Gotrek & Felix: Slayer (27 page)

‘PATIENCE, SLAYER.’

Felix gasped as the Slayer vanished before his eyes.

He opened his mouth to cry out to the dwarf, but in the time between thinking and breathing the entire temple too had followed Gotrek into oblivion. Darkness enveloped him, lightless, shapeless, devoid even of the sensation of stone beneath his feet and air on his face. Realisation hit like a cold wave and he did scream then, or at least he thought he did, but either he had been struck deaf or there was no air for him to hear it. He didn’t know which was worse.

It wasn’t the Slayer who had been cast into oblivion.

It was him.

Light guttered fitfully from a torch set into an iron bracket in the stone wall and slowly dispelling the darkness. Felix studied it for a moment, disorientated, his hands padding absently over his body as if to reassure themselves they were not alone. His heart fluttered like a butterfly trapped in a lantern. The flame wobbled on its stand, light and dark rippling out from it across the room. It looked real. The warmth of it and the crackle of wood was real. Hand on his aching, stubbornly trembling chest, Felix looked over the room that the light revealed.

It was of a hard grey stone like granite, curved along one wall, with an arrow-slit window indicating that he was in some sort of fortified tower. A strange, gale-force roar sounded from outside. A full helm, the visor drawn back, and a breastplate hung from a dummy beside the window. A sheathed sword with a hilt studded with semi-precious stones was looped over a door peg. A pile of folded clothes – tabard, trews, a sash to be worn over the breastplate, all in the blue with yellow trimming of Middenland – lay on a chest.

Next to the armour dummy was a writing desk similar to the one that Felix had once had in the study of his brother’s Altdorf townhouse. It was piled with sheaves of paper. Felix spread them out across the table. Real enough. They were requisition orders, watch rotations, troop dispositions, the sort of military bureaucracy that most soldiers would never dream existed but without which the Empire would surely collapse in a day.

He set them down and looked out of the window.

The roar of tens of thousands of abhumans rose to assail his ears. The pointed glimmer of as many sources of light again brought tears to his eyes. He could see that the tower he was in was one of several overlooking the unscalable walls of a mighty mountaintop citadel. It was not Kazad Drengazi. It was Imperial soldiery on the walls, and the ground, seething with monstrous forms all bearing torches and flaming arrows, was all too visible. Arrows fizzed between the walls and the winged beasts and daemons that harried the garrison, the heavier munitions of ballistae and small-calibre cannons pounding the air with thumps and blistering whines. As Felix watched, a plume of flame rolled from the forked tongue of a two-headed dragon and blasted a ballista tower to ruin. Rock and bodies blackened inside their armour tumbled onto the mountainside. Felix shifted his view down.

A column of vile war machines rolled up the narrow causeway to the city’s gate. They did so under their own malodorous power, the fuming, twisting hunger of bound daemons driving battering rams and siege-ballistae over ground too treacherous for any beast of burden. Bloody steam hissed from the flared mouths of cannons, bony pitons stabbing into the rock to lock the weapons steady as great bronze barrels angled themselves upwards to fire.

Middenheim. This was Middenheim.

Was this a dream world constructed by the guardian of the mountain, or like Krell before it was it somehow more?

‘How is Gotrek being tested by this?’ Felix murmured to himself.

‘It is your turn, Herr Jaeger.’

The voice had come from behind him and Felix spun around.

At the back of the room was a small table upon which a chess board was set. There was a game under way that looked to be four or five moves in. Behind it were two albino men in sorcerers’ garb, one seated and one standing. An aura of incredible power shimmered around them both. The seated man was clad in black and leaned idly against a staff of ebony and silver as he examined the board. The tall, vulpine sorcerer standing beside him was robed instead in gold and held a glittering runestaff in gilt claws.

Felix backed away.

The mountain guardian was dredging his own mind for the enemies to destroy him!

Goldenrod beckoned to the empty chair on Felix’s side of the board, but also, Felix felt, to the world beyond. As if answering the sorcerer’s call there was a digestive rumble from the causeway below, followed by a slimy
boom
and the crunch of wood. The gate. The tower shook under the impact, causing the chess set to rattle and toppling the remaining white castle. Blackstaff reached across the board to reposition it, his finger lingering on the piece like an execution stayed.

