Gotrek and Felix - Road of Skulls

by Josh Reynolds

  ‘The giants are no use in cracking the hold,’ Khorreg said, stroking his beard and watching the construction. ‘The brutes wouldn’t live long enough to get through the doors let alone into the upper levels of the hold – they’d be dead the minute they assaulted the gates. But, he who wastes not wants not,’ Khorreg continued gleefully. ‘My kin have used breathing bridges to great effect elsewhere. We’ll just need to see that they’re properly supported, but once that’s done, we’ll have them lay down and then we’ll make sure they don’t get any ideas about moving. And we’ll need to be quick about securing a hold on the plateau. We’ll take the magma cannon over first and get it chained to the ground before the doors. Your savages can see to keeping it protected, just in case our weakling cousins decide to try a sortie through the main gates.’

  ‘How long will this… breathing bridge hold out?’

  ‘As long as the beasts do,’ Khorreg said. ‘They’ll last long enough to get most of your troops over and into the hold through whatever cracks we carve into it. After that, well, your troops are in need of supplies, aren’t they?’

  Canto grimaced at the thought of eating one of the smelly beasts. ‘Once we’re in, how long will it take you to build something more permanent?’

  ‘A few weeks, more or less,’ Khorreg said confidently. ‘I have no doubt our cousins have the materials within their pathetic hold somewhere.’

  The Dreadquake mortar gave a rumbling roar that shook the ground beneath Canto’s feet and fired a moment later, belching destruction towards Karak Kadrin. Part of the mountain face crumbled, showering the plateau with rocks. It was followed by a number of rockets, which streaked towards the doors, leaving behind immense craters to mark the points of impact. The doors held firm, though Khorreg didn’t seem disappointed. When Canto mentioned it, the Chaos dwarf gave a cackle.

  ‘Doors won’t matter when we rip the front of that mountain off, manling,’ he said.

  Canto was about to reply when the world was suddenly ripped asunder, as if by the hands of the gods. Stone was wrenched from the ground and hurled skywards, along with men and animals, in a vast volcanic gout of hot air and destruction as the ground was ruptured from below. The wall behind them disintegrated into a hurricane of stone flinders and death. Men were reduced to pulp by flying stone and debris. The Deathshrieker rocket launcher was knocked over and the remaining rockets exploded, ripping apart both the ogres responsible for loading them as well as the Chaos marauders and Chaos warriors nearby. The magma cannon broke its traces and the massive engine rolled through the destruction with a booming snarl of triumph as the daemon animating it suddenly found itself free to hunt its own prey.

  Canto, knocked flat on his back, saw the daemon-engine lurch towards him through the shower of rock and flaming debris. As it lunged past one of Khorreg’s assistants, its great iron and brass wheels pulped the Chaos dwarf, reducing him to a dark red smear on the cracked stone of the ground. He clawed for the hilt of his sword, knowing even as he drew it that it would be of little use. The cannon would devour him, sword and all. Then Khorreg was there, and he flung out his hands and something round and hissing flew towards the engine – a small explosive, Canto belatedly realized. The cannon’s wheels exploded and the engine toppled over with a roar.

  Khorreg glanced over his shoulder at Canto. ‘The third debt, Unsworn, is settled. Two left, by my reckoning,’ the Chaos dwarf said.

  Canto rose to his feet. The ground trembled as tremors rippled outwards from an immense column of smoke that now dominated the sky above them. ‘What was that?’ he snarled.

  Khorreg grinned. ‘Big explosion, manling… Looks like our cousins are coming out to play after all,’ he said. The Hell-Worker turned and began to bellow orders to his surviving assistant. He turned back to Canto. ‘Best get your troops facing the right direction, before you find yourself cut off at the knees.’

  Canto grunted and grabbed the first Chaos marauder to stagger out of the smoke and dust. ‘Sound the rally,’ he roared. ‘We’re under attack!’

  10

  Karak Kadrin,

  Baragor’s Watch

  The explosion rocked the chamber and though he’d been prepared for it, Felix was sent flying. He struck an outcropping and slumped, dazed by the sudden rush of sound and fury. For a moment, the air was filled with an almost solid bombardment of noise and destruction and Felix scrambled about on his knees, his hands clapped to his ears as a flood of stone dust billowed through the chamber. The echoes of the explosion faded, and Felix caught the groan of collapsing stone as he cautiously removed his hands.

