by Warhammer
Huntzinger pushed Felke away. ‘Lay off. He’s my man, I’ll question him.’
‘Then, do it, curse you!’ shouted Felke. ‘We’ve got to move.’
Huntzinger turned to the scout. ‘Well? Can we get around them?’
The scout shook his head. ‘They’re spread too wide. Foragers on either side.’
‘Can we run?’ asked one of von Volgen’s scouts.
The scout sergeant looked down at the Slayers’ short legs. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘We’ll hide in the trees,’ said another.
‘Dwarfs don’t climb trees,’ growled Gotrek.
‘They will scent us anyway,’ said Kat. ‘It is too late.’
‘Sigmar’s blood,’ said another scout. ‘We’re doomed.’
‘Good,’ said Rodi.
Gotrek shot a grim look at Snorri at this pronouncement and grunted savagely. Then he shrugged and started throwing logs on the sleeping fire, so that it began to burn bright again.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Huntzinger and Felke simultaneously.
‘There’s nothing to do but fight,’ said Gotrek, turning to them. ‘Face the woods with the fire behind you and be ready.’
The scouts babbled at this, terrified, but finally they followed the Slayer’s example and lined up facing the direction the beasts were coming from with the rekindling fire at their back so that it wouldn’t blind them, and waited.
Felix found himself shocked by the suddenness and the stupidity of it – not that he could say he was surprised. He had known the Slayer’s doom was going to come sooner or later. He had just expected it to be grander and have more meaning. He had imagined that Gotrek would die fighting some eldritch monster from the dawn of time, not just perishing because of simple human error, which was all this was. Because of the scout’s lapse, they could not outrun the beastmen, or outflank them. Instead, they were going to face them, and not even Gotrek, Snorri and Rodi could defeat two hundred beastmen. They would die here in the middle of nowhere, for the most foolish of reasons, with nothing accomplished – the shaman undefeated, the stone undestroyed, the Empire unsaved. It felt wrong. It wasn’t fitting. Felix wouldn’t have written it that way in a million years.
Off in the distance they could hear the beastmen coming – the heavy tread of their hooves, the crashing and lowing as they pushed through the brush.
A scout whimpered. The Slayers growled low in their throats and readied their weapons. Felix looked around and saw that the hermit had vanished – no doubt trying to run.
Kat took Felix’s hand and squeezed it. ‘At least we won’t have to see our friends turned into beasts,’ she said. ‘At least we won’t see the end.’
Felix swallowed. It was small compensation.
EIGHTEEN
The sounds of the approaching beastmen got louder. Kat took her hand from Felix’s and fitted an arrow to her bow. Snorri chuckled happily. Rodi slapped himself in the face a few times and snorted like a bull. Gotrek ran his thumb along the edge of his axe, drawing blood. The scouts shifted nervously, eyes darting hither and thither.
Felix readied Karaghul, then paused and looked at Kat. She stared into the wood, anxious but unafraid, her sharp chin firm. On a sudden impulse, he caught her shoulder and pulled her to him, then kissed her hard. She was stiff with surprise for a brief moment, but then relaxed into him and returned the kiss in full.
For a moment, there was nothing in the world but the pleasure of holding her and tasting her and feeling her push against him, but then after a moment he heard Rodi’s dirty chuckle and they broke off. A few of the scouts were staring at them.
Felix smiled at Kat, embarrassed. ‘I… I just didn’t want to leave that undone,’ he said.
She grinned and nodded, not quite able to look at him. ‘Aye. Good thinking.’
They turned back to the woods. Moving yellow lights flickered in the depths – the torches of the beastmen. The scouts murmured and shifted, watching for the first of them to appear.
‘Steady,’ said Sergeant Huntzinger. ‘Wait for your targets. We’ll take as many of them with us as we can.’
Now Felix could see horned shadows rippling across the trunks of trees, grotesquely stretched. They were almost within sight. The time had come. Time to fight and die, after all these years. Strangely, there was no fear, only a sudden, almost overwhelming melancholy. He wanted to weep for all the things he would miss.
