by Warhammer
‘It would be a shame,’ she purred. ‘To end so illustrious a career in a spat over the meaning of a word.’ She glanced around the room. ‘Particularly when our goals appear to be the same.’
‘What do you want with the Cleansing Flame?’ asked Felix. He could have wished that his first words to Ulrika after eighteen years had been something more personal. He also wished that she and Gotrek would lower their weapons, but he doubted asking would do any good.
‘Surely you want what I want,’ said Ulrika. ‘To discover where these villains have hidden the black powder.’
‘The Cleansing Flame have the black powder?’ asked Felix.
Ulrika raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t know that? Perhaps, then, I can be more useful to you alive than dead?’
‘How did you learn this?’ asked Felix.
Ulrika shrugged. ‘I would find it much easier to talk if your dwarf friend would remove his axe from my neck.’
Gotrek didn’t move.
‘Gotrek,’ said Felix. ‘It’s Ulrika.’
‘Not anymore,’ Gotrek rasped.
‘Will you break an oath?’ pressed Felix.
‘She has killed.’
‘Then take it up with her mistress,’ said Felix.
‘I will,’ Gotrek growled. ‘When I’ve finished with her.’
He leaned in, looking as if he meant to saw Ulrika’s head from her shoulders, but then, from all around them came the sound of running feet. Even the ceiling resounded with footsteps.
Gotrek stepped back from Ulrika, going on guard.
The vampire drew her sword. ‘Cockroaches,’ she hissed.
Felix turned in a wary circle, scanning the walls and ceiling. Hidden panels, Gotrek had said, but where? The whole place was so patched together and makeshift anything could be a door.
The wall in front of him flew out like the shutters of a cuckoo clock, and four masked men surged out, slashing at him with daggers, axes and cleavers. There were more behind them. At the same instant, panels in the other wall and the ceiling slammed open. Men charged Gotrek and Ulrika. More dropped down in their midst, stabbing in every direction. The tiny guard room was suddenly more crowded than the Blind Pig during Powder Week.
Felix parried and blocked the men in front of him. A dagger from behind gashed his burned shoulder. He hissed in pain and tried to return the attack, but his long sword was cumbersome in this tight space. Still blocking the three men in front of him, Felix twitched away from another backstab and kicked behind him like a mule. The attacker grunted and doubled up, and a back swing from Gotrek’s axe took off the top of the man’s head.
A man with a short, curved cutlass thrust at Felix and he ran him through. A cutlass! A much better close quarters weapon. Felix left his runesword in the man’s guts and stripped the cutlass and dagger from his slack hands. He used them to parry cuts from his other two attackers, then glanced over his shoulder for danger from behind.
A blink took in the rest of the room. All the men who had dropped from the roof were dead, their limbs and heads lopped off – Gotrek’s work. The Slayer fought five men who were pushing forward through the far wall. More were dead at his feet. Ulrika stood at the mouth of the inner corridor, teeth bared, her rapier and dagger flickering like humming birds in the brazier-glow. Men fell away from her, blooming red from the chests, necks and groins. A knife was buried to the hilt in her stomach. She appeared not to notice.
Another blink and he was back to his own opponents. He ducked a heavy cleaver swinging for his head, then stabbed the cleaver-man with his dagger and used his cutlass to gash a wrist behind a lunging knife. He had no idea who the wrist belonged to. His vision had narrowed to just the blades coming towards him. A short sword thrust at his groin. He smashed down on the fingers holding it and it clattered to the floor. A hand axe hacked at his head. He ducked and slipped left, shouldering someone in the ribs, and gutting someone else. The hand axe cut his shoulder – the same shoulder the dagger had hit! He hissed and stabbed back angrily, and was gratified to hear a scream. A knife grazed his cheek and he lashed out with his cutlass. The knife-man crumpled, his neck open to the bone.
The last two men backed away from him, squeezing back through the trap and running into the darkness beyond. Felix started forward, snarling.
‘Don’t be drawn, manling,’ said Gotrek’s from behind him.
With an effort, Felix restrained himself from chasing the men. It always amazed him how, when his blood was up, he found himself ready to do things you couldn’t have paid him to do when he was calm and thinking clearly.
