by Warhammer
Her eyes went wide with shock as the thing that had been Ilgner rose and advanced on her. ‘Oh no, my lord,’ she wept. ‘Not you. Not you!’
Felix reached the crest of the hill and charged the general, sword high, but Gotrek was there first, his axe a blur. Ilgner’s wolf-like head dropped from his shoulders in a shower of blood and thudded to the snowy ground between Kat’s legs.
Felix groaned with misery. If the knights had only stayed low like Kat and the Slayers, the fatal blue light would have flashed over their heads. ‘The poor man,’ he mumbled.
‘No time for pity, manling,’ said Gotrek, as a beast-knight charged him. ‘Defend yourself.’
Felix turned just in time to take the sword of one of the changed knights on Karaghul’s edge. Felix’s arm stung as the force of the blow staggered him back. The thing’s muscles had burst its armour and the sword looked like a plaything in its ham-hock hands. Behind it, he could see Snorri, Rodi and Argrin battling armoured monsters and slavering hell-horses in a mad scrum.
Felix slashed back at his opponent, cutting through the furred hide of its leg. It howled and attacked again.
Beside him, Kat chopped at it with her axes, weeping as she did. ‘I know them,’ she sobbed. ‘I know them all.’
Felix ran the changed knight through and stole a glance down the hill as it fell.
Through the ever-swirling snow he could see that the beast-shaman and the war-leader had turned away from them as if they were of no more concern, and the giant herdstone was on the move again, as was the herd that followed behind it. Unfortunately, a dozen or so of the blue-painted honour guard had detached themselves from the rest, and were wading through the snow in their direction. Of Ortwin he could see no sign.
He turned back just as a horse with a mouth like an Arabyan crocodile lunged and snapped at him. He stumbled aside and the thing shouldered him to the ground.
‘Gotrek,’ gasped Felix, trying to recover his breath. ‘More coming.’
‘I see them, manling,’ said Gotrek.
‘We have to get away!’ said Kat. ‘We have to warn the fort! We have to warn the villages!’
‘Aye,’ said Felix. He lurched up and faced the horse as it turned and charged again. He dodged away as it kicked at him with its forelegs, then darted in again and gored it in the belly. Kat cut the hamstrings of its back legs with her axes. It collapsed to the ground, screaming, still sounding much too much like a horse. Felix shivered with revulsion.
He and Kat looked around. The melee was over. The Slayers stood shoulder-deep in a ring of dead horses and knights, but the blue-painted beastmen were halfway up the hill.
‘Snorri has never killed a horse before,’ said Snorri, sounding sad.
‘Those weren’t horses,’ said Argrin.
‘Now let’s get the real beasts,’ said Rodi, striding eagerly towards the edge of the hill.
‘No,’ said Gotrek grimly. ‘This doom must be deferred.’
The two young Slayers turned on him, staring.
‘Are you mad, Gurnisson?’ asked Rodi.
‘This is a great doom,’ said Argrin.
Felix looked down the hill. The blue-daubed beastmen were closing fast.
‘It is a selfish doom,’ said Gotrek. ‘If we take it, the fort will not be warned. Thousands will die.’
Rodi snorted. ‘A doom is a doom.’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘But a great doom makes a difference.’
‘We’re all doomed if we don’t go now,’ said Felix, exasperated. This was not the time to be arguing the finer points of Slayer doctrine.
‘We’re doomed whether we go or stay,’ said Rodi. ‘The beasts are too fast. We might as well fight now as later.’
‘We have to try,’ said Kat. ‘Please! Let’s go!’
‘There is one great doom here,’ said Argrin solemnly. ‘For the one who stays behind.’
‘I’ll stay!’ said Rodi.
‘No,’ said Snorri. ‘Snorri will stay.’
‘There’s no time for this!’ said Felix.
‘Let the Slayer who suggested it stay,’ said Gotrek. He nodded to Argrin approvingly. ‘May Grimnir welcome you to his halls.’
Snorri shrugged. ‘That seems fair to Snorri.’
Rodi looked about to burst, but then cursed and spat. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But I will have the rear guard.’ He bowed to Argrin. ‘Die well, Argrin Crownforger.’
Argrin bowed back. ‘We shall drink together at Grimnir’s table.’
