By Taal and Rhya, thought Felix, delving lower, no wonder the girl regrets her apprenticeship, she’s as enflamed as a rutting cat.
“Here!” the seeress shrieked, and scrambled up out of the bed, kneeing him in the cheek in her haste.
“Claudia, what…?” he said, then stared.
She stood in the centre of the tiny cabin, her arms thrust wide and her eyes rolled up in their sockets, shaking like she was bracing against a high wind.
“Here!” she screamed. “Here is the source of the visions! I can feel it! It is from here that the ruin of Marienburg will spring!”
Felix heard the thumps and questioning cries of his fellow passengers through the walls all around him. He jumped out of bed and snatched her robe up off the floor where she had dropped it. He had to get her dressed and back to her own cabin. But it was impossible. She continued to stand with arms outstretched, as rigid as a sword, and he could not get both of her sleeves on her at once.
“Here!” she wailed in his ear as he tried to wrap the robe around her nakedness. “Here is where we will find Altdorf’s doom!”
It was in this tableau that the others found them when they slammed open the door—Max, Aethenir, Captain Breda, Gotrek and assorted swordsmen, sailors and elves—all staring at Felix and Claudia struggling and naked in the centre of the room, with the seeress’ robe fluttering once again to the deck.
“Could you be quieter about it, manling?” rumbled Gotrek. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
SEVEN
Captain Breda dropped anchor there and then, but there was little point in looking around in the dark, so they waited until first light before lowering the boats and rowing them to shore to see if they could find the source of Claudia’s vision.
Gotrek and Felix set out in the boat that carried Max and Claudia and their eight Reiksguard knights, Aethenir and his elf warriors were rowed in another, and Captain Breda sent another party of sailors to look for fresh water to replenish the stores. As they all left the ship, Felix could see the sailors at the rail looking at him and elbowing each other lasciviously. His face burned crimson. They had been laughing behind his back since word had spread of how he and Claudia had been discovered. He didn’t know what they had to snicker about. She had come to his cabin and not theirs after all.
The sailors’ mirth was unfortunately not the only fallout. Max had not spoken to him since. Nor had Claudia. She seemed too embarrassed to look at him. The ride to the shore was therefore silent and uncomfortable.
They pulled the boats up onto a rocky beach hemmed in on three sides by high sand dunes. A cold wind whistled through the saw grass that topped them, and clouds scudded by above them in a steely autumn sky. A few raindrops fell. Max and Aethenir turned to Claudia, expectant, while the Reiksguard and the elf warriors prepared to march and Felix shrugged into his chainmail and strapped on his sword.
“Have you further insight as to where this evil lies, seeress?” asked Max, who had grown very formal with her since the previous night. “Or what it might be?”
Claudia shook her head, unable to meet his eyes. “The vision has passed and 1 have not had another. I’m sorry, magister. It is near here, but I don’t know where, or what it is, precisely.”
Max nodded. “Very well, then we will split up and look for it. You and I will go south with Captain Oberhoff and his men along the shore. High one, will you take your kin inland and look there?”
“Of course,” said Aethenir.
Max turned to Gotrek, pointedly ignoring Felix. “Slayer, will you and Herr Jaeger walk the coast to the north? We will search until mid-morning, then return here and compare notes. And whatever you find, let it lie until we may all examine it together.”
Gotrek nodded.
Felix stiffened at the snub, but said nothing. He had, after all, all but promised Max that he would have nothing to do with Claudia, and he had gone back on that promise—however unwillingly—so he supposed he deserved a snubbing. Still, it felt a bit petty. Maybe Max was jealous that Claudia had chased Felix instead of him. The thought sparked others. Was Max married? Did he have a mistress? Did he even care about such worldly matters any more? Felix didn’t know.
As they took packs and waterskins out of the boats, Felix found himself for a moment alone next to Claudia. He leaned in and lowered his voice. “I hope Max hasn’t scolded you too much for last night’s—”
“You might have covered me,” she snapped, cutting him off. “I’ve never been so embarrassed.”
