Gotrek & Felix- the First Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer

  ‘Quick! Quick!’ he ordered his stormvermin. ‘Kill them! Now! Now!’

  With visible reluctance, the stormvermin moved to the attack. They had heard of this pair. Tales of the destruction they had wreaked among skaven were legend among the army assaulting Nuln. Their very presence was demoralising to Thanquol’s troops. The way the dwarf decapitated the experienced clawleader as if he were a mere puppy did nothing to reassure the skaven. Nor did the vast howling tide of angry humans flowing into the ballroom. Thanquol sensed that the morale of his force was mere moments from breaking.

  Swiftly he weighed the odds of victory, and saw that his moment had passed, and that triumph had slipped through his talons. Now it was a case of measuring his chances of survival. If he left now, while his troops still slowed down the pursuit, Thanquol realised he might reach the privy. Once there he could use the scrying stone to create a gate back to the sewers. Of course, now with his power at a low ebb, he would not have the strength to hold it open for all his warriors. In fact, he doubted that more than one solitary skaven would escape through it.

  Still, he knew the genius of Thanquol must be preserved. On another day, he would return and take his revenge.

  ‘Forward, my brave stormvermin, to inevitable victory!’ Thanquol shouted, before he turned tail and ran with all his might. He did not need his grey seer’s intuition to tell him that the slaughter behind him was going to be one-sided and merciless.

  EPILOGUE

  ‘So it was that the skaven were driven forth from the city, although at great, terrible cost in lives and damage to property. I had thought to rest and catch my breath after our exertions but it was not to be. The hand of doom reached out for my companion. And so began a journey that was to end at the furthest and most gods-forsaken reaches of the world…’

  — From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol. III,

  by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)

  Felix sat in his favourite chair in the Blind Pig and finished inscribing the notes in his journal. He would leave this book in storage with Otto until such a time as he returned to claim it. If ever he did get round to writing the tale of the Trollslayer’s heroic doom, it might prove invaluable.

  From outside he could hear the sound of hammers. The builders had been at work for weeks now, trying to restore the battle-scarred city to its former glory. Felix knew that it would be many years before Nuln recovered fully, if it ever did. Still, he was not hugely troubled. Things had ended well, more or less.

  The countess had been grateful, but there was not much she could do to reward two criminals wanted by the authorities in Altdorf without antagonising the Emperor himself. There had been many protestations of gratitude and sweet smiles of thanks, but nothing more. Felix did not care. He was just glad to have avoided being thrown into prison, just as he was glad to have survived the night of conflict which had followed the storming of the palace.

  He still shivered to think of the savage battles which had been fought in the streets between man and skaven. It had taken all night and most of the rest of the following day to clear the city, and even after it was done most people had remained awake the following night, not quite able to believe they were safe. It had taken many more days of hunting afterwards to winkle the skaven out of all their hiding places, and he was still not sure that the sewers were entirely free of them.

  On the other hand, the plague had abated. Perhaps the great fire had cleansed the city – or maybe it had simply claimed all the lives it was capable of taking. Drexler claimed that this was often the way with plagues. It had vanished now. No more deaths were reported. No more people had been stricken.

  And for a wonder, the great plague of rats had ended too. For days, more and more of them had appeared but they seemed weaker, and bore the stigma of mutations, as if something had gone wrong with them before even they were born. Many of the later generations had been still-born. It was as if they had been created with some deliberate flaw by the skaven. Perhaps they had been intended to scourge the city and then die out, leaving the skaven free to claim everything. It was an idea of such devilish cunning that it made Felix shiver. Were the rat-men really capable of such a thing? Or had it all been merely an accident?

  Somewhere in the distance, temple bells rang. Of course, the priests were claiming that their particular gods had intervened to save Nuln. Such was their way. Felix had seen precious little evidence that the immortal ones had acted to preserve Nuln at all, but who was he to say? Perhaps they had been there, invisibly shielding the folk, as Drexler claimed. Certainly Felix thought that Gotrek and himself had been very lucky, and perhaps that was the favour of the gods.

