by Warhammer
Felix stood as well. He felt as if he was made of matchsticks and rusty hinges. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘But you’re to do yours from the roof, remember?’
‘But I want to fight by your side,’ she said.
And I want you to live, thought Felix, but he knew that wouldn’t fly. Instead he said, ‘No, Kat. The archers need you. You saw them on the wall. Go to them. Show them how it’s done.’
She looked up at him with her lopsided smile. ‘Is this how you make Gotrek do what you want?’
Felix opened his mouth, but before anything came out she laughed and started unsteadily up the steps to the upper floor.
Felix watched her go, then turned and hurried for the door, where the sounds of slaughter were rising.
The intersection was a charnel house. The pulped remains of scores of beastmen were piled up against the walls of the houses facing the street like drifts of crimson rubbish. Of the powder wagon there was no sign, only a smoking patch of earth where it had stood, surrounded by melting red snow, but bits of timber and barrel staves stuck out of the wattle-and-daub houses like straw blown by the wind.
And yet, astoundingly, some of the beastmen still lived. Felix saw Gotrek and Snorri and Rodi laying into them at the south end of the intersection – three squat whirlwinds wading into two score beastmen. And they weren’t alone. Sir Teobalt, Karaghul in hand, fought at the head of a small group of soldiers, refugees and villagers, all armed with Ludeker’s stolen weapons.
‘Men of the Empire,’ cried the templar in a high warble. ‘Destroy the enemies of man! Defend your homes!’
As Felix ran – or rather staggered – towards the fight he saw beastman after beastman fall, and not all from the exertions of the dwarfs and men.
From every rooftop shot flashing shafts that buried themselves in beastman fur, and he could hear Weir shouting from somewhere above and behind him, ‘That’s the way, lads! Stick to the edges. Don’t want to kill our own, do we?’
Felix ploughed into the fight, swinging high and low, and cutting down a beastman with almost every stroke. It was a dream of a battle – the kind of battle he had imagined being the hero of when he had read the old sagas as a little boy. Thus had Sigmar slain a thousand orcs at Black Fire Pass. Thus had Magnus smote the forces of Chaos before the gates of Kislev. The beasts practically fell over before he hit them, and Felix’s allies were faring just as well, killing beastmen as if they had been lambs.
Of course it wasn’t a fair fight and Felix knew it. The blast had dizzied the beastmen as it had him, only more so, as they had borne the brunt of it. They reeled as if drunk, and could barely hold on to their weapons. Some of them had smoking bits of timber sticking out of them. Still, it felt magnificent, a glorious vengeance for all the violence and misery the gors and the Drakwald had inflicted upon him and his companions since he had left Altdorf.
Only one thing marred the fight. Only one thing kept it from being the perfect battle – the paltry and unfamiliar sword with which he fought. It should have been Karaghul. Without it, nothing felt right. His blocks and parries were off, his attacks lacked force – in fact, it was a fortunate thing that the beasts were so disabled, for at full strength and with their wits unscrambled, he wasn’t sure he could have prevailed against them with the new blade.
He glared at Sir Teobalt across the battle in between fighting. He supposed the templar had a right to take the blade from him, but it still stung. It still seemed unfair. He almost wished… but no, that was an unworthy thought. He pushed it away.
After only a few moments, the last few beastmen broke and ran for the gate. Felix and the Slayers and Teobalt’s ragtag company chased them all the way, cutting down all but the quickest. Only three remained when they reached the gate, and they quickly outdistanced their shorter-legged pursuers.
Gotrek heaved his axe at them as they ran across the field. It caught the slowest one in the left leg and it went down with a screech. The other two didn’t look back, only sprinted for the black wall of the forest as quickly as they were able.
Felix and the others stopped just outside the gates of the village as Gotrek stumped forwards to retrieve his axe. Last came Sir Teobalt, limping and grimacing and wheezing like a bellows as he leaned against the gatepost and caught his breath.
‘Well… well done, men,’ he said to his troops. ‘It was bravely fought. And well done to you as well, sons of Grimnir,’ he added, turning to the Slayers. ‘Your plan worked in all particulars.’
Felix noticed that the old templar didn’t mention him in his congratulations.
