Trollslayer

by William King

  ‘Kat. Katerina.’

  Justine nodded, surprised that she felt nothing whatsoever at this information.

  In a flash of insight, she finally understood the ways of daemons. She saw all the tests, all the rituals, all the sacrifices for what they were, preparations for this one crucial moment. She knew now that all of this killing, and all of the bloodletting had been for a purpose. It had been a process which had changed her into something other than the human she had once been. She had been tempered by the process the way a blade is tempered by a master smith. She finally understood, after all the violence and all the massacres, that a human being could get used to anything, even to the destiny that made them a Chaos Warrior. She knew that at this moment, she could turn away from the child, that it would make no difference, she had finally and truthfully confirmed to herself that she was on the path of damnation. Killing the girl would make no difference now. She could do it if she wanted to, but it was meaningless – a piece of book-keeping, nothing more. She had passed the point of no return when she had decided to kill her a few moments ago. Still, she thought, it was always best to leave things tidy. With no more feeling now than if she was about to chop a log of wood, she raised her blade high.

  And there was a flash of pain in her side as something crashed into her.

  Felix leaped, crossing the distance between himself and the Chaos Warrior in one bound. He smashed into the woman just as she raised her blade, overbalancing her and sending them both toppling to the ground. Knowing that he would never get another opportunity he lashed out with his blade, piercing the woman’s side. She gave no sign of pain beyond a small grunt.

  As they rolled over on the trampled earth, locked in a deadly embrace, Felix knew at once that he was overmatched. The woman reached up with mailed hands and grasped him by the throat. He reached up to try to dislodge them, grateful at least that she had dropped her blade, and at once knew that he had made a mistake. The Chaos Warrior was far stronger than he, possessed of a supernatural strength which was as superior to his own as his was to that of a child. He fought to slacken her grip but it was like trying to pry loose the fingers of a troll.

  She was on top of him now, and the weight of her armour knocked all the breath from him. He rolled, trying to raise his shoulders from the earth, to throw her off, but it was useless. She seemed to anticipate his every move with ease. In that moment, he knew he was going to die. He was faced with an opponent who was simply too strong for him, and Gotrek was not there to save him.

  Darkness pressed on him, sparks flashing before his eyes. Somewhere in the distance he heard Gotrek’s battle-cry and part of him, infinitely remote and infinitely detached, thought it ironic that the Slayer would witness his doom, and not the other way around.

  ‘Now, mortal, you die,’ the woman said calmly, and her hands began to twist his neck.

  Felix strained as hard as he could, as the terrible pressure mounted, knowing that if he gave way his neck would snap like a twig, and death would come to him instantaneously. He felt the veins bulge and muscles began to tear as he tried to resist, knowing that it was futile and that in a moment it would all be over. The darkness deepened. He saw everything as a shadow. It was quiet save for the thunder of his breath within his chest and the distant tolling of his heartbeat. He knew he was beaten, that he could take no more, and his muscles started to relax in surrender.

  Kat looked out on the terrible battle. She knew the Chaos Warrior had been about to kill her. She knew that Felix had tried to save her. She knew that the black-armoured woman was going to kill him. She knew she must do something.

  Something glittered on the ground nearby. She saw it was the black sword which the Chaos Warrior had dropped. Its edge glittered brightly in the firelight. Perhaps there was something she could do. She reached out and tried to pick it up but it was too heavy. Maybe if she used both hands. Slowly, the blade started to rise. It twisted in her hands. The runes on its blade glowed bright red and she sensed the terrible power within it.

  Now if only she could–

  Suddenly Felix felt the terrible pressure cease. The Chaos Warrior looked down at him and then further, at her own chest. Felix followed her burning gaze and saw the blade of black metal which protruded there. The red runes glowed. Smouldering blood dripped from the wound and evaporated into poisonous smoke as it hit the ground. The Chaos Warrior stood upright, reeling to her feet, and turned to look in the direction the blow had come from.

