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

by Warhammer

  At the front door after the meal, as Felix collected his sword and cloak from the butler and tried to find room in his pack for the leather-bound books with his name on them, Otto coughed.

  ‘You might want to stop home in Altdorf on your way north,’ he said. ‘The old man is on his last legs.’

  Felix’s head swam as he walked through the Kaufman district towards the High Gate. He had received too much news too fast. Apparently a lot could change in twenty years. Otto had a son who was attending university. Felix’s poetry was old-fashioned. His adventures had been made into books. His father was dying.

  The tall, gabled townhouses and walled and guarded estates of wealthy merchants passed unnoticed as he wound through the cobbled streets. The sniffs of prosperous burghers and their plump wives as they stared at his shabby clothes went unchallenged. Otto had a son. His father was dying.

  His father was dying.

  Felix was surprised that news was affecting him so much. He was surprised, actually, that his father was still alive. How old must he be? Seventy? Eighty? Just like the grasping old miser to wring every year he possibly could out of life, just to make sure he got his money’s worth.

  If there was one person in the world that Felix got on with less well even than his brother, it was his father. The old man had disowned him when he had decided to become a poet instead of joining the family business. He had said Felix was wasting the education he had paid for. Funny really, when it was that education that had opened Felix’s eyes to the beauty and variety of life and introduced him to the worlds of literature, philosophy and poetry. Gustav Jaeger had wanted his sons to have all that knowledge, had wanted them to be able to spout it on command, but only because such learning was one of the qualities of refinement that marked a man as noble, and Gustav had desperately wanted his sons to be the first noble Jaegers. As tight-fisted as he was, the old man had poured gold into the coffers of the high and mighty of Altdorf like it was water, trying to buy a title to pass onto his sons – apparently to no avail.

  Felix had hated his father for his crassness, his narrow-minded pragmatism that left no room for art or beauty or romance. Gustav Jaeger had sacrificed his childhood to claw his way out of the gutter, becoming one of the richest merchants in the Empire. And, having reached that eminence, he had seemed determined that his sons would sacrifice their childhoods as well. He had made no allowances for youthful follies or indiscretions. Perhaps that was one of the reasons Felix had extended what should have been a passing fancy into a lifelong sidetrack.

  Felix sidestepped a rushing carriage and passed under the iron portcullis of the High Gate without looking up. Should he go see him? Should he try to make amends? Should he spit in his face? Should he flaunt the books that had been made of his life? That would show him! Or would it? The thought of seeing the old buzzard, even sick in his deathbed, was daunting. He’d never been able to look him in the eye. Even full of youthful confidence after the publishing of his first book of poems and being the toast of Altdorf University, Gustav had been able to make him feel like he was seven years old and had just wet the bed.

  The deep bark of a cannon firing woke Felix out of his reverie. He looked up, wary. Had something happened? Was Nuln under attack? No one else seemed to have noticed. They continued on with their errands as if nothing had happened. Hadn’t they heard? Had he imagined it?

  Then he remembered. This was Nuln, forge of the Empire. The Imperial Gunnery School test fired new cannons several times a day. When he had lived here before, he had become so used to it that he too had never looked up from his daily round when they sounded.

  He looked around him, seeing for the first time the streets he passed through. Nuln, outside the wall that separated the old city from the new, was a noisy, busy place. The war may have impoverished much of the rest of the Empire, but Nuln made cannons, guns and swords. It thrived in war. Everywhere he looked there was bustle and industry. Wagons hauled heavy loads of coal or saltpetre or finished guns through the maze of streets and tall, soot-blackened brick and timber houses. Grimy workers trudged wearily home from their shifts in the manufactories of the Industrielplatz. Fat merchants trundled by in palanquins, their bodyguards jogging in front and behind.

  Sausage and pie sellers shouted their wares from carts fitted with sizz-ling grills, and the smell of cooking meat mixed with sewer stench and the acrid reek of smoke and black powder to create what was, in Felix’s mind, the signature smell of Nuln.

  But though Nuln’s men of industry were doing well, the same could not be said for the lower classes. Those sizzling pies and sausages were selling for triple what they should have been, and looked to have been made of sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor. The stalls of the fruit sellers and costermongers that fringed the market squares were mostly bare, and the prices for the meagre produce on display were shocking. The press gangs of the state militias were out in force, and there were few able-bodied young men on the street.