A banshee wail split the night right above their heads, rising like a steam whistle, and an icy, unnatural wind swept through the camp, snuffing out the fire and throwing them into instant darkness. The scouts jumped and cried out, and Felix was afraid he had too. The eerie shriek made his hair stand on end. Kat mumbled a prayer to Rhya.
‘What is that?’ cried Sergeant Felke from somewhere to Felix’s left.
Felix could see nothing. The woods were pitch-black. The light from the beastmen’s torches had vanished as well, leaving not even the glow of embers behind, but Felix could hear them thrashing and howling in the distance. They seemed as scared as the men.
Felix didn’t blame them. The ear-splitting wail continued rising – a sound like a soul being ripped asunder by daemons – and a dread presence filled the wood. Felix felt flensed by it – as if the bones had been sucked from his body, leaving him as limp as a dead jellyfish. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could only hunch there next to Kat, quivering and twitching and staring about as the noise went on and on.
After a moment a dim red light gave Felix back his sight – the glow of the runes on Gotrek’s axe. The Slayer glared, uncowed, up into the trees, with Snorri and Rodi at his side, as the men trembled all around them. There was nothing to see but shadows and mist drifting through the branches.
Out in the darkness the herd was running. Felix could hear their screams and their hooves thundering past to the right and left of them, and he saw a few shadows flicker past, but strangely none of the beastmen came through the camp. Whatever the evil thing was that had snuffed their torches, they were terrified of it and would not come near it. It felt to Felix like he stood on a stone in the middle of a river and watched the waters split to his left and right.
Then a single beastman did run into the camp, bellowing and stumbling wildly as it crashed through the bracken. It ran directly at the leftmost scouts, but didn’t seem to see them, for when they dived out of the way it didn’t turn on them, only staggered off into the trees again, clutching its head and screaming as if it were being chased by the contents of its nightmares.
For a few more minutes the sounds of the beasts passing them by continued, while the shrieking echoed from the branches above them and the enervating terror pinned Felix and the scouts to the ground. But then, as the last heavy hoof beats diminished into the distance, the hideous wail trailed off and the feeling of dread dissipated into a sense of trembling relief.
The runes of Gotrek’s axe dimmed as the others recovered themselves and muttered prayers to Sigmar.
‘Get that fire lit,’ said the sergeant.
Felix let out a shaky breath as one of the scouts fumbled with his flint and steel to rekindle the flames. ‘What was that?’ he asked.
Gotrek glared up into the branches of the trees above them, his one eye searching. ‘Something vile.’
‘But it protected us,’ said Kat. ‘It chased the beastmen away.’
‘Protected us?’ snorted Rodi. ‘It robbed us of our doom.’ He spat on the ground.
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘Why?’
‘Maybe it wanted the beastmen for itself,’ said Snorri. ‘Snorri thinks that’s greedy.’
Felix doubted that was the reason, but he couldn’t think of a better one.
Just then, a rustling at the edge of the camp made everyone turn and go on guard again. Old Hans the Hermit poked his head out from behind a tree, his eyes as big as eggs. ‘Is it over, my masters?’ he quavered.
Everyone grunted with disgust and relief and settled back down to their be
drolls as the scouts who were on duty headed back out into the woods to continue their patrols. Felix doubted, however, that anyone except the Slayers got any sleep. Felix certainly didn’t. The memory of the shrieking and the cold, evil presence was too fresh. He knew if he closed his eyes they would return.
The next day, the ground began to rise and break up into rolling hills and winding valleys, all covered in oak and elm, and there was less undergrowth. The herd’s axe-hewn trail twisted through the lumpy terrain like the path of a snake, avoiding the largest trees, which must have been too much bother to cut down, and sticking to riverbeds and areas of new growth.
After noon, the trees too began to grow more sparse, and those that remained had turned twisted and strange. The elms, which in the morning had been straight and tall, were now stunted and sickly, while the great spreading oaks had become black, tangle-rooted monsters with deformed branches and trunks that bulged with growths like bark-covered goitres. The beastmen’s path grew straighter then, as they had fewer trees to fell, and veered to the south-east, cutting across the grain of the rise and fall of the hills.
