by Warhammer
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘There!’ said Kat, pointing towards the water near the quayside.
Felix followed her gaze. The water was filled with bobbing heads and thrashing hands as men tried to climb out onto the quayside.
No. Not men.
‘Zombies,’ rasped Gotrek. ‘From under the river gate.’
TWELVE
‘Sigmar’s blood!’ cursed Felix. ‘How have they got in? We blocked it!’
The zombies were pulling themselves onto the docks in a mass now, like sludge-covered crabs crawling over each other to escape a roiling stew pot. The massive forms of dead beastmen heaved up amongst them, water pouring from their filthy fur, and they staggered towards the doors of the main gatehouse while the human corpses shuffled for the stairs to the walls and clawed up the sides of the burning riverboat as the river wardens hacked at them and shoved them back.
‘So many,’ moaned Kat. ‘What do we do now?’
Felix turned to ask Gotrek the same question. The Slayer was walking after von Volgen with Snorri and Rodi following. Felix shot an uneasy look at Snorri, afraid he might still be angry at Gotrek, but the old Slayer’s face was as placid as it always was – as if his oldest friend hadn’t just shouted in his face. Felix sighed. That was one advantage to Snorri’s memory problems, he supposed. He forgot an insult as quickly as he forgot anything else.
Felix saluted the greatsword sergeant as he and Kat turned to follow the Slayers. ‘Thank you, sergeant.’
The big man gave him a sheepish smile. ‘Thank you, mein Herr,’ he said. ‘Thank you for bringing us back.’
‘You are thanking him, Sergeant Leffler?’ rang a voice behind them. ‘For countermanding my order?’
They all looked around. It was Bosendorfer, his eyes blazing.
‘If I tell you to fall back, you fall back,’ he said, stepping forwards. ‘If I tell you to hold the walls, you hold the walls, is that clear?’
‘Yes, captain,’ said the sergeant. ‘Very clear.’
‘Good,’ said Bosendorfer, then pointed to the now-empty battlements. ‘Hold the walls!’
The men hesitated, and Leffler glanced at Felix as if to ask his permission. Felix nodded automatically, then saw that Bosendorfer had witnessed the exchange, and was rigid with rage.
The sergeant saluted hastily, then led the others back to the battlements.
Felix stepped back, feeling like he should say something, then turned away with Kat, growling. He felt Bosendorfer’s eyes on him the whole way as they followed the Slayers down the wall.
‘I don’t think I’ve made a friend there,’ he said.
‘Who wants a coward for a friend?’ sneered Kat.
They found the Slayers on the top of the easternmost tower, waiting impatiently as von Geldrecht gave orders to his officers while von Volgen stood at his side, whispering advice.
‘One in every five men on the wall shall descend and defend the gatehouse!’ called von Geldrecht, then turned to von Volgen, frowning. ‘One in five? Are you sure? Will the walls hold?’
‘With the towers down,’ said von Volgen calmly, ‘the zombies on the ladders can be contained. The harbour breach is your greatest threat, lord steward. It must be stopped and the gatehouse held, for if it falls, you will have to retire to the keep – and that will involve a great loss of life and treasure.’
‘But how are we to stop the hole?’ said von Geldrecht, and Felix could see he was an eye blink from panic. ‘I thought we had already blocked it.’
‘Leave that to us,’ said Gotrek, his breathing slowly returning to normal. ‘You keep the corpses out of the gatehouse, and we’ll plug your hole for you.’
Von Geldrecht breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Slayers. You shall have all the assistance you require.’
‘Rope, lamp oil, pipe charges and matchcord,’ grunted Gotrek. ‘Also an oarboat, and some men to keep off the zombies while we work.’
‘It shall be done,’ said von Geldrecht. ‘And you will have Bosendorfer’s greatswords to defend you.’
Felix coughed. ‘Uh, no need to trouble them,’ he said quickly. ‘Perhaps some spearmen instead.’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ said von Geldrecht, then turned back to von Volgen as Felix, Kat and the Slayers started for the stairs. ‘And you will see to the defence of the gatehouse, my lord?’
Von Volgen bowed. ‘Of course, lord steward. We will hold it to the last man.’
