[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  The cold welcome had done nothing to improve Thanquol’s mood, already befouled by the slow, miserable journey that had brought him here. In his day the palanquin-bearers had been speedy and subservient. They had known their place and how to get one to one’s destination without colliding with every skaven coming the other way. Now it seemed more than they could do to all move in the same direction at once. It was therefore with little patience that he listened to his overpaid, under-successful assassin make yet more excuses.

  “My abject apologies, oh most forgiving of skaven,” said Shadowfang from the floor where he knelt before him. “But though our sleep-smoke missed them at the drinking place, all is not lost.”

  “No?” said Thanquol. “Have you managed to poison yourself in the process, then?”

  Issfet tittered fawningly at that, and Thanquol nodded approvingly. He liked his servants servile and obsequious.

  “No, grey seer,” said Shadowfang. “But we have sneak-followed the pair to a ship, and have tortured one of the sailors to reveal its destination.”

  “And…?”

  The assassin squirmed uncomfortably. “They have no destination, sagacious one. They hunt-seek something in the stink-swamp, but know not where it is.”

  Thanquol turned this information over in his head. It was unfortunate that Shadowfang had once again been unable to capture his two nemeses, but it would not be the most terrible of plans to follow them into the Wasteland where there would be no one to interfere or come to their rescue. Yes, perhaps it was for the best. Now he only needed some way of following them there.

  He turned to Issfet. “What manners of conveyance does this fool Riskin have at his disposal?” he asked. “Quick-quick.”

  The tailless skaven bowed and once again nearly lost his balance. “I shall enquire, oh most effluent of masters.”

  SIX

  The Pride of Skintstaad was a two-masted trading ship out of Marienburg that Aethenir had hired with elven gold. She was a pot-bellied little barque, slow but seaworthy, with a grizzled, vulture-beaked captain by the name of Ulberd Breda, and a crew from every corner of the Old World.

  Though happy to take Aethenir’s money, Captain Breda seemed a bit uneasy about their voyage, and Felix didn’t blame him. Max’s instructions had been to sail north and west through the Manaanspoort Sea and on into the Sea of Chaos until Fraulein Pallenberger called a halt. They might sail all the way to the Sea of Ice if she failed to receive any vision, and a journey into those barbarous climes was not to be made lightly by a little ship with winter coming on. Storms, Norse raiders and icebergs were the least they could expect if they went that far.

  Felix shivered at the idea of all those days at sea, and not because of the cold or the danger. Being cooped up on the tiny ship with such a volatile mix of personalities for any length of time was sure to be a miserable experience. In fact, even before they had left the dock there had been conflict. Aethenir had come on board with seven elf warriors, taken one look at his cabin and come back out again, saying he refused to stay there until it had been thoroughly cleaned.

  “It’s filthy” he said with a shudder. “It stinks of urine and vermin. There was a rat on my bed.”

  The crew snorted at that.

  “Ain’t a ship that sails that doesn’t have rats, yer worship,” said Captain Breda.

  “You’ve never sailed on a ship of Ulthuan, then,” said Aethenir, sniffing.

  “No, yer worship, I never has. But if we was to try to chase off all the rats on this ship we’d never leave the dock.” He turned to one of his crewmen, an Estalian by his look. “Doso, go and clean his worship’s cabin.”

  “But I swabbed this morning,” complained Doso.

  “Then swab it again,” growled the captain. “And use clean water this time.”

  Doso grumbled, but did as he was told.

  It was clear that, even after this extra cleaning, Aethenir was less than satisfied, but Max whispered a few words in the high elf’s ear and he dropped the matter. Unfortunately, the damage was done. The high elf had earned the ill will of the crew—men that might have treated him with the awe and respect that humans generally reserved for the elder races were, in one stroke, sneering at him behind his back and spitting on his shadow.

  His warriors fared better, for unlike their master, they seemed hardened veterans—cold, silent elves who wore scarred scale mail under the green and white surcoats of Aethenir’s livery, and asked for no special favours. They found a place near the aft rail and talked quietly amongst themselves, and that was that.

