Gotrek & Felix- the First Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer

  BEASTS OF MOULDER

  ‘The plague had come to Nuln. Fear stalked the streets. Not even the corrupt authorities could keep a lid on all the rumours that flew back and forth. On every street corner one began to hear tales of mutants and rat-men and huge wild-eyed rats which brought death and disease to all they encountered. I can now reveal some of the sinister truths behind those rumours…’

  — From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol. III,

  by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)

  ‘You’re moving in high society these days, Felix,’ Heinz the landlord said, giving Felix Jaeger an uneasy grin.

  ‘What do you mean?’ the younger man asked.

  ‘This came for you when you were out.’ He handed Felix a sealed letter. ‘Twas delivered by a footman in the tabard of Her Highness, the Countess Emmanuelle no less. He had a couple of the city guard to keep him company too.’

  A sudden sick feeling grabbed Felix in the pit of his stomach. His eyes flickered towards the door, making sure he had a clear way out. It looked like his past had caught up with him at last. Quickly he reviewed all the things the authorities might want him for.

  Well, there was a standing bounty on his and Gotrek’s heads posted by the authorities in Altdorf for their involvement in the Window Tax riots. There was the fact that he had murdered the Countess’s chief of secret police, Fritz von Halstadt. Not to mention the fact that they had been involved in burning her new College of Engineering to the ground.

  How had they found him? Had they been recognised by one of the hundreds of informers who swarmed through the city? Or was it something else entirely? Where was Gotrek? Perhaps if they moved quickly enough they could still escape the jaws of the trap.

  ‘Aren’t you going to read it then?’ Heinz asked, naked curiosity showing in his eyes. Felix shook his head, his reverie broken. He realised that his heart was pounding and his palms were sweating. Noting the way Heinz was looking at him, he realised that he must look guilty as sin. He forced a sickly grin onto his face.

  ‘Read what?’

  ‘The bloody letter, idiot. You must be able to tell we’re all dying of curiosity here.’

  Felix glanced around, and saw that Elissa, Heinz, and the rest of the staff were all staring at him quite openly, keen to know what business the ruler of their great city-state might have with him.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Felix said, forcing himself to remain calm, to make his hands stop shaking. He walked over to his customary chair by the fire and sat down. The horde of curious onlookers followed him over and scrutinised his face intently. Felix glared at them meaningfully until they all backed off, then gave his consideration to the letter.

  It was inscribed on the very finest vellum, and his name was written in good quality ink. There were no blots or smudges and whoever the scribe was possessed a fine hand indeed. The wax seal had not been broken and it showed the crest of the Elector Countess.

  A measure of calm returned to Felix. You did not write letters to men you were going to arrest. If you were a stickler for formalities, you read them the warrant and then clapped them in irons. If you were the Elector Countess Emmanuelle, your thugs bashed them over the head with a club and they woke up in chains in the Iron Tower. Perhaps, he told himself, things were not going to be so bad after all. Still, he doubted this. In his experience, in this life whatever could go bad did go bad.

  With nervous fingers he broke the seal and studied the message within. It was written in the same beautiful and courtly hand as the address, and was as simple as it was enigmatic:

  Herr Jaeger,

  You are commanded to present yourself at the palace of Her Serene Highness, the Countess Emmanuelle, at the evening bell on this day.

  Yours in faith,

  Hieronymous Ostwald, Secretary to Her Serene Highness

  How very curious, thought Felix, turning the letter over and over in his hands, as if by doing so he would find some clue as to why he was being summoned. There was none. He was left to wonder what the ruler of one of the greatest fiefdoms of the Empire might want with a penniless mercenary wanderer, and no answers were forthcoming. He realised that everybody was still staring at him. He stood up and smiled.

  ‘It’s all right. I’ve just been invited to visit the countess,’ he said eventually.

  Elissa still looked impressed and a little shocked, as if she could not quite believe there wasn’t some mistake.

  ‘It’s a great honour,’ she told him as they sat together by the fire.

