[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  “Wait!” hissed Felix. For once he had an idea of how to take advantage of the Slayer’s bullheadedness. “Hide. Let them think he’s alone. Max, Claudia, Lord Aethenir, prepare your most deadly spells. Captain Rion, be ready to attack. Captain Oberhoff, protect the magisters.”

  Oberhoff and his men obeyed, as did Max and Aethenir. Rion looked at Felix like he was a dog who had suddenly begun to sing opera, but then motioned his elves to the left of the vault door as Felix peered into the vault.

  “Firandaen,” Rion said to the elf whose leg had been maimed by the skaven. “You will stay with the magisters.”

  The skull-masked Endless were charging Gotrek from all sides, swerving around overturned treasure chests and mounds of dumped treasure. Beyond them, the sorceresses stared at the Slayer, shocked. The only person who seemed entirely undisturbed was the sorceress who spun the silver hoop on the metal wand, a tall, ageless, hard-faced beauty who watched coolly as Gotrek and the Endless met in the centre of the room with a deafening crash and a flurry of flashing steel.

  The Slayer disappeared as his taller foes swarmed around him, hacking and stabbing with their long slim swords. One of them fell back, a scarlet trench dug through the armour and flesh of his chest, spraying blood everywhere.

  “Magisters! Captain Rion! Now!” cried Felix.

  Max and Claudia stepped to the gap between the doors, thrusting their hands through and propelling streams of light and crackling lightning into the room. Felix, Rion and his three unwounded warriors ran in right behind the blasts. The masked druchii screamed and fell back as the blue fire and blinding light attacked their bodies, then Felix and the high elves slammed into them and five more went down, Gotrek killing two, Rion and the elves killing two more between them, and one dying fried to a crisp by Claudia’s lightning. Half of them dead already! Felix rejoiced. This might be easier than he had expected.

  Felix lunged at his bedazzled opponent, but the dark elf recovered with alarming speed and Felix’s sword only scraped his armour as he blocked and whipped his blade into a blurring riposte. Felix barely brought his sword up in time. The next attack came almost before the first had finished, aiming straight for his eyes. Felix back-pedalled desperately, panic sweat prickling his skin. In two seconds Felix knew the dark elf was the best swordsman he had ever faced. There was no question of going on the offensive. Felix couldn’t keep up with his attacks. He counted himself a better than average swordsman, but he was only human. He had only been fighting with a sword for twenty-five years or so. The dark elf, on the other hand, had probably been studying the blade for two hundred years, and was of a race naturally more agile than mankind to begin with.

  Felix blocked again, but the druchii slipped under his guard and stabbed him at the crux of his right shoulder and chest. Felix’s chainmail stopped most of it, but still the point sank an inch into meat before striking bone, driving links of mail with it. Felix fell back, barking with pain, and landed gasping on his back. The world dimmed and throbbed before his eyes. He waved his sword weakly above him with his off hand, but the druchii had turned away from him and was attacking Rion’s warriors.

  The arrogance of it cut through Felix’s pain. Was he really so negligible a threat that the dark elf would turn away without finishing him off? He had never felt more dismissed. Felix struggled to get up and go on guard, then understood the druchii’s confidence. The attack had been a carefully calculated crippling blow, goring the muscle that allowed him to lift his sword. He couldn’t use it.

  Beyond the melee, the woman with the wand and the silver hoop called out an order in a slithery voice, and two of her five sorceresses began scribing spells in the air. The others, Aethenir’s Belryeth included, returned to searching through the stacks of treasure chests, as they had been doing before Gotrek’s interruption—casually dumping them and kicking through their contents.

  Determined to stay in the fight, if only to prove to the dark elf that he was still a threat, Felix switched his sword to his barely competent left hand, and charged him again. The Endless didn’t even look back, just threw his leg out behind him in the middle of a lunge and kicked Felix precisely on the wound.

  Felix smashed to the ground, hissing and curling up in a ball. By the gods, I’m useless, he thought as he fought to remain conscious through the pain.