He turned. All the men who had attacked them were dead or fleeing. The room was a charnel house. The bodies were knee deep. Gotrek had a few minor cuts, but was otherwise unwounded. The Slayer was glaring at Ulrika as she drew the dagger from her stomach and tossed it aside with a sniff of annoyance.
‘My Tilean doublet,’ she said. ‘That will take some…’ She paused as she met Gotrek’s gaze, then rolled her eyes. ‘Do you still wish to slay me, Slayer?’
‘You are a monster,’ growled Gotrek.
‘A monster that you allowed to come into existence.’
Gotrek bared his teeth. ‘That makes it worse.’
‘Perhaps we should settle this later,’ said Felix, looking around uneasily as he recovered his runesword from the stomach of the man it had killed.
Ulrika’s chin came up. She cocked her head. ‘Good idea. More are coming.’
‘Where?’ said Gotrek eagerly.
She nodded towards the left wall. ‘We should elude them.’
‘Elude them?’ Gotrek sounded as disgusted as if she had suggested he kiss an orc.
Ulrika sighed. ‘You were never long on strategy, were you, Slayer?’ She continued as if speaking to an unusually slow child. ‘If we fight every step of the way, the leaders will have time to sneak away or move the powder.’
Now even Felix could hear footsteps, and they were coming from more than one direction. ‘Then let’s go.’
But Gotrek was still glaring at Ulrika.
‘What?’ she snapped, impatient.
At last he snarled and turned towards the inner corridor. ‘Follow me.’
Ulrika gave Felix a quizzical glance, as if to say ‘did he mean me?’ Felix shrugged and they followed the dwarf into the corridor.
Felix could see almost nothing, but he heard men coming ahead of them.
‘You call this eluding them?’ said Ulrika.
‘Shut up, leech,’ growled Gotrek. He felt along the walls with his fingers. The composition of the walls changed with almost every pace – brick, wood, plaster, stone. These cellars had obviously been rebuilt countless times. Gotrek turned a corner. The footsteps got louder, and there were more approaching from behind them.
‘Ha!’ said the Slayer, then felt up and down a section of brick. ‘I knew there would be another.’
Felix looked up and down the corridor anxiously. It sounded like both groups of men were almost on them.
With a grunt of satisfaction, Gotrek used a thick fingernail to pry out what looked like a loose chunk of mortar. There was a click and a section of the wall swung back, revealing a stairway going down. ‘In. Quick,’ said the Slayer.
Felix and Ulrika slipped through the secret door and Gotrek pulled it closed, enveloping them in darkness. Just as it clicked shut again, boots rumbled up from both directions just outside.
‘Where are they?’ said a harsh voice.
‘They were heading towards you,’ said another. ‘Don’t tell me you let them slip by.’
‘No one got by us!’ said the first voice. ‘You must have lost them. Search back the way you came!’
The two groups split up again and the bootsteps faded into the distance.
‘A hole even the roaches don’t know of,’ said Ulrika. ‘Interesting.’
Gotrek sniffed. ‘I smell smoke and meat. They are below.’ He stepped to the stairs. ‘Hand on my shoulder, manling.’
They
started down the stairs, Gotrek and Ulrika in front, Felix stumbling along behind. He ground his teeth in frustration. Why was he always the one who couldn’t see in the dark?
‘So, how was it that you learned that these madmen had the black powder?’ Felix asked after they had descended a few flights.
‘Countess Gabriella hears many things,’ said Ulrika. ‘Among them was a rumour that the Cleansing Flame would soon make an attack on the Imperial Gunnery School that would be the beginning of the burning of all of Nuln.’
‘What!’ said Felix. ‘They mean to blow up the school?’
‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘When the countess heard that the black powder had been stolen, she wondered if it might be the Cleansing Flame who had purchased it from the thieves. She sent me to investigate. While you were going for your swim in the Reik, I pulled aside one of the yellow-masked agitators who was leading the rioters and questioned him. He told me that the countess’s suspicions were correct.’
‘He talked?’ said Felix, surprised.
‘Oh yes.’ Ulrika chuckled. ‘I bled him for everything he knew.’
Gotrek spat, disgusted. ‘And what does your mistress care for the safety of Nuln,’ he asked.
