Gotrek & Felix- the Third Omnibus - William King & Nathan Long

by Warhammer

  ‘Come on, Ranulfsson,’ said Gotrek, gruff. ‘Work to be done.’

  Hamnir nodded and raised his head, face grim. ‘Right.’ He crossed to the lever room door. ‘Rassmussons, hold the other guard room.’ He started trying keys in the lock. ‘And one of you, lock Narin into the lever room, in case… in case they get through you.’

  ‘Aye, prince,’ said Arn, saluting. He sprinted across to the left-hand guardroom with his brothers, as the thunder of running boots shook the room.

  ‘Thirty!’ screamed Ragar, as the brothers formed up in their door.

  ‘Galin,’ said Hamnir, not looking up from the lock. ‘When I find the key, you will lock me in, and then help the Slayer.’

  Galin nodded. ‘Right.’

  ‘You know what to do, Gurnisson?’ Hamnir called.

  Gotrek nodded. ‘Keep your sorry hide whole, as usual.’ He plodded to the hallway door. ‘Manling, fall in.’

  ‘Twenty!’

  Felix took up a position to the left of the door and looked at Gotrek. The Slayer swayed slightly as he stood.

  ‘All right, Gotrek?’ he asked.

  ‘Never better,’ said Gotrek, and looked back at Hamnir. ‘Fifteen minutes you said, Ranulfsson?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hamnir.

  Gotrek nodded and faced the door, raising his axe. ‘I can stand anything for fifteen minutes.’

  With a deafening clatter, the orc horde filled the end of the corridor like a green flood. Gotrek roared and swung as they pushed in at the guardroom doors, butchering them as they came. The press of the orcs behind shoved those at the front into Gotrek’s axe ready or not. He cut them into flying green pieces.

  Felix stabbed into them from the side, hamstringing and blinding them. Through the surging mass of sinewy green arms and armoured green torsos, he caught glimpses of the brothers Rassmusson swinging crimsoned picks in the door to the other guard room, digging into orc flesh with the same tireless swings they had used to cut through the wall to the vault.

  At least a hundred orcs choked the end of the hall, and no doubt hundreds more packed the long hall behind them, trying to get to the fight. Fortunately, the doors to the guardrooms were only as wide as a single dwarf, and the orcs could only squeeze in one or two at a time. Gotrek stood a pace back, so he had an unobstructed swing, and split heads and chests, while Felix jabbed at feet, wrists and eyes, before they reached him.

  There was a cry of triumph from Hamnir as he found the key to the lever room at last. Felix was too busy to look back, but he heard a door open and clang closed, and then Galin joined them, hewing from the right side of the door as Felix did from the left.

  Fifteen minutes? Felix eyed Gotrek uneasily. Could the Slayer do it, weary as he was? Could the brothers Rassmusson? The Slayer’s axe never slowed, but he was heavy on his feet, slipping in orc gore, and the savage, bared-teeth grin that usually spread across his face in battle was missing, replaced with a tight-jawed scowl of grim determination.

  And would it be only fifteen minutes? What if Gorril encountered unexpected obstacles? What if his force was being ambushed by orcs? What if, Sigmar forbid, Gorril hadn’t heard the horn at all? It might be that there was no help coming. Then, no matter how long Gotrek lasted, it wouldn’t be long enough. The tide of orcs was never-ending. Eventually, they would force their way into the guardrooms and slaughter them all.

  Felix chuckled bitterly. Orcs or no, here was the sort of death that Gotrek had longed for – a heroic fight against overwhelming odds, in pursuit of the noblest of causes. Of course, as always, Felix was as trapped in Gotrek’s grand death as the Slayer was, and the chances of surviving in order to write the epic poem of his legendary doom were slim to none. One day, he would have to figure out how to chronicle Gotrek’s death from afar – if there were any more days after today.

  There was a bellow of pain and then a cry of ‘Ragar!’ from the corridor.

  Felix looked through the crush of orcs to the opposite guardroom. Ragar was falling, his head half severed, blood matting his beard. His brothers butchered the orc who had killed him and fought on.

  Felix did the same; there was no time to grieve. He moaned with weariness. It felt like hours had passed, not minutes. His arms ached from stabbing and hacking. The orcs crawled over the bodies of their slain comrades to attack Gotrek with stoic blankness, as if their own lives meant nothing – as if they knew they were the drops of water that wear down a rock. The bodies inside the door were up to Gotrek’s shoulders.