  The gods had spared others. Otto and his wife were safe, prospering even. As his brother had predicted, there was a great demand for all manner of stuff for use in the reconstruction and Jaegers of Altdorf were helping provide it.

  Drexler had recovered almost fully from his sorcerous battle with the grey seer. Felix had been to see him several times since the fateful night, and the man looked as calm and cheerful as ever. One time, he had even encountered Ostwald at the doctor’s townhouse. The spymaster had treated Felix with a deference close to hero worship, which Felix had found embarrassing.

  Heinz and most of the mercenaries were well. The old innkeeper had taken a nasty knock on the head, and his head was swathed in so many bandages that he looked like an Arabyan, but he was still there behind the bar, pulling pints.

  Felix had no idea where Elissa was. He had not seen her or Hans since the day before the battle, and no one he knew had any knowledge of her whereabouts. He sincerely hoped she was well and had escaped back to her home village. He still missed her.

  They never found the skaven grey seer, despite searching the palace from top to bottom. All that the court magicians had found were some strange magical resonances in the privy. It was assumed that Thanquol had used magic to effect his escape.

  For the most part, the citizens were happy. They had survived and were rebuilding. In any case life went on as usual and Felix was looking forward to a nice long rest.

  Having avoided meeting his heroic doom yet again, Gotrek had stomped around like a bear with a sore head in the days after the fighting finished before consoling himself with a three day long binge of boozing and brawling. Now he sat in the corner of the Blind Pig, nursing his hangover and bellowing for ale.

  The saloon doors swung open and another dwarf came in. He was shorter than Gotrek and lighter in build. A circlet of bright red cloth was wrapped round his head and his beard was clipped short. The tunic he wore was divided into red and yellow squares of ungodly brightness. The newcomer looked around and his eyes widened when he saw Gotrek. He strode across to the Slayer with a purposeful step. Felix closed his journal, put down his pen and watched with interest.

  ‘You are Gotrek, son of Gurni, a Slayer?’ the newcomer said, speaking in Reikspiel as dwarfs often did when humans were listening. Felix knew they liked no one to hear their secret tongue.

  ‘What if I am?’ Gotrek said in his most brutish and surly fashion. ‘Want to make something of it?’

  ‘I am Nor Norrison, a bonded messenger to the clans. I have a message for you of great importance. I have come a thousand leagues to deliver it.’

  ‘Well, get on with it then! I don’t have all day,’ Gotrek grumbled impatiently.

  ‘It is not a verbal message. It is written in runescript. You can read, can’t you?’

  ‘About as well as I can punch out the teeth of messengers who cheek me.’

  The messenger produced a parchment envelope with a great flourish. Gotrek took it and tore it open. He started to read – and as he did so all the colour left his face. His beard bristled and his eyes went wide.

  ‘What is it?’ Felix asked.

  ‘A mighty doom, manling. A mighty doom indeed.’ He rose from his chair and reached for his axe. ‘Get your gear. We’re leaving.’

  ‘For where?’

  ‘The ends of the ea
rth, most likely,’ Gotrek said, and could be prevailed upon to say nothing more.

  DAEMONSLAYER

  William King

  ‘After the dire events in Nuln, we travelled northwards, for the most part following back roads, lest the Emperor’s roadwardens come upon us. The arrival of the dwarf-borne letter had filled my companion with a strange anticipation. He seemed almost happy as we made our weary way to our goal. Neither all the long weeks of journeying, nor the threat of bandits or mutants or beastmen ever served to daunt him. He would barely stop for meat or, more unusually, drink, and would answer my questions only with muttered references to destiny, doom and old debts.

  ‘For myself, I was filled with anxiety and recrimination. I wondered what had happened to Elissa and I was saddened by my parting with my brother. Little did I guess how long it would be before I would meet him again, and under what strange circumstances. And little, too, did I guess how far the journey which began in Nuln was to take us, and how dreadful our eventual destination was to be.’

  — From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol. III,

  by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)

  ONE

  THE MESSAGE

  ‘You spilled my beer,’ Gotrek Gurnisson said.

