[Gotrek & Felix 10] - Elfslayer

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  All around, the corsairs and the knights edged in. Felix swallowed, terrified.

  “Even now you have failed, dwarf,” sneered Tarlkhir, as he fell back before Gotrek’s assault. “Kill me or no, we will still get the harp.”

  “At least there will be one less elf in the world,” said Gotrek, and leapt forwards again, roaring.

  Tarlkhir raised his sword to block, but Gotrek’s axe sheared right through the black metal and swept on, splitting the commander’s breastplate down the middle and burying itself deep in his chest. Blood welled up through the blued armour as Tarlkhir’s eyes rolled up in his head.

  Heshor wailed from the prow of the submersible. The corsairs cried out as well, then surged forwards to avenge their commander’s death. Felix was so weary he almost welcomed the end.

  Gotrek didn’t even look at them. Instead he laughed and raised his axe above the howling harp. “Now they all die!” he roared.

  Heshor’s wail turned into a terrified shriek. “No!” she cried.

  Gotrek slammed the heavy blade down on the hellish instrument with a deafening clang. The harp cracked and danced away, the ancient skaven’s hand still gripping it, and weird purple light spilled from hairline fissures in its frame. Gotrek staggered back, covering his single eye, and Felix and the dark elves and the skaven were knocked off their feet. The discordant ringing quickly rose to a daemonic scream. The corsairs and knights scrambled back in fear. Behind them, Heshor shrieked, her face a white mask of tenor, then turned and leapt into the sea.

  “Felix! Gotrek!” called Max from the submersible’s tower. “Away! Into the water!” Then, following his own suggestion, he turned and ran, dragging Claudia with him.

  “Come on, Gotrek!” called Felix, then sprinted after the magister and the seeress. He was joined in his flight by terrified corsairs and skaven, all running for cover from the spinning, spitting harp.

  Felix ran towards the submersible’s stern, then jumped into the water behind the galley and came up near Max and Claudia and the floating casks. He shook the water out of his eyes and glanced around. Gotrek wasn’t with them.

  “Gotrek?”

  Felix looked back towards the submersible. The Slayer stood alone in the centre of the deck, lit from below by a terrible purple light, his axe raised, his feet braced wide on either side of the dancing harp as druchii and skaven dived away from him in all directions. Then, with a roar, Gotrek swung down again and chopped the harp in half.

  “Down!” shouted Max, and shoved Claudia’s head under the water as he dived down himself.

  Felix ducked, the image of Gotrek vanishing in a flash of blazing purple light that was burned into his retinas as the water closed over his head. He felt a wave of heat and pressure pass through the water, and heard a deafening concussion like a clap of thunder directly overhead.

  Seconds later he came gasping back to the surface and looked towards the deck. It was empty but for a raging purple fire where the harp had been, and crackling arcs of purple energy that crawled and leapt across the rupturing, steam-shot metal. Gotrek was nowhere to be seen.

  “Did… did he escape?” said Felix, stunned. “He can’t have died.”

  “He died,” said Max, looking in terror at the dancing purple energy. “He has to have done. And killed us as well. The blast has agitated the warpstone on the skaven craft.”

  “The aetheric winds are building,” said Claudia staring as well. “It will not hold.”

  Then, from above them, came a familiar groan.

  Felix looked up. “Gotrek?”

  The druchii galley loomed over their heads. Gotrek’s groan had come from somewhere upon it.

  “Gotrek!” Relief flooded Felix’s heart, and he began swimming towards the aft gangplank of the druchii ship.

  “Felix!” called Max after him. “We must get away! The submersible will explode!”

  Felix swam on, ignoring him. How were they to get away anyway? Fly? There was nothing they could do, but if the Slayer was still alive, Felix knew he should be with him at the end. It was the fitting thing to do. He grabbed the gangplank and pulled himself up onto it, not daring to touch the surface of the glowing, shuddering submersible.

  He ran up it onto the broad deck of the black galley, sword out, fully expecting to die fighting a crowd of corsairs as he tried to reach Gotrek, but the few druchii who had clambered back on board lay writhing and clutching themselves obscenely, their eyes mad and blind and their white skins burned pink.

