A crazy hope flared in Felix’s heart as the way cleared before them. The stair to the tunnels was only a few paces beyond the stone circle. If they were lucky, and the rest of the beasts ignored them as well, they might just survive this mad folly after all.
Felix looked back. Beyond Rodi and Snorri’s battle with the beastmen, Urslak swung his staff at Gotrek, the blue orb glowing like an azure sun. Gotrek hacked the staff in two, then gutted the shaman and kicked him back before the claw-held orb had stopped bouncing across the rocky ground.
The Slayer spat on the dying shaman, then turned back to the herdstone, raising his axe.
“Faster!” said Felix, and sprinted with Kat for the ring of monoliths.
They weren’t fast enough.
With another deafening crack, he and Kat were knocked flat again by a jolt stronger than all the others. It felt as if a giant had hit him in the back with an enormous shovel, knocking the wind out of him and pushing him to the brink of unconsciousness. He thought of trying to move, but it seemed too much effort. Easier to just lie there. Then Kat whimpered beside him. The thought of her galvanised him. He had to get her to safety.
As Felix fought to regain his senses, gasping and groaning and blinking the glare from his eyes, he became aware of a thunderous roaring behind him, and of a hard wind battering his face. He raised himself on shaking arms and looked back — then froze at what he saw.
The towering herdstone was rising from the ground and expanding — the jagged lines that had been the seams of quartz now widened into gaps between huge floating shards of granite that moved outwards from the core of the stone. And through these gaps shone a terrible blue light that bathed the inside of the stone circle in a harsh sapphire glow.
The impossible wind blew towards the widening cracks from all directions, as if they were chimney flues sucking smoke from a fireplace. Felix’s hair streamed towards it. Leaves and branches whirled towards it. The wind tore at the floating granite shards of the herdstone too, crumbling their edges and sucking in the pebbles so that they shrank even as the gaps between them grew ever wider.
Felix squinted into the light that streamed from the expanding cracks, and a sickening dread swallowed all his other fears as he saw its source. Hanging within the core of the fragmenting herdstone was a hole in the world, a gash in reality that looked into some other place. Blue swirls of every shade wove a hypnotising dance inside the rift, blue swirls that looked at him with fierce intelligence, and begged him to join them in their search for ultimate knowledge.
Kat whimpered again beside him. “It’s… it’s beautiful.”
Felix turned and clapped a hand over her eyes. “Don’t look!” he cried. “It will take your mind.”
He fought to his feet, the unnatural wind pulling at him, then dragged her up too. “Come on. Turn away from it. Run!”
And yet, even as he followed her, pushing hard against the rising wind, Felix found it impossible not to look back himself.
The beastmen were running from the stone, the initiates screaming with fear as the sucking wind dragged them back, Gargorath and his surviving lieutenants trampling them and hurling them aside in their eagerness to get away.
Chasing them came Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri, all roaring insults over the shrieking gale.
“Come back, you cowards!” called Gotrek.
“Are you afraid of a little wind?” bellowed Rodi.
“Snorri has seen squirrels with more courage!” shouted Snorri.
Felix could feel the wind trying to lift him off the ground as he leaned against it, and it was getting worse. It was going to suck him into the rift! Only two more yards to the menhirs, but it might have been two miles. He put Kat in front of him to shield her and they pressed on, fighting for every inch. More debris whipped past them, flying towards the vortex. One of the beasts they had killed as they fought their way into the circle rolled by, flopping loosely, over and over.
Finally they reached the ring of monoliths and Felix pushed Kat into the shadow of one, where the wind was less, then struggled to pull himself behind it as well. Kat caught his arms and hauled with all her strength. With a final grunt of effort he stumbled behind the stone and collapsed against it, breathing heavily.
The shadow of their stone shelter was as sharp as a knife in the harsh light of the vortex, and stretched away with the shadows of the other stones down the sloping sides of the hill to the valley below. Nothing could be seen within the shadows, but the light that blazed from between the stones illuminated a roiling sea of beastmen backing away from Tarnhalt’s Crown with naked terror showing in their glittering black eyes. Felix couldn’t blame them. If he could have run, he would have been over the hills and gone long ago. “Are we safe even here?” asked Kat. Felix shrugged weakly. “I don’t know. But I can go no further.”
