by Warhammer
He ducked a blackjack and rabbit-punched the mercenary who swung it in the kidneys. The man groaned and doubled up. Felix kneed him in the face. Gotrek back-fisted the captain, sending a spray of yellow teeth flying. The giant’s knees buckled and he fell forward. Gotrek jumped back, holding his tankard out of the way. Another mercenary grabbed him around the neck, trying to strangle him. Gotrek reached up and caught him by the top knot and flung him over his shoulder into three others. They went down in a heap.
Four more leapt for the dwarf. Felix tripped one and shoulder blocked another. Gotrek kicked and elbowed the others to the ground.
The captain was up again, a long wooden bench raised over his head for a smashing blow. Gotrek lurched forward and punched up, driving his fist between the man’s legs. The captain squeaked like a rat-man and tottered back, eyes wide.
All around the bar the fight was slowing down, the combatants too battered or too drunk to continue.
Heinz’s hoarse bellow rose above the moans and groans. ‘Who started this? Who smashed up my tap-room?’
The giant mercenary toppled backwards and crashed to the floor like a felled tree, revealing Gotrek, swaying in the centre of a pile of unconscious bodies, still holding his tankard of ale. He hadn’t spilled a drop.
Heinz’s brow lowered. ‘Gurnisson. Did you start this?’
Gotrek drained his drink in one swallow, then smashed the tankard on the floor. ‘And what if I did?’ he asked.
‘And you were bouncers here once.’ Heinz shook his head, disgusted. ‘Get out.’
Gotrek stumped towards him menacingly. ‘And who’s going to make me?’
The bouncers started moving in.
Felix stepped beside Gotrek and leaned down to speak in his ear. ‘You don’t want to fight old Heinz, do you? Your old companion? Your blood brother?’
Gotrek shrugged him off. ‘Who says I don’t?’
‘You will, tomorrow morning,’ said Felix. ‘Come on. If you want to fight, let’s go find a tavern where you don’t know the owner. There’s nobody left here worth fighting anyway.’
The Slayer stopped unsteadily and squinted around the room, taking in the crowd of groaning drunks and battered bouncers. He sneered. ‘You’re right, manling. Nothing here but a bunch of cowards. Let’s find another place.’ He turned and aimed himself at the door, then started forward, rolling like a sailor.
As he reached the door, Heinz called after him. ‘It was a quiet twenty years, Gurnisson. Don’t come back for another twenty.’
After a quarter of an hour of meandering through the cramped, overhung streets of Shantytown – deserted at this late hour – with Gotrek muttering and cursing under his breath and changing his mind about which way they were going every few minutes, the Slayer stopped in a small square with a fountain in the centre. The fountain had once been grand – Magnus the Pious holding aloft the hammer of Sigmar with griffins at his feet spouting water into a circular pool. Now the pool was dry, the griffins’ beaks cracked, revealing their copper pipes, and Magnus’s hammer missing its head and most of its haft. The forms of sleeping beggars and vagrants clung to the walls of the surrounding buildings like dirty shadows.
Gotrek swayed for a long moment in the middle of the square, as if lost in thought, then stepped to the fountain and plopped down on the rim of the pool.
Felix joined him. He was feeling a bit worse for wear and it was a relief to sit. There hadn’t been many opportunities for drinking on the road from Karak Hirn, and all the unaccustomed alcohol had gone to his head somewhat.
Gotrek lay back and looked up at the sky, still muttering to himself.
Felix frowned down at him. ‘If you want to sleep, we should find an inn.’
‘We’ll find an inn, manling,’ said Gotrek, with every indication of lucidity. ‘I’m just thinking.’
‘Fine,’ said Felix. After a moment he found himself lying back too. The wind was picking up and it was getting too cool for comfort, but lying there was very peaceful. Mannslieb was full and bright, casting a delicate silver glamour over rooftops that by day would have looked shabby and poorly patched. Stars shimmered in the sky like fireflies pinned to black velvet. Felix picked out the constellations. The Hammer, the Wolf, the Dove. His eyes closed, and after a long moment opened again. Then closed again. His breathing grew heavier.
He fought to open his eyes again. ‘We really should find some place–’ He stopped, blinking up at the sky. A huge black shadow was pushing across his vision, blotting out the stars. Now it was eclipsing Mannslieb! He gaped, frozen with dread and confusion. What was it? Was he dreaming? Was it some strange swift storm? Was it a daemon come to devour them all? Was it…
Gotrek sat bolt upright beside him, staring straight up. ‘It’s the Spirit of Grungni!’
