by Warhammer
‘Come and try,’ said Gotrek, still striding ahead.
‘Wait, my lord,’ called Felix, running forwards as von Volgen’s knights dismounted. ‘The Slayers did not kill your son! He was already dead!’
Von Volgen turned, glaring. ‘What foolish lie is this? I saw it with my own eyes! My son was trying to escape the undead, and these wretched dwarfs cut him down without a second glance.’
The knights were stepping forwards to encircle the Slayers. There would be bloodshed any second.
‘He wasn’t escaping the undead,’ said Felix desperately. ‘He was undead! He died fighting the beastmen before you arrived and was raised with the others!’
‘It’s true,’ said Kat, stepping up beside Felix. ‘Please. I saw him die. It was a hero’s death, but–’
‘You question my eyes, peasant?’ Von Volgen’s face was purple with rage. He turned to his men. ‘Stand back from the dwarfs, or die with them!’
‘Somebody help Snorri stand,’ said Snorri, from the cart. ‘He wants to die with his friends.’
‘Hold!’ called von Kotzebue, and such was the command in his voice that the knights paused.
Von Volgen was furious. ‘You order my men? You are in Talabecland now, sir. You have no authority here.’
‘Perfectly correct,’ said von Kotzebue, bowing from the saddle. ‘But it occurred to me that, as both you and the dwarfs want the same thing – namely their deaths – you should let them do it slaying our common enemy, rather than getting into a fight that will wound, and likely kill your own men.’
Von Volgen scowled. ‘How is it punishment to give them what they desire? If they wish to die, then it will be by execution!’
‘Very well, my lord,’ said von Kotzebue. ‘But by my recollection, execution only comes after a trial, and it seems–’
‘There is no time for a trial!’ cried von Volgen, flinging out an arm to indicate the encroaching undead. ‘We are about to be overwhelmed!’
‘Precisely,’ said von Kotzebue. ‘Which is why I recommend you let the Slayers go to their doom and let us be on our way.’
Von Volgen chewed his lip, his angry eyes shifting from von Kotzebue to Gotrek and Rodi to the zombies and back. Felix didn’t know who was more insane, the lunatic who wanted to kill them, or the madman who seemed perfectly happy to debate points of law while an army of zombies bore down upon them.
‘No,’ said von Volgen at last. ‘We will take them with us and have your damned trial once this is over.’ He motioned to his knights. ‘Arrest them!’
Gotrek and Rodi raised their weapons as the knights began to move in again.
‘Try it and you’ll have your murder,’ said Gotrek.
‘Gotrek, please,’ whispered Felix. ‘These are men of the Empire. They are our allies.’
‘Not if they try to arrest us, they aren’t,’ said Rodi.
‘Aye,’ said Snorri, dragging himself onto the tailgate. ‘No one stands between a Slayer and his doom.’
‘Noble dwarfs!’ called von Kotzebue. ‘If you are reluctant to spill the blood of men, hear me out. We travel to Castle Reikguard, six days to the south-west, to bolster its defences and send warning to Altdorf. If you accompany us there without violence, I will guarantee two things. One, a fair trial within its walls, and two, this shambling horde will be only days behind us. If you prevail in your trial, there will be ample opportunity to find your doom when they arrive. What do you say?’
‘Since that one has already decided our guilt,’ said Rodi, nodding at von Volgen, ‘we say nay.’
Felix groaned, but drew his sword and stood beside the dwarfs. He didn’t want to fight Empire men, but nor would he watch while Gotrek was attacked. Kat pulled her hatchet from her belt and crouched beside him.
‘If you fight, Gotrek,’ she said, ‘I fight.’
‘And so does Snorri’ said Snorri, balancing on one leg.
Gotrek grunted, then, with a Khazalid curse, he lifted his head and levelled his one eye at von Volgen. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘We will go.’
Rodi turned, stunned. ‘We will?’
‘We will,’ said Gotrek, not looking away from von Volgen. ‘We will wear your chains and submit to your trial.’
Felix and von Kotzebue let out relieved breaths. Von Volgen’s eyes gleamed.
‘Arrest them,’ he said. ‘Take their weapons and shackle them to the cart.’
