by Warhammer
‘Are you certain this will carry both of us?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Gotrek.
He uncapped a brass tank behind the pilot’s seat, stuck the funnel in, and began to pour in the black water. The smell made Felix’s eyes burn.
‘We might not have enough fuel either,’ said the Slayer, squinting towards the western horizon. Felix followed his gaze. The Spirit of Grungni had disappeared behind the clouds.
Gotrek looked in the cockpit. ‘Take out those grenades,’ he said, pointing with his bearded chin. ‘That’ll shed some weight. And find me a spanner. We’ll have the cannon off too.’
Felix looked back at the door again. ‘Do we have time?’
‘The boiler takes ten minutes to build up steam,’ said Gotrek, setting down the empty fuel can. ‘We can’t leave before then.’
‘Ten minutes!’ Felix cried. He had vague memories of what a boiler was from the lessons Makaisson had given him long ago, but couldn’t remember exactly what it did. Whatever it was, he didn’t think it was going to do it fast enough. He looked to the door again. An axe blade bit through timbers. It would never last ten minutes. ‘We’ll be knee deep in Gunnery School guards by then.’
‘Just find a spanner.’
Gotrek pulled flint, steel and a curl of tinder paper from his belt pouch as Felix limped back towards the shed. Felix cringed as he heard a whump of flame, but when he looked back, Gotrek was closing a door in the side of the machine as if nothing was amiss.
There were no spanners in the fuel shed, but as Felix stepped out again, he noticed a half-dismantled contraption just to his left. It looked like some sort of telescope, or perhaps an experimental catapult. Rusty parts and tools were scattered all around it like fallen leaves. Felix hurried to it and scooped up as many tools as he could carry.
He ran back and spilled them at Gotrek’s feet. ‘Will these do?’
‘Aye, fine. Now remove the grenades.’ Gotrek took up a spanner and a pry bar and rolled under the front of the gyrocopter, from which a stubby cannon sprouted. ‘And watch the gauge on the side of the tank,’ he said as he reached up into the machines innards. ‘When the needle points straight up, we’re away.’
Felix peered at the gauge. The needle pointed left, parallel to the ground, but was rising slowly, in quivering starts and stops. He looked back to the door. There was a long, narrow hole in it, and axes and swords hacked at it from the other side.
Lord Groot’s voice came through it, rising over the clamour. ‘Come now, Herr Jaeger! Herr Gurnisson! Give yourselves up! You have no chance of escape!’
Felix swallowed as he leaned into the cockpit and began gingerly taking the heavy black iron spheres from the racks that held them. He set them carefully on the roof. He remembered too well how deadly and unpredictable the little bombs were. Images of Borek’s bespectacled nephew Varek handling them as if they were harmless toys flashed through his mind and made him shiver. And thinking of Varek reminded him of how the young dwarf scholar had died – by crashing a gyrocopter just like this one into the flank of a Chaos-twisted dragon. Felix’s shiver turned into full-fledged trembling.
Under the gyrocopter there was a clang, and Gotrek cursed. ‘Give me a bigger spanner, manling. And a hammer.’
Felix sorted through the tools and put a huge spanner and a ball-headed hammer into Gotrek’s outstretched hand. They disappeared under the gyrocopter and it began to shake as a deafening banging rang across the roof.
Felix checked the gauge again as he resumed unloading the grenades. He moaned. The needle hadn’t raised more than a hair’s width, and the guards would be through the door at any moment. Of course, they would still have some difficulty after that, having to climb over the cart or under it, but just one man with a pistol would be enough to end Gotrek and Felix’s flight before it began.
He looked at the grenade in his hand. That would be one way to solve the problem. One grenade under those lift-gas tanks and everything on that side of the roof would be blown to the four winds. If only it were orcs or mutants or ratmen on the other side of the door instead of Imperial citizens. If he were the black-hearted villain Ostwald and Groot and everybody else in Nuln apparently thought he was, he would have had no qualms about killing them all. Alas, tempting as it was, he was no killer, at least not of innocent men – at least, he thought with a shudder of guilt as he remembered the columns of smoke rising over Shantytown, not on purpose. He was not going to change that now.
