A heart-sized lump welled up in his chest. “Ah, Kat,” he said, and pulled her tighter against him. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that all the time she spent alone in the forest might not have been entirely self-imposed? “Ah, Kat.”
A snap of a twig from outside the tent brought her head up again, snapping his teeth shut as she cracked his chin with the top of her skull. Felix cursed, then tried to turn his head to look into the night.
Gotrek, Snorri and Rodi were stepping out of the darkness towards the fire. They were covered in minor cuts and bruises, but seemed otherwise whole.
Gotrek snorted when he saw Felix and Kat in the tent. “Found him, then, did you?”
“I… I…” said Kat, pulling the blanket higher.
“It’s… it’s not what you think,” said Felix.
“It never is, manling,” said Gotrek. “It never is.”
Rodi snickered.
Snorri shrugged. “Snorri doesn’t know what he thinks it is.”
“Don’t let it trouble you, Father Rustskull,” said Rodi. “But come spread your roll on this side of the fire. Give the poor skinny things some privacy.”
Felix groaned with embarrassment. “It really isn’t what—”
Kat stopped him with a shake of her head. “Never mind, Felix,” she said. “And it’s time for you to drink again.”
He sighed. More torture. But now that he came to notice, he wasn’t shivering nearly as much as before, and suddenly he felt very, very sleepy.
The next day, Felix woke alone. Kat was outside the tent, sitting with the slayers, cooking rabbit over the fire.
Felix’s stomach growled at the smell of it and he tried to sit up. He hissed with pain. Everything hurt — his head, his joints, his muscles, but at least the terrible shaking and the frightening inability to think or move were gone.
After a few minutes of grunting and groaning, he got himself dressed and crawled out of the tent. The snow was piled high all around them, but the storm had stopped and it was a bright morning. He was greeted by a nod from Gotrek, a sly smirk from Rodi and a vacant grin from Snorri. Kat smiled at him, then looked away shyly.
“All right, manling?” asked Gotrek.
“I’ll be fine,” said Felix, sitting down gingerly at the fire and warming his hands.
“Frozen stiff, were you?” asked Rodi.
“Nearly,” said Felix.
Felix jumped to his feet, though his muscles shrieked with complaint. “Leave Kat out of this.”
Kat looked from one to the other of them, her eyes nervous.
Gotrek held up a hand. “Easy, manling,” he said, then turned and gave Rodi a look with his one cold eye. “He won’t do it again.”
Rodi looked put out. “Only making a joke.”
“A joke at the expense of my friends,” said Gotrek. “There have been names penned in the book for less.”
Rodi glared at the Slayer sullenly for a moment, then had to look away. “Aye, aye,” he said. “Fair enough.”
“Snorri doesn’t get the joke,” said Snorri.
Thankfully nobody tried to explain it to him.
As Felix and the slayers ate, Kat took down her tent and folded it into her pack.
“I’m leaving for Stangenschloss,” she said, when all was packed away. “And then on to Bauholz. They must be warned before the herd arrives, and I can make better time on my own.”
“Aye,” said Gotrek. “A good plan.”
Felix opened his mouth to object. She would be out in the wilderness on her own, without anyone to protect her! Then he paused, flushing. Who had saved who last night, exactly? And after what Kat had said as they lay together, about him being one of the few to accept her as both a scout and a woman, it wouldn’t do to tell her he didn’t want her to go. He closed his mouth.
“Can you find your way there without me?” Kat asked.
Rodi and Snorri shook their heads.
“Too many trees,” said Rodi. “They all look alike.”
Felix wasn’t sure he could get there either. After twenty years of wandering, he had learned quite a bit about travelling by the sun and the stars, but that was difficult under the forest canopy, and it helped to know where one was starting from. He had no idea where they were, or what direction they had travelled during the snowstorm the night before.
“We’ll follow the herd,” said Gotrek.
Kat nodded sadly. “Aye, I’m afraid the fort is exactly where they’re heading,” she stood and shouldered her pack. “Well, luck to you. See you there.”
