Gotrek & Felix: Kinslayer

by David Guymer

  That was the reason for the self-splitting spell he now performed. It was the proof of his suspicions. Max’s aethyric self could see in colours that he should not. He could draw connections that he previously could not. The world had indeed gone wrong. The winds of magic no longer flowed as they should. The legacy of Nagash’s rise.

  For all that however, for all he had seen and suffered, he was still a magister of the Light. He could not dismiss the possibility that these new abilities were a symptom of his own corruption rather than some global shift in the rules of magic. Even Max himself could see something amiss in his current pursuit. Scholarly curiosity could become obsession, self-preservation could mutate easily into willing determination. It was not every day that one was set the task of creating a new race of intelligent beings. He probed within himself but could find nothing overtly at fault. He had longstanding mental wards, all apparently still intact, to warn of and resist any incursion by Chaos but, of course, any taint deep enough to afflict his personality could circumvent or corrode even the best laid safeguards without his being aware.

  A man could second-guess himself to oblivion once he started down that road. What he could say for certain was that what he sought to accomplish did not feel evil.

  Which meant there was every chance of him doing some good.

  By helping Throgg stand strong he would help the Empire. Yes, that much was obvious. His homeland needed its strongman in the north.

  And now, his mind opening to the pure glory of the aethyr undivided, he saw how it would be done. Back in his cell, his body laughed. It was so beautiful, seductive even, in its simplicity. Max had told Throgg no lies. He was neither a Teclis nor a Nagash, but he did not think it too bold to count himself amongst the second tier of magicians below them. If what Throgg demanded could be done, then Max Schreiber could do it.

  Conceptualising the ritual cant to return him to his bruised flesh and broken bones, Max felt a trembling in the web of Chaos. Focusing his divinations, he followed the source of the disturbance to a place beyond the moribund spell wards of Praag’s walls and to the very periphery of his senses. It was another spellcaster. Outside! So unexpected was that he was almost ready to believe that his own senses were at fault, and with them everything else he had become prepared to accept. It was with good reason that even the most brazen daemon prince dared not deploy magic within reach of Throgg’s gates.

  For a moment longer his spirit lingered at the outermost limits of Praag’s walls, hovering above the Gate of Gargoyles as it opened to disgorge a band of brutish trolls into the besieging horde. Max looked away. He had long ago ceased to wonder at the sound made by a warrior crushed inside his own Chaos armour. Instead, he looked outside.

  The mage’s signature resonance felt familiar and yet not, almost like an old acolyte who had matured into a magister, or a friend who had since fallen to Chaos. A reassuringly human sense of pity for the poor soul was marred only by a bleak curiosity.

  Whoever it was, they were in for a cruel surprise.

  Thirteen

  King of Trolls

  Felix knew more about trolls than most men.

  One of his earliest adventures had brought him face to face with such a beast in the bowels of Karak Eight Peaks. With his own hand had he struggled to force steel through flesh as hard as rock, only to then watch his best effort regenerate before his eyes. He had seen men dissolved in the monster’s infamously potent gastric juices and seen others crushed to jelly by its sheer massivity and physical strength. Later, he had sought out and studied the Anatomicum Bestiarum, which, despite coming complete with coloured illustrations of blank, lopsided heads and dissected intestinal tracts, was a treatise that had somehow passed him by during his studies at the University of Altdorf.

  There was however one hitherto overlooked fact that Felix very much hoped he would survive long enough to see disseminated in the next volume of My Travels with Gotrek, or at least as a referenced appendix in the next edition of the Anatomicum.

  Trolls were not afraid of ghosts.

  Confusion and fear required a complexity of thought that a troll could not boast. The spirits shackled to Ulrika’s maze coiled around the hulking frames that condensed out of the snow and darkness. They tugged, prodded, whispered in bullet-hole ears, but the dim brutes came on, leaving the screams of the northman horde behind them under an avalanche of walking stone.

  With a cold and spreading dread whose evolved sophistication provided him no consolation, Felix drew his sword. Karaghul’s former owner had after all met his end in the belly of that Karak Eight Peaks troll. Felix was still debating whether it was best to run or to fight as the men working on the northern barricade gave a wail and, weapons in their hands, did what came most naturally.