‘The turn is yours.’

SIXTEEN

Katerina

‘Sit down, Herr Jaeger,’ said Goldenrod in a high-pitched voice, gesturing to the empty chair. ‘Kelmain and I have been forced to concede that it is pointless to continue to play one another when neither of us is the clear superior.’

‘It was becoming an ever more tedious challenge to keep score,’ the black-robed wizard, Kelmain, agreed.

‘Where does it stand, brother?’

‘I fear I forget.’

Goldenrod nodded portentously, turning a cunning look onto Felix. ‘I am keen to see the outcome of this game. Your opening gambit demonstrates a keen and, if you’ll pardon the observation, unconventional mind.’

Felix stared in confusion at the chequerboard. He backed away, shaking his head slowly, until he hit the door.

‘This isn’t real. I don’t even know how to play this game.’

‘What is real?’ said Kelmain with a shrug.

‘Is a dream real?’ added Goldenrod. ‘What about a vision, a prophecy?’

‘What makes them real?’ Kelmain cut in, seamlessly carrying his brother’s line. ‘Is it us? The way we interpret and act upon that which we see? Would we have acted differently had we not seen at all?’

‘Are you saying this is really Middenheim?’ said Felix, reaching back with his left hand to the wood of the door and running the palm of his right along the rough-set stones. He shot a glance towards the window, a narrow aperture through to a void of sulphur smoke and screams.

Not narrow enough.

‘He’s not really so bright after all, is he, Lhoigor?’ said Kelmain, disappointed.

‘His mind is so… binary.’

Felix’s gaze was still on the window. The smell of burning filled his lungs now. He could feel it permeate through his chest. The screams were distant, almost ethereal, but impossible to distance himself from, like a haunting in a lost love’s home.

‘Is Kat here?’ Felix asked sharply. ‘Did she survive the fall of Altdorf and make it here before the siege?’

‘If this is not real then we are essentially conjurations of your own mind and powerless to aid you beyond what you are able to offer yourself,’ said Kelmain.

‘And if it is real,’ Lhoigor hissed, baring yellow-bright fangs as he leaned forward into his golden staff, ‘then what makes you think that we would?’

‘You killed our pawn Arek Daemonclaw. And Skjalandir.’ Kelmain produced a self-deprecating smile. ‘And us.’

‘So you see,’ said Lhoigor, fangs disappearing behind a smile as he once again indicated the chair and bade Felix sit. ‘It does not matter whether this is
real
or not. The end consequence is the same.’

‘But if you will play a game or two, then maybe we can give you a hint.’

‘No,’ said Felix, heart pounding with a desperate logic of its own. If Kat was here he’d find her. Real or not he’d find her. And his child…

He choked.

He would see his child.

Kelmain emitted a rasping sigh, scratching his cheek as though politely informing Felix he had something in his eye, and looked askance to his brother. ‘I wonder if Archaon plays.’

Either one of these men could incinerate him with a word, but Felix no longer cared. His own life hadn’t bothered him terribly for some time now, and now his family might actually be within his grasp it concerned him even less.

He turned to face the door, his hand closing over the brass handle and pushing it down.

‘We have played with destiny and been burned,’ called Lhoigor, his voice suddenly swollen with melancholy, bitter with wasted might. ‘Seldom is there but one right path, and the obvious choice is rarely the best. No door is opened without consequence.’

But Felix wasn’t listening.

He opened the door.

Frightened-looking men in the colours of city and state mustered in the courtyard before the east gatehouse; blue and gold, white and blue, rivers churning before the dam broke and spat them all out to the sea. Smoke poured over the walls. Concussive blasts rolled through the air, not a heard sound so much as a wave that rippled banners and spooked horses. Teams of artillerymen in crimped black livery yelled obscure, technical-sounding instructions to one another as they heaved a pair of helblaster volleyguns into positions of enfilade either side of the gate. Unhelmed and grey-maned knights drew into a line, a bulwark of steel and horseflesh that spanned the main road onto Neumarkt, their broad armoured shoulders level with the guttering of the boarded-up commission offices. Their muscular mounts snorted at those hurrying by, wolf-faced champrons snarling, unsettled by the struck match smell that pervaded the air. Every few seconds a resounding blow crashed against the gates. Drums, horns, whistles and pipes added to the thunder of beasts and guns. Rattling and barking, a battered old steam tank chugged into the courtyard and whistled to a stop.

