by Warhammer
‘Go in, manling,’ shouted the Slayer as Krell and the wights knocked him back and drove Rodi towards the gate. ‘And take Snorri Nosebiter with you.’ Snorri kept walking ahead. ‘Snorri doesn’t want–’
‘I don’t care what Snorri doesn’t want!’ roared Gotrek as he blocked and backed away. ‘Go in!’
Snorri snorted, but then stopped, fists bunched, and watched as Gotrek and Rodi fought in the centre of Krell and the wights.
Felix looked back towards the doors. The gap between them was getting awfully narrow. ‘Uh, Snorri…?’
With an enraged snort, the old Slayer turned and walked through the gate, as angry as Felix had ever seen him. Felix and Kat breathed a sigh of relief and followed him in as the greatswords filed in behind them. Once inside, Snorri turned and glared back through the closing doors. Felix and Kat joined him, staring as Krell and the ancient wights battered Gotrek and Rodi inexorably back towards the gate.
A tremor of realisation went through Felix as he watched. This was it. This was Gotrek’s doom at last. He faced too many opponents. He would never survive. At least it was a good doom – certainly better than dying from slivers in the heart – and if he killed Krell, then the Slayer’s fame was assured. He would be remembered as one of the greatest heroes of dwarf history. Felix’s eyes brimmed. And what a poem it would make! A last stand. A closing door. Two rivals united against deathless evil, fighting shoulder to shoulder.
But then, with the doors almost too narrow for a dwarf to pass through, Rodi suddenly dropped his shoulder and slammed into Gotrek from the side, surprising him and knocking him off balance, then shoved him back through the gap.
‘Sorry, Gotrek Gurnisson,’ called the young Slayer as Gotrek crashed down inside the doors. ‘You will not rob me of another doom!’
Felix and Kat and Snorri stared in shock as Gotrek bounded up and tried to squeeze back through the gap, but it was too small now and he couldn’t get between the doors.
‘Treacherous beardling!’ Gotrek roared, pulling desperately. ‘We’d both have had our dooms!’
‘No, Gurnisson, we would not!’ cried Rodi as he slashed at Krell and the armoured wights. ‘Even here, even with a belly wound, even with the doors closed, we would have survived! You are cursed, Gurnisson! You will never find your doom! Nor will anyone around you! Grimnir mocks you, and I will not be part of the joke!’
Gotrek pulled with all his might, but at last he had to snatch his hands from the gap to keep them from being crushed. He turned on Classen as the doors boomed shut.
‘Open them!’ he shouted. ‘Let me out!’
The knight sergeant edged back in the face of the Slayer’s fury, but shook his head. ‘No, Herr dwarf. I will not risk the keep for your personal wishes.’
Gotrek glared at him for a long moment, breathing heavily, then grunted and turned back as the muffled clash of steel against steel rose to a feverish tempo beyond the doors, and a whoop of fierce joy sang above the tumult – then was cut short.
After that, all that could be heard was the hiss of the crimson rain and the chop of axes and swords against the oak and iron of the doors. Gotrek’s shoulders slumped and he stood facing them, head bowed, while Classen called for men to man the murder holes and drive Krell and the wights away with gunfire and boulders.
Kat and Snorri bowed their heads too, and so did Felix, though he wasn’t sure how he felt. Rodi had been a sharp-tongued companion, and hot-headed as well. Nonetheless, Felix had liked him. He had been quick and funny and brave, but now that he had stolen a doom from Gotrek, those memories were beginning to sour.
‘Cursed,’ said Gotrek, then turned and started into the keep’s courtyard.
Felix and Kat fell in behind him, with Snorri hobbling along after them, mumbling under his breath.
EIGHTEEN
‘How many still live?’ asked von Geldrecht, then amended his question as he looked around. ‘How many can still fight?’
Felix looked around too. He, Gotrek and Kat stood with the steward, von Volgen and the remaining officers at the side of Bosendorfer, who lay wincing upon a cot in the back corner of a large cellar room within the keep. In normal times the room was a chapel belonging to Karl Franz’s personal retinue of Reiksguard knights. Now it was carpeted with the wounded and the dying, and the prayers were to Shallya, not Sigmar.
