Gotrek & Felix- the First Omnibus - William King

by Warhammer

Shop in Nuln that specialises in rare and exotic books and other artefacts. Reputedly, it also serves as a government front as well.

  Vermak Skab

  Warlord of Clan Skab and Lurk’s distant cousin. Sent to lead the attack on Nuln but tragically meets his end in a terrible accident involving a loaded crossbow and an exploding donkey!

  Vilebroth Null

  Low Abbot of the Plague Monks of Clan Pestilens who tries to bring about the downfall of Nuln by using the Cauldron of a Thousand Poxes to spread the plague.

  Villem Kozinski

  Younger brother of the Duke Enrik. His diplomatic manner makes him a more suitable candidate for the throne than his brother, and he acts as a foil to Enrik’s abruptness.

  Voorman

  Count Hrothgar’s pet wizard and a member of the Order of Tzeentch.

  Von Diehls

  An ancient Empire family line, rumoured to be cursed.

  Vork Kineater

  Leader of the ogre mercenaries employed in Skabrand by Zayed al Fahruk to protect his caravan. It’s possible his name came from eating all his family. Kineater kidnaps Talia Nitikin, intending to marry her, an act which inflames the other ogres of his tribe against him.

  W

  Waldenschlosse

  Castle which sits above Waldenhof and home to Rudgar, Count of Waldenhof.

  Warlord Pakstab

  Warlord of the skaven settlement Greypaw Hollow.

  White Boar, The

  A tavern in Praag where Gotrek, Felix and the rest stayed during the Siege of Praag.

  Wildgans, Frater

  An instructor at the Schrammel monastery.

  Witch

  Grey seer Thanquol suffers an unfortunate consequence when he angers an unnamed strigany witch in a forest.

  Wolfgang Krassner

  Man killed by Felix in a duel, resulting in his expulsion from university.

  Wolfgang Lammel

  Decadent fop and Slaaneshi cultist. His father owns the Sleeping Dragon in Fredricksburg, where he hangs out with his equally unpleasant friends.

  Worlds Edge Mountains

  Immense range of mountains that mark the eastern boundary of the Empire and the Old World, believed in ancient times to be the edge of the world itself.

  Z

  Zayed al Mahrak

  An Arabyan caravan master who plies his trade between the Empire and far Cathay.

  Zarkhul

  A prophet and the uniter of the orc tribes of Albion. He intends to lead them into the great Waaagh to reclaim the Temple of Old Ones.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  William King is the author of the Tyrion and Teclis saga and the Macharian Crusade trilogy, as well as the much-loved Gotrek & Felix series and the Space Wolf novels. His short stories have appeared in many magazines and compilations, including White Dwarf and Inferno!. Bill was born in Stranraer, Scotland, in 1959 and currently lives in Prague.

  John Brunner (24 September 1934 – 26 August 1995) was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His career spanned over four decades and won him many accolades. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year. The Jagged Orbit won the BSFA award in 1970.

  Josh Reynolds is the author of the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix, and the audio dramas Blackshields: The False War and Blackshields: The Red Fief. His Warhammer 40,000 work includes Lukas the Trickster, Fabius Bile: Primogenitor, Fabius Bile: Clonelord and Deathstorm, and the novellas Hunter’s Snare and Dante’s Canyon, along with the audio drama Master of the Hunt. He has written many stories set in the Age of Sigmar, including the novels Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows, Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden, Nagash: The Undying King, Soul Wars and Shadespire: The Mirrored City. His tales of the Warhammer old world include The Return of Nagash and The Lord of the End Times, and two Gotrek & Felix novels. He lives and works in Sheffield.

  Jordan Ellinger is the author of the Gotrek and Felix novella The Reckoning as well as numerous short stories for Black Library. A first place winner in the Writers of the Future contest and a Clarion West graduate, his work can be seen in numerous anthologies across the science fiction and fantasy genres. When he is not writing, he is a freelance editor.

  C L Werner’s Black Library credits include the Age of Sigmar novels Overlords of the Iron Dragon and The Tainted Heart, the novella ‘Scion of the Storm’ in Hammers of Sigmar, the Warhammer novels novel Deathblade, Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, Runefang and Brunner the Bounty Hunter, the Thanquol and Boneripper series and Time of Legends: The Black Plague series. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Marine Battles novel The Siege of Castellax. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer worlds.

