Gotrek & Felix: Slayer (32 page)

Power lensed down to a sharp black point at the tip of the daemon prince’s claw. Morzanna felt malice rise up out of the earth at his beckoning, ripping around his form like black lace in a whirlwind. Lancing through it came a beam of darkness, laced with purples and blues and shooting towards the gate. Screaming men and dwarfs flung themselves clear moments before the bastion erupted in a geyser of glassed stone and warped metal.

Frantic shouts rang down from the walls, a desultory volley of gunfire from the handful of defenders that weren’t abandoning it for a last stand within the courtyard. Bullets beat against Be’lakor’s god-like frame, ricochets crunching through corner walls or punching horsemen from the saddle. The tribesmen galloped around the hulking daemon prince, loosing a storm of arrows on the run as they raced for the ruined gate.

The foreknowledge of her own passing did not trouble her.

In a way it was comforting. Hers was a borrowed life, one that should have ended two centuries ago but for the intervention of Felix Jaeger. It was destiny, she supposed, fully conscious of the irony in that, and at least in living it she had guided Be’lakor towards his own great work.

The death of this world at the hands of the Everchosen, Be’lakor’s child-in-darkness.

And its rebirth.

A future unseen but
felt
lay before them all. What it held, what form it would take, she could not say, but it was there and the simple fact of not knowing thrilled her.

Summoning her own power to her fingertips she moved into a burning street – shadows rushed to envelop her – and stepped out onto a tower that had lost its roof to an aerial blast.

Fires blazed all around her, ravaged buildings poking through like islands in a sunset sea. Screams rose around her like smoke. A persistent drone passed overhead and she looked up at the sleek belly of the dwarf airship. Gun-barrels fixed within rotating metal bubbles swivelled and boomed. From the corner of her eye she watched as one of the gunners noticed the mutant sorceress overlooking the battlefield and pivoted his battery towards her. With a sigh she clapped her hands sharply, the impact foreshadowing the small explosion that blew the gun turret and a spurt of shrapnel from the side of the airship.

Sometimes she wondered why she still bothered to fight, but it was not yet her time. One minute away or a hundred years, what was the difference? She had seen this moment coming all her life. If she was going to give up now, then she would have done so decades ago. She had even felt the change that came next, but even without forewarning it would have been impossible to miss.

For a moment the magic that swirled down from the polar warp gate in the far Northern Wastes was overwhelmed by another source. It came from deep below ground, spearing through a fissure in the rock of reality as though the world had been cracked and molten light beamed from its core. It was the polar gate that Grimnir had long ago vowed to close, and a doorway onto his road lay here.

And it had just been opened.

Be’lakor threw back his head and roared in triumph, vanishing mid-cry with an implosive
clap
that sucked in the surrounding flames to the abruptly voided space.

Morzanna felt herself relax. She had played her part, but the future lay in the hands of others now. She looked to the inner walls of the fortress, noting with an almost maternal pride that the tribesmen continued to pour forward despite the departure of their infernal lord. Several swung grapnels like lariats above their heads and launched them over the parapet, jumping from the backs of their galloping horses and slapping into the walls before grinning and starting to climb. The handful of missile troops left on the walls loosed their last panicked shots before jumping down. As far as she could see, only one man and a huge, strangely-outfitted dwarf Slayer remained to defend the wall.

She had often heard it said that dying was like falling asleep.

The dwarf raised his long firearm. A flash of red light shone in her eyes and blinded her for one crucial second as an explosive shot raced ahead of its accompanying bullet.

Morzanna smiled.

It was time to dream her own dreams.

She had always wondered how it would feel to sleep.

‘Retreat! Everybody back to the temple!’

Gustav waved men back as he retreated up the wide steps to the temple of Grimnir, yelling until the thin air and the smoke turned his voice into a rasp. The smoke was so thick he could no longer make out
Unstoppable
. The sharp points of light that cut through the murk might have been the vessel’s guide lights or could just as easily have been stars. Only the relentless rolls of thunder assured him that the airship was still there at all. While the mighty craft remained aloft and firing he had hope, but he would gladly have traded a handful of its cannons for half as many good men on the ground.

