by Warhammer
She looked up at him, then away again, nodding. ‘I… I understand. Only…’ She paused, looking as if she was going to continue speaking, but then just turned back the way they had come. ‘We should get back to the others.’
She started into the bushes without a look back. Felix looked after her for a moment, wanting to say something to make her feel better, but still not knowing what that would be. He sighed and started after her.
After a while of walking together in silence he shook his head and laughed. ‘I still don’t understand how you made that shot. You loosed the arrow before the beast appeared.’
‘It was walking in the stream,’ she said, her voice dull. ‘I shot when I saw the ripples of its steps. I knew it would follow behind them.’
By the time Felix and Kat made their way back to the others, the wind had become stronger and the sleet had turned to snow – great fat flakes that whirled before the gale to stick to their clothes and melt into the mud.
They found Ilgner and his knights and the Slayers tending to their wounds in the midst of the bodies of the fallen beastmen.
‘Excellent news,’ said the general when Felix told him the runners were dead. ‘Then we may proceed.’ He had a bloody gash across his nose and cheeks that one of his knights was stitching up with needle and thread.
The sewing knight looked uneasily at the sky. ‘This doesn’t look like letting up, my lord,’ he said. ‘We could be in for a bad storm.’
Ilgner shrugged, seemingly entirely unaffected by the terrible cut on his face. ‘We’re stuck in it no matter if we go forwards or back, so… onwards.’
As the party hurried to finish binding their wounds, Felix noticed Ortwin off to one side, kneeling in the mud beside one of the beastmen, his head bowed mournfully.
Felix crossed to him. ‘Everything all right, Ortwin?’ he asked. ‘Did you not find this battle as glorious as the others?’
Ortwin raised his head. There were tears in his eyes. ‘It isn’t that, Herr Jaeger,’ he said. ‘It is this.’ He indicated the dead beastman he knelt beside.
Felix blinked in surprise as he realised that the rusty, dented breastplate that the monster wore strapped around its powerful furred torso was emblazoned with the heraldry of the Order of the Fiery Heart.
NINE
‘I fear we have reached the end of our quest, Herr Jaeger,’ said Ortwin with a break in his voice. ‘I fear we have discovered the fate of Sir Teobalt’s brother templars.’
Felix sighed, his shoulders slumping. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t expected this all along – it had almost been inevitable that they would find that the templars had been killed by the beastmen. Still it was one thing to expect a tragedy, and another to learn that it had actually occurred. The tiny spark of foolish hope he had carried with him from Altdorf guttered and went out. He might win Karaghul now, for he had done what Teobalt had asked of him, but there would be no joy in it.
‘I’m sorry, Ortwin. Truly. At least we know they died fighting bravely,’ he said, noting the battered state of the stolen breastplate. To his mind that was poor compensation, but it seemed to comfort Ortwin.
The young squire nodded and said, ‘Aye. They would have wished for no better end than to die fighting the enemies of mankind. May Sigmar welcome them to his halls.’
Felix nodded and stood a moment in silence, then turned and left the boy to his prayers.
Three of Ilgner’s knights had to be left behind. One had been crushed to death by a beastman’s mace, his armour so crumpled that he could not be removed from it. Another had a cracked skull and could not see straight, while the third had a shattered pelvis and could not walk or sit on a horse, let alone fight. Ilgner left the two wounded men with the corpse and some food and a fire, and said they would come back for them once they had seen what there was to see.
It seemed a polite abandonment to Felix, and he didn’t doubt that the knights knew it. Even if Ilgner’s party met no mishap while scouting the herd, it might be days before they returned, and both men were in need of immediate attention. Indeed, had Ilgner turned around and returned to Stangenschloss right then, it would still have been unlikely that the wounded knights would have survived the journey. Felix was impressed by how calmly the men accepted their fates, and it seemed the Slayers were too.
Argrin left them his keg of ale – which was admittedly nearly empty, but still had enough for a few drinks each – and Rodi said he would pray to Grimnir for them.
