by Warhammer
He looked around the dockside. There was a tavern here somewhere. He remembered it from his days carousing with the other sewer jacks, when he and Gotrek had last lived in Nuln. Ah, there it was. A placard painted with a laughing bear standing on a red and yellow ball swung in the breeze just a few hundred yards to the east, and as he had expected, half a dozen shifty looking men lounged around outside it, sipping from leather jacks and watching the comings and goings of the docks with eagle eyes.
Felix felt in his belt pouch until he found a gold crown, one of his last, then sidled up to a likely looking villain with a three day beard and a greasy forelock over one eye.
‘Evening, brother,’ Felix said, twirling the coin in his fingers. ‘Were you here this morning?’
The man turned and stared at the rotating coin. ‘Could have been.’
‘Did you see some men unloading some barrels from a red and blue barge at the dock over there?’ He pointed with the hand that held the coin.
Forelock looked at Felix’s face for the first time, and his eyes went as blank as buttons. ‘I don’t see nothing for no jagger.’ He turned away and started into the tavern.
Gotrek grabbed the man before he reached the door. He spun him around and slammed him against the wall, holding his axe an inch from his forelock. ‘Do you see this axe?’
The man choked, face pale and eyes wide. The other men stood up from their benches, crying out and reaching for daggers. Felix drew his runesword and faced them. The men paused, considering their chances, then shrugged and slouched with feigned nonchalance into the tavern.
‘Please don’t kill me,’ mewled Forelock.
Gotrek jerked his bearded chin towards Felix. ‘Answer his question.’
‘But… but they’ll kill me.’
‘I kill you now. They kill you later. Take your pick.’
Forelock swallowed. Sweat ran down his brow. ‘I-I-It was Big Nod’s boys! Offloaded this morning ’fore dawn, then set the barge adrift down river.’
‘Where are they?’
‘I can’t…’ The man hesitated, then his eyes came back to the axe. ‘Cold Hole Lane, by the dog pit. Just follow the docks until…’
Gotrek jerked him away from the wall and shoved him forward. ‘Take us there!’
‘But they’ll see me!’ pleaded the man.
‘They’ll see you dead if you don’t move.’
Forelock bit his lip, miserable, but then turned and led the way through the twilight gloom. Felix trailed behind Gotrek, unreasonably annoyed that the villain had marked him as coming from wealth. How had he guessed? It had been ages since Felix had been wealthy. His clothes were as ragged as those of any man in Shantytown – worse in fact. Then he understood. His voice. He still spoke like an educated man. He had been so long out of the Empire that he had forgotten how much accent mattered here.
Forelock brought them to a cobbled square that abutted the river. The fish market was closing up for the day. Fishwives and whelk sellers dumped their heads and bones and shells in the river and gossiped as they packed up their carts. All along the north edge of the square wide ramps sank down into the ground, angling back under it. At the bottom of each ramp was a high, wide, arched door, open, but covered with soiled leather curtains. Men rolled carts and barrows up and down the ramps. Though he had never been in one before, Felix knew what they were – commercial cold cellars, built with one wall against the river so that it would transfer its constant chill to them. The cellars were used to store ice, ale, fish and other perishables.
Forelock stopped at the west end of the square and pointed, his hand shaking. ‘The third one in. That’s Nod’s. I don’t dare go no farther. They’d see me.’
Gotrek looked at him suspiciously, then sneered and pushed him aside. ‘Run away, then.’
He started forward. Felix joined him.
‘Hoy,’ came Forelock’s voice from behind them. ‘What about that Karl?’
Felix sighed, then flipped the coin over his shoulder.
Gotrek stopped at the top of the third ramp. A sign over the door said Helder’s Ice House. It looked no more criminal than the others. Men were lowering a fully laden ale wagon down the ramp using a block and tackle. Others were sliding still struggling sturgeon down a wet canvas chute to men at the bottom who gaffed them with billhooks and flopped them onto a low cart.
