[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  There was a loud rap from Gotrek’s side of the chest and Felix started walking forwards. He looked down through the water and saw that Rion was doing the same, but Gotrek’s short legs were pedalling uselessly above the floor. He heard a muffled dwarf curse through the wood.

  Another step and the raft boomed hollowly against the vault’s left-hand door. Felix placed his hands on the front wall of his chest and pushed with all his might. His feet scraped and slipped, struggling to gain purchase against the slick marble floor. Through the water he could see Rion doing the same, and the chests creaked as the others behind him applied pressure too.

  The doors didn’t move. Felix strained harder. Still nothing. Panic began to rise in his chest. He heard another curse from his right, then a small splash. He looked down into the water again and saw Gotrek, out of his chest, pushing at the door with both hands. Still nothing happened, and Felix’s panic grew worse. Had the doors locked when they closed? Was the pressure still too unequal? Were the doors just too heavy to move without magic?

  Then, with agonising slowness, Felix saw the bottom edge of the door inch forwards. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding, loud in the confines of the chest, and pressed all the harder. Slowly, but then more swiftly, the door began to swing open. Gotrek gave a final push, then leapt back up to his chest, and Felix heard hoarse breathing coming through the wood.

  The door opened all the way with a shuddering thud that reverberated through the water and they were free. The raft shot ahead, the momentum almost dragging them across the antechamber towards the archway. They slowed by the time they reached the stairs, and began to ascend. After the first few steps, Felix noticed that the front of the raft started to angle up—only natural as they were on stairs—but alarming, as he heard the heaps of treasure above him shift, and a stream of bubbles escaped under the leading edge of his chest.

  He heard another curse from Gotrek’s chest, then an angry slap.

  “Crouch down, manling!” came Gotrek’s blunted voice. “Crawl! Tell the elf!”

  Felix rapped at the left side of the chest. “Crouch down!” he shouted. “Crawl!” Then he started pulling down on the rope that underslung the chest. To his relief, the elf did the same, and the raft’s angle slowly evened out again. Felix, Gotrek and the elf began crawling up the stairs like turtles sharing the same shell.

  At the first landing, Felix cautiously rose again. Fortunately, both the stairs and the landings were built on a grand scale, and they had no trouble manoeuvring around to start crawling up the next flight.

  By the time they reached the entry chamber, the air inside the chest was rank and humid and thin. Felix tried to stop his heart from pumping in panic. It would be the cruellest of jokes if, after all of Gotrek’s genius invention, they died of asphyxiation just short of the surface.

  They pushed quickly across the entry hall. Felix had a momentary flash of panic as he remembered that Max had closed the palace doors, and he ducked down into the water to look ahead. He needn’t have worried. The doors lay, splintered and bent on the marble floor, ripped off their hinges by the wall of water that had rocked the palace. Felix and the others walked over their twisted remains, then out onto the wide front steps, where Gotrek banged on the chests for them to stop.

  “Drop the armour!” he called. “Pass it on!”

  Felix rapped on the high elf’s side of his chest. “Drop the armour! Pass it on!” He reached down into the water and undid the belt that held the elaborate elven ceremonial armour around his waist. It dropped away and he felt his toes rise off the steps.

  Beside him, the Slayer’s thick legs disappeared again and he heard heavy thuds and clunks above him. He looked up, then down as something bumped his boot. One of the treasure chests was settling down sideways on the steps, spilling bubbles and golden treasures.

  A thud to the rear of the raft told him that Gotrek was being careful to dump their ballast in a way that wouldn’t raise one side of the raft before the others.

  And the raft was indeed rising. Felix was busy thinking how much treasure was being lost forever, and didn’t notice at first, but then he was up to his chin in the water instead of his chest. He caught at the underslung rope and pulled himself up into the chest again as his feet floated off the steps. After another second he heard a splash and a gasp and a smug chuckle from Gotrek’s chest. The Slayer had reason to be proud. Everything he had planned seemed to be working.

  Felix tried to look down at the city as they rose, but couldn’t see any distance through the ripples on the surface of the water in the chest, so he took a breath and ducked his head under again.