  His eye was caught by a cloud of boiling blackness that roiled towards the combat from the two druchii sorceresses. The pain of the wound was instantly eclipsed by a greater one as the black cloud enveloped him, and a burning like red-hot brands seared through him, seeming to cook him from the inside. He screamed and beat at himself like he was on fire, though there were no flames. The high elves were affected in the same way. They fell back, cursing and wailing and blocking desperately as the Endless lunged in to take advantage. Only Go trek fought on unaffected.

  But almost as quickly as the black cloud was upon them, a bubble of light pushed it back, dissolving it in its radiance. The pain receded from Felix’s limbs as the bubble expanded beyond him. He looked to the door and saw Max and Aethenir standing within it and working in tandem, sending pulses of white and golden energy into the room as Claudia shot more lightning at the sorceresses.

  The bubble of light expanded to surround the high elves, allowing them to recover, but for one it was too late. He was crumbling, blood pouring down his white and green surcoat as Captain Rion and the other two elves fought on at Gotrek’s side, surrounded by five skull-masked Endless.

  Felix rolled out of the way of the combatants and staggered to his feet, while all around him invisible forces flexed and strained as the sorceresses and the magisters cast and countered each other’s spells. With one arm useless, he couldn’t hope to fight the dark elves directly, but he could at least take up his old position and guard Gotrek’s sides. He limped behind the Slayer and immediately put his sword in the way of a slashing druchii sword. It was amazing to see how much trouble the Slayer was having. He who had fought armies of orcs and hordes of skaven single-handed, and who had faced down daemons and vampires, wasn’t able to get a single strike in on the three druchii he held at bay. Though his axe was everywhere and his face was red with effort, he could not touch them, and shallow gashes covered his chest and arms.

  The three druchii that fought him looked the same, blooded and winded. Their eyes, barely seen through the eye holes of their skull masks, were wide with offended surprise that any foe could last so long before them.

  Rion and his remaining elves were drenched in sweat and blood, and fought their opponents with doomed desperation, for though, being elves, they might best any man alive at the sword, compared to the Endless, they were fumbling beginners. There was no question what the outcome of their fights would be, and Felix shuddered at what would happen when they had died and all the Endless were able to turn their attention on Gotrek. Against five such enemies, even the Slayer could not hope to prevail.

  Suddenly, from atop a stack of treasure chests to the right of the door, Belryeth cried out in triumph and raised a sinuously curved black object over her head. The other sorceresses cheered. She turned towards the door of the chamber and smiled at Aethenir. “Look, beloved, the Harp of Ruin, which you have helped us find!”

  Aethenir shouted something back at her in the elvish tongue, but she laughed at him.

  “No,” she said. “I will speak so these fools can understand and know your humiliation. Bewitched and beglamoured, you have given into the hands of your enemies the greatest weapon of a lost age. One pluck of these strings can cause earthquakes that raise mountains from valleys or sink highlands lower than the sea bed. With this will the druchii create a wave that will sweep all the asur from Ulthuan. With this will we raise lost Nagarythe and rule the world again from our true homeland! You have doomed your people, and all for a love that never was!”

  She reached into her robe and drew out something thick and square, then threw it so that it skidded across the floor to stop at Aethenir’s feet. It w
as a book. Aethenir stared at it, then stooped and picked it up.

  “Please thank your masters for the loan,” called Belryeth, laughing. “It was everything I’d hoped it would be.”

  The sorceress who spun the silver ring on the wand barked something that sounded to Felix suspiciously like “enough gloating”, and Belryeth and the other druchii women began making their way towards the door of the vault as they began new incantations.

  With five of the sorceresses turning their attentions on them now, Max, Aethenir and Claudia were overwhelmed. Beams of darkness, like shafts from a black sun, smashed through their protective bubble. Felix saw Max stagger and Aethenir fall back, clutching his throat. Claudia wailed and tore at her face as if she were staring into the abyss. The Reiksguarders fell to the floor, screaming. Firandaen, the wounded elf who had stayed back to guard the spellcasters, pulled Aethenir and the magisters behind the vault door as blood poured from his nose, mouth, ears and eyes.

