Gotrek & Felix: Kinslayer

by David Guymer

  ‘Max Schreiber?’ said Felix, getting stiffly to his feet. The dragon ogre regarded him stormily from its master’s side but made no move. ‘You’re an intelligent creature. Will you bargain for him?’

  The Troll King wiped a trickle of blood from his nose and stared at it as though attempting to extract meaning from a pattern that was not there.

  Through the snow above, harpies flapped wildly for their eyries in, to all outward appearances, a blind panic. The blizzard echoed with the shouts of beastmen and peals of phantom thunder. Felix tightened at the weary sound of running feet approaching from behind but did not turn around. This was what he had come here for. And besides, unlike the cosseted fools and liars who boasted about such things in taverns, Felix had no great preference as to whether he faced death when it came or not. Despite aching muscles though, he almost jumped when a rough hand fell on his arm.

  ‘I hope you weren’t trying to keep this for yourself,’ said Gotrek.

  ‘Very selfish,’ Snorri agreed with a nod that almost pitched him over he was so wearied.

  Both dwarfs looked as though they’d fought across a road paved with hot coals to get this far. Snorri bled from both ears and swayed as though he had taken one blow to the head too many. Dried blood creaked with his movements like the joints of armour plate. Gotrek however was not just plated with blood, but layered in it: it encased his skin, soaked his breeches, clogged the top of his boots, dyed the roots of his crest. A wet smear covered his axe, a smattering of golden hairs stuck to it like flies in amber. Runes glowed diffusely from underneath. He noticed none of it. His gaze was locked on the dragon ogre.

  ‘Mine.’

  ‘Not if I get there first,’ said Felix before he could bite his tongue. Silently, he cursed Karaghul and its single-minded drives. The sword was just metal: it had no concept of when it was overmatched.

  ‘Is Snorri fighting the Troll King then?’ said Snorri amiably. ‘Because he really doesn’t mind.’

  ‘Witless animals and blind fools,’ roared the Troll King, with his head clutched in one hand. ‘Chaos itself holds at my walls and soon the world will follow where Kislev has shown the way.’

  The monster glared over Felix’s head with a look like thunder and withdrew a step towards the castle. Felix pulled his gaze from the smouldering ancient to see why: a group of exhausted but armed men trailed in the dwarfs’ wake. Kolya was amongst them and – Felix’s heart lifted – Gustav as well.

  ‘Shagga,’ said the Troll King, indicating Felix and the others with a pained wave of one dully luminescent rock of a wrist as he backed away. ‘I have to see what has happened for myself. Kill them all.’

  ‘Leave this to me, manling,’ said Gotrek, brandishing his blood-smeared axe as the dragon ogre gave a thunderous flex of its muscles and charged.

  Wishing very much that he could, Felix positioned himself at Gotrek’s left side and slightly behind, angling his sword to guard the Slayer’s blind side. Gotrek merely grunted and let it slide. If Felix didn’t know better, he would have labelled the mausoleum grin on his former companion’s face as almost pleased. Felix couldn’t even tell any more if it was Karaghul or his own sense of duty to the miserable dwarf that compelled him to do this. Neither possibility was particularly reassuring so he didn’t overly lament the too-brief second he had to consider it before seething storm clouds lashed the shaking flagstones with thunder and the dragon ogre swung its black axe.

  At the last second Felix and Gotrek shared a look.

  Gotrek bared his teeth and rolled right while Felix, just a fraction slower, tucked his shoulder and ducked left. In an awesome display of power and control, the dragon ogre checked its downstroke, monstrous biceps swelling as it turned it into a pendulum slash for Gotrek at the same time that Felix was forced to parry a stray lightning bolt that blasted him from his feet.

  The Slayer swung his own axe to parry the blow as charged black clouds descended from the monster’s torso to wash over him. Gotrek snarled in pain at the impact, backing up and tossing his axe to his left hand. He flexed his right hand, yanking out the wrist until the chain that bound axe haft to right bracer pulled taut.

  Clothes steaming where the snow landed on him, Felix pulled himself up. His hands and feet were shaking like tuning forks. Discharging static clapped from the frayed ends of his wool cloak. His woollen undergarments delivered further painful shocks to various out of the way places as he bade his legs to carry him forwards.

