by David Guymer
The temple chamber rumbled, as if under some kind of bombardment, but Felix didn’t care.
The Slayer was dead.
Again the words of the seeress’s prophecy came to him, circling around his mind like taunts however much he tried to ignore them or forcibly throw them out. His mental flailing only left him vulnerable when something he had thought safely forgotten took the opportunity to strike. The mutant seeress had not been the first to prophesy the Slayer’s doom. It had been several years ago, during their escape from a black ark of the dark elves, when a greater daemon of the Prince of Pain had fled from Gotrek with the chilling message: ‘One greater than I is to die killing you.’
The Slayer was dead.
This was it then, the moment, the gimbal upon which the layers of prophecy and fate tilted in balance.
All Felix could think of was how stupid it was, how utterly vain and pointless a death. He wondered what he was supposed to do now. Was he doomed to waste away to eventual insanity in this antechamber? For all the daemons, mutants and mad priests who had jostled to give their pfennig’s worth on the Slayer’s doom, none of them had had much to say about Felix’s: only the seeress’s cryptic assertion that he had a choice to make.
He couldn’t take his eyes from his companion’s body. They stung. It was as though they were attached – melted, welded – and he couldn’t move them.
He knew what he had to do.
It was the only thing a friend and a rememberer could do for a Slayer. This was a hall of vengeance, and the daemon’s prophecy was only half fulfilled.
Felix turned on the spot and looked up, only becoming aware that his sword was in his hand and positioned into a guard when he heard Grimnir’s chuckle. It was a mirthless, mocking sound, that of a corpse being dragged across gravel.
‘You would fight me too, manling? And how much better than your companion do you think you would fare?’
Felix ground his teeth, but refused to lower his guard. ‘Does it matter? I’ve nothing left.’
With a snarl the Vengeful Ancestor surged forward, axe raised high. Felix tensed behind his blade, but held his ground. He knew that it was a hopeless, a futile gesture to avenge a futile death. Grimnir’s mighty axe would cleave through his own pitifully enchanted blade like a wafer. In a second from now he would be dead and he doubted that Gustav or Malakai would be around for long enough to miss him, much less mourn him. The mad thought then arose that he might as well use that second to attack. He was as good as dead anyway, so why not use that last hot beat of life to inflict upon this stone-hearted god at least one moment of the hurt Felix felt now, after he was gone.
Felix shifted position, lowering his hilt and angling the sword point up and out. Kolya had once described to him how men hunted wild boar. The beast was goaded into a charge, crashing through the woods towards the cordon of hunters that waited with spears. There was little skill, just courage, the will to stand before a charging beast, nothing between you and your ending but a point of metal.
The Ancestor loomed over him, less a boar than a savage bear, mighty chest opening up and rippling with muscle for a rending downstroke.
Felix roared and stabbed up with his sword.
Grimnir pulled out of his attack at the last minute, batting away Felix’s sword with a negligent wave of his enormous axe. Then, to Felix’s astonishment – and no little annoyance – the Ancestor started to laugh. He lowered his axe and put his hands on his hips, waves of mirth shaking his stone barrel chest. Felix glared, eyes stinging, as he worked life into the numbed fingers around the grip of his sword. That single parry had deadened them.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Felix, the hoarseness in his throat lending his voice a bravado he didn’t feel. He had been expecting to be dead by now, and the terror of what he had just tried to do was only now beginning to circulate through his system. ‘Are you worried I’ll stain your axe?’
The Ancestor’s laughter settled into a low chuckle, a giant hand separating from his hip to wipe what looked like a golden tear from his eye. ‘Clearly I’ve been stuck too long in the Realm of Chaos, for never would I have expected to find such courage in one of the younger races. Tell me, manling, are all your kind as you are?’
‘I don’t think I’m anything particularly special.’
Grimnir again threatened to break into a laugh, but managed to restrain himself. Felix glared angrily. The Slayer was dead, and now his killer laughed.
