lurched back, barely in time, but Gotrek ducked them both, slashing for the horror’s torso. The axe bit deep, finding white ribs beneath crimson flesh.

  The horror howled and fell back. Behind it, Lichtmann thrust out his twisted arm and a ball of fire exploded around Gotrek. The Slayer staggered in the midst of the flames, and a third cannon grazed the top of his head, knocking him flat. He rolled away, smoking, as two more arms slammed down, smashing deep creases in the metal deck. He scrambled back out of range, putting the horror’s massive bulk between him and Lichtmann.

  ‘Kill the warlock, manling,’ he said out of the side of his mouth. ‘The daemon is mine.’ A purple bruise was spreading across his scalp to the left of his crest.

  ‘Aye,’ said Felix, though he was less than enthusiastic about facing Lichtmann one on one. He looked around, hoping the others might be able to help, that Malakai had perhaps recovered. He had not. Petr and the other students were carrying the engineer’s body through the door into the hangar. A thrill of fear went through Felix. Could Makaisson be dead?

  Gotrek charged the horror again. Felix summoned his courage and sprinted at Lichtmann, hop
ing to run him down before he could complete another spell. No such luck. The warlock’s charred arm blazed, and a blossom of flame shot at Felix.

  Felix yelped and dived aside, crashing down behind a stack of crates and covering his face as the fire billowed above him. The cloud of fire evaporated. He raised his head. All around him the crates were burning. He rose to a crouch, sword at the ready, and looked through the flames. How was he supposed to kill Lichtmann if he couldn’t reach him?

  On the other side of the crates, Gotrek once again dodged through the horror’s slime-covered iron arms and slashed at it, but this time he didn’t aim at the limbs or its chest. This time he chopped at the arm just above one of the cannons. The axe hacked through the muck as if it was water, and the cannon dropped to the deck with a clang, flashing and sparking.

  The daemon howled in agony, and for the merest instant its crimson flesh became translucent and insubstantial and all the other cannon it carried drooped, as if they had become too heavy for it. The green nimbus around them flickered and hissed. Gotrek pressed his attack, his eye gleaming feverishly.

  Lichtmann screeched, horrified, and began carving symbols in the air.

  Felix charged him, sword raised. Sigmar’s blood! They were going to do it.

  Lichtmann saw him coming. He made a circle with his black hand and suddenly a roaring ring of flame sprang up around him. Felix skidded to a stop, throwing up his hands as a wave of heat rushed over him.

  Gotrek hacked off one of the horror’s legs, then another. Its flesh became nearly transparent. It toppled, cannon dropping. Gotrek tried to spring clear, but one of the falling guns caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder, knocking him sprawling. Another cannon arm smashed through a crate. Cannonballs spilled across the deck. The horror landed on top of the wreckage, all its form lost.

  Felix lunged at Lichtmann with his sword, trying to stab him through the wall of fire. He jerked back as the flames seared his arm. Lichtmann ignored him, his eyes on Gotrek. He began another incantation. Felix cursed and looked around for something to throw through the flames. There! One of the dead crewmen’s hatchets lay on the deck not ten paces away. He ran towards it.

  Gotrek pushed himself up, his shoulder torn and bloody. On the deck in front of him, bathed in the pulsing energy of the possessed guns, the horror was reassembling itself, its legs reconnecting with its torso and its arms once again absorbing the dropped cannon. The cannonballs it had fallen upon were disappearing into its flesh as well.

  Gotrek stood and limped forward, hurrying to attack the thing before it completely recovered.

  Felix picked up the hatchet as Lichtmann pointed his black claw at Gotrek, the embered cracks glowing.

  ‘Gotrek! ’Ware!’

  Gotrek looked up.

  Felix hurled the hatchet at Lichtmann through the curtain of fire. It was a clumsy throw. The flat of the axe hit the warlock in the back. He stumbled, but still loosed the fireball.

  The Slayer dived aside, rolling behind a mortar. The flames exploded above him.

  Lichtmann turned on Felix, flames playing around his right hand. ‘It’s a pity we do not fight on the same side,’ he said, starting forward, his circle of flames moving with him. ‘Your bravery and resourcefulness are unquestionable.’

  Felix backed away, dodging behind another stack of crates. ‘It’s a pity you fight on the side of ruin,’ he called. He looked towards the Slayer, trying to see if he had survived the blast.

  ‘What choice did I have?’ Lichtmann asked, following. ‘I would be a loyal son of the Empire yet, had my hand not begun to change. I did nothing to make it occur. I read no proscribed books. I learned no profane rituals. I followed my teachers’ instructions to the letter, and still I changed.’ An edge of anger crept into his voice.

  Felix ran behind a pile of barrels.

  Across the room, Gotrek staggered to his feet, beard and eyebrows smouldering.

  The horror rose before him, once again solid and complete, its pulsing corona of balefire glowing brightly. It lumbered towards him, the cannonballs it had absorbed boiling and subsiding under its skin like black bubbles. It was as if Gotrek’s axe had never touched it. The Slayer growled and rushed to meet it, undaunted. Steel rang on steel. Felix groaned as he watched. They were back where they started, only worse for wear.

