by William King
In the doorway Frau Winter stood calm and unafraid, a nimbus of light emerging from her left hand. She looked over at Felix and gave him an encouraging nod.
Behind her was Kirsten, who pointed mutely over his shoulder. He whirled and saw a dozen undead warriors rushing towards him. He heard Dieter and his men run up to meet them. Then he joined the rush.
For Felix the night became howling chaos as he hacked his way round the camp in search of Gotrek. At one point the mist cleared and he pushed some quivering children under a wagon away from the bodies of their dead parents. The man lay in a night shirt, the woman close by, a broom handle clutched in one hand like a spear. Felix heard a sound and turned to face a skeletal giant bearing down at him. Somehow he survived.
Felix fought back to back with Dieter until they stood among a pile of mouldering bones. The battle surged away from him as the mist closed in and for a long moment he stood alone, listening to the screams of the dying.
A passing figure lashed out at him and they exchanged blows. Felix saw that it was Lars, a grin frozen on his face revealing missing teeth, terror froth foaming from his mouth. Berserkly he hacked at Felix. The man was mad with fear.
‘Bathtard!’ he hissed, chopping at Felix with a blow which would have felled a tree. Felix ducked underneath the blow and lunged forward, taking him through the heart. Lars sobbed as he died. Felix wondered how crazed Lars really had been. If the trapper had killed Felix it could have been blamed on the attackers. He returned to the fray.
He rounded a corner to find a score of undead warriors being driven back by the furious onslaught of Gotrek’s axe. Blue chain lightning flickered and the area about him was suddenly clear. He looked about for Frau Winter to offer his thanks but she was gone, vanished into the mists. He turned to see Gotrek standing astonished, his jaw hanging open.
Sometime before dawn, their assailants retreated back towards the hills, leaving Baron von Diehl’s warriors to contemplate their ruined wagons and the bodies of their dead.
In the early morning light, Felix watched warily as Gotrek inspected the rubble of the old stone arch. The stench of dank air and mouldering bones that came from within made Felix want to gag. He turned to stare down the hillside, to where the surviving exiles were building funeral pyres for the dead out of the remains of ruined wagons. Nobody wanted to bury them so close to the hills.
Felix heard Gotrek grunt with grim satisfaction, and turned to look at him. The dwarf was running his hand expertly along the broken stones with their faint webwork of old runes. Gotrek looked up and grinned savagely.
‘No doubt about it, manling: the runes guarding the entrance were broken from the outside.’
Felix looked at him. Suspicion blossomed. He was very afraid. ‘It looks as though someone has been giving the von Diehl curse a helping hand,’ he whispered.
Rain lashed down from the grey sky. The cart rumbled southward. Beside the caravan the waters of Thunder River tumbled headlong towards their goal. The rain-swollen river constantly threatened to burst its banks. Felix jerked the reins; the oxen lowed and redoubled their efforts to move on the muddy ground.
Beside him Kirsten sneezed. Like almost everyone else, she was pale and ill-looking. The strain of the long journey and the worsening weather had made them all prey to disease.
No town would take them in. Armed warriors had threatened battle unless they moved on to untenanted land. The trail had become interminable. It seemed as if they had been riding forever and would never come to rest. Even the knowledge that someone in the train had freed the undead beneath the hills had ceased to be alarming, fading into cold suspicion when no culprit could be found.
Felix looked at Gotrek guiltily, expecting Kirsten’s sneeze to produce his usual crass comments about human frailty, but the Trollslayer was silent, staring towards the Worlds Edge Mountains with a fixity of purpose unusual even for him.
Felix wondered when he would pluck up the courage to tell Gotrek that he wasn’t continuing onwards with him, that he was settling down with Kirsten. He was worried about what the dwarf’s reaction would be. Would Gotrek simply dismiss it as another example of human faithlessness – or would he turn violent?
