Gotrek & Felix- the Third Omnibus - William King & Nathan Long

by Warhammer

  The watch commander turned and spoke to someone standing in the passageway beyond the cell. ‘Is this the one, Herr Lieferen? Is this the man you saw?’

  Felix almost didn’t dare to look.

  Dishevelled, grief-stricken, with his eyes reddened and his hands trembling, Sabine’s father stooped in through the doorway and let his gaze fall upon Felix. It was a mournful gaze stung with tears and rage.

  ‘That’s him, that’s the poet! He’s to blame!’ he shrieked, wiping his eyes with the cuff of his fine shirt. ‘He killed my Sabine!’

  The watch commander laid a hand on the sobbing merchant’s shoulder, causing him to flinch slightly, and ushered him back into the passageway.

  ‘Thank you, mein herr. We’ll see to him from here. This Ripper’s a crafty one, eluded us for a long time. We even thought of calling on the Witch Hunters – there were many as said he weren’t a man, but a ghoul or a daemon, or a vampire…’

  Felix’s heart missed a beat.

  The commander turned back and looked down at him with a sneer. ‘But he bleeds good enough, and I don’t see him flying up out of that little window any time soon. He’ll swing from the gallows before nightfall, you have my word.’

  The watchmen began to back out of the cell, leaving Felix cowering and shivering in the corner. The commander swung his boot at the pile of rags near the far bench, eliciting a yelp of pain from it.

  ‘And you, how are you liking it in here? This must be a dream come true for you, eh? You simple-minded little pervert.’

  To Felix’s surprise, the bundle unfurled into the form of a man – an emaciated, grimy vagrant in a tattered coat and cap. The man trembled and pawed beseechingly at the commander as he withdrew.

  ‘Please, your honour, I beg you,’ he bawled, ‘don’t leave me alone in here with him! He’s dangerous, he’ll kill me and take my soul for a plaything!’ He prostrated himself before the commander, splashing at the edge of the silty puddle and fawning over his grimy boots. ‘I saw him – when you were outside and couldn’t have known – he was licking the blood off his hands, and laughing! Oh, Sigmar preserve me, you can’t leave me in here with the Ripper!’

  One of the other watchmen hauled him up by the scruff of his neck and sent him tumbling back into the corner. The commander blew out his lantern and reached for the ring of keys at his belt.

  ‘I ought to hang you alongside him. Be thankful you didn’t do nothing wrong, other than upset the common, decent folk.’

  The heavy door slammed shut, and the bolts were racked back into place. The muffled sound of grim laughter and of spear hafts on the stone floor faded into the distance, leaving only Felix’s ragged breathing and the rainstorm outside the tiny window, and the endless drip-drip-drip of the vaulted ceiling.

  Felix blinked in the sudden darkness, trying to locate the vagrant again. The man had fallen curiously silent, in spite of his desperate outburst in front of the watchmen.

  With a sudden sharp intake of breath, Felix saw him.

  He was sat slightly closer than Felix had expected, calm and cross-legged on the edge of the pool which still rippled from his little display moments earlier. He seemed bigger, somehow rangier than before – Felix supposed this was because he had initially mistaken him for a pile of gaol-cell rubbish. In the gloom, he saw the man’s shoulders rise and fall in slow, measured breaths, but not a sound did he make compared to Felix’s own laboured gasps.

  Most unsettling of all were his eyes. His face was cloaked in shadow, but his beady little eyes peered out quite visibly.

  Unblinking.

  Felix pulled his manacled limbs up, edging back onto his bench in spite of his pounding head and the dizziness which threatened to pitch him to the floor without warning. The man’s eyes never left him all the while.

  ‘Well then, friend,’ came his cold voice once more. ‘This is quite a turn-up, is it not?’

  A new sickness spread in Felix’s gut – it was not the ongoing legacy of his ale binge, nor was it at the prospect of his impending execution. It was not because Gotrek had abandoned him to the watch, nor because that poor girl lay dead or because he couldn’t even remember rightly how or when it had happened.

  This new sickness was at the thought of having to spend his last hours locked up with this sinister figure whose predatory gaze never faltered, and whose breath did not seem to fog in the cold air of their gaol.

