When he was finished he closed the journal, sighed contentedly and sat back, thinking that a little dinner would be in order shortly. But then the feeling that he was being watched crept over him and he turned, expecting to find Claudia peeking out from behind a mast. Instead, it was Max, leaning against the opposite rail and observing him with furrowed intensity as he puffed on his pipe.
Felix raised an eyebrow. What had he done this time? Hadn’t he given Claudia the cold shoulder? Surely Max couldn’t be unhappy about that.
He nodded politely and began to cap his ink and put away his pen. Before he finished, Max had tapped his pipe out on the rail and crossed to him, sitting down next to him on an overturned bucket. Felix hid a sigh. Was he going to get another lecture?
“Good afternoon, Max,” he said, as pleasantly as he could.
Max continued to look at him, saying nothing for long enough that Felix began to feel uncomfortable.
At last, just as Felix was about to ask what the matter was, he spoke. “You really haven’t aged a day, Felix.”
Felix sighed. “Everyone says that. I’m getting a little tired of—”
“I do not mean it as a compliment,” said Max. “I mean it as a fact. It is impossible that you should look this young and vigorous.” He frowned and pointed at Felix’s cheek. “You used to have a scar, just there. Do you remember?”
Felix reached up and touched his cheek—the duelling scar, taken when he had fought his schoolmate Krassner at university, and killed him.
“It’s gone now,” said Max.
“Scars fade,” said Felix.
“Not a scar like that. Not completely. And yet it has.”
Felix frowned. He didn’t like this scrutiny. “But isn’t that good?”
“Good?” Max shrugged. “Yes, I suppose. But mysterious as well. Something unnatural is affecting your body—keeping it young, keeping it free from disease, allowing you to recover from wounds faster and more completely than you should. I know other hardy warriors of your age, Felix. They are strong and fit, but their knees still creak and their hands are scarred. Their faces are lined and creased. Yours is not. You no longer look a youth of twenty, it’s true, but you look ten years younger than your true age and well cared for besides.”
“I think you’re exaggerating, Max. But if what you say is true, what…” Felix swallowed, uncertain he wanted to know the answer. “What do you think has caused it?”
Max leaned back, stroking his neat beard and considering. “I don’t know, but I can think of several possibilities. You will note,” he said, adopting a professorial tone, “that Gotrek is affected in the same way. More so, in fact. There is no dwarf stronger or more massive than he. I’ll wager he has the strength often of his kind. And he too is virtually unscarred, but for his missing eye. Perhaps something the two of you encountered during your journey to the Chaos Wastes has caused this effect. Or it might be some consequence of entering that portal through which you disappeared when I saw you last. Perhaps it is some property of Gotrek’s axe. It is a weapon of great power. Perhaps it is keeping him, and you, fit for some important purpose, though what that might be, I couldn’t say. Whatever it is, it is possible it could keep you alive indefinitely.”
“Indefinitely? You mean I might be…” He laughed at the ridiculousness of it. “Immortal?”
“Or as near as makes no difference,” said Max, nodding. “But be aware that it is not an unmixed blessing. We of the Empire are not tolerant of the unusual or the unnatural, Felix. If you continue to look as you do for another ten or twenty years, people will talk. You might be accused of being some sort of mutant, or a master of the dark arts, or even one of the undead.”
Felix blanched. He had never considered that his good health might be seen as the taint of Chaos. What was he supposed to do, get sick?
Max sighed and stood. “I must go hold Scholar Aethenir’s hand again, but think on what I have said, Felix. I believe it would be wise to face your true nature, instead of pretending you have not changed.”
“Thank you, Max,” said Felix, softly. “I will.”
He barely noticed Max as he turned and left, so confounded was he by what the wizard had said. He didn’t want to believe it. How could it be true? If something had happened to him, wouldn’t he have noticed? He felt no different than he ever had. But perhaps that is what Max had meant. He should have felt different—achy, more run down, older.
What if he was immortal? Should he be happy about it? It was every man’s dream to live forever, wasn’t it? But to be made immortal without his consent by some force he didn’t understand—that was more unnerving than thrilling. And did he really want to be following the Slayer into danger for ever and ever without end? Even the wildest journey must come to an end sometime, mustn’t it?