  On the other hand, there were more beggars than Felix could remember ever seeing in Nuln. They thronged the streets, and lifted their palms in every doorway. He saw whole families camped in alleys and courtyards.

  Patrols of the city guard, uniformed in Nuln’s colours of charcoal and yellow, sauntered through the shuffling crowd, eyes moving and truncheons swinging. Jugglers and singers jostled elbows with broadsheet sellers, doomsayers and demagogues on the street corners. Sisters of Shallya asked for alms for the upkeep of their hospitals and temples.

  ‘The end times are upon us!’ cried a wild-eyed Sigmarite ascetic who carried a hammer fashioned out of wood that was the size of an anvil. ‘The wolves of ruin swarm down from the steppes to devour us all! Beg almighty Sigmar for forgiveness before it is too late!’

  ‘We must send the children north!’ wailed another, who wore nothing but a loincloth. ‘Their purity and innocence is the shield that will turn the sword of Chaos! They are our hope and salvation!’

  A group called the Ploughmen called for the shutting down of the foundries. ‘We must turn our swords into ploughshares. We must make peace with our neighbours to the north.’ They weren’t getting much of a crowd.

  Another group, The Silver Chalice, was calling for the closing of the Colleges of Magic and the death of all magicians in the Empire. ‘The corruption comes from within!’

  A young man in a mask that was a bright yellow headscarf with eye holes cut in it held aloft a lit torch while a similarly masked compatriot passed out cheaply printed leaflets. They wore tabards over their jerkins, emblazoned with a crude symbol of a flaming torch. ‘The cleansing flame will burn away the corruption that chokes Nuln like the smoke from the foundries!’ declaimed the youth. ‘No more will the fat priests shear their flocks! No more will the forge owners and factors underpay the brave men who pour the iron that makes them rich! No more will the landlords raise rents on hovels not fit for dogs to live in! Raise the torch, brothers! Join the Brotherhood of the Cleansing Flame and burn them out! Burn the city clean!’

  As Felix watched, the masked men caught sight of the watch patrol pushing towards them and they quickly gathered up their leaflets and disappeared into an alley.

  Felix continued on. As he got closer to the river and the area known as Shantytown, the buildings became flimsier and taller, and the streets – neatly cobbled within the old city and around the universities – were here unpaved swamps of mud and filth. Felix noticed the symbols of the various agitator groups scrawled more often on the walls of buildings the further he went – the wedge-shaped plough of the Ploughmen, the chalice of the Silver Chalice, the flaming torch of the Cleansing Flame. That last symbol made him shiver, for he remembered the fire that had burned this neighbourhood to the ground during the attack of the ratmen, all those years ago. He found it hard to believe that any organisation advocating flame as a tool of change would gain followers here, but one never knew. People had short memories.

  At last, in the very heart of Shantytown, he came to a r
undown and ramshackle tavern. The weathered sign over the door was painted with a picture of a pig with a blindfold tied around its head. A few rough mercenaries lounged on benches outside the narrow door, sipping ale and basking in the late summer sun. A pair of towering bouncers nodded to him as he approached.

  Felix ducked through the low door and looked around the tavern’s dim interior. Gotrek sat at the bar, his squat, massive form perched on a high barstool, his towering crest of red hair aflame in a solitary shaft of sunlight. He hunched forward, massive, muscular arms resting on the bar top, as Old Heinz, the owner of the Blind Pig and an old comrade from Gotrek’s mercenary days, filled two tankards from a keg of ale. He handed one to Gotrek and they raised them solemnly.

  ‘To Hamnir,’ said Heinz.

  ‘To Hamnir,’ agreed Gotrek.

  They drank deep, draining the tankards.

  Heinz wiped his mouth with the back of a meaty hand. ‘But he died well at least?’ he asked.

  Gotrek frowned and coughed into his mug.

  ‘Aye,’ said Felix, stepping forward and taking a seat beside the Slayer. ‘He died well.’

  ‘Good,’ said Heinz, and turned to draw them all another pint.