  And no matter how sick Felix felt, he knew that he did not want to turn his back upon this monster for even a moment.

  As thick as thieves, so the saying went. It was true throughout all the cities of men, in the Empire and beyond; in Gotrek’s experience, criminals tended to prefer the company of their own kind. Professional assassins, hired thugs, rogues, smugglers and footpads – they were all cut from the same cloth, and whatever twisted code of honour they followed, you could always count on them to cover for their fellows. At least until their interests conflicted.

  And once you had a hold over one, you could find out more about another. Like this Ripper character, perhaps?

  The problem was that Gotrek was never sure where the trail began, in these sorts of situations. That had always been Felix’s strong suit. The dwarf himself just wasn’t cut out for sleuthing.

  Too much faffing around, like in those card games.

  That, of course, had given Gotrek his flash of inspiration. There was a criminal type that he knew he could lean on, without fear of reprisal from the watch or whatever limited seedy underworld there was in this backwoods burg.

  He cast a quick look about him, and then rapped hard on the door at the bottom of the stone steps just off the market square. Rain beat down upon his woollen hood.

  No response. He kicked the bottom of the door three times with his boot, rocking it in its frame.

  There came a scuffling from within, and the peephole set into the wood flipped open to reveal a bloodshot eye. After a moment, the eye settled on the diminutive Slayer, and widened in alarm. The peephole snapped shut again.

  ‘Go away!’ came a hoarse voice. ‘We’re closed, by order of the watch.’

  Gotrek laughed pointedly. ‘Ha! I find that hard to believe.’

  Hushed voices spoke quickly behind the door, followed by the faint creak of floorboards further in.

  ‘Believe what you like. You ain’t coming in. You just ’bout wrecked the place last night, with your shenanigans. New house policy – no dwarfs allowed.’

  ‘You’ve not to worry, manling. I’m not looking for another game.’ Gotrek dropped his voice to a stage whisper as a market cart trundled past on the muddy street above, and opened his pack to reveal the blade of his axe. ‘Now you let me in, quick as you like, or I’ll smash this door to splinters and–’

  His words were cut short by a crash in the alleyway at the side of the den, and he lumbered up the steps to block the obvious escape route. Sure enough, he found the bruised and battered dealer from the previous night, picking himself up from a heap of tumbled crates just outside the building’s side door.

  Gotrek barrelled into the man without hesitation, and with a fearsome growl he drew his axe from the pack and let his hood fall to reveal his flattened mohawk.

  The battered man whimpered and screeched, producing gold crowns and sundry trinkets from his pockets and thrusting them at the Slayer in desperation.

  ‘Be still, you fool,’ Gotrek hissed, all too aware that their scuffle might attract attention from the people on the street behind them. ‘I’m not interested in your money. Back inside.’

  He pulled the door shut behind them, and knocked the man’s legs out from under him with the flat of his axe. Although they were in a backroom which smelled suspiciously bad anyway, Gotrek realised that the man had just pissed himself in fear.

  ‘You filthy little thief! Is this how you want to meet your death? On your knees, with soggy pantaloons. What kind of an end is that, eh?’

  The man gabbled incoherently, and began to weep from his puffy black
eyes.

  Gotrek made a theatrical show of lowering his weapon. ‘All right, all right. I’ll give you one last chance, thief. You can walk – or waddle – out of here alive, if you tell me more about this “Ripper” of yours.’

  Sniffing and trembling uncontrollably, the man gingerly wiped his swollen nose and nodded frantically.

  ‘The R-Ripper, yes! They c-caught him this m-morning. The watch caught him.’

  Gotrek leaned in, almost conspiratorially, and clucked his tongue.

  ‘See now, thief, I don’t think they did.’

  The man frowned. ‘I don’t know w-what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘I think they got the wrong man, see? I mean, you tell me what you know about this Ripper. You ever seen him?’

  ‘No sir, Mast’r Dwarf! F-few have. Fewer still who’ve lived long enough to–’

  ‘Anyone you know?’

  The man paused, still sobbing softly.

  ‘One fellow, maybe. He talked about the Ripper often enough. Talked about how his eyes blazed colder than a winter frost, and about how he could outrun the fastest horse on the forest roads, when he had a mind to.’