Felix waded into the commotion as though he’d just taken a blow to the head.

He had no memory of crossing the threshold of that door, nor of heading down any stairs. And yet here he was.

‘Herr Jaeger. Great Sigmar, is that you?’

Striding through the crowd came a tall knight in brilliant silver plate, covered by a tabard emblazoned with a fiery heart and a scabbarded broadsword clapping at his thigh. Felix turned to greet the man but before he could so much as open his mouth the knight threw his arms around Felix’s back. There was a loud
clang
as the man’s breastplate embraced Felix’s mail shirt and Felix staggered back, only to be checked by the strong arms knotted behind his back. Felix coughed politely, inhaling a sour hit of armour grease and sweat. The man pulled away, powerful gauntleted hands clasped to Felix’s shoulders, and grinned.

‘Aldred?’

The Templar knight produced a short bow.

Aldred Keppler – or the Fellblade – had been the prior owner of Felix’s sword, Karaghul, but the man had fallen to a Chaos troll in the dank ruins of Karak Eight Peaks. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t… Could it? Felix wasn’t sure any more. The Templar looked, sounded, and – Shallya’s mercy – smelled real, and the way Felix’s heart responded to the reappearance of an old and valued comrade was entirely real enough.

Felix clasped Aldred’s hand between both of his. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘You carried my weapon with you,’ Aldred shrugged. ‘It did my work in the world. That had been enough until now. Now everything changes.’

There was something about the Templar’s words, or perhaps the wearied manner in which he said them, that jarred with Felix as wrong. He tried to shake the feeling off.

‘I need your help, old friend. I’m looking for a woman. Katerina Jaeger, my wife, perhaps you’ve seen her. She’s–’ Felix held an upturned hand approximately level with his chest, then smiled as an image of her leapt fully formed into his mind. ‘She’s about this tall, dark hair with a lock of silver on the left side. Probably the most beautiful of the refugees from Altdorf.’

Aldred’s expression turned stern and Felix’s heart lurched over a precipice.

‘There are refugees from Altdorf, aren’t there?’

‘There are thousands of women in this city, and children. What do you think will happen when that which hungers beyond the gate breaks through?’

Something struck the gates with a titanic crash. Wood crunched and split and iron bent, the gates splitting down the join to reveal a hideous daemon-headed ram. Liquid fire drooled from its brazen snout where it hissed against the flagstones. Cries for courage rang through the courtyard. Orders were bellowed, the names of Ulric and Sigmar thrown freely, men herded into ranks like sheep by dogs as the gate was breached again, the locking bar shattering with a
crack
and flames racing up the broken back of the gate itself.

A command was given. It sounded over the din like ‘Fire!’

Arrows whistled from the windows and balconies of the disused commission offices. Most thudded into the burning wood of the gates, a handful pattering indifferently from the daemon-infused brass of the battering ram.

A woman’s voice called words of encouragement from a bow militia, spread along a rooftop opposite to Felix as a missile screen for a ballista embedded within a fascine of straw bales and brushwood. Whilst the weapon crew conducted frantic last-minute checks on their machine, the archers had readied and aimed and awaited the order to fire. It came courtesy of their female officer and a sheet of arrows hissed down a half-second ahead of the next fastest detachment.

Felix kept his eyes on the woman as she dropped to one knee behind the rough, recently added battlement and reached back over her head to pull an arrow from her quiver. The shaft slid out and onto her bowstring and in one seamless motion she rose again. She was a head shorter than the smallest man in her command, and slender as an arrow. A padded gambeson jacket puffed out her chest. Her forearms and thighs were clad in light single-piece leather plates. Her short dark hair brushed her narrow shoulders, all except for the single white lock that hung errantly over her left eye. Disregarding it, she drew a bead on the breached gate. Firelight glinted from the weighty ring of dwarf gold worn on her left-hand thumb, tight against the bowstave.