‘She cares for Nuln precisely the way a shepherdess cares for her sheep,’ came Ulrika’s prim reply.
Gotrek growled in his throat, but said nothing.
After another flight, the Slayer stopped at a landing. ‘Keep back,’ he said, and shrugged out from under Felix’s hand.
Felix listened, trying to understand from the soft sounds that followed what Gotrek was doing. Then suddenly there was a thin line of torch glow illuminating Gotrek’s ugly face, and casting a dim light on the rest of the landing, revealing that the stairs continued further down.
Gotrek peered through the cracked door with his one good eye. Felix stepped behind him and looked over his shoulder.
Though he could only see a narrow sliver of the room beyond, he saw that it was big, with a high ceiling and a far wall more than thirty paces away. There was a large square of yellow cloth on the left wall above what appeared to be a stage of some kind – planks laid over an under structure of old barrels.
‘They must have escaped,’ echoed a plaintive voice from the room. ‘We searched all over the cellars.’
‘Escaped?’ said an upper class voice. ‘I find that hard to believe. Search again. From top to bottom. They cannot be allowed to interrupt us now. Go!’
‘Yes, brother. Right away, brother.’
Gotrek closed the door. ‘Further down,’ he said.
They resumed their descent.
Four flights later, the stairs ended at another hidden door. Gotrek listened at it, then tugged on the catch and pushed it open a crack. He peered through, then opened it wider. There was a hanging of some kind in front of the door. Gotrek drew his axe, hesitating. Felix strained his ears, listening for movement.
‘Worry not,’ said Ulrika. ‘I smell nothing with a pulse in this room.’
Gotrek shot her a look, then eased through the door and looked around the edge of the hanging. He motioned his companions out. Felix and Ulrika stepped through and pushed past the curtain. They were in a small room that looked something like Felix’s father’s office in his counting house. A desk with pigeon holes and ledger shelves stood on the left side of the room, a horn lamp illuminating it. The hanging was a yellow banner with the torch symbol of the Cleansing Flame stitched onto it. An armoire stood against the right wall. The far wall had a stout door in it.
Gotrek crossed to the door, listened, then tried it. Felix and Ulrika stood behind him as he opened it. A short corridor ended at a large, well-lit warehouse room. Felix could see men rolling barrels past the door under the direction of masked overseers.
‘The black powder,’ murmured Ulrika.
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘But where are they taking it?’
He crept into the corridor with Felix and Ulrika on his heels. They stopped just out of the square of light that shone from the high, vault-ceilinged room. It looked like the store room at a garrison fort. Boxes of steel shot were piled next to pyramids of cannonballs, racks of spears, swords and bows, a small deck cannon that looked like it had been stolen off an Estalian galley, and… the stolen barrels of black powder.
On the right-hand side of the room was a wooden loft. Stacked upon it were sacks of flour, racks of long guns, kegs of ale, barrels of salted beef and butts of water, as well as small barrels of pitch and paraffin.
The work crew was rolling the black powder barrels out from under the loft, and through a ragged hole in the far wall that led into a brick walled tunnel. The sewers. Felix could smell them from where he stood. Small boats bobbed in the channel of liquid filth. The men loaded two barrels on each boat and then other men poled them away. Only half a dozen barrels remained.
‘Destined for the Gunnery School?’ asked Felix. ‘We should go back and tell Lord Ostwald,’ said Felix.
‘Go back?’ Gotrek snorted. ‘Wait ten minutes and you can tell him it’s over.’ He strode forward into the light.
‘Fool! Wait!’ hissed Ulrika. ‘Have you never heard of subtlety!’
It was too late. One of the masked overseers was looking directly at Gotrek. He pointed, shouting an order. The men pushing the barrels righted them, then drew weapons and charged. More men poured out of side rooms, snatching up spears and swords from the weapon racks. On the loft platform, others began taking the long guns from the racks and feeding them powder and shot. The masked overseer started shouting arcane phrases.
Gotrek grinned, his one eye glittering. He ran forward, bellowing a dwarfish war cry.
Ulrika stared after him. ‘He’s insane.’
Felix shrugged. ‘He’s a Slayer.’ He raced in after Gotrek, screaming wordlessly.
Ulrika ran right beside him.