  Gotrek was weaving with each blow, and Felix and Galin had to do more and more of his blocking for him.

  ‘How long?’ the Slayer rasped a while later.

  ‘Ten minutes gone, I think,’ wheezed Galin, deflecting a mace, ‘maybe more.’ He looked over his shoulder to the lever room door, which had a grilled window in it. ‘Any sign of them, prince?’

  ‘No sign,’ came Hamnir’s voice, hollowly.

  There was commotion in the hall – an orc voice chittering commands, and orcs shifting around.

  Gotrek choked out a laugh. ‘Grimnir, that’s all we need.’

  Felix risked a look around the doorframe and gaped. Ten orcs, armed with dwarf long-guns, were forming up back to back in the centre of the wide corridor, five facing each guardroom door, as other orcs got out of their way.

  ‘Find a way to kill them, manling,’ grunted Gotrek. ‘If I go out there, the rest will come in here, and if I stay here…’

  ‘I have it,’ said Galin. He backed from the door and ran to the gun rack at the far wall. ‘Wait there.’

  ‘And where do you think I’d be going?’ Gotrek asked through his teeth.

  Felix looked back and saw Galin gathering up powder horns.

  The orcs primed and loaded their guns like boys on their first day of gunnery drill – clumsy and slow, spilling powder all over the place, but at last they were ready. Their commander growled an order. They raised the long-guns to their shoulders and aimed.

  ‘Olifsson!’ shouted Gotrek.

  ‘One moment!’

  ‘Haven’t got a damned–’

  The orc captain dropped his hand and the orcs fired at Gotrek and the Rassmussons, utterly unconcerned about hitting their fellows who stood in the way.

  Two of the guns exploded, their barrels ripping apart at the stock and blowing shrapnel and flame into the faces of the orcs around them. Four collapsed, skulls shattered. Three guns fizzled and failed to fire at all, but five got off shots. Two balls whizzed towards the Rassmussons, three towards Gotrek. One buried itself in the back of an orc. One whistled over his crest. Gotrek swung his axe up and the last spanged off it, and then bonged into the gong.

  In the opposite door, Karl staggered back, clutching his arm. An orc cut him down before he could recover. Arn died a second later, alone and overwhelmed.

  ‘The Rassmussons are down!’ called Felix. ‘The orcs have the other guardroom.’

  Hamnir cursed from the lever room.

  Having cleared the opposite doorway, all the remaining orc gunners turned to Gotrek’s side and began to reload as, behind them, their comrades swarmed into the left hand guardroom and started hacking at the lever room door.

  ‘Hurry, curse you, Olifsson!’ called Gotrek.

  ‘Just coming!’ said Galin. He ran back to them holding a pair of powder horns with holes in their sides, stuffed with bits of paper wadding. He shook them. They rattled. ‘Added some shot.’

  He lit the wadding of one with his lamp and heaved it over the heads of the orcs in the door. It hit the floor near the orc gunners, and went off with a concussive crack and an eruption of smoke and flame. Orcs fell, howling and coughing, with holes in their legs and guts, but not as many as Felix could have wished. Five of the gunners were still up, though one of them was on fire and flailing. The captain chopped it down and shoved it aside, roaring at the others to fire.

  An orc slashed at Galin as he tried to light the second grenade. He danced back and tried again.

&nbs
p; ‘Throw it!’ Gotrek shouted.

  The wadding caught. Galin threw the horn just as three of the orcs finished loading, and raised their guns. The powder horn exploded, ripping into them.

  It was a second too late. The orcs had got their shots off first.

  Gotrek staggered and dropped to one knee, catching himself with his axe. There was a bloody trench along his outer thigh.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Felix blocked desperately as an orc swung for the Slayer’s unprotected skull. The cleaver screeched along his sword and missed Gotrek’s face by a hair’s breadth. Felix hooked Gotrek under his arm with his free hand and tried to haul him up. He was ridiculously heavy. More were coming in. Galin fought two.

  Gotrek found his footing again and severed the arm of the orc with the cleaver, but the damage was done. There were five orcs in the room, and more pushing in behind them. The doorway was lost. Felix, Gotrek and Galin backed and fought in a line, trying to keep the orcs from encircling them. Gotrek’s left leg was slick with blood.

  Felix heard a tinny shout from inside the lever room – Narin yelling through the speaking tube from across the hall. ‘They’re nearly through to me! The door won’t hold long!’

  ‘Courage, Ironskin!’ called Hamnir. ‘Any minute now.’

