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

by Warhammer

  Thorgig Helmguard

  Friend of Kagrin Deepmountain, this young dwarf takes part in Prince Hamnir’s attempt to free Karak Hirn from orc and goblin invaders.

  Thulgul

  A hideously mutated troll, the guardian of the lost hoard of Karag Eight Peaks.

  Tialva

  A beer-like drink that Gotrek and Felix first taste in Ras Karim. It is made from sorghum, rather than wheat.

  Tobaro

  Tilean city-state on the western coast of the Tilean Sea. Built upon ancient elven ruins, the city is protected both inland and along the coast by rugged natural defences.

  Tobi

  Young dwarf marine aboard the Storm Hammer.

  Trollslayer’s Doom

  The alternate name Felix considered for his ‘My Travels with Gotrek’ journals.

  Trees

  ‘I hate trees. They’re like elves, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘They make me want to take an axe to them.’

  From Trollslayer, by William King

  Trolls

  Vile monsters that lurk in the dark, dank and largely forgotten corners of the world. They are huge and strong, and possess tremendous powers of recuperation that make them very hard to kill. They aren’t very bright, but their savage nature more than makes up for this one failing. Fighting and killing trolls is a perfect test of skill and courage for dwarfs with a death wish.

  Truthsayers

  The order of wizards of Albion. The formation of the order of Truthsayers apparently dates back to the legendary times when the Old Ones walked the earth.

  Twisted Paths

  Spoken of by Tasirion, they are said to be where the work of the Old Ones intersect with bubbles of pure Chaos.

  Tyrion

  Teclis’s twin brother. A handsome warrior and consort to the Everqueen. The deadliest elf warrior in twenty generations.

  Tzarina Katarin

  ‘The Ice Queen’, ruler of Kislev. An accomplished mage and warrior, her nickname derives from her cool demeanour as well as her mastery of Ice Magic.

  U

  Ufgart Haginskarl

  A dwarf of the Stonemonger clan, based in Karak Hirn.

  Ugrek Manflayer

  A massive orc who has united the greenskin tribes near Karak Kadrin. He is known as far as Altdorf, such is his reputation. He is said to skin his captives and make the skins into cloaks. He wields a magical cleaver.

  Ulgo

  A witch hunter and member of the Cult of Ulric. He accuses Gotrek and Felix of conspiring with Chaos.

  Ulli Ullisson

  A dwarf Slayer who joins Felix and Gotrek’s quest to slay the dragon Skjalindir. His freshly shaven head suggests that he is only a recent convert to the Slayer cult, and his manner is that of a nervous braggart rather than a truly brave warrior.

  Ulrika Magdova Straghov

  A beautiful, blonde Kislevite and an expert swordswoman. Her father is March Warden of an estate bordering the troll country and she is the love of Felix Jaeger’s life for a while. After an encounter with the sinister Adolphus Krieger, Ulrika’s life takes an unusual and unforseen direction.

  Ulthuan

  The island continent of the elves, raised and held above the sea by potent magic.

  Undgrin

  The ancient underground dwarf road system that was built to link all the holds together. Sadly, much of it has fallen into disrepair, damaged by the dwarfs’ enemies, or geographic upheaval.

  Ungrim Ironfist

  Slayer-king of Karak Kadrin. Due to the vow taken by his ancestor Baragor, Ungrim is bound both by his oaths as king and Slayer, and tries to balance both as best he can.

  Unsinkable

  Malakai’s famous steamship and the biggest one ever seen. Two hundred paces long and weighing overfive hundred tons, it could sail at over three leagues an hour and had steam-powered gatling turrets for protection. It hit a rock and sank.

  Uragh Goldtusk

  Orcish captain, and the most feared pirate in the Gulf of Araby. Remarkably agile and intelligent for an orc, he wields twin cutlasses.

  Urli

  Marine sergeant aboard the Storm Hammer. Known as Ugli Urli to his comrades, his face has been pock-marked by shrapnel.

  V

  Varek Varigsson

  Son of Vareg of the Clan Grimnar and nephew of Borek Forkbeard.