  ‘Uncle!’

  Felix turned sharply at Gustav’s voice. His nephew and the last handful of his free company had been made haggard by snow and battle and rendered smaller than men by terror. A couple of wavering spears pointed back into the snow-swept Square of Heroes and the raucous din that raged there, but most simply gaped in horror at the rampaging ancient.

  ‘Stay back,’ Felix commanded them and those still of sound enough mind to register human speech needed no second telling. Felix focused on Gustav who looked physically torn over whether to intervene. ‘You too, Gustav. This is not for you.’

  That said, Felix took a cold breath of air that tasted of scorched stone and charged into the storm-wracked umbra that now shrouded the dragon ogre’s rear. His ears popped as he lunged through the monster’s electrical corona, a tingling in his skin translating into a vibrant, violent light that suffused Karaghul’s rune-etched length as he drew back and then rammed the blade deep into the creature’s thigh.

  The dragon ogre bellowed in unexpected pain as gromril-hard scales as old as the world parted before Karaghul’s baneful enchantments and razor edge. A stamp of the ground with the monster’s wounded leg sent Felix staggering and he only just avoided a swipe of its thick tail as it tried to swat him down again to pile its full power onto the Slayer.

  Felix saw his former companion fighting axe-to-axe right under the tusks of the monster’s front. Their dual was a blur of obsidian and starmetal, fearsome tattoos and brutal piercings, dispersed into a haze of static torture. By Felix’s snap assessment, the Slayer was more than holding his own, but the flesh was being literally seared off his bones by a succession of lightning strikes. Gotrek staggered back before one dazzling thunderclap, shaking his head, dazed, and then presented his axe with a snarl.

  That he was still alive was a miracle worthy of Sigmar.

  Ducking low Felix slashed his blade across the dragon ogre’s hamstrings, eliciting another roar and a swipe of tail, and then rolled between the monster’s legs slicing into its tough green underbelly as he went. The monster shuddered and drew back, earning Gotrek a second to catch his breath as Felix came up beside him. The Slayer decided to waste it instead on a disparaging grunt.

  ‘You could have just walked.’

  Felix found himself grinning like a lunatic, but the respite was as short-lived as Felix imagined he was to be. The dragon ogre pounded forward, axe rising amidst a gathering pall of lightning and then hammering down on Gotrek’s blade. Muscles knotted across the Slayer’s back as he pushed back against the dragon ogre’s strength and, impossibly, matched it. The two axes remained locked, wavering up and down within the span of an inch as both fighters strained. Lightning limned the boundary of the struggle, but rather than striking the Slayer those random discharges now converged on the lightning rod in the midst.

  Cursing the Templar sword through clenched teeth, Felix tensed rigid with pain as jolt after jolt cracked against Karaghul’s blade. The weapon’s protective enchantments absorbed most of the energy from the impacts, but Felix wasn’t feeling particularly grateful for that fact just now given that it was those same enchantments that were pulling the dragon ogre’s power onto him in the first place. The blade glowed brighter with every strike. He couldn’t have let go of the sword now if he’d wanted to. His body coursed with electricity and had the dragonhead hilt in a rictus grip.

  Even if he could have dropped the sword and run, he knew he w
ouldn’t have. This was Gotrek’s only chance of slaying the beast.

  Lightning flashing across his gaping eye socket, Gotrek inched one hand from his axe, grunting as the full strength of the dragon ogre bore down onto one shaking arm. Gotrek’s bicep swelled and knotted with veins, but slowly the two axes ground inevitably down.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Felix managed to stutter as the Slayer used his free hand to loop the chain locking axe haft to bracer around the dragon ogre’s wrists.

  Baring his teeth in a lightning-flecked grin, Gotrek hauled the chain tight until blood trickled between the steel links where they bit into the monster’s flesh. Thunder rumbled from the dragon ogre’s throat, but the unexpected pain was a distraction and, moreover, the constriction around its wrists was fouling its grip on its axe. Gotrek pushed back.

  Felix however could take no more. His sword was shining so brightly that its corona encompassed him entirely. He could barely see, could hear nothing but the crack of lightning and the occasional wild burst of charge that arced off from the tip of his blade to strike a flagstone or a statue and blow them apart in a ravaging storm of energy. Again Felix cursed the damned sword. Fighting the dragon had been easier than this.