A movement in the corner of his eye made him turn his head. Gargorath and his lieutenants had escaped the circle and were straining to reach the slope down into the valley as the gale tore at their armour and their fur. Felix put his head around the corner of the standing stone, looking into the circle for Gotrek, Snorri and Rodi. The three slayers were ploughing on, slowly but steadily, against the wind, cursing lustily all the while. Behind them, the initiate beastmen weren’t doing as well. Felix saw one fall backwards and roll head over heels towards the howling stone. Another was lifted bodily and spun away through the air to be sucked into the fissures between the shards — breaking up into its component parts as it went. The wind was too loud to hear its screams.
Then Felix saw a lone figure rise before the stone. It was Urslak. It seemed impossible for him to be alive, after the evisceration Gotrek had given him. It seemed even more impossible that he was able to stand steady so close to the stone and the vacuum of the vortex. And yet he did. Though buffeted cruelly by the wind, he straightened his hunched form and spread his arms wide, calling out some incantation that was lost in the roaring rush of air. His claw-festooned robe flapped and fluttered around him like a living thing, and his intestines, which had spilled through the cut made by Gotrek’s axe, streamed out in front of him, drawn towards the glowing void and waving like some grisly banner.
Felix wasn’t sure if the old shaman was trying to repair the damage that Gotrek had done, or was simply praying to his god. Whatever the case, neither the wind nor the light diminished. In fact both grew stronger, rising to an unbearable intensity as the granite shards began to crumble away to mere slivers.
The slayers were on their hands and knees now, crawling with their heads down away from the herdstone. Gotrek was in the lead, only two strides away from Felix, but Felix was afraid they wouldn’t make it.
“Come on, Gotrek!” shouted Felix. But he doubted the Slayer could hear him. He couldn’t hear himself.
More of the initiate beastmen fell back and flew away, vanishing into the vortex in flashes of blue-white. Felix felt the massive monolith he leaned against shift under his shoulder as the wind pulled at it. Sigmar! The rift was going to suck in the whole world! It would swallow everything.
Finally, after a handful of lip-chewing seconds, as the wind shrieked louder and the light grew still brighter, Gotrek and Rodi dragged themselves behind the monolith just to the left of the one Felix and Kat hid behind. Only Snorri remained in the light. He looked back over his shoulder and shook his hammer at the vortex, shouting something Felix couldn’t hear. But then big hands reached out of the shadow and jerked him back, and he vanished into the blackness behind the stone.
Felix was sure it wouldn’t matter. They would all be pulled into the glittering void — all their hopes and dreams for the future ended here in a blinding flash of blue. He looked back towards the stone, shielding his eyes from the glare, and saw Urslak still standing there, a black silhouette against the bright blue, his arms wide, chanting ceaselessly as the wind tore at him.
The shaman grew thinner as Felix watched. The light was eating him. He was disintegrating, his flapping intestines and his
flesh tearing away in chunks and vanishing into the swirling core, leaving at last nothing but his skeleton, and then that went too, flaking away like ash until there was nothing left.
Felix pulled back behind the monolith, unable to look anymore as the light blazed from blue to white and the wind rose to an apocalyptic shriek. He wrapped Kat in his arms and hugged her tight, certain that these were their last moments together, and content — or nearly content — that his life should end that way.
Faces flashed before him like wreckage in the wind. Gotrek, Snorri. They were here. At least he was with them at their end. But there was no Max. No Malakai.
No… no Ulrika. He cursed himself for thinking of her. Kat was here. Kat who loved him, and who he loved. He should be content. He should be ready.
A clap like thunder shook the ground and made him slap his hands to his ears. It felt as if his head was going to implode. Kat did the same, screaming inaudibly.