  There was a smash behind Felix. He glanced back. The blade of a cleaver stuck through the door to the murder rooms and turrets. The orcs from above were breaking through. They would soon be surrounded.

  ‘Where in Grungni’s name is Gorril?’ grunted Galin, blocking an orc sword.

  ‘Not here,’ said Gotrek. He was weaving like a drunk, barely able to stand on his mangled leg. He swung at an orc and missed. Felix nearly dropped his sword in shock. Gotrek never missed. The orc pressed forwards. Felix stabbed it in the neck. Gotrek gutted it, but four more had got past. Gotrek, Felix and Galin had orcs on three sides of them. They were too tired. There were too many.

  Then, over the clangour of the fight, very faint, they heard a horn, drowned out almost immediately by muted gunfire.

  ‘A horn!’ said Galin.

  ‘They’re in the canyon. They’re running!’ cried Hamnir from the lever room. ‘Narin! At the ready!’

  ‘Ready,’ came the metallic reply.

  ‘Oh Grimnir, the crossfire!’ choked Hamnir. ‘So many down. They’re… Open the outer door. Pull! Pull!’

  An enormous grating and rumbling shook the room as the outer door slowly began to lower, and then came a deafening boom as it sank home. The orcs in the guardroom looked behind them at the sound, and Gotrek, Felix and Galin cut down five of them. The battering stopped behind the door to the murder room, and they heard the orcs running back up the stairs to their stations in the turrets.

  A second volley of cannon and small-arms fire resounded through the walls from the canyon.

  ‘Now the inner! Pull, Narin!’ came Hamnir’s voice. ‘Run lads, run!’

  Another shuddering rumble and a roaring of wind, and the guardroom filled with cold air and the smell of gunsmoke. As the second door boomed to a stop, the wind rose and steadied to a deafening trumpet pitch that vibrated the whole corridor, as if blown through the throat of an enormous horn. The orcs twitched and cringed at the noise.

  Hamnir roared from the lever room. ‘The horn of Hirn! Now they will fear us!’

  The orcs in the corridor were turning and backing away from the open door, their commanders shouting at them to form up. They were too late.

  With horns blowing and banners waving, the dwarfs of Karak Hirn charged through the open doors eight abreast, hammerers at the fore, and punched the disorganised orcs back like a gunner ramming a charge down a cannon’s mouth.

  Gotrek, Felix and Galin butchered the last five orcs in the guardroom as Gorril’s force continued to pour in, rank after rank of sturdy warriors howling for orc blood.

  As the last orc toppled, Gotrek staggered back and sank down onto a stool by the guardroom table. His axe head thudded on the stone floor. ‘Grungni, I need a drink!’ he said. His left leg, below the trench the bullet had cut, was red to his boot.

  ‘Galin!’ called Hamnir from the lever room. ‘Open the door!’

  Galin hurried to the lever room door and let Hamnir out. The prince surveyed the heaps of orc bodies in the room, and shook his head. He looked up at the three of them. ‘Your deeds today will be recorded in the Book of Karak Hirn. I swear it.’

  Gorril stepped out of the blur of dwarfs rushing past the guardroom, leading a company of his clan brothers. He saluted Hamnir, his fist over his heart. ‘My prince,’ he said gravely. ‘I am glad to see you alive. Your army goes to gain a foothold in the grand concourse, and then awaits your orders.’

  ‘And I am glad to see you, cousin,’ said Hamnir, saluting in turn. ‘We will need dwarfs here to open the murder room doors and take the orcs within. They must also close the gate when the column is in. There is not the glory to be had here that there will be in the concourse, but our rear must be protected.’

  ‘Of course, prince,’ said Gorril. He turned to his clan brothers. ‘You heard him, Urlo. Divide up the lads and take the murder rooms.’

  ‘Aye, Gorril.’ Urlo saluted and began barking orders to his companions.

  Hamnir glanced at Galin. ‘Stonemonger, take the keys from Arn’s body and let Narin out of the other lever room.’

  ‘Aye, prince.’ Galin saluted and stepped into the hall.

  ‘And you, Gurnisson,’ Hamnir continued, turning to Gotrek. ‘I command you to have no more to do with this battle. The physicians will dress your wounds and you will take a well-deserved rest. You too, Herr Jaeger.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Gotrek.

  ‘Now come, Gorril,’ said Hamnir, stepping to the door with the tall dwarf. ‘Have you sent thunderers to the second-floor balconies? And are the Ironbreakers on their way through the secondary tunnels to come at the orc flanks? Have the miners gone to seal the doors to the mines?’