  Gotrek gave Felix a look that was almost gratitude. The Slayer didn’t like to lie, but telling Heinz the truth obviously wasn’t appealing either. Hamnir had not died well. He had died betraying his race, and it had been Gotrek that had killed him. This wasn’t the first time Felix had saved him from telling this uncomfortable truth. He hoped it was the last.

  Gotrek stuck a thick finger under his eyepatch and rubbed his empty socket. ‘Heinz says the war will be won or lost at Middenheim. We leave tomorrow at dawn.’

  ‘Right.’ Felix sighed. So much for a few days with a roof over their heads. But he wasn’t surprised. Gotrek had been like a hunting dog that had scented a fox ever since they had learned at Barak Varr that the hordes of Chaos had once again come down from the wastes to threaten the lands of men. Nothing was going to stop the Slayer from getting north to challenge another daemon.

  ‘Remember the time Hamnir tried to save the entire library of Count Moragio while the orcs were breaking down the doors?’ said Heinz as he set tankards in front of Gotrek and Felix. ‘Never seen a dwarf so worried about a bunch of books. Mad, he was.’

  ‘Aye,’ grunted Gotrek. ‘Mad.’ He snatched his ale off the bar and stumped angrily off to sit in a dark corner.

  Heinz peered quizzically after him with rheumy eyes. The old mercenary was still a big man, but old age had stooped his shoulders, and the bulk that had once been muscle now sagged off his bones. ‘What’s got into him?’

  ‘Old wounds,’ said Felix.

  ‘Aye,’ said Heinz, nodding sagely. ‘I know the kind.’

  ‘Did you see the burning today?’ asked the harlot.

  ‘What did you say?’ shouted Felix.

  It was later that same night. The Blind Pig was crowded now, and filled with noise and smoke and the reek of close packed bodies. Boisterous students from the universities and colleges yelled boasts and challenges at each other. Mercenaries and soldiers hunched around tables, telling tall tales at the top of their lungs. Apprentices and smoke-blackened iron workers from the forges across the river bantered with giggling harlots and barmaids eager to strip them of their pay. Slumming nobles’ sons kept their backs to the wall and laughed too loudly as they tried to soak up the atmosphere without getting their clothes dirty. Tilean traders talked business with dwarf craftsmen in one corner. A halfling oversaw a dice game in another.

  ‘The burning. Did you see it?’ asked the girl, a chubby thing with her hair in red ringlets and rouge caking her round cheeks. ‘One of the guards at the Gunnery School. The witch hunters found out he had a mouth under his left arm and burned him on Tower Isle this afternoon.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Felix, disinterestedly.

  The girl had squeezed in beside him at the bar hours ago, thinking him an easy mark, and he had fed her wine just to have something to do. Truth to tell, he would much rather have been upstairs in the room Heinz had given him, reading the books his brother had made from his journals, but Gotrek had sunk into one of his blacker moods and Felix had decided that it would be a good idea to stay nearby and keep an eye on him. The Slayer hadn’t moved since he had walked away from Heinz, only drunk tankard after tankard of ale and stared all night at nothing with his single angry eye.

  He had been this way since he had killed Hamnir deep below the mines of Karak Hirn, grimmer and angrier than Felix had ever known him. Gotrek never spoke of his feelings, so Felix didn’t know what was going through his head, but seeing someone who had once been one’s best friend succumb to the lure of Chaos and then killing him for it would be enough to make even the most cheerful soul bitter, and Gotrek hadn’t exactly been a ray of sunshine to begin with.

  ‘He screamed almost like a human when he burned,’ said the girl.

  ‘Who did?’ asked Felix.

  ‘The mutant. It made me shiver.’

  ‘Very empathetic of you, I’m sure,’ said Felix.

  ‘What does emfetic mean?’ asked the harlot. ‘Is it something dirty?’

  Felix didn’t answer. He had heard someone say the word ‘Slayer’, and turned his head to find the speaker.

  A group of drunk students, still in the long sleeveless robes they wore to lectures, were staring openly at Gotrek.

  A chinless one with thin blond hair was frowning. ‘A Slayer?’

  A dark-haired one with a haughty sneer nodded. ‘Aye. I’ve read of them. They are dwarfs who have vowed to expunge some great shame by dying in combat with a terrible monster. There are trollslayers, dragonslayers, what-have-you slayers.’