Felix felt miserable. He was fond of the Trollslayer, for all his black moods and bitter comments. The thought of Gotrek wandering off to meet a lonely doom disturbed him. But he loved Kirsten and the thought of being parted from her was painful to him. Perhaps Gotrek sensed this and it was the reason for his withdrawn mood. Felix reached over and squeezed the girl’s hand.
‘What are you looking for, Herr Gurnisson?’ Kirsten asked the dwarf. Gotrek did not turn to look at her but continued to stare longingly at the mountains. At first it seemed as if the Trollslayer would not reply but eventually he pointed to the outline of one cloud-swathed mountain.
‘Karaz-a-Karak,’ he said. ‘The Everpeak. My home.’ His voice was softer than Felix had ever heard it and it held a depth of longing that was heart-breaking.
Gotrek turned to look at them and his face held such a look of dumb, brute misery that Felix had to look away. The dwarf’s crest of hair was flattened by the rain and his face was bleak and weary. Kirsten reached past to adjust Gotrek’s cloak about his shoulders, as she would have done for a lost child.
Gotrek tried to give her his ferocious, insular scowl but he could not hold it and he just smiled sadly, revealing his missing teeth. Felix wondered whether the dwarf had come all this way just for that fleeting glimpse of the mountain. He noticed a drop of water hanging from the end of the Trollslayer’s nose. It might have been a teardrop or it might just have been rain.
They continued southward.
‘We can’t leave them just yet,’ Felix said, cursing himself for being such a coward.
Gotrek turned and looked towards the tumbled-down fortified mansion which they had found. He could see smoke rising in plumes from the chimneys of the recently cleared building.
‘Why not, manling? They’ve found clear ground, cultivatable land and the ruins of that old fort. With a little work it should prove quite defensible.’
Felix strove desperately to find a reason. He was surprised that he was trying so hard to delay the moment when he had to tell Gotrek of their parting. The way Gotrek looked at him disapprovingly reminded him of his father at his sternest. He felt once more the need to make excuses, and he hated himself for it.
‘Gotrek, we’re only a hundred miles north of where the Thunder River flows into Blood River. Beyond that is the Badlands and a horde of wolf-riders.’
‘I know that, manling. We’ll have to cross there on our way to Karak Eight Peaks.’
Tell him. Just say it, Felix argued with himself. But he couldn’t.
‘We can’t go just yet. You’ve seen the bodies we found in the mansion. Bones cracked for the marrow. The walls have been burned. Dieter has found the spoor of wolf-riders nearby. The place is not defensible. With your help, with the help of a dwarf, it could be made so.’
Gotrek laughed. ‘I don’t know why you think that.’
‘Because dwarfs are good with stone and fortifications. Everyone knows that.’
Gotrek glanced back at the mansion thoughtfully. He seemed to be remembering a former life. A frown creased his brow and he rested his forehead against the shaft of his axe.
‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually, ‘that even a dwarf could make this place defensible. Typical human workmanship, manling. Shoddy, very shoddy.’
‘It could be made safe. You know it could, Gotrek.’
‘Perhaps. It has been a long time since I worked with stone, manling.’
‘A dwarf never forgets such things. And I’m sure the baron will pay handsomely for your services.’
Gotrek sniffed suspiciously. ‘It had better be more than he pays his mercenaries.’
Felix grinned. ‘Come on. Let’s find out.’
By the moons’ light he picked his way through the cluster of hovels which lay in the lee of the new wooden walls surrounding the mansion. He felt at peace for the first time in a long while. Even the night-time noise of the camp was reassuring. The fort had been completed before the first snows; it looked as if the settlers would have enough grain to last the winter and seed a new crop in the spring.
He listened to the cattle lowing and the measured tread of the sentry on the walls. He looked up and saw that a light still gleamed in the window of Manfred’s room. Felix thought about his convoluted destiny. Not a place I would ever have imagined myself settling down, a fortified village on the edge of nowhere. I wonder what my father would think if he could see me now, about to become a farmer. He’d probably die of mortification. Felix smiled.
It was exciting to be here. There was a sense of something about to begin, a community still taking shape. And I will have a place in shaping that community, he thought. This is the perfect place to start a new life.