Felix had made a fair number of prayers to the Lady of Mercy himself since the retreat to the keep. Kat had cleaned and bound the claw wounds on his forearm as best she could, but the bat’s talons must have been diseased, for the arm was now stiff and hot, and the edges of the gashes red and painful to the touch. Still, he could hold a sword, and he could walk, and in this company, that ranked him among the able. Most of von Geldrecht’s remaining officers were no better off, and some were worse – with splinted arms, seeping head wounds, missing fingers and missing eyes.
At least Bosendorfer’s mad anger seemed to have bled out with the blood they had all lost. The steward seemed in no danger of sending von Volgen to the dungeon, and Bosendorfer hadn’t even looked at Felix since he had woken from unconsciousness. They were all too weary for such nonsense now.
‘Six,’ said the greatsword captain, glancing to where Sergeant Leffler and his greatswords sat, binding each other’s wounds. ‘But there would be seven if someone would see to this leg. Where’s that damned sister?’
‘She is in need of a sister herself,’ said von Geldrecht. ‘Lord von Volgen?’
‘Fourteen,’ said von Volgen. ‘Though even the fittest can barely stand in his armour.’
‘There’s only me,’ said an artilleryman Felix didn’t know. ‘But all the powder’s down in the underkeep where we can’t get to it, and there’s no shot for the top guns anyway.’
Looking at him, Felix realised almost all the officers were unfamiliar to him now. Volk was dead, Hultz of the handgunners was dead, and Felix was too numb to mourn their loss, or remember if he had seen them die. Even the young spearman who had taken the place of Abelung, who had taken the place of Zeismann, had been replaced by an even younger spearman. The boy had peach fuzz on his chin and a thousand-yard stare. Only Bosendorfer and von Volgen were left of those who had commanded before the fighting began, and the wound in Bosendorfer’s leg that he had taken from the wight queen’s mace would be the death of him.
The boy from the spearmen wiped at his cheek. It was caked in blood. All the men were, from head to foot. Drying, it looked like they were iron statues, gone to rust. ‘Eleven, my lord,’ said the boy. ‘Eleven. Eleven.’
‘I don’t know,’ said a young river warden. ‘The rest took shelter in the underkeep. I couldn’t get to them, so I came up here. There – there was fifteen before the battle.’
‘They will be dead by now,’ said von Geldrecht blankly. ‘Handgunner?’
‘Nine,’ said the handgunner. ‘And we’ve no powder or shot either.’
Classen had to be nudged awake.
‘Eh?’ he said, looking around.
‘How many of your company can still fight, knight sergeant?’ asked von Geldrecht.
‘Nineteen,’ said Classen. ‘Though it’ll be less by morning.’
Von Geldrecht swung his head around to Gotrek, Felix and Kat. ‘And we are less one Slayer, yes?’ His eyes glittered angrily. ‘Died outside the gate when he could have backed through the doors and fought again.’
‘A Slayer’s doom is no one’s business but his own,’ rasped Gotrek.
‘Even when he may have doomed the rest of us with it?’ asked Bosendorfer. ‘We may die tonight for want of his axe.’
‘We will all die tonight,’ said Gotrek. ‘Rodi Balkisson’s axe would make no difference.’
Von Geldrecht looked at him sourly. ‘Less of that talk, dwarf. Would you have us give up hope? Would you have us give up fighting?’
Kat snorted. ‘You certainly did,’ she muttered, but fortunately only Felix heard her.
‘I will fight,’ said Gotrek. ‘The dwarfs wou
ld have died out long ago if we only fought when there was hope.’
‘Aye,’ said von Volgen. ‘We must fight. There may be no hope for us, but we are still the hope of the Empire. We fight now to slow Kemmler as long as possible, and give Karl Franz time to prepare for his coming.’
‘Well said,’ said von Geldrecht, looking as if he wished he’d been the one who had said it. ‘Though I’d hoped we might survive at least one more night.’ He looked around at them all. ‘Is that impossible?’
Classen raised his chin. ‘We will try, my lord. We will die fighting to make it…’
A figure moving towards them caused him to trail off in mid-sentence. The others looked around. Sister Willentrude was shuffling through the ranks of the wounded, the makeshift bandage that had been wrapped around her terrible neck wound as blood-soaked as her once-white Shallyan robes. She was staring at von Geldrecht with a look of dull despair on her ravaged face.