  Chinless guffawed. ‘This one looks like a flagonslayer!’ he said loudly. ‘He’s had his nose in that mug since we got here.’

  The others burst out laughing at this witticism. Felix cringed and looked at Gotrek. Fortunately, it seemed the Slayer hadn’t heard. Now if only the fools would pass on to another target all would be well.

  It was not to be. The others liked Chinless’s joke so much they felt the need to repeat it, louder.

  ‘Flagonslayer! That’s rich!’

  ‘How about aleslayer?’

  ‘Aye! Aleslayer, bane of the taproom!’

  ‘Hoy, Aleshlayer!’ called one with jug ears, his words slurring with drink. ‘Shlay another flagon for ush! Show ush yer might!’

  ‘Come now, fellows,’ said Felix. He pried himself from the harlot and stepped forward, but it was too late. Gotrek had raised his head and fixed the students with a blank, baleful stare.

  Most of them paused at that, suddenly aware that the bear they were poking wasn’t dead after all. But Jug Ears was apparently dimmer, and drunker, than the rest. He giggled and pointed.

  ‘Well at leash he’ll never get crosh-eyed drunk. He only hash one eye!’ He raised his glass in mock salute. ‘Hail flagonshlayer! Mighty cyclopean drainer of kegsh!’

  Gotrek stood, tankard in one hand, knocking the heavy oak table he sat at to the floor. ‘What did you call me?’

  Felix stepped between them. ‘Easy, Gotrek. They’re very drunk and very young. We don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, manling,’ said Gotrek, pushing him gently but inexorably out of the way. ‘Trouble is exactly what I want.’

  The other students backed away uneasily as Gotrek stumped forward, but Jug Ears stood where he was, grinning foolishly. ‘I dub thee Flagonshlayer! Aleshlayer! Pintshlayer!’ He laughed. ‘Thas’ it! The pint-shized pintshlay–’

  Gotrek’s fist connected with Jug Ears’s jaw with a crack like a gravestone snapping in two. The boy flew through the air and crashed into a table full of burly Hochland handgunners, knocking their drinks to the floor and soaking them all in ale. Felix’s harlot squealed and ran, disappearing into the crowd.

  The leader of the handgunners, a black-bearded giant of a man with leather bracers on both wrist
s, lifted the unconscious Jug Ears off the table by his shirtfront as the other students rabbited for the door. ‘Who threw this toff?’ he growled. His eyebrows dripped with ale.

  ‘I did,’ said Gotrek. He grabbed an entirely blameless smith’s apprentice by the front of his leather apron. ‘You want another?’

  ‘I want these drinks paid for, is what I want,’ said the giant. ‘And a cleaning for my best uniform.’

  ‘I’ll clean the floor with it,’ said Gotrek and, still holding his tankard in his left hand, hurled the apprentice with his right with less effort than Felix would have flung a sack of onions.

  The apprentice hit the mercenary high in the chest, knocking him backward through the table and sending his Hochlanders diving in all directions. They leapt to their feet, roaring, and charged at the Slayer, fists and brass knuckles raised high. Gotrek ran to meet them, his drink held protectively behind him, bellowing incoherent insults.

  Within seconds the whole tavern was fighting, violence splashing outward from Gotrek and the handgunners like ripples in a pond as elbows were bumped, drinks spilled, then insults and blows exchanged. The dwarfs and Tileans fought a gang of weaver’s apprentices. Barmaids and harlots shrieked and dived for cover. A dozen dock workers scrapped with three nobles and their six bodyguards. Students of the university brawled with students of the School of Engineering. A company of Bretonnian crossbowmen seemed to be fighting each other. The halfling gambler rode the shoulders of a red-bearded Talabecman, banging on his skull with a pewter dice cup. Everywhere mugs flew, bottles smashed and furniture splintered. Old Heinz beat on the bar with an axe handle – roaring ineffectively for order while his bouncers grabbed the collars of anyone they could get their hands on and chucked them out of the front door.

  Felix fought back to back with Gotrek in a ring of Hochlanders, cursing all the while. Another stupid bar fight over nothing. And Gotrek had started it. He should let him fight his own battles. This was the last thing he wanted to be doing. And yet, in the state Gotrek was in, one of these villains just might get in a lucky shot, and getting trounced in a tavern would do nothing for the Slayer’s mood.