The two sides came together with a clash of steel in the centre of the big room. Gotrek killed five men instantly, his fell axe shattering spears, swords and bodies with equal ease. Felix hacked down through the shoulder of a spearman and into his ribcage. Ulrika lunged, recovered and lunged again in a blur, killing two men in the time it took Felix to pull his sword from the spearman’s chest.
Then they were surrounded – three whirlwinds fighting back to back in the eye of a hurricane of steel. Spears and swords and hand-axes stabbed in at them from all sides. A sword opened a shallow gash in Felix’s chest, tearing and bloodying his borrowed shirt. A spear tore his thigh. This was madness! Why wasn’t he wearing his trusty mail? Because he had thought he and Gotrek were going out for a drink, that’s why!
More men poured in from the entrances – patrols returning from hunting the passages, Felix guessed – and surged forward to join the press, pushing the melee into the shadow of the loft. Gotrek slew them as they came, wreaking terrible carnage with every stroke. Ulrika floated and flowed like a dancer, her sword everywhere at once. Bodies toppled in her wake, dying from wounds that barely bled. Felix hacked and blocked, more concerned with keeping the spears and swords at bay than with killing anyone. Attacking was too dangerous. Every lunge was an opportunity for five enemies to find an opening and run him through.
The masked overseer finished his incantation and thrust his hands towards the centre of the fight. Nothing happened. Perhaps Gotrek’s axe had protected them, thought Felix. It had dissipated spells before. Or perhaps Ulrika could counter magic now that she was a vampire. It gave Felix a good feeling knowing his companions were so powerful – a sense of security. With them at his side he knew he could face the greatest armies and come out on top. Gotrek was unstoppable, and Ulrika appeared to have become an even better swordswoman than she had been when she was alive. In fact, they were so good that Felix didn’t really have to do anything. He was tired anyway. Why didn’t he just lower his weapons and watch the two of them work? They would protect him. He had nothing to worry about. All was well. Everything would be…
‘Wake up, Felix!’
/> A sharp pain in his cheek snapped his eyes open. Half a dozen spear and sword blades were stabbing towards him. He yelped and leapt back wildly, and smacked into one of the wooden posts that held up the loft, knocking the wind out of him.
To his left Ulrika shouted at him as she impaled one attacker and elbowed another to the ground. ‘Beware!’ she snapped. ‘The mage tries to glamour us.’
Felix growled, furious at the violation. His mind was his own! He renewed his attacks, glaring at the masked sorcerer.
A tattoo of deafening bangs sounded from above. Men screamed. Felix felt hot agony sear his neck. He looked up. The gunners in the loft had got off a volley. They had hit some of their own men, but both Gotrek and Ulrika had been shot as well. Gotrek had a bleeding stripe just above his ear, and Ulrika was clutching her breast.
‘Cowards!’ roared Gotrek. ‘Come down here and fight!’
He lashed out at the support post and chopped it in two with one strike. The platform groaned and sagged in the middle. A flour sack slid off a stack and dropped down into the melee, smacking an agitator on the head. Gotrek pushed for the other post, cutting a swathe through his attackers.
‘Gotrek, don’t!’ cried Felix.
But it was too late. With a fierce backhand, Gotrek smashed through the second post.
‘Run!’ roared Felix, and bulled into the men in front of him, trying to get clear. They shouted and backed away, tripping over each other as the planks and beams of the loft twisted and snapped above them. Ulrika danced through the mob. Gotrek laughed maniacally, shoving the men aside and grinning back over his shoulder.
With a splintering roar, the loft gave way all at once. The front edge slammed down in a rain of men, guns, kegs, barrels of water and sacks of flour, and crashed right through the ancient warehouse floor, collapsing the supports that held it up, and sending the cannon, the cannonballs, and all the crates of shot smashing into the level below. The sagging planks slanted steeply under Felix’s feet as he tried to run, and suddenly he and Gotrek and Ulrika, and all the men that surrounded them, slid backwards down into the hole and fell on top of the heap of debris at the bottom. Felix thudded shoulder first – the same shoulder again – into the corner of a wooden gun case, buried under a squirming, moaning, coughing pile of bodies. All around, men called orders and shouted questions. Somewhere nearby, Gotrek chortled madly.