He sighed and placed the grenade next to the others, then paused and looked again towards the door. So the men behind it thought him a bloodthirsty killer, capable of anything, did they? Why not use that to his advantage? He grinned and picked up the grenade again.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said, then started to the door.
Gotrek just grunted. The banging from under the gyrocopter continued.
Felix stopped about ten paces from the lift-gas cart. The hole in the door was bigger than a Verenan tome of law now. ‘Groot!’ he called. ‘Lord Groot! Show yourself! I want to talk!’
There was a babble of voices behind the door, and the chopping and banging slowed to a stop. After a second, Groot’s face appeared behind the hole, eyes wide and nervous.
‘Herr Jaeger?’ said Groot. ‘You wish to speak to me? Did you wish to give yourself up?’
‘No,’ said Felix. ‘I just wanted to say goodbye.’ He raised the grenade so Groot could see it, then mimed jerking the pin out, and rolled the bomb under the cart.
Groot shrieked and disappeared from the hole.
‘A bomb! A bomb!’ came his scream. ‘Down the stairs! Down the stairs! Hurry!’
The sounds of bedlam came through the door – bellows and shouts, the clank and clatter of dropped weapons, the thud of boots and falling bodies.
Felix laughed, then felt ashamed. It was a cruel trick, but when the alternative was murder? He shrugged and limped quickly back to the gyrocopter.
The needle was climbing steadily. It was less than the width of his finger away from straight up. Felix quickly removed the remaining grenades, then looked over the machine again. He frowned. Lightening the load was all very well, but there was still only one seat.
‘Where am I to sit?’
‘On your arse,’ growled Gotrek.
A heavy thud came from under the gyrocopter. Felix looked down. Gotrek was rolling out from under it. The cannon lay on the roof, surrounded by brass lugs.
The Slayer stood and scowled at the gyrocopter, scratching his scalp through his matted crest. ‘Hmmm. You’ll have to sit behind me, or the balance won’t be right.’
Felix looked into the cockpit, frowning. ‘But there’s no room behind your seat.’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘You’ll have to sit on the cowling.’
‘The cowling?’ said Felix. He didn’t know the word. ‘You mean on top of it? On the outside?’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek again. ‘It’s the only way.’ He checked the gauge. ‘It’s ready. Get on.’
‘No no!’ said Felix. ‘I won’t! The airship was bad enough! I’m not going to flit through the sky clinging to the back of a mechanical dragonfly! It’s impossible!’
‘Use some rope, then.’
‘Rope! And what if we crash? Or explode? How will I get away?’
‘Stay behind, then,’ said Gotrek, starting to climb up the wooden step ladder to the cockpit. ‘Do what you want. I’m flying.’
There was a loud crack and something whistled past Felix’s ear. He ducked behind the gyrocopter and looked towards the stairwell door. The muzzle of a long gun was withdrawing through the hole.
‘Try to blow us up, will you?’ came an angry voice. ‘Fiends of Chaos!’
Felix groaned. His ruse hadn’t bought them as much time as he’d hoped. Another gun poked through the hole, and another ball whizzed past.
Felix swallowed convulsively. ‘I’ll… I’ll get the rope.’ He darted out from cover, snatched up one of the ropes that had held down the
gyrocopter, then clambered up onto the machine, feeling horribly exposed. He sat down on the skin of it, his back against the column from which rose the spindle that held the three very flimsy looking lift blades. He started lashing himself to it as Gotrek lowered the second canister of black water into the cockpit and climbed in after it.
There was a splintering crash from the far end of the roof. Felix looked up. The door had come down at last. Men with swords and guns were squirming under and over the lift gas wagon.
‘Hurry!’ he said.
‘Easy, manling,’ said Gotrek, situating himself and running his hands over the controls. ‘I haven’t flown one of these in over a century.’ He murmured to himself. ‘Gear engage. Rudder. Forward down. Backward up. Aye, that’s the way of it. Right.’ He reached forward, released a lock, and pulled slowly back on a lever. ‘Hold on.’
With a hiss of steam and a clunk of pistons, the blades over Felix’s head began very slowly to spin. Too slowly.