The slayers grunted non-committally.
Kat turned to Felix. “Goodbye, Felix,” she said.
Felix stood. “Goodbye, Kat,” he replied. He wanted to go to her and embrace her, but he felt Rodi’s eyes upon them, and didn’t.
Kat waited for an awkward second, then turned away abruptly and headed into the trees.
Felix cursed himself inwardly as he sat down again. Was he really so concerned about what the dwarf thought, or was it that he still didn’t know what he thought about her, and had been afraid that she would read too much into it if he had gone to her?
The girl was driving him mad.
They found Argrin Crownforger’s corpse on the way back to the wide valley that the herd had passed through the night before. It was buried by a deep layer of snow, a white hump surrounded by bigger humps, and they might not have found it at all had they not seen the haft of a beastman’s spear sticking up out of the soft cover.
When they cleared it away they found that the spear was sticking up out of Argrin’s chest the point buried to the shaft between his ribs. All the snow around and below him was red crystals, and there were five dead beastmen surrounding him, as stiff and lifeless as he was.
Rodi tried to pry Argrin’s warhammer from his hand, “to return it to his kin”, but found that he couldn’t. Argrin’s death grip was too tight. He would have had to cut off Argrin’s hand to do it.
“Leave it,” said Gotrek. “And leave him. Let the beasts of this accursed forest see who killed their brothers. Let them see what a slayer can do.”
Rodi nodded, and he and Gotrek and Snorri bowed their heads over Argrin’s body for a moment, then turned and started down the hill towards the herd’s trail.
As they started along the beastmen’s trail, Felix was afraid they would catch up to them again as they had before, and that the slayers might not this time be able to resist charging in to their doom. He needn’t have worried. Though the storm had passed, it had left three feet of snow behind. Rodi was up to his fork-bearded chin in it, while Gotrek and Snorri were up to their chests and, strong as they were, it was still slow, weary work ploughing through it, with many stops to restore their strength. Felix doubted if they made ten miles that first day.
“This is rubbish,” snarled Rodi just after noon. “Wading through leagues of snow to chase the doom we might have had last night.”
“A selfish doom,” rasped Gotrek. “As I said before.”
Rodi snorted. “I see now why you haven’t found your doom in twenty years, Gurnisson.”
Gotrek turned a dangerous eye on him. “What do you mean by that, beardling?”
“You are too choosy,” said Rodi. “ ‘It must be an honourable doom, a great doom’, says the great slayer. Bah! Those things mean nothing. A doom is a doom is a doom. It is the dying in battle that counts with Grimnir. Nothing else.”
Gotrek grunted and started forwards again. “Grimnir asks only for death. Others ask for more.”
Rodi stared after him. “What do you mean by that? A slayer answers only to Grimnir. He renounces all else.”
But Gotrek wouldn’t answer him.
Felix followed wide-eyed. He had never heard the Slayer say anything like this before and he didn’t know what it meant any more than Rodi did. Who were these others? What did they ask of Gotrek? Had the Slayer been the subject of some king all this time and never mentioned it to Felix? Did he worship some other god? Did it have somet
hing to do with the great shame that had made him a slayer in the first place? Felix grumbled with frustration. He might never know. Gotrek never spoke of these things and Felix knew better than to ask. Perhaps Rodi would goad it out of him as he had this. Felix would just have to keep his ears open.
A few minutes later, as if to change the subject, Gotrek turned to Felix. “What happened to the squire, manling? I was fighting the knights and didn’t see.”
“He changed,” said Felix. “Along with the rest.”
“Did you slay him?”
Felix shook his head. “I… I didn’t have the heart.”
“It would have been kinder if you had.”