  ‘I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s probably for my brother, Otto, and was sent here by mistake.’ He reached out and took her hand. She pulled it away quickly. She had been doing that a lot recently.

  ‘You will go, won’t you?’ she said, and smiled.

  ‘Of course. I cannot refuse a command from the local ruler.’

  ‘Then what will you wear?’ He was going to say ‘my own clothes, of course’, but immediately saw her point. His tunic was stained and soiled in a hundred places from all the brawling and fights he had been in. His cloak was ragged and ripped at the hems where strips had been torn from it to make bandages. His boots were holed and cracked. His britches were patched and filthy. He looked more like a beggar than a warrior. He doubted that he would be able to get past the front gate of the palace looking like he did. They were more likely to throw him a bone and send him on his way with kicks.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of something.’

  ‘Best do it quickly then. You’ve only got eight hours till the evening bell.’

  Felix looked across the desk at his brother. Newly bathed and with his tattered clothes hastily washed and dried in front of the fire, he felt self-conscious. His hands toyed idly with the silvered pomander which dangled from his neck. He wished he’d never come to the warehouse where Otto’s office was located.

  Otto got up from behind his heavy oaken desk and lumbered over to the window. He put his hands behind his back. Felix noticed that his right hand was clutching his left wrist. It was an old habit of Otto’s. He had always done that when called upon to answer difficult questions by their tutors.

  ‘Why do I only see you when you want something, Felix?’ he asked eventually.

  Felix felt a surge of guilt. Otto had a point. The only times he had been near his brother recently was when he had needed a favour. Like he did now. He considered the question. It wasn’t that he disliked Otto. It was just that they had nothing much in common anymore. And perhaps, Felix feared that he would ask him to join the business again, and he would have to refuse again.

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ he said.

  ‘Doing what?’

  Crawling through graveyards, burning scholarly institutions to the ground, fighting monsters, killing things, Felix thought, wondering how much, if any, of this he would ever be able to tell his brother. Fortunately Otto did not give him a chance to reply, as he had some suggestions of his own.

  ‘Brawling, I suppose. Hanging about with tavern wenches and rakes. Frittering away that expensive education father paid for. When you should be here, helping run the business, following in the family tradition, helping to make…’

  Felix could not tell whether Otto was angry or simply hurt. He fought to keep his own feelings under control. He stretched his legs out, pushing the chair back until it rested on its two rear legs. A huge portrait of his father glared down at him from behind Otto’s desk. Even from up there, the old man managed to look somehow disapproving.

  ‘Do you know the Countess Emmanuelle?’ The question interrupted the flow of Otto’s ranting, as Felix had intended it to. His brother stopped, turned around and looked sharply at his younger brother.

  ‘I met her on the last high feast day of Verena, when I was presented at court. She seemed a spirited and somewhat flighty young woman.’

  Otto paused and turned away from the window. He slumped back into his comfortable chair again and opened a huge ledger. He had marked his place with a qu
ill pen. It was a gesture so reminiscent of his father that Felix smiled. For a moment Otto’s brow furrowed in concentration. He dipped the pen in the inkwell and inscribed something in the ledger. Without looking at Felix, he said: ‘I’ve heard some rumours about her.’

  Felix leaned forward until he almost touched Otto’s neatly arranged desk. The front legs of his chair clunked back onto the stone floor. ‘Rumours?’

  Otto cleared his throat and smiled in embarrassment. ‘She’s supposed to be somewhat wild. More than somewhat, actually. It’s not uncommon at Emmanuelle’s court. They are all, shall we say, a little less than moral.’

  ‘Wild?’ Felix enquired. His interest was piqued. ‘In what way?’

  ‘She’s said to be the mistress of half the young nobles of the Empire. Has a particular fondness for rakes and duellists. There have been a number of scandals, apparently. Only rumours, of course, and I don’t pay any attention to gossip,’ he added hastily, like a man who fears that what he is saying might suddenly be overheard. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Felix placed the letter on top of the ledger which Otto had been studying. His brother picked it up and turned it over in his hands. He studied the broken seal then slid the parchment from out of the envelope and read it. Otto smiled the same cold and calculating smile that their father showed in the portrait above.

