Gotrek & Felix- the Second Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer

  ‘Not much. Not much. I don’t know much of anything recently. They talked about it sometimes when they thought I couldn’t hear, and it was some sort of joke with them. They had found some sort of new… patron, one who was giving them plenty of work, and who was going to give them all sorts of special rewards.’

  ‘By work, you mean…’

  ‘Muscle work. Silencing them that needed silenced. At first I thought it was the usual stuff, nobles settling grudges, merchants burning out rivals but then…’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘They started acting weird, coming and going at strange hours. They talked about blackmailing some folks. Seems they thought they had something on some of the nobles.’

  Felix looked at Mona. ‘You sure you want to hear the rest of this? There are some things that it’s not worth your life to overhear.’

  She looked at him, then looked at the purse. She understood but greed was warring with fear, and it did not take him long to work out which one would win. He tossed her a gold coin.

  ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs,’ she said.

  ‘You do that.’ She opened the door and stepped outside.

  ‘What else did they tell you?’

  ‘They didn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘What else did you overhear then?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘You ever see this new patron of theirs?’ Felix realised his speech patterns were starting to echo the girls’. ‘Did you ever see this new patron of theirs?’

  ‘Sometimes a big man would come in looking for them. A noble, I guess from his speech.’

  ‘Did you ever see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘He always wore a cloak with a cowl, kept a scarf wrapped round his face.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little unusual.’ To his surprise, she laughed.

  ‘Here? Gods, no! Plenty of folk, ’specially the nobs, don’t want folk to know they come here. They have wives, mistresses, rivals. You get that, don’t you?’

  ‘Know anything else about this man. Did they call him the Great One or something like that?’

  Suddenly whatever fit had taken her seemed to pass, and she seemed to realise what she had been saying. ‘Olaf and Sergei would kill me if they knew I was telling you this.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about them, if I were you. They won’t be troubling anybody ever again.’

  The girl’s eyes went wide. She looked as if she were about to scream. Felix put his hand over her mouth, and silenced her. She squirmed weakly as if she expected him to attack her, or carry her to the window and throw her out. Felix cursed. He had learned nothing from her he had not already guessed except that some unidentified patron had actually met them here at the Red Rose a few times.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I won’t hurt you. I just want answers to my questions and then I’ll go. Just don’t scream or do anything to attract attention, and there will be gold in this for you. Do you understand?’

  She nodded. He wondered as to the wisdom of letting her go, but could see no other option. He could hardly carry her out into the corridor with her mouth covered. Even in the Red Rose that might attract the very eyes he wished to avoid. He uncovered her mouth. She breathed a bit more easily. It did not look like she was taking a breath to scream.

  ‘Anything else about this patron? A name? A meeting place? Anything?’

  ‘I know they followed him once, to see where he came from. Said he was a slippery customer but they were good at not being seen when they wanted to be.’

  Not that good, thought Felix, remembering the previous evening. ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘The palace.’

  Wonderful, thought Felix, just what I wanted to hear. He studied the girl, hoping for some sign that she was lying. He could not see any. She seemed sincere, and a little addled from the drugs once more.

  ‘Is that all?’ he asked.

  ‘I heard them mention a name once.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Halek.’

  Felix began to wonder how much time had passed and whether Gotrek and the Slayers were about to come looking for him. That was the last thing he wanted under the circumstances. He took some gold from the pouch and tossed it to the girl.

  ‘Here, this is yours. If you see this man again, or hear anything else about him, ask for Felix Jaeger at the White Boar. There will be more gold in it for you.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ she said, and turned and buried her face in the pillow. He could hear her sobbing as he went out the door.

  ‘I’m staying here,’ said Bjorni. ‘You can go if you like.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Gotrek said.

  ‘I think… I will stay too,’ Ulli said quietly, shuffling his feet with embarrassment.

  ‘It’s up to you, youth.’

  Felix and Gotrek strode out into the street. Swiftly Felix outlined what he had learned. It seemed like even less than it had done at the time.