‘Goodbye, Argrin,’ said Snorri.
‘Hurry!’ said Kat.
Gotrek, Snorri and Rodi started into the pines without another look back as Argrin stepped to the edge of the hill and readied his steel-headed warhammer.
‘Come on, you cow-faced dung piles!’ he roared. ‘I’ll cut you into chops and cook you on Grungni’s forge!’
Felix and Kat turned away and hurried after the Slayers as they heard the beastmen bellow in response. Felix was afraid it was all for naught. Argrin wouldn’t hold the beastmen for long, and even in the dark and through the whirling flakes, they would have little trouble following the party’s footprints in the snow. They were only postponing the end.
‘We’re not going to be fast enough,’ he said when he and Kat caught up to the Slayers. ‘They’ll follow our footsteps and catch us.’
‘Then another will stay behind to stop them,’ said Gotrek. ‘Until we have all met our doom.’
‘If we can reach the deepest woods it might be possible to lose them,’ said Kat. ‘There are places where the snow never reaches the–’
She was cut off by the roaring of beasts and the clash of steel on steel, rising out of the wail of the wind in the trees.
Rodi paused and turned, but Gotrek shoved him on.
‘Keep moving,’ he growled.
They hurried up the hill through the darkness, silent and grim, following the footsteps they had made on the way here, and listening to the snatches of the fight that the wind brought them – screams and curses, clashes and thuds – and then, much too quickly, the triumphant howl of the beastmen.
The sound brought a lump to Felix’s throat. He had barely known Argrin, but the young Slayer had made a great sacrifice for them, and the fact that it had been very likely worthless just made it all the sadder.
‘Lucky bastard,’ snarled Rodi, with a rasp of emotion in his voice.
‘Snorri is jealous,’ said Snorri.
As they reached the top of the ridge and started down the other side, Felix strained his ears behind him. He could hear nothing. The wailing wind covered everything. Had the beastmen given up? Had they decided it was too much bother to give chase, and gone back to the herd? It was impossible to know.
The pines were thicker on this side of the hill, and the darkness beneath them was almost complete. Only the white of the snow gave some light, but not nearly enough. Felix followed Gotrek more by sound than sight. The crackle of branches and the slap of a twig against his cheek told him they were entering another tangle of brush before his eyes did. Felix would have loved to light a torch, but light would be their doom.
Six steps into the thicket, Kat hissed. ‘Stop! Turn left!’
Gotrek obligingly turned left, and Felix followed, Kat, Rodi and Snorri crunching in behind him. The bracken grew even thicker here, and the faint light faded entirely. They might have been in a cave.
‘Some trouble?’ Gotrek asked.
‘No,’ Kat said. ‘But deeper in the bracken, they might not see we’ve turned off our old path.’
‘Ah,’ said Gotrek. ‘Smart.’
For a few minutes it seemed that the ruse had worked. As they broke out of the brush and continued along the steep shoulder of the hill they heard nothing behind them but the wind. It felt as if they might be entirely alone in the wood.
But then, as Felix followed Gotrek’s steps through densely packed trees, feeling his way like a blind man, there was a distant crashing behind them, as of something big wading thr
ough bracken, just audible above the moan of the trees.
‘Found us again,’ called Rodi from the back.
Gotrek cursed and quickened his pace. Felix tried to do the same, flinching at the darkness that loomed up at him with every step. He could hear Kat picking up the pace behind him.
‘Find an open space, Gurnisson,’ Rodi called again. ‘I’ll need some room to swing my axe.’
They sped on, Felix stubbing his fingers and barking his knuckles on the trunks of trees he couldn’t see, then pushing past. He shivered at the thought of fighting beastmen in the pitch dark. It would be short at least. And he wouldn’t see it coming.
A guttural howl echoed from behind them, the baying of a beast that has caught the scent. Felix looked back – a stupid thing to do, since he could no more see behind him than in front. He turned back, and ran smack into a tree, cracking his head on some knot of wood. The world spun around him and he staggered, hissing in pain, then caught himself and felt his way around the tree one-handed as he massaged his temple with the other. There was blood, and a lump was rising. Touching it made his legs go wobbly and he had to steady himself again, fighting nausea.