CHAPTER TWO
Gotrek and Felix caromed through the twisting, uncooperative streets of Shantytown like lunatics, trying to keep the receding airship in sight. It was heading due east, and all the streets seemed to head every direction but. They were constantly having to zigzag and double back as the black oblong shape disappeared behind tall, gabled tenements and massive crenellated warehouses, only to appear again as they turned a corner and found it drifting away from them above the moon-washed rooftops.
Harlots and other late-night walkers shied away as Gotrek and Felix staggered drunkenly past, shouting commands and obscenities at the sky. An undermanned watch patrol almost moved to block them, then thought better of it and let them pass. Cats and dogs and rats scurried into the shadows at their approach.
The Spirit of Grungni led them out of Shantytown and through the government buildings and trading houses of the Neuestadt towards the Universitat. There the streets became wider and the way easier, and the airship seemed to be slowing. This was good, for Gotrek and Felix were slowing too. Felix was gasping and sucking wind, weakened by too much wine. Gotrek showed no signs of losing his breath, but he was groaning and holding his belly with each step. Felix thought he could actually hear the ale sloshing inside the dwarf, but it was probably his own stomach he heard.
At last, with a roar they could hear from the ground, the airship reversed engines and came to a slow halt over the high grey stone turrets of the massive, castle-like central building of the College of Engineering. Lights on the roof underlit the brass gondola and Felix could just see ropes dropping from it.
Gotrek and Felix fetched up panting and gasping against the College’s intricate iron gates a few moments later. Four wary guards stepped out from a guard house just inside, spears at the ready. More watched from the tops of the fortified walls.
‘Mak…’ said Gotrek. ‘Mak…’ then vomited a vast quantity of ale all over the wrought iron bars.
‘Hoy!’ said the guard captain, stepping forward. ‘Get away, you filthy drunks! I’m not cleaning that up. Go home and sleep it off!’
Gotrek’s hand shot through the bars and caught the captain by the belt, then pulled him down to his level. ‘Makaisson,’ hissed Gotrek, as the other guards shouted and stepped forward, drawing their weapons. ‘Fetch Malakai Makaisson. Tell him Gotrek Gurnisson wants to see him.’
The other guards shouted at Gotrek to let their captain go, but Gotrek wrapped his powerful fingers around the man’s neck and he frantically waved them off.
‘It’s too late,’ squeaked the captain. ‘College is closed for the night. No visitors. You’ll have to come back in the morning.’
Gotrek shook him. ‘Fetch him now or I’ll come in there and feed you your sword, pommel first.’ He shoved him back into his men.
The captain choked and recovered himself as his men started forward again. For a moment it looked like he was going to let them try to chase Gotrek off, then he reconsidered and called them back.
‘Leave him, but watch him,’ he said, massaging his bruised throat. ‘Brugel, go ask Professor Makaisson if he’ll see a filthy drunk named Gotrek Gurnisson.’
After what seemed like several hours to Felix
’s foggy brain, he and Gotrek looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. Out of the shadow of the entry of the college’s massive central building came a small squad of guards escorting a short, broad figure in a thick, fleece-lined leather jerkin. He wore a peculiar leather cap with goggles pushed up over his shaggy brows, and a slot at the top to make room for a short crest of bright red hair. It looked like he had just come off the airship.
‘Whur’s the liar claimin’ tae be Gotrek son of Gurni?’ spat the dwarf in his strange, thick accent. ‘Whur’s the eejit dinnae know the Daemonslayer’s been deid these seventeen–’
He broke off in mid-sentence as he caught sight of Gotrek standing at the gate. He stopped and stared. ‘Weel noo, ye look like him, right enough.’ He shot a glance at Felix. ‘And this looks like young Felix an’ aw.’ He crossed his arms over his massive chest. ‘But Maximillian Schrieber said ye went intae some hell-gate in Sylvania and never returned. How am ah tae be sure ye ain’t some daemons of the void in disguise?’
Gotrek roared and plucked his axe from his back. He slashed left and right, making a big X in the air with it, then held it at the ready and stumped towards the gate, shoulders lowered. ‘Are you calling me a daemon, Malakai son of Makai?’