  Plump and civilised looking, his well-groomed beard reaches almost to the floor and he wears thick glasses. A scholar like his uncle, he diligently keeps a diary of all the events that take place. He is equipped with bombs made by Malakai, and the engineer also taught him how to fly a gyrocopter, a skill he uses to great effect against the dragon

  Van Niek’s Emporium

  Shop in Nuln that specialises in rare and exotic books and other artefacts. Reputedly, it also serves as a government front as well.

  Vermak Skab

  Warlord of Clan Skab and Lurk’s distant cousin. Sent to lead the attack on Nuln but tragically meets his end in a terrible accident involving a loaded crossbow and an exploding donkey!

  Vilebroth Null

  Low Abbot of the Plague Monks of Clan Pestilens who tries to bring about the downfall of Nuln by using the Cauldron of a Thousand Poxes to spread the plague.

  Villem Kozinski

  Younger brother of the Duke Enrik. His diplomatic manner makes him a more suitable candidate for the throne than his brother, and he acts as a foil to Enrik’s abruptness.

  Volg Staahl

  A Templar of the Order of the Black Bear. Impromptu leader of the expedition to reclaim the Wynters brewery – and the precious grave-cask of Grandmaster Rodor – from the greenskins. Sometimes called ‘the Voluminous’, he was a big man with an even bigger voice.

  Voorman

  Count Hrothgar’s pet wizard and a member of the Order of Tzeentch.

  Von Carsteins

  The most infamous line of vampire counts. Based in Sylvania, they occasionally rise up and lead massive armies of undeath across the lands of the living, swelling their ranks with the freshly dead bodies of their victims. Of them all, the most dangerous is Mannfred von Carstein, who lives (if one can use that word for such a creature) to pose a constant danger to the human Empire.

  Von Diehls

  An ancient Empire family line, rumoured to be cursed.

  Vork Kineater

  Leader of the ogre mercenaries employed in Skabrand by Zayed al Fahruk to protect his caravan. It’s possible his name came from eating all his family. Kineater kidnaps Talia Nitikin, intending to marry her, an act which inflames the other ogres of his tribe against him.

  W

  Waldenschlosse

  Castle which sits above Waldenhof and home to Rudgar, Count of Waldenhof.

  Waldemar Lichtmann

  A bright wizard who works in the Engineering School of Nuln alongside Groot and Makaisson, making war machines for the Empire troops to use against Chaos invaders who are menacing Middenheim. He is thin and tall, with reddish brown hair.

  Warlord Pakstab

  Warlord of the skaven settlement Greypaw Hollow.

  Whisperer of Hayesh, The

  A mythical monster that Gotrek has never been able to find.

  White Boar, The

  A tavern in Praag where Gotrek, Felix and the rest stayed during the Siege of Praag.

  Wildgans, Frater

  An instructor at the Schrammel monastery.

  Witch

  Grey seer Thanquol suffers an unfortunate consequence when he angers an unnamed strigany witch in a forest.

  Wolfgang Krassner

  Man killed by Felix in a duel, resulting in his expulsion from university.

  Wolfgang Lammel

  Decadent fop and Slaaneshi cultist. His father owns the Sleeping Dragon in Fredricksburg, where he hangs out with his equally unpleasant friends.

  Worlds Edge Mountains

  Immense range of mountains that mark the eastern boundary of the Empire and the Old World, believed in ancient times to be the edge of the
world itself.

  Wulf’s

  A private gentleman’s club in the Handelbezirk district of Nuln. Its members wear a golden pendant in the shape of a shield, emblazoned with a wolf’s head. Felix’s brother Otto is a member.

  Wynters Brewery

  A dwarf brewery renowned for the quality of its beers, especially Wynters Own.

  Y

  Yhetee

  A mythical creature rumoured to haunt the mountains of the Old World. These shy creatures are larger than men, clad in pale-coloured fur that lets them blend into the snowy scenery. Though roughly human-shaped, they are not much more intelligent than wild beasts.

  Yuleh il Toorissi

  A princess, and niece of a previous ruler of Ras Karim. She conspires with her lover, Halim, to overthrow the current, corrupt caliph, Falhedar.

