by Warhammer
With a grunt of frustration he slipped them down between his jack and his shirt, the only place on him that was fully dry. The cold steel against his chest made him flinch, but it had to be done. After a second he fumbled them back out and tried again. A spark!
It flew away on the wind, never coming close to the twigs. He shifted around so that his back was to the gale and tried again. Still the spark flew. He sobbed. Every muscle in his body was cramping with cold. He felt made of wood now. His arms could barely hold their position. His fingers couldn’t hold the steel. It slipped out of his hand and fell on the snowy ground. He struggled to pick it up again. It was like trying to grab something with one’s elbow. He could only push it around.
At last he got the little bar trapped against his leg and fumbled it up into his grip. He struck it against the flint again, and again, and again. The sparks hopped onto the twigs and died – snuffed by the ice or blown out by the wind.
He paused. He was tired. He couldn’t lift his arms any more. He needed to rest. Yes, that was it – a little rest and he would try again. He laid his arms on his knees and bowed his head. All he needed was a few minutes and he would get his strength back. Just a few minutes. He closed his eyes. That was better. He was feeling better already. Warmer even. A gentle heat seemed to be flowing through his veins. He felt cosy. Maybe he would just lie down for a bit. Yes, that was best. A little nap.
He eased over on his side, letting the flint and the steel fall from his fingers and curling into a ball. All was well. A cosy little nap and everything would be fine.
But then, just as he was drifting off into a drowsy dream of hearths and warm brandy, there was a noise in the darkness. His heart lurched. Something was coming for him. He tried to open his eyes, tried to move his arms and legs, to force himself to sit up, to draw his sword. He couldn’t. He was pressed to the ground by weariness and petrified with stiffness. His body would not answer his call.
The thing in the darkness got closer. He could hear it behind him. He could hear it breathing.
ELEVEN
‘Felix! Felix, wake up!’
Someone was shaking him. It hurt. His muscles screamed. He tried to shrug the person off, tried to complain, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t stop his jaws from trembling long enough to speak. The person stepped in front of him and held a slotted lantern to his face. Though the light was dim, after so long in the dark it blinded him. He cringed away.
‘Rhya be praised.’ said the person. ‘You’re alive!’
Felix knew the voice. A voice from the distant past. A girl he used to know. Kirsten? Ulrika? Was he dreaming? He couldn’t tell.
A warm hand touched his face and felt at his neck.
‘Gods, not by much. Wait here.’
He heard the person set down the lantern and move away. He squinted against the light, looking around only with his eyes, for he couldn’t move his head. Through a screen of slashing snow he saw a little bundled-up form was bustling in and out of his field of vision, taking off her pack, looking though his.
Kat. It was Kat. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved.
‘All wet,’ she said to herself. ‘Felix, what happened? How did you do this to yourself?’
There was a sharp scraping noise and a flash, and then after a moment, the space in front of him got brighter. Kat moved away and he saw she had started a little fire. It almost made him cry. How had she done it so easily? Why had it been so hard for him? He saw her digging away the snow around him as if she were a dog burying a bone, then she vanished again for a moment. Something was laid over him, and then Kat was kneeling beside him, raising it on sticks. She was making a tent around him.
Then she vanished again, and for long enough that he grew worried. Had she left him? Had something grabbed her?
Finally she stepped back in front of him, a big bundle of dead branches and twigs in her arms. She dropped them beside the little fire and then began to lay them carefully on top of it. The heat of it was reaching his face now. It stung like ice.
When she had built up the fire, she placed her canteen and his next to it, then crawled into the tent and spread out her bedroll beside him, then turned to him and pulled off his cloak, which was stiff and heavy with ice. She threw it out beside the fire, then started on the wool coat he wore over his chainmail.
‘Wh… wh… what are you doing?’ he managed.
‘Your clothes are killing you,’ she said. ‘They are wet and frozen and taking your heat. You must get out of them or you will die.’