Horsemen in iron and leather scales galloped in and out of view, cheek flaps and leather skirts slapping their sides, shod hooves clattering on stone. Gustav flinched from the whine of arrows. A man in soiled burgundy and gold and a breastplate slowly turning to rust caught an arrow through the leather padding between armour and shoulder and went down with a scream. Another took an arrow in the back of the leg, dropping to his knees and making a wild shot with his blunderbuss only to be beheaded by an adze-wielding rider charging in from the side.

Everywhere he looked his men were dropping, men he had led since Badenhof, people he had come to consider as something more than mere friends.

Smoke clinging to his enormous armoured frame, the Slayer-Abbot barrelled towards a group of marauder horsemen. The riders flowed away, teasingly out of reach, calling out to the enraged dwarf as they riddled him with arrows. White and brown feathers bristled like a hedgehog’s quills from every part of his body when he took one last despairing lunge and crashed over.

‘Laddie, catch.’

Gustav snatched up his hand instinctively as a blocky dwarf-made pistol flew through the air towards him. From the weight of it, it was already loaded so Gustav swung it round immediately and fired, winging the pauldron of a Chaos knight who had been thundering across his line of sight towards the last pocket of Slayer-Monks battling with the marble statues at their backs.

Malakai Makaisson was a few steps below him and backing up, shrugging off the shoulder strap of his longrifle and muscling up his big handcannon. With calm proficiency the engineer ignored the incoming marauders, slotting a crank handle into the right hand of the stock and feeding a belt of what looked like ammunition into a hopper on the left. He began to turn the crank and, slowly at first but with his hugely muscled right arm quickly building speed and power, the cylindrical gun-barrel chugged and span, spitting out a torrent of shells. Laughing maniacally, the engineer swept his gun from left to right, mowing down the first rank of the cavalry charge before they made the bottom step. Horses screamed as they fell. Men jerked as the relentless stream of missiles pumped bloody craters into their bodies, many somehow remaining in the saddle only to be crushed by their falling mounts. The cannon flashed with every shot, spent casings raining from the hopper and tumbling down the steps. Makaisson’s single goggle lens shone like the eye of a daemon. And then he raked his fire back the other way, cutting through the second rank with even greater glee than he had gleaned from the first.

Gustav held up the pistol and shouted over the onslaught: ‘You have any more shot for this?’

‘There’s five mair already in the chamber.’

Gustav took another step back, aimed at a de-horsed marauder and took out half of the man’s face and the back of his head with a well-placed shot.

A six-shot pistol. Remarkable. A pity the Empire would never get to see them in service.

‘Ma ain invention,’ Makaisson yelled up.

Gustav aimed again and fired again. And again. And again. Until the pistol returned his pulls on the trigger with empty clicks and he stood at the top of the steps with his back to the colonnaded frontage of the temple itself. He threw the gun away and hefted his sabre two-handed. Malakai’s weapon stalled. The engineer shook it with a curse, then took a bomb from his backpack, pulled the pin in a fountain of sparks and let it bounce down the steps as he ran to rejoin Gustav at the top.

The explosion was small but fierce, sending bodies flying left and right. The damage to the stairway itself was minimal however and before the smoke had cleared, mounted warriors were already clattering up. Makaisson threw Gustav a wink, cleared the jam from his handcannon with brute force, unused ammunition drizzling through his fingers, and then re-attached the munitions belt to the hopper.

‘Ye’re nae the oath-swearin’ kind are ye, young Gustav?’

Perhaps it was the imminence of death that tickled him. Or perhaps it was the preposterous pointlessness of it that made him chuckle.

Him a rememberer to a Slayer – in what mad world?

‘How do you say “go to hell” in Dwarfish?’

‘Ach, laddie,’ Makaisson grinned, bringing his weapon to bear once more and setting his tattooed hand to the crank. ‘We dinnae huv all day.’