A sudden thought came to him and made his heart lurch. Could he be some sort of vampire, as Max suggested? That would mean that he and Ulrika could be together after all! But no, he decided with a sigh, he doubted very much he was a vampire. He was sitting in the sun, wasn’t he? And he had not, as far as he could remember, ever drunk anyone’s blood. And besides, if he were a vampire, he would never have the chance to be with Ulrika, because Gotrek would kill him first.
“Sail ho!” called a voice from above. “To the stern on our heading.”
Felix looked up. This sort of cry had been frequent on the first two days of their journey, when the Pride of Skintstaad had been at the narrow end of the Manaanspoort Sea and in the major shipping lane, but as they had continued to hug the east coast while most of the traders hugged the west, heading for Bretonnia, Estalia and Tilea, other ships had become fewer and fewer.
He rose and joined Captain Breda at the aft rail. Far in the distance, between the iron sea and the pewter sky, was a sharp fleck of white, like a tooth sticking up over the horizon.
“What sort of ship is it?” asked Felix.
The captain shrugged. “Hard to tell, this far out,” he said. “Three masts. Square rigged. Marienburg, most likely, possibly Imperial. Don’t know what she’s doing going north. Not much trade with the Norse this late in the year. Wouldn’t be doing it myself, if it weren’t for the high one’s gold.”
The ship remained on the horizon for the rest of the day, not gaining and not falling back. Captain Breda left instructions for the night watch to keep an eye on its lights and wake him if it got closer, but it never did.
* * * * *
The fourth day dawned grey and misty, with gusts of intermittent rain, and it was impossible to tell if the ship with the white sail was still behind them or not.
Just before noon, the Pride of Skintstaad sailed past the last headland of the Manaanspoort Sea and out into the great black expanse of the Sea of Chaos. The north wind, which had been softened somewhat by its passage over the Wasteland, was here a cold wet slap in the face. All the sailors donned oiled leather jerkins and shivered at their stations. Felix pulled his red cloak closer around him and looked in all directions. For all his travels, he had never sailed these waters before. Directly north was Norsca, land of longships, snow-topped mountains and fur-clad reavers. East was Erengrad and Kislev and the Sea of Claws. West was fabled Albion, the mist-shrouded isle that he and Gotrek had once visited, but never travelled to. Adventure awaited in every direction, but on the whole, it all seemed a bit chilly and unappealing.
It was a few hours later that the inevitable finally happened, and Gotrek and Aethenir crossed paths. Such a confrontation had so far been avoided because both the elf and the dwarf had spent most of their time in their cabins, and generally came up only to use the privy. Thus, it was at the privy that the meeting occurred.
The privy of the Pride of Skintstaad was nothing more than a round hole in a bench that hung out over the prow of the ship, directly under the bowsprit and screened off from the rest of the ship by a leather curtain. The path to it was very narrow, a little wedge of space between the looming bowsprit and the starboard rail, which had s
pare sails and spars and other nautical debris lashed to it.
Though Felix was not there for the beginning of the argument, it started, apparently, when Aethenir stepped out of the privy and found Gotrek waiting impatiently to go in.
The first Felix and the rest of the crew heard of it was Gotrek’s rasp rising above the sounds of wind and wave.
“I’ll not step aside for any honourless, tree-worshipping elf! You step aside!”
“Do you dare make demands of me, dwarf? I have paid for this ship, and you are upon it at my pleasure. Now step aside, I say.”
Felix sprang up from where he had been reading more of his travels with Gotrek, and ran for the prow. This was just what was needed. Max too was hurrying to the scene. Aethenir’s household guard was not far behind. When they all reached the tiny space, they found the elf and the dwarf face to face—or face to chest, to be more accurate—and barking at each other like dogs.
“I go where I please, when I please, and no pompous, prick-eared pantywaist is going to bar my way. Now step aside before I throw you overboard!”
“Stubborn son of earth. I do not bar your way. You bar mine!”