He tried to protest, but more for form’s sake than anything else. He knew she was right, it was just that, though he had more than once pictured her taking his clothes off, it hadn’t been like this. Not with him helpless as a baby. Not when it was a matter of life or death.
She had terrible trouble with his chainmail, but he could do little to help her. She had to raise his arms so that she could tug it off over his head, for he couldn’t move them himself. At last, after much grunting and cursing, she dragged it off him and threw it aside. The rest came much easier, and soon he was lying naked under the tent with all his clothes drying around the fire.
Still he couldn’t move except to shiver. Also, though he shook so much that he thought he would break his teeth with their chattering, he was burning up. He felt like he was back in the desert of Khemri, dying in the sun. With a grunt of effort, Kat rolled him onto her bedroll and pulled the blanket over him, then started taking off her hat and coat and scarf.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Felix. ‘You’ll freeze too.’
‘I am going to lie with you. The blankets are not enough. You need true warmth.’
Felix was alarmed. Again, he had dreamed of this, but not like this! ‘But… but I’m too hot already.’
‘You are not,’ said Kat, unbuckling and shucking her leather armour. ‘You’re as cold as a fish. You only think you’re hot. It is the madness that comes before the end.’
‘M-madness?’ stuttered Felix as Kat pulled her wool undertunic off over her head and revealed her naked torso.
She was as lean and wiry as a greyhound, but most definitely a woman. She shucked her boots and breeches, then reached out of the tent and grabbed her canteen from beside the fire. She hissed as it burned her fingers, then pulled it into the tent by the strap. When she had it, she quickly rolled under the blanket with him and wrapped an arm around him, while she gingerly unscrewed the cap of the canteen.
‘Kat,’ he said. ‘I… this…’
‘Shhhh,’ she said, and lifted the canteen to his mouth. ‘Drink this.’
He jerked back, yelping, as the water scalded his lips. ‘It’s too hot! I can’t!’
‘You must. You must warm your insides. Drink!’
Felix opened his mouth again and did his best to swallow as she poured it into him, though it felt as if the water were blistering his mouth and throat as it went down. Finally she relented and set the canteen aside, and he lay back, panting and gasping.
She rested her head on his chest and hugged him hard. It felt remarkably good, but Felix remained rigid. He wasn’t sure if he should return the gesture, or if he wanted to, or even if he could.
‘Listen, Kat…’ he said, then couldn’t think of what to say.
‘Forget it, Felix,’ she said. ‘I remember what you said. Just rest.’
From the way that she said it he could tell it still stung her. He grunted, frustrated. He didn’t want her thinking that he didn’t love her. It wasn’t that. It was… His mind was too jumbled with the cold and the warmth and the dizziness from drinking the hot water so fast. He gave up. He dragged his lumpish, unresponsive arms up and put them around her. She remained tense for a moment, but then relaxed and nestled her head under his chin, very like a cat indeed. It was such a sweet, cosy gesture he almost cried.
‘Damn it, Kat,’ he sighed, his words slurring a little with drowsiness. ‘What is the matter with you?’
‘What do you mean?’ she mur
mured.
‘Why do you like me? And don’t say you’re in love with the hero I was to you when you were young. You’re smarter than that, and I was never that hero anyway.’ He snorted. ‘It was you who saved me that day, not the other way around. And…’ His shivers overcame him again for a moment and he had to stop. ‘And here you’ve done it again, so it can’t be that.’
Kat was silent for a long time, and Felix wondered with mixed feelings if he had actually convinced her of her folly and that she would say, ‘You’re right, Felix. It was my memories of you I loved. I’ve been a foolish girl.’
But after a moment she squeezed him again and said, ‘You are a hero to me, Felix. Not for killing that woman, but for trying to stop her even though you knew she would kill you. But…’ She paused again. ‘But it isn’t that – not just that.’ She stared out of the tent at the fire. ‘There are many men I know who accept me as a scout, but not as a woman.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘They call me she-beast, or tom-cat, or… other names.’ She paused again, and Felix could feel angry tension in her arms, then she continued. ‘And there are other men, like Milo, who would accept me as a woman, but not as a scout.’ She turned her head and looked up at him, her brown eyes liquid in the glow of the fire. ‘You accept me as both. That…’ She swallowed, then buried her head against his chest again. ‘That doesn’t happen very often.’