  Frantically Felix forced himself to move. Leadenly his limbs responded. He looked around seeking his blade, and reached out to grab it. His fingers folded round the hilt and he tried to raise it. It felt like he was trying to lift the weight of that great cannon outside the gate, but somehow he forced himself to do it. He pushed himself upright and saw that there was no one else around, only the Chaos Warrior, himself and Kat. The woman’s eyes were locked on the girl’s, her lips twisted into a terrible ironic smile. Mad laughter bubbled from her lips. She took a step forward, the blade still protruding from her chest and Kat took a step backwards, eyes wide with horror and fear.

  Slowly it filtered into Felix’s brain what must have happened. Kat had lifted the heavy blade and driven it into the warrior’s back while they fought. She had saved his life. Now it was up to him to save hers. Slowly he forced his battered body to move. He dragged himself along the ground after the Chaos Warrior.

  The woman’s step faltered. Slowly she began to topple forwards.

  Justine laughed inside even as the pain ate away at her consciousness. It was the final terrible joke. She had been killed by the one she had come to kill. A little girl had succeeded where mighty warriors had failed.

  It was true, as the daemon had always said. A warrior had not killed her. Her own child had done it instead. She stumbled forward and fell into the waiting darkness.

  Felix watched as the vile Chaos Warrior fell. Flesh melted, decomposing with horrid rapidity to leave only a reeking skeleton within the black armour. Somehow, without being told, Felix knew that he looked upon the body of someone who had died a long time ago. The sight of it made him want to vomit.

  Something wet hit his face. The storm had broken at last and rain was starting to fall. Sizzling sounds from nearby told him that the raindrops were at war with the blaze. Good; perhaps the town would not burn to the ground after all.

  Suddenly Kat was there, huddling beside him. ‘Is it over now?’ she asked.

  Felix listened to the sounds of carnage all around him and nodded.

  ‘It soon will be,’ he said softly. ‘One way or another.’

  Felix slumped on a tree-stump looking back towards the town. Messner and Kat sat nearby, watching him reproachfully. Both of them thought he should not be up and about. His throat was still bruised and he had trouble speaking and eating, but it looked like he was going to be all right. He was just grateful to still be alive.

  So were the two hundred or so villagers who had survived the great battle and its aftermath. He could still hear them chanting prayers of thanksgiving for their deliverance in the Temple of Sigmar.

  A knight rode by, one of the mighty force despatched by the Duke in answer to Messner’s message. He had the head of a beastman spiked on his lance. Felix and Messner watched him pass, and Felix could tell that the man was thinking the same as he was. There was a faint look of contempt on the woodsman’s face. It was all very well for the knight to pose with his trophy now – but where were they when the real fighting was being done? The conquering heroes had arrived the morning after the battle.

  ‘So you found the cannon?’ he asked. His voice came out in a croaking whisper.

  ‘Yes,’ Messner said. ‘It’s an eerie thing. They say it feels as warm to the touch as flesh. Dark sorcery involved, for sure. We’ve sent for a priest to exorcise it. If that doesn’t work, the old duke will send a wizard.’

  ‘But the beasts are
all dead.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve hunted down every one of them. Gotrek just got back at dawn. He says that’s the last.’

  The two of them were just talking to keep Kat quiet and they both knew it. Neither wanted to let her get a word in. Still, this news gladdened Felix. It seemed that the beasts had lost heart and fled when word of their foul leader’s death had got out. The rout had turned into a massacre as the foresters had pursued them. Now it looked like Kat had saved the whole town by her actions. She was a heroine and everybody told her that. Right now, she didn’t sound much like one.

  ‘I still want to go with you,’ the girl said. Even after two days of argument she hadn’t given up.

  ‘You can’t, Kat. Gotrek and I are bound for dangerous places; we can’t take you. Stay with Messner.’ He didn’t want to tell her there was a price on his and Gotrek’s heads. Not with a ranger present.

  ‘You do that, girl,’ Messner added. ‘There’s a place for you here with me and Magda and the kids. And you’ll have friends among the other little ones, for sure.’

