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

by Warhammer

  They climbed broad stairs to the balconied corridor that ringed the grand concourse, and travelled past six breached clanholds until they came to a tall iron and stone door with the insignia of a diamond set above its lintel. The door was blackened with smoke, and chipped and dented as if from gunshots and hammer blows, but it was still intact.

  Hamnir looked upon it with longing eyes. He stepped forwards, and then turned to the crowd of dwarfs who had followed him there. ‘Are there any among you of the Diamondsmith clan? Do any of you have a key or know the clan secret to opening this door?’

  None of the dwarfs spoke up.

  ‘No Diamondsmiths save Thorgig and Kagrin escaped the hold, prince,’ said Gorril. ‘The rest locked themselves in, to the last dwarf.’

  Hamnir nodded and turned back to the door, drawing his axe. He reversed it and rapped an odd, syncopated tattoo on the door with the square back of the head. From years in the company of dwarfs, Felix knew what this must be, though he had never heard it used – the mine code of the dwarfs, a system for communicating through miles of tunnels with nothing but a hammer. The code was more jealously guarded than the dwarf language, for with it they could talk though walls and across enemy lines.

  Hamnir finished his short pattern and the assembled dwarfs waited for a response. None came. He rapped the door again, and again no response came. Gorril shifted, uncomfortable. Gotrek coughed. Hamnir set his jaw and raised his axe once more, but just as he was about to rap again, an uncertain tapping echoed through the door. It sounded as if the sender was just on the other side.

  Hamnir gasped and beat an excited response on the door.

  ‘Easy, scholar,’ said Gotrek. ‘You’re stuttering.’

  After a breathless silence, a slow reply came.

  ‘Valaya be praised!’ said Hamnir. He turned to the others. ‘Stand back. They’re opening the door.’

  The crowd moved back, murmuring their amazement. Hamnir and Gorril were all smiles, slapping each other on the back and chuckling, but Felix saw that Gotrek kept his hand on the haft of his axe, and his face was wary. Felix understood his caution. If the orcs could learn how to build dwarf traps and shoot long-guns, they might have learned anything.

  For a long moment nothing happened, and then there was a deep ‘thunk’ of stone bolts drawing back and the doors began to swing slowly out.

  The dwarfs held their breath, and more than one followed Gotrek’s example and lowered their hands to their axes, but when the doors boomed fully open, what faced Hamnir, Gotrek, Felix and the others through the huge arched door, was a handful of dwarfs so ragged and gaunt that it was hard to believe they still lived. Felix heard a horrified intake of breath behind him as the liberators gazed upon the liberated.

  Felix had never seen dwarfs so thin. Even in the direst circumstances, dwarfs remained relatively robust, but these poor souls looked at death’s door. The dwarf who stood to the fore, an axe hanging from his shaking hand, was practically a skeleton, his cheekbones jutting out above his grizzled and patchy beard like rock ledges. His doublet hung from his bony shoulders like a sack, loose and dirty. His hair and beard were brittle and dull.

  Hamnir cried out and stepped forwards, taking the dwarf’s bone-thin hand. ‘Thane Kirhaz Helmgard! You live!’

  ‘Prince Hamnir,’ Kirhaz whispered, his voice as weak as a candle flame at noon, ‘you have come.’

  ‘And by Grimnir, Grungni and Valaya, I am thankful beyond all words that we are not too late. Unless,’ he choked suddenly. ‘Unless we are too late, and you few are all that survive!’

  Kirhaz shook his head. ‘Some have died, but most are spared. We have been allowed to live.’

  Felix thought it was a funny way to put it, but Hamnir didn’t appear to notice.

  ‘And Ferga?’ he asked eagerly. ‘Does she live?’

  ‘Aye, Ferga lives,’ said Kirhaz.

  ‘The ancestors be praised!’ said Hamnir. He turned to the others. ‘Summon the physics and surgeons! Bring food and drink! Our cousins are in need.’

  More haggard dwarfs were appearing in the hall behind Kirhaz, shuffling forwards like slow-moving ghosts.

  ‘By the ancestors,’ said Hamnir, staring. ‘What you have endured.’

  He started forwards into the Diamondsmith hold. The others followed, calling out to old friends among the survivors and hurrying to them with glad cries and gentle embraces. The survivors met these greetings with wan smiles and blank stares. It seemed as if it hadn’t yet sunk in that they had been saved. Their eyes remained haunted and far away.

  Felix and Gotrek stepped with Hamnir and Kirhaz and the others into the central chamber of the clanhold. Frail dwarfs came out of arches and doors all around its perimeter, blinking like bears waking from hibernation.