A heart-sized lump welled up in his chest. ‘Ah, Kat,’ he said, and pulled her tighter against him. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that all the time she spent alone in the forest might not have been entirely self-imposed? ‘Ah, Kat.’
A snap of a twig from outside the tent brought her head up again, snapping his teeth shut as she cracked his chin with the top of her skull. Felix cursed, then tried to turn his head to look into the night.
Gotrek, Snorri and Rodi were stepping out of the darkness towards the fire. They were covered in minor cuts and bruises, but seemed otherwise whole.
Gotrek snorted when he saw Felix and Kat in the tent. ‘Found him, then, did you?’
‘I… I…’ said Kat, pulling the blanket higher.
‘It’s… it’s not what you think,’ said Felix.
‘It never is, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘It never is.’
Rodi snickered.
Snorri shrugged. ‘Snorri doesn’t know what he thinks it is.’
‘Don’t let it trouble you, Father Rustskull,’ said Rodi. ‘But come spread your roll on this side of the fire. Give the poor skinny things some privacy.’
Felix groaned with embarrassment. ‘It really isn’t what–’
Kat stopped him with a shake of her head. ‘Never mind, Felix,’ she said. ‘And it’s time for you to drink again.’
He sighed. More torture. But now that he came to notice, he wasn’t shivering nearly as much as before, and suddenly he felt very, very sleepy.
The next day, Felix woke alone. Kat was outside the tent, sitting with the Slayers, cooking rabbit over the fire. Felix’s stomach growled at the smell of it and he tried to sit up. He hissed with pain. Everything hurt – his head, his joints, his muscles, but at least the terrible shaking and the frightening inability to think or move were gone.
After a few minutes of grunting and groaning, he got himself dressed and crawled out of the tent. The snow was piled high all around them, but the storm had stopped and it was a bright morning. He was greeted by a nod from Gotrek, a sly smirk from Rodi and a vacant grin from Snorri. Kat smiled at him, then looked away shyly.
‘All right, manling?’ asked Gotrek.
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Felix, sitting down gingerly at the fire and warming his hands.
‘Frozen stiff, were you?’ asked Rodi.
‘Nearly,’ said Felix.
The young Slayer chuckled. ‘Nice for the girl then, eh?’
Felix jumped to his feet, though his muscles shrieked with complaint. ‘Leave Kat out of this.’
Kat looked from one to the other of them, her eyes nervous.
Gotrek held up a hand. ‘Easy, manling,’ he said, then turned and gave Rodi a look with his one cold eye. ‘He won’t do it again.’
Rodi looked put out. ‘Only making a joke.’
‘A joke at the expense of my friends,’ said Gotrek. ‘There have been names penned in the book for less.’
Rodi glared at the Slayer sullenly for a moment, then had to look away. ‘Aye, aye,’ he said. ‘Fair enough.’
‘Snorri doesn’t get the joke,’ said Snorri.
Thankfully nobody tried to explain it to him.
As Felix and the Slayers ate, Kat took down her tent and folded it into her pack.
‘I’m leaving for Stangenschloss,’ she said, when all was packed away. ‘And then on to Bauholz. They must be warned before the herd arrives, and I can make better time on my own.’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘A good plan.’
Felix opened his mouth to object. She would be out in the wilderness on her own, without anyone to protect her! Then he paused, flushing. Who had saved who last night, exactly? And after what Kat had said as they lay together, about him being one of the few to accept her as both a scout and a woman, it wouldn’t do to tell her he didn’t want her to go. He closed his mouth.
‘Can you find your way there without me?’ Kat asked.
Rodi and Snorri shook their heads.