“Gotrek,” called Felix. “Leave off. What is the point of this?”
“Yes, Slayer,” said Max. “Give way and have done.”
“Give way to an elf?” said Gotrek, with a dangerous edge to his voice. “I would die first/
“By Asuryan,” said Aethenir. “There would be no need for this argument were you to shave that monstrous filthy beard. There would be room enough for both of us then.”
Gotrek froze, his one eye blazing. His hand slowly reached up and caught the haft of his axe. “What did you say?”
Felix heard the scrape of steel as the high elf’s warriors all drew their swords at once.
Aethenir looked up to them. “Captain Rion! Brothers! Defend me! Save me from this mad rock hewer!”
The elves pushed forwards through the other onlookers.
“Coward,” snarled Gotrek, bringing his axe before him and ignoring the elves at his rear. “Would you have others fight your battles for you? Draw your sword!”
“I carry no sword,” said Aethenir, backing against the privy curtain. “I am a scholar.”
“Ha!” barked Gotrek. “A scholar should be wise enough not to start with his mouth what he can’t finish with his hands.” He took another step towards the elf.
“Turn, dwarf,” said Captain Rion, a weathered-looking elf with cold grey eyes. “I would not slay even a tunnel-digger from behind.”
Gotrek turned and grinned at the thicket of sharp steel that faced him. “All right,” he said. “You first, then the ‘scholar’.”
Felix squeezed in beside him. “Gotrek, listen to me. You can’t do this.”
“Step back, manling,” growled Gotrek. “You’re crowding my arm.”
Felix stayed where he was. “Gotrek, please. He might deserve it, but he paid for the ship. This voyage ends if you kill him or his friends. Remember the seeress’ vision? The black mountain? The tide of blood? The towering abomination? If this argument ends in slaughter we all go back to Marienburg and that doom fades away like all the others. Is that what you want?”
Gotrek stood rigid for a long moment, breathing heavily. Felix could see his jaw muscles clenching under his beard as he ground his teeth. At last he put up his axe and turned, shouldering roughly past Aethenir as the elf flattened against the rail.
Gotrek slapped aside the curtain, then looked back. “This had better be a damned good doom!”
He turned and disappeared into the privy. There was a noise like an explosion in a brewery.
Everybody hurried quickly away.
Felix retired to his cramped cabin that night well pleased. Though Gotrek’s altercation with Aethenir had been a terrifying near-massacre that had almost ended their journey before it had really begun, afterwards, Felix had been heartened at the thought of how angry and alive the Slayer had been—trading spirited insults with the elf and challenging his whole retinue to a fight. Such a contrast to the somnambulant lump that had sat glumly in the Griffon with barely the energy to lift his tankard to his lips. The seeress’ vision seemed to have worked upon him like an elixir, raising him from the living death of his depression and giving him purpose again.
As he lay down in the tiny cupboard bed and pulled the heavy quilt over him, Felix hoped that, for the Slayer’s sake, the premonition wasn’t a lie. After that his thoughts became scattered, and he let the swell of the waves and the creaks and groans of the ship timbers lull him into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When he woke again, it was to a soft noise. Long years of experience in dangerous awakenings had taught him not to make any sudden noises or movements. Instead he moved only his eyes, passing them slowly over the small area of dark room that he could see without turning his head. Nothing. Had he imagined it? No. The soft noise was repeated, and followed by quiet rustlings and shiftings. Someone, or some thing, was most definitely in the room with him.
He could make out the corners and edges of things now, illuminated in a dim glow of moonlight from the small, thick-glassed window. He eased his head a few inches around, as quietly as he could.
Yes, there was someone in his room, and she was stark naked, the pale light highlighting her slim, youthful curves as she dropped her robe to the deck.
“What are you doing here?” Felix asked.
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Fraulein Pallenberger.
“And so you decided that I shouldn’t either.”
She sighed and sat on the bed, shivering a little in the chill as she lay a hand on the covers that draped over his legs. “You use harsh humour to hide your misery, Herr Jaeger, but I know that, beneath your cruel words, you long for solace. You drive me away so that you will not have to share your pain, but in your mind you are calling, ‘come back, come back’.” She lay down on top of the covers and brought her face close to his. “And so, I have.”