  The antechamber was large, almost the length of the outer wall of Karak Kadrin. The explosion had been like a precise blow, tipping the first in a row of pegs. Bodies tumbled into the gash opened in the roof even as that gash split and spread like cracks running across ice. Gotrek had been correct, the ground above was weak; what age and disuse alone had failed to do, the explosion had accomplished. Vast flat stones, formerly part of the roof of the Underway, slammed down against the road, creating rough ramps, even as Gotrek had predicted. Even as Felix staggered to his feet, dwarfs covered in dust and grime shook themselves free of the devastation and the Slayers charged up the makeshift ramp, scrambling part of the way then running with their weapons swinging.

  Dazed Chaos marauders who had somehow not fallen were slapped aside, and dead ones were trampled. The bodies of the latter littered the floor of the chamber three-deep, and Felix was forced to clamber over them, his stomach rebelling at the sight of what the force of the blast had done to them. Even the hardy men of the Chaos Wastes were as nothing before the power of the explosion that had ripped open the ground beneath them.

  The dwarfs moved surprisingly quickly, following the Slayers. The miners had given a number of the latter sturdy metal ladders that could be carried rolled up and then unrolled when needed. The Slayers had done so as they reached the top, and the rangers followed them, climbing swiftly. Felix went up with Koertig and Axeson. Both men had been abandoned by their Slayers.

  The climb was arduous, despite the relative shallowness of the slope. The dwarfs managed it easily, but both Felix and Koertig were sweating and shaking by the time they reached the top. At some point during their travels, the sun had begun to rise, and thin daylight pierced the heavy cloud of dust and smoke that the explosion had thrown into the air. He emerged from the oppressive silence that followed an explosion into the clangour of battle. His eardrums ached and Karaghul was in his hand, though he didn’t recall drawing it.

  The devastation was breathtaking. The explosion hadn’t simply opened a hole in the battlefield. It had gouged titanic talon marks through the already ruined outer keep, ripping the bastion open like a savaged lamb. Felix could not even begin to comprehend what the reverberations had done to those distant portions of the Underway. How much ancient history had been lost, buried forever by one lit trail of powder? The fortress looked as if it had been raised up and then tossed down, some places sunken lower than others as buried supports collapsed in a slow domino-tilt of destruction. Smoke and dust obscured the sky, issuing in ominous clouds from the ruptured soil. It was as if the very ground had decided to reject the Chaos horde’s presence.

  The rangers had arrayed themselves around the circumference of the newly made crater and their crossbows were pointed outwards, firing into the melee that surrounded them. Felix hastily moved away from the crater as ironbreakers and miners clambered to the surface. He looked for Gotrek, but couldn’t spot him in the chaos of battle.

  The Slayers had seized the initiative, and their assault rippled outwards in a spreading circle of destruction as twenty doom-seekers pitted themselves against ten times their number in an orgy of violent redemption. The explosion had shattered whatever cohesion the marauders had possessed, erupting beneath the largest mass of men. Now they fought not as a horde, but as individuals or small groups, and in that, they were little match for the ravening Slayers.

  Felix
caught sight of Dorin, wide sword in hand, as he lopped off a leg at the knee and bounced over the falling warrior to launch himself at the man’s wide-eyed fellows. A milky-eyed old Slayer spun his axe in a crooked figure-eight and tattooed tribesmen shrieked and fell. But where was Gotrek?

  He heard a shout, and found himself thrust aside by the metal-plated arm of the ironbreaker, Grimbold, whose axe looped out, shearing off the jaw of a howling Northman. ‘Step aside, manling, and let us do our job,’ the ironbreaker snarled. Behind him, another ironbreaker raised a curling war-horn to his lips and let loose with a low, loud sound that rose up over the fading noise of the explosion and bounced through the ruins. Grimbold and his warriors moved outwards in two rings past the line of rangers, dispatching those men the Slayers hadn’t. Unlike the latter, however, the ironbreakers did not spread so far as to weaken their own lines. Felix felt a bit in awe of the dwarfs’ martial precision. Each of the dwarfs seemed to know by instinct where his companions were and move accordingly, shield held aloft and axe flashing. As with everything else, the dwarf approach to war was that of craftsmen, organized, precise and effective.