And then, utter silence. Utter blackness. Utter stillness. He lay in it a moment, stunned into motionlessness. Had the thunderclap broken his eardrums? Had it killed him? Was this some empty afterlife? He tried to feel his arms and legs, but he wasn’t sure he even had any anymore. “Is this death, then?” he whispered, looking around at the impenetrable darkness. “Is this the endless sleep of eternity?”
“What did you say?” said a voice from nearby. “Snorri can’t hear a thing.”
Felix frowned. He was pretty certain that the endless sleep of eternity wouldn’t have Snorri Nosebiter in it. Then Kat shifted against him and he realised that he was alive.
After another moment of quiet contemplation, he finally found the wherewithal to sit up. The blackness, which had seemed absolute after so much light, was now penetrable, showing stars above and far-off torches and fires down in the valley, and the faint glow of the moons that showed Felix the line of Kat’s cheekbone and the white streak in her hair.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Felix.
To their left, Gotrek, Rodi and Snorri were grunting to their feet. Felix and Kat did the same, groaning and weaving dizzily. Felix felt like he was on a ship in heavy seas. The ground wouldn’t stay still under his feet.
After a moment with his head down, he straightened and followed the dwarfs as they stepped out from behind the monoliths and looked into the circle.
The vortex was gone, and so was the herdstone. No trace of it remained. It had been sucked into the rift.
“What happened to it?” Felix asked. “I thought it was going to swallow us all.”
“Things of Chaos are unstable, manling,” said Gotrek. “It swallowed itself.”
“Then the Empire is safe,” said Felix with a relieved sigh. “The shaman is dead. The herdstone is gone. The people of the Drakwald will not become beasts—”
“Taal and Rhya, look at the menhirs,” breathed Kat, interrupting him.
Felix and the others turned to look at the ring of monoliths. They were all leaning in towards the centre of the circle, like fingers closing, or like old crones whispering to each other. He shivered. The vortex had nearly succeeded in pulling the massive slabs of stone from the ground — and if they had gone, Felix and the others would have been quick to follow.
“Never mind the stones,” said Rodi. “Look at the bodies.”
Felix looked where the young slayer pointed. On the ground close to the centre of the circle, the bodies of a few beastmen remained, fallen where they had dropped when the vortex closed. There was nothing left of them but skeletons, but the skeletons were odd. They did not gleam white in the light of the two moons. They gleamed yellow — golden yellow.
“Gold, by Grungni!” cried Rodi, stepping forwards, his eyes gleaming with dwarfish lust. “And of the purest too, by the look of it.”
“Snorri sees sapphires too,” said Snorri, stepping closer and pointing to a golden skull.
Felix stared at the thing, amazed. The horns and claws and hooves of the skeleton were indeed deep, star-crossed sapphire, polished as if by a master jeweller.
Gotrek put his arms out and held Snorri and Rodi back. “You want nothing to do with that gold, nor that sapphire,” he said.
“But why not?” said Rodi, his eyes glazed with desire. “It will solve everything. I can go back. I can pay the debt. I can…”
Gotrek slapped him hard across the cheek. Rodi snarled and doubled his fists.
Gotrek just glared at him, his single eye as cold as ice. “It has already made you forget your oath,” he said. “And you haven’t yet touched it. Can you not see it for what it is?”
Rodi remained with his fists up for a long moment, then at last he sighed and lowered his hands. “You are right, Gurnisson. Gold born of such an abomination could only ever bring misery. Forgive me.”
“Snorri still thinks it’s pretty,” said Snorri.
Gotrek grunted and turned to Kat. “It is time to blow your horn, little one,” he said, then looked to Felix and Snorri, his brow lowering. “And it is time for you—”
He was interrupted by a bright tantara of rally horns blaring from the north. Everyone turned. The thunder of guns and cannons echoed off the stones around them, and the roar of angry beasts filled the valley.
“The armies!” said Kat. “They’re attacking!”
TWENTY-ONE
Felix, Gotrek and the others ran out of the circle to the north end of the hill. By the torches and fires of the beastmen, and by the light of the two moons rising side by side in the black sky, they could see the surging movements of the forces in the valley below them.