Teobalt turned to one of the soldiers. ‘Anselem, close the doors, and place the heavy bar. They may come again–’
‘Srr,’ came a strange voice from the shadows beside the gate. ‘Srr, pleese.’
Felix and the others turned at the sound. A horrible crouching figure shuffled out of the darkness. It was one of the ungors, with little sprouting horns and a furred face, but features still mostly human. It had been terribly abused, with great gashes and bruises on its face and shoulders, and its wiry arms were clutched around its belly, trying to keep in the intestines that threatened to slither out of a gash that slit it from privates to breastbone. It looked as if it could barely stand.
‘A beast!’ shouted Sir Teobalt. ‘Kill it!’
His men stepped forwards, but Snorri and Rodi got there before them, raising their weapons.
The ungor staggered back, crying out, a look of fearful pleading on his half-human face, and suddenly Felix recognised him.
‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘It’s Ortwin!’
FIFTEEN
Sir Teobalt stared.
The two Slayers paused, but Gotrek, returning from retrieving his axe, did not. He pushed through them, preparing to strike. ‘Not any more it isn’t.’
The changed squire fell on his back, raising one hand in supplication. ‘Pleese, no. I msst speek. I msst tell you.’
Gotrek stepped over him, axe high.
‘Wait, Gotrek,’ said Felix. ‘Let him speak.’
‘He is a beast,’ said the Slayer. ‘He must die.’
‘Death is all I wssh,’ mumbled Ortwin through his fangs. ‘But I msst speek frrst.’
‘It looks like he’s going to die anyway,’ said Felix.
Gotrek lowered his axe. ‘Speak quickly then, beast,’ he growled. ‘My axe is impatient.’
Ortwin moaned with relief. ‘Blsss you, Slayrr.’
Sir Teobalt stepped past the Slayers and looked down at his former squire. Felix had never seen the old knight look so stricken or sad. ‘Ortwin, is it truly you?’
The changed youth cringed away from the knight’s gaze. ‘Frrgive me, mastrr. Sigmar have mrrcy on me.’
Sir Teobalt’s shoulders slumped, and he covered his eyes with a shaking hand. ‘Sigmar have mercy on us all.’
The crunching of snowy footsteps came from the village. Felix turned to see Kat and Doktor Vinck leading forwards a crowd of nervous villagers.
‘Are they all dead?’ asked Doktor Vinck. ‘Have you chased them all–’
He choked when he saw Ortwin. There was an angry murmur from the crowd.
‘Keep them back, doctor,’ said Felix. ‘There is no need to fear.’
The doctor obligingly waved the villagers back, but Kat came forwards, staring wide-eyed at the dying squire.
‘Is it…?’ she asked in a trembling voice. ‘Is it…?’
Felix nodded, then took her arm. Her hand circled his waist.
‘Go on, Ortwin,’ he said, turning back. ‘Tell us.’
Ortwin nodded weakly and took a laboured breath. ‘I know whrrr they… take the stone,’ he wheezed. ‘I know what they will… do with it. I came… to wrrn you but they caught me, and…’ He looked down at the horrible wound in his belly. ‘At leest it will be over soon.’
‘Sooner than you expect if you don’t speak quickly,’ said Gotrek. ‘Tell your tale, beast.’
Ortwin fought to focus. ‘They go to hills in the
south,’ he said. ‘Acrrss the Talabec. Thrrr is an old crrcle. They will raise the stone. On… on Witching Night – Hexensnacht.’ He grimaced with pain.
‘To what purpose?’ asked Sir Teobalt.
‘A crrimony,’ breathed Ortwin. ‘Urslak Cripplehorn was granted a vssion by the brrd-headed god. Thss crrimony, on thss niight… will trrn all men undrr the shadow of the forest to beestmen, like me.’
The men and dwarfs stared at him in disbelief.
‘All men?’ said Felix uncertainly. ‘Everyone? He has the power to do this?’
‘The stone givss him the powrr,’ said Ortwin. ‘His god givss him the powrr. His beesthrrd giives him the powrr.’
‘Which forest?’ asked Doktor Vinck. ‘The Drakwald? The Great Forest? The Reikwald?’
‘To the beestmen,’ said Ortwin, ‘all frrests arr one.’
Felix and the others looked around at each other.