  He looked around, sighting the shattered, gaping outer walls of the fortress. Men poured out, abandoning the siege for battle. Horns screamed and tribal chieftains tried to maintain order, but just as with the earlier internecine blood-letting the war-hunger of the Blood God’s worshippers could not, would not be denied. They had been forced to wait for too long; now that their opponents had come to them, they would neither slow nor retreat.

  ‘I should never have accepted that drink,’ Koertig muttered. He raised his shield and slammed the flat of his axe against it. ‘Come on then!’ The first Chaos marauders reached them a moment later. Koertig caught a blow on his shield and let his axe drop, taking his opponent in the head. The Nordlander knew these men of old, for his people had fought them since before Sigmar had first raised his hammer, and he met their savagery with cold hatred centuries in the making.

  Axeson, in contrast, fought with an almost Slayer-like ferocity. His axe in one hand and a short-hafted hammer in the other, he used the latter to break a charging marauder’s leg before cleaving his head with the former. He fought in silence, unlike the warrior-priests of the Empire who went into battle belting out hymns.

  Karaghul shot up, narrowly deflecting a clumsily hurled spear. Weaponless, the frothing warrior leapt at Felix, arms outstretched. Felix ducked beneath those arms and his blade sank home. As the Chaos marauder fell, dragging him around, Felix jerked the blade free and turned to meet his next opponent. A crossbow bolt took that one in the head, pitching him backwards. Felix strode past him without pausing.

  He searched for Gotrek. It was instinct by now, a compulsion to make sure that he didn’t miss any moment of what might be the Slayer’s final battle. The battle spun around him, and there were more orange crests to catch his eye than normal.

  There! Gotrek’s arm swung out, his massive fist connecting with a helmeted head, denting baroque metal and breaking bone, sending the Chaos warrior tumbling down like a sack of broken sticks. His axe swung out as if independent of him, a predatory curve of steel seeking its morning meal. Like Axeson, he fought quietly, without his usual excitement. It was unnerving, as if the Gotrek he had known had become something else – a mechanism of destruction, feeling nothing, not even anticipation. The Slayer fought steadily, his every step littered with human wreckage.

  In contrast, Garagrim fought almost joyously. The War-Mourner seemed to have left behind the weight of responsibility, and his axes licked out as if they weighed no more than feathers. But despite his abandon, Felix noted that he stayed close to the equally wild younger Slayer he had noticed with the older dwarf in the tunnels. The War-Mourner guided the young Slayer into the thick of the battle, almost herding him into combat.

  The sound of galloping hooves shook the air. Felix turned and saw a wave of marauder horsemen crushing their own ground-bound allies to reach the dwarf line. The riders whooped and howled as they came on and Felix threw himself to the side, narrowly avoiding being trampled. A Slayer wasn’t so lucky, and the orange crest was flattened ignobly into the mud of the battlefield. Felix couldn’t tell who it was.

  He brought Karaghul up in time to block a spear-thrust and then the horseman was past him. Crossbows fired, picking riders from the saddle. Then, it was axe-work. Horses shrieked as pick-axes swept their hooves out from under them and sent them rolling. The dwarfs, while possessing no cavalry of their own, had long ago learned the art of dealing with a charge, especially one as ragged as this.

  More riders came on, however. The dwarfs would be overwhelmed, unless–

  More horns, but not the brute things of the enemy. No, these were the brass-banded dragon-horns of Karak Kadrin, sounding from somewhere nearby. The second sortie had begun.

  So distracted by this was Felix that he only caught sight of the looming rider at the last second, and a falchion sliced through the edge of his cape and across his cheek as he twisted aside.

  The Chaos marauder was lithe and deadly looking, like a needle wrapped in iron, and his armour was covered in stretched and stitched faces that looked as if they were screaming. He whooped and jerked on his mount’s reins, his eyes alight with battle-lust. He stank of the stuff of slaughter and Felix gagged as he brought Karaghul up to block another sweeping blow from the falchion. His opponent was stronger than he anticipated, and Karaghul bent back, nearly gashing his shoulder. Felix fell and the hooves of the horse rose over him. He closed his eyes.