  Kat looked at Felix imploringly. He shook his head and forced his features to remain stern and calm. He was not sure how much longer he could manage it when he heard the Slayer clump up. Gotrek grinned evilly. From his look Felix guessed he had added to the huge tally of deaths he had inflicted in the battle.

  ‘Time’s a-wasting, manling. We’d best be off.’

  Felix got up slowly. Messner advanced and shook hands. Kat hugged first Felix and then the Slayer. Messner had to pull her away in the end.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said tearfully. ‘I’ll always remember you.’

  ‘You do that, little one,’ Gotrek said softly.

  They turned and walked away from Flensburg. The path was steep and the road rocky. Ahead lay Nuln and an uncertain future. At the top of the slope Felix turned and looked back. Below them Messner and Kat were two small figures, waving.

  THE MUTANT MASTER

  ‘It must sometimes occur to the readers of these pages that my companion and I were under some sort of curse. Without any effort on our part, and without any great desire on my part, we somehow managed to encounter all manner of worshippers of the Dark Ones. I myself have often suspected that we were somehow doomed to oppose their schemes without ever really understanding why. This sort of speculation never seemed to trouble the Slayer. He took all such events in his stride with a grunt and a fatalistic shrug, and dismissed any speculation along these lines as vain and useless philosophising. But I have thought long and hard on this matter, and it seems to me that if there is a power in this world which opposes the servants of Chaos, then perhaps it sometimes guided our steps, and even shielded us.

  Certainly, we often stumbled across the most outrageous and wicked schemes perpetrated by the most unlikely of evildoers…’

  — From My Travels with Gotrek, Vol. II,

  by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)

  When he heard the snap of the twig, Felix Jaeger froze on the spot. His hand groped instinctively for the hilt of his sword, as his keen eyes searched his surroundings and spotted nothing. It was useless, Felix knew – the light of the fading sun barely penetrated the thick canopy of leaves overhead and the forest’s dense undergrowth could have hidden the approach of a small army. He grimaced and ran his fingers nervously through his long blond hair. All of the peddler’s warnings came back to him in a flash.

  The old man had claimed there were mutants on the road ahead, packs of them, preying on all who travelled this route between Nuln and Fredericksburg. At the time, Felix had paid no attention to him, for the peddler had been attempting to sell him a shoddy amulet supposedly blessed by the Grand Theogonist himself, a sure protection for pilgrims and wanderers – or so the merchant had claimed. He had already bought a small throwing dagger in a concealable wrist sheath from the peddler, and he had not felt inclined to part with more money. Felix rubbed his forearm where the sheath chafed, making sure the knife was still secure.

  Felix wished he had the amulet now. It had most likely been a fake but at times like this any weary traveller on the dark roads of the Empire would feel the need for a little extra protection.

  ‘Hurry up, manling,’ Gotrek Gurnisson said. ‘There’s an inn in Blutdorf and my throat is as dry as the deserts of Araby.’

  Felix regarded his companion. No matter how many times he looked upon the dwarf, the Trollslayer’s squat ugliness never ceased to astonish him. There was no single element that made Gotrek so outstandingly repulsive, Felix decided. It wasn’t the missing teeth, the missing eye or the long beard filled with particles of food. It wasn’t the cauliflower ear or the quiltwork of old scars. It wasn’t even the smell. No, it was the combination of them all that did it.

  For all that, there was no denying that the Trollslayer presented a formidable appearance. Although Gotrek only came up to Felix’s chest, and a great deal of that height was made up of the huge dyed crest of red hair atop his shaved and tattooed skull, he was broader at the shoulders than a blacksmith. In one massive paw, he held a rune-covered axe that most men would have struggled to lift with both hands. When he shifted his massive head, the gold chain that ran from his nose to his ear jingled.

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ Felix said.

  ‘These woods are full of noises, manling. Birds chirp. Trees creak and animals scuttle everywhere.’ Gotrek spat a huge gob of phlegm onto the ground. ‘I hate woods. Always have. Remind me of elves.’

  ‘I thought I heard mutants. Just like the peddler told us about.’