  Gotrek did what he always did on any voyage over water. He went directly to his cabin and stayed there. Felix hoped he continued this way, for that would lessen the probability that he and Aethenir would meet during the voyage, a situation to be avoided at all costs if blood was not to be spilled and the War of the Beard not to be rekindled.

  Max and Claudia spoke briefly with the captain and also retired to their cabins, but Felix feared that there would be trouble from that quarter ere long, for as she started down the stairs to her quarters, the seeress cast a look back at him from under her golden fall of hair that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

  Max’s Reiksguard escort found a place for themselves along the port rail and lounged there, chatting and smoking pipes and spitting over the side, as the crew made ready to make way.

  At last, with a heavy mist freshening into a light rain, they cast off the lines and were towed out of the Bryn-water into the centre of the Rijksweg by boats of the Marienburg port authority. Then the sails were unfurled, and they were away, sailing past the grim fortifications of Rijker’s Isle and out into the Manaanspoort Sea.

  And a less breathtaking beginning to a voyage Felix could not have imagined. The sky was a dull, uninterrupted grey. The air was wet and chilly, the rain not even strong enough to be called a drizzle, and the scenery left much to be desired. The east coast of the sea, which ran almost due north towards the Sea of Chaos, was known as the Cursed Marshes, but Felix, after the fifth hour of watching them slide slowly by, was ready to rename them the Dull Marshes, because he had never seen a more uninteresting landscape in all his life—nothing but saw grass and cat-tails and stunted trees for as far as the eye could see, mile after mile after mile. Occasionally a stork would fly past, or a chevron of geese, gabbling like noisy children, or there would come the rustle and plop of some hidden swamp-dweller sliding into the still water, but that was all. It was little wonder, thought Felix, that the Empire had let Marienburg claim the marshes and the wastelands for their own. Who would want them?

  There was more trouble with Aethenir at lunch—trouble with far-reaching repercussions for Felix’s peace of mind—though at its beginning, it had only been an argument about food.

  Before he had even tasted the bowl of stew that one of his warriors had brought him, Aethenir had thrown it overboard. He had come up from his cabin already agitated—presumably from the lack of cleanliness—and the smell of the food appeared to be the last straw.

  “This is unacceptable!” he said in a clear high voice. “I may be forced to sleep in filth, but I refuse to eat it.”

  Felix took another sniff of his stew. It smelled fine to him, if a little strong on the garlic.

  Captain Breda glared at the high elf over the lip of his bowl, his mouth full. “You got what we all got,” he said.

  “And I wonder you don’t die from it!” cried Aethenir. He turned to Max. “Is it too much to ask for fresh vegetables and fresh meat, cleanly prepared?”

  Max glanced around uneasily, but before he could speak, the cook, a peg-legged Tilean with a pot belly and a black beard that would have done a dwarf proud, popped out of the galley, glaring around. “Who say my meat is bad? I kill that pig myself, last week!”

  “Last week?” Aethenir blanched. He put a hand to his forehead. “How is it possible that humanity has risen to such heights while the noble asur have fallen? How have they even survived? Their shi
ps are slow, their knowledge of the world contemptible, their hygiene appalling, their food poisonous…”

  Max stood, trying to stem the tide. “High one, please, calm yourself. Conditions could be better, I admit, but.

  The cook turned on Aethenir, shaking his spit-fork angrily. “I know not what this hygiene is, but…”

  “By the Everqueen, that’s obvious,” said Aethenir as his warriors went on guard behind him. “Look at yourself. When was the last time you washed your hands? Why did learned Teclis ever decide to grant such shaven apes the blessing of—”

  “Lord Aethenir!” Max yelped, stepping between him and the begrimed cook. “I think perhaps you would find it more congenial to dine in your cabin.” He took the elf gently by the elbow and steered him towards the door to the underdecks. “I will have new food made for you, and I will oversee its preparation myself. It is part of the learning of my college to cleanse and purify. You need have no fears for your health.”

