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

by Warhammer

  Felix’s heart sank. The guns were feeding it, making it stronger. They were doomed.

  Lichtmann came on, stabbing again. It was all Felix could do to lift his sword to block his attack. He couldn’t think. His mind was too full of voices. He wanted to drop his sword and tear at his scalp to make the whispers stop.

  To his left Felix saw Gotrek go down hard, a bloody gash across his massive chest. The horror edged through the cannons towards him. Felix knew he should do something, but he couldn’t think what. He couldn’t think at all.

  Lichtmann slashed again with his dagger. Felix’s arms wouldn’t answer him. He could do nothing but stumble helplessly away through the cannon. He tripped over something and landed beside Gotrek. The sorcerer continued after him. Panic rose in Felix’s throat. The whispers told him there was no hope, that he should just give up, that he should offer his throat to Lichtmann’s shimmering blade.

  Gotrek rose to his hands and knees beside Felix, shaking his head. He glared at Lichtmann and the horror, now only paces away, then grabbed Felix’s arm. ‘Come on, manling. Get up.’

  Felix tried to get his limbs to move. They wouldn’t. The whispers were in the way.

  ‘Wake up, manling!’

  Gotrek slapped him, hard. The crack was deafening. Pain exploded through Felix’s jaw, knocking the voices from his brain.

  The daemon loomed above them, raising the hellish cannons. Gotrek yanked Felix aside as they smashed down. They missed Felix’s legs by inches and ripped gaping holes in the metal deck. Felix scrambled up, his muscles finally responding, and followed Gotrek, who was charging straight for Lichtmann. The horror crashed after them.

  ‘Thank… thank you,’ he said through aching teeth.

  Gotrek grunted.

  The sorcerer backed away from them, then turned and ran as Gotrek lashed out at him with his axe.

  To Felix’s surprise, Gotrek didn’t pursue him, but continued on towards the stairs to the landing.

  ‘Where… where are we going?’ asked Felix.

  Gotrek started up the stairs. Felix swallowed. They were leaving the cover of the guns. Lichtmann would be able to blast them!

  And he did.

  Gotrek shoved Felix forward onto the landing and dived after him as a ball of fire exploded above the stairs. A cannonball whistled overhead, then another. They blasted huge holes in the bulkhead.

  Felix looked around. Two shots? The horror was firing with its arms as well as its head! It was bringing the other two cannon to bear.

  Gotrek hauled Felix up and pushed him through the hangar door ahead of him. Felix stumbled over the burning bodies of the students that lay across the threshold, and sprawled face first on the hangar deck as Gotrek dived past him. A mortar round smashed a hole in the door frame behind them.

  ‘After them, brothers!’ came Lichtmann’s voice. The airship shook as the horror stomped towards the landing.

  ‘What are we doing?’ asked Felix, getting up. He looked around the hangar. The wreckage of the gyrocopters was still burning. The remaining students were cowering in the far corner. Malakai lay prostrate on the floor at their feet. ‘Are we running away?’

  Gotrek snarled derisively as he smashed open a locked cabinet and pulled out two canisters of black water. ‘We’re taking the daemon away from those iron-befouling dead warlocks.’ He handed Felix a lantern. ‘Outside.’

  ‘Outside?’ But they were in the middle of the sky.

  Felix glanced back through the door into the cargo hold. The horror was pulling itself onto the landing. The metal groaned under its weight.

  ‘Up the ladder, manling.’ Gotrek pushed Felix towards the rungs that were set in the wall beside the door, then picked up a piece of the burning gyrocopter’s wooden frame.

  As Felix started climbing the rungs, Gotrek split one of the canisters of black water with his axe, then heaved it out into the cargo hold. It bounced off a cannon, splashing black water everywhere. Gotrek pitched the burning wood after it, then clambered up the ladder after Felix.

  There was a huge ear-popping whump from the cargo hold as the black water caught fire, followed by a blast of heat and orange light. Then a shriek from Lichtmann.

  ‘No!’ he cried. ‘The guns!’

  ‘That’s only the beginning, sorcerer!’ shouted Gotrek, climbing. ‘A Slayer is not afraid to die. I’m setting fire to the balloon and killing us all!’

  Felix stopped, heart pounding. ‘You… you’re what?’

  ‘Keep moving, manling!’

