by Warhammer
A shadow fell across him and a hand tapped him lightly on the shoulder. Felix looked up, his train of thought disturbed. Varek stood there, peering short-sightedly into the distance towards Ulrika.
‘What is it?’ Felix asked.
‘My uncle asked me to tell you that our preparations are complete. We will leave tomorrow at dawn.’
Felix nodded to show his understanding. Varek bowed low to Ulrika and then backed away.
‘What was that?’ she asked.
Felix told her. A cloud passed across her face.
‘So soon,’ she said softly and reached out to touch his face, as if to reassure herself that he was still there.
The sun sank beneath the horizon. In the darkness, Felix stood on the wall and looked towards the distant mountains. It was still early and a warm breeze blew across the grasslands. The two moons had yet to rise. A strange shimmering glow was visible beyond the northern peaks. The sky was filled with dancing lights, the colour of gold, silver and blood. It was a strange sight, at once captivating and frightening.
From below came the sound of musicians tuning their instruments, and cooks bellowing to each other as they prepared the evening feast. Judging from the number of cattle slaughtered and flasks of vodka being produced, Straghov was preparing to give them a right royal send-off.
A slight noise to his left attracted Felix’s attention and he realised that he was not alone on the battlements. Gotrek stood there too, gazing into the distance. He seemed rapt and a look of concentration creased his face.
‘That glow – is it the light of Chaos?’ Felix asked at last.
‘Aye, manling, that it is.’
‘From here it looks almost beautiful.’
‘You might think so now but if you went through Blackblood Pass and marched under that sky you would think differently.’
‘Is it really so bad?’
‘Worse than I can make it sound. The sands of the deserts are all of strange colours, and the bones of huge animals gleam in the light. The wells are poisonous, the rivers are not of water but other stuff like blood or mucous. The winds drive the dust everywhere. There are ruins that once were the cities of men, elf and dwarf. There are monsters and enemies without number, and they are not troubled by fear or by sanity.’
‘You lost a lot of people, the last time you were there.’
‘Aye.’
‘What are our chances then?’ Felix wanted to add ‘of surviving’, but he knew that would be a meaningless question to ask a Slayer. ‘Of reaching Karag Dum?’
Gotrek was silent for a long time. From behind them rose the sound of singing. From the grass beyond the manor house came the sound of night insects. It was so tranquil that Felix found it hard to believe that this was a land on the frontier of an endless war, and that tomorrow they would be passing over the Chaos Wastes, through a country from which they might never return. Standing here in the warm night air, Felix felt like he was going to live forever.
‘In truth, manling, I cannot say. If we went on foot, there would be no chance whatsoever, of that I am certain. With this airship of Makaisson’s we might be able to make it.’
He shook his head ruefully. ‘I do not know. It depends on how accurate Borek’s maps are, and how potent Schreiber’s spells prove, and whether the engines break down or we run out of fuel or food, or warpstorms…’
‘Warpstorms?’
‘Monstrous tempests filled with the power of the Darkness. They can make stone flow like water and turn men into beasts or mutants.’
‘Why do you want to go back?’ Felix turned to lean against the battlements so that he could get a view of the courtyard behind them.
‘Because we might get to Karag Dum, manling. And if we do, our names will live forever. And if we fail, well, it will be a mighty death.’
After that Felix asked no more questions. Looking down into the courtyard and catching sight of Ulrika in a long bright dress, he did not want to believe that it was possible that he could die.
Felix made his way to the edge of the courtyard. Behind him he could hear the sounds of drinking and dancing. Pipers tootled on instruments which resembled miniature bagpipes; other musicians banged away rhythmically on their hide-covered wooden drums. The smell of roasting meat filled his nostrils, warring with the sharp acrid taint of vodka. From somewhere outside came shouting and grunting and cries of encouragement as the warriors egged on two wrestlers.
He was not hungry and he was stone cold sober, for he had decided that he could not face another night of drinking, even if it was to be his last night on earth. He was looking for Ulrika but she had vanished earlier, accompanied by two of the peasant women who appeared to be either her maids or her friends, he was not sure which. It was all a bit anti-climactic. Here he was, dressed in his freshly washed and mended clothes, his hair combed and his body washed – and he could not even find her to steal a kiss. He felt surly and miserable, and more than a little confused. Didn’t the girl even care that he was leaving tomorrow? Wouldn’t she even talk to him? He was in no mood for the gaiety behind him. He was going to return to his room and sulk. He smiled bitterly as he went, knowing he was being childish and not wanting to do anything about it.
At the half-open door he paused. His chamber was dark and there was a quiet sound from within. Felix’s hand reached for his sword, wondering if this was a robber or some servant of the powers of Chaos which had slithered in from the night under the cover of the merrymaking.
‘Felix, is that you?’ asked a voice that he recognised.
‘Yes,’ he said in a voice suddenly so thick that he had difficulty forcing the words out of his mouth. A light flickered and a lantern was lit. Felix could see a bare arm protruding from beneath the coverlet.
‘I thought you were never going to show up,’ Ulrika said and threw the quilt aside to reveal her long, naked body. Felix rushed to join her on the bed. The scent of her filled his nostrils. Their lips met in a long kiss and this time she did not break away.
