by Warhammer
A sudden weariness overcame Felix. All sound seemed to die away. He was too tired to care and he was not afraid to die. There was nothing he could do now. The club would descend and his life would be over. There was no sense in struggling. Best just to lie back and surrender to the inevitable.
For a moment only, he felt so helpless. Then he gathered all of his willpower to make one final futile attempt at movement. He knew it was impossible, that in his weakened state he could never get out of the way in time. His shoulders tensed and at any moment he expected to feel agony smash through his brain as the fatal blow connected.
It never came. Instead, his foe toppled away from him, blood exploding from his back. Gotrek bent over, gripped him by his chain mail vest and hauled him to his feet.
‘Get up, manling. There’s still killing to be done!’ The Slayer swung his axe and dropped a beastman with one blow. ‘You cannot die till you have witnessed me kill a daemon!’
‘Where is it?’ Felix asked, still dazed.
‘Over there,’ Gotrek said and pointed with one blood-covered finger.
Felix looked in the direction he had indicated and through a gap in the fury of battle witnessed a scene of momentous courage. Snorri steamed headlong at the daemon and lashed out at it with his axe and hammer. The daemon looked down and laughed mockingly as Snorri’s attacks bounced off its hide.
‘Snorri, you idiot!’ Gotrek bellowed. ‘Only rune weapons will affect the accursed thing!’
If Snorri heard, he gave no sign. He continued to lash ineffectually at the mighty monster, launching a whirlwind of blows that would have dropped a dozen oxen, yet left the daemon unscathed. At last, as if tiring of watching the antics of a jester, the Bloodthirster lashed out almost languidly with its axe. Snorri tried to block, crossing both weapons in front of him, but he had no chance. The haft of his axe and his hammer splintered, and the sheer force of the daemon’s blow sent him hurtling across the chamber like a stone launched from a catapult. He went tumbling through the air to land at the feet of King Thangrim, splashing the old dwarf’s beard with blood.
The Bloodthirster ploughed on through the warriors of King Thangrim’s elite guard. Its weapons flickered almost too fast for the eye to follow and every time one struck, a dwarf warrior fell. It seemed like no armour could resist those hell-forged weapons. In mere moments, brave warriors were reduced to mewling, dying piles of ragged flesh. Proud armour was rent asunder. Even as Felix watched, the Bloodthirster smashed through a row of dwarfs with its axe, leaving only mangled corpses in its wake. Yet the great daemon was not having things all its own way. The rune weapons of the dwarfs had bitten its flesh in a few places. Smoking ichor dribbled onto the floor as it advanced.
Rage blazed in King Thangrim’s eyes. His beard bristled. He raised his hammer once more as if in answer to the daemon’s challenge and cast it to smash on the daemon’s breast. Once more the ancient weapon bit home. Once more daemonic blood spurted forth. Once more the hideous thing staggered – then grinned and came on with redoubled fury.
Nothing could stand in its way. It ploughed through the dwarf king’s guards like a battering ram through a rotting doorway. Felix saw that one warrior managed to ram a runic blade into its back before it was aware of him. The blade stuck fast, protruding out from the Bloodthirster’s shoulder blades before it turned and lashed out with its whip. Felix had no idea what that infernal lash was made from but it cut through dwarf-forged armour with ease and flayed its targets to the bone. Felix saw skin and muscle part as if slashed with a cleaver, white bone and yellow cartilage suddenly exposed in the dim, guttering light. The whip lashed forward again, spinning its shrieking victim like a top and tugging more flesh from his carcass. Another dwarf strode forward and smote the daemon with a rune-etched hammer. The impact caused the daemon some discomfort, but the swing of its axe decapitated its attacker. All the while it kept lashing its victim. In heartbeats, a bloody, skinned carcass that was not recognisable as a dwarf lay at its feet.
‘How much longer will you hide behind your warriors, little king?’ asked the daemon, and such was the dreadful magic of its voice that the words were audible where Felix stood even above the clamour of battle. The king threw his hammer once more but this time the daemon threw down his whip and caught it with one outstretched claw. The runes blazed along the hammer’s head and where it held the weapon the daemon’s hand blackened but it reversed the weapon and sent it hurtling back towards the king.