  ‘We’re no closer to finding this Great One behind those assassins than we were, manling.’

  ‘No. I wish I knew why they wanted us dead. Could it be some old enemy come back for revenge?’

  ‘We killed most of those.’

  ‘There’s a few left. Like that skaven grey seer, for example.’

  ‘I doubt that he could pass himself off as a noble and sneak into the palace, manling, no matter how potent his sorcery.’

  ‘He’s used human agents in the past.’

  ‘Aye, true enough.’

  ‘Or it may be connected with the Chaos horde out there.’

  ‘Seems more likely to me,’ said the Slayer, pausing for a moment to listen to the night.

  ‘You hear something?’

  ‘Footsteps, trying to be stealthy. Might be footpads.’ The Slayer raised his axe. Felix almost felt sorry for any would-be robbers that came on them out of the darkness. Almost. Then he remembered the assassins and their poisoned knives. He was suddenly glad of the chainmail shirt he was wearing. He held his breath for a moment, willing himself to silence. Two young men emerged from the mist, their faces masked, clubs held in their hands. They took one look at the Slayer, shrieked with fear, and turned and fled into the night. Gotrek shrugged and didn’t bother to pursue them. Felix felt that was wise.

  ‘If the girl was telling the truth then there’s a traitor in the palace, manling,’ said Gotrek conversationally.

  ‘What can we do about it? March up to the duke and tell him there may be a Chaos cultist in his employ. We’re sorry we don’t know who, he’ll just have to take our word for it. Or maybe we should start asking the staff about this Halek. It’s probably a false name anyway.’

  The Slayer shrugged and turned to stalk along the street. The Chaos moon gleamed balefully in the sky. Felix could have sworn that the gargoyles on the buildings had started to move. A trick of the light he told himself, hurrying after the Slayer. At moments like this he wished that he was anywhere else than Praag. It was not a comfortable city to be in, even without a Chaos army outside its gates.

  Max Schreiber got up and pulled the curtains fully closed over the shuttered windows, trying to block out the chilly draught. For a moment, through the gap in the shutters, he caught sight of the white snow-covered roof of the building opposite. He did not like it. It was too early in the year for snow. Something was affecting the weather. The fact that it was happening just as the Chaos horde approached could not be a coincidence.

  He looked over at Ulrika, where she lay wrapped in a thick quilt. If this cold snap continued she would need more than one or a chill might undo all of Max’s work. Right now though, she slept the healthy sleep of someone recovering from an illness. The crisis was past, and really he was no longer needed here. He stood there anyway, looking at her sleeping form, and offered up a prayer of gratitude to Shallya for sparing her life. Even if she would never be his, he was glad she had survived. He walked over, stroked her head, and tiptoed quietly to the door.
>
  He was as drained of energy as if he had walked for days without food, and he knew he needed to replenish his strength both physical and magical. He headed downstairs into the tavern. Men looked at him with new respect, wonder and even fear. Somehow word had got out that he had saved Ulrika from the plague. No one wanted to offend him now. After all, he might be able to save them if they went down with the disease.

  Max knew that sooner or later this was going to cause problems. Much as he would have liked to, he simply did not have the strength to save so many people. Saving Ulrika had almost killed him, and he doubted there was anybody in the city he cared enough about to make him want to risk his life again. Of course, that was easy to think now, sitting here among these rough hard-faced men, but what if tomorrow some teary-eyed mother came to him and asked him to save her child? That was a plea he would find much harder to resist. Well, he would worry about that when it happened. There was no sense in borrowing trouble from tomorrow.

  He ordered food from the serving wench, and some tea, and then returned to the room. He did not feel like facing the stares of the men in the common room, and he did not feel at all like drinking wine. He wanted a clear head and nothing to distort his powers. He wondered where Felix and the Slayer were. Out hunting for the man who sent those hired killers last night, most likely. Max wondered if there was anything he could do to help. Not likely at the moment. He needed to husband every iota of his strength until he recovered. Even then it was unlikely he could do much if the man they sought was a cultist. Such people were usually well protected against scrying spells. They needed to be.

