by Warhammer
‘I need no disguise,’ Gotrek said. ‘When the fighting starts, I’ll come in.’
And what if you come in too late, thought Felix? He and Ulrika could be overwhelmed before the Slayer arrived. But he kept it to himself. It would sound like whining.
‘There are skylights on the roof,’ said Ulrika, then looked Gotrek up and down. ‘If you can get to the roof.’
Gotrek growled. ‘I’m a dwarf. There are no better climbers.’
‘Shhh!’ said Felix. ‘They come.’
Gotrek, Felix and Ulrika stepped further back into the arch of the boatyard’s gate. The two men walked past, looking nervously over their shoulders, but not into the shadows beside them.
Gotrek reached out and grabbed one by the belt. Ulrika took the other by the collar. They yanked the men into the archway and broke their necks with brutal efficiency. Felix winced in sympathy, then pulled their masks and cloaks off. He recognised neither of them. They looked like shopkeeps.
As Gotrek heaved the bodies over the boatyard gate, Felix handed a mask and cloak to Ulrika and donned the other himself. His mask smelled of sausage and sour sweat. He fought down nausea and looked at Ulrika and Gotrek through the small eyeholes.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready,’ said Ulrika.
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek.
They stepped out of the archway and started towards the warehouse, Felix and Ulrika making for the front door, Gotrek angling for the alley that ran between it and the next.
When they reached the door, Felix stretched out his hand to knock, then paused. What had it been? Ah yes. He rapped sharply on the door twice, then three times, then twice again.
The door opened, and a short, masked man in workman’s clothes looked up at them. ‘Welcome, brothers. The password?’
Felix froze, his heart thudding. There was a password? Sigmar, they were sunk before they had begun!
‘Er,’ he said, for want of anything better to say.
‘We have already told you the password,’ said Ulrika, speaking in a husky voice and stepping forward.
‘You have? said the cultist, his brow crinkling. ‘No you haven’t. I would have heard.’
Ulrika pressed her mask close to her face so that he could see her piercing blue eyes. ‘We have already told you the password.’
She took another step forward. Felix followed her lead and advanced as well. They were in the door now.
‘But…’ said the man stepping back unhappily. He sounded like he was going to cry. ‘But…’
‘Don’t you see? We must have told you the password,’ said Ulrika, soothingly, as she eased past him. ‘Or you wouldn’t have let us in. You are not to let anyone in who doesn’t know the password, correct?’
‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘And…’
‘And you are a stalwart man who would not forsake your duty, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am! There are none more loyal to the brotherhood than I.’
‘Yes. You are dutiful and loyal, and would not have allowed anyone in who hadn’t told you the password.’
‘Never,’ he agreed.
‘So since we are in…?’ she let it hang.
‘I… I suppose you must have told me the password,’ said the cultist. ‘Yes, of course you did. Why else would I have let you in?’
‘Yes,’ said Ulrika softly. ‘Nothing else makes sense.’
‘Yes.’ He sighed, glad to have it all resolved. ‘Nothing else makes sense.’ He pointed to the door at the back of the small office they were in. ‘The others are in the back.’
‘Thank you, brother,’ murmured Ulrika.
Felix shot her a look as they stepped to the inner door. Her eyes behind the mask twinkled with amusement. Felix swallowed. He hadn’t seen anything amusing in the exchange. He felt like he had just watched a cat toy with a mouse and then eat its head.
The warehouse beyond the office was dark but for a flicker of lantern light that glowed from somewhere beyond a blocky mountain range of stacked barrels and crates. Low murmurs disturbed the dusty silence. Felix and Ulrika followed the voices around the towering piles of cargo and found a group of men sitting on and standing around a ring of rolled carpets, in the centre of which stood a figure that Felix was nearly certain was Gephardt. There was a lantern at his feet.
‘Brothers, welcome,’ said the figure. It was indeed Gephardt. ‘We will begin shortly. We wait only for two more.’
Felix and Ulrika nodded, but said nothing. They joined the men leaning against a wall of crates at the edge of the circle, staying as far out of the lamplight as they dared. Felix glanced up at the roof. Through the rafters that supported it he could see a line of square skylights. He did not see Gotrek.