  The high elf allowed himself to be led below with further placating murmurings. Everyone let out a held breath and returned to their meal, though there was much muttering from the crew and from Max’s Reiksguard swords.

  “Called our boat slow,” said a sailor.

  “He throw my food off the ship,” said the cook.

  “And one of my bowls,” said Captain Breda. “That’ll go on the bill.”

  “Shaved apes, did he call us?” asked the captain of the Reiksguard, a knight by the name of Rudeger Oberhoff. “Hope he doesn’t think we’ll be watching his back for him after that.”

  His men laughed at that, but Felix didn’t see anything particularly funny about the situation. If the elf got the crew too worked up, there might be mutiny or violence, and Aethenir’s warriors looked like capable fellows. He was just glad that Gotrek had elected to stay below and drink instead of joining the others for lunch. Things could have gone much worse if he’d been there.

  When Max returned to the main deck to oversee the preparation of Aethenir’s meal, Captain Breda pulled him aside and had a few words in his ear. Felix happened to be nearby, and overheard, little knowing then how those words would affect him later.

  “Magister, sir,” said the captain. “Er, it might be best, milord, if yon high one was to stay off the deck as much as possible for the remainder. Out of sight, out of mind, if you get my meaning, sir.”

  “Perfectly, captain,” said Max. “And I apologise for Scholar Aethenir’s behaviour. He is young, for an elf, and has never left Ulthuan before. I’m afraid it’s been a bit of a shock.”

  “That’s as may be,” said Captain Breda. “But he’s in for a ruder shock if he spouts off like that again, elder race or no. The men won’t stand for it.”

  “I understand completely, captain,” said Max. “I will see to it personally that he stays below as much as can possibly be managed.”

  “Thank you, magister,” said the captain, bowing. “You ease my mind.”

  Not exactly the most doom-laden exchange of words, but that is exactly what they were for Felix, because what keeping Aethenir below decks entailed was keeping him company. For the rest of the journey, Max spent night and day in Aethenir’s cabin, discussing magic, philosophy and the nature of the world, as well as playing endless games of chess. And it was in this caretaking that the far-reaching repercussions of the “stew incident” made themselves apparent, for with Max made nursemaid to Aethenir he was no longer able to keep an eye on Fraulein Pallenberger, and finding herself unchaperoned, she made a beeline for the target she had had her eye on since boarding the Jilfte Bateau—Felix.

  The battle recommenced on the morning of their second day out of Marienburg. At first it seemed that it would be nothing more than a skirmish, but soon it escalated into a full-on assault, with Felix fighting a desperate rearguard action in order to get away unscathed.

  The morning had begun peacefully enough, settling into what was to be the daily routine of the voyage—wake, dress, have a breakfast of oat mash, grilled flounder or pike and Tilean coffee, then watch the Wasteland go by until lunch, and then more of the same until sunset. Felix would have welcomed almost any interruption of the monotony, but not this one.

  “You look sad, Herr Jaeger,” said Claudia, appearing at his side.

  Felix jumped, startled. “Sad?” he said. “Not at all.” He had actually been in the middle of a reverie about what he might do with his father’s inheritance if he did manage to get Euler’s letter for him. Not that he wanted the money, of course. But if he did inherit some, what would he do with it? Visions of exquisite leather-bound volumes of his poetry dissipated into smoke as he turned to the seeress. “Just musing.”

  “Musing,” she asked, sliding closer to him along the rail. “About what?”

  “Oh, ah, nothing really. Just, well, just musing.” He looked around him for an excuse to escape, but could see none.

  She touched his arm and looked at him with her deep blue eyes. “You hide a secret grief, don’t you, Herr Jaeger.”

  “Eh? Oh no, not really. No more than anybody else, I should think.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  Felix didn’t have any response to that except for a keen desire to push her over the side, so he said nothing, just watched the reeds go by and hoped she would go away. Unfortunately, she did not.

  “Have you ever loved, Herr Jaeger?”