  Z

  Zayed al Mahrak

  An Arabyan caravan master who plies the Ivory road between Barak Varr and Cathay. He employs Gotrek and Felix as caravan guards on one of his journeys.

  Zarkhul

  A prophet and the uniter of the orc tribes of Albion. He intends to lead them into the great Waaagh to reclaim the Temple of the Old Ones.

  Zhufgrim Scarp

  A high, sheer-sided cliff in the mountains by Karak Hirn. At its foot lies the Cauldron Lake.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  William King is the author of the Tyrion and Teclis saga and the Macharian Crusade trilogy, as well as the much-loved Gotrek & Felix series and the Space Wolf novels. His short stories have appeared in many magazines and compilations, including White Dwarf and Inferno!. Bill was born in Stranraer, Scotland, in 1959 and currently lives in Prague.

  Nathan Long hails from Los Angeles, California, where he began his career as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He has written a wide selection of Warhammer novels, including the Blackhearts trilogy and the adventures of Ulrika the Vampire. To many fans, he is best known for his work on the hugely successful Gotrek & Felix series, including five full-length novels and the first Black Library fantasy audio drama, Slayer of the Storm God.

  L J Goulding is the author of the Horus Heresy audio drama The Heart of the Pharos, while for Space Marine Battles he has written the novel Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin and the audio drama Mortarion’s Heart. His other Warhammer fiction includes ‘The Great Maw’ and ‘Kaldor Draigo: Knight of Titan’, and he has continued to explore the dark legacy of Sotha in ‘The Aegidan Oath’ and Scythes of the Emperor: Daedalus. He lives and works in the US.

  Andy Smillie is best known for his visceral Flesh Tearers novellas, Sons of Wrath and Flesh of Cretacia, and the novel Trial by Blood. He has also written a host of short stories starring this brutal Chapter of Space Marines and a number of audio dramas including The Kauyon, Blood in the Machine, Deathwolf, From the Blood, Hunger, The Assassination of Gabriel Seth and Hubris of Monarchia.

  An extract from Rulers of the Dead.

  I still endure.

  The skies weep, the seas boil, the ground cracks, but I still endure.

  Let the stars gutter and the suns go cold, and still, I will endure.

  The reverberations of my fall shattered mountains.

  My servants are in disarray, bereft of my guiding will.

  But I still endure.

  I am death, and death cannot die.

  It can only be delayed.

  – The Epistle of Bone

  The mountain air trembled with the squeal of splitting wood as the outer stockade succumbed to the greedy flames. The fire was not natural, for no natural flame burned the colour of pus. Natural fires left ash in their wake, not virulent, shrieking mould. It was a fire roused by sorcery, and only sorcery could snuff it. But there was no time. And, in any event, there was no one among the Drak who possessed the strength to do so. Not even their war-leader.

  Tamra ven-Drak, voivode of the Drak, oldest of the highclans of the Rictus Clans, felt her soul wither as the great hall where she’d been born collapsed with a groan. Lodge poles burned like torches, and the skulls of three generations screamed useless warnings to their living kin from their rooftop perches. The fire spread like a thing alive, leaping from peaked log to thatched roof without pause.

  ‘Back, get back,’ she cried, shoving her clansfolk along, away from the creeping flames and towards an ornately carved stone archway. ‘To the inner keep – go!’ A stream of frightened faces surrounded her, pushing and shoving to escape the oily haze which preceded the plague-fires. The walls of the inner keep were high and sloped backwards, surrounding the lodgehouses of the highborn, as well as the great storehouses which fed her folk in the darkest months of winter, and the icy wells which drew fresh water up from beneath the earth.

  The walls had been built in centuries past by greater artisans than her people now possessed. What few living warriors that remained to her clan were stationed there, loosing arrow after arrow at the invaders. Once the last of her folk were safely through, they would retreat down through the lichgates hidden beneath the lodgehouses and within the great wells, then along the secret paths that led into the surrounding wilderness. Those ancient paths had been carved for this very contingency after the black days of the Great Awakening, and they would be the salvation of her people – if she could buy them the necessary time.

  Tamra held her ground, letting her clansfolk break and flow around her. The enemy would be inside the outer palisade in moments, and she intended to greet them with all due hospitality. She was a daughter of the Drak, and could do no less.