The guards shouted and advanced, lowering their spears. The captain drew a pistol from his belt and aimed it through the bars, but Malakai just grinned and waved them back. ‘Put it awa’, boys. Put it awa’ and open yon gates. There’s but the one who can wield yon axe!’
The guards hesitated, but at last their captain motioned them forward and they drew the bolts and pushed on the bars.
Malakai threw his arms wide as the gates swung out and Gotrek and Felix stepped in. ‘Gotrek Gurnisson, I’m grieved tae see ye hivnae met yer doom, but ah’m glad tae see ye no’ the less.’
He clasped Gotrek’s hand and slapped him on the shoulder.
‘Well met, Malakai Makaisson,’ said Gotrek gruffly. ‘I hope you have some ale here. I lost some just now and I’ve got a bit of a thirst.’
‘Why am ah here?’ Malakai shrugged as he lit an oil lamp and set it on a low desk. ‘Ach weel, wae one thing an’ another, I’m no’ welcome in the dwarf holds at the minute, so here ah came an’ offered ma services. Made me a professor, if ye can believe it.’
Gotrek and Felix sat on an unmade day bed in the middle of a vast, high ceilinged workshop that was apparently Malakai’s office, located on the third floor of the college’s main building. It was chilly in the room, for it had no roof and the east wall was only half-built. Scaffolding rose before the unfinished wall, and building stones and sacks of mortar were stacked at its foot. Night air and moonlight poured in through it, while high overhead, a canvas tarpaulin snapped in the breeze like the sail of a ship.
In the moonglow beyond the yellow light of the lamp, Felix could make out the looming shapes of partially assembled machines, strange weapons, odd bits of pipe, scrap metal and glass tubing, short-legged tables covered with scribbled-upon sheets of vellum, and what looked like an enormous metal horse. Felix thought he recognised one of the machines as a drill of some sort, and another as a lathe, but the rest were far beyond his understanding.
Malakai pottered about among it all like a gardener seeing to his prize roses, straightening and checking and adjusting things all around the room, and chattering all the while.
‘Ah’m sorry for the state o’ the place, but ah heard the skaven made a wee mess o’ things here at the college some twenty years past and they hiv niver got around to fixing it up again.’
‘Er, yes,’ said Felix, face flushing. ‘We’d heard about that.’ And had a hand in the destruction, he thought guiltily. He didn’t say anything, however. The whole incident was a bit embarrassing.
‘That’ll change noo ah’m here,’ Malakai continued. ‘Have this place straight in a jiffy. And better than it was afore.’
‘So Max Schrieber survived Sylvania,’ said Gotrek, sipping the mug of ale Malakai had found for him. ‘And Snorri Nosebiter?’
‘Oh aye,’ said Malakai. ‘They both of them made it back to Praag, ready t’fight the hordes come spring, just as ah wis. But it niver happened. The marauders milled outside the city for a few mair weeks, then just turned aroon an’ went back hame. Seemed tae’ve lost all heart, somehow.’ He sounded sad at the memory. ‘Max thought it might hae somethin’ tae do with the vanishin’ of them tae wee sorcerers, but nobody ever really learn’t the why of it.’
‘Are Max and Snorri still alive?’ asked Felix.
‘Max is – weel when ah saw him four days ago he wus. He’s at Middenheim, wi’ the defenders, where ah’ve just come frae.’ His brow creased. ‘As tae Snorri, ah dinnae noo for certain. After the spring thaw came tae Kislev that year, he went aff wi’ some Empire mercenaries, chasin’ a herd o’ beastmen south towards the Middle Mountains. No’ heard o’ him since. Grimnir grant that he met his doom.’ He looked pensive for a moment, then shrugged and grinned. ‘But enough about aw that. Whur hae ye been these seventeen years? I’ll wager that’s a tale worth the telling.’
‘Well,’ said Felix, frowning. ‘I’m not sure where to begin.’ He looked over at Gotrek and saw that the Slayer was lying back on the day bed, his one eye closed, snoring gently.
Malakai looked over and clicked his tongue. ‘Och, the laddie’s fallen asleep. Ach weel, no’ a bad idea at that. Save yer story, young Felix. It’ll keep. Come on. Ah’ll find ye a bed.’