  ‘Gotrek!’ he screamed, knowing that dwarf ears were better than men’s and praying that his former companion could hear when even Felix himself could not. ‘Let go of it. Now!’

  With a howl, Felix lashed out with Karaghul as if striking a deathblow. Lightning flashed around the sword with an apocalyptic crack of godly thunder and a torrent of energy burst from the tip of the blade and struck the dragon ogre square in the chest. Gotrek had heard and pulled clear at the last minute and now watched as paralysing paroxysms overwhelmed the dragon ogre’s nervous system. Given the stories Felix had read of dragon ogres feasting on warp storms and bathing in mountaintop seas of never-ending lightning he didn’t expect the blow to prove fatal, but the moment was all that the Slayer needed.

  Gotrek stepped in towards the shuddering beast and buried his rune-axe deep into the monster’s abdomen, roughly transecting the line where the dragon ogre’s monstrous half took on its human character. Blood and guts spat from the wound as Gotrek withdrew his axe and cut again. It took several more blows for the monster to fall and several seconds more for the last spasm of electricity to arc across its limp carcass.

  Felix slumped onto one knee, leaning on the dragonhead hilt of Karaghul like a knight in prayer. His body felt like it had been torn up from the inside and now bits of himself that he had no name for flapped loose. But somehow he was all still here. Shakily, he kissed the ring on his finger. Perhaps it was good luck after all. He decided it was a ritual he was going to keep.

  The approach of Gustav and the other men brought a crunch of snow and pebbled flagstones under their nervous feet. Kolya took up the rear, his swaddling furs thick with snow and a hood keeping the worst of it off his eyes. With bow loosely drawn, he eyed the blizzard at their backs. It was no longer just shapes that peopled the snow but animal shrieks and a clangour that seemed to be drawing in from every side.

  Felix could only guess what was happening out there and from everything he had witnessed on his way in, none of it was good.

  ‘Do we go inside, then?’ said Kolya, with a nonchalant nod towards the citadel as if the corpse of a monstrous ancient did not lie across the bottom step. ‘We can all die in the warm.’

  Just what the party needs, thought Felix with a sideways glance at Gotrek, another optimist.

  ‘You could have helped out,’ said Felix.

  The Kislevite offered another of his infuriating shrugs. ‘He is a Slayer, Empire man. A man can take a horse to water…’

  Felix waved down the platitude with a grimace and stood. His bones creaked. It felt as though more than a few muscles weren’t pulling their weight.

  ‘This is why you were a shoddy rememberer,’ said Gotrek. ‘You never did get the point.’

  Felix felt something in his heart wrench. He regarded the Slayer, hoping for an indication that he joked, but of course he didn’t. The moment of comradeship he had thought he’d sensed as they fought was nowhere to be seen now. ‘Fine then. Let’s get you killed, shall we? It shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’

  As cold inside as out, Felix turned to the men to offer at least a few reassuring words when he noticed something gravely amiss. He scanned the faces around him. One was missing.

  ‘Where is Snorri?’

  The entrance hall of Praag’s gloomy citadel was a large and circular space made of dark stone blocks. Thick pillars rose past a succession of galleries before coming to a domed ceiling decorated with painted panels depicting a sweeping horse battle over an icy field. It was the only colour to be found in what was otherwise a desert of stone. The galleries looked like they should have been hung with tapestries. Embedded into the walls at intervals were hooks and bars that might have held portraits, weaponry, animal heads and skins. There were also indents where suits of armour would have once stood, but now they were empty. It looked as though the castle had been stripped of anything of beauty or value.

  Snorri Nosebiter liked it better this way. It reminded him of home. His tuneless whistle echoed back at him from the distant ceiling.

  Halfway down the hall a wide staircase climbed partway towards the next floor before splitting into two halves that spiralled up towards the upper storeys, crossing again somewhere above Snorri’s head. Snorri took the left-hand stair to the next floor. It was a corridor, longer than the hall beneath and lined with plain wooden doors interspersed every few doorways with benched alcoves.

