Gotrek & Felix- the Fourth Omnibus - Nathan Long

by Warhammer

  Gotrek grunted and let go of the chains. ‘And do you have a plan, manling?’

  Felix shrugged. ‘Not at the moment. No.’

  Aethenir raised his head. ‘I know where your weapons are,’ he said. ‘And your gold.’

  They both turned on him. ‘Where?’ they said, in unison.

  The high elf drew back at their attention. ‘Ah, that is to say, I know who has them. The corsair captain who took them. His name is Landryol Swiftwing. I overheard him say that he plans to sell your things to a collector in Karond Kar.’

  ‘What good does that do us?’ growled Gotrek.

  Aethenir shrugged. ‘Knowing his name, we might learn where his quarters are, and then…’ He paused, then looked around the dank, crowded cell again, and the stout iron door. ‘And then…’ He sighed and lowered his forehead back to his knees. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Landryol,’ rumbled Gotrek, sitting down again. ‘He will be the first to die when I take back my axe.’

  Suddenly Aethenir’s head jerked up again. ‘Asuryan! I forgot!’

  ‘What is it, high one?’ asked Felix, hoping against hope that the elf had just remembered some magic spell that would miraculously get them out of this situation.

  ‘The high sorceress,’ he said, turning to them. ‘She is here. I saw her as we were brought to this place!’

  ‘I saw her too,’ said Felix, remembering.

  ‘If she is here, the harp is here!’ said Aethenir. He turned to Felix. ‘Perhaps we could recover it.’

  ‘We’d be dead long before we reached her,’ said Gotrek. ‘There are foes without number between us,’ he murmured, his single eye far away.

  ‘Then we must avoid them!’ cried Aethenir. ‘All that matters is the harp. If we don’t take it back, Ulthuan is doomed!’

  Gotrek grimaced at the high elf’s shrill tone. ‘Good riddance,’ he rasped.

  Aethenir stood, angry, then staggered when his chains caught him as he tried to draw himself up to his full height. ‘Dwarf! Your stupidity amazes me. If the druchii destroy us, they will come for you next and, armed with the harp, they will crush your holds one by one until there is nothing left of your race but rotting corpses in buried ruins. You must promise me–’

  Gotrek swung his chained hands and knocked Aethenir’s legs out from under him, then clamped his fingers around the high elf’s throat. ‘A dwarf makes no promise he can’t keep, elf. I will seek the harp, but I will make no vow. My doom awaits me somewhere on this ark. If it finds me first, then the defenders of Ulthuan will have to fight their own battles for once.’

  He shoved the high elf away with an angry grunt. The prisoners around him were looking towards him, frightened by the violent outburst.

  ‘What of Max and Claudia?’ Felix asked, trying to calm things down again. ‘Do we try to save them? Or do we try only for the harp?’

  Aethenir coughed and sat up, massaging his throat and glaring at Gotrek. ‘We have no hope of reaching the harp without them. Their magic will help us immeasurably.’

  Felix shook his head. It all sounded convoluted and impossible. ‘So, let me see if I have it. If we escape the cell, we look for our weapons, then for Max and Claudia, then seek the harp and fight until we reach it or die trying. Yes?’

  Aethenir nodded.

  Gotrek shrugged. ‘If we escape the cell.’

  Felix nodded. Nice to have a plan.

  They all settled back to wait for an opportunity to escape to present itself.

  No such opportunity arose in the next few hours, and Felix drifted between consciousness and sleep, finding it almost impossible to distinguish between the two. The monotony of sitting there with nothing to do but breathe the foul wet air and wave away the flies was the same in either state. After a while Felix had to relieve himself and discovered that there was a narrow gutter that ran along the base of the wall. A thin stream of water trickled through it.

  He paused when he saw it, all the thirst that had tormented him in the boat coming back to him now more strongly than ever. He wanted a drink more than anything he had ever wanted in the world, and yet, it was water at the bottom of a piss gutter. It turned his stomach to think of drinking it. Still, if they were going to be ready to fight when the time came – if it ever did – he would need all his strength. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.

  He finished his business and let the water run on for a moment, then squatted down and reached a tentative hand towards the stream.