A set of shallow stairs went down one side of the ramp. Gotrek and Felix walked down them and pushed through the leather curtains. It was dim inside, and cold. Haloed torches glowed in the moist air and Felix could see his breath. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw that the cellar was one long, cavernous tunnel that ran under the market square above, all the way to the river wall. The tunnel was about thirty feet wide, with a double row of crumbling stone columns forming an aisle down the centre. Crates and barrels were piled to the left and right of the aisle, pushed up against what Felix at first thought were towering stacks of baled hay. Then he saw that the bales were blocks of ice, wrapped in hay to keep them from melting. The entire room was lined, floor to ceiling, with walls of ice. Below the arched ceiling was a lattice of wooden beams and struts. These supported a crane and winch that could be moved the whole length of the tunnel to facilitate the loading and unloading of carts.
A second ale wagon was being unloaded as they entered – huge man-high kegs winched up and swung across, then set down gently on top of others. To the wagon’s left, men in winter coats were laying the twitching sturgeon in beds of crushed ice while, deeper in the tunnel, other men climbed all over the piles of crates, shouting and whistling to each other as they placed inventory or cut ice from the great blocks.
Gotrek marched up to a burly bearded man who stood next to the ale wagon, checking a manifest. ‘Where’s Big Nod?’ he growled.
The man looked down at him, sizing him up, then shrugged and turned back to the wagon. ‘Never heard of him.’
Gotrek punched him in the stomach, smashing the air of out him in a rush. The man collapsed to his knees, white and wheezing.
Gotrek grabbed him by the beard and yanked his head up. ‘Where’s Big Nod?’
‘Get… get stuffed,’ whispered the man.
Gotrek slapped him to the ground.
Felix winced. Violence was all very well if the man was a thief, but what if he really never had heard of Big Nod? What if the weasel with the greasy forelock had lied to them? All over the underground room men were turning to look at them. Some moved between them and the door.
‘Hie!’ came a piercing voice. ‘What’s the trouble?’
Felix looked over his shoulder. A ginger-haired halfling with bushy mutton chops stood in the door of an office, hands on his hips. An enormous man with pig eyes and a slack jaw stood behind him, scratching himself idly.
‘Where’s Big Nod?’ said Gotrek.
‘Y’ve got the wrong place,’ said the halfling. ‘No one here by that name. Now away with ye before I call the watch.’
The workmen edged closer, hefting billhooks and cudgels.
Gotrek strode forward. ‘Where’s the black powder? Where are you hiding it?’
‘Uh-oh, Nod,’ said Pig-Eyes, dully. ‘They know about the powder.’
The halfling’s cheek twitched, and he kicked Pig-Eyes in the shin. ‘Shut yer pie hole, ye cloth-headed orc!’
Pig-Eye cringed away. ‘Sorry, Nod. Sorry.’
The halfling shot a nod towards the doors. They began to creak closed. ‘Right, lads,’ he said, drawing an icepick as long as his arm. ‘Now that Hollow Head’s let the cat out, looks like we’ll have to teach a nosy dwarf to mind his own business. Bleed ’em!’
The warehouse men swarmed in, weapons swinging, as the big doors boomed shut. Gotrek and Felix were surrounded. Felix drew his sword and parried a long pole with a cruel hook at the end. A gutting knife stabbed at his stomach. He twisted away. Gotrek picked up the man he had flattened and heaved him at the crowd. Four men went down, but more surged around them, slashing with barrel hooks, daggers and
clubs. Brass knuckles glinted on meaty fists. Big Nod screeched encouragement behind them.
Felix blocked a cudgel, but checked his riposte, even though he had an opening. He felt constrained. He had no compunction about wholesale slaughter when it was orcs or bandits in the mountains, or Kurgan or beastmen in the wilds of Kislev, but this was Nuln. This was the Empire. There were laws here, consequences. Even though these villains were trying to rip his entrails out with their hooks and long knives, he didn’t feel right murdering them somehow.
Gotrek too did not kill, fighting only with his fists and whatever sticks and poles he could take from their attackers. He dealt terrible damage regardless. Men lay moaning and writhing all around him, eyes blackening and broken noses gushing blood. He snapped the arm of a man twice his height with a flick from a stolen club. Another’s knee bent sideways from a savage kick.
‘Practicing mercy?’ gritted Felix as they fought back to back.
‘Mercy? Bah!’ said Gotrek. ‘These scum are not worthy of my axe.’
A man in an apron roared and charged Gotrek with a barrow loaded with a huge side of beef. The meat caught the Slayer amidships and drove him back, smashing him into the tubs that held the iced sturgeons. He went down and the barrow went with him, tipping on its side. The half-carcass slid across the stone floor on a smear of blood.