He walked on towards the guard tower, where he knew he would find Gotrek. The dwarf was unable to sleep, restless and ready to move on. He liked to while away the night watches in the tower he himself had designed.
Felix clambered up the ladder and through the trapdoor in the floor of the guardroom. He found Gotrek staring out into the night. The sight of the dwarf made Felix nervous but he steeled himself, determined to tell the dwarf the truth.
‘Can’t sleep either, eh, manling?’
Felix managed a nod. When he had rehearsed his speech to himself it all had seemed simple. He would explain the situation rationally, tell Gotrek he was staying with Kirsten and await the dwarf’s response. Now it was more difficult, his tongue felt thick and it was as if the words had stuck in his throat.
He found himself flinching inwardly at all the accusations he imagined Gotrek would make: that he was a coward and an oathbreaker; that this was the thanks a dwarf got for saving a man’s life. Felix had to admit that he had sworn an oath to follow Gotrek and record his doom. Certainly, he had sworn it while drunk and full of gratitude to a dwarf who had just pulled him from under the hooves of the Emperor’s cavalry, but an oath was still an oath, as Gotrek was wont to point out.
He moved over to stand beside the Trollslayer. They stared out over the ditch that surrounded the outer wall and which was sided with sharpened stakes. The only easy way over it was the bridge of earth that this tower overlooked.
‘Gotrek…’
‘Yes, manling?’
‘You’ve built well,’ Felix said.
Gotrek looked up and smiled grimly. ‘We’ll soon find out,’ he said. Felix looked to where the Trollslayer pointed. The fields were dark with wolf-riders. Gotrek raised the alarm horn to his lips and sounded a blast.
Felix ducked as an arrow splintered into the wood of the parapet in front of him. He reached down and took a crossbow from the fingers of the dead guard. The man lay with an arrow through his throat. Felix fumbled for a quarrel and strained to cock the weapon. He eventually slipped a bolt into place.
He leapt up. Fire arrows flashed overhead like falling stars. From behind him came the stench of burning. Felix looked down from the parapet. Wolf-riders circled the camp as a wolf-pack circles a herd of cattle. He could see the green skin of the riders glistening in the light of their burning arrows. The flames highlighted their jaundiced eyes and yellowish tusks.
There must be hundreds of them, Felix thought. He thanked Sigmar for the ditch and the spikes and the wooden walls that Gotrek had made them build. At the time it had seemed needless labour and the dwarf had been roundly cursed. Now it seemed barely adequate provision.
Felix aimed at a wolf-rider who was drawing a bead on the tower with one pitch-soaked arrow. He pulled the trigger on the crossbow. The bolt blurred across the night and took the goblin in the chest. It fell backwards in the saddle. Its blazing arrow was launched directly into the sky, as if aimed at the moons.
Felix ducked back and reloaded. With his back to the parapet he could see down into the courtyard. A human chain of women and children carried buckets from the rain-barrels to the flaming hovels, struggling vainly to extinguish the fires. He saw one old woman go down and others flinch as arrows fell around them like dark rain.
Felix turned and fired again, missing. The night was filled with a cacophony of sound. The screams of the dying, the howling of wolves, the deadly cutting whisper of arrows and crossbow bolts. He heard Gotrek singing happily in dwarfish, and somewhere far off the baron’s dry, rasping voice giving orders in a firm, calm voice. Dogs barked, horses whinnied in terror, children cried. Felix wished he were deaf.
He heard the scratching of claws on wood nearby and lurched to his feet. He looked over the parapet and almost lost his face. The jaws of a wolf snapped shut below him. The creature had leapt the ditch, ignoring the stakes which were covered by the bodies of its fallen comrades.
He smelled the stench of its breath as it fell, saw its rider hanging on grimly as it gathered itself for another spring. Felix let fly with a crossbow bolt. It thunked into the creature’s chest, and the wolf fell. Its rider rolled clear and scuttled off into the night.
