by Warhammer
Felix nodded with grim satisfaction. For all the fire and noise and crashing stones, all seemed to be going well. The hoardings were protecting the defenders from the bats and the blazing barrage that Kemmler’s catapults and trebuchets were raining down upon them, and the defenders were holding their lines and making short work of the corpses that managed to make it to the walls.
Unfortunately, it looked as if all that was about to change.
As Felix, Kat and the Slayers and spearmen squeezed onto the parapet behind the surging lines of knights, the deep rumble that had churned their guts since they had stepped into the courtyard grew so strong that it shook the castle walls, drowning out the shouts of the captains as they bellowed orders to their troops. Felix craned his neck to see over the battlements, and saw at last the source of the sound.
‘Sigmar,’ he breathed.
The towers had been frightening enough seen at a distance, when he had watched them being constructed at the edge of the woods. Now, lurching out of the night and crawling with nightmare crews, they were enough to make him want to turn and run. Up close, he saw they had been covered with the shaggy skins of beastmen, stretched across a twisted framework of dead trees, the hides crudely stitched together and the empty bags of head skin flapping and ballooning in the wind so that it looked like the eye and mouth holes were blinking and trying to say something.
More revolting still, the tower was being pulled by the dead beastmen that had been flayed to make it. Hundreds of skinless beast-corpses were harnessed to the towers, pulling them forwards by ropes that pierced them through their chests and strung them together like grisly fetishes on a shaman’s braid. The bestial zombies trudged forwards as one, straining against the thick knots that pressed against their sternums as the towers skidded slowly over the uneven ground, swaying and shaking like they were in a high wind.
The boarding crews were just as hideous – naked, white-skinned ghouls with clawed hands and filed teeth. They hung from the fighting tops by the score, gibbering and howling for human flesh, and shaking shin-bone spears and thigh-bone clubs.
‘Corpse-eaters,’ moaned Kat, shuddering.
Felix fought down nausea as the reek of death and defecation washed over them. ‘Gods,’ he choked. ‘The smell alone will kill us!’
The spearmen gave Felix and Kat a farewell salute, then hurried to rejoin the ranks of their comrades. Felix and Kat returned the salute, then followed the Slayers as they went left, heading for where the nearest tower was trundling towards the wall.
But as it loomed closer, hope swelled in Felix’s chest. It looked like the crew of the menacing tower were going to drag it straight into the empty moat, where it would tip forwards and crash flat before it reached the wall – and the further tower seemed about to do the same.
‘That’s it, you brainless puppets!’ shouted Captain Hultz from where his handgunners blazed at the ghouls. ‘Do our work for us!’
‘They’re going to crush their own crews!’ laughed a spearman.
The cat-calls died away, however, as the long trains of zombies that had been following the towers all at once surged ahead and began throwing themselves into the moat in front of them.
‘What are they doing?’ asked a knight. ‘They’ll be flattened!’
‘Oh, Sigmar,’ moaned a handgunner. ‘They’re making a bridge.’
And as he and Kat stared, Felix saw the man was right. The zombies kept piling into the moat in their hundreds until, just before the harnessed teams of beast-corpses reached them, they were level with its banks.
At first the dead beastmen lost their footing on the uneven surface of their comrades’ stacked bodies, but then they recovered, digging their hooves into the faces and ribcages and guts of the undead bridge and using them for traction. The skids of the towers had less trouble. They slid across the mound of crushed corpses as if they were greased, and the towers picked up speed.
Cannons belched smoke from the castle walls, and the top of the further tower smashed to splinters, sending the ghouls that clung to it spinning away to their deaths, while the cannonball from the right-hand gun crashed through the waist of the nearer, snapping timbers and braces within before punching out the far side.
The men on the walls cheered, but though smashed and sagging, the towers kept coming, screeching ghouls swarming up from their depths.
Rodi and Snorri stopped behind Bosendorfer and his greatswords, who readied themselves at the place where the nearer tower would strike the wall.
‘Here,’ said Rodi, hefting his axe.