  They opened fire.

  Handguns popped, discharging flutes of black smoke and peppering the leading beast with solid iron shot. It was too dark and Felix was too far away to judge how much of the fire was simply wayward and how much of it ricocheted off the stone titan’s grey hide. One moment more was all it took for the stone troll to hit the barricade.

  The loose wall simply disintegrated around the stone troll’s charge. More and more trolls crashed through after it in a storm of masonry aggregates and crushed men too slow to run.

  The big stone troll glazed over in confusion upon finding itself in open space where its brain still believed there to be a wall. It was a granite colossus fifteen feet high, its body spined with arrows and axe blades and jagged with regeneration scars. Dull moon eyes blinked slowly over the men fleeing from it into the ruined outpost. Its mouth dropped open, then a pistol shot fired one-handed by a running man blasted a chunk off its lower jaw. Blood spurted sluggishly – once, twice – before the flesh began to close. The troll’s tongue flopped out of its regrowing mouth as it focused on the red-crested warrior steaming towards it with an axe held high and a dwarfish war cry.

  Still Felix hesistated. His grip tightened indecisively on his sword. His feet seemed to root deeper into the snow. Should he help Gotrek or warn Ulrika? Before he had a chance to arrive at a decision, Snorri Nosebiter issued a furious hoot of joy, flourished his axe and hammer, and charged. Felix swore with the vivid colour of the well travelled as Snorri tottered into the herd of Norse cattle towards the fence between them and the trolls.

  The Trollslayer looked ridiculous.

  Sweeping what the harpies of Kurzycko had left of his cloak over his left shoulder to free his sword arm, Felix hurried after him. Ulrika could take care of herself. Only a miracle could look after Snorri if Gotrek found out about his wife’s chain without a ready explanation for how it came into Snorri’s keeping. It could be innocent and probably was, but Gotrek was hardly known for his understanding. Felix was firmly of the mind that Snorri should absolutely not be left alone with Gotrek until Praag was a long way behind them all.

  Snorri hobbled through the herd with Felix close behind. He held his sword upright and his arms tight to his chest, mindful of the hot-blooded belligerence that pressed perilously close on all sides. All it would take was one wrong step, one horn-swipe at an imagined itch, and Felix wouldn’t have to worry about trolls. They emerged the other side into a bitter flurry of snow, Snorri scrambling under the fence while Felix swung a stile.

  Still climbing fences, Felix thought ruefully. Oddly though, he didn’t feel nearly so stiff this time.

  While Snorri picked himself up out of the snow, Felix quickly surveyed the scene.

  The Lynsk was to the left. The flood plain of southern Praag and Ulrika’s ghost-maze were ahead and to the right. The trolls had smashed through the barricade and reduced a swathe of the northmen’s stockade to splinters. Already, cattle were wandering aimlessly into the surrounding ruins and getting in the way of the soldiers desperately trying to run the other way. With cries of despair, some scattered into the buildings and returned fire. Relentless, the pursuing
trolls stamped through the ineffectual scatter of handgun and pistol shot as blithely as they did through the buildings that their minds couldn’t adjust to the presence of fast enough to avoid. How could men fight an army like that? What was stopping the Troll King from conquering the world? Felix watched open-mouthed as whole structures went down in geysers of red dust. The rumble of falling stonework couldn’t obliterate the screams of those buried inside.

  Men crawled through the snow to escape, fleeing towards the lanterns that shone from spears by the despatch-fort’s gate. There, Felix could just about pick out Ulrika’s Ungol guard assembling into ranks. Their bright wool coats fluttered gaily over hide armour. Tassels whipped from the heads of their spears. Chapka hats glittered under the lantern-light with frost.

  Why were they just standing there?

  Felix’s initial annoyance faded when he realised they didn’t need to go anywhere. The trolls were coming straight for them. Felix’s lip twitched with the sudden realisation. Aekold Helbrass had claimed the Troll King was collecting sorcerers. He was after Ulrika! He stopped running and glanced back. The trolls were being slowed by gunfire, and distracted by the northmen’s livestock and fences and the deep snow, but no force of men was going to stop them.