Felix sighed. He knew it was the truth. If the boy retained even a small portion of his mind, the life of a beastman would be torture to his Sigmarite soul. The thought brought Felix up short, for suddenly, with a sickening sinking of his stomach, he knew that the templars of the Order of the Fiery Heart had not died at the hands of the beastmen like Ortwin had thought. They had become beastmen themselves. The beastman that Ortwin had killed, who had worn the breastplate with the insignia of the order upon it, had not stolen it, it had been his all along.
“The templars didn’t die, did they?” he said after a moment.
Gotrek shook his head. “No, manling. But if we find them, I will give them peace.”
Felix nodded in agreement. It was the best that they could do for them. Next time he would not falter.
But as they continued on, a new thought gave Felix pause. How many of the massive herd had once been human? How many had been changed into monsters by the light flashing from the shaman’s herdstone? The reports of empty villages that the soldier at Stangenschloss had spoken of — had the people all been slain? Had they all fled? Or had they changed as the blue light caught them, and followed obediently in the shaman’s wake?
He shivered with fear. How could an army stand against such a thing? They might charge the herd as knights and spearmen and greatswords, but before they reached them, the blue light would sear their eyes and they would fall twisting and screaming, only to rise again as beastmen and turn on their fellows. It was something out of a nightmare, and if the nightmare were true, then Stangenschloss would be lost — and every village and town between it and the Talabec. Could even Talabheim or Altdorf repel such a threat? The wizards of the colleges would have to be mustered at once and the stone destroyed, before the herd numbered not thousands, but tens of thousands.
He slogged on, numb with the horror of it.
On the second day, they came to the place where the herd had been when the snowstorm had stopped, and they found the snow on the path trampled to a blackened inch-thick crust that made travel easier. Felix again became afraid that they would catch up to the beastmen and that the slayers would do something rash, but on the morning of the second day they woke to their tents being ripped from the ground by another screaming gale, and the snow came down heavier than ever, once again blotting out the trail.
Felix began to wonder why he had ever longed to return to the land of his birth.
Out of the blue on the morning of the fourth day, as they were making their slow way through an area of enormous oaks with the wind still blowing snow in their faces, Snorri chuckled and said, “This reminds Snorri of fighting beastmen in the snow with his old friends Gotrek and Felix.”
Felix looked to Gotrek at this, and saw him wince.
“Snorri,” said Felix. “We are your old friends Gotrek and Felix.”
Snorri looked at Felix with a puzzled frown, then smiled. “Snorri knows that,” he said. “But this was before. Snorri and Gotrek and Felix and their friend Max had just killed a vampire and then they were attacked by beastmen in the snow. Then Gotrek and Felix went through the door and never came back.”
“Snorri, listen to me,” said Felix, losing patience. Why couldn’t the old slayer make the connection between then and now?
“There’s no use telling him,” said Rodi. “Poor Father Rustskull is a few bricks shy of a—”
“What happened after that, Nosebiter?” Gotrek interrupted. “Where did you go?”
“Max and Snorri went back to Praag to fight the hordes of I-can’t-remember-his-name,” said Snorri. “But the cowards ran away as soon as they got there.” He paused. “After that… After that…”
“After that you went beastman hunting with someone named Rag Neck Ruchendorf,” said Rodi impatiently. “And killed a beast-lord in the forests of Ostermark.”
“Aye, that’s right,” said Snorri. “Now Snorri remembers.”
Felix looked at Rodi. “You were there?”
“Nah,” said Rodi. “But he’s told it before. Sometimes he remembers. Sometimes he doesn’t.”
“Rag Neck was a good man,” said Snorri, his eyes faraway. “Drank almost as much as Snorri, which Snorri thinks is pretty good for a human.” The old slayer laughed. “He made a contest with Snorri. Told him if he could take as many beastman heads as all of his men together he would give Snorri a keg of Karak Norn ale. Snorri killed ninety beastmen in three days — some big ones too — and won by fifteen kills!” He smiled.
“You still don’t see it,” Rodi sighed. “Your friend Rag Neck must have been collecting bounty for those heads. He robbed you of your share and fobbed you off with beer.”
“It was good beer,” protested Snorri.