A dozen men leapt on the Slayer, flailing with their hooks and cudgels. One dived from the top of the ale wagon.
‘Gotrek!’ Felix slashed around with his sword, fanning back his attackers as he attempted to reach his companion. Maybe they should have been killing these hoodlums after all.
Gotrek surged up, kicking and punching, a barrel hook buried in the meat of his left arm. The men dodged back, then darted in again, stabbing and swinging. Gotrek reached behind him, pawing for weapons, and found the tails of two sturgeons. He snatched them up and swung them like clubs. Each was longer than Felix’s sword and weighed more than a halfling. The Slayer caught one man on the side of the head with a wet smack that knocked him flat. He took another’s legs out from under him.
Gotrek grinned savagely. ‘Ha! Now we’ll see!’
He strode into the mob, the two massive fish whirling around him in a silvery blur. Warehouse men flew left and right, their heads knocked sideways, spit and teeth flying. Felix caught up a cudgel and followed behind him, cracking the heads and hands of those who had managed to dodge the deadly onslaught.
The tide turned. More than half the workmen were down, and the others were hanging back, wary. Gotrek’s left fish slapped a man in the stomach. His right clubbed another in the back of the head. Bits of slimy fish flesh flew everywhere.
Felix slashed with his club and blocked with his sword. His attackers danced back, eyes wide. Was he truly that frightening? Why were they looking over his shoulder?
A hard hand shoved him roughly to the floor and something big whooshed by his ear. He looked up in time to see Gotrek knocked flat by an enormous keg of ale that swung at the end of a rope and pulley. The keg caromed on, mowing down a handful of men, then smashed into one of the stone support pillars in an explosion of ale, smashed staves and tumbling stones.
The ale slopped to the ground in a great spreading tide as men staggered to their feet. The halfling screamed a war cry and ran at the unmoving Slayer, ice pick raised. Felix tried to stand, but slipped in the swamp of ale, blood and filth that covered the floor. His sword flew from his fingers as he tried to steady himself. He wasn’t going to make it in time.
‘Die, ye nosy dirt eater!’ cried the halfling, and jabbed down with the pick.
Gotrek’s hand shot up and caught Big Nod’s wrist. The halfling screamed in the dwarf’s iron grip. Gotrek got to his feet as the little villain scrabbled and kicked at him ineffectually. Still holding him by the wrist, Gotrek raised the halfling over his head, then flung him. He splashed down in the lake of ale.
Gotrek waded in after him and sat on his chest. His fingers closed around the halfling’s throat. ‘Where is the powder?’
‘Please, no…’ he sputtered.
A mortar-crusted stone as big as a pumpkin bounced into the ale, drenching them both. The halfling looked up. Felix followed his gaze. The pillar that the keg had struck was falling apart. Men were picking themselves up and running from it. As Felix watched, a huge mass of stone and mortar broke free and sloughed to the ground in an avalanche. The network of rafters groaned. Dribbles of dust rained down from the ceiling above.
Gotrek didn’t look up. ‘Where is the powder?’
Felix backed towards the wall, staring up warily. ‘Gotrek, get away…’ He paused, frowning. Was there someone in the rafters? He thought he had seen a white-haired, black-clad figure ducking under a crossbeam, but there was so much dust in the air he couldn’t be sure.
The rest of the pillar exploded in a shower of dust and stones as the weight of the roof finally became too much. The rafters warped and splintered with the strain. Men ran for the doors and threw them open, trying to escape.
‘The powder,’ repeated Gotrek, implacably, as stones crashed down all around him.
A hole was opening in the roof.
‘Are ye mad?’ squealed Big Nod. ‘We’ll be killed! Let me up!’ A stone impacted inches from his head. He shrieked.
Gotrek didn’t even flinch. ‘Tell me and I’ll let you up.’
‘But I don’t know where it is!’
Gotrek’s hand tightened around the halfling’s neck. The hole in the ceiling was getting wider as more stones and mortar peeled away and dropped to the floor. Felix could just see stars in a deep blue sky through the clouds of dust. A rock the size of a fist bounced off Gotrek’s back. He didn’t seem to notice. Another smashed Big Nod’s outflung hand.