  The horror pushed two cannon arms through the door and started oozing in after them. Felix yelped and scrambled up the ladder, terror in his guts but his mind awhirl. Was Gotrek serious? Was he really going to blow up the airship? It would certainly finish off Lichtmann and foil his plans, but it would kill not just Gotrek and Felix, but Malakai and all his surviving students as well.

  Felix clawed up through the circular hatch into the upper deck’s central gangway, then took the canister of black water from Gotrek as he heaved himself up through the hole.

  The airship shook violently as one of the horror’s arms smashed the ladder just inches below Gotrek’s boots.

  Gotrek lurched up and grabbed the canister. ‘Run, manling. The ladder to the roof!’

  They ran, though Felix wondered if there was any reason. Could the huge daemon even fit through the hole to chase them?

  With a noise like a steam tank crash, one of the cannon arms ripped up through the metal deck, tearing it as if it was paper. The impact knocked Felix off his feet. Gotrek picked him up and shoved him ahead. He looked back. A second smash widened the hole. Two glowing, muck-covered cannons snaked up through it and the horror pulled itself up, deforming like hot wax to fit into the cramped confines of the gangway. Lichtmann appeared behind it.

  ‘Your fire is out, Slayer,’ laughed the sorcerer. ‘I foiled your little sabotage.’

  The horror thundered towards them on four iron legs.

  Felix sprinted on, sweating with terror. The ladder to the roof was just ahead to the right. He reached for it and glanced back again.

  The mortar burst through the churning skin of the daemon’s chest, the wide barrel aiming ahead. Green flame flared in its breach.

  ‘Look out!’ Felix threw himself against the right bulkhead. Gotrek did the same.

  The mortar fired, battering Felix’s ears with its roar. The ball ripped past, inches away, as the gangway disappeared in smoke and flame. Somewhere glass shattered and a man shouted.

  Felix groped in the smoke for the ladder. He found it and hauled himself up, blinded and numb, the lantern he held banging off every rung. Gotrek clumped up behind him. The bulkheads vibrated with the thudding steps of the approaching horror.

  ‘Faster, manling!’

  Felix’s head banged into the heavy hatch above him. He fumbled for the lever as something slammed into the ladder below. He shouldered the hatch back. Sunlight and cold wind slapped him in the face. He scrambled out onto the surface, then turned to take the canister from Gotrek again.

  The Slayer squeezed through the hatch and rolled to one side, coming up on his feet with his axe at the ready.

  Felix set the canister and the lantern down in a metal box that looked like it was meant to hold grenades, then drew his sword. He faced the hatch with Gotrek. Nothing happened. There was silence from below. Had the horror got stuck in the tight gangway?

  Felix glanced around. The surface of the gondola was flat, with a low rail at the edges where the metal curved down on all sides. A score of taut metal cables stretched from sturdy rings in the roof up to the enormous expanse of the balloon, twenty feet above their heads. There was a ladder next to the hatch that rose, encased in a circular safety cage, up to a hatch in the belly of the balloon. All around them was blue sky and sunset clouds. Felix felt almost as exposed and precarious here as he had on the gyrocopter. The last time he had stood on this deck, he had faced the dragon Skjalandir. Memories of that night did not ease his mi
nd. This was not the first place he would have picked for a fight to the death.

  ‘Light the lantern, manling,’ said Gotrek. He didn’t take his eyes from the hatch.

  Felix swallowed. He got out his tinder and flint and knelt, then opened the lantern’s door. ‘But this is just a ruse, isn’t it?’ he asked as he sparked a flame.

  ‘If I kill the daemon and the sorcerer, it’s a ruse,’ said Gotrek. ‘If I find my doom first, then it’s not. You’ll have to finish it.’

  Felix lit the lantern, then looked up, following the ladder up to the balloon with his eyes. To be certain of destroying the airship, he would have to enter the envelope, pour the black water from the canister all along the catwalk that ran through the centre of all the lift-gas cells, then light it. He shivered. That would be the last thing he did in this life, for when the gas cells caught, the explosion would vaporise him.

  ‘And if I die before I have the chance?’

  ‘Then Sigmar and Ulric have mercy on their Empire,’ said Gotrek. ‘For Middenheim will fall.’

  A glowing cannon shoved up out of the hatch at the end of a thick red tentacle, swaying like an iron-headed snake.