  The other side of the passage opened out onto the entrance hall through a row of elaborately carved stone arches in the form of wrestling gargoyles. Through the symmetrical feature on the opposite side of the staircase, Snorri saw a single file of armoured beastmen hurry by before disappearing again. They ignored Snorri entirely and Snorri couldn’t figure out how to get across without going back down to the hall and taking the other branch of the stair up, so he ignored them too. The beastmen’s hard, bony feet and rattling mail echoed through the halls long after they were forgotten about and Snorri followed the corridor deeper into the castle.

  Snorri knew he was no great mind – he was reminded of it often enough – but he was good at following. Even he couldn’t miss the cratering in the stone floor where something big and very angry had recently walked or the occasional still-crumbling punch wound torn out of the side of the little wall nooks. He followed the trail until he came to a door that had been ripped clean off its hinges, snapped in two, and hurled down the corridor.

  It led onto a staircase that wound upwards. A light flickered like a cat’s eye in the distance and Snorri grinned determinedly. It was his turn to be the hero now. Images of Durin Drakkvarr and Skalf Hammertoes flashed through his mind. A lot of people had put a lot of faith and sacrifice in Snorri’s supposed destiny and if there was a doom to be had here then it would be Snorri’s.

  The Spider Lady had promised him one.

  And it would be the mightiest.

  Seventeen

  True Selves

  At the sheer granite face of the Mountain Gate overlooking the Goromadny Road and a white sea of snow-covered tents, thirty thousand northmen raised a raucous cheer as the immovable line of trolls upon the ramparts jerked and fell. The cry became a berserker roar on every man’s lips as cold, hungry, frustrated men surged forwards as one. Chaos warriors already on the siege ladders suddenly found themselves opposed by nothing more than beastmen and a long overdue slaughter began in deadly earnest.

  Five miles back from the East Gate and the killing fields littered with the bodies of Kurgan and Dolgan and other marauder tribes, Khorreg Hellworker watched with a grin as black as coal as a string of trolls pitched from artillery-scarred walls one by one into the Lynsk below. Snowmelt
screaming from the glowing fissures in his flesh, the daemonsmith bade the host of Zharr-Naggrund to attack. The Dawi-Zharr were a patient and stubborn race, but the Troll King had defied them all for long enough. At his word, the sky whined with a sudden onslaught of rockets and shells. The walls of Praag shook to their foundation stones under the onslaught as block after block of remorseless heavy infantry marched on.

  To the south, the Gate of Gargoyles was still to be re-sealed after the Troll King’s sally and battles raged between beastmen and Kurgan across several miles of open plain. The block of massive stone trolls that anchored their rear within the open gate staggered and all at once stopped fighting, only their collected bulk holding them upright and plugging the gate until a charge of Kurgan cavalry and charioteers scythed them down and howling marauders spilled onto the Grand Parade.

  Across Praag, trolls dropped dead in the street and beastmen fled in panic for the inner walls of the Old Town.

  Fires sprang up out of nowhere in the cramped heart of the Novygrad and a huge, fiery-winged daemon began to take form out of the cinders as a cabal of Chaos sorcerers finally dared to let their powers be felt. A pair of giants wielding massive stone hammers bellowed Throgg’s name as they strode through the ruins to do battle with the summoned being. On the wide body of the mighty Karlsbridge, a wild hydra with scales as grey as morning sleet sent torrents of flame rippling through the snow and incinerating any that dared attempt the crossing. Huge, armoured beastmen bellowed for order in its fiery shadow, rallying their routed forces to the prepared stockades there until volleys of precise Kurgan horse-archery brought the beast down and the bridge went the way of the gates.

  Fire and bloodshed lapped at the Old Town walls, closing on the citadel of the hated Troll King like a rising flood of Chaos.

  Dragging on a dry vein within the dark of a forsaken cellar, the beast that had been Ulrika felt herself drown. Dense, foul-tasting blood ran through her veins like oil in water, churning, churning, but never fully mingling with her own. She could feel the war going on between her own blood and the troll’s. She felt sick. Through it and the strange magical connection that this troll seemed to possess with the others of its kind within the city, she experienced every death as a spasm in her mind. She too groaned at the tug that sought to draw her spirit from her cold flesh as it had from the now dead troll in her embrace.