‘This is dread news,’ said Teobalt.
‘It’s bunk,’ said Rodi. ‘It’s not possible. No beast has such power.’
‘Can you say that with the evidence before you?’ asked Doktor Vinck, indicating Ortwin.
‘Changing a handful of men isn’t the same as changing thousands, over hundreds of miles,’ replied Rodi.
‘Does it matter?’ asked Gotrek. ‘If this shaman can do a tenth of what he claims it will be too much. He must be stopped.’
‘He must,’ agreed Kat.
Rodi nodded. ‘Aye. And there is a great doom to be had, win or fail.’
‘Snorri wants it to be Witching Night now,’ said Snorri.
The comment brought Felix up short. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘What day is it?’
Sir Teobalt looked up. ‘It is the twenty-first of Vorhexen – fasting day of Walhemar the Valiant.’
Felix did a quick calculation in his head. ‘Then there are fourteen days until Hexensnacht. I don’t know where the beasts are going below the Talabec, but at the rate they’re moving they’ll never make it in time. It took us ten days from Ahlenhof, and we went by roads. They’re cutting every step through the deep woods.’
Kat nodded. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘Nno,’ moaned Ortwin.
They turned back to him. The snow around where he lay was crimson with his blood.
‘Evrry changed man Urslak adds to the hrrd adds knowing,’ said the squire through bubbles of red phlegm. ‘He sees our minds. He knew I would trry to come to you. He knows how to use the rrver.’
‘How to use the river?’ said Sir Teobalt. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘The timbrr camp,’ said Ortwin. ‘On the rivrr.’
‘Aye, I remember it,’ said Teobalt, nodding. ‘We passed the night there.’
‘What has a timber camp got to do with it?’ asked Rodi. ‘The beast has stopped making sense.’
Felix gasped as understanding came to him. ‘Logs!’ he cried. ‘Rafts! We saw them!’
‘What are you saying, manling?’ asked Gotrek.
Felix grunted with impatience. Dwarfs seemed to have a blind spot for the uses of trees. ‘The shaman means to float the stone down the river,’ he said. ‘A few of those rafts we saw bound together, and he can move it at twice his speed. Maybe three times as fast. They’ll tow it down the Zufuhr like a barge.’
‘Yss,’ said Ortwin from the ground. ‘Yss.’
‘But beastmen don’t know how to make boats,’ said Rodi. ‘They can barely tie a rock to the end of a stick and call it a mace.’
‘Beestmen do not,’ whispered Ortwin. ‘But beests who wrrr once men do. Urslak is…’ He coughed, spilling blood down his furred chest. ‘Urslak is… lrrrning.’
Felix stared dully as Ortwin fell silent. A beastman who learned was a nightmare – the doom of the human race. It had been the beasts’ savagery and lack of discipline, more so than the superiority of the defences of man, that had stopped them from taking over the world. If the monsters began to learn to use wagons and boats and developed organisation and tactics, there would be no stopping them.
‘Anything else, beast?’ asked Gotrek, looking down at Ortwin.
The changed squire looked up through dimming eyes. ‘Bewrre… bewrre the axe of Gargorath the God-Touched,’ he said. ‘It… it eats what it kills.’
‘That is all?’
Ortwin nodded and sank back. ‘I am rredy.’
Gotrek raised his axe, but Sir Teobalt stepped forwards.
‘Wait, Slayer,’ he said. ‘It should be I that does this.’
Gotrek nodded and stepped back as the old templar stood over his former squire. ‘I can offer you no salvation, squire,’ said Teobalt. ‘A beast is beyond Sigmar’s mercy. But… but I give you my thanks. Though you have fallen, you sacrificed your life to return and warn us. It was a brave thing, bravely done.’
‘Thank you, srr,’ said Ortwin, and there seemed to be tears in his bestial eyes – though it might only have been blood. ‘Sigmrr blsss you.’
Sir Teobalt lifted Karaghul with both hands. ‘May you find in death the peace you lost in life.’
The changed boy closed his eyes. The sword came down. Kat turned away and pressed her face against Felix’s chest as the shaggy horned head dropped softly into the snow. He pulled her close, stroking her hair as he grieved.