After a few minutes, another man came in, and right after him, the guard who had watched the door. Felix counted nineteen in all – twenty-one including Ulrika and himself.
‘Good,’ said Gephardt, as the door guard took a seat on a rolled rug. ‘Now we are complete. And soon our plans will be complete.’ He stood straighter and spread his arms. ‘Brothers,’ he said. ‘The time of the rising of the Brotherhood of the Cleansing Flame has come at last. All over the city our fellows meet. Tonight is the last night of Nuln. Tomorrow comes the change!’
The men murmured soft cheers. Felix and Ulrika followed suit.
‘I will now tell each of you your target. When we have finished here, go to it and wait in secret until the signal. This will come in a few short hours when the men of the school test the last cannon they shall ever make. When that gun fires, our brave leader will light the powder that will blow the Imperial Gunnery School to the heavens. That explosion is your signal. When you hear it – and have no fear, you will hear it – you will set fire to your primary target, then, when it is burning well, light as many nearby buildings as you are able. The houses will burn! The foundries will fall! The manufactories will collapse!’ He raised his fists. ‘We will raise such a cloud of smoke that Nuln will know no dawn today, and no tomorrow ever after.’
The men cheered.
Gephardt raised his voice to be heard over them. ‘The flames of the city will light the way for Tzeentch’s glorious armies as they march across the broken empire that will be theirs, and ours!’
The men cheered louder. Felix’s heart almost stopped in his chest. By all the gods, they meant nothing less than the destruction of the Empire! For, though they intended to burn only Nuln – only! – Nuln was more than a city. It was the Empire’s armoury! Out of it came the cannons and black powder and hand weapons that kept her strong and secure. If Nuln’s forges were destroyed and her foundries stilled, no amount of men could defend the Empire’s borders, for they would have no arms to do it with. The hordes of Chaos that even now assaulted their northern borders would lumber south unimpeded, and everything that Felix called home would be ground to pulp beneath their iron-shod hooves. The enemy was striking from within, far from Middenheim and the front, and unless he and Gotrek and Ulrika could prevail, no one in power would know it until it was far too late.
Gephardt lowered his arms and motioned for quiet. ‘Brother Matchcord!’ he called.
‘Aye?’ said a sturdy fellow at the front.
‘Your shift at the granaries starts in an hour, yes?’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Go to work as usual, but when the signal comes. Light the silos.’
‘Aye, sir! All glory to Tzeentch!’
‘Brother Candlewick!’
‘Aye,’ said a stooped older man.
‘Handelhoff’s livery stables. Start in the hayloft.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Brother Lampblack!’
‘Here, sir!’
And so on through the assembly – Brother Flint, Brother Tinder, Brother Flame, Brother Brand, with each being given a target in the general vicinity of Shantytown. Felix’s heart lurched as he all at once realised that they would soon call his name, and he didn’t know what it was! He looked at Ulrika and sh
e nodded and shrugged. They both glanced towards the ceiling. There was still no sign of Gotrek. What was keeping him? Had he met with some accident? Was he already here?
‘Brother Torch!’
There was no answer. The men looked around.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Brother Torch!’ repeated Gephardt, scanning the crowd.
‘H-here!’ said Felix at last.
Gephardt looked at him, his eyes seeming to burn through Felix’s mask. ‘You are not Brother Torch.’
‘Who says I’m not,’ said Felix, remembering belatedly to affect a Shanty-town accent.
‘Wait a moment,’ said the door guard, shaking his head as if waking from a dream. ‘Wait a moment. They’re the ones who told me they gave me the password when they didn’t. I knew something wasn’t right about them!’
The masked men all stood, drawing daggers and cutlasses and cudgels from under their cloaks.
‘Friends,’ said Gephardt. ‘You have made your last mistake. Get them!’
His followers surged towards Felix and Ulrika in a mass. Felix threw back his cloak and drew his sword. Beside him, Ulrika did the same. Two versus nineteen, thought Felix grimly. Ulrika might survive it, but he would not. There were too many. If only Gotrek were here.