‘What would any man do to avenge a friend?’ Felix returned with a snarl.
‘Your body is frail, manling, but your heart’s in the place it ought to be, I’ll grant you that.’ The Ancestor sighed, huge chest heaving as he lowered his axe to the ground with a clang. The runes that adorned its killing edge faded, as though attuned somehow to the ebb and rise of its master’s wrath. ‘Maybe you aren’t worthy, but it’s not as though I have another ten thousand years to wait for one who is. Dwarfs are ever practical, and perhaps you are worthy enough.’
Grimnir knelt in the pool of blood beside Gotrek’s body and laid one massive hand over the Slayer’s face. So large was it that it obscured Gotrek’s entire head and part of his crest. Felix started forward with a warning growl and raised his sword again.
‘Leave him alone. Haven’t you done enough?’
The Ancestor warned him back with a look. It was not a threatening one, but nevertheless it commanded obedience and Felix found his sword lowering. Grimnir hadn’t moved.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Hush, manling, and be patient.’
A golden-red light shone through the join between Gotrek’s cheek and the palm of his Ancestor, expanding to envelop the Slayer’s head and then his entire body in an auric cocoon of energy. Felix grunted in pain and raised a hand to shield his eyes, but even as he did so the brilliance began to recede and he warily repositioned the hand around his sword.
Grimnir rose, a bloody imprint on his knees, and nodded towards Gotrek. Felix turned away his blade and looked.
There was a rasping intake of breath that filled the Slayer’s chest, and then a fit of coughing, as a man dying of thirst might drink too much and splutter. Gotrek sat upright, hacking and heaving. His own blood glistened on the stones around him but the wounds on his body were healed. With one harsh valedictory cough, Gotrek took a breath and swallowed it. He looked around, confused.
Felix gasped, hand to his mouth. ‘Gotrek, your eye.’
The Slayer clapped his hand to his good eye, and then like a blind man muddling in the dark worked his fingers towards the other, which had for twenty years been an empty socket.
Until now.
‘What in Gr–’ Gotrek glanced up at his benefactor and grumbled something under his breath. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Arise, Slayer,’ said Grimnir, extending a helping hand. ‘In this place there is always more killing to be done.’
Gotrek clasped the Ancestor’s arm and allowed himself to be hauled up. He clenched his fists, swung a practice roundhouse and grunted satisfaction at his healed muscles, then turned with his ‘good’ eye scrunched tight and stared at Felix to test the acuity of the other which the power of Grimnir had restored to him.
That and more.
The Slayer was alive!
Felix couldn’t speak for the exuberance bubbling up beneath his breast.
‘You’re skilful and uncommonly strong, Slayer,’ said Grimnir, nodding appreciatively to Gotrek’s axe as the dwarf bent to collect it from the ground. ‘Bearing my axe for so many years has toughened you, but you’re aware that its most powerful enchantments lie dormant.’
‘You speak of the Rune of Unbinding. Aye, King Thangrim of Karag Dum spoke of it, but with the passing of his Runelord so too went the craft to awaken it.’
Grimnir smiled. Felix thought it a uniquely terrifying expression.
The Ancest
or held out his hand. ‘Pass it here.’
Gotrek hesitated a moment – understandably so, considering – then mouthed a curse and slapped the weapon down into Grimnir’s waiting palm.
The Ancestor’s fingers closed around the haft, his other hand moving to cover the flat blade. He uttered a word that Felix didn’t catch, whispered it to the meteoric steel through his fingers, then swept his hand aside to reveal a fiercely glowing runic mark square in the centre of the blade that Felix would swear on the very existence of the Empire had not been there before. Felix could feel the power pulsing from it. It was cleansing, like slipping into a hot bath after months of mud and road. The magic inherent in this strange place receded from its proximity, the pillars wavering yet becoming somehow more solid. The walls too appeared less distant than they had, standing more-or-less as Felix would have placed them according to the temple’s outward appearance.