The squire had been a fool sometimes, and too concerned with honour and doing heroic deeds for his own good – or the good of his companions on more than one occasion – but at the same time that honour had proved stronger than the animal instincts that had come with his new shape, and he had died to maintain it. It was doubtful that anyone would write any ballads about a youth that turned into a beast, but he was a hero nonetheless. He might very well have saved the Empire. That is, he might have if the rest of them could warn Altdorf in time.
‘I must go south at once,’ said Sir Teobalt.
‘Not alone, you won’t,’ said Gotrek.
‘Aye,’ said Rodi. ‘We’re coming too.’
‘Snorri is ready,’ said Snorri. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Is there a boat?’ asked Felix. It seemed the only way to catch up to the beasts.
Doktor Vinck shook his head. ‘There is not. They were all taken by the soldiers and the refugees when news of the herd reached us.’ He frowned. ‘There is one at the lumber camp, or there was. Perhaps the beasts have taken it.’
‘Unless they haven’t reached it yet,’ said Kat, lifting her head from Felix’s chest. ‘If we take the river road, we may beat them.’
‘We must try it!’ said Sir Teobalt. ‘We will leave immediately.’
Felix, Kat, Sir Teobalt and the three Slayers left an hour later on a wagon to which they hitched four horses for greater speed – with Teobalt’s Machtig tied behind. Though all were weary from the long day of preparing and defending the village, there was no alternative. They had to get ahead of the beastmen, and waiting until morning might make it impossible for them to catch up.
Doktor Vinck thanked them profusely for saving Bauholz, and gave them food and drink for the road. He begged Kat to be careful, and reminded Sir Teobalt to apply the ointment he had given him three times a day to his wounds, which were not yet fully healed, then waved goodbye to them until the wooden doors of the gate closed with a hollow boom.
Felix and Kat sat side by side in the back of the wagon as they rode out of town, alone – or at least nearly alone – for the first time since he had rescued her from Milo. Sir Teobalt, saying that he had done the least in the recent battle and would therefore take point, had unhitched Machtig and rode well ahead of the wagon, and the three Slayers sat on the buckboard, Gotrek driving the horses while Rodi and Snorri kept watch.
Felix took a deep breath. This might be the best opportunity they would have for days.
He put a hand on her leg. ‘Kat,’ he said.
She turned and smiled up at him, and all the words went out of his head. He just stared.
Kat stared back, and, as the silence stretched and the seconds ticked by, she c
overed his hand with hers, then lifted it and pulled it over her shoulders so that she could lean against him underneath it. He pulled her tight and all at once they were kissing, long and deep, and the freezing night was suddenly as warm as a Tilean spring.
After a moment Felix pulled back, holding her away from him. ‘Wait, Kat,’ he said, panting. ‘Wait.’
She scowled at him. ‘Does it still feel wrong to you, then, Felix? I am no longer seven.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. That’s… that’s not what I was going to say.’
‘Then what?’ she asked, her chin thrust out.
He hesitated again, not sure how to begin, but finally he spoke. ‘I realised, when we were fighting Milo, that… that I cared more for you than I have for anyone for a long long time, and that all my… misgivings were gone.’
Kat dropped her eyes at that, smiling shyly.
‘But…’
She looked up again, her brow lowering once more. ‘But?’ she said, warningly.
Felix sighed and sat back. ‘Kat, I don’t have a proper life. I have no employment, no home, no money. I follow the Slayer into certain death time and time again, and my vow to him means I’ll keep doing it until he dies.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘I’ve got nothing to give you. Not even the certainty that I’ll be here tomorrow.’
Kat smiled and let out a relieved breath. ‘Is that all?’ she said.
‘Isn’t that everything?’ he asked.
‘It’s nothing, Felix. Nothing.’ She leaned against him, resting her head on his chest. ‘When Papa trained me to be a scout, he taught me the first rule of the Drakwald – the rule that every woodsman and beast-hunter lives by.’
‘What rule is that?’ asked Felix.
‘Today is all there is,’ she said. She circled her arms around him, looking out over the tailgate of the cart. ‘We are all like you, Felix. No home, no money, and death always only an eye-blink away. None of us knows if we’ll be here tomorrow, so we live by that rule.’
‘Today is all there is,’ Felix repeated.