He shook his head as the rest of the party got underway. ‘I hope when it comes, my doom is clean,’ he said. ‘Starving to death is no way to die.’
‘Maybe some more beastmen will come,’ said Snorri.
‘Aye,’ said Argrin. ‘That would be best.’
‘Dying well no matter the circumstance – that is what is best.’ said Gotrek. ‘No one gets to choose their doom, only how they will face it.’
The other Slayers nodded gravely at this. Even Rodi had no comment to make.
The party wasn’t long on its march before the snow started sticking, turning the muddy track into dirty slush, and mantling the shoulders of the forest’s green pines with epaulets of white. It fell so thickly and fiercely now that Felix found it impossible to see more than a few steps ahead, and he huddled inside his old red cloak and wished it had a hood. Fortunately, the path of the herd remained as easy to follow as ever – a raw gash of severed stumps that wound up and down wooded hillsides and between towering boulders through which the wind howled and the snow danced.
An hour on and the snow was covering even the muddy trail. An hour after that, in an open valley of scattered pines between high crags, Kat found hoof prints in the snow – a very different thing than finding snow in hoof prints. It meant that the herd had passed by so recently that the swiftly falling flakes had not yet had time to cover them.
‘They are close, my lord,’ she said to the general. ‘Only minutes ahead.’
‘Go find them and report back,’ said Ilgner. ‘We will follow slowly.’
Kat saluted and hurried off into the snow, disappearing almost instantly behind the slashing curtain of white. Felix shivered to see her going off into such danger, and glared at Ilgner for sending her on so blithely. Then he snorted angrily at himself. It was her job after all, and he had seen her do it before without worrying for her. Foolish how an unexpected spark and an unintended kiss had made him suddenly protective of her.
His mind continued to churn with thoughts of her. Damn the girl, why had she kissed him like that? The wildness of it! The sweet hunger of it! The urgent strength of her arms as she grappled herself to him! It made him dizzy just thinking about it.
He tried to calm himself. The reasons why being with her would be a bad idea were still as valid as they had been before, but now he found himself hunting for arguments that would poke holes in them. She wasn’t that much younger than him, was she? And maybe it wasn’t necessary that he love her. Perhaps she didn’t love him. Perhaps all she wanted was a few nights together while they continued on the trail of the beasts.
He looked around at Ilgner and his knights, and Ortwin and the Slayers. No. That wouldn’t be such a good idea. He didn’t want a repeat of the embarrassment he and Claudia had endured on board the Pride of Skintstaad. Whatever he decided, he would have to wait until they got back to civilisation. Perhaps by then his fever for the girl would have cooled somewhat and he would be able to think rationally again.
He breathed a sigh of relief and returned his attention to their surroundings, pleased to have defused his trouble, at least for now.
The knights and the Slayers were following the beastmen’s trail at a walk, not wanting to accidentally stumble into the tail of the herd. Here in this more open area, with only a few twisted pines dotting the valley floor, the true breadth of the herd’s trail could be seen at last. The swathe of snow blackened by their passage was more than a hundred paces wide, and had been churned up by thousands of hooves. It was an intimidating sight
.
Felix looked over to Ortwin to see how he was doing. He was worried about him. The boy had been praying constantly since Felix had left him to it back at the site of the fight with the foragers. Not only that, before they had resumed their hunt, Ortwin had stripped the breastplate with the insignia of the Order of the Fiery Heart from the dead beastman, and now wore it instead of his own.
‘All right, Ortwin?’ Felix asked.
‘Yes, Herr Jaeger,’ said Ortwin, breaking off his verses. ‘Perfectly all right, thank you.’
‘Not blaming yourself for the death of the templars or anything like that are you?’
‘No, sir,’ said Ortwin. ‘It was the beastmen who slew them. And the order shall have its vengeance upon them, sir.’
‘Of course they will,’ said Felix. ‘Of course they will.’
Less than an hour later, just as the grey day was darkening to a murky charcoal twilight, Kat’s little bundled figure trotted out of the snow and waved them down. Felix and Gotrek and the others gathered around as she stood at Ilgner’s stirrup to make her report. Her eyes were wide and fearful.