He started on again, but after a few steps he realised he wasn’t hearing Gotrek ahead of him any more. He paused. The noise of the others was off to his left, only a few feet. He edged in that direction, but ran into dense undergrowth. There was no way through. For an instant he thought about working his way back to where he had left the trail, but he didn’t dare. The beastmen were in that direction. He’d have to keep going and angle back after the brush thinned.
‘Felix?’ came Kat’s voice.
‘Coming,’ he called over the wind. ‘Sorry.’
He pushed on faster, trying to go straight, but having to go out wider and wider to his right around the tangled brush. He fought for balance as the angle of the hill got steeper under his feet.
Then behind him he heard the thud of hooves and a garble of inhuman voices.
‘Hurry, Felix,’ Kat hissed. ‘They’re coming!’
‘Move, girl!’ shouted Rodi.
Felix shoved at the brush but it wouldn’t give. He sidestepped desperately, trying to find a way through. His ankle banged into something hard and immovable on the ground. He fell sideways, flailing with his arms for purchase. His fingers caught at twigs but they snapped, and he was tumbling down the hill in a flopping sprawl of limbs, upside down, then right side up, then crashing into invisible tree trunks, rocks and bushes before slamming hard on his side at the bottom of the slope and cracking his head on another invisible obstacle.
The only thing he could see was stars.
He woke again to the sound of distant fighting. For a long moment he had no idea where he was, or what the sound meant, or why he couldn’t see, or what had caused the horrible throbbing in his head. He only knew that lying there in the dark was infinitely preferable to moving in any way. Moving hurt like a hangover, and he didn’t care for it. Besides, the wind and the patter of snowflakes on his face were comforting somehow.
Then bubbles of memory began to float up through the mud of his brain and burst one by one on the surface. He had fallen. From where? A hill. Why had he been on a hill? There had been some desperate reason to get somewhere. At that memory his heart filled with dread, though he couldn’t remember the cause. He had been trying to reach someone. Who? He knew he had to help them. Had to save them. A girl. She was running from…
Suddenly it all flooded back and he sat up with a gasp. At least he tried to. Really he flopped over on his side and vomited – while his brain smashed around inside his skull like an iron mace that might shatter it from the inside.
On a second try he made it to his hands and knees, which made it very convenient to vomit again – so he did. He was tempted to stay that way for a while, but the sounds of the fighting were still going on. Gotrek and Kat and the others still lived. He had to help them.
He forced himself to his feet with the aid of a tree. It was so black around him that he could see nothing at all – not the snow, not the sky, nothing. For all he knew the crack on the head might have blinded him. But he could hear the fight, above him and off to the left, some distance away.
He staggered forwards, wading through the snow and the blackness with his hands out in front of him. Every step hurt. He had bruises from head to toe, and he had smashed his left knee and twisted his right ankle. At least nothing seemed broken. He stumbled on at a snail’s pace, feeling with both his hands and his feet. He wanted to run, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up if he fell again.
After a few more steps, the trees thinned out and the ground sloped down a little before him. This was encouraging. He might be able to make better speed in the clear. At the bottom of the little slope the ground under the snow became very flat and smooth. He took another step and his heel shot out to the side. He was on ice!
He scrambled to catch his balance, but his other foot went and he fell backwards. There was a loud crack and the ice gave beneath him. His heart stopped, as the image of plunging into some frozen lake or river and sinking to the bottom in his chainmail flashed through his mind.
Nothing so dramatic happened. He landed flat on his back in a foot of snow, and for a moment thought that he hadn’t broken through the ice after all. Then he felt freezing cold water seeping though the seat of his breeches and the back of the leather jerkin he wore under his mail.
With a curse he fought to sit up. Soaking wet in the middle of a snowstorm was not good at all. He put his hand down on the ice to lever himself up. It broke through. His hand hit bottom almost instantly, his sleeve soaked to the elbow. He must be in some frozen pond or stream. He tried to be cautious, but no matter where he put his weight, the ice broke under it, and by the time he dragged himself to the edge he was soaked to the skin from the waist down. His cloak and both sleeves were wet through too.
‘This is bad,’ he murmured. And then he realised something worse.
He couldn’t hear the fight any more. He paused and strained to listen over the howling and moaning of the wind, but there was nothing.