  Max wondered if assassins would come looking for him and Ulrika or whether it was just Felix and Gotrek they were after. Given the power of the Slayer’s axe, there might be some reason for getting rid of him, but what reason could there be for seeking out anybody else? Why even bother trying to understand the reasoning of the worshippers of Chaos, Max thought. Too much effort in that direction might end up warping your own mind. It had happened before, he knew. Those who tried to understand the ways of Chaos were often seduced by them. It was a thing he had been often warned against.

  Even as these thoughts churned through his mind, he felt a sudden vast change in the winds of magic. If it had been the distant rumble of a thunderstorm it could not have been more obvious. He glanced out of the window and invoked his mage sight. At once, he saw his suspicions were correct. Great turbulent currents were starting to affect the massive cloud of dark magic above the Chaos army. Huge vortexes of magical energy swirled downwards into it, funnelling all that power somewhere. What was going on, he wondered? Nothing good, that was for certain.

  There was a knock at the door. Max moved cautiously and checked the bar. It was still in place. ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you Herr Schreiber?’ The voice was calm, and held a great deal of authority.

  Max wondered who it was. Was this some sort of trap? He used some of his carefully husbanded power and risked a scrying spell. A vision of the man beyond the door flickered into his mind. He was a tall soldierly figure in a tabard that bore the winged lion of Praag. The chevrons that marked him as a sergeant-at-arms were on his sleeves. Two other soldiers waited with him. Max wondered whether the duke had sent these men. It was likely enough. Still, it would not be the first time Chaos cultists had impersonated those in authority. He wanted to take no risks with Ulrika in her weakened state.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I bear a summons from the duke.’ That at least appeared to be true. The man held a rolled-up piece of parchment in his hands. Still, how much did parchment cost, Max asked himself. He prepared a potent offensive spell in his mind, drawing the winds of magic to himself. If these men were assassins they would not find him unready.

  He opened the door a crack. No knife was pushed through. The sergeant-at-arms looked at him oddly, as if his behaviour were somehow a little cracked. If the man were what he seemed, Max supposed it would seem that way to him.

  ‘I have a patient in here who may still carry the plague. It would be best if you passed me the message and waited downstairs,’ Max said. This was the moment of truth. If these men were hired killers now was the moment when they would attack.

  He saw the sergeant’s face blanch, and the scroll was swiftly thrust through the crack in the door. ‘Right you are, sir,’ said the sergeant.

  Max inspected the paper. It certainly looked authentic enough, and it bore a winged lion seal. He sensed no magical energies laid on it, so, as far as he could tell, it was not some sort of magical trap. Working on the theory that you could never be too careful he probed it with his mage senses, and came up with nothing. He shrugged, closed the door and cracked the seal.

  Swiftly, he read the message within. It was a simple request for his presence at the palace. It was addressed to Herr Max Schreiber of the Imperial College of Magicians. It appeared that the ruling house of Kislev wished to hire his services. Most likely they wanted an extra healer on hand in case of plague, Max thought cynically.

  He looked around at Ulrika. He did not want to leave her now with no one to protect her, but Praag was a city at war, under martial law; refusing a request by the ruler might be construed as treason. He studied the message once more. It did not say when he had to report to the palace, and the hour was certainly late. He considered this for a moment, looked over at Ulrika’s sleeping form, and decided that he would risk offending the duke. There would be time enough to go see him in the morning. He scribbled out a hasty reply, and went downstairs to hand it to the sergeant.

  Grey Seer Thanquol looked around at the elders of Clan Moulder. He was enjoying himself now. Since the defeat of Lurk’s forces, they looked at him with new respect tempered by a healthy amount of fear. That was good.