‘I found them,’ she said.
‘And?’ asked Ilgner, when she didn’t go on.
‘My lord, there are thousands of them. Thousands. I could not guess how many. I ran along the side of them for a quarter of an hour and still did not see the front of the herd. It wound away through the hills for… forever.’
‘And did you see any champions among them? Any fiends of the Wastes?’ Ilgner asked.
Kat shook her head. ‘I didn’t, my lord, but I did not reach the head, so did not see the leaders.’
Ilgner nodded, thinking, then sighed. ‘There’s no help for it. I must see them. I must know what we face.’ He looked to Kat again. ‘Can you bring us to the front of their line undetected?’
‘I believe so, my lord,’ said Kat after a moment. ‘They are making their way over the hills by the broadest valleys. It takes them out of their way a bit. I think I may find a straighter line through smaller passes and get ahead of them, but it will be dangerous. They will have scouts and outriders moving before them and beside them. In this weather we won’t know they are near us until they are on top of us.’
‘Still we must risk it,’ said Ilgner. ‘It is that or risk doom for all the towns south of Stangenschloss.’ He waved a gauntleted hand. ‘Lead on, Kat. Lead on.’
And so they followed Kat’s footprints up into the hills through narrow valleys and tree-choked canyons, all white and soft with snow that was now up to Felix’s knees. It was hard slogging, and though the wind bit at his nose and cheeks, sweat was running down his back and ribs. The snow dragged at their legs and made it hard for them to judge their footing. More than once Felix slipped and fell and had to accept Gotrek’s hand to stand again.
By the time they had reached the top of the hills, the snow had eased off somewhat, though the wind did not. It blasted straight over the crest, driving the flakes into their faces so hard that they felt more like sand than snow.
Rodi looked up as ragged clouds streamed across the sky, shredding like carded wool and revealing the sickly green light of Morrslieb behind them.
‘Be easier to see them now,’ he said.
‘And easier for them to see us,’ said Felix unhappily. Thousands of beastmen, Kat had said. A herd that went on forever. It seemed just the sort of doom Gotrek would be unable to resist – leagues from nowhere, in knee-deep snow, so that even if Felix wasn’t killed by the beastmen who killed the Slayer, he would likely die from exposure before he made it back to civilisation. Wonderful.
They tucked their heads and started down the other side of the hill, and for another hour continued to go up and down smaller hills and in and out of wooded valleys until at last, just as it was becoming full dark, Gotrek lifted his head and inhaled.
‘They’re close,’ he said. ‘I can smell them.’
‘No,’ said Snorri, waving a hand behind him. ‘That was Snorri. Sorry.’
‘Unless you ate a wet fur coat,’ said Rodi, ‘it isn’t just you. I smell them too.’
Just then Kat came back, appearing out of the trees to their left like a white ghost. ‘They’re coming,’ she said, panting a bit. ‘Down the length of the next valley.’ She pointed back behind her. ‘There is a stand of trees on the other side of this ridge. You may spy on them from there without being seen, my lord.’
‘Excellent,’ said Ilgner. ‘Good work, Kat. Now we shall see what we shall see.’
They heard them before they saw them.
It was a quarter of an hour later. Felix was hunkered down at the edge of a pine wood that stretched down from the crest of the low hill behind them. He gazed with the others into a wide valley of jutting boulders and sparse, new-growth pine as the wind tore at his cloak and the steady snow slanted down ceaselessly from the charcoal sky and piled on his shoulders. It was full night now, but the white of the snow that blanketed the valley and the occasional light of Morrslieb piercing the torn and scudding clouds gave the scene the dim, colourless phosphorescence of a cave mushroom.
Despite his cloak, Felix was aching from the cold. His hands were stiff with it, and his face raw with it. Kat’s hat was pulled down so low, and her scarf so high, that only her eyes were visible, flicking up and down the valley anxiously while Ilgner and the knights shuffled and stamped their feet to keep warm. Ortwin shivered, his teeth chattering as he continued his ceaseless praying. Only the Slayers didn’t seem to mind the cold. They squatted there shirtless, their eyebrows, beards and moustaches dusted with snow and crusted with ice, and didn’t even shiver.