The light of dawn and the crowing of the cockerels woke Felix. He opened his eyes to see that Ulrika lay beside him, propped up on one elbow, studying his face. When she saw that he was awake she smiled a little sadly. He reached up and ran his hand across her cheek, feeling the soft skin of her face beneath his fingers. She caught his hand, and turned it over to kiss the palm of his hand. He laughed and reached out. He drew her down to him, feeling the warmth of her body, happy to be there, happy to be holding her and feeling her heart beat against his naked flesh. He laughed from sheer pleasure, but she shuddered and turned away from him as if she was about to cry.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘You must go,’ she said.
‘I’ll be back,’ he blurted foolishly.
‘No, you will not. No man ever returns from the Wastes. Not sane. Not untouched by Chaos.’
He realised then why their lovemaking of the previous evening had possessed such desperate urgency. It was a one night thing, a gift from a woman to a warrior she thought she would never see again. He wondered if that happened a lot here. His happiness vanished but he held her anyway, stroking her hair.
A heavy knock sounded on the door.
‘Time to be away, manling,’ came Gotrek’s voice, and it sounded like the voice of doom.
TWELVE
THE CHAOS WASTES
Felix felt sadness settle on him like a cloak as he watched the Straghov mansion fall away below the airship. The tiny waving figures slowly receded into the distance and then faded from view entirely as the Spirit of Grungni picked up speed. The mansion dwindled until it was lost in the endless immensity of the rolling grass-covered plains. Felix paced the metal deck restlessly.
He wondered if he would ever see Ulrika again. She plainly didn’t think so, and she was in a better position to know about these things than he was, having lived on the borders of the Chaos Wastes all of her life. It was odd but already he missed her, strange considering he had never even met
the woman until a few days before.
For a swift, dreadful moment, he felt like going to Makaisson and asking him to turn the airship around. He wanted to say that there had been a terrible mistake and he did not want to leave. He found himself wishing he had stayed behind with her, but things had happened so quickly and he had been swept up suddenly once more by the momentum of the dwarfs’ quest. Everyone, including her, had seemed to believe he was going, and so he had gone, despite having no real inclination to do so.
It was typical of how things went in his world. Small events took on a life of their own, and before he knew it, he was caught up in wildly unlikely occurrences far beyond his control. He wondered if everybody’s lives were like that and not just his. Did everyone pile tiny decisions upon tiny decisions like a child piling pebbles, only to realise at the last moment that they had built a shifting unstable mountain beneath themselves, and that there was no way off without causing an avalanche?
He knew that he could not go to the chief engineer and ask him to turn back for a number of reasons. The first and simplest was that Makaisson might not do it, and he would forfeit the respect and goodwill of the crew without gaining anything. The second reason was that he had no idea what reception he would get even if he did turn back. Perhaps what had attracted Ulrika to him was the belief that there was something heroic about his part in the quest, and abandoning it now would mark him as a coward. He knew that the people of this harsh land would want no truck with cowards.
And maybe, he was forced to admit, part of him wanted to go on anyway, to see this new place, to find out how it would all end, to measure his courage against a wilderness that caused dismay even to Gotrek. Maybe the way he felt other people might judge him was the way he judged himself. If he abandoned the Spirit of Grungni he would be abandoning his heroic view of himself and retreating into being just like everybody else. Maybe part of him really wanted the fame that the dwarfs aboard the airship craved. He did not know. There were times when his motives confused even himself. They seemed to vary with his moods or his hangovers.
He just knew that he felt terrible right now – and that he wanted to see Ulrika again. The mood of gloom seemed to have infected the whole airship. All the dwarfs were quiet and their expressions were pained. Perhaps they felt this unaccountable sadness as well. Or maybe they were simply hungover, for last night every last one of them had drunk like a Marienburg sailor on a spree or, to be nastily exact, dwarfs confronted by a lake of free booze. Felix had to admit that the airship was currently no place for those with a hangover. The deck vibrated visibly and occasionally the whole gondola shook as they passed through clouds and patches of turbulence.
He pushed his way towards the command deck and saw that it was mostly empty, save for the basic crew needed to fly the ship. He paced moodily over to stand beside Makaisson and looked out the window. The vast stone bulk of the mountains loomed ever closer. He could see that they were headed for Blackblood Pass. It yawned in front of them like the mouth of some great daemon.
Soon they were in the pass itself with the mountains looming all around them, and the lowest of the strange glittering peaks level with the airship. Felix studied them but the glowing, shimmering substance that capped them seemed strangely hard to look at. The eye slid along it like a man tumbling on ice, and he found that he could not really focus on the peaks close up. It was his first indication of how strange Chaos could be. He was sure that it would not be his last.
The pass itself was rocky and bleak. Here and there oddly shaped boulders had been placed alongside the track, and Felix felt sure that strange, outlandish runes had been carved into them. Noticing that some of them gleamed white, he borrowed a telescope from Makaisson and focused it on them. To his horror he saw that what he had taken to be a chalked symbol was in fact a deformed skeleton chained to the rock. Were they human sacrifices left here by warriors of Chaos, he wondered, or warning markers left by the Kislevites? Either seemed perfectly possible.