  Lichtmann stepped around the barrels, his ring of flames setting them on fire. ‘Could I go to my professors and tell them my plight?’ he continued conversationally, as Felix ran and dodged before him. ‘Could I ask for mercy at the Temple of Sigmar? No. The only mercy the Empire gives its twisted children is the axe. What could I do? I wanted to live. I did not want my great mind to go to waste merely because one of my limbs had betrayed me.’

  Felix squeezed in between two rows of crates as the sound of Gotrek’s battle rang in his ears. This was madness. There was nowhere to go. The hold was too small.

  Lichtmann circled the rows, looking for him. ‘So when Archaon began his march south, I saw that, though I loathed him and his uncultured barbarian followers, his triumph was my only hope for survival.’

  A loud clang made both Felix and Lichtmann turn. Gotrek was flying backwards through the air. He crashed down, shoulders first, on the barrel of a cannon, then slid to the floor, dazed.

  As the horror slogged after him, the mortar that served it as a head sank into the roiling red protoplasm of its chest, like a bucket disappearing into a swamp.

  Felix frowned. He didn’t understand what it was doing.

  Gotrek struggled to his feet and backed away through the guns while he recovered himself.

  The mortar pushed up out of the horror’s neck and swivelled towards Gotrek, strands of crimson slime clinging to it.

  Felix still didn’t understand. Then green fire flickered in the mortar’s breach hole, and all became horrifyingly clear.

  Gotrek saw the flash too, and dived away just as the mortar fired in a billowing burst of smoke and noise. The cannonball smashed through the right wheel of a cannon and punched a ragged hole in the deck right where the Slayer had been. Sunlight shone up through it.

  ‘No!’ shouted Lichtmann.

  Felix could barely hear him over the ringing in his ears.

  ‘Do not damage your brothers,’ Lichtmann cried to the horror. ‘They must be whole or they will not be placed on the walls of Middenheim.’ He looked around the hold at all the fires he had started with his magic. ‘In fact, we have caused too much damage already.’ He stretched out his blackened claw, and the fires snuffed out one after the other.

  Of course, thought Felix. Lichtmann has to protect the cannons or his plan won’t succeed. And that made them perfect cover. Felix sprinted for the cluster of guns and ducked down behind one. Neither the warlock or the horror would dare to fire at him if he stayed among them.

  Gotrek seemed to realise this too. He was back on his feet, beckoning to the daemon with a meaty hand. ‘Come on, you overgrown nightmare. Come and face me steel to steel.’

  The horror obliged him and waded into the maze of cannon, howling its fury from a multitude of mouths. The dwarf and the daemon clashed together deafeningly.

  Felix turned and saw Lichtmann striding towards him, his flame-shaped dagger in his human hand. Felix readied his sword. This might be a fight he could win.

  ‘Die, foul sorcerer!’ shouted a voice from behind him.

  Felix looked back. Petr and a few other students had returned to the landing, long guns and pistols levelled at Lichtmann. They fired.

  Lichtmann threw up a warding hand and the bullets ricochetted off the air in front of him. Felix ducked. One went through his shirt sleeve. Several thwacked into the torso of the horror, to no effect. Others shot off at wild angles, bouncing all over the hold.

  ‘Don’t fire, curse you!’ shouted Felix. ‘You’ll kill us all!’

  Lichtmann laughed. ‘Two can play at that game, fools.’

  He sang out a string of profane words and raised his twisted arm. Fire
flared from its embered cracks. The horror turned its mortar-head as its arms continued to batter at Gotrek.

  ‘No!’ shouted Felix. He ran at the warlock, sword raised.

  The students saw what was coming. They made a mad dash for the door, fighting each other to get through it. Petr slipped and fell, then struggled to his feet again.

  Almost as one, Lichtmann and the daemon loosed their attacks. A mortar ball punched through Petr’s body, bursting him. A mess of limbs and viscera showered down on the guns below the landing, blood splashing everywhere. The students caught in the door were enveloped in Lichtmann’s fire. The lucky ones screamed and ran into the hangar, beating at their flaming clothes. The others collapsed where they were, writhing and burning like torches.

  Felix slashed down at Lichtmann, enraged at the death of earnest, clumsy Petr. The warlock sideslipped and stabbed backward with his dagger. Felix squirmed aside, barely avoiding its point. A horrible heat radiated from the shimmering blade.

  Lichtmann lunged again, lightning quick. Felix swiped with his blade and jumped away, still off balance. He backed into a cannon and put a hand on it to steady himself. The iron tingled to the touch. He glanced back at it. Petr’s blood was sinking into it and, just as had happened with the others, it was beginning to glow and crackle with poisonous green energy, as were the rest of the bloodied guns.

  Lichtmann smiled. ‘Yes, Herr Jaeger. More of my brothers wake. And I will use your blood to wake the rest.’

  Felix backed away, flinching as the whispers returned, more strongly than ever, worming their way into his mind. He could feel the rage of the dead warlocks, their lust for his destruction. For the destruction of all his kind. They probed his mind with tendrils of corruption, they ripped at it with thoughts like claws.

  Pulsing streams of balefire leapt from cannon to cannon as the spirits within them woke, forming a crackling, criss-crossing lattice of sorcerous energy that made the whole room thrum. The energy arced to the daemon’s cannons, and they flared and fizzed with power. The daemon roared and raised its arms. It seemed to grow larger as Felix watched.