Felix thought he did a remarkable job of keeping the contempt out of his voice.
A few minutes later, Felix, Kat and Snorri were prowling back and forth along the embankment of the harbour, fending off the giant bats that wheeled down out of the sky and chopping at any zombies that dared rear their heads above the waves while Rodi tied a rope around Gotrek’s waist, and Gotrek chained his rune axe to his wrist. They were all tucked into the furthest corner of the harbour, behind the stairs that rose to the keep, and beside the river gate. The spearmen Gotrek had requested were posted between the stairs and the embankment, blocking any zombies that shambled towards them from the courtyard. That didn’t stop the ones who tried to climb out of the water, however, and Felix, Kat and Snorri had their hands full.
‘Sure you have enough breath?’ asked Rodi, pulling the rope tight.
‘It won’t take much,’ said Gotrek.
Felix swallowed. He could think of no more unpleasant experience than jumping into a dark harbour full of undead men and beastmen, but it would be impossible to patch the hole until they knew how big it was, and the only way to learn that was to sink down and look. Gotrek also wanted to know how the zombies had made it. Had they pushed aside the stones? Had they dug through the mud? How could they have done it in such a short time?
Rodi tied off the rope, then ducked aside as a great boulder smashed down next to them, shattering the flagstones and bouncing away, proof that the battle had not stopped so that they could carry out their investigation. Indeed, it had become worse. On the towers, Volk’s cannons continued to blaze away, trying to knock out Kemmler’s catapults and trebuchets, which still bombarded the courtyard with filth and stones and flaming death. On the walls, von Geldrecht’s knights and spearmen kept up their never-ending battle to push back the zombies’ ladders. And in the courtyard, von Volgen and his company of chosen men guarded the gatehouse doors against the ever-growing swarm of zombies that continued to surge up out of the harbour in a never-ending tide and attack them with mindless focus.
Unless Gotrek found some way to block the hole in the river gate, the outcome of that battle was inevitable. Von Volgen’s men were holding up well, but faced with a force that would not break or tire or diminish, they would eventually die of attrition, and the gatehouse would fall. Then the zombies would open the gates and the rest of the horde would pour in. The lower courtyard would be lost, and likely the keep too. Castle Reikguard would be in the hands of Kemmler, and the relief force, when it at last arrived, would take the role of besieger, rather than rescuer.
Gotrek stepped to the edge of the embankment.
‘Leave off, Nosebiter,’ he said. ‘It’s time.’
Snorri put his hammer on his back and wrapped the end of Gotrek’s rope around his massive fist. ‘Snorri is ready.’
‘Ready,’ said Rodi, taking up a jug of lamp oil and a torch.
Gotrek nodded, then dived into the water, his axe in one hand. As soon as he vanished beneath the waves, Rodi cracked the jug of lamp oil on the stone embankment and let the contents spill onto the water, then touched the torch to the spreading sheen.
With a sudden whump, the oil went up in a ball of flame, then burned brightly on the waves, snaking like it was alive through the ripples and splashes.
A zombie came up in the middle of it and tried to climb onto the bank as the flames clung to its head and shoulders. It didn’t seem to notice, and reached for Kat with a burning hand. She dodged back, then split its skull with one hatchet, and its
throat with the other. The thing fell back, clawing weakly and fizzling as it sank beneath the waves.
A second later, the flames burned themselves out, and a second after that, Gotrek’s rope began wildly jerking and thrashing in the water.
‘Pull, Snorri!’ shouted Rodi. ‘Pull!’
The old Slayer heaved mightily on the rope, and began to reel it in fist over fist, but there was a lot of resistance. Rodi joined him and they pulled together as Felix and Kat stepped close to the edge, weapons raised.
The water churned at their feet, and then a shaven head and broad shoulders shot backwards up out of the waves, followed instantly by the horned goat head of a dead beastman, and the rotting, thrashing limbs of human zombies. Gotrek was infested with them. The beast-corpse had its ursine teeth clamped around his left shoulder, and the humans clung to his legs and torso, all clawing and biting as he swung his rune axe and roared sputtering defiance.
