Gotrek & Felix: Kinslayer

by David Guymer

  ‘Your skull has grown thick from too many beatings,’ came a deep gravel-pit voice that jarred Snorri from his memories. He was still here, he concluded with disappointment, so probably couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds. The Troll King stood a few feet away, hunched like an ape under the cage’s roof, arms spread so that they hung off the left and right walls. A joyous, self-hating, animal gleam shone from its eyes. ‘Perhaps that is why your brain is so slow.’

  ‘No. Snorri has always been this way.’

  ‘Then for a dwarf you are very stupid.’

  ‘You’re pretty clever for a troll. Does that make Snorri more smart or less? He’s confused.’

  ‘You–’

  Whatever the Troll King had intended to say sank into a volcanic pit of rage as, with a roar that caused stonework to shake and glassware to shatter, he hauled down on one shoulder without letting go of the bars. Pitted against the Troll King’s strength, the entire cage wall bent inwards and came away from the bolts connecting it to the ceiling bar and the floor. The unsupported roof tipped down onto the Troll King’s head, but he shrugged it off, ripping out the opposite wall as well and wielding both as improvised weapons. Snorri hefted his hammer.

  The Spider Lady had been right. This would be a mighty–

  The two squares of iron smacked together around Snorri like cymbals.

  The sweet smell of well roasted meat filled the air. It disturbed the ale sloshing in his otherwise empty belly and he threw up over the bloodstained flagstones.

  He swayed for a few seconds before a hand like a wall scooped him up and in the same motion thrust him into the stone wall at the back of the cage.

  He dropped to his knees to vomit, crunching the charred ribcage of a goblin raider that had been hidden under the layer of soot. A high-pitched war cry stopped his heart and he turned to one of the burning buildings.

  He was hauled back, bits of rock cascading over his shoulders. Crying an oath to Grimnir, he kicked out, chipped the troll’s chin and bellowed as he was driven into the wall again.

  A horribly burned fighter charged from the house towards Snorri. It was Gotrek’s house, Snorri realised, fury souring the ale still in his belly as he rose, a blow from his hammer dropping the goblin in its tracks. The goblin fell onto its face and was still.

  Snorri couldn’t feel his hands. His eyes were going dark and it felt like some other dwarf being drawn out of the wall in the Troll King’s tightening grip. This was what death felt like. Snorri was glad. There were times when he’d thought it would never happen and it wasn’t nearly as terrible as the Spider Lady had said. He saw the old crone now over the Troll King’s shoulder. She was smiling, pleased. Except it wasn’t her at all, it was Ulrika. Only that made no sense. Ulrika would never stand by and watch even if Snorri had asked her, and he couldn’t imagine her ever looking so hungry to watch someone die. Then it hit him with a blow to the heart.

  It was surely the dwarf woman from his dreams!

  The Troll King bellowed in annoyance at finding him still alive and Snorri felt himself flung forward again.

  It was big for a goblin, and with long braids like a dwarf’s. Snorri’s anger turned cold.

  What?

  Snorri turned the body over. It was a dwarf woman with a golden chain.

  No!

  The old lady had promised Snorri that his doom would bring nothing but pain, and here it was. A new kind of determination welled up inside of him – for the first time in a hundred years he felt a powerful resolve to live. He had to confess. He had to make amends. Gotrek had to know who was responsible for his shame!

  With every bone, tooth and nail that Snorri could lay onto the Troll King’s fingers he fought, even as the blows kept coming and his struggles grew ever weaker.

  The last impact he didn’t even feel.

  And then Snorri Nosebiter closed his eyes.

  ‘No!’ Felix’s cry hung in the hollow space that had just been torn from his chest.

  He staggered under the door frame and into the brightly lit cell chamber as though struck under the ribs with a knife. He couldn’t breathe. He watched with a numb, distant kind of horror as Throgg withdrew his fist from the stone wall and let Snorri drop lifelessly from the gouge he had been driven into. A patter of loose mortar covered him like earth scattered over a grave.

  Not Snorri, Felix found himself wishing, as if the gods ever heeded that kind of prayer from the likes of him. The old Slayer was cheerful and kind, as innocent as a child.