  Felix picked his way through them to the sterncastle as the rumbling and hissing from the submersible got louder and more violent, and found Gotrek at last by the aft rail, lying motionless on his side, both hands still holding his axe in a death grip. The Slayer looked ghastly. His one eye was rolled up in his head, his beard, crest and eyebrows were blackened and smoking, and the front of him was as red as a lobster, and steamed slightly. But the most extraordinary thing about him was his axe. It glowed a bright red from blade to pommel, and was as hot as if it had been pulled seconds ago from a forge. Smoke curled from the haft where Gotrek’s hands clenched it, and it hissed and popped like fat on a fire. Felix smelled cooked meat.

  “Gotrek? Do you still live? Can you stand?”

  He looked back towards the skaven craft, then knelt beside the Slayer, to listen for his breathing. He paused when he heard footsteps coming up the steps to the stern deck, then stood. A powerfully built druchii with a short sailor’s cutlass and a whip appeared, looking around cautiously.

  Felix ran at him, hoping to kill him before he reached the deck, but the druchii lashed out with his whip and cut Felix across the thighs. His chainmail took the brunt of the blow, but it still stung, and he stumbled, nearly impaling himself on the dark elf’s cutlass. Felix parried, and what had been a charge quickly became a retreat as the druchii gained the deck and forced him back.

  Then a cry and a sudden burst of light made them both cringe. Felix dived away and looked towards the skaven craft, expecting to see it erupting, but it was not the submersible, it was Max, staggering up the gangplank with Claudia and shooting a stream of light at the druchii sailor. He shielded his eyes and swiped blindly at Felix, dazzled by the magical light.

  Felix charged in and dispatched him in two quick strokes while he was still defenceless, then collapsed from exhaustion on top of him.

  “Get below!” gasped Max. “It’s going to blow.”

  “Will that save us?” asked Felix.

  “I doubt it,” said Max as he led Claudia across the deck. “But it’s our only chance.”

  The seeress trailed behind him, mumbling up towards the sky and pawing at the air.

  She’s gone truly mad this time, thought Felix, as he hurried back to Gotrek. Heshor’s counter-spells must have crushed her mind. He hooked his hands under the Slayer’s arms and pulled, but it was like trying to shift a bull. He was so weak, and the Slayer was so heavy. He hauled again, and moved Gotrek perhaps a foot, the glowing rune axe branding a smouldering black line in the deck. It would take him an hour to get him to the door to the lower decks.

  He ran back to the rail that looked down to the deck. “Max!” he called. “Help me move the Slayer.”

  His voice was drowned out by a wrenching crash and once again he flinched and looked towards the skaven craft, expecting the worst. Instead he saw the gangplanks twisting and tearing away from the galley as the submersible slid past, still glowing and shaking and crawling with purple lightning.

  Max stared too, stepping towards the rail.

  “They’re sailing off!” Felix shouted, elated.

  “No,” said Max. “We are.”

  The magister turned towards Claudia. Felix followed his gaze. The seeress was still mumbling at the sky, but now her arms were outstretched towards the galley’s lateen sail, which was bellied out and straining full of a wind that existed nowhere else. They were moving, slowly still, but picking up speed, thumping through the clutter of debris that floated all around them as t
hey went.

  Felix ran back to the Slayer and hauled at him again. A moment later Max joined him, though in his weakened state he wasn’t much help. Still they had to try. Every yard they sailed gave them a little more hope for survival. And if he could get the Slayer below the decks, his chances might be better still.

  At last they got him to the top of the stairs. Max looked down them, then back to the skaven ship. “There’s no way,” he said, panting.

  With a curse, Felix heaved Gotrek up and over, and pushed him down the stairs. The Slayer bounced down loosely and sprawled at the bottom, unmoving. Felix hurried down after him with Max close behind, and started dragging him towards the door.