  Gotrek lunged forward instantly and slashed with his axe, decapitating it with a single blow. Green sparks showered and gore splashed as the cannon dropped to the deck with a deafening clang. It bounced towards the side, hit the low railing and flipped over it, spinning off into space. The slithering voices in Felix’s head rose in a keening wail of rage and loss.

  ‘Ha!’ said Gotrek. ‘You won’t get that one back, daemon.’

  The beheaded tentacle flailed at the Slayer wildly. He dodged back, continuing to watch the hatch. Felix backed away, a spark of hope flaring in his heart. For once they had the horror at a disadvantage. If it had to push its cannon out through the hatch one by one, Gotrek might be able to cut them off as they came. He could destroy it without a fight.

  A second cannon-tipped arm pushed up through the hatch. Gotrek dodged around the first tentacle and hacked at it. It too clanged to the deck, flashing and sputtering. Gotrek stepped back as it bounced past him and crushed a section of the railing before tipping and sliding down the side of the gondola and away. The voices wailed again.

  The two headless tentacles shuddered and for a moment grew translucent, their corona of green energy flickering and dimming. But before Gotrek could take advantage, they grew solid again and lashed at him. He hacked at them and circled the hatch.

  Felix’s heart surged. By Sigmar, it was going to work! Only two more cannon and the mortar to sever and the horror would be so weak that Gotrek would be able to vanquish it with a mere touch of his axe.

  A third cannon tentacle shot up through the hatch. Gotrek sprang for it, ducking the attacks of the other two and lashed at it. It reared back and he missed. He lunged forward again, but all at once he was hanging upside down in the air. The first tentacle had him by the ankle.

  ‘Gotrek!’ Felix ran forward and slashed the thing with his sword as the Slayer flailed and cursed. The attack did nothing. He drew back for another swing, but the second tentacle clubbed him to the deck.

  The first raised Gotrek higher, swinging him about. It meant to throw him off the gondola! Felix struggled to rise. He was going to be too late.

  With a violent twist, Gotrek chopped backwards at the tentacle, just below his foot. It parted in a spray of gore and sparks. The Slayer flew across the deck and crashed down on the railing, then rolled over it, sliding towards oblivion.

  ‘Gotrek!’

  The Slayer made a one-handed grab and caught the railing. Felix ran to him and offered him a hand. Gotrek took it and pulled himself back onto the roof. They turned.

  In the interval, the horror had emerged fully from the hatch. It stood on four tree-trunk legs, its constantly flowing skin glistening in the crimson sunset light as moaning mouths formed and melted away all over it. Its two remaining cannon hung at its sides, the bright ends of their muzzles poking out from the muck that held them and green energy coursing back and forth between them. The other two tentacles rose from behind its back like twin cobras. Its mortar head turned towards Gotrek and Felix menacingly.

  The Slayer lowered himself into a fighting stance. He ran his thumb along the blade of his axe, drawing blood. He grinned savagely. ‘Now, daemon, you die!’

  He charged towards it, roaring a Khazalid battle cry. Felix ran after him, commending his soul to Sigmar.

  The red horror came to meet them, clubbing down at them with its iron arms and smashing great dents in the gondola’s metal skin as the tentacles snaked forward to grab at them. Gotrek met it blow for blow, bashing at the cannons and hacking through a tentacle. It grew back instantly. Felix hacked at the tentacles too, hoping to keep them away from Gotrek so that he would be able to take off another of its arms. His sword barely scarred them. It was like chopping at a tree limb.

  Suddenly he saw green fire flash at the back of the mortar.

  ‘Gotrek! Look out!’

  Gotrek looked up, then threw up his axe as the mortar belched flame and smoke. He caught the cannonball on the flat of the axe and it glanced away to skip off the deck and out into thin air. But the force of the blow was too much. It slammed the back of the axe into Gotrek’s temple and he stumbled, his legs buckling.

  The horror knocked him flat with a tentacle and the Slayer slid across the riveted plates on his back. Felix ran back to him as the horror thundered after them.

  The Slayer lurched up instantly, but his balance was shot. He shook his head to clear it and nearly fell again. A bleeding lump was growing over his patched eye. The horror swung in again, raining down crushing blows. Gotrek staggered back, blocking and ducking, but only at half strength. Felix backed with him. The horror pressed forward, pushing them back towards the nose of the gondola.