  Why did it have to be Snorri that fell?

  A shift in the rubble and the tangled bars warned of the movement of the Troll King and Felix gripped his sword with a hate so sudden and intense it crowded out every other sensation. He was aware only vaguely of the racket being raised by the creatures in the surrounding cages. Broken glass crunched underfoot as Felix strode towards the towering figure. Karaghul burned his eyes with the hateful glare of the surrounding torches, blinding him until the final second to the figure that slid out from behind the Troll King and blocked his path with a cold, hard hand on his shoulder.

  She was clenched inside a battered suit of pearl-white plate armour like a crumpled ball of bloodstained paper. Her ash-blonde hair had been pulled ragged, as though raked by the inch-long claws that dripped blood from her fingertips. Her eyes were dominated by huge black pupils that stared out from some lightless place. The hunger in those empty pits was enough to startle Felix from his grief, but even then it required a conscious moment to recognise Ulrika behind that twitching, snarling visage.

  ‘What did he do to you?’

  Ulrika merely hissed and drooled.

  Behind her, Throgg turned fully from the wall and drew himself as near to his full height as the ceiling allowed. His tattered red cloak fell back from his shoulders to reveal a chest riddled with regeneration scars, crossbow bolts, tumourous warpstone growths, and mouths that gasped in a constant fix of hunger or suffocation. At the sight of a familiar axe embedded in the troll’s waist, Felix gave a strangled cry of loss and took an unconscious step back.

  The Troll King lifted his gaze over Felix as the sound of huffing men finally rounded the last turn of the stairwell and Gustav, Kolya and the rest crunched out onto the carpet of broken glass, doing their best to shield their eyes from the sudden glare. Gotrek followed just behind, a consequence only of his shorter stride rather than any sign of his wounds catching up with his formidable stamina. His axe glowed red as though hot from the forge, bright even by the standards of the over-lit chamber. Ulrika slithered back from the touch of the rune-light on her skin.

  Gotrek absorbed what had happened with a single sweep of his unblinking gaze. ‘A good death. Well earned.’

  Felix bit on the impulse to snap back with something sharp. It was easy to be magnanimous now, but where had Gotrek’s compassion been when Snorri was alive and hurting? Whatever secrets Snorri had wanted to tell his friend about his shame went with him to his afterlife now.

  Watching Gotrek’s axe warily, the Troll King edged backwards, iron bars and alchemical apparatus buckling underfoot as he moved towards another open door at the far side of the chamber. Felix started after him, but Ulrika’s marble grip on his shoulder stopped him in his tracks with a gasp, forcing him to lower his sword as the effortless crush cut off the blood to his arm.

  ‘These are the friends that abandoned you to this, Ulrika,’ said Throgg, continuing to back away towards the door. The vampiress bared her fangs and snapped at the mention of her name, but some command in the Troll King’s voice spoke directly to the beast that now owned her. ‘There are things I cannot leave behind. Ensure that none pass and their blood is yours to feast on.’

  That elicited a mindless grin and Felix groaned as the pressure on his shoulder intensified. Did Ulrika even realise her own strength any more?

  ‘This isn’t you Ulrika, I k
now it. Help us to stop him. Come back to the Empire with us.’

  Ulrika met his eyes but if she comprehended a word of what he said there was no sign of it. Her fangs glistened with bloody saliva. She stared at his temple vein, lips twitching as a shudder of hunger passed through her body and elicited a gasp from Felix as it reached the hand gripping his shoulder. With only his free hand, Felix managed to lift the tip of his sword off the ground.

  ‘I told you, manling,’ said Gotrek as he strode forward with axe raised. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘Go after the troll!’ Felix screamed. ‘Ulrika is mine, do you hear me?’

  Never in his career as Gotrek’s henchman had Felix dared speak to the Slayer like that but, without a word spoken to convey his understanding, Gotrek lowered his axe and ran past. Ulrika hissed and looked up to watch the dwarf go, caught in animal indecision between satisfaction now and the command of a master who already seemed a foggy memory. It was all the opening that Felix could hope to expect.