Felix saw Frau Winter climb up into the watchtower, to stand at Gotrek’s shoulder. He hoped she would do something. In the howling chaos of the night it was impossible to tell, but Felix sensed that things were not going well for the defenders. The ditch seemed to be filling with the bodies of their attackers, and the guards were falling like flies to the incessant barrages of arrows in spite of the protection of the parapet.
When Felix looked again, he saw a group of heavily armoured orcs, bearing a sharpened tree trunk, racing towards the gate. A few crossbow bolts landed among them but others were deflected by the shields of those who ran alongside the rammers. He heard the juddering sound of the tree’s impact on the gate.
Felix fumbled for his sword, preparing to leap from the walls into the courtyard and hold the gate. If it fell, all he could do was sell his life dearly; they were too badly outnumbered to delay the besiegers long. He felt fear twist in his gut. He hoped Kirsten was safe.
Frau Winter’s calm, clear voice rang out. She chanted like a priest at prayer. Then the lightning came.
Searing blue light leapt through the night. The air stank of ozone. The hair on the back of Felix’s neck prickled. He tried to watch as the lightning flashed among the ram-carriers. He heard them scream. Some danced back, capering like clowns, dropping the treetrunk. They fell to earth, bodies smouldering. The disgusting burned-meat smell of scorched flesh filled the air.
Again and again the lightning lashed out. Wolves howled fearfully, the hail of arrows slackened, the sickening smell increased. Felix looked at Frau Winter. Her face was drawn and pale, her hair stood upright. As her face alternated black and blue in the nightmarish flashes, she looked daemonic. He had not suspected any human being could wield such power.
The wolf-riders and the orc infantry retreated, howling in terror, to beyond the reach of those appalling thunderbolts. Felix felt relieved. Then he noticed, off in the distance, a glow of light.
He peered into the darkness, making out an old greenskin shaman. A red nimbus played around his skull, illuminating the wolfskin head-dress and the bone-staff he held in one gnarled claw. A beam of blood-coloured light flickered from his head and lashed out at Frau Winter.
Felix saw the sorceress moan and totter back. Gotrek reached out to support her. He watched her grimace in pain, her face a pale m
ask. She gritted her teeth, and sweat beaded her brow. She seemed to be locked in a supernatural contest of wills with the old shaman.
The wolf-riders rallied around their braver leaders. Cautiously they began to return, although their renewed attacks lacked the wild ferocity of their initial onslaught. All through the night the struggle continued.
In the first light of dawn, Felix approached Gotrek where he stood with Manfred, Dieter and Frau Winter. The woman looked weary beyond endurance. People crowded around her, gazing at her in awe.
‘How are we doing?’ Felix asked Gotrek.
‘As long as she holds out, we can. If she can call the lightning.’ Manfred looked at Gotrek and nodded agreement.
There was a commotion from the other side of the courtyard.
‘Frau Winter, come quickly,’ Doctor Stockhausen called. ‘The baron has been gravely wounded. An arrow, maybe poisoned.’ Wearily, the sorceress walked into the mansion. From the crowd Felix saw Kirsten move to help her. He smiled at her, glad they were both alive.
With a sound like sudden thunder, the gate rocked back on its hinges. Another blow like that and it will fall, Felix thought. He looked over at Gotrek who was testing the edge of his axe experimentally with his thumb. On this second night of the siege the Trollslayer was looking forward to the hand-to-hand combat to come. Felix felt a tug on his shoulder. It was Hef. The big man looked deathly afraid.
‘Where is Frau Winter?’ he asked. He nodded at the gate. ‘That’s no battering ram. That’s the staff of that old devil. He’ll have all our heads for his lodge afore the night’s out unless the witch can stop him!’
Felix looked from Hef to the rest of the pitifully depleted band of defenders. He saw tired warriors; wounded men who could barely carry a sword, teenage boys and girls armed with pitchforks and other improvised weapons. From outside the howling of the wolves was deafening. Only Gotrek looked calm.