  Beyond the battle, Lichtmann climbed from the hatch, his eyes blazing with fury. ‘The cannons you just cast away contained the souls of Magister Valintin Schongauer and Magus Ermut Ziegel – greater men than you will ever be. You will pay for their loss!’

  ‘I’ll pay you in steel, warlock!’ snarled Gotrek, ducking another cannon blow. He was still unsteady on his feet.

  Lichtmann sneered. ‘Yes. You will. I will take your axe, and I will melt it down as an offering to Tzeentch.’ He raised his charred claw, intoning a spell. His hand flickered with fire.

  Felix flinched back, terrified, and almost stepped into a tentacle’s grasp. One blast from Lichtmann and the balloon might erupt! Wait! That was it. He looked to the sorcerer, pointing up. ‘Do it!’ he said. ‘Do it and finish us all!’

  Lichtmann paused in his incantation. He looked up at the balloon and frowned, then shrugged. ‘No matter. There is more than one way to shape a flame.’ He started for the fight, drawing his gold dagger with his left hand and murmuring a new incantation. He balled his black claw into a fist, and the flames that wreathed it grew brighter.

  Felix eyed him warily. A man armed only with a dagger should not have concerned him, but he had seen Lichtmann sever the heads of two men with that dagger, as easily as he might have clipped a rose from its stem. He had felt the heat that radiated from it. At least with Karaghul he had reach on him.

  But just as the thought formed in Felix’s head, the flames around Licht-mann’s fist extended from it to become a blazing sword. The warlock charged him.

  Felix stepped back and parried, almost colliding with Gotrek as the Slayer ducked a whistling swipe from the horror. The sword of flame smashed into Felix’s runesword, embers splashing from it like water. He was showered with hissing sparks. Felix staggered, the flames pricking his hands and face. The fire blade had weight! It hit like a great sword, and Lichtmann seemed inhumanly strong. The gold dagger darted for Felix’s stomach. Felix twisted away from it, and was knocked sideways by a tentacle. Felix slashed around him blindly, trying to keep Lichtmann at bay until he recovered himself.

  The sorcerer laughed and pressed his attack.
‘You are running out of roof, Herr Jaeger.’ His eyes glowed. In fact his whole aspect was changing. His reddish hair was now flame orange and growing long and wild, and his once hairless face was sprouting curling orange moustaches and a beard.

  Beside him, the horror battered at the Slayer with a whirlwind of glowing iron and red tentacles. Arcs of Chaos energy flared all around. Gotrek blocked every attack, his axe seeming to be in six places at once, but he was still not fully recovered, and could not penetrate the thing’s defence. He took a step back, and another, his muscle-knotted torso red to the waist from the deep gash across his chest.

  Felix beat aside Lichtmann’s sword of flame and lunged for his chest. The warlock turned the thrust with the gold dagger then stabbed it for Felix’s face. The vile weapon hissed like a snake. Felix jerked back from it and brought his sword up, opening Lichtmann’s forearm.

  The warlock howled in pain and slashed furiously at him. Felix parried desperately and took another step back. Something pressed against the back of his legs. He glanced back. He was at the rail. Beyond it, the green carpet of the Drakwald spun vertiginously far below him.

  Gotrek threw himself back as one of the daemon’s iron arms slammed into the deck, tearing a huge trench in the brass plates. He bounced off one of the wrist-thick cables that held the balloon. He too had nowhere to go.

  ‘Ha!’ cried Lichtmann. ‘Goodbye, brave fools!’

  He and the horror attacked as one, Lichtmann lashing out at Felix with both sword and dagger, the horror swinging its iron arms at Gotrek’s head. The Slayer dived left. Felix dived right, landing on his face. There was a spang like an enormous guitar string snapping, and the roof lurched under him.

  Felix rolled over and looked up. Lichtmann was staggering back from the edge, his arms in front of his face, one of the steel cables loose and whipping around behind him.

  The horror plunged after Gotrek, who was rolling to his feet beside the rail. Its cannon arms swung again. The Slayer ducked. Two more cables snapped.

  Lichtmann fell to his knees as the roof jolted down a foot, broken cables lashing like snakes. The horror staggered sideways, almost tipping off the edge of the slanting gondola, then caught itself with its tentacles and continued after Gotrek. The remaining cables creaked and groaned alarmingly as it moved along the edge.