There was a crack like thunder and the hammer flew too fast for the eye to follow. It crashed into the dwarf king and sent him sprawling to the ground. A groan came from the dwarf army as they saw their leader tumble and fall. The daemon bellowed in triumph. Insane laughter rumbled above the fray and echoed through the hall. The host of Chaos fought on with redoubled fury and everywhere seemed to gain the upper hand over the dwarfs.
The Bloodthirster strode through the dismayed throng, slaying right and left as it went. The priest of Grimnir went forth to meet it and was disembowelled with a slash of its claw even as his warhammer buried itself in the daemon’s flesh. The old priestess of Valaya stood before it. She raised her book as if it were a shield. A glow leapt from the pages and for a moment the daemon paused. Then it laughed once more and brought its axe arcing down, cleaving through the book and the priestess both. Her bisected form fell in two pieces to the floor and the daemon strode forward in triumph to stand above the dying king.
‘Come, manling. Now is the hour of my doom,’ Gotrek said, and made to stride towards the daemon. Nothing could stand in the Slayer’s way. Anything that tried to do so died. He was now as much an engine of destruction as the daemon had been. As he moved towards his goal he struck left and right and everywhere he struck beastmen and Chaos warriors fell, cloven by the power of the axe and the arm that drove it.
With a shrug, Felix strode along behind, resolved to his fate. His head still rang from the glancing blow he had taken, and the scenes of nightmarish carnage all around had taken on an unreal quality. There now seemed nothing unlikely about the Slayer’s mission. It did indeed seem inevitable that Gotrek would fight with the daemon, and die his heroic death, and that Felix would witness it and die in turn himself. There was no other possibility. Looking around the hall Felix could see that the dwarfs were beaten. Their foes had the upper hand, and the fall of King Thangrim had demoralised them utterly. There was no sign of Snorri or Varek. Felix knew that he was not going to leave this battlefield alive. He might as well do as the Trollslayer wished. He owed the dwarf his life once more, and this was the way to pay the debt.
The Bloodthirster stood over the recumbent form of the old dwarf king. It drove its axe blade deep into the ancient flagstones so that the weapon stood there quivering. Then it reached down and picked up Thangrim Firebeard with both its claws, as gently as a man might pick up a small child.
Felix ducked the swing of a beastman’s axe, lopped his attacker’s hand off at the wrist and kept running, leaving the amputee falling to his knees and clutching a bleeding stump. Three Chaos warriors came between Gotrek and the daemon. His axe smashed through the neck of one, opened the stomach of another and buried itself in the groin of a third. The backward swing of the axe toppled them to the floor and left Felix with a clear view of what happened next between the king and his tormentor.
The Bloodthirster peeled away Thangrim’s armour like a man might strip away the peel from an orange. The dwarf managed to lean forward and spat in his tormentor’s face. The spittle mingled with the ichor that ran down the daemon’s brow and evaporated with a sizzle. Grinning widely, the Bloodthirster pushed its claws into the king’s exposed flesh and began to pull outwards. The dwarf’s ribcage cracked and flew open like the shell of an oyster, revealing the exposed innards. Blood sprayed across the Bloodthirster as it kept at its unholy work.
It raised the body to the level of its eyes, holding him easily with one hand. With the other it reached out and tore Thangrim’s still-beating heart
from his chest, raised it so that the king’s wide eyes could see what it was doing. It squeezed the heart. The meat was crushed with an audible squelch. Blood gushed forth and sprayed down into the monster’s mouth. Then, like a Bretonnian epicure devouring the flesh of an opened shellfish, it threw back its head and let the heart slide down into its open mouth. All this the king watched with wide, appalled eyes.
The daemon’s throat swelled as it swallowed the whole heart and then it opened its mouth and gave an enormous belch of satisfaction. It let the heartless, now dead thing which had once been the proud king of Karag Dum flop to the floor and turned to bellow its triumph to its assembled followers.
Felix had a perfect view of the whole thing, for at that moment he and Gotrek had almost reached the Bloodthirster.
‘I hope you enjoyed your last meal, daemon,’ Gotrek said. ‘Now you die.’