  With a cry that gave vent to all his pain and his grief, Felix lashed around with his sword. He knew that he had little chance of causing a being as powerful as Ulrika anything more than an inconvenience with a blow struck from his supine position at Ulrika’s feet, but he did it anyway. The ornate dragon’s-maw grip guard cracked her in the ear and the base of the blade scored a shallow cut across her scalp, and elicited a startled bark. In an agonising pulse of sensation, Felix felt blood rush back into his arm as Ulrika’s grip loosened and then instinct took charge.

  Pushing up through his buckled knees Felix rammed himself into Ulrika’s chest. She might have had the strength of twenty men and powers beyond his ability to comprehend but in one sense at least she was still a rapier-thin woman, far lighter than he was, and they both fell to the ground. Ulrika reacted like a cat, flipping onto all fours and punching deep into the stone where Felix had fallen before rolling hurriedly away. Again, she turned to chase after Gotrek but Felix brought her attention back with a stabbing thrust for a gap in her back armour where buckling had caused the shoulder plates to push apart. Spotting the stroke at the last second, the vampiress spun away with frightening speed, drawing her sabre in the same blinding motion and parrying Felix’s sword with an impact that ravaged through his still aching shoulder.

  Lips twitching, transitioning between something not quite animal and something almost human, Ulrika smiled at something behind Felix’s back. ‘My loves. See how this man threatens me. Protect me.’

  Felix’s heart sank as he felt men close on him from behind.

  No, Ulrika. Please, no.

  ‘Put down the sword, uncle.’

  Felix shifted to try and cover his side with the cage to his left, but what the men lacked in martial discipline they made up for in brawlers’ instincts and that included knowing how to corner one man into a tight spot with five. Felix, though, didn’t take his eyes off Ulrika – or whatever it was she had let herself become.

  ‘You’re not yourself, Gustav. If any of this makes any sense to you right now then I’d love to hear it.’

  ‘Oh, it makes sense. You’re jealous.’

  Felix shook his head, eyes forward.

  ‘Don’t lie to me! I read that pathetic pfennig dreadful you call a biography. I know that you and General Straghov were together in the past. You had your chance and squandered her. You disgust me, you adulterous popinjay.’

  Maybe it was that final barb that made him snap, but Felix spun around and threw a punch to the jaw that snapped back Gustav’s head and knocked the man cold before Felix even knew what he was doing. Gustav flopped into the arms of his man behind.

  ‘One small lapse, damn you.’

  ‘Doskonale,’ Kolya boomed approvingly. The Kislevite, apparently forgotten by everyone, observed proceedings from the doorway. He lifted a foot and drew a long hunting knife from his boot. ‘A good hit for an Empire man.’

  Ulrika snarled and lunged for Felix just a second after her thralls fell on Kolya. This time Felix was able to anticipate her speed even if he could never hope to match it, and got his sword in the way. The phenomenal application of strength smacked Felix’s sword against his own mail and staggered him into the back of a grizzled soldier just as he was about to thrust at Kolya with a spear. The strike went wide. The Kislevite parried another with his knife, then clubbed his attacker senseless with an elbow between the eyes. The soldier crashed back against the bars of the cage behind him, leading to an upsurge of noise from the prisoners still held all around. A boom sounded overhead and dust rained from the ceiling, but Felix had no time to consider it. He pushed the spearman out from under him and returned his attention to Ulrika.

  Why was she still here? Gustav’s distraction had given her ample opportunity to escape.

  The vampiress twitched, a ripple tracking the course of her jugular vein as if some pernicious corruption fought with her own vampiric blood for dominance. ‘I dreamed of you after Krieger remade me. So many days. I dreamed of hunting you, catching you, tearing the blood from your heart and feasting until I drowned.’

  Disgust crawling up his throat Felix angled his sword for a rising slash across Ulrika’s chest, but before he could make the swing Ulrika extended a long claw and uttered what sounded like a lullaby and the strength in his limbs began to fade away. Felix gasped at the sudden paralysis and sought reflexively to bring his sword back up into a guard. His arms remained stubbornly where they were, not numb, not dead – just stuck.