  An extract from Shadespire: The Mirrored City.

  The attack, when it came, was not entirely unexpected. The bloodreavers had been shadowing Seguin Reynar and his men for days, their hunting ululations echoing through the ruins of Shadespire, setting the carrion birds to flight. He didn’t know why the cannibals were after them, in particular – there was easier meat to be had in the rubble-strewn alleyways – but he’d learned not to waste time worrying about such things.

  It didn’t matter why – it just mattered when and where.

  When turned out to be now, and where was a decrepit, dust-choked avenue beneath the hollow gazes of the statues that lined either side. The statues observed the massacre with silent detachment, hooded heads bowed over clasped hands. And it was a massacre. Five men against nearly twice that number of gore-locked savages had little chance. Hardened killers though they were, Reynar and his men could not match the sheer ferocity of their attackers. Thus, one by one they fell, until only two of their number remained. Reynar himself and the Ghurdish hillman Utrecht.

  ‘I told you we shouldn’t have bought a map from a man named Nechris,’ Utrecht growled as a barbed axe bit into the embossed face of his shield. ‘You’ve put us right in the soup this time, captain.’ He shoved his opponent back and plied his own axe to better effect, removing his attacker’s arm at the shoulder joint.

  ‘We’re here, aren’t we?’ Reynar snapped. ‘And stop calling me captain.’ He twisted aside as a crude blade chopped down at him. He saw an opening and lunged. His blade, proper Aqshian steel, sank easily into his opponent’s scarified flesh, releasing a torrent of blood. The reaver sagged with something that might have been a groan – or a laugh. Reynar lashed out with his boot and kicked the dying man off his blade. There were four bloodreavers left now. Bad odds, but better than before.

  ‘Captain you were, captain you’ll be,’ Utrecht said, flattening a reaver with a sweep of his shield. Born in the hinterlands of Ghur, Utrecht was head and hands taller than his opponents, and built thick. He was like a bear fighting wolves. His bare arms were marked by scars, both ritual and earned in battle. He wore a crude mail hauberk and a round helm decorated with the fangs of some beast he’d slain. His axe was a long-handled, single-bladed thing that would have taken most men two hands to properly wield. But Utrecht wasn’t most men. He boasted that he’d shed blood in three realms and ruled kingdoms in two of them. Sometimes, Reynar even believed him.

  Reynar was shorter than his companion, but no less deadly. He fought the way a miser spent money – carefully, and with an eye on getting back twice the value he put in. That was the Freeguild way. Never risk more than you could afford, and make them pay in blood. His sword slashed out in short, looping arcs. Aqshian steel held its edge longer than most and would cut bone the third time, or the twenty-third, as easily as it had the first. ‘We’re deserters, remember?’ he said, backing away from a hulking bloodreaver.

  The warrior bore slave markings beneath the scars. He grinned, displaying broken teeth, and hefted a crude sword, probably stolen from some previous victim. ‘Blood for the god of battle,’ he mumbled throug
h gnawed lips. ‘Skulls for his throne.’

  ‘Find another one,’ Reynar said. ‘I’m still using mine.’ He jerked aside as the bloodreaver’s blade swept down, shivering to fragments against the stones of the street. He staggered, off balance, and Reynar thrust his blade up through his opponent’s ribcage. The bloodreaver clawed at him, gurgling imprecations, and bore him backwards against the base of a statue. Reynar’s back spasmed as he struck the stone, his duardin-made hauberk doing little to protect him from the force of the impact. Cursing, he drove a fist into the warrior’s head, to no avail.

  The bloodreaver grinned at him as he dragged himself along Reynar’s blade, further impaling himself. ‘Blood and skulls,’ he croaked, scrabbling at Reynar’s throat. His grip was like iron, and Reynar found himself unable to breathe. Desperate now, his sword arm pinned to his chest, he fumbled for the hilt of his dagger.

  The world started to go black at the edges, like paper caught in a fire. His lungs strained. He saw death in his opponent’s eyes, and something else over his shoulder. A face – a woman? – watching from the other side of the street. She stood in a doorway, half-hidden in shadow, her eyes gleaming like black opals. He blinked, and she was gone.