  The sight below him was an eerie wonderland. What had looked like a sad, crumbling relic of lost glory when exposed to the air and the harsh light of day was, by the light of Max’s glowing globe, a beautiful blue dream of ruined towers and swaying seaweed taller than cedars. The coral and the strange undersea plants which had looked so dull and dry out of the water were now bright and lurid. Things like jewels glowed in the shadows with their own luminescence. It was a city where mermaids should live.

  He pulled himself back into the air of the chest, gasping as his lungs burned, and found that the air within was hardly enough to give him relief. The spots in front of his eyes remained, and the blood pounded against the roof of his mouth, demanding to be fed.

  He clung to the rope, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible and praying for the raft to rise faster. How deep was the city below the waves? A hundred feet? A hundred yards? A hundred fathoms? He had no idea. Deep enough that no sailor had ever seen or suspected the elven towers below.

  The black spots began to crowd his eyes. His fingers tingled with pins and needles. He couldn’t feel the rope and had to look to be sure he was holding it. Then his heart leapt with hope. The sea around them was becoming brighter and Max’s light paler. They must be nearing the surface. He could hold on a little longer knowing that.

  Then something heavy pushed past his legs. At first he thought it was Gotrek, heading for the back of the raft for some reason, but when he looked down he saw a thick grey trunk and a sharp tail. His air-starved mind took a second to put those things together, and then he gasped.

  A shark!

  Just as the realisation came to him, he heard a muffled scream from behind. He dropped his head down into the water and looked back. Beyond the kicking, dangling limbs of his companions, a shark the size of the Pride of Skintstaad’s long boat had an elf warrior in its jaws and was shaking him back and forth violently. The elf’s limbs flopped like a doll’s as plumes of red billowed from his body.

  Felix fumbled for his sword, holding on to the rope with one hand. He looked towards Gotrek. The Slayer was in the water too, readying his axe and kicking towards the shark as Rion and the other warrior drew their swords and guarded Aethenir. Max and Claudia looked like they were trying to crawl up into their chests. Then Felix saw something beyond and below them that stopped his heart. Rising up from the murky, tower-pierced depths were more moving shadows—a whole school of sharks. Manann preserve us, he thought, we’re all dead.

  Gotrek caught the shark by the tail and swung his axe, burying it in the creature’s slate-coloured side. Blood blossomed into the water and the shark flinched and spun, dropping its mangled prey to face this new threat. It lunged at Gotrek with a mouth the size of a rain barrel. Gotrek kicked up, trying to get out of the way, and the thing butted him in the stomach with its snout, smashing him back twenty feet. Felix slashed at it uselessly as it rushed past, and saw, to his horror, that a smaller snout was growing from the side of the shark’s head, complete with eyes and mouth, and its needle teeth were clamped down on the golden bracelets on the Slayer’s left wrist. Was not even the sea free from the taint of Chaos?

  Through a storm of black spots, Felix watched as the Slayer rained blow after blow on the head of the massive grey monster. The other sharks were close enough now that Felix could see their beady eyes gleaming thr
ough the murk. Rion and his last elf stayed close to Aethenir and turned towards the monsters as their dead comrade spun lazily down and away, red blood and white and green surcoat trailing gracefully behind him. Some of the sharks turned towards him, but most came on.

  Suddenly Felix felt the rope go slack in his hand. He looked up, frightened. The raft had stopped rising. Had they hit some obstruction? Was something holding it down? Then he saw the dapple and shine of sunlight on water. They were at the surface!

  Every fibre of his body screamed for him to climb to the air, but he couldn’t leave the others to the mercy of the sharks. He looked back and saw Rion and his last elf pushing Aethenir to the edge of the raft. Max was doing the same for Claudia. Felix clambered hand under hand to them and caught the seeress’ other arm. He and Max reached the side and lifted her up so that her head broke the surface. Felix’s face hit the air a second later. He took one gasping, glorious breath, saw that Claudia was doing the same, then ducked back down and grabbed her left leg as Max grabbed her right. Together they raised her up until her torso flopped on top of the raft.