  She caught the edge of her chest-plate and shifted it. The armour was old and ill-fitting, digging into her flesh at inconvenient points. An heirloom from the Age of Myth, it had belonged to her father, and had been handed down from one voivode of the Drak to the next for generations. A stylised serpent, once a vivid red but now a faded brown, marked its faceted surface. It was the symbol of a fallen kingdom, and of lost glories.

  Sister.

  She glanced at her brother. His empty eye sockets burned with witchfire flames, and his fleshless fingers clutched the hilt of his barrowblade tightly. You should go. They will be here soon. His words echoed in her head like a freezing iron wind. Your responsibility is to the living. Leave this to the dead.

  ‘No, Sarpa. We will meet them together.’

  She recalled the day he’d died to an orruk blade, and the ceremony that followed. She’d left his body on a high slope, to be picked clean by scavenger birds and flesh-eaters. She had carved the sigils of rousing into his bones herself, as he would have done for her. As they’d both done for the dead who now surrounded them in a phalanx. The old dead, the loved dead, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers; the countless generations of the Drak, stirred to fight anew for hearth and home. Death was not the end for the Drak. They lived and died and lived again, to serve their people and their god, and they had done so since the coming of the Undying King and the Great Awakening.

  And now the dead were all her people had left, in these final hours. They outnumbered the living two to one, with barely several hundred of her people left to flee. Most of their living warriors, and the hetmen who’d led them, had fallen, slaughtered in open battle by an enemy far stronger than them. But the dead held firm, and so would she. She could feel them fighting on the walls and in the streets. The majority of the dead were scattered throughout the outer keep and along the palisades, fighting to delay the inevitable. One by one, their soulfires were snuffed out as the enemy pressed ever forwards.

  ‘We hold them here, until the outer village is empty,’ she said. ‘Then we retreat, no faster than we must. Let them blunt themselves on our shields. We are Drak. What we have, we hold.’

  We hold, the dead echoed. The skeletons were armoured in bronze and carried weapons and shields of the same. Steel was precious, and carried only by the living; they needed it more than the dead. She could feel the flicker of soulfire animating each of the fleshless warriors, the brief embers of who they had once been. Such was the gift of the highborn
of all the Rictus Clans. Only those who could stir the dead could lead the living.

  Overhead, black clouds grumbled with the promise of a storm. The skies of the north were never silent, never peaceful. The snow had ceased for the moment, but soon it would be replaced by rain. Purple lightning flashed in the belly of the clouds, and she watched it for a moment. Then, the pox-flames parted and the enemy arrived in a rush.

  The first to come were the hounds, their fur soggy with pus and their eyes faceted like those of flies. They bayed and loped forwards in a seething mass of rotted fangs and blistered paws. Bronze-tipped spears slid home, turning their howls to shrieks. Those beasts that made it through the thicket of spears died to swords and axes. As the hounds perished, their masters arrived, lumbering through the plague-fires. The blightkings were monsters, clad in filthy tabards over grimy war-plate marked with the sign of the fly.

  They advanced with a droning roar, hefting outsized weapons in flabby hands. They struck the bronze shield wall like a foetid fist, and the line bowed inwards.

  ‘Sarpa,’ Tamra said, fighting to keep her voice calm. Her brother stepped smoothly towards the enemy. His barrowblade sang a deadly song as it rose and fell, removing limbs and heads. The blightkings’ momentum was broken in moments. They fell back, their droning song giving way to cries of alarm.

  They retreated, seeking shelter in the plague-fires. But she could hear the distorted jangle of pox-bells and the thump of skin drums, and she knew more were coming. These had only been the most eager, the least disciplined. She looked around the palisade yard, watching as the last houses of her people were consumed, along with the bodies of the dead. Where the plague-fires burned, her magic was as nothing, and the dead were lost.

  They are coming, Sarpa said.

  ‘Fall back to the archway. Tighten the line.’ She had learned the art of the shield wall from her father, and from his mother before him. Their spirits had whispered to her, in her infancy, and shown her much: the proper way to wage war, to raise walls, to lead. The dead had taught her the lessons of a thousand years. But they had not prepared her for this.