  Finally his fingers scraped the pommel of his dagger. He snatched the thin blade from its sheath and stabbed it into the side of the bloodreaver’s neck, trying for an artery. Blood spurted, and the savage staggered back, dragging Reynar after him. Reynar twisted the knife, trying to find something vital. The bloodreaver gargled hymns to the Blood God as he sank back, his grip finally loosening enough for Reynar to free himself. He stepped away, breathing heavily, as his attacker slumped into the sand. Utrecht laughed.

  ‘Well done, captain.’

  Reynar glared at him. Utrecht had killed the rest of their foes while he’d been otherwise occupied. ‘If you were bored, you could have helped.’

  ‘What, and steal your kill? You’d never forgive me.’

  Reynar didn’t reply. He looked around. The rest of his band were dead, and no sense checking to make sure, the way the bloodreavers had hacked them apart. Kuzman, Dollac… even Hakharty. He paused, looking down at the last, his chest caved in by an axe blow, the hilt of his broken sword still in one hand.

  Hakharty had been the youngest, a drummer boy in the armies of Azyr, before Utrecht and Kuzman had filled his head with stories of fabulous plunder and taught him every sin they knew. They’d come a long way since then. Across three realms, and over the bodies of more men than Reynar had ever killed in Sigmar’s name. Hakharty had killed his share. He had been lethal with a blade. But not lethal enough.

  ‘He died well, for an Azyrite,’ Utrecht said.

  ‘There’s no good way to die, hillman.’ Reynar looked back towards the doorway where he’d seen the woman. Where he thought he’d seen the woman. She wasn’t there now, if she ever had been. One more phantom in a city of such. Shadespire had more than its share of ghosts. Overhead, something shrieked. He looked up.

  Carrion birds sat atop the statues and on the broken archways, watching them. One croaked, and the others picked up the call, singing a song as old as war itself. Long shadows stretched, sliding across the bone-strewn street and making it seem as if the statues were stirring. Reynar felt a chill and looked away.

  ‘Shame about Kuzman,’ Utrecht said. ‘The little Ghyranite was a good cook.’

  ‘He was a terrible cook.’

  ‘But he was willing,’ Utrecht grinned. ‘More than can be said about us.’

  ‘I’m in charge,’ Reynar said. ‘Man in charge doesn’t cook.’

  ‘I know your tricks, captain. You’re only in charge when it suits you.’

  Reynar glanced at him. ‘Then why follow me all the way across the desert?’

  ‘It was getting dull, fighting beastkin for Azyrite coin. No sport in it.’

  ‘And is this better?’

  ‘Much.’ Utrecht laughed.

  Howls sounded, somewhere nearby. More bloodreavers. Reynar sheathed his weapons. ‘Come on. Time to go. We get back to camp, grab what we can and go.’

  ‘Are you certain? We could stay and kill a few more, if you like.’

  ‘Stay or follow as it suits you, Utrecht. I’m not your captain anymore, remember?’ Reynar set off down the avenue, back towards their campsite, moving as quickly as he dared. There were more dangers in the ruins than just bloodreavers. Blood and death were in ready supply here, but so far there was a distinct paucity of the riches he’d been hoping for.

  He’d come to the ruins of Shadespire hoping to make his fortune. Though the city was no more than a hollow skeleton half buried in the desert, it was said that the treasures of antiquity remained untouched in its vaults and crypts. The wealth of untold empires, waiting for a clever man to find it.

  Reynar had been certain he was that man. It was starting to look as if fate had other ideas. So he did what he always did when his luck turned.

  He ran.

  Isengrim growled in frustration. He looked over the dead, irritated that none had fallen by his axe. ‘Too slow,’ he muttered. Then, more loudly, ‘You were too slow.’ He turned and looked at his followers, who edged back in a suitably chastised fashion. They had arrived in a howling tumult, expecting enemies to slay.

  Instead, they’d found only the dead and carrion birds. Eight of his warriors to claim three skulls. A bad bargain. ‘Weak,’ he said, looking down at the body of one of his men. ‘They were weak. You were slow.’ He spoke slowly, scanning their ranks, gauging their value. Then, without warning, he beheaded the closest of them – a pale-skinned northerner whose head rolled off his neck as blood gushed, filling the air with its sweet, hot stink. Nine dead now. He had fifteen left. That was enough.