  If the man who had just knocked over the flagon possessed any sense, Felix Jaeger thought, the menacing tone of the dwarf’s flat gravelly voice would have caused him to back off immediately. But the mercenary was drunk, he had half a dozen rough-looking mates back at his table and a giggling tavern girl to impress. He was not going to back down from anybody who only came up to his shoulders, even if that person was nearly twice as broad as he.

  ‘So? What are you going to do about it, stuntie?’ the mercenary replied with a sneer.

  The dwarf eyed the spreading puddle of ale on the table for a moment with a mixture of regret and annoyance. Then he turned in his seat to look at the mercenary and ran his hand through the huge crest of red-dyed hair which towered over his shaven and tattooed head. The gold chain that ran from his nose to his ear jingled. With the elaborate care of one very drunk, Gotrek rubbed the patch covering his left eye socket, interlocked his fingers, cracked his knuckles – then suddenly lashed out with his right hand.

  It wasn’t the best punch Felix had ever seen Gotrek throw. In truth, it was clumsy and unscientific. Still, the Trollslayer’s fist was as large as a ham, and the arm that fist was attached to was as thick as a tree-trunk. Whatever it hit was going to suffer. There was a sickening crack as the man’s nose broke. The mercenary went flying back towards his own table. He sprawled unconscious on the sawdust covered floor. Red blood gushed from his nostrils.

  On considered reflection, Felix decided through his own drunken haze, as punches went it had certainly served its purpose. Given the amount of ale the Slayer had consumed it had been pretty good, in fact.

  ‘Anybody else want a taste of fist?’ Gotrek inquired, giving the mercenary’s half-dozen comrades an evil glare. ‘Or are you all as soft as you look?’

  The soldier’s comrades rose from their benches, spilling foaming ale onto the table and tavern wenches from their knees. Not waiting for them to come at him, the Slayer swayed to his feet and bounded towards them. He grabbed the nearest mercenary by the throat, pulled his head forward and head-butted him. The man went down like a pole-axed ox.

  Felix took another sip of the inn’s sour Tilean wine to aid his reflections. He was already several goblets south of sober, but so what? It had been a long, hard trek all the way here to Guntersbad. They had been moving constantly ever since Gotrek had received the mysterious letter summoning them to this tavern. For a moment, Felix considered reaching into the Slayer’s pack and examining it again but he already knew that it would be a useless effort. The message had been penned in the strange runes favoured by dwarfs. By the standards of the Empire, Felix was a well-educated man but there was no way he could read that alien language. Foiled by his own ignorance, Felix stretched his long legs, yawned and gave his attention back to the brawl.

  It had been brewing all night. Ever since they had entered the Dog and Donkey, the local hard boys had been staring at them. They had started by making nasty remarks about the Slayer’s appearance. For once, Gotrek had paid not the slightest attention, which was very unusual. Usually he was as touchy as a penniless Tilean duke and as short-tempered as a wolverine with toothache. Since receiving the message, however, he had become withdrawn, oblivious to anything but his own excitement. All he had done all evening was watch the door as if expecting somebody he knew to arrive.

  At first Felix had been quite worried by the prospect of a brawl but several flagons of the Tilean red had soon helped settle his nerves. He had doubted that anybody would be stupid enough to pick a fight with the Trollslayer. He had reckoned without the sheer native ignorance of the locals. After all, this was a small town on the road to Talabheim. How could they be expected to know what Gotrek was?

  Even Felix, who had studied at the University of Altdorf, had never heard of the dwarfs’ Cult of Slayers until the long-ago night when Gotrek had pulled him from under the hooves of the Emperor’s elite cavalry during the Window Tax riots back in Altdorf. On the mad drunken spree which followed, he had discovered that Gotrek was sworn to seek death in combat with the fiercest of monsters to atone for some past crime. Felix had been so impressed by the Slayer’s tale – and to tell the truth, so drunk – that he had sworn to accompany the dwarf and record his doom in an epic poem. The fact that Gotrek had not yet found his doom, despite some heroic efforts, had done nothing to reduce Felix’s respect for his toughness.