The daemon looked down at him and smiled. ‘Your brain will be my desert,’ it said with terrible certainty.
For a moment the Slayer and the daemon stood frozen facing each other. Gotrek held his blazing axe poised to strike. A look of near-berserk fury transformed his face into something almost as terrifying as the daemon. The Bloodthirster flexed its wings with an audible snap and gestured mockingly for Gotrek to advance. Felix looked from Gotrek to the daemon to the corpse of Thangrim. He had heard that the brain could still live for moments after the heart ceased to beat. He knew that in Thangrim’s case this was true, for it was what the daemon had willed in order to fulfil its unholy oath. Suddenly he was very angry, at the senseless cruelty of the daemon and the insane malignity of all of Chaos. He wanted to take his sword and plunge it into the daemon’s breast.
The long frozen moment ended. Gotrek bellowed his war cry and charged. His axe flashed forward and down and buried itself in the daemon’s chest. Blazing ichor belched forth, scorching the dwarf and sending him reeling backward for a moment. He recovered himself well and launched another blow. The Bloodthirster raised its claw to block it and another huge gash appeared in its arm. For a moment, Felix thought that in his fury Gotrek might overwhelm it, but the Bloodthirster stepped back out of the Slayer’s reach and made a grasping gesture.
Its huge axe sprang up out of the ground and flew into the daemon’s hand in the time it took to blink. For a moment the daemon stood there. Felix could see that it had taken damage. The dwarf guard’s sword still protruded from its back. Thangrim’s hammer had left deep welts in its flesh, through which broken bones showed. Gotrek’s axe had left two gaping wounds from which ichor dripped, smouldering to the floor. From its entire body rose a foul vapour like smoke. At times its outline seemed to waver and go out of focus as if it were not quite there. Then it snapped into being once again, becoming hard-edged and distinct.
And it launched itself at the Slayer.
There was a flurry of blows much too fast for the mortal eye to follow. Felix had no idea how Gotrek survived the encounter but he did, reeling backwards with a great gash across his forehead and claw marks all across his chest. The Bloodthirster bore another great rent on its arm but appeared less damaged than the Slayer.
‘I see you’ve had enough,’ Gotrek gasped defiantly.
The daemon laughed and prepared to spring forward once again. Felix steeled himself, knowing now that what he was about to do was suicide. He was going to die. It did not matter, Felix knew that if the Slayer fell, the daemon would overpower him in heartbeats, so he decided to get in his blow while he could. He sprang forward and struck with all his might at the daemon. The Templar Aldred’s enchanted blade bit deep into the daemon’s flesh. Felix pulled back the sword and tried for a second blow. The daemon turned to face him at the last second and sent him sprawling backwards with a mere buffet of its arm that nearly knocked the life from Felix.
As its claw made contact, something exploded against Felix’s chest, sending a surge of pain flickering right through him. The Templar’s blade was sent spinning from his hand. As he fell, he landed on something hard and heavy, and the wind was knocked from his lungs. He could hear what might have been a howl of unearthly agony coming from the Bloodthirster.
Gotrek took advantage of the distraction to spring forward and for a moment Felix thought the Slayer was going to be able to take the Bloodthirster. His axe flashed through a ferocious arc and almost connected but the Slayer’s wounds slowed him and the daemon leapt aside and avoided the stroke which otherwise would have beheaded it. There followed another flurry of blows that were too fast for the eye to follow. They ended with Gotrek’s axe being knocked from his hand. As the dwarf stood there, staggering, barely upright, the Bloodthirster smashed down with a mighty fist, slamming the Slayer to the ground. Gotrek fell prostrate at the daemon’s feet. All hope fled from Felix’s heart.
He reached down and tried to push himself upright. Looking down he could see the smouldering remains of Schreiber’s amulet on his chest. The daemon’s fist must have caught it when it struck him. The amulet had exploded, overloaded by the daemon’s sheer power. Still, thought Felix, perhaps it had saved his life. Something had robbed the Bloodthirster’s blow of much of its force. He was certain that it should have killed him – yet it had not.
