by Warhammer
‘No!’ cried Kemmler, from the dais, and began incanting a new spell.
There was no stopping the axe’s deadly trajectory. It cleaved through the champion’s breastplate and buried itself in his rib cage. Krell struggled to rise, but Gotrek kicked him in the teeth and wrenched his axe free, grinning wildly.
‘A single stroke, butcher!’
He raised the rune axe over his head for the final blow to the neck, but on the dais behind him, Kemmler thrust forwards with his staff and the skull that topped it opened its mouth, puking out a stream of roiling black energy.
Gotrek grunted and went rigid as the darkness struck him in the back, his grin turning into a rictus grimace as every muscle in his body tensed. Felix stared. It was a rare thing to see the Slayer affected by magic at all, let alone paralysed by it, but as shocking as that was, that wasn’t all it was doing to him. As Felix watched, the lines in the Slayer’s face deepened, and his cheeks grew gaunt. His body was growing leaner as well, every detail of his muscles and veins standing out from his skin as if he had been flayed.
Nor was he the only one affected by the spell. The flesh of Felix’s fingers was shrinking and his knuckle bones poked through his tightening skin like tent poles. Max and the twins were the same. Max’s silver hair was turning white at the roots, and the magister and the father were ageing before Felix’s eyes, their spells and invocations weakening and flickering out. Kemmler’s withering blast was pressing them all into the grave – a hand like that of time itself, crushing them with the weight of years – while more and more zombies broke through Marwalt’s ward and shuffled into the room.
The Slayer turned, inch by straining inch, as if frozen in ice, and raised his rune axe in a shaking hand, but he couldn’t turn fast enough. He was weakening with every half-step. He would never be able to reach the necromancer before the spell turned him into a walking skeleton.
Felix struggled to his feet, as weak as a broken reed, and drew his dagger, but as he raised it to throw at Kemmler, something flashed down from above and stuck in Kemmler’s shoulder.
Kemmler barked in surprise and fell back, his stream of black energy boiling away to nothing as he turned, looking for the source of the attack. There was an arrow in his shoulder, and as Felix stared, another flashed down and sprouted from the necromancer’s leg. He screamed again and fell.
An arrow?
Felix’s heart thudded like it was trying to escape his chest. An arrow!
At the opposite end of the room, Gotrek broke free of his paralysis and ran for the necromancer with a blood-curdling howl of rage. Kemmler saw him coming and raised his staff in a trembling hand, spitting out the beginning of another incantation, but before he could utter more than a few syllables, the Slayer bounded onto the dais, smashed his way through the necromancer’s remaining wights, and slashed down at him with all his might.
Kemmler blocked with his staff and Gotrek’s rune axe chopped it in two, sending its grinning skull spinning to the side as a chorus of screams, like the dying of a thousand souls, shook the room and weird half-seen entities burst forth and vanished into the shadows. Then the axe found flesh, and Kemmler screamed as well, a great stain of blood spreading across his abdomen to darken his grey robes.
‘Now, necromancer!’ roared the Slayer as he raised his axe again. ‘You die for your desecrations!’
But as Gotrek lashed down, misty shadows boiled up from Kemmler’s cloak and enveloped them both in swirling darkness, and when it cleared, Gotrek was alone, his axe buried in the splintered planks of the dais, and his one eye blazing with frustrated fury.
‘Coward!’ he shouted at the air. ‘Defiler!’
He turned with a growl to where he had brought down Krell, and charged back across the room towards the wight’s still-prostrate form, but even as he ploughed through the rotting rubbish around the Reikland thrones, shadows formed around the fallen champion and by the time the Slayer reached him he was gone as well – even his axe had vanished from the ceiling – and Kemmler’s voice echoed through the hall, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
‘You have not defeated me, fools,’ he hissed, ‘only delayed me. I have all the time in the world.’
Gotrek cursed as the necromancer’s mad laughter faded away, and he lashed around with his axe at nothing.
‘Cursed!’ he roared. ‘Cursed!’