‘The Rune of Unbinding was crafted to slay the Chaos Gods,’ said Grimnir, returning the reawakened axe to Gotrek’s grip. ‘You’ll find it useful.’
‘You should have taken it with you in the first place.’
‘Originally I’d planned to. But strong as I felt, I knew there was a chance I’d fail. And if I did then I needed there to be something of me left behind for my heir to follow in my steps. My avatar in the End Times.’
Gotrek snorted derisively.
‘Moan all you want, but there it is.’ Then, Grimnir presented to Gotrek his own axe. It was similarly massive and with the same extra-earthly metal employed in its making. The runes that emblazoned its surface were similar, but even to Felix’s eye noticeably different. ‘The End Times these are, and it’s right that both of my axes should be borne together again by my heir.’
Gotrek examined the weapon and shook his head sternly. ‘I’m no thief. This is the axe of Thorgrim Grudgebearer, the weapon of my High King.’
‘It is Morgrim’s axe, the weapon of my son, and it is mine to give.’
‘How did it get here?’ Felix chimed in, his voice sounding terribly light and obtrusive after the rumbling discourse of the two dwarfs. He cleared his throat and unconsciously dropped an octave. ‘Is it an illusion like the one of Middenheim?’
‘That was no illusion, manling, and neither is this.’
Gotrek nodded his understanding, his voice when it came as hard and sharp as a flint. ‘Then the High King has fallen. Azamar, the ever-rune, has been broken and the kingdom of the dwarfs is no more.’
‘Not quite yet as you might reckon it, but it will. The numberless hordes of Grey Seer Thanquol, and one you’ve not encountered named the Headtaker, yet besiege it. Its doom, however,’ said Grimnir, pushing the axe into Gotrek’s unprotesting grasp, ‘is as written as yours.’
‘Can it not be saved?’ Felix asked, aghast.
If the Everpeak could be toppled then what hope was left for the lands of men?
Grimnir turned a questioning look on Gotrek. If the Slayer seemed at all perturbed by the slow extermination of his people, then he didn’t show it. He gave his two god-like axes a practice swing and grinned horribly.
‘No more tests. I know where my doom lies. Come, manling.’
That last was called over the Slayer’s shoulder as he turned towards the doorway.
‘One last warning,’ Grimnir called after him. ‘That door has stood unopened, guarded by my monks and I for ten millennia. Opening it will weaken the wards that surround this place, make an opening for anyone else that might be waiting for it. That daemon prince that spared you aboard your ship, for instance; he assaults Kazad Drengazi even now.’
Felix cast a despairing look to the door. The knowledge that it no longer led back to the fortress and the men he had left there only increased the impotence of his agony.
Gustav.
‘Can’t you stop him?’ he asked of the Ancestor.
‘Not once the way is broken. I am but an echo of Grimnir. In truth, I wait for you at your destination.’
‘Let the daemon come,’ said Gotrek.
‘Be’lakor is almost as old as I. He’ll be at his strongest where you’re headed, the very threshold of the Realm of Chaos, and you’ll never get there before he does.’
‘Let him,’ Felix echoed, explaining as Gotrek glanced back in surprise: ‘If he follows us then Gustav and Malakai might have a chance.’
Grimnir smiled and gestured to the door.
‘Sentimental, aye, but brave. May it keep you strong where you go, manling.’
A thunderous report boomed out from Unstoppable’s ventral batteries and a blaze of organ-gun fire ripped into the ruins of the lower wards, churning up men and rubble and screaming horses with supremely indifferent firepower. Gustav’s company, spread out along the wall amongst the monks, gave a ragged cheer and let off a salvo of their own. A short burst of cracks and pops from their more conventional arms sounded like a five-gun salute as the airship yawed to port, bearing away from the temple complex and over the lower wards, maintaining the same punishing rate of fire as it went.
The disciplined marauder formations broke up as individual men went to ground. A handful reappeared atop roofs or high towers to fire at the airship’s gleaming metal belly, but the distances were deceptive and their arrows fell way short.