  All at once, Hamnir shouted and hurried across the room to a starved looking dwarf maiden, her long hair ratty and unbraided, and her dress like a tent around her bony frame.

  ‘Ferga!’ cried Hamnir, taking up her hands and kissing them. ‘Ferga, beloved.’

  She stared at him uncertainly for a moment, and then reached out and patted his face, frowning uncertainly. ‘Hamnir. Prince. Have you come? Or is this yet another dream?’

  ‘I have come, Ferga. You are free. Your ordeal is over.’

  ‘Good. Good.’ Her hand fell to her side.

  Hamnir swallowed, his face a mixture of confusion and pain. This was obviously not the scene of tearful welcome he had constructed in his head. ‘Beloved, you are weak. We must see to your recovery. I…’ he paused and looked back at Kirhaz, who was crossing to them. ‘I am afraid I must bring sadness to this joyous occasion.’ He held up the war horn and looked at them both. He squared his shoulders. ‘Your son and brother, Thorgig, is dead, slain by the orcs, but his sacrifice was not in vain. He won the day and freed you. He died summoning our troops.’

  ‘Thorgig.’ Ferga’s brow furrowed, as if she were trying to remember what the word meant. ‘Thorgig is dead?’

  ‘My son,’ said Kirhaz hollowly. ‘Aye. That’s bad. That’s bad.’

  Felix frowned. Even for dwarfs, Kirhaz and Ferga’s response was stoic. They didn’t seem to understand.

  Hamnir was unnerved, but put the best face on it he could. ‘Forgive me. I should not have burdened you with such news before you have had a chance to recover yourselves. I will trouble you no more until you have been fed and tended to.’ He turned and addressed the dwarfs of the Diamondsmith hold, masking his pain with an effort. ‘There will be a feast tonight in the feast hall. Your courage and steadfastness will be honoured there. If you are well enough, I beg all of you to attend. Let the drinking horns be filled and the trenchers heaped high! Tonight we celebrate a miracle!’

  The rescuers cheered. The rescued took the news with dull indifference. The cheers faltered.

  Hamnir bowed to Kirhaz and Ferga, and then turned away and whispered to Gotrek. ‘It is enough to break my heart. Have you ever seen dwarfs so lost?’

  ‘No,’ said Gotrek, ‘I haven’t.’ His hand was still on his axe.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  For all Hamnir’s talk of piling the trenchers high, the feast was a lean affair. The dwarfs could not, or would not, trust any food touched by the orcs, nor use the great kitchens until they had been thoroughly scoured, so they had to make do with the provisions that Gorril’s army had brought with them from Rodenheim Castle. Fortunately, Hamnir and Gorril had foreseen this situation, and the wagons had been packed to overflowing, though it was still hardly enough.

  There was, however, plenty of beer. The dwarfs had been amazed to find two entire storerooms filled with untouched hogsheads – more proof, if any were needed, that the orcs who had held the hold were unusual indeed.

  Toast after toast was drunk: to Hamnir, to Thorgig, the survivors, Gotrek, even Felix got a polite cheer. The Diamondsmith survivors – those few strong enough to attend – sat quietly among their roaring, guzzling cousins, sipping at their beer and mouthing their food, a
nd raising feeble smiles at each toast. They seemed glaze-eyed and uncomfortable in the midst of all the uproar.

  Hamnir sat between Thane Kirhaz and his old friend, the engineer Birri Birrisson, at the king’s table at the head of the hall, trying his best to learn from them what had happened since the orcs had invaded. Whatever Birrisson had looked like before, now he seemed a skeleton with spectacles, his lank grey beard hanging from sunken parchment cheeks.

  ‘But, Birri,’ he said as the engineer forked ham mechanically into his mouth with a trembling hand, ‘Gotrek reported that the passage from the gyrocopter hangar was laid with new traps, dwarf-built. Those traps killed Matrak, your old colleague, and two others. Are you certain no dwarf helped in their construction? Was perhaps one of your apprentices caught and tortured? Was anyone missing?’

  Birri shook his bald head, not looking up. ‘No apprentices lost. None that didn’t die, at least. Not in our hold.’ He frowned. His fork paused. ‘Had a dream I set new traps in that hall, but…’ He stopped, his eyes far away.

  ‘A dream?’ asked Hamnir, eyes wide. ‘What sort of dream?’

  Birri frowned again for a long moment, then shrugged. ‘A dream. Only a dream.’ He could not be induced to say more about it.