Felix turned from him as he heard moaning and shuffling behind him, and found the horde of zombies that was spilling through the door nearly at his back. He caught Lord Dominic’s arm and pulled him up, and they staggered back from the dead, raising their swords together. Gotrek fell in beside them, still grunting angrily, and Max and Father Marwalt and Magister Marhalt rose behind them, corpse-thin and shaking from Kemmler’s withering, but preparing spells nonetheless.
But as the zombies shuffled towards them, rusty weapons raised and claws outstretched, their steps began to falter, and their arms to droop. A big one in the apron of a butcher tripped and fell on its face. A woman in the remains of a rich dress lost an arm, then her lower jaw, then collapsed entirely, her skin putrefying before their eyes. The corpse of a beastman crashed down, taking several smaller zombies with him. Some of the others struggled gamely on, but they didn’t last long. They were dropping like flies – the ones outside in the entry hall too. Finally the last of them crashed to its knees in front of Felix, its clawed fingers scratching feebly across the toe of his boot before stilling forever.
‘Kemmler is gone,’ whispered Father Marwalt, dropping into a broken chair.
‘And his influence goes with him,’ said Magister Marhalt, sagging to the floor. ‘It is over.’
‘For now,’ said Max, letting his hands fall to his sides. ‘How long before he comes again?’
Nobody had an answer for him. The twins just shivered where they slumped, while Dominic Reiklander staggered to kneel before the headless corpses of his mother and father, and Gotrek cleaned his axe.
Felix could not yet rest. His hope wouldn’t let him. He looked to the dais where Kemmler had been struck by the arrows, then turned, trying to figure out where the shafts had come from. Somewhere high up. They had shot down at Kemmler. There. The musicians’ gallery above the dais. He stumbled towards it, his heart beginning to pound.
‘Kat!’ he called. ‘Kat, was it you?’
There was no answer.
‘Kat?’
Still nothing.
There was a door in the wall below the gallery. He threw it open. It was a water closet. He cursed and started for the door to the corridor, stumbling over the mounds of rotting corpses that choked it. The door to the gallery must be on the floor above. He limped down the hall to the stairs, feeling as frail and light as a bird skeleton from Kemmler’s withering.
The stairs were almost too much for him, but he crawled up them at last, then made his way down the corridor. There was a small door on the left-hand wall. He stumbled to it and pulled on the knob. It was locked. He pounded on the panel, desperate now.
‘Kat! Kat, are you in there?’
Nothing. He yanked at the door, then kicked it, but it was useless. He was too weak. He couldn’t budge it. He couldn’t break it. A sob escaped him.
‘Stand aside, manling,’ said Gotrek.
Felix looked up. He hadn’t heard the Slayer approach, hadn’t known he had followed him.
Gotrek chopped at the door with his axe, knocking a great hole in the panel, then reached through and turned the latch from the inside. He pulled it open and stood aside.
‘Go on, manling,’ he said.
TWENTY-SIX
Felix hesitated on the threshold, almost afraid to go on now that the way was clear. What if she wasn’t there? Or it wasn’t her? Or…
He swallowed and stepped through into the narrow, curtained balcony. At first he could see nothing but the silhouettes of chairs and stools set in rough rows, and the pale litter of sheet music scattered on the floor. But then in the lee of the balustrade, he sa
w a small form, slumped and still.
‘Kat!’ he cried, stumbling through the chairs.
She lay on her back, eyes closed, her bow in her hands and an arrow nocked on the string, but so thin Felix didn’t know how she’d had the strength to draw it. Her face, already gaunt when last he’d seen her, was a sunken skull, her skin stretched across the bones drumhead-tight.
He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Kat,’ he whispered. ‘Do you live?’
She didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to breathe. The arrow slipped from the string and clattered to the floor. Panic thudded again in Felix’s chest.
‘Kat, hang on.’
He reached down and got his arms under her and lifted. She was so light that, even weak as he was, he could stand with her in his arms. He staggered back to the door and out into the hall.
‘Gotrek, bring the Shallyans!’ he cried. ‘Bring food!’
‘Bring her to Max, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘The Shallyans will come when we open the gate.’
Felix nodded and started downstairs, rushing so fast that twice he tripped, and would have fallen if Gotrek hadn’t steadied him.