‘Curse ye!’ he wailed. ‘I sold it! I sold it to them that ordered it stolen! I don’t know where they took it!’
Gotrek surged up and dragged the dripping halfling to the wall. A huge chunk of masonry crashed down right where they had been. Nod gulped, eyes bulging.
Gotrek pressed him against the wall and leaned a forearm across his windpipe. ‘Who bought it?’
‘I don’t know.’
Gotrek pressed harder. Nod’s workmen pressed past them, too intent on escaping to be concerned about their boss.
‘Come on, Gotrek,’ said Felix. ‘Bring him outside. It’s time to go.’
‘Not until he talks.’
‘I don’t know! Truly!’ squealed Big Nod. ‘They wore scarves and hooded cloaks. I never saw their faces!’
‘It’s the truth, dwarf,’ said the burly, bearded man Gotrek had first spoken to. ‘Came to us at night. Never stepped into the light.’
Another huge chunk of stone slammed down to the floor beside them. Felix felt the impact through the soles of his boots. Big Nod wailed.
Gotrek grunted and dragged the halfling towards the doors. Felix hurried after them, relieved. Halfway there, a flash of white drew his eye upward. There was someone up there. A black-clad figure was climbing the rafters. Felix barely registered it before it disappeared through the hole in the roof, its white hair flashing in the starlight. Felix frowned. There had been something disturbingly familiar about the figure, something he was sure he should recognise, but the memory stayed tantalisingly out of reach.
As soon as they were outside the leather curtains, Gotrek pinned Big Nod to the wall again.
‘What now?’ cried the halfling. ‘We already told you. We didn’t see their faces. Leave me be!’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Gotrek growled. ‘Thieves always make sure of their employers.’
Burly shook his head and made the sign of Taal. ‘They was dangerous men. Magickers for certain.’ He swallowed. ‘Said they could kill us in our dreams if we crossed them.’
‘And they paid twice what the job was worth,’ said Big Nod. He glared back towards his cellar. ‘Won’t be enough to fix this though, curse ye. Ye’ve ruined us!’
‘You’ve ruined yourself,’ g
rated Gotrek.
‘Were they Nulners?’ asked Felix. ‘Could you tell that much?’
‘They weren’t Shantytowners,’ said the halfling. ‘I know that. Talked posh, like you. Big words.’
That was something at least. Felix was going to ask another question when he heard shouts and the thud of blows from the top of the ramp. He looked up. Men in the uniforms of the city watch were coming down it, trying to collar scurrying workmen.
‘Sergeant!’ cried Big Nod, waving frantically in Gotrek’s grip. ‘Arrest these villains! They attacked my men and smashed up my place! Look at my roof!’
The watchmen started towards them.
‘These are the thieves that stole the black powder from the Imperial Gunnery School,’ countered Felix. ‘They’ve just confessed to us.’
‘We never!’ said the halfling. ‘They’re lunatics, sergeant. Mutants, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Now now,’ said the sergeant, a square, stocky fellow with greying hair and enormous moustaches. ‘One at a time. And put that halfling down.’
Gotrek glared at him for a moment, then reluctantly lowered Big Nod to the ground and let go of his neck.
The halfling staggered back, gasping and clutching his bruised neck as he glared at Gotrek. ‘Y’blackhearted wreckers! Now you’ll see! It’s the Iron Tower for you, you filthy…!’
‘Pipe down if you please, sir,’ said the sergeant. ‘None of that. You’ll have your say.’ He turned to Felix. ‘Now then, who might you be? And what’s your interest in who stole what from the Gunnery School?’
Felix hesitated for a heartbeat, remembering that he and Gotrek were wanted men in the Empire – he for vandalism and incitement, Gotrek for killing Imperial cavalrymen during the window tax riots. Then he chided himself for being foolish. All that was a long time ago, and in Altdorf, not Nuln. Surely no one would remember, would they? It seemed impossible. ‘I am Felix Jaeger. My companion is Gotrek Gurnisson. We are guests of the College of Engineering, and…’
The sergeant blinked. ‘You’re Felix Jaeger?’ he interrupted. ‘And this is Gotrek the Slayer?’
Felix’s heart sank. They did remember them. After all these years there was still a price on their heads. Incredible. His hand dropped to his hilt. Gotrek reached for his axe.