‘Snorri forgets why we’re here,’ said Snorri after a while.
‘Beastmen, Nosebiter,’ said Gotrek. ‘We hunt beastmen.’
‘Ah,’ said Snorri. ‘Now Snorri remembers. Did Snorri ever tell you about the time he fought beastmen with his friends Gotrek and Felix?’
Gotrek grunted, but said nothing.
Then it came – a distant chanting brought on the wind, the sound of a thousand savage voices raised in unison.
Everyone looked up at once, then turned towards the north end of the valley. There was nothing to see yet, but the noise grew steadily louder, and was soon joined by a steady rumble that they could feel through the ground. The vibration was slow and rhythmic, like that of marching feet, but Felix knew the beasts didn’t march – they shambled along in a disorganised mob – so what was it? The chanting kept time with the thudding rhythm – a single phrase, repeated over and over in the beasts’ crude tongue, a vile gargle of harsh syllables and guttural grunts. And layered over it all were louder noises – whip cracks and roaring, wailing and smashing, and sounds of titanic tearing and snapping.
‘What are they doing?’ Felix wondered aloud.
No one had an answer for him.
Then, after minutes of staring, with the snow and the moonlight playing tricks on his eyes and making him see all sorts of things in the swirling flurries, Felix blinked and shook his head, for it seemed to him that the white distance was glowing yellow, like a candle set inside a porcelain bowl.
When he looked again the glow was brighter, and he knew it wasn’t a trick of the eye.
‘They’re here,’ whispered Kat.
Soon the silhouettes of young pines could be seen against the yellow light, and the snow flakes danced and glowed before it like fireflies, while the chanting and the thumping got louder, as did the syncopation of thuds and roars and cracks.
It seemed to take forever for the glow to get closer, and Felix wondered why. He knew from experience that beastmen could travel very quickly through the woods when they wanted to, but this herd seemed to be moving at a crawl. Even dwarfs marched faster.
Then, as Felix and the rest stared, one of the silhouetted trees shivered and thrashed like it was in a cyclone, then slowly toppled, accompanied by a horrendous splintering crash. Another tree fell the same way a moment later, and then, after a pause, another. It was as if s
ome gigantic foot was crushing them to the earth.
Felix looked around at the others, his heart racing.
Ilgner’s knights were wide-eyed and staring. Kat was shrinking back like a rabbit. The Slayers were grinning with savage anticipation. Ortwin was still praying, his eyes closed.
‘By all that’s holy,’ said Ilgner. ‘What can flatten a tree like that?’
Felix looked back to the valley. The yellow light was brighter still, and had a shape now – long and sinuous, like some impossibly large glow-worm inching through the trees. The end of it faded into the snow-shrouded distance. It might have gone on forever.
More trees fell as the light crept ever closer. Felix began to see individual torches, and monstrous shadows moving around them, and now he could hear axes at work, which was almost a relief – for it was a much more mundane explanation for the toppling trees than the mad phantasms that had welled up unbidden in his mind.
‘’Ware the scouts,’ said Kat.
Felix and the others looked where she pointed. Ahead of the crawling glow, dark shapes moved through the slender pines. Huge hunched shadows with giant axes and clubs in their hands, wading ponderously through the snowdrifts and looking all around them. Felix crouched lower instinctively as he saw them, but they continued on.
Then, finally, as more trees snapped and fell, through the swirling white veil of the snow came the column itself, and all Felix could do was stare.
First came the ungors, all carrying aloft burning brands to light the way. Just behind them lumbered a vanguard of huge, horn-headed gors, all in armour and carrying terrible weapons, which they raised over their heads and shook in time to the incessant chanting. There were hundreds of them, striding forwards in one ragged rank that stretched from just below Ilgner’s position across to the far side of the valley for as far as Felix could see.