  ‘So you’re moving among the nobility now. I won’t ask how this has come about.’

  It had been their father’s ambition to buy the family’s way into the nobility for as long as he could remember. So far he had not succeeded, but Felix reckoned that it was only a matter of time. The old man was both wealthy and persistent. Otto continued to give him that long, measuring look. He ran his eyes over Felix’s old and tattered clothing.

  ‘Of course, you need money,’ he said eventually. Felix looked back, considering his options. He didn’t really want to take his family’s money but under the circumstances it seemed advisable. He would certainly need better clothing for his visit to the court.

  ‘Yes, brother,’ he said.

  Felix walked out through the warehouse door feeling slightly sick of himself. The pouch of gold jingling within his jerkin was like a badge of his betrayal of his own ideals. The letter from Otto instructing any of the Jaeger businesses to give him what he required seemed tainted with his own greed. After so much time spent shunning his family, the generosity seemed almost excessive.

  Felix shook his head and strode across to the river wharves. He looked down into the grey, misty murk of the Reik and studied the great barges which had come all the way from Altdorf carrying their cargoes of Bretonnian wines and Estalian silks. They lay at rest along the piers, like whales momentarily surfaced, bobbing in the river flow. He watched the sweating dockhands lifting the casks from the holds with hooked knives, and saw them roll heavy barrels up long gangplanks towards the warehouse. And he heard loud coughs and saw men holding handkerchiefs over their mouths. The plague had claimed hundreds over the past few weeks.

  It seemed that his and Gotrek’s efforts in the Gardens of Morr had at best slowed its spread, and at worst had no effect at all. He wondered how it was spread, and in his mind, he pictured the rats that the plague monk had been dipping into that vile cauldron. Somehow he just knew they had something to with it.

  One of the men, older than the rest, remembered Felix from his younger days. He raised his hand and waved at him. Felix waved back. He could not even remember the man’s name, but he was shocked to find him still labouring away after all these years. The dock worker had not been young even then.

  Here, Felix thought, was the difference between the nobility of the Empire and those they ruled. That docker would continue to work for the pittance which the Jaeger family paid him until he keeled over and died. The nobles would lounge in their palaces, collecting the revenues of their estates and never raise their hands in honest toil in all their lives. There were times when Felix found himself in agreement with the revolutionists who preached rebellion across the Empire.

  He smiled ironically. Fine words, he told himself, for a man who had just taken a hefty handout from his own rich family. Well, he had not made this world, he just had to live in it. He turned and walked along the bank of the river, losing himself in the sounds and smells and sights of the dockside.

  The smell of fish assaulted his nostrils. Felix gagged and held the pomander he had acquired from Doctor Drexler under his nose. Its perfumed scent was starting to fade, but it was still enough to sweeten the tainted air. Felix noticed that the smells of the street and other people seemed keener now that he’d had his first bath in weeks.

  The rumble of huge drayage carts competed with the shouts of the dock workers. An armed guard in the black tabard of the city-state stopped to take a pear from the cart of a small trader. A child pickpocket made a daring rush for the purse of an old trader too poor to afford bodyguards. It was all very much as Felix remembered it from his childhood visits to Nuln with his father and brothers. He headed onwards, making for the better part of town.

  He had a niggling feeling that someone was following him, but when he turned around to look no one was there.

  Felix studied his reflection in the mirror. Very nice, he thought. He knew he cut a fine figure. At the best of times he was tall, athletic and quite good-looking, if he said so himself. Now he was dressed to make the most of it. He took a deep breath, revelling in the smell of luxury, of oak panelling and fine old leather. This discreet tailor’s shop, catering only to the highest category of nobles, was one of the Jaeger family’s less well-known businesses. It had not even existed when Felix had last been in Nuln. It had been set up by Otto, using introductions passed on by the late Fritz von Halstadt. For once Felix was glad of Otto’s corrupt association with the man he had killed.