  ‘Who told you this?’ Gotrek demanded.

  ‘I don’t know his name – he sometimes comes in to try his hand at the tables though. Thin fellow, always nervous. Wears a cloth cap.’

  The scrawny manling with the fast eyes.

  ‘He was here last night, was he not?’ said Gotrek.

  ‘Aye, that he was, though he didn’t stick around long after the… trouble began, Mast’r Dwarf. With respect.’

  Slippery fellow, thought Gotrek. Too fast for me, and that’s saying something.

  ‘So, thief, where would the watchmen have taken this Ripper they’ve caught?’

  ‘Most likely to the gaol to await his execution, if any gaol will hold him. You know the town gibbet?’

  ‘I saw it. In front of the gallows in the market square.’

  ‘The cells are in the stone building at the eastern facing. You won’t miss them.’

  Gotrek shouldered his axe, and tossed a grubby rag into the man’s face.

  ‘There you go, thief. Clean yourself up.’

  Cautiously, Felix took a handful of water from the puddle and splashed it over his bare neck, never taking his eyes off the shadowy figure sat in front of him.

  ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I saw you in the alleyway when the watch came.’

  A spread of teeth emerged into a wicked grin in the gloom.

  ‘Indeed you did, friend, though I saw you and the girl a good while before that.’

  Felix pointed at him in the most intimidatory manner he could. ‘For a start, you can stop calling me “friend”. You don’t even know me, and on balance I have to say that most of the people I call my friends don’t smell half as foul as you. Damned vagrant.’

  The vagrant laughed his thin little laugh again. Felix ignored it.

  ‘Secondly, if you saw me there with Sabine then you know that I never touched her. I’m to be executed for something I didn’t do, and if you were half the “friend” you pretend to be, you’d tell that to the watchmen and clear my name.’ He sank back onto the bench, and waved dismissively. ‘But for whatever reason, you’ve decided to incriminate me further. I’m not sure what you hope to gain from that, but I’ll thank you to leave me alone. “Friend”.’

  A tense moment passed between them, and Felix managed to match the vagrant’s unblinking stare.

  He noticed that the smile had vanished.

  ‘Ungrateful,’ the vagrant hissed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m giving you the gift of infamy. Your name will live on for generations – Max Schreiber, the legendary Ripper of Oberwald. You never even had to kill a single one of those… immoral citizens, and yet you will take all of the glory.’

  ‘But how–’

  ‘Oh, she did squirm so, your little lady. She was quite taken with you. Even after you passed out, I don’t think she even noticed me until I was already upon her.’

  Felix’s stomach lurched. He tried to mask his horror.

  ‘And I must say, Herr Schreiber–’ the Ripper grinned again, ‘–your name is most apt for a poet. Is it a pen name, perchance?’ He chuckled, before snapping back to a humourless deadpan. ‘What, then, would your real name be, I wonder…’

  Felix sprang to his feet, holding his manacled fists out before him, but the Ripper was lightning-fast and already stooped in a low crouch in the silty puddle. For what seemed an eternity, they stood facing one another in that dark gaol cell.

  ‘You stay away from me, do you hear?’ Felix gasped, his hair hanging limply in his bloodied face. He looked to the heavy door, and raised his voice. ‘Guard! Guard! He’s the Ripper! The filthy, stinking–’

  Two heavy thuds on the wood. The milky-eyed watchman’s voice echoed in the passageway beyond.

  ‘Quiet in there, you murderin’ wretch.’

  Now that he stood in the half-light from the small window, Felix could see the Ripper’s features more clearly: a gaunt, thin face with a straggly beard, cap pulled low over his brow. His gaze was just as intense as it had been, almost hypnotic, like that of an adder or viper. When he spoke again, his words sent chills down Felix’s spine.

  ‘Have you any idea how pitiful your gallows accusations will seem? How mad they will make you sound?’

  ‘Do not speak to me of madness,’ Felix spat. ‘You’ve stalked this provincial little town for months, and for what? You are deluded if you think anyone outside of Oberwald will ever hear of your exploits.’