  ‘Don’t,’ murmured a voice beside him.

  Felix looked over. A middle-aged woman, horribly gaunt, lay on her side, looking up at him.

  ‘It’s salt,’ she said. ‘All the new ones make that mistake.’

  Felix withdrew his hand from the gutter and nodded to her gratefully. ‘Thank you.’ He sighed. Salt water. The druchii truly were as cruel as they were depicted.

  The woman closed her eyes and curled up again. ‘They’ll come with our food and water soon enough.’

  Felix nodded and sat back to wait.

  Another unguessable while later, there came voices and a rumble of heavy wheels from outside the door. Everyone looked up or woke up at this and crowded towards the raised bench that ran down the centre of the room, pushing and shoving to be close to it. Those too weak or too injured to move lay behind them, raising quivering hands and moaning to be brought forwards. Some didn’t move at all. Felix didn’t understand what it was all about, and stayed with Gotrek and Aethenir along the wall.

  A key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Four druchii guards, armed with drawn swords, filed in and stood to either side. After them came a whip-wielding overseer leading six strong-looking slaves. Two of them were dwarfs, one gnarled and greying, the other very young, who carried a huge metal cauldron between them, hung from chains hooked to a long metal pole that they bore on their broad shoulders. The other four slaves were human, and they split into pairs and walked down the length of the cell carrying torches and prodding any of the prisoners that didn’t move.

  Gotrek growled, deep in his throat. Felix looked around to see what the matter was and found the Slayer staring at the dwarfs.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ whispered Felix.

  ‘Dwarf slaves,’ rumbled Gotrek. ‘The most despicable creatures in the world. They are without honour.’

  Aethenir looked up at that. ‘Surely even a dwarf can’t blame someone for being captured by slavers.’ He smiled sadly. ‘We ourselves are guilty of that.’

  ‘A dwarf should die before capture,’ Gotrek snarled. ‘And no true dwarf should live as a slave. He should kill himself first.’

  He spat, then sat with his knees up, glaring at the dwarfs, his single eye glittering balefully. Felix decided it was wisest to keep silent on the subject, and watched them too.

  The dwarfs carried the cauldron to the raised bench and then tipped it so that the contents spilled into it. Felix recoiled as he realised what was happening. The bench was in reality a food trough. They were being slopped, like pigs.

  A thin grey gruel flowed down the channel and the prisoners scooped at it with their hands as it passed, daubing it into their mouths and gulping it down. Even proud Euler and his crewmen mucked in with the rest, elbowing weaker men and women out of the way. It didn’t seem enough to feed them all, and it wasn’t. When the dwarfs had emptied the first pot, they went out and carried in a second pot and spilled that down the trough as well.

  Felix knew that there would come a time when he would be fighting for a mouthful of the muck just like all the others, but just now it turned his stomach and he stayed where he was. Gotrek and Aethenir seemed similarly disinclined to try it.

  As the dwarf slaves finished pouring the slop into the trough, the human slaves continued their examination of the prisoners. If a prisoner didn’t respond to their prodding, they kicked him. If there was still no response, they grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him to the door.

  Felix’s heart leapt when he saw this. Here was the way t
o escape! All they had to do was play dead and they would be taken out of the cell! His heart sank again when he saw the overseer take out a curved dagger and cut the throat of every prisoner the slaves brought to him, before allowing them to take the body out the door. So, they had thought of that one. He sighed.

  The dwarf slaves went out again and returned with a third cauldron on their shoulders, but this one they did not immediately pour. Instead they waited at the end of the trough, and Felix took the time to study them. Both were strong, and both had their hair cropped to patchy stubble. They had beards too, but only just. These had also been trimmed to little more than an inch all over. Not since poor Leatherbeard had Felix seen more naked-looking dwarfs. They wore breeches and filthy aprons, but no shirts or shoes, and their eyes were as dead and emotionless as those of zombies.

  After a moment, the overseer cracked the whip over his head. ‘Hurry up, you filthy cattle!’ he cried in Reikspiel. ‘I’ve twelve more cells to feed!’ The prisoners at the trough flinched and scooped faster.