  He wiped gore from his face and growled again. ‘Too slow. They’ve escaped.’

  ‘There is other prey,’ Morgash said. A heavy brute with ash-marked skin and teeth capped in brass, Morgash liked to think of himself as Isengrim’s champion. But in truth, he was a rival. Morgash thought the Blood God smiled on him. And maybe Khorne did. But that didn’t mean Isengrim wouldn’t take his head if it proved necessary.

  ‘Not this prey.’ He stooped and picked up a chunk of shadeglass, broken underfoot during the confrontation. Something pale flashed within its dark facets, and he felt a chill. For an instant, it had seemed as if someone were looking at him from within the glass.

  He’d heard the stories passed about the tribal fires by champion and slave alike. That there were dead souls trapped in the shards of black glass scattered across the city. That if you looked too closely, the Undying King could trap you as well, or drive you mad. He growled and tossed the shard aside. Such tales did not frighten him. He feared neither the dead nor their god.

  ‘Why? You bring us from our hunting grounds for what? Weak men.’ Morgash hawked and spat, showing what he thought of that. ‘We could have rejoined the joyous slaughter at the western palisades and taken skulls in Khorne’s name again. Instead, we stand here, following your fever dreams.’ Several warriors murmured in agreement.

  Isengrim studied Morgash, wondering if the day of days had come at last. The mantle of chieftain could only be bought in blood. He smiled thinly. ‘If they were weak, they wouldn’t have escaped. If they were weak, they wouldn’t have made it across the desert.’

  A murmur swept through his warriors at that. Morgash fell silent, but glowered at him. Isengrim turned away. ‘Urok,’ he said. Urok was his second-in-command, a rangy southron with grey in his tangled mane and beard. Urok was older than most – a survivor. Not a coward, for cowards didn’t survive. But careful.

  ‘My chieftain?’ Urok asked as he brusquely pushed past Morgash, earning himself an irritated glare. Isengrim watched the interaction, smiling widely.

  ‘Bring me Hthara,’ he said. ‘Bring me the witch. Now.’

  Urok turned, bellowing for the witch to be brought forward. They never went anywhere without her these days. One did not discard a god’s gifts.
Not unless they couldn’t keep up. Isengrim turned back to the dead, replaying the battle in his head. He could tell how it had gone from where the bodies had fallen and the tracks in the dust.

  He stepped forward, following one set of tracks in particular. He avoided imaginary blows and returned them in kind. The warrior he hunted was fast – but fought without flourish. His steps were like a weasel’s war dance. Quick, always in motion, but always going in the same direction. Calculated. Isengrim’s smile widened.

  Morgash was wrong. This prey was strong, though lacking in courage. His death would be a good death, however swiftly he ran from it. A hard death, full of screaming and blood. Such men did not die quietly. Of course, Khorne would not have sent him the witch if his prey were a weakling. From behind him sounded a clank of chains, and he turned.

  Hthara came unresisting. Brass chains connected to a collar of iron bound the woman’s hands and feet, and her robes were stiff and stained with old blood, their original hue lost. Ravaged sockets peered out unseeing from within a ragged hood. She claimed to have looked full upon Khorne in all his glory and plucked out her own eyes as penance and sacrifice both. But the red mists of the Blood God’s kingdom were still in her – insensate, but ready to be awoken at the call of the worthy.

  Isengrim was worthy. He knew this, because Hthara had sworn it was so, and she was too frightened of him to lie. He watched as Hthara’s keepers brought her forward and forced her to crouch before him. ‘Witch. Was my prey here?’ He asked the question knowing the answer, but his warriors would need convincing. They lacked his certainty.

  Hthara sniffed the air. ‘I will need a sacrifice,’ she croaked, pulling her cloak tight about her wasted form. ‘Blood and offal, to draw Khorne’s eye.’

  Isengrim nodded. ‘You shall have it.’ He paused. ‘Morgash.’

  Morgash blinked. ‘What?’

  Isengrim spun, axe looping out in a wide arc. Morgash parried the blow with his own crude blade but was rocked back on his heels. He wasted no time, hurling himself at his chieftain. Their dance was short, but bloody. Most of it was Morgash’s. He was too slow. Too eager. He’d thought himself blessed, but Isengrim had been chosen.