‘Sister,’ said von Geldrecht, ‘you should not be up from your bed. What is the matter? Is there some new calamity?’
‘She’s come to look at my leg,’ said Bosendorfer. ‘Let her through.’
But Sister Willentrude didn’t look at him, only raised her arms as if she wished to be comforted and stumbled on towards the steward, moaning.
Von Geldrecht stepped back, eyes widening, as the others began to stand. ‘Sister? Are you well?’
‘Draw your sword, fool!’ shouted Gotrek, pushing forwards. ‘She is–’
Before he could finish, the sister fell upon von Geldrecht, her hands clawing at his chest and her jaws snapping at his neck. The steward barked in terror and shoved her back, and Gotrek’s axe bit deep into her side, then severed her head as she sprawled to the floor.
Von Geldrecht and the other leaders looked down at the headless corpse in stunned silence, as from all over the room, the wounded shouted and tried to stand.
‘The dwarf killed the sister!’ cried one.
‘Kill him!’
‘Lord steward, arrest him!’
Von Geldrecht held up his hands as some of the men started lurching towards them, balling their fists.
‘Go back to your beds,’ he said. ‘She was already dead. She – she had turned.’
The angry looks turned to masks of grief and disbelief. The fists lowered.
‘Not the sister,’ said one. ‘Not her.’
Beside Felix, Kat sobbed quietly. ‘But we saved her,’ she murmured. ‘We saved her.’
He put his arm around her shoulder. She didn’t seem to notice.
Von Geldrecht stared at the sister’s headless body, then sighed again. ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I will go inform Graf Reiklander of our numbers and our prospects. Please begin your preparations for tonight’s attack. I will rejoin you soon.’
He turned and limped away, leaning heavily on his cane, as the others began to disperse and Bosendorfer stared at the corpse of Sister Willentrude.
‘But who’s going to look at my leg?’ he asked.
Felix glared at him, and had to restrain himself from leaping up and throttling him. The man most responsible for the deaths of the wounded since the siege began, and now he was moaning about his leg not being seen to? It would be the most poetic of justice to see him die for want of a surgeon, but… but he wasn’t the only one wounded, was he? There was a whole chapel full of hurt men. And Felix’s arm needed attention as well.
Felix grunted to his feet and started after von Geldrecht.
‘My lord steward,’ he said as he caught up to him. ‘I know you must be weary of my asking, but with Sister Willentrude dead, I must try again. Will you release Tauber and let him do his job?’
Von Geldrecht turned, and Felix was afraid he was going to get another earful, but instead the steward just stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded. ‘Very well, Herr Jaeger,’ he said. ‘Very well.’ He pulled his ring of keys off his belt and unhooked the clasp, then selected an age-blackened skeleton key and drew it off. ‘I’m afraid I’ve left it too late,’ he said, holding it out. ‘And for that, I apologise. But as your dwarf friend says, just because there is no hope, doesn’t mean one should stop fighting.’
He dropped the key in Felix’s outstretched hand, then turned and started off again. ‘Good luck, Herr Jaeger.’
Felix and Kat followed an old servant down narrow steps as he held up a lantern. ‘Steward said I wasn’t to let no one down here,’ he said. ‘Not on no account. But as you have the key…’
He stepped from the stairs into a cramped corridor then led them through a barred door into a rectangular room lined with sturdy iron-banded doors, each with a tiny window and a slot at the bottom for food.
‘Herr Doktor is in this one,’ he said, pointing. ‘His assistants in that.’
Felix and Kat started to the door he indicated, but then a scuffling noise brought their heads around. There were noises coming from another cell.
‘Who’s that?’ came a sharp voice. ‘Are y’zombies?’
A hang-dog face appeared at the window of a door on the opposite wall. More crowded in behind it.
‘Draeger!’ said Kat.
‘The dwarf-lover and his cat, is it?’ asked Draeger. ‘What’s happened? We heard fightin’, but nobody came for us – not that I’m complainin’, mind.’
‘The lower courtyard’s been lost,’ said Felix. ‘We’re all in the keep now.’ He turned to the servant. ‘Will this key open this cell?’
‘Aye,’ the servant said. ‘Opens all of ’em.’