  The din from the surrounding cages had reached fever pitch and Ulrika smiled as if nothing could be more pleasing, watching the brawl being fought behind Felix’s back. She reached out to stroke Felix’s cheek with the back of her hand, knotting her claw in his beard.

  ‘I lied to you, Felix. You left Katerina with child to be with me.’

  Felix pulled back his head, but there was only so far he could defy her while she controlled his arms and legs.

  ‘I suspected,’ said Felix. ‘Helbrass showed me a vision of a child and…’ He trailed off as his mind ran back to an event that he had not since considered the ramifications of. ‘You knew from the first moment. I thought you must have been mistaken but you knew and you intended to make Kat a vampire anyway.’ Angrily, he tried to lunge at her but to no avail. ‘You would have killed my child!’

  Ulrika gave a hissing laugh, delighting in his futile struggles and his pain, and dragged the claw in his beard down to his throat. The hairs all over Felix’s body tingled and he felt a pressure building on his ears. Powerful magic was being gathered somewhere nearby and, judging from the feral gleam currently occupying Ulrika’s eyes, Felix doubted it was hers. His eyes rolled left to where a skaven hissed at him with unfettered malice through the bars of its cage.

  Felix groaned. They were surrounded by sorcerers whose captor had just fled. No wonder he felt that he had walked right into the jaws of a trap.

  ‘Let him go, Ulrika.’

  The voice came from the direction of the doorway that had just taken Gotrek and the Troll King. The torches bracketed either side of it burned with an eerie absence of any light and the cages and floorspace around them were mired in blackness from which Felix could discern only the outline of a human figure. The voice was familiar, but etched with a deep pain that Felix would never have forgotten had he heard it before. It was the voice of a man who had seen how the world was to die.

  At the sound of it, Ulrika cringed as if from an open flame and turned her face from Felix to see it.

  ‘Max. This is for you.’

  ‘I was not asking.’

  Squinting into the gloom, Felix saw him. Captivity had changed him. He was gaunt, hunched and unwashed, apparently wearing the same ivory and gold battle magister’s robes in which he had been taken captive half a year ago at Alderfen. The change that had come over him however went far beyond that. The whites had faded utterly from his eyes and his ski
n had bedimmed to a mealy grey. It was as though every pure glimmer of light had been drained from his body. There could be no mistake, though.

  It was Max.

  Ulrika flung Felix down as though he had been trying to force himself upon her and turned instead to Max. ‘Help me, Max. Help me. I didn’t want this. I thought I would be strong enough. I thought that Felix–’ A shudder wracked her armoured body. Her head jerked as if to shake off some intrusion of her mind and she balled her clawed hands into fists. ‘I was doing what had to be done. I’m just… so… hungry.’

  ‘I see that,’ said Max, sorrow in his bearing. ‘And I can help you.’

  The wizard extended a hand and, through a clear strain of willpower, the shadow that enveloped that portion of his body began to force out a sublimating white light. Ulrika shied away from it, meshing her claws before her eyes like a shield, and, in a sibilant tongue that hissed betrayal, spat a counter-spell of her own.

  Felix felt his own open wounds shiver from the touch of Dark Magic, and then gasped as blood was drawn from them to thread through her hair like a lover’s forget-me-nots. Strength returned to his limbs as her attention left him behind and he redoubled his grip on his sword.

  She was so achingly beautiful. And she was right, of course – he would always love her.

  He swung his sword for where her shoulder plates hung loose, decapitating her in one clean stroke.

  A sob burst from him unexpectedly and he had to cover his face with his arm and take several heaving breaths before he dared look at her body. It was surprisingly bloodless and shockingly mundane. There was no cloud of dust or sudden onset of rot, but then Ulrika had been relatively young. There were mortal men still living who were the richer for sharing in her life.

  ‘Starovye,’ said Kolya with a gentle pat on the back. ‘In Dushyka dead things go in the ground and we do not expect them to grow.’

  Felix ground his eyes and held his tongue. There was just too much death.

  ‘You did not have to do that, Felix,’ said Max quietly. ‘She was a child with those powers. She could not have harmed me.’