  A shout thundered in his ears. The young Slayer who’d been beside Garagrim flung himself at the rider, axe licking out to cut through the straps on the man’s saddle, spilling him to the ground in a heap. But as quickly as he’d fallen, he was on his feet, falchion sweeping upwards in a brutal arc that split the Slayer’s skull jaw to crest and sent his body pin-wheeling into the air.

  The Chaos warrior gave a bone-rattling guffaw as the body hit the ground. ‘That’s for you, you stunted monkeys. Yan the Foul is no dog to be beaten by apes with hatchets!’

  Felix scrambled to his feet and lunged, hoping to bury his sword in the warrior’s back before the latter remembered that he was there. The Chaos warrior turned as Felix’s boot-soles scraped on the stone and caught Karaghul in one gauntlet. Sparks spat from between his fingers as he wrenched the blade down, nearly knocking Felix from his feet. With barely a sneer of effort, the Chaos warrior jerked the sword from Felix’s grip and sent him scrambling back with a cursory swipe of his own blade. He examined Karaghul and gave an appreciative grunt, his weather-seamed face splitting in a vulpine grin. ‘I’ll have this, I think. And your skull to go with it,’ he said, pointing both swords at Felix, who felt his heart drop into his belly.

  ‘Only if you get past me,’ Garagrim rumbled, clashing his axes together. ‘That manling is a guest of Karak Kadrin and he is under my protection.’

  ‘Another shaved monkey,’ the Chaos warrior said, turning to face the War-Mourner. ‘Tell me your name, monkey, so that I might have it to remember you by after I knock your stone lair down.’

  ‘Garagrim Ironfist, Prince of Karak Kadrin and War-Mourner of the Slayer Keep,’ Garagrim growled, stalking towards his opponent.

  ‘And I am Yan the Foul, Yan of the Khazags, Beast of the Steppes, Wolf of the Plains, Master of–’ Yan began.

  ‘I don’t care,’ Garagrim said, lunging.

  His axes skidded off Yan’s hastily interposed blades. Yan grunted and shoved the Slayer back. ‘Master of the Red Lodge and Servant of the Eightfold Path,’ Yan continued, eyes flashing. ‘There. Now we’re properly introduced. Time to die, little monkey.’

  Karaghul hummed like a wasp as it slashed out, shaving the top inch off Garagrim’s crest. The falchion snapped down, nearly catching his leg. The War-Mourner turned and brought both axes around in a sharp arc that caught Yan on his cuirass, shearing away the flayed skin and staggering the Chaos warrior. Yan swept Karaghul up in an awkwar
d slice and Garagrim parried the blade with one axe and then brought his other down on the Chaos warrior’s extended wrist, severing it completely. Karaghul, still clenched in Yan’s fist, tumbled across the stone towards Felix, who leapt for it.

  Yan gave a howl and jabbed his gushing stump at Garagrim, blinding the War-Mourner with a spray of brackish blood. The falchion gashed the dwarf’s shoulder and sent him tumbling. The Chaos warrior lunged, trying to capitalize on his foe’s plight. But Garagrim was quicker. One axe snapped out, chopping into Yan’s foot and pinning the warrior in place even as the other sank into his opposite knee. The Chaos warrior screamed and crumpled to his knees.

  He slashed ineffectually at Garagrim, and the War-Mourner took his other hand with an almost lazy swipe of an axe. ‘Karak Kadrin still stands,’ Garagrim said calmly. Then he buried the blades of both axes into either side of the Chaos warrior’s neck until the blades met and Yan the Foul’s head toppled free to bounce along the stones, its expression one of bewildered frustration.

  ‘Up, human,’ Garagrim said, shaking blood from his axes with a rotation of his wrists. ‘There are still enemies to be killed and Slayers seeking doom.’ He looked at Felix. ‘You are a Remembrancer. You should be with your Slayer, so that his doom does not go unseen.’

  ‘One would think that you wouldn’t mind that,’ Felix said, prying his sword free from the Chaos warrior’s clutching hand. Garagrim’s expression turned sour.

  ‘Whatever else I may think of Gurnisson, Jaeger, I am War-Mourner and he is a Slayer. My oath is to see that his… that all of their oaths are fulfilled.’ He strode off and Felix followed warily after him. Gotrek and the other Slayers had left a trail of carnage from the crater up to the ragged gap in the sixth wall where the Chaos army had brought their war-engines.