‘Hang on!’ said Draeger. ‘Who says we want t’come out?’
Felix shrugged. ‘Stay if you want, but next time it’ll be the dead who come knocking.’
Draeger bit his lip and turned, and there was a whispered conversation behind the door, then he turned back. ‘Let us out, then. We’ll go down with our swords in our hands, thanks.’
Felix nodded and opened the cell. Draeger and his militiamen staggered out wearily, and blinked around.
‘Much obliged, mein Herr,’ said Draeger, touching his brow, then started for the guard room. ‘Our kit’s this way, lads. Come on.’
As they filed out, the servant crossed to Tauber’s cell and held up his lantern so that Felix could put the key in the lock.
‘You have visitors, Doktor Tauber!’ he called.
There was no response from within.
The key shrieked and stuck as Felix twisted it, but turned at last and the bolt shot back. He pulled on the handle, then peered in with Kat as the door creaked open. At the back of the cell was a low cot, and lying upon it, face to the wall and arms hugging his knees, was a filthy, emaciated figure.
Felix lit a candle from the lamp and gave the key to the footman. ‘Let out his assistants, please.’
‘Yes, mein herr.’
As the man shuffled away, Felix stepped in. ‘Doktor Tauber?’ he said. ‘Doktor Tauber, are you awake? I have water for you.’
There was still no response. Kat drew her skinning knife and crept forwards at Felix’s side. Felix understood her caution. If Tauber had died, he might well rise and attack them.
Felix reached out and shook his shoulder as Kat held the blade ready.
‘Doktor Tauber?’
The man jerked and grunted, and Kat and Felix stepped back, wary, but when he turned his head to look at them, there was intelligence in his blinking, squinting eyes.
‘So,’ he said, in a voice like dry paper. ‘Von Geldrecht is gone then?’
Felix smiled. ‘No, Herr doktor, he still lives. But he has relented at last. He wants you to see to the wounded.’
Tauber frowned at this, then rolled back over and closed his eyes again. ‘Let them rot.’
Felix sighed. He had been afraid of this. ‘Doktor, they need you.’
‘What could they possibly need a warlock for?’ croaked Tauber. ‘Are they begging for poison now?’
‘You are no warlock,’ said Felix. ‘You didn’t poison anyone.’ He pulled the stoppe
r from a jug he had found with half an inch of water in it. ‘Here. I have water.’
Tauber didn’t look around. ‘Bosendorfer certainly thought I did,’ he said, sneering. ‘Or wished I had. And the rest believed him. Why should I help the fools who wanted me killed?’
‘For the good of the Empire,’ said Felix. ‘We have to hold back Kemmler’s force as long as we can.’
Tauber rolled over and looked up at him, smiling thinly. ‘Mein herr, I may have been locked down here, but even I know that the castle will fall no matter what I do – and soon.’ He chuckled. ‘Would you like to try again?’
Felix opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what other argument to make. Maybe he should try threatening the man. Maybe he could force him to work.
Kat laid a hand on Tauber’s shoulder. ‘Because you are a doctor,’ she said. ‘If you are to die, it should be doing what you do.’
Tauber stared at her for a long moment, his brows lowering as if he was going to snarl at her, but then he closed his eyes. ‘You… you said there was water?’
Felix held out the jug as Kat helped him to sit up. He seemed to have lost nearly half his weight, and looked more than ever like a starved crow with a bad disposition.
He took the jug in clawed hands and drank, but only in sips, moaning and shivering with relief. Felix shot Kat a grateful look over his head. Why hadn’t he thought of that argument? She shrugged, embarrassed, then steadied Tauber as he lowered the canteen with a gasp and opened his eyes.
‘Help me up,’ he said. ‘I am ready.’
Tauber stopped just before the door of the Reiksguard chapel, making Felix and Kat and his assistants jolt to a stop behind him. He peered through at the men who lay in groaning rows on its polished stone floor, and his hands clenched at his sides.
The hate in the doctor’s eyes made Felix swallow, and he wondered if he had made a terrible mistake. Tauber may not have been a poisoner when Bosendorfer and the others had accused him of it, but what if his unjust imprisonment and their loathing of him had made him one? What if Tauber went into the chapel and proceeded to kill everyone he touched?