  Hamnir sighed and shook his head as he filled his stein again. He leaned over to Gotrek and whispered in his ear. ‘They are still too tired from their privations. I will wait until they have recovered.’

  ‘They aren’t just tired,’ growled Gotrek, fixing his one eye on Birri, who was staring placidly into space, his food forgotten. ‘Something’s wrong with them. Dwarfs are made of sterner stuff.’

  ‘Even a dwarf might grow weak after starving for twenty days,’ said Hamnir.

  Gotrek grumbled suspiciously but said nothing, only drank another stein dry.

  Soon the Diamondsmith hold survivors began to nod in their chairs, the unaccustomed amounts of food and beer overwhelming them and making them drowsy. They excused themselves in ones and twos, and returned to their hold while their rescuers toasted each departure. With the last of them gone, the spirits of the remaining dwarfs rose again, and they began to get roaring drunk.

  Strange, Felix thought as he watched Gotrek and Hamnir clash their steins together, that the feast’s honoured guests had been a drag on the festivities. The listless misery of the survivors had made the victorious army uncomfortable and polite. They had kept their voices low, and courteously tried to keep the survivors engaged in their conversations, but now that they were gone, restraint went with them. Dwarf marching songs rocked the feast hall, and heated arm wrestling and boasting matches were being contested at every table.

  Felix knew where it would all lead. He had seen it before. It was a dwarf tradition that they drink themselves into a stupor after a great victory, and it appeared this victory would be no exception. Already, there were dwarfs slumped in their chairs, snoring, steins still clutched in their fists, and those who had travelled with Hamnir were falling faster than the rest – all the marching and digging and fighting of the past days catching up with when they were at last allowed to relax.

  Gotrek was slurring his words and leaning heavily on his elbows as he spoke to Hamnir. Narin and Galin, sitting with their respective clans at the long tables below the dais, were both fast asleep, their heads back, snoring heavily. Felix too was drooping, his eyelids getting heavier and heavier until he too sprawled in his chair, unconscious.

  Felix’s head jerked up from the table. He blinked around blearily, so befuddled with sleep and ale that for a moment he had no idea where he was. The feast hall. Now he remembered. It was dark, the fire in the enormous hearth sunk to red embers, and the lamps and candles guttering. But what had awakened him? He could see no movement in the hall. The dwarfs around him snored softly, heads down on the tables, their beards soaking up puddles of beer and gravy and soup.

  A strange feeling of dread came unbidden to his heart, and for a moment, he was afraid that he was having a reoccurrence of the nightmare he had in the mines – that at any moment he would begin stabbing Gotrek and Hamnir and the rest in their sleep. But no, he felt no homicidal urges, only fear.

  Then he heard it again, a scream, echoing from the kitchens. That was what had woken him up. Someone had screamed. Around him, dwarfs were snorting and mumbling, their dreams disturbed. He looked towards the kitchen doors. The connecting corridor was bright with lamplight. There was nothing there, and then there was: a weaving shadow. A plump dwarf woman staggered through the door, wailing, and then fell between two long tables. Her back was split open like a melon. Felix could see her spine.

  He nudged Gotrek roughly. ‘Gotrek!’

  The Slayer didn’t move.

  Around the chamber, dwarfs were waking, muttering and cursing in the darkness.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Who’s screaming?’

  ‘Ugh, my head.’

  ‘Stop that cursed noise!’

  Hamnir lifted his head, murmuring fretfully, and then sank back, his forehead thudding as it hit the table.

  More shadows were moving beyond the kitchen doorway, hulking black shapes lurching across the floor, accompanied by harsh scraping sounds.

  A dwarf near the door scrambled up out of his seat and backed unsteadily away, pointing. ‘The orcsh!’ he slurred. ‘The orcsh!’

  ‘Wuzzat, lad?’ mumbled another, further from the door. ‘Don’t be daft. The orcs are dead.’

  Felix saw Narin amongst his cousins, blinking and rubbing his face. On the opposite side of the hall, Galin was still fast asleep.

  ‘Orcs?’ murmured Hamnir. He sat up again, listing in his seat. His eyes blinked open. ‘Where…’ His chest heaved and he lunged to the side, vomiting over the arm of his chair.

  ‘Gotrek!’ Felix shouted, shaking the Slayer.