More guards were pushing out from under the wagon. They stood and fired their guns. Balls whistled past on all sides of Felix. One ricocheted off the fuel tank.
The blades turned faster and faster, making the machine rock and vibrate like a living thing. The first guards knelt and reloaded as more crawled under the cart onto the roof and ran towards them.
Up up up, thought Felix to himself, willing the gyrocopter to fly. Up up up, damn you!
As Gotrek pulled the lever all the way back, the rhythmic thump of the blades smoothed out into a steady roar. The gyrocopter shimmied and danced, like a kite straining against its string in a high wind.
The handgunners were standing and aiming again, shoulder to shoulder. A guard ran directly at Felix, sword held high.
‘Up!’ shouted Felix, terrified.
The long guns cracked. Gotrek pulled backward on the rudder stick. The gyrocopter leaped sideways up into the sky over the bullets. The runners clubbed the sprinting guard to the roof.
Felix flopped over to one side, clutching futilely at the machine’s smooth exterior. The ropes cut painfully into his wounded ribs, but at least they held. Gotrek corrected his tilt and the gyrocopter zigged violently back the other way, throwing Felix against the ropes on the other side.
‘Controls are a bit sensitive,’ shouted Gotrek over the prop wash.
‘Really?’ moaned Felix.
Vertigo churned his guts as the machine veered over the edge of the roof and his eyes zoomed down the side of the building to the court yard below. With a sickening lurch the gyrocopter dropped and the ground shot up at him. He screamed. He and Gotrek were too heavy. They had overburdened the thing. The blades couldn’t keep them airborne. They were going to smash on the flagstones and die!
Gotrek pulled back on the rudder and brought them up short, about twenty feet above the ground. Felix’s crotch slammed painfully down onto the fuselage. The world dimmed as he curled forward in agony.
‘I think I’ve got it now,’ called Gotrek over his shoulder.
‘Oh… good,’ said Felix, clutching himself.
He sagged wearily against the ropes as Gotrek manipulated the controls – more gently this time – and the gyrocopter wobbled forward, glancing off a chimney as it rose over the tenements across from the college and started unsteadily across the city.
After a while even terror gives way to boredom.
At first Felix flinched at every dip and swoop that the tiny airship made, his stomach and bowels threatening to void themselves with every midair shimmy. Gotrek might have been the greatest warrior of his age, but he was a middling pilot at best. He flew dangerously close to spires and towers, and seemed to have difficulty staying high enough to clear the rooftops.
Things got better once they passed over the Nuln city walls and started flying above the countryside – there were fewer things to hit – but the machine seemed to be straining to carry them, and Gotrek constantly had to correct their altitude so they wouldn’t plough into the tops of trees.
Flying like this was infinitely worse than flying in the Spirit of Grungni, Felix decided. He had hated that too, at first – terrified of the unnatural feeling of floating high above the ground – but once he had understood how the cells of lift gas worked, and how resilient the gondola was, he had accepted the fact that it probably wouldn’t fall out of the air at a moment’s notice, and had come to enjoy it. This horrid contraption was another matter entirely. Here he was exposed to the wind and the cold and the weather, and the only things that held him up were three delicate spinning blades powered by a steam engine that might stutter and die at any moment. That was what had been so reassuring about the Spirit of Grungni. Even if its engines stopped, it would remain floating in the air. If the gyrocopter’s engines stopped, it would plummet to the ground like a cow dropped from a battlement.
But after the first hour, his terror faded to a dull tension that settled in his shoulders and made them ache. He watched listlessly as the endless green of the Reikwald scrolled past below them and the sun rose higher behind them. His mind, which until they had risen off the roof and out of the clutches of their pursuers, had been entirely occupied with either chasing or escaping their various enemies, began to think back over recent events and link together things that had, at the time, seemed unconnected.
The tainting of the cannons with powdered warpstone explained so much. The Gunnery School guard who had been hanged as a mutant, and the other who had gone insane and said that the cannons were looking at him – the poor fellows must have been warped by the tainted guns they had been guarding. The cannon that had exploded on the testing range – the addition of the warpstone dust must have caused a fatal flaw in the casting. The riot on the bridge that had ended with the cannon being pushed into the river – the Cleansing Flame must have orchestrated it so that the smiths of the Gunnery School couldn’t examine the cannon closely and discover the taint. Wissen’s insistence that the cultists wait until the new gun had been test fired before blowing up the Gunnery School – he wanted to be sure the last tainted gun didn’t blow up like the other had, and so would be able to do its evil work in Middenheim.