Felix struck the goat-headed monster a glancing blow. It was enough of a distraction for Gotrek to bury his axe under its jaw, and it fell away. Kat severed the spine of one of the men, and Gotrek peeled off the other two with his axe, then flopped on the embankment, coughing violently, as Felix and Kat drove the rest under the waves.
‘Well?’ said Rodi, throwing down the rope.
Gotrek sat up, still coughing, and slicked his crest back out of his eyes. ‘Big enough for a beastman,’ he said. ‘But no bigger. And right through the gate.’
He opened his left hand to reveal a stub of metal bar. Felix and Kat looked at it over their shoulders. It was a broken piece of the iron lattice that made up the river gate doors, but it had a curious brittle look to it, and when Rodi poked his finger at it, it crumbled away like chalk.
‘The saboteur,’ he grunted. ‘I thought Lord Lard-Guts was going to “take steps”.’
Gotrek grunted and pulled himself to his feet. He had deep bite marks in his left shoulder, and claw marks everywhere. ‘Forget the saboteur. We have to close the hole.’ His eye focussed on the temple of Sigmar across the harbour. ‘And that is the patch.’
‘You can’t take my door!’ cried Father Ulfram, as his acolyte, Danniken, cowered in the background. ‘This is a temple of Sigmar! You are committing sacrilege!’
The Slayers ignored him, just continued banging at the hinges of the huge iron-bound door with their hammers and chisels.
‘I’m sorry, father,’ said Felix, ‘but it’s the only way. It is strong enough and big enough, and–’
‘You’ve prayed to Sigmar to protect us, haven’t you, priest?’ interrupted Kat, an edge to her voice.
‘Of course I have,’ said Ulfram. ‘Constantly.’
‘And what if this is his answer?’ Kat asked.
The priest opened his mouth to retort, then paused, his brows furrowed behind the rag that hid his eyes. ‘Here it comes,’ said Rodi, and stepped back as the massive door suddenly dropped from its hinges, then toppled forwards to crash down on the temple’s front steps with a deafening boom.
Ulfram wailed at the sound and turned towards the altar at the back of the temple, making the sign of the hammer on his sunken chest. ‘O Sigmar, if this be your will, then grant me–’
‘We’ll be back for the altar,’ said Gotrek.
‘What!’ cried Ulfram. ‘No! At this I draw the line! You cannot–’
But the three Slayers had already picked up the heavy door and were walking it out to their commandeered longboat.
By the time the boatmen had pushed the heavy-laden longboat away from the quay and started rowing towards the river gate with Gotrek, Felix, Snorri, Rodi and Kat crouching on top of the precariously balanced door and altar, it was clear to Felix that Kemmler had figured out what they were doing and was trying to stop it.
The zombies that emerged from the waters of the harbour were no longer shambling towards von Volgen’s beleaguered square of defenders before the gatehouse. Now they were bobbing up on all sides of the longboat and reaching for its sides with their water-bloated claws, while at the same time, every giant bat in the sky was now streaking down and trying to smash them all into the water.
It was a nightmare. Felix, Kat and Rodi crawled up and down the boat, slashing at the zombies in a frenzy, as Gotrek and Snorri stumped back and forth and fought off the bats that clattered and shrieked above them, while the terrified river wardens prayed to Manann and spent as much time bashing zombies with their oars as they did rowing.
Felix feared every second that the overloaded boat would capsize and they would sink into the roiling stew of zombies, but somehow – by Sigmar’s grace? – they reached the river gate with only a foot of water in the bottom and only two of the oarsmen pulled to their deaths.
Gotrek lashed the boat length-wise to the iron bars of the gates, which allowed the boatmen to abandon their oars and take up their cutlasses and join Kat, Felix and Snorri in the defence, while Gotrek and Rodi bent to their work.
Felix had never been in so hectic a fight. It was a non-stop onslaught from water and air, a whirling madness of arms and wings and claws and snapping teeth, with the boat rocking and bumping under his feet. A bat clawed his forehead and he fought on blinded by blood. A zombie bit his ankle, and its jaws remained locked around it even after he had cut its head off. Kat weaved like she was drunk, her whole left side covered in black slime. The boatmen fought like cornered rats, snarling with rabid fear.