  Felix looked back towards Gotrek. The Slayer had hit some vital spot on the shark and it was flipping and flailing down through the water, a curling column of blood erupting from its side, while Gotrek frog-kicked back towards the surface, his left arm also spewing blood.

  Half the oncoming sharks turned towards their wounded cousin but the rest still came on. Felix looked around. All he could see were the flailing legs of the others clambering onto the raft. He joined them, kicking up out of the water and gripping the soggy carpet with desperate fingers. He could feel the wound Aethenir had just healed ripping internally as he humped himself up. Max was crawling out beside him, hampered by his waterlogged robes. Rion and the other elf were rolling Aethenir up onto the chests by brute force. Felix flopped himself out at last and immediately turned back to the water. Gotrek’s head broke the surface and he sucked air as he kicked forwards, chopping his axe into top of the raft to try to pull himself up. Felix saw deep gashes in the Slayer’s left wrist as he rushed to help. Half the gold bracelets upon it had been crushed so badly by the shark’s bite that they pressed deep into his flesh. Felix grabbed Gotrek by the shoulder, and hauled at him. The Slayer surged up and crashed to the carpet, breathing deeply.

  “Friends, help me!” called Aethenir.

  Felix and Max crawled to where the high elf and the last elf warrior were trying to pull Rion out of the water. Felix caught him under the left arm, while Max grabbed his right.

  But suddenly the elf captain jerked down in the water, nearly torn from their hands. He gasped, his eyes bulging.

  “Rion!” cried Aethenir.

  Gotrek joined them and all pulled desperately at Rion as something below tried to drag him down in the water. Then, with a horrible scream, the elf captain came up all at once and they fell back in a heap.

  “Rion!” cried Aethenir again, scrambling up. “Are you…?” His words ended in a cry of horror and he collapsed again.

  Felix sat up to see what had happened. Rion’s right leg was covered in blood. His left leg was… gone. The ragged stump pumped gore all over the wet carpet in thick gouts. Max and Gotrek cursed. Claudia looked away.

  Aethenir crawled to Rion and cradled his head. “Rion, I… I am sorry. I never…”

  The dying captain reached up and clutched at Aethenir’s sleeve. He looked hard into his eyes. “Follow… the path of honour.”

  “I will,” wept Aethenir. “I promise you. By Asuryan and Aenarion, I promise.”

  Rion nodded, apparently satisfied, then closed his eyes and sank back, dead. Aethenir sobbed. His last elf hung his head. Felix found a lump blocking his throat, and fought down the unworthy thought that he would rather that it had been Aethenir who had died and Rion who had lived, for the captain had been the epitome of elven virtue that Aethenir should have been.

  The last elf warrior began to pull Rion’s body to the centre of the carpet, but before he could take a step, a huge grey snout full of picket-fence teeth surged up out of the water and smashed the little raft, raising it out of the water and sending everyone flying. Felix crashed down on his wounded shoulder and nearly rolled off. Only Max’s sprawled body stopped him. The wizard tottered at the edge. Felix grabbed him and pulled him back. Nearby, Gotrek and the elf warrior were doing the same for Claudia and Aethenir.

  “Thank you, Felix,” Max gasped.

  The survivors crawled to the centre of the pitifully small raft, while all around cruel triangular fins circled them and hidden predators bumped them from beneath.

  Gotrek surged up, shaking his axe and beckoning towards the water. “Come on, you skulking cowards!” he roared. “I’ll kill the lot of you!”

  But then Claudia saw something that the others had been too preoccupied to notice.

  “A… a ship,” she breathed.

  Everyone looked up. Felix’s heart pounded with fear that it was the dark elves’ black galley swooping in to ram them again, but it was a different ship altogether—a fat merchant ship flying the flag of Marienburg, not half a mile away from them, its white sails a reddish gold in the late afternoon sun.

  Felix jumped up, waving his arms. “Ahoy!” he cried. “Ahoy! Save us!”