  His blood ran cold. Gustav was with her.

  ‘Snorri. Wait. We have to go back.’

  No sooner had he said the words than Snorri bellowed an unintelligible stream of sounds and hurtled towards a river troll that, distracted by the cattle that surrounded it, had blundered off the main thrust of the assault and into Snorri’s reach. It was hunched nearly double, flattened almost by the mass of its own shoulders. Its head was squashed and dripped with a shank of red algae. Trolls adopted the character of their habitat, Felix knew, and this one was the rugged white of the cliffs of Nordland. In one chalky fist it dragged a broken Chaos warrior like a club. The vinegar reek of its breath made the hair on Felix’s face shrivel. Its bellow as it pushed aside a shaggy Norse bull and charged onto Snorri’s weapons shook Felix to his insides.

  Snorri’s hammer smote splinters from the monster’s kneecap while his axe chipped ineffectually at its belly. The dwarf dodged a sweep of the troll’s club, then swung a mace-kick to its splintered kneecap to drive it down onto one knee. The troll smacked its lips dumbly as Snorri ducked under its arm and landed another kick into its side. Snorri laughed, skipping a single-legged tattoo around the kneeling troll, under its grasping claws, and then reached up for a fistful of the semi-mineral red mat that tufted from its chin. The monster roared as Snorri tightened his grip and used it to launch himself off the ground and land a shuddering head-butt between its eyes. A strange ochre fluid squirted from the troll’s eyes and a crack fissured its nose.

  Snorri staggered back, grinning like an idiot with a big chalky print covering his face. Felix winced. Even the troll seemed to have felt that.

  With a roar, the troll swept its Chaos warrior over the dazed Slayer and at Felix’s head like a morningstar. Felix ducked, dropping into a barrel roll that carried him under the hopeful stroke, and came up facing the troll’s groin. Though lacking Snorri Nosebiter’s wrestler’s brawn and brute power, his magical blade carved open the troll’s thigh like a roasted joint. Its passage halted with a jarring clang when it struck bone. The troll flailed its arms in confusion as Felix circled behind, applying the precise pressure, angle and carving action to sever the troll’s femoral artery on the blade’s egress and spray his right side with blood.

  It was remarkable, in hindsight, what could be learned from a colour illustration.

  Losing blood faster than even the river troll’s formidable metabolism could replenish it, the monster crashed face down into the snow. Snorri made loud and messy work of hewing its head from its shoulders.

  Felix sagged, but was quickly pressed to move aside for a bull that had wandered across from one of the shattered pens to investigate. It snorted hotly and poked the downed troll with its horns. It wasn’t dead. A troll could regenerate even a severed head. It would take fire to finally put it down and Felix had nothing of the sort.

  ‘Come on,’ Felix wheezed, turning back to Snorri. ‘We can still get back to the fort to… Snorri?’

  Wiping snow and troll blood from his face, Felix saw Snorri barrelling through the snow towards the wreck of the north barricade with an ululating outpouring of glee. For there, knee deep in rubble and held at bay by a frighteningly small-looking dwarf with an axe, was the largest troll Felix had ever seen. It had been the first to breach the barricade, but while the other trolls had been faced with Gustav’s free company, this one had had the misfortune to run into Gotrek Gurnisson.

  ‘Snorri! Get back here!’

  Knowing it was a pointless waste of breath even before he opened his mouth, Felix shouldered his sword and ran after him.

  Kolya crouched in the foxhole he had dug out of the snow and sighted the stone troll down a nocked and partially drawn shaft. It was taller than a mounted man and looked like something that had stepped out from the rocks of Urzebya where Ursun had taken a bite out of the world. Thinking of biting, he massaged a handful of snow into his gums. His mouth still throbbed where Gurnisson had kicked out his teeth. It was a wonder it had not broken his jaw. He tracked his aim to the dwarf.

  Gurnisson was not a quarter the troll’s mass. He was bleeding freely where his exertions had reopened unhealed wounds and was blowing hard. Somehow though, the dwarf found strength to brandish his axe and beckon the behemoth on. He was mad, he was infuriating and, Kolya was beginning to suspect, singularly blessed by his people’s gods.