  Gotrek and the elf warriors glanced towards the women, but could not disengage from the Endless, who would have cut them down the instant they lowered their guard to run. Only Felix was free. Though he knew it was death, he sprinted towards the women, his shoulder screaming with every jarring step. Belryeth turned casually and waved her free hand at him. A ripple of air rushed from her fingers and blew over him. It was as cold as death. He dropped, frozen to the bone, his teeth chattering. He couldn’t move. His very blood seemed to have turned to ice. Frost rimmed his eyelashes.

  Belryeth paused, smiling, as her sisters filed out the vault door. “You are fools helping a fool on a fool’s errand, and you will die a fool’s death as a result.” And with a merry laugh, she turned and followed the others out.

  Though the cold would not let him turn his head, Felix could hear screams and raving from the antechamber and he knew that the Reiksguard were trying, and failing, to prevent the sorceresses from leaving. He willed his limbs to move, wanting to go to their aid, but they would not. They were frozen stiff.

  After a moment the cries fell silent and all that he could hear was the clashing of sword on sword and axe, and the heavy breathing and stamping of the fight behind him. And that will end soon enough, he thought, miserably.

  But then, to Felix’s surprise, Max appeared in the gap between the doors of the vault, clutching them for support and looking near death. He raised a feeble shout over the clamour of the battle. “Your mistresses have left you to die, warriors. Will you still fight for them?”

  A cold voice came from the depths of the skull helmet of one of the Endless. “For the ruin of Ulthuan and the rebirth of Nagarythe, we are proud to die.”

  “Then die you shall,” said Max. He forced himself upright and summoned his sorcerous energies, though it seemed to age him to do so. With a grunt of pain and effort, he unleashed a stream of swirling lights at the druchii. It was weak compared to his earlier attacks, but it was enough. With the sorceresses gone, the Endless could not defend themselves from it. The lights danced in front of their eyes, blinding and confusing them.

  It was their end. Gotrek and Rion and his warriors beat down their swords and chopped through their armour with brutal ease. Gotrek dismembered the three who had defied him, as the others fell to the elves.

  “Damned dancers wouldn’t stay still,” growled the Slayer as he and the three elves stood over the pile of limbs and heads, breathing heavily.

  Felix uncurled slowly as the effects of the unnatural cold faded and the stab wound in his shoulder throbbed to prominence again. He bit his cheeks against the pain.

  Max sagged against the vault doors. “No time to rest,” he said. “We must go after the sorceresses.”

  Aethenir appeared behind him, swaying like an aspen. “Yes, hurry. They carry the doom of the asur in their hands.”

  “Then let them go,” said Gotrek, shrugging.

  “Vile dwarf,” said Aethenir. “Would you doom the rest of the world to satisfy your grudge against the elves?”

  “Why not?” said Gotrek. “You doomed it for a druchii kiss.”

  “I told you,” cried Aethenir. “I did not know that she—”

  “Their leader holds the key to escaping this trap alive,” said Max, interrupting their sniping angrily.

  Suddenly not even Gotrek had any objections to going after the sorceresses.

  Felix, Gotrek, Rion, and his elves followed Max and Aethenir out of the vault and found a bloodless massacre. Firandaen was dead, a look of wide-eyed horror on his noble face. Captain Oberhoff and the last of the Reiksguard were dead too, icicles like daggers growing out of their mouths and eyes, and stabbing through their breastplates from within.

  Felix for a moment thought Claudia was dead too, her little body huddled in a ball at the base of the low stairs, but then he saw her twitch. He and one of Rion’s remaining warriors helped her up and supported her between them as the party moved towards the stairs. She whimpered and flinched at their touch, and her face was shredded where she had clawed at herself after the sorceress’ attack.

  As they hurried across the antechamber, Aethenir turned to Rion, holding up the stolen book. “I know this is not enough,” he said. “Not any more. I vow that I will not rest until I recover the harp and prevent the sorceresses’ plan.”