“I tried!” said Felix, defensive. Then he got angry. What right did she have to criticise his actions? “And you might have stayed in your own cabin and saved us both a lot of bother!”
“Oh!” she said, and turned away without another word.
He watched her walk away and found Max giving him the evil eye again. Felix cursed silently and turned away, shouldering his pack.
Rain began to spit intermittently from the sky as Felix and Gotrek set off to the north, staying within sight of the water. This was not as easy as one might have thought. The shore was not all beaches and dunes. In fact, most of it was swampy, foul-smelling wetlands, an endless flat swamp with the occasional scrawny, leafless tree sticking up out of it like a witch’s claw reaching up from a drowning pool. They slogged through brittle, knife-sharp grass—waist high for Felix, chest high for Gotrek—that grew out of rank, spongy ground, their footprints filling in with water behind them. The muck exhaled a low, foetid mist that swirled around their ankles, and clouds of midges and mosquitoes rose from it continually, getting in their eyes and noses and biting them unmercifully on every inch of exposed skin. Weird cries echoed through the humid silence, and once something big splashed heavily into a stream nearby, but they didn’t see what it was.
Gotrek took the flies and the mud and the smell and the unnerving noises without apparent discomfort, but Felix was slapping and cursing and stumbling and walking into enormous spiderwebs the whole way. It seemed all of a piece with his vile mood. He couldn’t get over Claudia’s unfair anger at him. It wasn’t his fault she had been found naked in his cabin. He had tried to get her to leave, repeatedly. It was she who had come uninvited and tried to seduce him. It was she who had decided that the best time to have a vision of the future was during love-making. Even more galling was the fact that Max seemed to think that he had lured her there, that he was some sort of low lothario that preyed upon young, inexperienced girls. It made him want to go back and shout the truth in their faces. It made him forget to look where he was going and step into a puddle that filled his boots to the top with freezing, green-scummed water.
His cursing startled a flock of ducks who flew over their heads, complaining querulously, and started a racket of strange shrieks off to the west that made his skin crawl. He cursed them too.
If only he had some idea what they were looking for, it might have made the journey more bearable. That was Claudia’s fault too. Did she have to be so vague? What good was an ability that only gave half-answers? Should they be on the look-out for some ruined tower? A ring of stones? A weird tree with tentacles for branches? A fissure in the earth that radiated a ghastly glow? Without some goal in mind it all felt like some wild goose chase. Maybe Claudia had no powers of foresight at all. He had seen nothing conclusive to prove to the contrary. Maybe she made all of it up just so that she would have an excuse to leave the confines of the Celestial College. He wouldn’t put it past her.
Gotrek discovered the footprints just as they were about to turn back and report their failure. They had trudged up out of the marshland onto a hillocky plain that was covered in bramble bushes and scrub pine, and had found, carving through the brush to the sea, a narrow, clear-running stream with high, undercut banks. Below one of these banks was a line of bootprints, paralleling the stream and heading inland.
They drew their weapons and followed the prints as they weaved in and out of the water for perhaps a quarter of a mile. They stopped at last at a place where
the stream widened into a pool and the banks drew back to make a muddy little beach. Here the first prints were joined by many others, and also the imprint of the keels of small boats at the waterline and the circular imprints of barrels, sunk heavily into the mud. It was clear that a landing party had been here recently and refilled their water barrels, just as Captain Breda’s men were doing now further south. And the narrowness of the prints also made it clear—at least to Gotrek—who had collected the water.
“More elves,” Gotrek growled.
Felix nodded, and they turned back. It had been a discovery, but it didn’t seem to be the portent of doom they had been looking for.
The rain chose that moment to begin sheeting down like a waterfall. Felix sighed. Of course it was raining. A day like today wouldn’t be complete without being soaked to the skin.