  Half a minute later, the overseer decided he had waited long enough and snapped his fingers. The two dwarf slaves lifted the last cauldron and tipped it into the trough. This time it was water that rushed down the trough, and the prisoners stuck their faces down into it and guzzled greedily.

  Felix’s thirst got the better of him and he shoved forwards. He couldn’t yet imagine eating the food, but he needed water desperately. Gotrek and Aethenir joined him, and they squeezed to the trough. Other prisoners whined and complained when he shouldered past them, but he was too thirsty to care. He stuck his head down in the trough and sucked at the thin current of water that ran down the channel. He had never tasted anything so good in his life. Gotrek and Aethenir slurped on either side of him. They sounded like pigs. It didn’t matter. Water was all that mattered.

  With the last cauldron empty and the last corpse dragged from the cell, the slaves and the overseer went back out through the door, followed by the guards with drawn swords. Then the door swung shut with a clang, and Felix heard the key turn in the lock.

  Gotrek raised his head from the trough and glared at the door, and Felix wondered if he was thinking about how difficult it might be to break through, or how many of the guards he could kill before they raised the alarm.

  ‘Filth!’ barked Gotrek. ‘Kissers of pale arses. Your ancestors disown you.’

  After the prisoners had drunk and licked the trough clean and settled back to their places, Felix asked the woman who had told him about the salt water how often they were fed.

  ‘Twice a day,’ she mumbled. ‘Leastways, it might be. No telling the days now.’

  Felix thanked her and turned to his companions. ‘We have to talk to the slaves,’ he said.

  ‘The dwarfs? Never,’ growled Gotrek.

  ‘The dwarfs or the humans,’ Felix insisted. ‘They’re our only way of finding out what’s going on beyond the door. They might be able to tell us where the corsair captain lives. Where Max and Fraulein Pallenberger are.’

  ‘And where the Harp of Ruin is,’ said Aethenir.

  ‘I’d sooner kiss a troll,’ sneered Gotrek.

  Felix sighed. ‘Well, I’ll talk to them.’

  A few hours later, Felix began to regret not eating. It wasn’t that the cell did anything to arouse the appetite. The reek of unwashed bodies and human waste was nauseating, the cold wet air made him shiver and sweat at the same time, and the constant pestering of the flies was enough to drive him mad. He felt fevered and close to vomiting, yet his stomach wouldn’t be denied. He tried to remember the last time he had eaten. It had been before the skaven had captured them. Had that been two days ago? Three days ago? His limbs trembled with weakness just sitting there. He snapped awake several times, never realising that he had fallen asleep.

  At last, several hours after Felix had given up hope of the overseer ever coming again, the sound of rumbling wheels woke the prisoners and they rushed to the trough. This time Felix, Gotrek and Aethenir joined them. Felix fought forwards to be the closest to the food slaves. It wasn’t easy. Weak as he was, he was stronger than the other prisoners, whose confinement and poor diet had wasted them away, but there were more of them and they were just as desperate as he – a scrabbling mass of frenzied skeletons. Felix was elbowed in the face and kneed in the ribs as he shoved closer. They squirmed around him and under him like sickly wolves.

  Then suddenly, his path was cleared. A woman with mottled bruises all over her naked arms and legs was plucked out of his way. A man in the uniform of the Marienburg coastal patrol was dragged back. Felix looked around. Gotrek had entered the fray, picking prisoners up and putting them firmly behind him. The Slayer didn’t look at Felix, but he seemed to be making sure that Felix would get an opportunity to talk to the slaves. Felix said nothing. Speaking of it might anger Gotrek and make him change his mind.

  With the Slayer‘s help he bellied up to the trough right at the end, closest to the door, harvesting a crop of dirty looks for his pains. Gotrek and Aethenir were right next to him. Euler and his crewmen, the strongest men on the left side of the pen, were directly across from him.

  Euler smiled wickedly at him over the trough. ‘Decided to join us for dinner this time, have you?’

  Felix opened his mouth to speak, but just then the key turned in the lock and the guard and the overseer filed in, followed by the human and dwarf slaves.