  In some ways this council chamber was a blasphemous echo of the Chamber of the Thirteen back in Skavenblight. The elders sat on a great rotunda roughly the shape of a horseshoe. There were thirteen of them, which was unsurprising, since that was one of the holy numbers of skaven cosmology. There were representatives of each of the Moulder clan-guilds, a group so interbred that it made even Thanquol’s mighty mind swim trying to understand the complexity of their relationships. He guessed that, as in Skavenblight, status was reflected by their representative’s position on the horseshoe: the closer to the centre and the further from the wings, the more powerful the skaven. The clan’s High Packmaster sat in the centre, at the fulcrum. Grey Seer Thanquol stood before him, in the space enclosed by the horseshoe, confronting thirteen pairs of fitfully gleaming red eyes. His paws rested on the rune of Clan Moulder tiled on the floor. He was not intimidated by his position. Not in the slightest. The faint tightening in his musk glands merely indicated excitement.

  ‘Your former minion has vanished, Grey Seer Thanquol,’ squeaked the High Packmaster. Thanquol saw notes being passed from paw to paw around the table edge. This was never a good sign.

  ‘The traitor Lurk has eluded Clan Moulder once more,’ sneered Thanquol, more to have something to say than for any other reason. ‘Why does this not surprise me?’

  ‘We had hoped that you would use your powers to locate him. Clan Moulder has a score to settle with that deviant creature.’

  ‘I have done my best,’ chittered Thanquol, ‘but he appears to have left the city.’

  ‘What has that got to do with it, grey seer?’

  Thanquol watched the note slowly make its way from the outer left hand edge of the horseshoe to the centre. What information did it contain, he wondered, even as he spoke.

  ‘There are great disturbances in the flow of mystical energies,’ Thanquol said in his best oracular manner. This was true. In the past few days the winds of magic had blown stronger than ever before. Scrying through such a mage storm was like trying to see in a blizzard. Finding Lurk was all but impossible under the circumstances.

  ‘So? So?’

  ‘These disturbances interfere with my vision, and disrupt all forms
of scrying.’

  ‘Have you given thought to what causes these disturbances? Could it be the powers behind the menace of Lurk?’

  That was a disturbing thought, and all too likely. Not that Thanquol suspected the powers of Chaos would aid a creature as lowly as Lurk. It was more likely that this was some mystical phenomenon occurring simultaneously with the march of the Chaos horde. There was perhaps the vanishingly small possibility that the spellcasters of the horde were drawing energy from the Wastes to aid their magic. Even as the thought crossed Thanquol’s mind, he felt his musk glands tighten almost to bursting point. Just the chance that it might be so was terrifying. It spoke of a power almost beyond belief.

  Of course, thought Thanquol, if there was a way to tap into that mystical energy before it reached the Chaos horde, the sorcerer who managed it would be powerful beyond belief.

  Suddenly Thanquol knew it was imperative that he get out of Hell Pit and begin investigating that possibility. All he needed now was an excuse. At that point the note reached the High Packmaster and he opened it, read it and frowned.

  ‘We have received word from Skavenblight. You are to return there at once, and explain your actions to the Council of Thirteen, Grey Seer Thanquol. We will, of course, provide an escort to see you through these troubled lands.’

  Normally the prospect of such a trip would have made Thanquol queasy with justifiable skaven caution. Now he almost looked forward to it.

  ‘I will depart at once!’ Thanquol declared.

  He could tell the Moulders were puzzled, and not a little frightened, by his enthusiasm.

  Felix wondered what was going on. His skin crawled. The hairs on the back of his neck had risen. There seemed to be a peculiar glow in the night sky, a shimmering over the army outside the city. He had sensed such things just before dark magic had been unleashed. It was not a feeling he enjoyed. Perhaps it had something to do with the early snowfall.

  The White Boar was just ahead of them, lights blazing cheerily through the constant drift of snowflakes. Even as he watched three men in the uniforms of the ducal guard emerged. He fought down an urge to duck into an alley. Surely they had not come to investigate the deaths of Olaf and Sergei? Surely they could not be looking for him? Gotrek showed no sign of any concern whatsoever. He strode forward, ignoring the guardsmen as if they were not there.