Rodi bristled at that and went back on guard, but Gotrek let his axe thud to the ground, his face cold and impassive. Rodi stared at him, as did Felix.
‘Drop it,’ said Gotrek, turning on the younger Slayer. ‘Or I drop you. You too, manling. And you, little one.’
Felix shrugged and unbuckled Karaghul, then laid it next to the Slayer’s axe. Kat threw down her hatchet as well, but Rodi stood defiant for a long moment, trying to withstand the baleful glare of Gotrek’s glittering eye, then he cursed and tossed his hammer beside the rest.
Von Volgen’s men stepped forwards with chains and led Felix, Kat and the Slayers to the wagon, then urged them onto it. When they were seated, the men chained them to the gunwales, even Snorri. They gave the key to the driver and told him and his cargo men that they had the care and feeding of them, then returned to their masters.
‘Gotrek Gurnisson,’ said Rodi as von Volgen and von Kotzebue galloped away. ‘I want an explanation. You have robbed me of my doom.’
‘And myself as well,’ the Slayer said, then turned his eye on Snorri, who was looking back towards the valley, oblivious. ‘Never involve yourself in another Slayer’s doom,’ he muttered, and that was all.
As they got under way again, the last of the rearguard fell, and the zombies welled up after them through the pass like pus bubbling from an open wound.
It was a grim march. Though most of the men were wounded and painfully weary from fighting two terrible battles back to back, there could be no stopping to rest and bind their cuts with the undead horde so close at their heels. They had to limp on, shambling like zombies themselves, through the long dark hours of the night, and then far into the day, without proper rest and eating from their packs at dawn before trudging on again over the endless wasteland of the Barren Hills.
As he slumped in the back of the open cart, the hood of his cloak pulled low against the ever-present wind, Felix had to smile at the favour von Volgen had done them. If the lord had let the Slayers go to their doom and allowed Felix, Kat and Snorri to march with the army, they would be slogging along beside the cart with the others, mile after mile. Instead, as prisoners, they rode where the others walked, and slept when they could.
Felix’s mood was soured, however, as he saw men wounded far worse than he die on their feet around him. Over the course of the day dozens toppled to the ground in mid-step as their exhaustion caught up to them, or bled white while carrying the stretchers of comrades worse off than themselves. Still more died on the carts before the surgeons could get to them – and when they died, there was no time to bury them properly, nor could they be granted the dignity usually accorded the dead.
At first, to be sure they did not rise again, the heads of the fallen were cut off and wrapped in their shirts so they could be buried together later. Unfortunately, that procedure had to be abandoned after all the severed heads started talking in unison, whispering from their bags that the men should give up, that they should just lie down and let the sweet release of death come to them. After that, the heads were all smashed with hammers and left behind as the armies plodded on.
Von Volgen and von Kotzebue finally called a halt in the early afternoon and let their troops rest until nightfall. Word came down the line that, for the rest of the march, the force would be allowed to nap during the day, when the zombies were at their weakest and it was easiest to see them coming. The march would resume at nightfall to keep ahead of them.
During that first daylight halt, weary pickets patrolled the perimeter and wearier field surgeons worked straight through, trying to save the lives of knight
s and spearmen and handgunners whose wounds had been left too long. Because they were prisoners, the surgeons passed Felix, Kat and the Slayers by, but the driver, Geert, and his two cargo men, still grateful to them for saving their life and cargo, browbeat a surgeon until he consented to see them, and their wounds were cleaned and bound. The surgeon even found some hot tar to cauterise and seal Snorri’s severed leg.
Kat shook her head as she looked at the Slayer’s black stump. ‘We fought so hard for nothing.’
‘Not nothing,’ said Felix, scratching under the bandage the surgeon had wrapped around his upper arm. ‘Didn’t we stop a great evil that might have caused the downfall of the Empire?’
‘Yes,’ she said, bitterly. ‘And another sprang up in its place before it breathed its last breath. Will there never be peace?’
‘Never,’ said Gotrek, who was also looking at Snorri’s leg. ‘We will never win.’
‘Then why bother to fight?’ asked Kat.
‘So we don’t lose.’