She closed her eyes and leaned in to kiss him. Felix turned his head so that her lips fell awkwardly on his ear.
“Fraulein,” he said, then struggled with the bedclothes and sat up. “Fraulein, you cannot be here.”
She rolled over and looked up at him, stretching as she raised an eyebrow in what he was sure she thought was a sultry expression. He swallowed. Despite her overplaying, she did look rather fetching sprawled out like that.
“And why not?” she said. “You long for it. I long for it. Surely you are not some prudish…”
“I do not long for it!” snapped Felix. “And you… This has more to do with putting one over on Magister Schreiber and rebelling against your order than any attraction you have to me.”
Her languid look vanished in an angry flash of eyes and she sat up too, all semblance of desire gone. “Why shouldn’t it?” she hissed. “Don’t you see that this might be my last chance? Herr Jaeger, I am young! Young! I want to taste the world before it is taken away from me! I want to live before I die! It is my gift—my curse!—to predict the future, and I predict that the rest of my life will be a long, grey corridor, full of dust and charts and telescopes and pale, wrinkled old men!” She covered her face with one hand. “I know I cannot leave the colleges. The Empire does not suffer a witch to live. I know I have to go back and shuffle along with the rest of them, but for now—for these few days…” She looked up at Felix with eyes that burned with a shimmering fire. “I want to live!”
Felix sat back, torn between heartbreak and laughter. “Fraulein Pallenberger, this is all very moving, but the Celestial Order is not a celibate order. You may marry. You may take your pleasure as you like.”
“Not until I become a magister,” said Claudia sullenly. “And that might take until I am thirty! I will be old then. No one will want to look at me. My youth will be behind me.”
This time Felix did chuckle. “And how old do you think I am?”
“It’s different for men!” she cried, then started to weep i
n earnest. “Oh, I’ve made a terrible mistake!” she bawled. “I didn’t want to join the order! I don’t want to be a seeress!”
“Shhhh, shhhh,” said Felix, taking her hands. “You’ll wake the ship.” He groaned as he imagined Max finding them like this. “Please, fraulein. Calm down.”
She muffled her sobs with her hands and fell heavily against his chest, nestling her head against his shoulder. He folded her in his arms and stroked her hair—not in any romantic way, he told himself—purely to comfort and quieten her. But when her hands crept around his torso and she pressed herself against him, he found desire stirring within him despite himself.
He fought it down and pried her off, but she clung again as soon as he let go.
“Do not cast me out, Herr Jaeger,” she murmured in his ear. “Let me live. I beg you.”
“Fraulein—Claudia,” he said, trying to disentangle himself. “You really overstate your case. Thirty, even for a woman, is not…”
Her lips found his, and then her tongue. He responded before he could remember not to.
“Claudia, please,” he said, pushing away from her at last. This wasn’t right. He loved Ulrika. Her memory was still fresh in his heart. He doubted it would ever die. He didn’t want anyone else but her. And since he could not have her, then he would have no one at all. It would be sacrilege to defile the memory of their love with some petty animal flailing.
Claudia’s hands trailed down his torso and gripped his legs as she kissed his neck. He shivered. On the other hand, there was something to be said, in this world of trouble and pain, for taking pleasure where one could find it. Ulrika’s words came back to him again. “We must find happiness among our own kind.” He still wasn’t certain that happiness was possible, but comfort might be.
With a sigh and a silent apology to Ulrika, wherever she might be, he lowered his lips to Claudia’s and kissed her, long and deep. The seeress whimpered and pressed harder against him. He pulled his nightshirt off over his head and moved his lips to her throat, kissing and nibbling tenderly. She shivered and groaned. Felix chuckled to himself. It had been a while, but he appeared not to have forgotten what to do. He pressed her back against the bed and kissed her clavicle, then down between her breasts. She moaned and clutched him, trembling as if with fever. “Here,” she said. “Here!”
[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer Page 9