  Rion nodded, but did not look around. “That is the path of honour, my lord,” he said coldly.

  Aethenir’s eyes were downcast as they entered the stairwell.

  The two flights to the entry hall was one of the most terrifying distances Felix had ever travelled, for he expected at every moment for a roaring torrent of water to pour down them and bury them beneath the sea. It was also one of the most painful, for with every step the wound in his shoulder staggered him afresh. The blood from it was soaking his shirt and padded jerkin and turning the rings of his mail red. He nearly lost his grip on Claudia several times as the pain made him faint.

  The others were in equally bad shape. Max’s face was pale and drawn, as if he had aged twenty years since the beginning of the battle. Aethenir was shaking as if with fever, sweat standing out on his pale skin. Rion and his last two elves moved with grim precision, staring fixedly ahead of them as their wounds bled into their surcoats. Only Gotrek seemed fit and ready for another battle. Though he bled from a score of wounds, his step was firm and his eye was clear and angry.

  They reached the silt-filled entry hall and ran to the golden doors, then slipped through them onto the wide porch at the top of the marble steps, looking around anxiously for the sorceresses. Felix didn’t see them, and it looked as if it would be impossible to follow them, for the streets of the city were flooded with water, and it was rising swiftly, already halfway up the palace’s grand marble steps.

  “The water!” wailed Aethenir. “She has loosed the walls!”

  “If she had loosed the walls, scholar,” said Max, with barely concealed impatience, “we would be dead by now. They are whole, you see? She is losing concentration, that is all.”

  “And that is better?” asked Aethenir.

  Over their voices Felix thought he still heard the now familiar chime of the sorceress’ silver hoop, faint, but still audible. “Shhh!” he said. “The ringing. Listen!”

  Everyone listened, but it was hard to pinpoint where the sound was coming from, and it was getting fainter, lost in the deep distant roar of the whirlpool’s spinning sides.

  “Where is it?” said Aethenir.

  “There,” said Claudia, looking straight up at the sky with dull eyes.

  Everyone followed her gaze. At first Felix could see nothing—only the glare of the sky shining down into the gloomy green well of the whirlpool. But then, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the light, he saw them—six black dots, levitating up towards the top of the well like they were being drawn up on ropes—the sorceresses. They rose in a circle, with one of their number in the centre.

  “Bring them down!” cried Aethenir. “Stop them!”

  “But we’ll die,” said
Felix.

  “Still I think I must,” said Max. “For the safety of the world.” He took a deep breath and began an incantation, pulling power from the air around him with his hands.

  He was too late.

  Before he was halfway through his droning, the shrill ringing stopped, like a chiming glass pinched silent.

  There was a short pause in which Felix could hear half a dozen frightened gasps—one of them his—then, with a sound like the world ending, the whirlpool collapsed, the green walls caving in and an avalanche of water thundering towards the centre to fill the unnatural hole in the sea.

  TEN

  Aethenir screamed.

  Gotrek cursed.

  Claudia stared.

  Felix turned to her, shouting though she was right next to him. “Seeress! Lift us up! Levitate us!”

  Claudia didn’t appear to hear.

  The titanic waves were already crashing into the city, smashing buildings and toppling towers in their wake, and the shallow water in the street began rising much more rapidly.

  “Back to the vault,” rasped Gotrek.

  “Back to the vault?” cried Felix. “But that’s suicide!” The Slayer was insane! They would be trapped underground, under water. They would die!

  Gotrek was already pushing through the narrow gap between the doors. “It’s the only thing that isn’t,” he shouted.

  “Follow him!” said Max, and hurried in with Aethenir and his escort.

  Felix and the elf who was helping him support Claudia hustled her through the door as quick as they could, but she was still too slow. The water from the street was already spilling into the palace. She would never make it to the vault, and neither would they. With a curse, Felix scooped Claudia up, slung her over his unwounded shoulder and raced across the entry hall after the others. The pain was still almost more than he could bear.

  “Thank you, Felix,” said Max, then turned back and held out his hands towards the palace doors.