Kat.

‘Since the elder days has the enemy been withheld, never vanquished, but always denied.’ Aldred’s voice grew heavier as he spoke, his appearance shifting into a semblance of someone Felix felt he ought to know without actually appearing to change at all. And when Felix blinked, it was undeniably Aldred and surely had been all along. The Templar drew his sword and pointed back to the gates. Kurgan axes chewed through the cinders. Middenheimer spears and halberds fell back behind their volleyguns. Another sheet of arrows rained down. ‘With naught but constant courage and iron in our souls have we prevailed. Now the wolves howl at the gates of your world and men like you must stand up, prove yourselves worthy, and cast the daemons back.’

Felix backed away, taken aback by the Templar’s sudden and uncharacteristic intensity. ‘Aldred?’

The Templar nodded to something over Felix’s head, and Felix turned about just as a trio of burly Trollslayers waded through the crowded Neumarkt street in search of the coming battle. Wielding a pair of axes was the ugliest dwarf that Felix had seen in an achingly long time. His squashed nose was graced with a hairy wart at the tip and gold rings jangled from his big ears. Hurrying behind him was a slighter, younger dwarf garbed in furs, his recently shaven head speckled with orange stubble. And the third…

Felix felt his tender heart break into jagged pieces.

‘Snorri thinks Felix has the right idea leaving,’ said Snorri Nosebiter happily, a stupid smile on his stupid, mashed-up face. ‘Why let them all come in here when we can fight them in the gate?’

‘Felix has decided not to do battle with us,’ said Aldred. ‘He is going instead to find a woman.’

Bjorni Bjornisson’s ugly face split into a lewd grin and he jabbed Ulli several times in the ribs, making an approving growl, until the younger dwarf blushed furiously and backed out of reach.

‘Snorri… doesn’t understand. Do you not want to fight with Snorri again, young Felix? It’ll be a good one. Snorri saw the… the…’ his face scrunched up in concerted thought, ‘
Ever-Chosen
from the walls.’

‘He didn’t look so tough,’ Ulli declared loudly, still blushing and apparently startling himself with his own volume. He glared reproachfully at the other two Slayers.

A lump formed in Felix’s throat. He had borne the guilt of his own inaction over Snorri’s death over months and leagues and part of him did yearn to stand by him now. Aldred glared at him expectantly. Nor had Felix forgotten the promise he had made to the Templar’s order – to wield their blade with honour, to combat evil wherever it surfaced.

He turned to look across the street to the rooftop. His heart grounded him to the spot like an anchor, but he knew where he had to go.

‘Forgive me, Snorri,’ he managed to choke, dragging himself away from the forlorn-looking Slayer and his companions and plunging into the crowd.

A fountain dimpled the surface of an ornamental pond, the centrepiece of a small cobbled garden surrounded on all sides by the high grey walls of Middenheim’s old town. Red roses and scented honeysuckle clambered over the stonework towards the square of sky. It was red like a sailor’s warning, filled with the
crump
of cannon fire and the screams of running battles. The cries weren’t entirely human, and ran from the sky like wet paint down a wall. The sky stuttered, the clouds curdling by in slow motion as Felix watched, before suddenly racing. His heart hammered, disorientated and afraid.

What was happening to him? Where was he? And what had happened to Kat?

He returned his attention to the garden with the idea of getting his bearings and trying to find his way back to Neumarkt, and noticed that there was a figure seated on the lip of the pond, garbed in thigh-length armour of pearl-white lamellar plates.
Gustav
. His nephew was seated side-on, with one slender leg crossed under him and his face turned away from Felix to the fountain. His nephew ran his fingers – almost like claws – through the pond. A crowd of subdued, mournful-looking children surrounded him, their broken reflections looking up through crying eyes from the water of the pool. It was only then Felix noticed that the armoured figure cast no reflection. A sepulchral chill entered his bones.