Kat frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is a lesson the dwarfs learned of old,’ said Rodi, lifting his head. ‘We fight to hold ground. In some battles we win back a hold or a hall. In others we are driven back. But if we stopped fighting…’ He shrugged.
Kat slumped against the side boards, not liking it. Felix reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and found his chains wouldn’t let him.
‘Snorri thinks this is good,’ said Snorri from where he lay. ‘It means Snorri will never run out of things to fight.’
Gotrek turned away at that, and glared out at the endless hills, and Rodi glared at Gotrek, while Snorri closed his eyes and went back to sleep, blissfully ignorant of the turmoil he was causing amongst his fellow Slayers.
Gotrek and Rodi had been at silent war since they were chained up, and the tension between them felt like a sixth person on the back of the cart – a sleeping ogre so large that it crowded the rest of them into the corners and made them unable to look at each other. Despite the discomfort, Felix did not try to talk the two Slayers out of their anger. He knew better. Dwarfs were stubborn, and Slayers the most stubborn of dwarfs. And what could he say anyway? The problem of Snorri seemed insoluble.
A dwarf became a Slayer to make penance for some great shame, swearing to Grimnir that he would die in battle against the most dangerous of enemies as recompense. If he died in some other fashion, or if his courage failed him, or if he gave up his quest, he would not be welcomed into Grimnir’s halls, and would spend eternity as a miserable outcast spirit, wandering through the dwarfen afterlife. Snorri had done none of these forbidden things. He had never turned from his quest and he remained brave to the point of foolhardiness, but despite this, because he had lost his memory, he was in grave danger of dying without Grimnir’s grace, and facing eternal damnation.
The trouble was that a Slayer was also required to die with his shame firmly in mind, and Snorri could not remember his. Too many blows to the head, too many nails pounded into his skull to make his rusty Slayer’s crest – whatever it was, Snorri had trouble remembering even Gotrek, who had been his friend for over fifty years. He would regale Gotrek with tales of his old friend Gotrek, and not remember him as the same dwarf who sat next to him now. But the worst of this forgetting was his shame, which he last remembered remembering before the siege of Middenheim, but now could not recall at all.
The news had struck Gotrek hard. Snorri was one of his greatest friends, and Felix could see that the thought that the old Slayer would be denied entrance to the dwarfen afterlife pained Gotrek more than any wound he had ever taken. Indeed, it had caused him to free Felix from his vow to record his doom in an epic poem so that Felix could instead escort Snorri on his pilgrimage to the Slayer Keep of Karak Kadrin to pray at the Shrine of Grimnir, the Slayer god, for the return of his memory. Once Felix completed this task, he would be free from his vow, and able to live his life as he chose for the first time in more than twenty years.
Unfortunately, Gotrek was finding that keeping Snorri alive was interfering with his own doom, and worse, had caused him now to interfere with Rodi’s as well. Felix knew Gotrek had not liked telling Rodi he couldn’t fight von Volgen’s men, but if the fight had happened, Snorri might have been killed, and that was unthinkable. And so, until the problem of Snorri was somehow resolved, Rodi glared at Gotrek, and Gotrek glared at Snorri, while Felix and Kat tried to rest and ignore the slumbering ogre of their anger as best they could.
There were no attacks during that brief afternoon stop, at least not from outside the camp, but men who had laid down to sleep barely alive later woke up dead and attacked their tent mates. Felix was twice jerked awake by sudden screaming before the orders came down that any man in danger of dying before he woke was to be tied into his bedroll and gagged so he couldn’t bite.
But even when the screaming stopped, Felix found it hard to sleep, for he kept hearing the distant howling of wolves, and when he did at last doze, the howling invaded his dreams and he thought he heard something snuffling under the cart. Needless to say, it was not an easy rest, and he breathed a sigh of relief when, just as the sun was setting, the ragged army got under way again, leaving behind them a roaring pyre of burning, headless corpses – and limping south all night over the grey, changeless landscape.
Though the wolves howled all night long, and the half-heard flapping of wings had the men looking into the sky at every step, the column saw nothing of the undead that night, and fought only the icy wind that blew stiff and cold and ceaseless from the east. Felix’s shackles froze his wrists and ankles. His fingers went numb. Kat curled up inside her heavy wool clothes and hid her face in her scarf. The Slayers didn’t even shiver.