Gotrek shot a last disappointed look at the sky, then fell in beside him. ‘Aye,’ he said.
‘Snorri wishes these humans would get out of the way,’ said Snorri.
‘Here it comes,’ said Kat.
‘Not one step back, greatswords!’ yelled Bosendorfer.
‘Not a step, lads!’ shouted his sergeant, a hulking veteran with a grizzled beard. ‘Not a step!’
With an impact that shook the whole castle, the hellish tower struck and the ghouls launched forwards, straight onto the sword-points of the greatswords – but they didn’t come alone. As the first wave died screaming and tumbling off the battlements to crash amongst the skinless beast-zombies below, a cold wind exhaled from the maw of the tower and a shrieking spectre burst forth, shadows flapping around it like a shroud. An eyeless female face stared from the centre of the darkness as claws like sabres reached for the greatswords.
The hairs stood on Felix’s neck as the thing came forwards, and he took an involuntary step back. Every fear he had ever had – of the dark, of losing his mother, of illness, death and tortures beyond the grave – all welled up in him at once as he looked into her empty eyes, and every fibre of courage he possessed dried up and crumbled in the scathing wind of her shriek. He wanted to turn and flee – to hide in a corner and weep.
And perhaps he would have, but Kat stumbled back too, bumping into him, and somehow, that contact, and the opportunity it gave him to put his hand on her shoulder and reassure her, reassured him too, and the panic passed.
The greatswords, unfortunately, had no one to reassure, and were edging back and dying as the ghouls took advantage of their terrified paralysis, raking out their eyes and ripping out their throats. Bosendorfer swung his two-hander at the ghostly horror, but his blade passed right through it without touching and it came on, swiping with its claws.
They impaled him through the chest, and though they seemed to do no physical damage to him or his armour, their touch made him stagger and shriek.
‘Fall back!’ he cried, flailing with his sword. ‘Fall back, we cannot prevail!’
The greatswords, already on the point of breaking, followed this order with a will, and fled down the wall, Bosendorfer in the lead and the sergeant taking up the rear, as a score of ghouls flooded onto the parapet unopposed after them.
‘Cowards!’ growled Gotrek, and charged forwards into the corpse-eaters with Rodi and Snorri milling at his sides, and Felix and Kat following behind.
‘At least they got out of the way,’ said Snorri.
The banshee howled at the Slayers as they slaughtered the ghouls, but one swipe of Gotrek’s axe and she dissipated into fading curls of mist, her miasma of fear fading with her. The Slayers pressed on, but they were like a boulder in a wide stream. Though they cut down ghouls with every swing of their weapons, without the greatswords to hold their flanks, many more spilled around them and swarmed down the wall, attacking the lines of the knights and spearmen from the rear. The ranks were crumbling and falling back in confusion, allowing the zombies to top their ladders and gain a foothold on the wall. The greatswords needed to come back!
‘Bosendorfer!’ shouted Felix, hacking down a ghoul. ‘Turn about! She’s gone!’
A few of the greatswords looked back, but Bosendorfer didn’t seem to have heard. Felix cursed, then filled his lungs. It had worked with the spearmen in the tunnel. Perhaps it would work here.
‘G
reatswords!’ he shouted. ‘To me! Hold the wall! Hold for Castle Reikguard!’
A few of the greatswords slowed and turned, and then called more of their comrades back. The grizzled sergeant hesitated, looking towards Bosendorfer, then back to Felix again.
‘To me!’ shouted Felix again. ‘We can hold them here!’
The words seemed to galvanise the sergeant, and he started back along the wall. The others followed, and fell upon the ghouls that had got behind the knights and spearmen.
‘That’s it!’ cried Felix, as they worked their way back along the wall. ‘For Graf Reiklander! For the Empire!’
With the greatswords pushing back the ghoul incursion, the Slayers pressed forwards to stem the tide at its source. They cut a bloody path to the battlements, then leapt from them to the siege tower and battled through the ghouls towards the maw from which they spewed.