  The troll reared up to its awesome height and punched down. Instead of diving clear as any sane man would, the dwarf gave a cholic roar and hammered his upswinging axe into the troll’s knuckles. The rune weapon split the monster’s hand up to the wrist bone and, impossibly, diverted the punch over his head. The troll roared as its fist ploughed through the snow. Kolya shook his head in wonder. The dwarf was astounding. Loose inside the beast’s guard, Gurnisson unleashed everything in a brutal flurry. His starmetal blade cut the troll’s belly to ribbons, freeing a ropey mass of steaming entrails that the dwarf ground underfoot with every appearance of satisfaction. The splattered juices produced a sharp hiss where they landed and, smelling the acid corrosion of his boots, even the dwarf withdrew with a grimace. He slid his boots under the snow until they stopped smoking. The troll’s belly was already knitting back together.

  ‘Are you going to help?’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘No.’

  The dwarf thought about that for a moment and started to laugh. ‘I like you, manling.’

  ‘Tor help me,’ Kolya muttered under his breath. He had almost come to like the murdering Slayer himself.

  Cackling, Gurnisson swept his axe through a rune-streaked blur of a figure-of-eight. From the expression on his face, Kolya wondered if dwarf hearing might be better than men’s. ‘Stand back then, and take word of this doom to that ghastly horse-loving afterlife of yours.’

  Kolya lowered his bow. If he was resigned to watch, then there was no more fighting to be done here. It was not that he did not pity those oblast men in the fort, but they were already as dead as their boyarina and it was pointless to mourn a dead man. Their screams were tinny, separated from him now by the roar of the trolls and the crash of collapsing buildings. Blackpowder weapons crackled in the distance like a dying fire. Set against that expectation, the sound of another charging fighter actually caught him off guard.

  The senile old dwarf with the metal leg careened through the loose rubble and snow waving an axe and a hammer above his bald head. A leather satchel slapped at his back like a riding crop.

  ‘Snorri’s turn!’ the dwarf yelled, muscling Gurnisson aside just as the stone troll dispatched an open-handed punch that would have ripped Gurnisson’s head off had he still been there to meet it. Gurnisson gave a shout as the
body charge of the other dwarf threw him sideways and sent him plunging into a rocky snow heap. The newcomer wobbled drunkenly on the uneven ground, but somehow managed to bat the troll’s punch aside on his hammer. The impact spun him around, but he kept his feet, coming dizzily about and raising his weapons.

  ‘That horse kicked Snorri harder than that.’

  All Kolya could do was gape. Was insanity a common trait in the dwarfs or had the End Times cracked their minds?

  Gotrek pulled himself from the drift and shook snow from his crest. His entire body looked clenched and swollen with wrath. He strode towards Snorri, axe gripped in one massive fist. ‘Of all the dooms in all the world, Snorri Nosebiter, you had to come and spoil mine. Again.’

  ‘This one’s Snorri’s,’ Snorri growled, fending Gurnisson off with his left arm while simultaneously hammering away at the troll’s groin.

  ‘That so?’

  Gurnisson and Snorri tangled arms, each using the spare hand to strike a claim on the troll. Snorri’s hammer bashed its hip. Gurnisson’s axe severed its arm at the elbow. Gurnisson produced a triumphant leer that cracked under Snorri’s elbow. The dwarfs shouted insults and manage to wrestle each other down under the troll’s swinging fist.

  ‘Damn it, Snorri!’

  Snorri spluttered snow from his mouth and clambered on top of Gurnisson’s back, wedging the struggling Slayer down beneath his thighs. ‘If Snorri’s rememberer hadn’t pulled his crest out that would have got him.’

  ‘I’ll pull out more than that if you get in my way again.’

  ‘This one isn’t yours,’ said Snorri patiently, as though training a horse. ‘The spider lady told Snorri he would have his doom when all his friends were together again.’

  With a tectonic rumble, the troll lumbered forwards, cracking Snorri’s forehead with a stray knee and hurling him back. The troll stamped after him, missing Gurnisson’s back by inches. Shivering with fury, the dwarf drew himself up. His one eye glittered hatefully. He grasped his axe two-handed, so tightly that the scabs of his biceps burst.