  He waited anxiously as the slaves carried the first cauldron to the trough, its chains creaking as it swung from the pole they shouldered. To his relief, the slaves were the same dwarfs as last time. They stepped forwards and tipped the contents of the cauldron into the trough. Felix paused as he reached down to scoop up his first mouthful. Hungry as he was, he almost backed away.

  It was thin oat gruel, more water than meal, but had that been its only sin, Felix would have dug in with a will. Unfortunately, it was rotten as well, made with mouldy grain, and a sweet reek of mildew rose from it. In addition, Felix could see fat weevils and rat droppings floating in the gruel.

  Felix heard Aethenir retch, but Gotrek began shovelling the stuff into his mouth with both hands. Felix did his best to follow his example, though it was an act of will to put it in his mouth and he wished he could have kept it from touching his tongue. More than once he had to fight down the urge to vomit.

  He did not attempt to communicate until the dwarfs had poured the second cauldron and returned to wait by the trough with the cauldron of water. Felix shot a quick look at the overseer, who prowled impatiently near the door as he had before, then, as he bent down and pretended to scrape at the last smears of the porridge in the bottom of the trough, he spoke in low tones.

  ‘My friends, we need your help. The fate of your homelands and holds hangs in the balance. We seek the location of the quarters of Corsair Captain Landryol Swiftwing.’ Felix risked a glance up at the slaves. They were staring ahead as if they hadn’t heard. He looked down again and continued. ‘And also where two recently captured human wizards are being held – a man and a girl. If you have any fondness for your old lands, I beg you, bring us this information and–’

  A pain like liquid fire exploded across Felix’s back and he reared up, crying out.

  The overseer was drawing back his whip for another strike. ‘No talking, vermin! I’ll have your tongue!’

  The prisoners scattered away from Felix like terrified rats. Euler and his men stared at him and backed away.

  The overseer lashed out again. Felix put up a hand, but the tip of the whip licked past it and striped his shoulder and neck. The pain made his eyes water, and he instinctively reached out to grab the leather strand and yank it from its wielder’s hand.

  Gotrek shouldered him hard and he missed.

  The druchii laughed. ‘That’s it, human dog. Take a lesson from the rock-eater. Fight the lash and die. Obey and live.’ He cracked the whip over their heads. ‘Now back! You’ve had your fill. For today and tomorrow. Neither of you will eat fo
r the next two feedings.’

  Felix clenched his fists with pain and rage, but forced himself to lower his head and turn away from the trough. Gotrek and Aethenir followed him. As they sat, Felix cast another glance at the cauldron slaves. Neither of them had shown any reaction when Felix had been whipped, and they remained stone-faced now, staring straight ahead as they tipped the cauldron full of water into the trough. Had they heard? Had they understood? Did they care? Would they do anything? Or were they too scared or too dulled by their years of captivity to try?

  The two dwarfs emptied the cauldron, then turned to the door without a backwards glance. Felix waited until the overseer and guards had followed them out and locked the doors behind them, then let out a long-held breath.

  From across the room came a cackling laugh. ‘Serves you right, Jaeger! What were you playing at, you fool?’

  Felix looked over and saw Euler and his men grinning savagely at them. He grunted and turned away, probing gently at the whip cut on his neck. ‘I hope that was worth it.’

  Aethenir shook his head. ‘The slaves will do nothing. They are too cowed. They have lived too long under the lash.’

  ‘And we will have to wait two feedings to learn one way or the other,’ said Felix bitterly. He looked at the high elf. ‘At least you will get to eat tomorrow.’

  Aethenir made a face. ‘A debatable pleasure,’ he said.

  The Slayer shrugged and motioned for them to return to the trough. ‘Water is more important than food. Drink.’

  Felix wondered how he was going to survive without eating again for a full day. He had managed to choke down only a few handfuls of the miserable porridge, and he was hungry again almost immediately after he had finished it. The thirst was excruciating as well. His head throbbed with it, the pain a dull counterpoint to the singing agony of his whip cuts, which prevented him from leaning against the wall or lying on his back.

  When he heard the rumble of wheels again he almost couldn’t bear it. He fought the urge to charge the trough and get as much gruel down his throat as he could before they pulled him away. But he couldn’t do that. If they wanted to have any hope of getting information from the slaves, he had to make the overseer forget he existed.