The morning brought relief from the wind, but none from fear or cold, for a thick fog smothered the hills, filling in the valleys and bringing with it a wet, seeping chill that made bones ache and teeth chatter. It was so dense that Felix could barely make out Rodi where he sat in the far corner of the cart, and flapping wings could be heard in its depths, while the howling of the wolves seemed even closer than it had been at night.
Von Kotzebue and von Volgen kept the men marching long past dawn in hopes that the fog would lift and they would be able to see when they made camp, but when it had failed to dissipate by noon, there was nothing they could do but call a halt. The men were too tired to go on.
The commanders ordered double pickets, set a ring of fires around the perimeter, and had their knights make constant long-range circuits of the camp.
None of these measures reassured Felix in the least. The fog was somehow more terrifying than the night. It couldn’t be pushed back with torches, and it played tricks with the ear, making some sounds seem closer, while hiding others entirely. He stared out into it, unable to sleep, his eyes shifting from place to place, searching for unseen movements and shadows that weren’t there.
A hoarse cry echoed from the camp.
‘Another dead man waking?’ asked Kat, looking up.
‘I don’t know,’ said Felix.
He craned his neck but could see no further into the fog. Another cry came from the left, and then another from behind them.
‘Wolf! Kill it! Kill it!’
Horns blared from every direction and sergeants bellowed.
‘Companies, assemble!’
‘Out of those tents! Up! Up!’
Running footsteps thudded past very close by.
Felix and Kat swivelled their heads towards each new sound, straining on their chains, but Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri only stared into the fog, unmoving.
‘How can you just sit there?’ Felix asked. ‘We’re being attacked.’
‘We’re not being attacked,’ sneered Rodi. ‘They are.’
‘And if they turn on us?’ insisted Felix. ‘I thought you submitted to these chains to keep Snorri safe.’
‘Snorri doesn’t want to be safe,’ said Snorri.
‘Snorri Nosebiter will not meet his doom h
ere,’ growled Gotrek, wrapping the slack of his chains around his fists. ‘No matter what happens to the humans.’
Felix heard movement and voices from Geert’s tent, only a few paces away, and turned towards it.
‘Geert! Release us! Give us weapons!’
But the driver and his cargo men ran out and into the fog, swords and cudgels drawn, calling to their comrades.
‘Bastards,’ grunted Kat.
An angry snarl brought their heads around. A young spearman ran out of the fog, panting and wide-eyed, and turned to sprint past the cart, but a huge black shape hurtled through the air and brought him down.
Felix and Kat drew back, sickened, as blood and limbs flew. The beast was twice as big as it should be, with rotting muscle showing through mangy crawling fur and a skinless skull for a head.
Another spearman appeared and charged, his spear raised.
‘Hoff! Hang on!’
He struck the wolf’s shoulder and it whipped around, snarling, to take a second thrust in the chest. The spear snapped, and the wolf slammed the spearman to the ground right next to the cart, tearing his throat out with its skeletal jaws.
Felix and Kat held their breath as it finished him off, wincing at the sound of crunching bones. Go away, thought Felix. Go back to your masters. There’s no one else here. There’s nothing left to hunt. The monster raised its head, sniffing the wind, then turned its red eyes straight towards him.
‘Bugger,’ said Felix.
He heard the sharp snap of breaking chains and turned. Gotrek and Rodi were standing and flexing their wrists.
Snorri had broken his chains too, and was struggling to sit up. ‘Snorri will–’
‘Snorri will stay where he is,’ said Gotrek.
The wolf was padding towards them now, circling to come around the back of the cart.
Rodi took up the slack of his broken chain and held it tight between his fists. ‘I’ll hold it,’ he said. ‘You kill it.’
Gotrek nodded.
The wolf sprang.
Rodi ran to meet it, and beast and dwarf slammed together in mid-air, then dropped out of sight behind the tailgate as Gotrek leapt the side boards and snatched a spear from one of the dead spearmen. Violent thuds shook the cart and the monster heaved up again with Rodi on its back, choking it with his chain.