In the few brief over-the-shoulder glances he managed, Felix saw the two Slayers working feverishly – fixing the door to the gate with long chains looped around its hinge posts, then tying ropes around the massive altar, and doing the same to it.
By then the boat was wallowing so low in the water that Felix feared that a single zombie laying its hands on its gunwales would send it sinking to the bottom.
‘Any time, Gotrek,’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Any time.’
‘Nearly there, manling,’ said Gotrek.
He and Rodi turned to the bow where two of Volk’s tunnel charges sat half-submerged. They took lengths of slow-burning gunner’s match from their belts then turned to the boatmen.
‘The blast will stun the zombies in the water and knock back any coming through the hole,’ said Gotrek. ‘It will also sink the boat.’
‘Sink the boat!’ cried a boatman. ‘You didn’t say–’
‘You should have time to swim to the bank before the zombies recover,’ smirked Rodi. ‘But if you don’t, well, at least you died saving your mates.’
The boatmen wailed at this, but there was little they could do. Gotrek and Rodi touched the gunner’s match to the matchcord of the charges then pitched them towards the centre of the harbour where they splashed into the water. Felix had been a little sceptical of this part of the plan, but he changed his mind as he saw the sparking flame of the matchcord still burning as it sank towards the bottom.
The zombies, being zombies, paid no attention and just kept on attacking, as did the bats, but Felix’s heart raced in his chest as he waited for the bang to come. How big would the explosion be? What if it smashed them all into the gate?
A dull thud, felt as much as heard, punched the soles of his feet and rocked the boat violently beneath him, then a geyser of water, smoke and zombie parts erupted in the middle of the harbour, spraying them all and sending a great mounded ring wave spreading in all directions.
‘Here it comes!’ shouted a boatman, dropping his cutlass.
The swell lifted them high, and as Felix had feared, banged the boat against the gates, but then the water passed through the bars and dropped again. The boat went with it, wallowing, then slipping out from under the chained temple door and roped altar to sink into the water.
The boatmen swam frantically for the embankment through a sargasso of floating, unmoving zombies, but Felix and Kat remained clinging to the bars of the gate and slashing at the wheeling bats as the last pieces of Gotrek’s plan literally fell into place.
As the boat sank, the heavy temple do
or swung down on its chains until it vanished under the water and Felix felt it clang flat against the river gate.
‘So,’ said Felix, ducking as a bat smashed into the gate. ‘That seals the hole?’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, then slapped the bulky stone slab of the altar, which still hung from its ropes, half-submerged, against the gate. ‘And this is the lock. Not even a beastman could shift the door with this wedged behind it.’ He raised his axe and turned to Rodi and Snorri. ‘Ready, Balkisson? Nosebiter?’
‘Snorri is ready,’ said Snorri, pulling himself around so that he held the outer edge of the altar.
‘Aye, Gurnisson,’ said Rodi, lifting his axe.
As one, he and Gotrek cut the ropes holding the stone table, and it sank swiftly into the water.
The Slayers went with it, holding its sides to guide it, and disappeared beneath the dark water. Felix looked around – the floating zombies were beginning to twitch and groan.
‘We’d better swim for it,’ he said, sheathing his sword.
Kat nodded and they struck out for the embankment, only a few yards away. The boatmen helped them out of the water then looked back towards the gate.
‘Have they done it?’ asked one.
‘It doesn’t seem possible,’ said another.
But as the Slayers’ heads broke the surface again and they began swimming for shore, Felix noticed that all the bats banked away from them and began to attack von Volgen’s men again, harassing them from the air as they defended the gatehouse against the huge mob of zombies that surrounded it.
‘Aye,’ said Felix. ‘They did it. Kemmler has given us up for another target.’
The three Slayers heaved themselves out of the water and turned towards the battle at the gatehouse.
‘Come on,’ said Gotrek, wheezing as he started forwards with Rodi and Snorri. ‘Only a few left now.’
Felix exchanged a weary look with Kat. It felt like they had been fighting forever, but the Slayer was right. Patching the hole would be pointless if the zombies that had already got in broke through the front gate. He drew his sword and Kat drew her hatchets, and they slogged after the Slayers.