‘Max,’ called Felix, as he carried Kat into the great hall. ‘Help her. Look at her.’
Max and the twins looked up, then made room as Felix laid Kat down beside them on the floor.
‘This is the archer, then?’ asked Max, kneeling. ‘Who turned the tide and saved us all?’ He looked up at Felix. ‘You know her?’
Felix nodded, his throat tightening. ‘She – she is–’
Max nodded. ‘Ah. I see.’ He smiled sadly as he looked Kat up and down. ‘You’ve always liked the brave ones, haven’t you, Felix?’
Father Marwalt put his right hand over Kat’s heart and his left on her forehead, then closed his eyes. Felix held his breath. Max seemed to as well. Gotrek stepped to Felix’s shoulder and crossed his arms, glaring at Kat as if trying to shame her into surviving.
After a long moment, Father Marwalt sat back on his knees. ‘She is not Morr’s concern,’ he said. ‘She stands on the threshold, but she has not yet passed through his portal.’
Felix choked out a sob of relief, and the tears he had held back until now streamed down his cheeks. What a fool! To cry at good news. What was the matter with him?
Max put a hand on his shoulder, and Felix nodded his thanks, then looked around for Gotrek.
The Slayer was walking towards the door to the corridor.
‘Come on, manling,’ he rasped over his shoulder. ‘It takes four hands to open the gates.’
Though of course relieved that he hadn’t had to lose any men fighting against Kemmler’s undead army, General von Uhland seemed almost disappointed that the infiltrators had done it all themselves and hadn’t given him a battle. All the zombies and wights in the castle had dropped dead with the necromancer’s retreat, and the ghouls had fled. There was no horde left to fight, and the general’s troops were faced with the much less glamorous, but just as necessary, challenge of disposing of ten thousand mouldering corpses before they diseased the whole region.
Snorri, too, was less than pleased to have missed the climactic battle, and he was still muttering about it late that afternoon, as he and Gotrek sat on either side of Felix’s bed in the room in the keep in which the general’s surgeon had put him.
‘Snorri blames himself,’ said Snorri, scowling. ‘He hasn’t been that drunk in a long time.’
Gotrek said nothing, and seemed to be having trouble meeting his old friend’s eye.
‘Snorri has never had manling beer that had such a kick either,’ Snorri continued, licking his lips. ‘He wonders who makes it.’
There was another silence, and then Gotrek grunted angrily.
‘I am to blame, Snorri Nosebiter,’ he said, forcing the words out as if they were heavy stones. ‘I had you drugged, so you would sleep.’
Snorri raised an eyebrow. It made him look like a confused dog. ‘Snorri doesn’t understand.’
Felix saw Gotrek clenching his jaw and balling his fist, and cut in to save him.
‘You can’t find your doom until you get your memory back, Snorri,’ he said patiently. ‘And we knew you would forget and want to come with us.’
Snorri blinked at him, still seemingly lost, then lowered his head. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Snorri forgot. Snorri always forgets.’
There was an uncomfortable silence after that, and none of them seemed to know how to break it. Fortunately, it was broken for them when Max entered the room, walking with the aid of a staff.
‘Are you able to stand?’ he asked Felix.
Felix nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘Then come with me.’
With Gotrek’s help, Felix levered himself out of the bed and tottered unsteadily after Max as the Slayers followed behind. He still felt like he was made of matchsticks and spit, and he was still as gaunt as one of Kemmler’s ghouls, but food and drink and the healing spells and prayers of Max and the Shallyan Sister had for the most part banished the dizziness and nausea. Gotrek only had to catch him once on the way down the hall.
Inside another room, the Sister hovered over another bed, but as Felix and Max and the Slayers approached, she stepped back.
Lying on the bed, looking scrubbed and unfamiliar in a clean white nightshirt and her hair combed back from her skeletal face, was Kat. Her eyes were closed and her withered hands were folded over her chest, and for a terrible moment Felix thought Max had brought him to her to pay his last respects, but then, as he stumbled to the side of the bed, she opened her eyes and looked up at him – and smiled.