  The shadows pushed into the feast hall, followed by the things that cast them. The dwarfs stared, most still half asleep and entirely drunk, as a dozen orcs shambled through the kitchen door, dragging their cleavers and axes behind them. The first orc was missing an arm. The next had three crossbow bolts sticking from its chest. Another dragged itself along the floor by its hands. It had no legs. The orcs’ heads drooped at unnatural angles. Their eyes stared into the middle distance, vacant and dull. Their movements were slow and stiff. A side door crashed open and more jolted through, as ungainly as the first group.

  A dwarf staggered up unsteadily from the table closest to the door and stood in the way of the orc procession. ‘Grimnir,’ he said, pointing. ‘They’re…’

  The lead orc swung his axe around loosely, as if he meant to throw it, and the drunk dwarf went down, the top of his head opened like a hard-boiled egg. All over the room, dwarfs began roaring and fumbling clumsily for their weapons, as ungainly in their drunken stupor as the shambling orcs. More orcs pushed through the feast hall’s main archway, a slow, spreading tide of herky-jerk monsters. The doors were choked with them.

  Hamnir pushed himself upright, wiping his mouth and looking around. ‘What… what is this? Do I still dream?’

  ‘It’s no dream, prince,’ said Felix. ‘Gotrek. Wake up!’

  Gotrek’s head snapped up, his beard grimy with crumbs. ‘Wha?’ he slurred. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘But the orcs are dead,’ mumbled Gorril, blinking around on Hamnir’s left. ‘How can they…’

  ‘Orcs?’ Gotrek looked around, frowning and belching. ‘Where? Where are they?’

  Hamnir jumped to his feet. His chair crashed to the floor as he sprang unsteadily onto the table. ‘Form up, brothers! Form up! Captains rally your men! Hurry!’ His voice was lost in the chaos of confused shouting that echoed through the hall.

  Gotrek lurched up and nearly fell over. ‘What orcs? Light a torch. I can’t see.’

  A longbeard charged an approaching orc and sunk his axe into its ribcage. The orc swayed under the force of the blow, but showed no pain. It raised its mace, and crushed the old dwarf’s skull. The axe was still
in its ribs.

  The dwarfs bellowed at this horror and charged the orcs all around the room, hacking at them in drunken frenzy. Orc limbs spun away. Orc bones shattered. The orcs kept coming. With hands lopped off and intestines trailing behind them, with torsos pierced by axes and smashed by hammers, they kept coming. They flailed spasmodically with their weapons. Cutting off their legs only slowed them down. Then they clawed forwards, snatching and snapping at the dwarf’s legs and feet.

  Dwarfs fell with bashed heads and cleaved chests, with severed arms and split bellies. All around the room, they fought in ones and twos as the orcs pushed them towards the centre from all sides. Some were murdered before they woke. Felix saw Narin hack an orc’s forearm off at the elbow, and then duck as the orc swung the stump. On the other side of the room, Galin was backing away from an orc with four bullet wounds in its chest and neck.

  ‘Form up! Form up!’ shouted Hamnir. ‘Form up or we’re lost!’

  ‘Light the lights!’ roared Gotrek. ‘I can’t find my axe!’

  Felix glanced at the Slayer. ‘Gotrek, your patch is over the wrong eye.’

  Gotrek snarled and pawed at his face. ‘Well, who played that fool trick?’ He pulled the leather patch over his ruined socket and blinked around at the chaos in the hall. ‘Grimnir’s balls,’ he breathed. ‘What hell is this?’

  ‘The orcs,’ said Felix dully. ‘They have come back from the dead.’

  ‘It’s madness,’ said Gorril. ‘Nothing stops them. They’re unkillable!’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Gotrek and drew his axe from under the table.

  Hamnir snatched up the battered war horn of Karak Hirn and blew a rally call. Its pure tone was lost. It sounded like a braying donkey, but it was loud. The dwarfs turned at its call.

  ‘Form up!’ he cried. ‘Captains rally your companies! Thanes call your dwarfs! Form up and face out!’

  The horn and the order had an almost magical effect on the dwarfs. As Hamnir and Gotrek, Felix and Gorril leapt down from the high table and hurried across the feast hall to where the orcs were the thickest, clans and companies rallied around their leaders and formed into ranks, facing out from the centre of the hall in a rough square. Companies overturned tables to make barricades, and attacked and defended as one. Hamnir, Gotrek and the others joined Gorril’s clanbrothers in the thick of the fighting. Felix found himself beside Galin, still red-faced drunk and cursing like an entire ship of sailors. Narin joined them shortly. He had a cut over one eye, and a ragged gash across the back of his knuckles. The dwarfs slashed unsteadily but unceasingly at the blank-eyed orcs.