Varek appeared beside Felix and maintained an awe-struck silence for a few minutes. Felix knew that the young dwarf shared his mood.
‘Schreiber thinks these mountains shield all of Kislev,’ Varek said eventually.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I talked with him back at the manor house. He has a theory that says that if it wasn’t for this range of mountains, the wind would blow all the warpstone dust down from the Chaos Wastes and infect the population with mutation. He says that they would all change and become deformed and subject to the mad whims of the Dark Gods.’
‘I thought there already were mutants in Kislev. Sigmar knows, I’ve fought enough of them in the Empire. There cannot be fewer here!’
Varek looked at Felix and smiled sadly. ‘In Kislev they kill anyone who shows the slightest stigmata of mutation – even babies.’
‘They do the same in the Empire,’ Felix said, but he knew that wasn’t really true. Many parents hid their mutant children and people shielded their mutant relatives. He had encountered such cases in his wanderings. Mutants were not bad people, he thought; they were just suffering from an illness. He shook his head bitterly, knowing that no dwarf and most likely no Kislevite would agree with that conclusion. It was indeed a terrible world.
‘Schreiber claims it would be much worse without these mountains, that they are a natural barrier which prevents most of the dust reaching the lands of men. He says that the strange stuff on the peaks is congealed Dark Magic, the pure stuff of Chaos.’
‘He has many interesting theories, Herr Schreiber,’ Felix said sourly.
‘He says these are not just theories. He has conducted experiments on animals using warpstone dust.’
‘Then he is mad. Warpstone is an evil substance. It drives men mad. I have seen it.’
‘He says he is very careful and shields himself with magic, and all manner of protective substances. My uncle believes his theories. It is one reason why there is a layer of lead foil within the hull of this airship.’
‘I think no good will come to Herr Schreiber in the end.’
‘I am inclined to agree, Felix, but all the same he could be right. My uncle says it fits with dwarfish lore. Some claim that our people first started building their cities underground during the first great Chaos incursions long ages ago and that the rock shielded us from the taint of Chaos which has affected all other races.’
He seemed embarrassed as he said this, as if unsure how Felix would respond to the accusation that his folk were touched by Chaos. From his own experience of travel within the Empire and beyond, however, Felix found it only too easy to believe that it was the case. Humankind gave itself over all too easily to the worship of the Darkness. It was a depressing thought.
‘When we pass beyond these mountains we will be on the very edge of the Realm of Chaos,’ Varek muttered darkly.
‘Do you think that the spells Schreiber wove around the airship will protect us?’ Felix asked.
‘I know nothing of magic, Felix. It is not a subject that many dwarfs know about. My uncle believes that it will, and he is considered wise in these matters.’
‘A strange man, Herr Schreiber. You know, he asked me to record my impressions of the Wastes in case we made it back.’
‘Me too. He says it will help with his researches.’
‘Let us hope then that we return to present him with useful material.’
Varek smiled. ‘Indeed, let us hope so.’
Lurk was worried. Ever since the human wizard had come aboard the airship and begun casting his spells, he had been unable to contact Grey Seer Thanquol. It was a terrible thing, for he knew the skaven sorcerer would blame him for it, whatever the real cause. He wanted to do something, but he knew nothing about sorcery. A feeling of helplessness surged in him. With it came a desire to rend and tear, to exorcise his fears by killing something, preferably something weak and helpless.
Unfortunately there had been no likely candidates for his fury. The airship was full
of well-armed and equipped dwarfs, and Lurk did not have a dozen of his packmates with him to encourage his righteous skaven wrath.
He had known that he needed to find this outlet for his pent-up energies. He had found it in exploring the airship while most of the dwarfs slept. Once again he had found himself at the promising tunnel opening in the topmost level of the gondola.
Slowly, carefully, he turned the massive handle and felt the lock click open. He pushed upwards with all his strength and saw a ladder running upwards. Wind tugged his fur for a moment and he realised he stood atop the gondola. Looking up he saw the ladder disappeared into a circular opening in the fabric of the gasbag. He pulled himself up through the opening and was immediately surrounded by what appeared to be a mass of monstrous balloons. They were fixed in long rows within the gasbag by fine wires.
Quickly he scurried up the ladder, leaping upwards with the natural agility of a skaven, reassured by the pressing closeness of the gasbags all around him. His keen nostrils twitched and his whiskers bristled. He recognised a faint acrid tang to the air that no human or dwarf would have noticed. He recognised this scent! He had caught hints of it down below in the gondola but that was not where he knew the smell from. No, he had encountered it in the great marshes around Skavenblight where the ratfolk factories poured their chemical by-products into the mud and quicksand. Sometimes huge bubbles would form where the effluent was piped, and when those bubbles broke the surface and popped this particular smell was emitted.
Was it possible that the dwarfs had trapped this gas in these thin balloon-like sacks, and that it was these thousands of sacks which lifted this vessel into the sky? Could it be that the means to create airships was already within skaven paws? Should he tell Grey Seer Thanquol of his suspicions?