  ‘All as you ordered, Prince Hamnir,’ said Gorril. ‘They are to secure each passage as they go, so the orcs may not get in behind us.’

  Hamnir hailed a mule cart just coming through the front gate. ‘Surgeons! Here! See to those within the guardrooms. The Slayer has been shot and is losing blood.’

  ‘Aye, prince.’

  The cart stopped and two dwarf surgeons bustled in, field kits in hand. One got busy patching up the minor cuts and scrapes that Felix had collected, while the other cleaned and dressed Gotrek’s leg wound. As they worked, Urlo and Gorril’s clan brothers unlocked the door to the murder rooms and turrets, and charged up the stairs within. The sounds of battle began to rage above them.

  ‘You’re lucky, Slayer,’ Gotrek’s surgeon said as he began wrapping his leg. ‘Missed the bone entirely. Stay off it for a month or two, keep it clean, and it’ll heal just fine.’

  ‘A month?’ growled Gotrek. ‘I’ll give you another minute before I use your guts to tie it off. Now hurry. There’s a battle to fight.’

  ‘Really, Slayer,’ said the surgeon. ‘I wouldn’t advise it.’ Nonetheless, he wrapped the wound in record time.

  Gotrek surged up almost before he had tightened the last knot, and limped stoically towards the hall. ‘Come, manling,’ he said, ‘I want to find that wax-skinned tusk-mouth in the black armour. An orc like that might almost be a challenge.’

  ‘Not going to listen to Hamnir?’ asked Felix, though he knew it would do no good. He followed the Slayer wearily.

  ‘I swore I’d protect him,’ said Gotrek, ‘not follow his orders.’

  Galin and Narin fell in with them as they left the other guardroom, their wounds also bound. All around them, surgeons and victuallers were unloading their carts and setting up cots and trestle tables in preparation for caring for the wounded and weary.

  As Gotrek passed a cart piled with barrels and crates, he snatched up a small keg, wrenched the plug out with his fingers and upended it over his mouth, gulping down several pints of the golden brew a
s it splashed over his beard and crest. At last, he lowered it with a contented sigh and held it out to the others. ‘Anyone else?’

  Galin and Narin both took and lifted the keg in turn, though with more difficulty, and drank their fill. Felix took it up after them, glad that it was nearly empty, for he would never have been able to raise it full. Gotrek took it from him when he’d finished, had another guzzle, and then slammed it down on the cart and limped on, smacking his lips.

  The corridor ended at a high, columned archway, beyond which wide, shallow steps descended into an enormous, marble-floored hall, the grand concourse of Karak Hirn, the central hall from which all the cere-monial and public chambers of the hold stemmed. It was three storeys tall, and pillars as big and round as castle turrets ran down either side of it, holding up an intricately carved, cross-vaulted ceiling.

  It was swarming with orcs.

  The dwarf army held the area around the steps, ranks of doughty warriors, Ironbreakers and miners lined up at their base, while thunderers stood and knelt in two lines on the top step, firing over the heads of their brethren below. The dwarfs were already vastly outnumbered, and more orcs were pouring into the concourse through a dozen archways.

  A tattoo of explosions came from beyond the battle. Felix looked up and saw that more thunderers had taken up positions on two balconies, one on the huge room’s right wall, one on the left, above and behind the main body of the orcs. Twenty orcs fell at this volley, and there was another right behind it as a second rank of dwarfs stepped up to the rail of the balcony and the first stepped back to reload. A third rank followed the second, and then the first was ready again. Orcs fell like cut wheat. The thunderers’ speed and marksmanship was awe-inspiring.

  Directly below where Felix stood with Gotrek, Hamnir, and the others, the huge pale orc in the odd armour, and his similarly dressed and milk-skinned retinue, were smashing Karak Hirn’s longbeards to pieces. The rancid reek of them was almost blinding. The white-haired dwarfs fought them valiantly, eyes watering from the smell as they struck again and again, but the orcs were incredibly strong, and what was worse, disciplined. For every white orc that toppled, three longbeards had their heads caved in. The longbeards would never break, but neither, it appeared would the orcs. And none could touch the huge warboss. Three longbeards bashed at him, landing blow after blow, but he took their worst and gave back murder. A white-haired dwarf staggered back, clutching his neck, his long beard a bright crimson tabard. It was old Ruen. He fell on his face before the steps.