It occurred to Felix that the explosion of the cannon on the testing range must have been just as frustrating for Wissen and the Cleansing Flame as it was for Gotrek and Malakai and the others. If the gun had fired successfully, the Grungni would have been away that same afternoon, and the shipment of tainted cannon would have reached Middenheim days ago. Had that happened, the mountaintop city might have already fallen to Archaon’s hordes!
For a moment Wissen’s other actions puzzled Felix. Why had the leader of the Brotherhood of the Cleansing Flame, in his guise as Ward Captain of the Nuln Watch, persecuted the Cleansing Flame so strongly? Why had he gone into Shantytown and beaten and arrested so many people? Was it only to deflect suspicion that he might be a cultist himself? Felix didn’t think so. No one had had any reason to suspect Wissen anyway. On the other hand, what better way to make the people rise up against the brutality of the watch than to command the watch to commit worse and worse brutalities? The common people who Wissen, when he wore the yellow mask of the Brotherhood of the Cleansing Flame, stirred up against ‘the vicious bullies of the city watch’, had no idea that, unmasked, he was the very same Ward Captain Wissen that rousted them out of their beds and beat and arrested their sons for crimes they didn’t commit. It was a brilliant scheme. Wissen had driven the common folk towards Chaos with a gauntleted right hand, and then changed masks and lured them to it with a welcoming left hand.
One thing Felix could still not explain. Magus Lichtmann had said that he had sensed no magical energy at the testing range after the cannon had exploded. Why hadn’t he sensed the warpstone? Had another sorcerer cloaked its presence somehow? The old man in the basket perhaps? Or was it that Lichtmann wasn’t much of a sorcerer? He had seemed more of an engineer to Felix.
‘When will we catch up to them?’ Felix called to Gotrek.
Gotrek shrugged.
‘Not soon. It will take hours even after we see them.’
Felix nodded glumly. And what if they never saw them? It was hard to believe they were travelling fast enough. And what if they were blown off course? What if the Spirit of Grungni had been? It had happened before. Twice! He said none of this to Gotrek. He would only get sarcasm in return. He sighed. Hours. His rump and legs were already aching abominably, not to mention the rest of his battered and bruised and sewer-drenched body. He glared enviously at the comfortable cushioned seat Gotrek sat on. It was going to be a long flight.
‘Manling, wake up.’
Felix moaned and opened his eyes, and yelped! He was falling! The ground was a mile away! He… No. No. Now he remembered. He was on the dwarf gyrocopter. He and Gotrek were flying, not falling. He was hanging sideways, leaning against the ropes that held him to the spindle column. He sat up with a groan. Every bone and muscle in his body ached, as if he had been beaten to within an inch of his life. He paused. That was probably because he had been beaten to within an inch of his life. When had he last slept? In a bed? With pillows? Ah, pillows. Pillows were nice. Those clouds looked like pillows.
‘Manling!’
Felix jerked. He had drifted off again. ‘Aye?’ He blinked around. They were still over the Reikwald – or was it the Drakwald now? From the position of the sun, it appeared an hour or so before noon. His cheeks burned from wind and sun. In front of him, Gotrek was wrestling the canister of black water out from between his legs. He lifted it over his head one handed and reached it back towards Felix.
‘Take this and fill the reservoir,’ he said. ‘You’ll need the funnel.’
Felix grabbed the canister, and almost dropped it! It was ridiculously heavy.
‘Easy!’ barked Gotrek. ‘We’re sunk without that.’
Felix hugged it to his chest like a lover and took the funnel that Gotrek handed back to him. He held onto it with one hand, then leaned forward against his ropes and stretched out his hand. The fuel reservoir’s cap was almost out of reach. He unscrewed it with the tips of his fingers, and then fumbled it. It fell, then jerked to a stop and dangled at the end of a chain. Felix breathed a sigh of relief. Dwarfs thought of everything.