Felix and Kat watched their progress uneasily as they and the great-swords fought to hem in the ghouls that still swarmed past the Slayers to the wall. The tower was listing decidedly to the left and creaking noisily as the skinless beast-zombies, no longer needed to pull it forwards, climbed its sides, still strung together on their long ropes.
‘Don’t the brainless things know it’s broken inside?’ cried Kat. ‘They’re going to pull it down!’
‘Aye,’ said Felix. ‘And the Slayers with it.’
A roar from above brought Felix’s head up. He cursed. Hurtling out of the sky on the back of his undead wyvern was Krell, aiming straight for the three dwarfs.
‘Slayers!’ shouted Felix.
Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri dived aside as the patchwork monster slammed down on the precarious tower and nearly rocked it off its runners. Ghouls and skinned beasts spun away to the ground as the Slayers clung like limpets, and more ominous crackings and grindings sounded from within.
‘Mine!’ roared Rodi as Krell dismounted and slashed at him with his black axe. The gauntleted hand and forearm Gotrek had previously severed seemed to have completely regrown.
‘Find your own doom, Balkisson!’ roared Gotrek, throwing himself forwards. ‘This is mine!’
‘Take it if you can, Gurnisson!’ laughed Rodi and charged in as well.
Krell blocked both attacks with a scrape of steel, but Gotrek shouldered into his legs and sent him crashing back into his wyvern. The ugly beast flapped into the air, shrieking, and left the wight king lying at the edge of the tower as the Slayers advanced.
‘Snorri wants it to be his doom!’ called Snorri, limping after them.
A skinned beastmen pulled itself up onto the fighting top and lurched in Snorri’s way as Krell and the Slayers clashed. Snorri crushed the beast-corpse’s head with his hammer, only to find more of the hulking horrors pulling themselves up all around him, all still linked together like some grisly charm bracelet come to life.
‘Get out of Snorri’s way!’ shouted Snorri.
Felix cursed. This was bad. He had to get Snorri off the tower before he found his doom. Unfortunately, there were more than a score of ghouls in the way.
‘Drive them back!’ he shouted to the greatswords. ‘Drive them off the walls!’
The greatswords cheered, and the grizzled sergeant echoed him. ‘Aye, lads! Drive ’em back to the graveyard!’
The greatswords fell upon the ghouls like a single man, their weapons rising and falling as one, and doing terrible damage to heads, shoulders and necks as Felix and Kat fought in their centre. Still, Felix wasn’t sure they would be quick enough.
On the leaning tower, Snorri fought in the centre of a handful of skinned beasts, roaring joyously, while Gotrek and Rodi chopped at Krell from opposite sides. The wight king turned and slashed in their centre, his obsidian axe making a choking cloud of grit all around him. Rodi caught a mouthful and stumbled, coughing, and Krell struck him a blow so strong that, though he blocked it, it knocked the young Slayer to the very edge of the fighting top.
‘Ha!’ snarled Gotrek, charging in. ‘Now we’ll see whose doom it is!’
Krell backed from Gotrek’s blurring axe, and his ancient black armour was quickly scored with a dozen metal-bright scars, but the surge was taking its toll on Gotrek too. His ragged breathing had returned, and his face glowed like a hot coal.
Rodi struggled to his feet and started up the slant again, but the skinned beast-corpses were surrounding him as well. ‘Wait, Gurnisson!’
Gotrek coughed as he drove Krell to the edge. ‘A Slayer doesn’t wait!’
The undead champion’s boot-heel slipped on the uneven lip of the fighting top, and Gotrek took advantage, hacking a huge divot out of his right greave. Krell threw himself to the side to avoid another strike and Gotrek turned after him, blowing like a steam tank.
At the same moment, Felix, Kat and the greatswords finally chopped down the last of the ghouls and leapt up onto the battlements to hack at the ring of skinless beasts that surrounded Snorri – only to find the old Slayer in a terrible predicament.
His peg leg was wedged between two planks at the very edge of the slanted platform, and he couldn’t get it out. He swung mightily with his warhammer as the dead beasts pressed him from all sides, but he could not move or dodge, and they were clawing him to pieces.