  Felix choked, and had to cover his mouth as he was wracked with sudden coughs. “Once or twice, I suppose,” he said, when he had recovered.

  She turned and faced him, leaning her shapely hip against the rail. “Tell me about them.”

  “You don’t want to hear about that,” he said.

  “Oh, but I do,” the seeress said, her eyes never leaving his. “You fascinate me, Herr Jaeger.”

  “Ah,” said Felix. And in spite of his best efforts, he found himself thinking back to the women he had shared a bed with throughout his wanderings. There had been a fair number over the years, mostly half-remembered tavern girls and harlots in lonely ports scattered from the Old World to Ind, and a few who stood out above the rest; Elissa, the barmaid at the Blind Pig, who had stolen his money, and for a time his heart, Siobhain of Albion, who had travelled with him and Gotrek in the dark lands of the east, and the Veiled One, spy and assassin for the Old Man of the Mountain, whose true name he had never learned. But there were only two he had ever truly loved: Kirsten, with whom he had thought to settle down and raise a family, murdered by the mad playwright Manfred von Diehl in a little outpost in the Border Princes, and Ulrika, with whom he had thought to travel the world, worse-than-murdered by the vampire Adolphus Krieger. The memories, one long buried and one still as raw as an open wound, brought a lump to his throat. Damn the woman. Why had she asked such a vile question? He turned away from her so she wouldn’t see the pain in his eyes.

  “I have only ever loved two women,” he said at last. “And they are both dead. Is that fascinating enough?”

  Perhaps he hadn’t done a very good job masking his pain after all, for when he turned to look at her, she stepped back, eyes wide and face pale, and put a hand to her heart.

  “I… I’m sorry, Herr Jaeger,” she said. “I did not think… That is, I did not mean…” Her face went suddenly from white to pink, and she turned and hurried away, almost running for the door to the underdecks in her haste.

  Felix turned back to the rail, cursing her for digging so thoughtlessly into his heart, but then a cheerier thought came into his mind. Perhaps this meant that she would leave him alone from now on.

  Suddenly the day looked a little brighter.

  Alas, it was not to be. She said nothing to him at lunch, only spooned dully at her stew and glanced at him guiltily when she thought he wasn’t looking, but later in the afternoon, just when he was getting another few hours of marsh-watching in, she reappeared at his side, eyes downcast and lip out-thrust.

  “I want to apologise to you, Herr Jaeger,” she said. “I wa
s awful to you earlier today and I feel terrible about it.”

  “Forget it,” said Felix, wishing she really would. Unfortunately she persisted.

  She took another step closer to him. “Sometimes I forget that men are not books, to be opened and read like… er, books. I should not have pried and I am truly sorry for it.”

  “Never mind,” said Felix, throwing a splinter from the rail into the water. “No harm done.”

  He felt a soft pressure on his arm and turned to see that she was leaning against him. The swell of her breast under her dark blue robe pressed against his elbow. “If there is any way…” she said, looking up at him from under her long lashes, “any way that I could make it up to you, I would be grateful for the opportunity.”

  Felix stood, rolling his eyes, then turned to face her. “I am beginning to wonder, fraulein, if you didn’t use your visions to convince the Slayer to come on this journey just so that you would be able to get me alone on a ship.”

  The seeress blinked at that, then drew herself up haughtily as the full meaning of what he had said sank in. “The oath of the Celestial Order is very clear, Herr Jaeger,” she said. “We will not use our powers for personal gain, nor will we announce false visions or predictions for any reason whatsoever!”

  “Well, I won’t tell if you won’t,” said Felix, a little meaner than he had intended.

  “Oh!” she said. Then “Oh!” again. Then she turned and stomped away just as quickly as she had before, but with much more noise. Felix hoped this time it would stick, but he very much doubted it.

  On the afternoon of the third day, he sat down on the aft deck with his journal to fill in the so far thrilling events of their journey up the Sea of Manann. Apparently, his last insult had done the trick, for he was able to get in nearly a full hour of scribbling without any interruptions from Fraulein Pallenberger. It was very refreshing.