A few hours later the trees gave out entirely, and they came at last to the northern edge of the Barren Hills. Felix thought they could not have been more aptly named. The land stretched out in an endless sea of low, mist-swathed ridges, mangy with dead winter grass and leafless thorn bushes, and bare of trees but for an occasional wind-bent pine hunched upon a rocky crest, like an old witch in a tattered cloak surveying her domain.
No birds sang here, and Felix saw no animal tracks in the patches of snow that hid in the shadowed valleys. Even the light that came through the grey clouds seemed thin and sickly, as if not even the sun could bear to look directly upon such dismal desolation. It seemed a blighted land, nearly as lifeless as the deserts of Khemri. At least the herd’s trail was still clear. The tread of ten thousand hooves had churned up a wide swathe of the hills’ dry, powdery earth, and it wound away towards the horizon for as far as the eye could see.
‘Long ago it was a lovely place,’ said Hans, looking wistfully out over the stark landscape. ‘The Green Hills, men called them, all meadows and lakes and the like. But then old Morrslieb spat a nasty green gob down in the middle of it, and everything for leagues around twisted and died – never to recover. Too bad, too bad. All dead.’ He giggled suddenly. ‘Though that’s good for my business, isn’t it?’
‘Morrslieb spat?’ Felix asked, sceptical.
‘Aye,’ said the hermit. ‘A great flaming gobbet. Straight out of the sky.’ He made a gesture like an arrow falling to earth.
‘You sound as if you saw it,’ said Kat.
Hans tittered. ‘Oh, dearie me, child. Do I look as old as that?’
Huntzinger shrugged, making a face. ‘Might have been beautiful once,’ he said. ‘But it’s ugly now.’
‘At least there aren’t any trees,’ said Rodi, cheerily.
‘And no cover either,’ said Kat with a shiver.
Felix turned and saw that she was eyeing the vast space before her like a mouse peeking out from its hole. It occurred to him that, living from girlhood in the Drakwald, she might never have seen so open a place in her whole life. He reached out and squeezed her arm reassuringly as they started forwards again.
‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘They don’t have any cover either. We’ll see them from miles away.’
She gave him a grateful smile in return, and they followed the others, walking side by side.
Despite doing his best to reassure Kat, Felix was far from being at ease himself. He had hoped that once they left the forest, the itchy feeling of being watched would cease, and he would be able to relax again, but it failed to go away. Even more so than before he felt that malevolent eyes were upon him, watching his every step, but when he looked around, he still saw nothing. It was impossible that anyone was following them or spying on them. As Kat had said, there was nothing to hide behind, and yet every time he turned his head he felt as if someone had just ducked out of sight a second before. Nor was the lack of trees a relief from the hemmed-in feeling of the forest. What with the grim grey sameness of the bleak hills below and the dull charcoal sky like a lowering ceiling above, Felix felt crushed between two vast millstones, and he found himself hunching his shoulders like he was carrying a heavy burden.
They saw the smoke of the beastmen’s camp on the afternoon of the next day. It looked at first like the smoke from the chimneys of a small city – hundreds of narrow grey ribbons rising above the low hills – and Felix fancied they might find some mundane town there, Barrensburg, perhaps, with a wall and a gate and tavern named after the local landmark – but he knew he would not. There were no towns in this terrible place.
They went more cautiously then, looking for scouts and hunting parties and taking advantage of what meagre cover they could find. The land here was littered with the burial mounds and standing stones of long-forgotten races – lumpy grass-covered barrows like tumours rising from the turf, and lichen-blotched menhirs sticking up like rotting teeth bursting from an abscess – and the scouting party did their best to keep in their shadows, despite the miasma of ancient menace that seemed to emanate from them.
At last there was only one more ridge, and they crept up it through the dry snow and brittle grass on their bellies until they reached the crest and could look down the other side into a Slayer’s dream come true.