Rodi shook his head, giving up.
“And after that?” asked Gotrek.
Snorri’s heavy brows pulled together thoughtfully. “Snorri was many places after that, slaying many things — orcs, beastmen, trolls, skaven. He even fought a dragon once, with his friends Gotrek and Felix.”
“No,” said Felix. “That was before.”
“Oh yes,” said Snorri. “That was before.”
He seemed troubled by that for a moment, then laughed uproariously. “Did Snorri ever tell you about the time he was put in jail for killing beastmen?”
“Yes,” said Rodi grimly.
“No,” said Gotrek and Felix.
Snorri laughed again, then scratched among the nails of his crest and continued. “Snorri was in some town of men — he can’t remember the name. He and some others had been hired by the townsfolk to protect them from beastmen, and he had killed many. The night after he had driven the beastmen away, Snorri went to have a drink, then after ten or twenty beers he decided to go back to the army camp, which was in a field outside the village. On the way, Snorri saw a whole herd of beastmen standing in a meadow, looking towards the village. Snorri realised that the treacherous beastmen had come back, so he took out his axe and slew them all. Snorri took more than fifty heads that night.”
That sounded like an exaggeration to Felix. Still, it might have been twenty. “But why did they arrest you for that?” he asked. “Surely you had done them a great service.”
Snorri snorted. “The mayor of the town told Snorri that they hadn’t been beastmen, but cows, and put him in jail.” Snorri laughed. “If they had been cows, then why would Snorri have slain them? There is no glory in slaying cows.”
“They were cows, you cloth-head,” said Rodi. “They must have been. And you’re lucky the mayor didn’t hang you. You robbed the people of all their milk and meat. Half the town probably went hungry that winter because of you.”
Snorri shook his head. “Snorri is pretty sure they were beastmen.”
Felix saw Gotrek shake his head at this, but he said nothing.
“So you’ve been fighting orcs and beastmen and trolls for twenty years and still haven’t found your doom,” said Felix. It seemed amazing to him, but then, Gotrek had been fighting orcs and beastmen and trolls for twenty years, and he hadn’t found his doom either.
Snorri nodded slowly. “Snorri is sad about that. He has met many slayers, and they have all found their dooms, but Snorri has never found his,” he glared around at the woods with uncharacteristic anger. “Snorri thinks it is the old lady’s fault.”
Felix and Got
rek exchanged a look at this, then looked to Rodi. The young slayer shrugged and rolled his eyes.
“What old lady?” asked Gotrek.
“Snorri saved an old lady in the woods,” said Snorri. “Spiders were attacking her. Big spiders, like the goblins ride. Snorri killed them all, but they bit him many times, and he got dizzy and couldn’t walk. The lady took him to her house — Snorri thinks she lived in a tree — and she fed him and gave him terrible-tasting beer.” His brow furrowed in confusion. “Snorri thinks he was there for a long time, but he can’t remember, but when he left, the lady told him that he should have died from the spider bites. She said she gave him some medicines, but she was too late, and he should have died.”
“Well, she was obviously wrong, wasn’t she?” said Felix.
Snorri nodded. “Snorri wishes she would have been wronger. She said she looked at Snorri’s stars and saw that he would not meet his doom for many years. She said Snorri had a great destiny.” He snorted, his anger returning. “Snorri thinks the lady cursed him. Snorri thinks her stars have stopped him from finding his doom.”
Felix blinked at this. Snorri Nosebiter had a great destiny? Who would have thought it? “Human nonsense,” said Rodi.
“Snorri wishes it was,” said Snorri. “He has tried to prove her wrong many times, but he is still alive. Snorri is very angry with that lady.”
Gotrek frowned deeply at this.
Felix thought about trying to explain to Snorri that foretelling didn’t work like that, and that he had it the wrong way around, but if the old slayer still believed that a herd of cows had been a herd of beastmen, the nuances of prophecy would undoubtedly be lost on him.
[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer Page 17