  The galley was beyond the swamp of floating garbage now and sailing past other druchii ships, which still circled the mess. There was nothing but open sea before them, and Felix began to hope that they might make it after all, when suddenly, with Gotrek’s body still two yards away from the underdecks door, an enormous “whump” of sound buffeted Felix’s ears and a blinding green light blazed off the aft rail.

  Max cursed and tackled Claudia to the deck as Felix threw himself down next to Gotrek. The magister shouted a terse incantation and a fragile bubble of golden light sprang into being around them. And just in time, for with an impact like a hammer, a hot wind slammed into the ship, spinning it around and heeling it over on its side.

  Felix looked back and saw a huge cloud of glittering smoke racing towards them faster than a cannon ball. Then it was over them, as thick as mud, and pushed by a howling, oven-hot wind, filled with spinning bits of metal, wood and flesh. Bodies and spars and twisted metal plates smashed into the deck and punched holes in the sails and tore away the rigging.

  Max’s golden bubble kept out the smoke and the rain of glittering powder that skirled across the deck, but heavier things came through. A severed druchii hand slapped Felix in the face and nearly dislocated his jaw. A decorative silver candlestick flew past and smashed into the bulkhead behind them.

  “Inside!” cried Max. “Hurry!” He crawled for the door, the bubble of pure air moving with him.

  Claudia dragged herself after him. Felix grabbed Gotrek’s body under the arms again and hauled at it.

  Max reached the door and threw it open, then shoved Claudia through. With strength born of desperation, Felix dragged the Slayer over the threshold, then collapsed in a heap behind him. Max shouldered the door closed again against the horrible hot wind, turned the latch and slumped against it.

  “Are we safe?” asked Felix, raising his head.

  Before Max could answer the ship rose beneath them as if it were the Spirit of Grungni, and for a moment Felix felt almost weightless. Then they crashed down again with a colossal impact and Felix and the others were thrown about the little corridor like rag dolls. Felix crashed head-first into a cabin door, them slammed back down to the deck as water poured in under the deck door and dripped down from the ceiling.

  The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was Gotrek’s massive chest rising and falling. Ah, he thought. So that’s all right.

  Then all went black.

  When he woke again, Felix was still in the cramped, ebony-panelled corridor of the dark elf war galley, and the others were still lying around him as they had been when he had passed out, but some things had changed. The ship was still. Water was no longer coming under the door, and no wind howled around them. In fact, there was hardly any noise at all.

  Felix tried to sit up. His body refused, every muscle screaming with agony and his head throbbing and spinning. After several more tries, he finally managed it, then went about the even more complicated process of getting to his feet.

  A minute later, with the assistance of the walls, he had done it, and he tottered slowly and painfully to the door, stepping over Max and Claudia’s unconscious bodies as he went. He pulled it open and stepped cautiously onto the deck. It was a sight to behold, blackened and shattered and strewn with bodies and wreckage flung there by the submersible’s explosion. The mast was snapped off halfway up its length, and the broken end hung over the port rail, the sail drooping into the water.

  He stepped past it and looked out over the sea. Except for the climbing pall of smoke blotting out much of the northern horizon, it was a beautiful late autumn afternoon. The sun was setting in the west. There was a light breeze from the south east and the ocean was blue and empty in every direction for as far as he could see.

  He shook his head in disbelief. Somehow, incredibly, they had survived—a thing that had seemed impossible almost since they had left Marienburg a thousand years ago. And not only had they survived; through luck, strategy and Gotrek’s single-minded determination to die well, they had succeeded in averting the disaster that Claudia had foretold. The Harp of Ruin was destroyed, and the plans that the druchii and the skaven had had for it were foiled. Marienburg would not be swept away. Altdorf would not be flooded. The Empire and the Old World would not fall—at least not from this cause.

  Of course, though they had survived and succeeded, many had died too. Around him on the deck, amidst the twisted wreckage, lay dozens of twisted corpses—the remains of the corsairs, their slaves, and the scrawny, furred bodies of skaven—all with their flesh half-eaten away by the glittering poison that had rained down from the smoke of the submersible’s explosion.