A diamond-shaped valley lay below them, perhaps a mile long and a half-mile wide, and narrowing at each end between the swelling flanks of the rolling hills, and it was filled from end to end and side to side with beastmen. Felix swallowed and shrank back at the sight. When he had seen the herd before, the forest had hidden its true size. Here, spread across the valley floor, its numbers were staggering. There had to be nearly ten thousand of the beasts – one vast camp made up of hundreds of smaller camps, each with a bonfire and a grisly standard stuck into the ground to let the others know who held sway there.
‘Snorri thinks Rodi Balkisson was right,’ said Snorri. ‘There are enough beastmen for everybody.’
‘So many,’ murmured Kat, staring wide-eyed.
‘Aye,’ said Rodi, unusually subdued. ‘This will do.’
‘A certain doom,’ said Gotrek, his eye gleaming.
Felix had to agree. It would doom all of them, and more than likely all the troops that von Volgen, Plaschke-Miesner and von Kotzebue could bring against them as well. He hadn’t seen so many beastmen in one place since he and Gotrek and Snorri had flown over the Chaos Wastes in the Spirit of Grungni. There were beastmen fighting, beastmen feasting and drinking around the fires, but mostly there were beastmen facing towards the middle of the valley and shaking their weapons and raising their voices in a guttural chant that sounded like the song of the end of the world.
Felix turned to see what was holding their attention.
Out of the centre of the vast herd rose a single low hill, long and steeply sloped on its sides like a whale’s back rising from the sea. Upon it, at the place where a whale would spout its steam, jutted an ancient stone circle, its rough black menhirs weathered with age and capped with snow. It was to this that the beastmen had carried their sacred stone from the depths of the Drakwald. Indeed, they were bringing it to the circle even as Felix and the others watched.
The hill was aswarm with beastmen, all thronging around the huge herdstone as it crawled up its flanks, borne upon the backs of its chosen carriers. The scene looked to Felix like ants carrying a dead grasshopper up their mound to the opening of their hole, but the stone did not vanish when it reached the top of the hill. Instead, the beastmen carried it into the centre of the stone circle, and then, with nothing but brute force and sheer numbers, pushed it upright.
Felix prayed to Sigmar that the evil thing would slip from their grasp and shatter upon the menhirs of the ring, but that prayer went unanswered. In the space of ten minutes the beastmen had righted and secured the stone, and the whole valley erupted in a how
l of triumph that Felix thought must have been heard in Altdorf. He shivered as the implications of his thoughtless exaggeration sank home. If the Slayers and the three armies failed here, the beastmen’s triumph would certainly be felt in Altdorf.
And it seemed inevitable that the men and dwarfs would fail. Even the Slayers seemed to have no illusions about that.
‘It will be a grand doom,’ said Rodi. ‘But…’
Gotrek cocked his one eye at him. ‘But? What happened to “A doom is a doom is a doom”, Balkisson?’
Rodi grunted morosely. ‘You’ve infected me with your pride, Gurnisson. Because of you, I want my doom to mean something. And this…’ He shrugged. ‘We may kill many, but we will never reach the shaman. Not by fighting, at least, and I was never any good at sneaking.’
‘Not even the best scout in the world could sneak through that,’ said Kat. ‘They are too close together. Even if they didn’t see us, they would smell us.’
‘Can we wait until they’re asleep?’ asked Felix.
‘They will likely carouse all night,’ said Kat.
‘And the ones on the hill will never sleep,’ said Gotrek. ‘You can be certain of that.’
Felix looked again to the central hill. There was a camp within the camp there – Urslak Cripplehorn’s true herd – more numerous and tightly packed than the rest of the herds at the gathering. Felix could see patrols of massive beastmen circling the camp and the base of the hill, and more standing guard on its slopes. At the top of the hill, still more danced around and within the stone circle, waving torches and weapons.
‘We may win the first charge,’ said Gotrek. ‘But once the alarm is raised, they will all come.’
‘Snorri thinks that’s a good idea,’ said Snorri.
‘Aye, Nosebiter,’ said Gotrek, nodding. ‘We’ll have our doom then, but the stone will stand.’
‘What is the date?’ asked Felix.
‘The thirtieth of Vorhexen,’ said Sergeant Felke.
Felix sighed and rested his chin on his crossed arms. ‘We have three nights then, to find a way.’