  Another bump from the sharks knocked him flat again, but the ship was turning their way.

  “Praise be to Manann and Shallya,” whispered Claudia with tears in her eyes.

  But suddenly Felix wasn’t so sure the ship was salvation. The covers were being raised from the forward gun ports and the black muzzles of cannons were pushing into the sun.

  “Oh come,” wailed Aethenir. “This beggars belief! Does everyone in the world seek to kill us?”

  “Bring ’em on,” said Gotrek.

  Twin puffs of smoke obscured the prow of the ship. Everyone but Gotrek ducked. A second later, the boom of the guns reached them and two huge plumes of water shot up about a dozen yards away.

  Felix let out a sigh of relief. “They missed.”

  “No,” said Max, looking around. “I believe they hit what they intended.”

  Felix followed the wizard’s gaze. The shark fins were gone from the water, vanished as if they had never been.

  “You think they mean to save us?” asked Aethenir.

  “I hope so,” said Max.

  And so it seemed, for no more shots came from the approaching ship, and it banked its sails and eased in gently to their side. Ropes dropped down to them. Felix and Gotrek and the elves grabbed them and pulled themselves tight to the ship’s towering hull.

  Felix called up to the deck above. “Have you a ladder? We have women and wounded.”

  A short round man leaned on the rail and smiled down at them as several dozen large and unsmiling men appeared at either side of him and aimed a profusion of pistols and long guns in their direction.

  “Good evening, Herr Jaeger,” said Hans Euler. “What a pleasure to once again make your acquaintance.”

  ELEVEN

  “So it’s guns now, is it?” Gotrek growled at Euler. “Couches weren’t cowardly enough?”

  Felix stepped quickly in front of the Slayer. “Herr Euler. How unexpected.” He recognised some of the gun-wielding crewmen as Euler’s massive footmen, who had since traded their black velvet doublets for leather jerkins and red bandanas.

  “Yes, I suppose you would think so,” said Euler, pleasantly. “But some friends of mine in the Suiddock overheard the sailors of your hired ship say you were going north seeking treasure, and I decided to come along and learn if this was true.”

  “It isn’t treasure we seek,” said Aethenir. “It is—”

  Max trod heavily on his foot.

  “It had better be treasure, high one,” said Euler. “Herr Jaeger owes me considerable recompense for the damage he and his uncouth friend did to my house. I intend to collect from him one way or the other.”

  “Come down here,” said Gotrek, “and you’ll get more of the same
.”

  “Is it wise to threaten me, dwarf?” said Euler, raising an eyebrow. “I can easily leave you here. There is blood in the water now. The sharks will soon return.”

  “Herr Euler,” said Felix. “There is indeed treasure. Look.” Felix turned and searched the rug they stood on. As he had hoped, a few spilled treasures remained. He picked up a gold and silver ewer of elven design that lay next to Rion’s corpse, then turned and tossed it up to Hans. The merchant caught it and examined it with the practiced eye of the connoisseur. “We had a holdful of it, but it was stolen from us.”

  “Stolen by whom?” asked Euler. “Where have they taken it?”

  Aethenir opened his mouth to speak, but Max once again crushed his foot. The high elf glared at him.

  “That,” said Felix carefully, “I will not tell you until you allow us to come aboard. But they are not far away.”

  Euler paused, greed warring with caution behind his eyes. He ran his hands over the fine filigree of the elven ewer and sighed. “Very well, Herr Jaeger, but I must first receive vows from every member of your party that you will not harm me, my property or my crew, if you come aboard—particularly the dwarf,” he added, glaring at Gotrek.

  Max, Claudia and the elves swore quickly enough, but Gotrek growled under his breath. Felix knew it was no small thing for a dwarf to make an oath.

  “Make oath with a liar and a blackmailer?” he said. “I won’t.”

  “Gotrek,” said Felix. “We can’t stay on this raft. We must follow your prophesied doom, remember?”

  Gotrek grunted, annoyed. “Very well, manling.” He turned and looked up at Euler. “I will swear to do no harm to you, your property and your crew, unless harm is done to us first.”