No. There it was. A clash.
He stood and started towards it. No. That way was the water. He’d have to go a little further down to the left. He stumbled on, his teeth chattering and his feet and leg joints aching with cold as his wet breeches slapped around them. His pack felt as if it weighed as much as Gotrek.
He listened again. ‘Come on, curse you!’ he muttered. ‘Keep fighting! Let me hear you!’
He laughed as he realised that all of a sudden he was hurrying to the fight to be rescued, rather than to be the rescuer.
Another clang. He reorientated himself and started ahead again. At least he thought he was moving in the right direction. The wind made it hard to pinpoint the sound. After a few more steps he braved a move to the left and found the stream again. This time he shuffled across as cautiously as an old man – though to be honest, his wet clothes and his muscles were so stiff now he could hardly do anything else.
He reached the opposite bank without incident and listened again. He heard nothing. He moved a little further on. Still nothing. Had he got turned around? Shouldn’t he have come to the hill by now? He pressed on, shivering as the wind pressed his ice-crusted clothes against his skin. Another ten steps. Still nothing. Was he even going in a straight line? He couldn’t tell.
‘Gotrek!’ he called. ‘Kat! Snorri!’ But his voice came out in a plaintive whisper that was whipped away in the wind. He could hardly hear it over the ceaseless chattering of his teeth. And in this wind, he doubted his friends could have heard him even if he had shouted at the top of his lungs. Was that why he couldn’t hear them? Or perhaps they were all dead, killed by the blue-painted monsters. Perhaps he was all alone in the Drakwald but for the beastmen – the only living man for a hundred miles.
It came to him then that he was going to die there – that his corpse would be buried in the snow, frozen to the marrow until
the spring, when it would thaw and rot, to become food for the beetles and worms of the forest. Maybe some scout or forester would find his bones and wonder who they had belonged to. Just another victim of the war, they would say. And all because he had walked the wrong way around a tree and lost the others. It seemed an impossibly silly reason to die.
A sob lodged painfully in his throat as he thought of all the things he had left unfinished. He would never witness Gotrek’s doom or complete his epic. He would never have vengeance upon the skaven sorcerer who had ordered his father’s death. He would never see Ulrika again. He would never–
He shook himself. Sigmar, he was having brain fever! He had to stop ruminating and do something or he would die indeed. He had to make a fire and get warm. But, no, if he made a fire, the beastmen would find him. He shrugged. He didn’t care. He would rather die warm than frozen. Besides, if Gotrek and the others had won the fight, the light might lead them to him.
He stopped and struggled to take his pack off. He was shaking so violently now he could hardly get his arms out of the straps. Finally he got it off his shoulders and it thudded to the ground behind him. He turned and felt around until he found it. His heart sank. No wonder it had felt so heavy. The leather was wet and crackled with ice. The bedroll and blanket that he had strapped to the bottom of it were soaked through.
He groaned in despair. A wet blanket, no dry clothes to change into. He really was going to die.
He fumbled for the buckles of his pack with fingers so numb that he couldn’t feel what he was touching. It seemed to take him an hour to get the straps loose and the flap open – an hour when the cold from his ice-hardened clothes seeped into his skin to the bone. He felt made of lead – cold lead. It was almost impossible to move his arms.
He dug painfully through the contents of the pack, all wet and ruined, until he found his flint and steel and tinderbox. The box was smashed, probably during his fall, and the little pine shavings wet and limp.
‘It’s not fair!’ he said, sobbing, then was glad that no one had been there to hear him.
Pushing to his feet hurt more than a sword wound. It felt like he had Altdorf’s temple of Sigmar on his back – like all his joints were wrapped tight with leather straps. He staggered around until he found a bush, then snapped twigs off it until he had a shaking fistful. He turned and went back to where his pack was. It wasn’t there. He whimpered and started feeling around. He’d lost it in the dark. It was probably a foot from him and he’d lost it. He found it at last behind him, and knelt beside it, breathing a shuddering sigh of relief and sweeping away the snow in front of him so he could pile the little handful of twigs on the bare ground. Then he found the flint and steel again and struck them together. At least he tried to. His fingers were so stiff, and his shaking so violent, that he missed. He tried again. This time they clashed together, but they were too wet to strike a spark.