Felix woke with the familiar feeling of opening his eyes in an unfamiliar place that he had experienced so many times in his travels with Gotrek. He was in a small, clean, cell-like room, lying on a narrow but comfortable bed. His head pounded and, strangely, the pounding seemed to echo through the waking world. For a long, disorienting moment he had no idea where he was. The place was too nice to be a jail. He tried to think back. There had been a tavern, and a fight, and then a drunken walk. He had laid down beneath a fountain. Had he fallen asleep there? No! The Spirit of Grungni!
Suddenly it all flooded back. He was in the dormitory of the College of Engineering. The pounding in his head was from last night’s drinking. The pounding that shook the room was the morning artillery practice at the Imperial Gunnery School, a few streets away. Felix sat up and rubbed his temples, groaning. Did they have to start so early? It was hardly civilized.
After pulling on his boots and breeches and finding the wash room and water closet, he asked directions of a fresh-faced and much too chipper engineering student, then shuffled at last back into Malakai’s enormous workroom. Felix squinted painfully in the blaze of sunlight that streamed through the unfinished wall, and looked around. A work table had been cleared off and Malakai and Gotrek were wolfing down a breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon, black bread, ham, griddle cakes, pale lager, and that vile Tilean import that some called the black oil of Nuln, coffee.
Gotrek’s appetite seemed none the worse for last night’s excesses, but Felix’s stomach churned at the sight of all the greasy food.
‘Welcome, young Felix!’ called Malakai, much too loud. ‘Sit doon and dig in before Gurnisson eats the lot.’
Felix fought down the urge to heave. He wiped his clammy brow. ‘Is… is there some tea, perhaps?’
‘Ah’ll have one of the lads brew up a pot,’ said Malakai, then shouted towards the back of the room. ‘Petr! A pot of Cathay fur oor guest!’
Felix clutched his head, certain it was going to shatter.
A moonfaced youth with wild blond hair and a chinstrap beard poked his head up from the innards of a dismantled steam tank. He had wide, watery blue eyes that he blinked rapidly. ‘Aye, professor,’ he said. ‘Right away.’ He clambered out of the tank, but caught his foot on a valve and sprawled face-first on the floor. He was up in an instant, blood leaking from his nose. ‘No harm done,’ he piped. ‘No harm done.’ He scurried out of the room, bumping into a telescope as he went.
Malakai shook his head. ‘Poor wee lad. My best student. Can set the calibrations
on a pressure gauge near as weel as a dwarf, but cannae see past his haund, and he could trip o’er a dust mote.’ He chuckled as he stuffed a chunk of ham in his mouth. ‘He’ll be coming to Middenheim to help oot in the engine room. But he’s noo allowed on the bridge. He’d wreck us.’
Gotrek looked up, his single eye bright. ‘You’re flying to Middenheim?’
‘Aye. The Imperial Gunnery School has asked me tae tak a shipment of cannon there.’
‘You’re taking me,’ said Gotrek. ‘I want to be there before the end.’
‘O’ course,’ said Malakai. ‘Always happy tae help a Slayer find his doom.’
‘Can we leave today?’ asked Gotrek.
Malakai chuckled. ‘Much as ah’d like it, laddie, nae. The last cannon won’t be test-fired till tomorrow morning. We’ll leave jist as soon as it’s loaded.’
Gotrek grunted unhappily, but Felix hid a grateful smile. Another night in a proper bed would not go amiss.
‘Ye’ll still get there mair than a fortnight quicker than if ye marched,’ said Malakai, amused.
Petr rushed into the room with a teapot in one hand and a cup and saucer in the other. He wove successfully around a jewellers stove, but his feet got tangled in a block and tackle and he flew forward with a cry. He managed to twist as he fell and landed on his shoulder, saving the teapot and cup from destruction, but slopping scalding tea all over his hands.
He sprang up again and set the teapot and cup before Felix, wincing. ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ he said. His hands were lobster red.
‘Go soak those in cold water, laddie,’ said Malakai. ‘Ye dinnae want blisters.’
‘Aye, professor,’ said Petr.
He hurried away. Felix couldn’t bear to watch him go.
‘Cack-handed pillock,’ muttered Malakai. He turned to Gotrek and Felix with a sigh. ‘When ye’ve finished wi’ yer breakfast, ah’ll take you o’er to the Gunnery School tae meet Lord Groot, who runs the place. As the trip is Imperial business, he has final approval on all ma crew. But dinna worry.’ He winked. ‘Ah’ll put in a good word for ye.’