He could not find his sword but his fingers clutched something hard and heavy. He realised that it was the Hammer of Fate. He tried to lift it but it would not move. It was not simply that it was too heavy, it was that some force kept it locked in place on the ground like the magnet which held maps in place on the airship.
Felix cursed. They had come so close. The daemon was moving slowly now, breathing hard, ichor dripping from great rents in its flesh, barely able to maintain its form. One more blow would finish the thing, of that he was certain. He heaved until he thought his muscles would crack and still the accursed hammer would not move. It was a magic artefact, intended to be wielded only by dwarf heroes, and it was beyond the strength of mortal man to overcome its magic.
The Bloodthirster had bent down now over Gotrek, as it had over Thangrim. It reached down and enveloped the fallen Slayer’s head with one mighty hand. Slowly it lifted him upwards.
Felix knew what was coming next. The daemon would squeeze the dwarf’s head until his skull shattered like a melon, then it would consume his brain and eat his immortal soul. Behind the triumphant daemon he could see the beastmen were crushing the last of the dwarfs’ resistance. Varek stood at one of the pillars. The scholar had armed himself with a hammer from somewhere. A wave of frenzied beastmen closed in.
‘Help me, Sigmar of the Hammer,’ Felix howled with a fervour which he had not felt since he was a frightened child. ‘Help me, Grungni! Help me Grimnir! Help me, Valaya! Help me! Help me, damn you!’
At the invocation of the gods’ names, the runes on the hammer flickered and fire leapt back into them. Felix felt the weapon begin to come free of the ground. It was heavy at first but weighed progressively less as he lifted it, as if some other force was lending him the strength to overcome its vast weight. A burning pain shot through Felix’s hand where he held the warhammer. He felt sparks scorching his sleeve. The taint of ozone filled his nostrils. The pain almost made him drop the thing. He fought to keep a grip on it while every nerve ending in his hand shrieked with agony. Somehow, he managed to maintain his hold.
Felix knew he would only get one chance. He drew the hammer back for the cast. The daemon sensed the gathering of energies behind it and turned to face him, the Slayer held negligently in one hand, the way a man might hold a broken doll. The terrible eyes rested on Felix and for a moment he felt another surge of that familiar terror. He knew the daemon was about to spring, to rend him limb from limb and he would not be quick enough to stop it. He wrestled down his fear, smiled shyly and decided to try anyway.
The Bloodthirster dropped Gotrek and sprang, both claws outstretched, its mouth wide open, its fangs bared. Eyes through which hell looked out upon the world glared directly into Felix’s soul. Its hideous odour filled his nostrils. The heat of its bo
dy radiated across the closing gap. Felix flung the sacred warhammer forward and released it. It hurtled forward like a falling meteor, trailing a comet tail of blazing lightning. It smashed directly into the daemon’s head with a noise like a clap of thunder. The force of the impact stopped its headlong rush. It toppled over backwards but only for a moment. The Hammer of Fate glanced off it and flew into the gloom.
Slowly the daemon pulled itself upright. Felix knew now that there was nothing he could do to stop it. Its victory was inevitable. He had done his best, and it had not been enough. He barely had the energy to stand, let alone flee from the creature. His chest was scorched. His hand felt like the flesh was peeling off the bone.
The Bloodthirster staggered forward, grinning evilly. The look in its ancient eyes told him that it knew what he was thinking and that it mocked his despair. Its enormous shadow fell across him. It flexed its wings, pulling the rune-carved blade free from its back and sending it flying across the chamber. It drew back its claws for the killing blow.
‘Oi! You! I haven’t finished with you yet!’ roared Gotrek’s voice from behind it.
The monstrous head of his great, ancient axe suddenly protruded through the Bloodthirster’s chest. As it did so, the daemon began to come apart, in a shower of red and gold sparks which transformed into stinking vapour. The thing started to vanish, like a fire burning down before their eyes. Through the fading mist Felix could see the bruised and battered form of the Slayer, barely able to stand upright. Slowly the Bloodthirster faded from view.
But Felix could still see the daemon’s blazing eyes and its last words still echoed inside his head: I will remember you, mortals, and I have all eternity in which to take my vengeance.