Felix, Kat and the greatswords charged in, chopping at the ring of beasts, but there were too many, and they were too big. They weren’t going to make it before Snorri was driven over the side.
‘Gotrek!’ shouted Felix. ‘Snorri!’
Gotrek looked to the old Slayer as he smashed Krell’s legs out from under him and sent him crashing down the slant. He hesitated, and Felix read his expression. If he went after the wight king, he could finish him, and cross out a thousand grudges in the dwarfs’ ancient book. He could be known forever as the Slayer of Krell the Holdbreaker. But if he did, Snorri would fall to his death.
With a savage snarl, Gotrek charged at Snorri, and slammed into the wall of beasts around him, hamstringing one with his axe and shoving it over the edge. It jerked to a stop and swung like a hanged man as the rope that connected it to its fellows pulled taut. The next in the string staggered sideways at the jerk and Gotrek shoved it too. That did it. As the second beastman pitched over the side, its weight, combined with the weight of the first beastman and the steep angle of the platform, pulled all the rest off one after the other in rapid succession. It was like watching a string of ugly sausages slip over the edge of a cliff.
But as the last beast-corpse toppled, it impaled itself upon a dead tree branch that jutted out through the stretched skins of the tower’s side, and stopped dead. All at once, all the weight of all the beasts on the string jerked the crippled tower hard to the left, and something vital broke within it.
Gotrek cursed and stumbled to Snorri, ripping his trapped peg from the planks as the tower began to sink slowly but inexorably to the side.
‘Fall back, Nosebiter,’ he wheezed, and shoved him at Felix and Kat, who dragged him back towards the battlements.
‘Where did the beastmen go?’ asked Snorri.
‘Forget the beastmen, Snorri,’ snapped Kat.
Gotrek turned back to Krell. Rodi was already there, driving him back across the tipping fighting top with brutal cuts as the wight king roared at the sky. Gotrek plunged after them, panting and rasping, but before he could reach them, the wyvern flashed down, flaring its wings, and Krell vaulted into the saddle.
Gotrek and Rodi rushed at him, but they were too late. The wyvern launched forwards and plunged away out of sight, and the tower tilted drastically under their feet.
‘Coward!’ roared Gotrek.
‘Come back and fight!’ bellowed Rodi.
‘Slayers!’ called Felix. ‘Get off it!’
‘Hurry!’ cried Kat.
The Slayers stood for an agonising second, staring after Krell, then turned and walked back onto the battlements just as the collapsing tower finally sank away beneath them. Gotrek’s face was hot and his chest heaved, but his single eye was as ha
rd and cold as Felix had ever seen it.
Along the wall, the men pushing back the ladders and fighting the zombies cheered as the tower crashed to the moat, crushing scores of zombies and ghouls, and the cheer was echoed from the right as the second tower went down as well, burning like a kite in a furnace, but the Slayers did not seem in a celebratory mood.
Snorri, bleeding from a dozen claw wounds, was frowning at Gotrek as he struggled to stand. ‘Snorri doesn’t think it was right of you, Gotrek Gurnisson, to stop him from–’
‘And Gotrek Gurnisson doesn’t give a damn what Snorri thinks!’ Gotrek bellowed in the old Slayer’s face. ‘Until he remembers his shame, Gotrek doesn’t want to hear another word out of Snorri’s mouth!’
Felix, Kat and Rodi stepped back as Snorri blinked, stunned by Gotrek’s outburst. The greatswords didn’t seem to know where to look.
‘And what if Snorri thinks he’d like to punch Gotrek Gurnisson’s ugly face in?’ asked Snorri, his fists balling.
Gotrek’s brows lowered, but before he could gather enough breath to reply, von Volgen and a pair of knights shoved past him, running towards von Geldrecht.
‘Lord steward!’ called von Volgen. ‘The harbour! Look to the harbour!’
Felix, Kat and the Slayers turned and looked down into the harbour, searching for what von Volgen was speaking of. Felix frowned. The sloop was still burning, and rocks and flaming corpses were still splashing down all over it, but he saw no new threat.