A steam horn sounded from above Unstoppable’s bridge, a signal of some kind, and a moment later her belly opened. The gondola’s underside, something Gustav had considered to be riveted steel as solid as the rest of the hull, turned out instead to be comprised of a series of large hatches concealing some kind of ballast tank. Now those hatches swung out and a stream of dark cylindrical objects dropped in weighted silence to the streets below.
Bombs.
Gustav had read about this in Felix’s book. Just one more thing he hadn’t believed. He hugged the crenel again and braced himself.
Parallel tracks of increasingly violent explosions stamped a path across the lower wards of the citadel, throwing up sky-high pillars of smoke and burning debris as they went. Gustav stared in awe of the airship’s power. Who needed an ancient dwarfish prophecy when they wielded something like this?
This, here, would be the salvation of the Empire – Malakai Makaisson and the aptly named Unstoppable!
Already half of the lower wards were on fire, the flames sickly and dark in the thin air, and everything not already flattened teetered on the brink of collapse. Ventral and broadside cannons continuing to pound what little remained upright, the airship began the tortuous process of coming about for a second pass.
‘Nae Chaos-lovin’ wazzock messes wi’ ma airship.’
Gustav smiled, but then, for no good reason he could perceive, shivered. A murmur passed through the Slayer-Monks and he could tell he was not alone. The temperature, already well south of freezing, plunged even further despite the fires. Gustav felt the air in his mouth begin to crystallise. A nascent headache started to thump at the back of his brain.
‘Dark mage!’ he yelled.
A black shape thrashed within the flames, like some giant sea monster tearing free of a net. Gustav’s free company peppered the emanant beast with shot, but nothing made a mark. Makaisson brought up his longrifle with a grunt. A red dot flashed over the emerging shape of a huge, horned head. The high-powered weapon fired with a deafening boom and Gustav gripped the wall in anticipation, only to watch the shell ricochet off the daemon prince’s forehead.
Gustav moaned. ‘Be’lakor. I thought Max banished him.’
Makaisson swore and reloaded. ‘Hawd the wall, laddie. It’s joost yin wee daemon.’
Be’lakor burst through the flames, fire licking about his volcanic form as he threw back his wings. A sudden gale arose from nowhere to fill them and shoot the daemon prince into the sky. Gunshots flashed across his frame as he briefly soared towards the fortified gatehouse of the third wall. There, he tucked in his wings and
dived.
A Slayer-Monk with a double-bladed quarterstaff hurled himself from the parapet as the daemon prince crashed through the wall of the keep like a cannonball. The fortification slowly began to collapse in on itself. The dwarf clutched his quarterstaff, legs pumping furiously as he dropped, his wall crumbling away behind him even as he did. A deep roar echoed from under the rubble of the keep and for one implosive instant the world was bleached of colour. A shockwave rippled from the epicentre, so fast that everything in the vicinity was caught in a wave of vibrating force. Then the keep cracked open like an egg, a purple fire spearing through the cracks and annihilating everything nearby in a blast of dark magic. The monk was incinerated, just a fraction of a second before the keep and a huge stretch of wall was transformed into a glass-lined crater.
Be’lakor strode through, wings upraised like a halo of black.
‘Alright, sae it’s a big daemon.’
‘Sihrak. Sihrak Grimnir ha!’
One of the Slayer-Monks on the inner wall was remonstrating with his abbot, others joining in on both sides to raise what sounded like a heated argument. Gustav turned to Malakai.
‘Ah gather yon abbot has the power tae call doon the wrath o’ Grimnir if he wishes tae.’
‘Why the hell doesn’t he?’
Malakai cocked his ear to the arguing monks for a moment, then turned back to Gustav. ‘He says oor fate lies wi’ Grimnir’s heir noo.’ He listened a bit more as the abbot continued to remonstrate with his monks. ‘And his rememberer.’
Gustav puffed out his cheeks and readied his sword. It looked like he was going to need it after all.
‘Tale of my life.’