* * * * *
As the sky grew darker and the downpour got heavier, they turned inland, partly to be good scouts and search new ground, but mostly to avoid the marshes during the rain. It appeared that Max and Claudia and their Reiksguard escort had done the same, for they met them coming north about a quarter of a mile inland from the beach where they had landed. The two wizards were much the worse for wear, their cloaks and long robes muddied to the waist, their hands and faces scratched by brambles and dotted with insect bites. Felix felt a warm glow at the thought that Claudia had shared his misery. It served her right.
“Anything to report?” asked Max, raising his voice over the hiss of the rain as he mopped his face with a handkerchief. Despite the chill wind and the downpour, he and Claudia were beetroot-red and boiling from their exertions, as were their swordsmen, who were steaming slightly, and appeared to be regretting having worn breastplates and pauldrons for the march.
“Not much,” Felix shouted in return. “We found signs of an elf watering party at the limit of our march.”
“A watering party?” asked Captain Oberhoff. “In this godforsaken place? Must have been desperate.”
“Or searching for something,” said Max. “Like us.”
The clink of scale mail brought their heads up and they saw, coming over a hill to the east, Aethenir and his escort, marching in perfect double file. Felix was annoyed to see that, though wet, their surcoats were still pristine, and their boots clean. And not one of them seemed to have been bitten by mosquitoes.
“A disappointing search,” said Aethenir as the elves joined them. “We found nothing.” He looked to Max. “I hope you have had more success.”
Max shook his head. “Nothing. Gotrek and Herr Jaeger have found signs of a recent elf watering party to the north, but nothing else.”
“Elves?” said Aethenir, his eyes narrowing. He turned to Captain Rion and asked him a question in the elven tongue. The captain shook his head and Aethenir looked troubled. “I pray it was only elves,” he said to Max, then turned to look at Claudia. “And has Fraulein Pallenberger experienced any new revelations about our goal?”
“No,” said Max. “Not yet.”
Claudia hung her head. “I wish I could call them forth, high one,” she said glumly. “But they come when they come.”
The elf smiled slyly. “So I have observed.”
Claudia turned crimson at that, and Max’s eyes blazed. Even Felix felt angry. The girl might be a young fool who needed to learn restraint, but there was no need to make her feel worse about last night’s embarrassment.
Aethenir turned towards the beach again, oblivious to their anger, his escort following. Max opened his mouth to speak, but Claudia grabbed his arm and shook her head, pleading silently. Felix could see her point. Protesting would only make her the centre of more excruciating attention. Max relented and they all followed the elves as they trudged up the hill into the driving rain.
Felix was slipping and stumbling down the far side and thinking that perhaps stealing his father’s letter from Euler might have been the better option after all, when suddenly Claudia gasped and staggered into him.
He caught her but then lost his footing and they both went down together. It took all his will to be polite.
“Are you all right, fraulein?” he asked. “Have you trodden on something?”
But Claudia’s eyes were wide and unseeing, and she clutched her robes with spasming, white-knuckled hands. “The flames! The sea crawls with flames!”
“Back to the boats!” snapped Max, and he motioned for two of the stronger Reiksguarders to take Claudia from Felix as he and Gotrek and the rest of the party raced towards the shore.
It was difficult to see for more than ten paces in the freezing torrent and the gathering dark. Even so, all could see the flickering glow that silhouetted the last dune before the beach, and they hurried up the shifting sandy slope with anxious speed.
Felix was one of the first to the top, just behind Aethenir’s elves, and he looked towards the source of the light. Out on the sea, the Pride of Skintstaad was a roaring pyre of sallow green flames—too far gone to even think of trying to save it.
The others joined him on the crest, Max, Claudia and the men gasping and wheezing from their run. Gotrek just stared, the green fire reflected in his single eye.
Claudia choked and wept. “No! Why didn’t I see it sooner?”
Felix was wondering the same thing.
Max pointed down to the beach. “To our boats. We must go help the survivors.”