  The Ripper started forwards suddenly, his hands outstretched like grasping claws, but he held back. Nonetheless, Felix flinched and stumbled in his leg-irons – his opponent had the advantage of complete mobility, and he clearly intended to make the most of it.

  ‘Months?’ the Ripper sneered, his eyes narrow. ‘Try years. And what makes you think Oberwald is the only town to have enjoyed my particular attentions?’ He gestured widely. ‘In my time, I travelled throughout the Empire and the Border Princes, and further still. You have the air of the traveller about you too, “Herr Schreiber”. I wonder if you have also seen the things that I have seen.’

  Felix shrugged, hoping to stall him. ‘Pray tell, what would that be?’

  ‘I have seen the worst in mankind. I have seen men rut like the beasts of the Drakwald, or wage war like the greenskins and dwarfs up in the mountains.’ He raised a hand, and closed it slowly into a fist. ‘But worst of all, I have seen the slow eradication of our innocence, even out here in the rural provinces. Take this town – no more than a crossroads between the local villages, and then later a market settlement. Traders, farmers; honest folk living by the toil of their own hand.

  ‘But then it grows. Money to be made, you see. The landowners and innkeepers creep in, start to make a killing by renting out their yards and frontages to the travelling vendors. How do you think these fine roads and buildings are maintained?’

  The Ripper’s eyes had glazed somewhat, and he stared into the middle distance, no doubt imagining some apocalyptic end to his ranting monologue.

  ‘But the population is transient – market is only a few days each week, so they begin to specialise in their offer. Aside from food and lodging, the more wealthy visitor might even find himself with amenable female company for an evening… and suddenly there are whores and disease on every corner!

  ‘And all the while, there are still those who cannot afford even the most basic comforts. They are forced to huddle in the streets by night, bedding down in muddy straw bales or sleeping beneath their empty market wagons and shivering in the bitter wind. They die out there, while the rich continue to grow fat by their roaring hearths.’

  Absently, he adjusted his coat against some dimly remembered chill.

  ‘It speaks of a base inequality. It is the soulless values of the big cities like Altdorf and Talabheim cast in microcosm. Without something to fear, without a beast at their doo
r, men become greedy. I will give them all something to fear.’

  Felix merely laughed. ‘I tell you what – you are mad.’

  The Ripper’s eyes snapped back to him, fixing him with their cold, predatory glare once more. Still, he let Felix continue.

  ‘You say you’ve travelled the Old World, and yet you say that men have nothing to fear, out here in the provinces? You guess rightly – I’ve wandered these lands long enough to find nothing but bloodthirsty beasts and unspeakable horrors under every mountain and upon every plain.’

  He pointed at the Ripper, who twitched nervously.

  ‘You’re not some saviour of men. You’re just a murderous lunatic.’

  ‘Wrong,’ he replied in a heartbeat. ‘You’re the murderer, remember? You’ll swing from the gibbet before the day is out, and I’ll be set free.’ He laughed again. ‘I’m just the vagrant caught skulking at the scene of your latest murder. Aside from offending the sensibilities of the townsfolk with my morbid curiosity, I am apparently innocent.’

  Felix could stand it no longer. He bellowed and lunged at the Ripper, but the sinister figure flashed out of his path and sent him careening into the opposite bench. As Felix fell, his leg-irons yanked free from their rusted mounting on the wall and the chains splashed loosely into the pool of silty water.

  The Ripper stood over him, partially silhouetted against the light from the window and yet with his pale eyes still noticeably visible beneath the brim of his cap. As Felix rolled onto his back and tried to stand, with a flick of the wrist his tormentor produced a long, serrated knife from beneath his coat.

  ‘Stay down, friend. You don’t want to taste this steel.’

  Before Felix could formulate a suitably witty riposte, an unmistakable voice came down through the bars of the high window.

  ‘Manling? What’s going on in there?’

  He let out an involuntary gasp of joy. The Ripper turned to look up at the tiny opening, but Felix yelled past him.

  ‘Gotrek? Gotrek! It’s the Ripper! He’s in here with me!’

  As Felix began to tug the rusted remains of the leg-irons from his ankles, the Ripper looked slowly back towards him, confusion clear in his eyes.