  And these were only a few of the dead. Aethenir, Rion and his house guards, Max’s Reiksguard escort, Farnir, his father Birgi, and thousands more. A whole city had died—and not just wicked druchii, but human, dwarf and elf slaves and prisoners, not all of whom had given their lives willingly for the cause. Felix tried not to feel guilty for this horde of ghosts. It certainly hadn’t been him who had enslaved them, or who had woken the deadly instrument that had shaken the floating island to pieces, but once again, had he and Gotrek not been present, they would not have died. On the other hand, had he and Gotrek not been present Marienburg would have died, and Altdorf drowned—hundreds of thousands dead instead of a few.

  And there might be one more dead.

  The moment he thought it, his heart thudded in his chest and he wanted instantly to be home. His father. He had to learn what the vile skaven had done to his father. He had to discover if the old man were alive or dead.

  The thought brought him out of his reverie and he looked around. The galley drifted quietly, its mast broken, its sails slack and torn. Much of the rigging was hanging in tangled ruins. He stepped to the rail. He could see no land in any direction. They had survived, yes, but how were they to get home? How could two men, a dwarf and a not particularly handy young woman sail a dark elf galley back to the Old World? Even if any of them knew how to sail it would be impossible. There were too many things to do at once. They would need a whole crew.

  The thought brought him up short. Perhaps they had one. He turned and climbed painfully to the sterncastle. There he found the druchii with the whip and the cutlass, or what was left of him. He pulled the ring of iron keys from his belt—the corroded leather tore like tissue—then hurried as fast as his battered body would take him back down the stairs and into the bowels of the ship.

  He found them in the dank, sweat-grimed hell of the rowers’ deck, and for a wonder, most of them were still alive—the only dead being those closest to the oar holes where the poison cloud must have blown in. Those that still lived looked up from their oars as he unlocked the latticed iron door that imprisoned them, and stared when they saw that he was human. They were a gaunt, haggard lot—men and dwarfs with dirt-blackened, whip-scarred skin and dreadlocked hair and beards, all chained at the ankle to the hard wooden benches that rose in tiers along the length of the galley.

  “Greetings, friends,” said Felix as he stepped to the first iron padlock and opened it with the key, “Do any of you know how to sail a ship?”

  * * * * *

  Grey Seer Thanquol sat chest deep in water in the bottom of a leaky ale cask in the middle of the Sea of Chaos, contemplating the fol
lies of ambition as his servant, Issfet Loptail, bailed water using a druchii helmet for a bucket.

  For almost twenty years Thanquol had longed for only one thing, vengeance on the tall yellow-furred human and the mad red-furred dwarf. For almost twenty years he had nursed his hatred for the pair and dreamed of new and more creative ways of dismantling them body and soul. And after twenty years he had had them at last. They had been at his mercy. He might have done anything he pleased with them.

  But then the words of that vainglorious prick-ear, the tale of the Harp of Ruin and what it could do, had set his mind to thoughts of position and power and the rightful return to his former rank and privilege. And like a human in a maze who drops one piece of meat for a bigger piece of meat and in the process loses both, he had let go of his nemeses, used them to confound the druchii and steal from them the harp, and just when everything seemed to have gone according to plan, he had lost it all.

  The human and the dwarf had escaped him, the harp had been destroyed, the submersible, surely the most glorious invention in the long history of skaven innovation, and which he had hired at great expense and with many promises of political favours from Riskin of Clan Skryre, had been blown to dust, and… and…

  He looked at his tied-off right wrist, the ragged stump already healing due to his sorcerous ministrations. The dwarf would pay for this painful, humiliating maiming. He would never stop paying. Though Thanquol had nothing now, having squandered all his coin and influence hiring the submersible and Shadowfang’s night runners, he would rise again. He would amass wealth and power and influence, and when he had it, he would reach out his remaining claw and crush the vicious, black-hearted dwarf to a pulp, but not before tearing off his disgusting pink limbs one by one, as if he were a fly.

  “What now, oh most bereft of masters?” asked Issfet as he dumped the last of the water out of the cask and leaned, panting, against its rim.