Felix and the others nodded and started trotting quickly down to the boats, calling for the sailors to take up their oars, but though the boats were there, the men who had rowed them ashore were nowhere to be seen.
“Where in Sigmar’s name have they run off to?” growled Captain Oberhoff.
Then one of his Reiksguard pointed to the water. “Look!” he said. “The crew! They’re swimming ashore!”
Felix looked where he pointed. It was hard to see through the rain, but he could make out the lumpy shapes of heads bobbing in the water, moving closer to the beach. Some of them were crawling through the surf.
“Praise Manann,” said one of the other Reiksguard.
But Felix frowned. Had there been so many crewmen? He only remembered a score at the most. There seemed to be twice that many heads in the water. “Wait,” he said. “Aren’t there too many?”
The others looked again, blinking in the downpour.
Aethenir stepped back. “Those aren’t men,” he said. “They are…”
With a feral hiss, the first wave of swimmers rose from the breaking waves and ran at the party on the beach—dark, crouching forms with water dripping from their piecemeal armour and their matted fur. Dagger teeth flashed bone-white in the gloom. Red eyes glowed. Rust-grimed spearheads glinted green in the light of the burning ship.
“Skaven!” roared Gotrek. He charged into the surf, drawing his axe from his back and sweeping it around him savagely. Skaven heads and limbs and tails spun away from skaven bodies to splash in the water.
The men and elves did not follow the Slayer’s example. They fell back, shouting and drawing swords as dozens of the horrible creatures rose from the sea and scrabbled towards them, swinging wide around Gotrek and up the beach like a black tide. Felix backed off and fought alongside the others, separated from the Slayer by the seething wall of fur, filth and fangs. Spearheads flashed out of the glistening gloom, invisible until almost too late. Felix parried desperately, and slashed back, but it was like striking at shadows. A hoarse cry of pain came from his left—a curse from his right.
Felix was having a hard time getting his bearings as he fell in with the Reiksguard. Why skaven? Why now? What did they want? And where had they come from?
Then, with a shout of strange words, Max thrust up a hand and a ball of brilliant white light crackled into existence above his head. The skaven cringed back in the harsh illumination, chittering fearfully.
The Reiksguarders, hardened veterans of the recent Chaos invasion, did not flinch from this magic, nor did the elves. The Reiksguard fell in shoulder to shoulder, their sw
ords and shields working in unison, while beside them, the elves attacked in a spinning, whirling fury, their long blades chopping through spears and furred limbs with equal ease as further spells from Max’s hands shot past them and blasted the ranks of skaven with orbs of scintillating light that made them shriek and fall and writhe on the ground. But though the glowing ball made the vermin easier to see and kill, it also showed just how many there were. Felix’s heart thudded as he looked out over the milling carpet of ratmen that covered the beach, while still more rose from the waves. There seemed no end to them.
The harsh light illuminated all their most hideous attributes—the patchy, scrofulous fur, the pustule-plagued snouts, the soulless black-marble eyes, the horrible, hissing mouths, the revolting trophies that dangled from their necks and belts. Nausea constricted his throat as he slashed viciously at them, all his disgust and fear of the vile creatures turning into a seething rage. His first stroke opened a ratman’s stomach in a spray of blood and viscera, then he removed another’s arm on the back swing. He buried the blade in the skull of a third, kicked it free and spun to face more.
On the far side of the skaven, Gotrek was doing the same, or trying to. The Slayer was as angry as Felix had ever seen him, for though he was surrounded by foes, he had no one to fight. The skaven scampered away from him like—well, like rats—and on his short legs he could not close with them. “Stand and fight, vermin!” he raged as he ran backwards and forwards in the centre of an empty circle of sand.
Felix quickly found himself having the same problem. The skaven were staying behind their spears, prodding at him from a distance, but making no attempt to kill him. He lunged at a cluster of them, but they only parted before him, like water around a stone. He could not understand the behaviour. Skaven either fought with maddened fury or fled. There had never in his experience been anything in between.
[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer Page 10