  His fine new clothes felt strange. The high leather boots pinched. The tunic felt a little stiff, the padded lining felt too soft. The white linen shirt smelled too fresh. He realised how used he had become to the harsh life on the road, when he had not changed his clothes for months. Only the new cloak of red Sudenland wool felt familiar. It resembled his old one, ruined by skaven blood during the attack on the Blind Pig. The sword he had taken from the Templar, Aldred, was encased in a fine new sheath of plain black leather.

  ‘Would sir like any alterations made?’ the assistant asked obsequiously.

  Felix studied the bald-headed, sour faced fellow. Only an hour ago, when Felix had entered the shop, the assistant had inspected him as if he were a particularly large and repulsive cockroach. In a way, Felix could not blame him. He had been dressed like a beggar. Of course, the assistant’s attitude had changed within seconds of reading Otto’s hastily scrawled note. When Otto Jaeger himself told his minions to give this client anything he wanted, fawning courtesy was thrown in as part of the bargain.

  Felix gave the man his best condescending smile. ‘No. I would like several copies of these garments delivered to my residence within the day. And have my old clothing packed and returned immediately.’

  ‘Of course, sir. And where would sir’s residence be?’

  ‘At the sign of the Blind Pig, in the New Quarter. Have the clothes delivered to Felix Jaeger.’

  Felix enjoyed looking at the man’s face when he gave the address. He looked as if he had just swallowed that large and particularly nasty cockroach.

  ‘The Blind Pig, sir? Isn’t that a–’

  ‘Where I stay is my own business, don’t you think?’

  ‘Of course, sir. It is simply that sir took one rather by surprise for a moment. A thousand apologies.’

  ‘No need. Just make sure my clothes are delivered on time.’

  ‘I will see to it personally, sir.’

  Felix wondered if the man would have the nerve to come to the New Quarter himself. Maybe he would. He was obviously paid enough to make it worth his while to stay in Felix’s favour.

  ‘Will that be all, sir?’

  ‘For the moment, yes.
’

  Felix emerged from the tailor’s into the late afternoon gloom. He glanced around. No pursuers were visible. If there had actually been any, perhaps they had grown bored with waiting while Felix was in the tailor’s. He hoped so at least.

  He noticed he was standing taller and he felt more poised than he had before. He carried himself like a different man from the weary wanderer who had presented himself at Otto Jaeger’s warehouse earlier. It was amazing the difference a bath and a change of clothes could make in a man.

  A feeling of nervous anticipation had been gathering in his stomach all day. It was not quite fear. It was more like a vague uneasiness about what he would encounter within Elector Countess Emmanuelle’s palace. He was forced to admit that he prayed he would not embarrass himself in front of the nobility.

  He considered that thought for a moment, then forced a smile. His manners were good. He was well-spoken and well-dressed. There was nothing to be afraid of. Yet he knew this was not true. The nobility did not like upstart newcomers from the merchant class. During his time at university he had endured many snubs by young nobles who had taken pains to communicate this to him. At the same time, he had always resented being looked down on by people who were often stupider and less well-educated than he, whose only qualification was that they happened to be born into the right inbred bloodline. Now he could not help but laugh at himself. He was certainly not working himself into the correct frame of mind for this interview.

  He thanked Sigmar for small mercies: at least Gotrek had not been summoned as well. He could just picture a confrontation between the local high-born and the sullen Trollslayer. It would be an encounter fated to end in disaster. Felix had never known the Slayer show deference to anything or anyone, and he doubted that the countess or her minions would appreciate his independence of spirit.

  Suddenly a new problem presented itself, and one that he had not even bothered to consider earlier. The streets were muddy and full of rubbish. The gutters were overflowing. The crowds were unwashed and tightly pressed. He could not get to the palace without some of the dirt of the streets transferring itself to his superb new clothes. He knew it would never do to appear at the palace looking less than immaculate. He glanced around, hoping that a solution would present itself.