‘’Ware below,’ grated a familiar voice from above, as the cultists slammed into them.
Felix didn’t dare look up. He was too busy blocking and parrying a dozen attackers. But then a groaning of tortured wood followed the words. He stole a glance over his shoulder. The cliff face of crates was leaning precariously out over their heads. Felix yelped and dived left, his stitches tearing as he batted aside the cultists’ blades and hit the floor, hissing with pain.
Four big crates toppled down on the masked men just as they realised what was happening. They screamed, and more than half a dozen of them were caught under the crates as they exploded on the floor in an eruption of planks, splinters and brass chamber pots, one of which bounced and clonked Felix on the head.
Gotrek leapt down from the gap he had made, bellowing Khazalid war cries, and cut down three cultists with two swings. Felix surged up unsteadily, the pain from his reopened wound making him dizzy. He slashed around himself, half blinded by his mask, which had turned askew. He tore it off and hacked at a cultist who was engaged with the Slayer. The man screamed in pain and turned, swinging a hand axe at Felix. Gotrek decapitated him without looking around. Beyond the Slayer, Ulrika ran the door guard through the stomach. He squealed as he died.
‘Kill them!’ cried Gephardt, from behind the pack. ‘They know all! They cannot be allowed to escape!’
The cultists pressed forward, calling on their heathen god. Gotrek roared as they came, cleaving one down to his guts, then turning on three more. Felix slashed left and right to keep the ones he faced at bay, then ducked instinctively as something bright flashed overhead. It was Gephardt’s lantern, sailing over the heads of the attackers to smash behind Ulrika. It splashed her back with flaming oil. She shrieked and dropped, rolling to put the flames out. A cultist stabbed her through the leg. Another smashed her in the chest with a huge mallet.
‘Ulrika!’ Felix cried, and tried to scramble through the jumble of crates to reach her. He misstepped, and jammed his foot in a chamber pot. He slipped as the pot skidded on the wood floor. The fire was spreading across the floor. The wreckage and the wall of crates were catching.
Gotrek growled, annoyed, but pushed towards Ulrika, fanning back her attackers with his axe. Felix tried to free his foot, but three cultists were on him. He smashed one’s sword out of his hand, but slipped again. A cultist with a cutlass lunged in, trying to take advantage. Felix parried desperately and nearly fell. Beyond the melee he saw Gephardt and another man disappearing around a mound of crates.
‘Gephardt’s running for it!’ he said.
‘Well, get him!’ said Gotrek, holding off four cultists as Ulrika rolled behind him, still smouldering.
Felix grunted. He could barely stand with this foolish piss bucket on his foot, let alone run. He blocked a smash from an iron-shod club and kicked the cutlass wielder in the face with the pot. The brass split from the impact, and the man dropped like an empty sack. Felix shook his foot as he blocked another bash from the club, but couldn’t free it. Curse it! He’d just have to run with it. He bulled past his three attackers, knocking two to the floor, then ran in the direction Gephardt had gone, clanking ridiculously with every step, his attackers in hot pursuit.
As Felix rounded the mound of crates, he saw a door open in the far wall and Gephardt and the other man’s silhouettes fill it. He raced towards them as fast as he could go, clang, thud, clang, thud, clang, thud, which wasn’t very fast. He could feel blood trickling down his side from his torn stitches. He heard his pursuers gaining on him and glanced back. He’d have to fight them before he could fight Gephardt, curse it.
He turned to face them, but as he did, a black shadow dropped down behind them, sillhouetted against the glow of flames from the front of the warehouse. A bright spike of steel sprouted from the last one’s ribs. Ulrika! The others turned and cried out as the vampiress laid into them. She was still smoking slightly.
Felix turned and clanked on, his caught foot cramping terribly. Gephardt turned and paused in the door.
‘Go!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Spread the word! There may be more spies among us! Tell the others to start the fires early!’ He tore off his mask and drew his sword, glaring at Felix with wild eyes. ‘I’ll handle this fool.’