  ‘That so?’ Gotrek showed his blackened teeth in what could have been a snarl or a smile, then he reached up and scratched under his eye-patch, rubbing the socket of his ruined left eye with his thumb. It was a deeply disturbing sight. Felix looked away.

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly.

  Gotrek turned to face the woods.

  ‘Any mutants there?’ he bellowed. ‘Come out and face my axe.’

  Felix cringed. It was just like the Trollslayer to tempt fate like this. He was sworn to seek death in battle with deadly monsters in order to atone for some unmentionable dwarfish sin, and he wasted no opportunity to complete that quest. Felix cursed the drunken night he had sworn his oath to follow the Trollslayer and record his doom in an epic poem.

  Almost in answer to Gotrek’s shout there was a further rustling in the undergrowth, as if a strong wind had disturbed the bushes – only there was no breeze. Felix kept his hand clasped on his sword hilt. There was definitely something there and it was getting closer.

  ‘I think you might be right, manling,’ Gotrek smiled nastily. It occurred to Felix that he had known there was something there all along.

  A horde of mutants erupted from the undergrowth, screaming oaths and curses and the vilest of obscenities. The sheer horror of their appearance threatened to overwhelm Felix’s mind. He saw a repulsive slimy-skinned creature that hopped along like a toad. Something vaguely female scuttled along on eight spidery legs. A creature with the head of a crow and greyish feathers screeched a challenge. Some of the mutants had transparent skin through which pulsing organs were visible. They brandished spears and daggers and what looked like rusty kitchen implements. One of them launched itself towards Felix, swinging a notched, blunt-edged cleaver.

  Felix reached up and caught the creature’s wrist, stopping the blade a moment before it crunched into his skull. He jabbed a knee into the monster’s groin. As it bent double, he kicked it in the head, knocking it over. Its greenish vomit spewed all over Felix’s boots before it rolled back into the undergrowth.

  In the brief respite, Felix ripped his blade from its scabbard, ready to lay about him. He need not have bothered.

  Gotrek’s mighty axe had already cleaved a path of red ruin through their attackers. With one blow he cut down three more. Bones splintered under the impact. Flesh parted before the razor-sharp edge
. The Trollslayer’s axe flashed again. Two halves of a severed torso flopped down, and, briefly unaware that it was already dead, tried to crawl away from each other. Gotrek’s axe completed its upswing, severing the head of another mutant.

  Appalled by the sudden carnage, the mutants fled. Some of them rushed past Felix into the woods on the far side, others turned and ran back into the dark undergrowth from which they had come.

  Felix looked at Gotrek speculatively, waiting to see what the Trollslayer did. The last thing he wanted was for them to separate and pursue the creatures into the darkening forest. Their victory had been too easy. It all smacked of a trap.

  ‘Must’ve sent the runts of this litter after us,’ Gotrek observed, spitting on a mutant corpse. Felix looked down to see the Trollslayer was right. Very few of the dead looked as if they would have come up to Gotrek’s chest, and none of them looked taller than the Trollslayer.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Felix said. ‘These things smell awful.’

  ‘Hardly worth the killing,’ Gotrek grumbled back. He sounded deeply disappointed.

  The Hanged Man was one of the most dispiriting inns Felix had ever visited. A tiny cheerless blaze flickered in the fireplace. The taproom smelled of damp. Mangy dogs gnawed at bones that looked as if they had been lost for generations in the carpet of filthy straw. The landlord was a villainous-looking individual, his face tracked with old scars, a massive hook protruding from the stump of his right hand. The potboy was a wall-eyed hunchback with an unfortunate habit of drooling into the beer as he poured it. The locals looked thoroughly miserable. Every one of them glanced at Felix as if he wanted to plunge a knife into the youth’s back but were just too depressed to summon up the energy.

  Felix had to admit that the inn was appropriate for the village it served. Blutdorf was as gloomy a place as he had ever seen. The mud huts looked ill-tended and about to collapse. The streets seemed somehow empty and menacing. When they had finally intimidated the drunken gatekeeper into letting them enter, weeping crones had watched them from every doorway. It was as if the whole place had been overcome with grief and lethargy.