‘Hello, Felix,’ she said in voice like the memory of a whisper.
Felix eased himself down beside her. ‘Kat,’ he said. ‘It – it’s good to see you.’
She reached out and he took her hand. Her fingers were trembling, and terribly thin.
‘I knew you would come back,’ she said. ‘I knew it.’
He frowned. ‘How did you survive?’ he asked. ‘How did you stay alive for so long with Kemmler’s dead all around?’
Her face crinkled into a grin. ‘Reiklander’s secret closet,’ she said. ‘I hid myself inside and waited. Then I heard fighting, and knew it was you.’
Felix closed his eyes, imagining Kat lying in the dark for two long days and nights, not knowing if she would ever be saved, and praying the zombies wouldn’t find her first.
He leaned down and kissed her. ‘I’m just glad we were here in time.’
There was a polite cough. Felix looked up. Everyone was very busy looking somewhere else, but the Sister was smiling down at them.
‘She should rest, mein herr,’ she said. ‘I only called for you because she insisted.’
Felix nodded and turned back to Kat. ‘I will visit you whenever you wish,’ he said.
‘I’ll be up and about soon,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling better already.’
Felix swallowed at that. Feeling better than when he had found her wasn’t much to crow about, and she still looked more dead than alive.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll see you soon.’
She nodded and closed her eyes again and he stood, then limped to the Sister of Shallya and drew her into the hall.
‘Sister,’ he murmured. ‘Will she live?’
The sister looked at him, then pursed her lips. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She has come as close to starving as is possible without succumbing. And you have both been subject to the enervation of the necromancer’s spells. Neither of you may recover your full strength.’ She shrugged. ‘At least you were both in vigorous health at the start. Perhaps that will count in your favour. Rest and Shallya’s blessing are what is needed now, lots of rest.’
Felix nodded, distracted, as the sister bowed and started down the hall. He looked back through the door at Kat, chewing his lip. What if the two of them were enfeebled like this for the rest of their lives? It might not be so bad for him. After all his years on the road, after all the fighting and
running and chasing, it wouldn’t be so bad to live quietly, to read and write and think for a time. But for Kat? She was a child of the forest, a hunter. What would she do if she couldn’t survive in the wild on her own? What if she were housebound or bedbound for the rest of her life? It would kill her. She would sicken and die, like a wolf in captivity.
He closed his eyes. If that was her fate, it might almost have been better that she had died.
‘I am no doctor,’ murmured Max, stepping though the door to join him, ‘but my advice is, that while rest is indeed what is needed now, in the long run, you would both do better to go where Gotrek goes, despite the dangers.’
Felix looked up at him. ‘I am bound to anyway,’ he said. ‘But Kat too? Why do you say that?’
Max nodded at Gotrek, who was following him into the hall with Snorri. ‘I mentioned before that some of your unusual vitality seemed attributable to your remaining near Gotrek all these years. Whatever the cause of it, it seems that your association with him has kept you healthy and mended wounds that should have been the end of your adventuring.’ He looked towards Kat, sleeping in her bed. ‘I cannot say if this strange influence would work on Kat as well, but it certainly couldn’t hurt,’ he said, smiling. ‘Also, I don’t think you could keep her from following even if you chained her to her bed.’
A glimmer of hope stirred in Felix’s heart. He hadn’t been sure he believed Max’s theories about his health when the magister had first shared them with him, and he still wasn’t now, but if it was true! It could be the saving of Kat. It might make her well again!
‘Sounds like rubbish to me,’ Gotrek grunted. ‘But no one ever got strong lying in bed. She can come if she wants.’
Max smiled at Gotrek. ‘Excellent. And where do you go now, Slayer? What unspeakable abomination do you intend to throw yourself at next?’
Felix looked at the Slayer, as curious as Max was. Their most recent journey had begun when they had gone north to fight the beastmen at the behest of Sir Teobalt of the Order of the Fiery Heart, and they had become caught in the web of Kemmler’s schemes after that, but now, as far as he knew, Gotrek had no goal other than his perennial quest to find his doom, and that might lead him anywhere.