The whole of the herd was pressing forwards towards the narrow north end of the valley where regimented ranks of cavalry and infantry were stabbing into their milling mass. Felix’s heart leapt at the sight.
“Hurrah!” cried Kat, throwing up a fist. “They have come! The beasts are smashed!”
Gotrek grunted. “Not with that force, they’re not.”
“Aye,” said Rodi. “Nor those tactics.”
Felix looked again, and his elation at the arrival of the armies faded. The slayers were right. Everything was wrong.
It was difficult to tell in the uncertain light how many troops were cutting into the herd’s side, but there were certainly not seven thousand. For some reason, despite their earlier statements, it seemed Plaschke-Miesner and von Volgen had attacked without waiting for von Kotzebue to arrive. Worse, Felix saw that Gargorath the God-Touched and his lieutenants had escaped the herd stone’s implosion, and were at the forefront of their followers, urging them on and wreaking terrible damage in the human army’s front ranks.
“What are they doing?” Felix asked. “The lords said they wouldn’t engage without Kotzebue’s reinforcements.”
“And they were to wait for the horn,” said Kat.
“It seems they found their courage after all,” said Gotrek. “Though not their wits.”
It was true. The two lords’ armies were driving for wards so strongly that they were losing all advantage of terrain. If they had stayed in the narrow end of the valley and let the beasts come to them, they could have kept them all on their front, with their cannons, handguns and crossbows positioned on the steep hills to either side to keep the beasts from flanking them. Instead, the armies had stabbed so deeply into the mass of the herd that already the beastmen were curling around the ends of their lines to encircle them, and the cannons and guns were forced to fire at the edges of the herd so as not to hit their own troops. The lords had lost tactical superiority — the only advantage they had — within the first minute of the attack.
“It’s madness!” said Felix. “They’ve killed themselves, and taken all their men with them.”
“Aye,” said Rodi. “They’re acting like slayers. A thing only slayers should do.”
Snorri chuckled and smacked the haft of his hammer into his left hand. “Snorri thinks this will be a proper fight,” he said, then plunged down the hill, bellowing a savage war c
ry.
“Nosebiter, stop!” shouted Gotrek.
It was too late. Snorri was already halfway down and didn’t hear him. Gotrek growled.
“We better go keep him alive,” said Rodi, grinning.
“Aye,” said Gotrek.
And with that they charged after Snorri, roaring war cries of their own.
Felix wanted to call out after them, but knew it would not change their minds to remind them that they had already done their part — that they had killed the shaman and destroyed the stone and could retire from the field with honour for those accomplishments. That was not the slayer way. By the slayers’ logic, having saved the day, they were now free to die gloriously.
With sudden shock, Felix realised that he was miraculously free not to die gloriously. By some mad mischance, he had ended up in a position where he wasn’t in danger of being swallowed by Gotrek’s doom. He was up above the fray while the Slayer ran towards it. He could observe from here and then slip away with Kat to the barrow tunnels and to freedom where he could record Gotrek’s doom later at his leisure. He would have fulfilled his vow and lived to tell of it, and he could take Kat with him. He could have a life beyond his travels with Gotrek.
He turned to Kat, opening his mouth to tell her to come away with him, but then paused.
It felt wrong. He knew that he had vowed to Gotrek only to record his death, not die himself, but it still felt disloyal not to be fighting at the Slayer’s side at the end. Their relationship, whatever it was, had become more than just that of slayer and rememberer. It wasn’t that they were friends in any way most men would recognise. They did not share their thoughts and inner turmoil with each other. They did not profess bonds of undying loyalty to each other. To the outside observer, and sometimes even to Felix himself, they seemed little more than master and servant. If Felix wanted to go somewhere and Gotrek didn’t, they didn’t go. It was not an equal partnership.
And yet, it was a partnership. They relied on each other, and trusted each other more than most so-called friends ever did. They knew each other better than they knew themselves, and certainly better than either of them knew anybody else. Like it or not, he and the Slayer were bound to each other by a bond not easily broken.
[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer Page 30