Felix charged at him, swinging, but Gephardt backed out of the door, and Felix’s sword bit into the wall beside it. Gephardt lunged through the frame, forcing Felix to twist ungracefully aside to avoid his point. His stitches ripped further. He cursed through clenched teeth. The little snot had him at a disadvantage. Karaghul might be a runesword and a dragon killer, but it was a slashing weapon, not made for quick thrusts, whereas Gephardt’s weapon was a slim rapier, a courtier’s weapon, made for the lunge. Felix couldn’t get a good swing in, with the door frame in the way.
He thrust, but Gephardt parried easily, and returned a riposte that pinked his arm. Felix fell back, his trapped foot slipping sideways and wrenching his groin. Curse this stupid pot, Felix thought. He kicked savagely to try to dislodge it. It flew off his foot and through the door, glancing off Gephardt’s forehead.
Felix leapt forward before the cultist could recover, and ran him through the belly, tearing it horribly. Gephardt flopped back in the mud of the street, gasping and staring at the ropes of his intestines as they slithered out through the hole in his abdomen.
Felix raised his sword to put the man out of his misery, but a black form blurred past him and shoved him aside.
‘No!’
Ulrika straddled Gephardt’s chest and thrust her head forward, baring her fangs. ‘Burn me, will you?’ she snarled, then sank her clawed fingers into his neck as if it was soft butter. Gephardt sputtered and thrashed, but could not throw her off. She ripped his oesophagus out with one hand and showed it to his dying eyes. ‘Burn in your master’s flames, fool.’
She tossed the mess aside and wiped her hand on Gephardt’s beautiful cloak, then caught Felix’s horrified look. She shrugged. ‘I don’t like fire.’
Gotrek appeared in the door. ‘Was that the last?’
Felix shook his head and looked up and down the empty street. ‘There was one more. And we must catch him. Gephardt sent him to tell the others to start the burning early.’
‘Which way did he go?’ asked Ulrika.
‘I don’t know,’ said Felix. ‘I…’
He paused as he saw something on the ground. He picked it up. It was a mask. He groaned. They were sunk. The man could be blocks away by now, and they didn’t know what he looked like. Half the city could be aflame within the hour.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
‘Give me that,’ said Ulrika. She snatched the mask from Felix’s hand and covered her nose with it, inhaling deepl
y. After a moment she lowered the mask and tucked it away in her doublet, then crouched like a cat on the prowl, sniffing the air and the ground. She took a few steps north, then nodded and stood.
‘I’ll find him,’ she said. Then she sprinted off into the night.
‘This is bad,’ said Felix, as he helped Gotrek carry Gephardt’s body back into the warehouse. The place was filling with smoke from the rapidly spreading fire. ‘Did you…’ He coughed violently. ‘Did you hear their plan?’
‘Not all of it,’ said Gotrek.
‘They are going to blow up the Gunnery School after all, the minute the last Middenheim gun is test fired, and the explosion will be the signal for the rest of the Cleansing Flame to start fires all over Nuln.’ He shook his head. ‘We’ll never stop them all.’ He looked despairingly at the inferno that raged at the far side of the room. ‘We won’t stop even this one.’
‘We don’t have to stop them all,’ said Gotrek, ‘just the explosion at the school. Then their signal will never come.’
‘But we can’t just let this burn!’ said Felix. ‘We already burned down this neighbourhood once! I won’t do it again.’
‘Better one neighbourhood than all of them,’ said Gotrek. He started for the door. ‘Come on, manling. No time to waste. If that gun is ready, they may fire it before dawn.’
Felix followed, reluctant and heartsick. Though he knew in his head that it was the cultists who were responsible for the fires, he also knew that they wouldn’t have been set if he and Gotrek hadn’t come sticking their noses in. And yet, had they not investigated, they would not have learned that the cultists meant to burn the whole city.
As they stepped into the street they saw Ulrika approaching, wiping her face with the cultist’s yellow mask. Her lips and chin were smeared with blood, and her eyes glowed with feverish life.
‘I found him,’ she said, tossing the mask aside. She licked her lips clean.
Felix shuddered. Gotrek spat, then stumped forward, pushing past her as if she weren’t there. Ulrika fell in behind him.