‘Too many trees,’ said Rodi. ‘They all look alike.’
Felix wasn’t sure he could get there either. After twenty years of wandering, he had learned quite a bit about travelling by the sun and the stars, but that was difficult under the forest canopy, and it helped to know where one was starting from. He had no idea where they were, or what direction they had travelled during the snowstorm the night before.
‘We’ll follow the herd,’ said Gotrek.
Kat nodded sadly. ‘Aye, I’m afraid the fort is exactly where they’re heading.’ She stood and shouldered her pack. ‘Well, luck to you. See you there.’
The Slayers grunted non-committally.
Kat turned to Felix. ‘Goodbye, Felix,’ she said.
Felix stood. ‘Goodbye, Kat,’ he replied. He wanted to go to her and embrace her, but he felt Rodi’s eyes upon them, and didn’t.
Kat waited for an awkward second, then turned away abruptly and headed into the trees.
Felix cursed himself inwardly as he sat down again. Was he really so concerned about what the dwarf thought, or was it that he still didn’t know what he thought about her, and had been afraid that she would read too much into it if he had gone to her?
The girl was driving him mad.
They found Argrin Crownforger’s corpse on the way back to the wide valley that the herd had passed through the night before. It was buried by a deep layer of snow, a white hump surrounded by bigger humps, and they might not have found it at all had they not seen the haft of a beastman’s spear sticking up out of the soft cover.
When they cleared it away they found that the spear was sticking up out of Argrin’s chest, the point buried to the shaft between his ribs. All the snow around and below him was red crystals, and there were five dead beastmen surrounding him, as stiff and lifeless as he was.
Rodi tried to pry Argrin’s warhammer from his hand, ‘to return it to his kin,’ but found that he couldn’t. Argrin’s death grip was too tight. He would have had to cut off Argrin’s hand to do it.
‘Leave it,’ said Gotrek. ‘And leave him. Let the beasts of this accursed forest see who killed their brothers. Let them see what a Slayer can do.’
Rodi nodded, and he and Gotrek and Snorri bowed their heads over Argrin’s body for a moment, then turned and started down the hill towards the herd’s trail.
As they started along the beastmen’s trail, Felix was afraid they would catch up to them again as they had before, and that the Slayers might not this time be able to resist charging in to their doom. He needn’t have worried. Though the storm had passed, it had left three feet of snow behind. Rodi was up to his fork-bearded chin in
it, while Gotrek and Snorri were up to their chests and, strong as they were, it was still slow, weary work ploughing through it, with many stops to restore their strength. Felix doubted if they made ten miles that first day.
‘This is rubbish,’ snarled Rodi just after noon. ‘Wading through leagues of snow to chase the doom we might have had last night.’
‘A selfish doom,’ rasped Gotrek. ‘As I said before.’
Rodi snorted. ‘I see now why you haven’t found your doom in twenty years, Gurnisson.’
Gotrek turned a dangerous eye on him. ‘What do you mean by that, beardling?’
‘You are too choosy,’ said Rodi. ‘“It must be an honourable doom, a great doom,” says the great Slayer. Bah! Those things mean nothing. A doom is a doom is a doom. It is the dying in battle that counts with Grimnir. Nothing else.’
Gotrek grunted and started forwards again. ‘Grimnir asks only for death. Others ask for more.’
Rodi stared after him. ‘What do you mean by that? A Slayer answers only to Grimnir. He renounces all else.’
But Gotrek wouldn’t answer him.
Felix followed wide-eyed. He had never heard the Slayer say anything like this before and he didn’t know what it meant any more than Rodi did. Who were these others? What did they ask of Gotrek? Had the Slayer been the subject of some king all this time and never mentioned it to Felix? Did he worship some other god? Did it have something to do with the great shame that had made him a Slayer in the first place? Felix grumbled with frustration. He might never know. Gotrek never spoke of these things and Felix knew better than to ask. Perhaps Rodi would goad it out of him as he had this. Felix would just have to keep his ears open.