  Gotrek slammed a fist into another man’s stomach. His opponent doubled over as the air whooshed out of his lungs. Gotrek took him by the hair and slammed his jaw down hard onto the table edge. Noticing that the mercenary still moved, the Slayer repeatedly banged his groaning victim’s head on the table edge until he lay still, looking strangely rested, in a pool of blood, spittle, beer and broken teeth.

  Two big burly warriors threw themselves forward, grabbing the Slayer by an arm each. Gotrek braced himself, roaring defiance, and hurled one of them to the ground. While he was down there, the Slayer planted his heavy boot into the man’s groin. A high-pitched wailing shriek filled the tavern. Felix winced.

  Gotrek turned his attention to the other warrior and they grappled. Slowly, even though the man was more than half-again Gotrek’s height, the dwarf’s enormous strength began to tell. He pushed his opponent onto the ground, straddled his chest, and then slowly and methodically punched his head until he was unconscious. The last mercenary scuttled for the door – but as he did so he slammed into another dwarf. The newcomer took a step back, then dropped him with one well-aimed punch.

  Felix did a double-take, at first convinced he was hallucinating. It seemed unlikely that there could be another Slayer in this part of the world. But Gotrek was now looking at the stranger as well.

  The recent arrival was, if anything, bigger and more muscular than Gotrek. His head was shaved and his beard cropped short. He had no crest of hair; instead it looked for all the world like nails had been driven into his skull to make a crest and then painted in different colours. His nose had been broken so many times it was shapeless. One ear was cauliflowered; the other had actually been ripped clean away, leaving only a hole in the side of his head. A huge ring was set in his nose. Where his body was not criss-crossed with scars it was covered in tattoos. In one hand he held an enormous hammer and thrust in his belt was a short-hafted, broad-bladed axe.

  Behind this new Slayer stood another dwarf, shorter, fatter and altogether more civilised looking. He was about half Felix’s height, but very broad. His well-groomed beard reached almost to the ground. His wide eyes blinked owlishly from behind enormously thick glasses. In his ink-stained fingers he carried a large brass-bound book.

  ‘Snorri Nosebiter, as I live and breathe!’ Gotrek roared, his nasty smile revealing missing teeth. ‘It’s been awhile! What are you
doing here?’

  ‘Snorri’s here for the same reason as you, Gotrek Gurnisson. Snorri got a letter from old Borek the Scholar, telling Snorri to come to the Lonely Tower.’

  ‘Don’t try and fool me. I know you can’t read, Snorri. All the words were bashed out of your head when those nails were bashed in.’

  ‘Hogan Longbeard translated it for Snorri,’ Snorri said, looking as embarrassed as it was possible for such a hulking Trollslayer to look. He glanced around him, obviously wanting to change the subject.

  ‘Snorri thinks he missed a good fight,’ the dwarf said, eyeing the scene of terrible violence with the same sort of wistful regret that Gotrek had expended on his spilled ale. ‘Snorri thinks he’d better have a beer then. Snorri has a bit of a thirst!’

  ‘Ten beers for Snorri Nosebiter!’ Gotrek roared. ‘And better make that ten for me as well. Snorri hates to drink alone.’

  An appalled silence filled the room. The other patrons looked at the scene of the battle then at the two dwarfs as if they were kegs of gunpowder with a burning fuse. Slowly, in ones and twos, they got up and left, until only Gotrek, Felix, Snorri and the other dwarf were left.

  ‘First to ten?’ Snorri enquired, knuckling his eye and looking up at Gotrek cunningly.

  ‘First to ten,’ Gotrek agreed.

  The other dwarf waddled towards them and bowed, politely in the dwarfish fashion, raising his beard with one hand to keep it from dragging on the ground as he leaned forward.

  ‘Varek Varigsson of the Clan Grimnar at your service,’ he said in a mild, pleasant voice. ‘I see you got my uncle’s message.’

  Snorri and Gotrek looked at him, seemingly astonished by his politeness, then began to laugh. Varek flushed with embarrassment.