Cavernous hallways echoed to the shriek of daemons. The stone walls of bottomless stairwells rang with the impact of rune-axe and claw, bodies tumbling endlessly down or piling high before those that fought to follow. Slender marble bridges arced over rivers of abyssal darkness, fiends and horrors raining from them as Gotrek and his axes ploughed remorselessly across. Felix stuck close, stabbing out at anything that encroached on the Slayer’s back. His arms were numb and his chest burned, and he could barely see for the sweat pouring from his brow. When he did get the chance to mop his arm across his eyes all he could see was a wave of dark, distorted creatures scrambling down walls or surging up corridors from adjoining chambers. Gibbering cries screeched from every stone.

Gotrek savaged a hole and punched though.

With an axe of Grimnir in each hand, the Slayer had become an unstoppable force, an avatar of bloody-minded vengeance as the Ancestor had predicted he would be. Felix was fighting as hard as he could just to keep up. Part of him wanted to remind the Slayer that they hadn’t all had the good fortune to be imbued with godly power, but he was too occupied by his own concerns to spare even that much effort.

There wouldn’t be much left of him if he fell behind now.

At the end of another long hallway there was something different – a door – and Gotrek cut them a path towards it. It was high enough for a giant to pass through untroubled and sufficiently wide to accommodate a rank of Reiksguard Knights. Its carved, red wood panelling depicted images of struggle, encompassing oceans and nations and the void above, and was banded with brass. Finials in the form of vanquished daemons appeared to gnash their teeth and rage, surrounded by runic inscriptions like warding circles. Felix darted around the Slayer to try the handle. It gave an iron rattle, latched and bolted from the other side.

He shook the handle, then kicked it and cried out in frustration.

‘Of all the useless…’

‘Let me have a try, manling.’

Felix ducked around again, raising his sword to the slavering hordes as Gotrek at the same time spun the opposite way, like clockwork dancers on a dwarfish music box, to face the door. Felix parried a rust-edged knife, a three-bladed pincer, an axe crusted with blisters, his sword moving faster than he could control. He gave ground, keeping his back square to Gotrek’s as the Slayer advanced, axes whirring.

The pair of them roared with one voice as the air around them dissolved into brass shards and splinters. Max had given his life for this. Snorri and Ulrika and Kolya and Kat had died for this. But despite the best efforts of daemons and demi-gods, they had made it.

Their last adventure.

They were going to save the world.

And they would do it together.

NINETEEN

The Doom of Gotrek Gurnisson

A silver radiance bathed the inner sanctum of Grimnir’s temple with a spectral shimmer. The air resonated with a limpid hum that hinted at forces only barely held in check and that thrummed against Felix’s inner ear. Looking around was disorientating, like trying to locate a silver schilling at the bottom of a wishing well while a flautist played a single out-of-tune note beside him.

The chamber was of a similar size to the courtyard above it and with the same circular design. There were no weight-bearing columns here, nothing to divide the temple into more discrete spaces, nor to provide any hiding place from that light. The high ceiling was vaulted with ribs of iron and stone that crossed each other in a pattern that resembled a field of stars, a single ruby glittering in the centre of each one. There was a mezzanine level at the opposite end of the chamber, supported by nothing more obvious than dwarfish ingenuity and the two marble staircases that swept around the curve of the temple’s walls towards it. A chandelier hung over each staircase. Each was an iron latticework of geometric forms, squares coming together to form stars, which assembled in turn into pyramids that lay atop one another in the confines of the final, square shape of the chandelier. Precious glowstones, rather than candles, shone from them, but the ambient light around them washed out their colours and brightness.

Felix looked up to the mezzanine itself. There was the origin of the light and the fluting hum. An enormous silver portal rippled and swirled. It was identical to that shown to him by Grimnir during his trials, but rather than standing free in the air the distortions that it put out were mitigated by the huge stone dolmen that had been constructed to contain it. The marble uprights were carved into the stylised semblances of dwarf gods. They were not of Grimnir, Felix realised, but of the other two members of the dwarfs’ holy triumvirate: Grungni the smith and Valaya the hearth-maker.

Of course, Grimnir had likely built this shrine himself. And the Vengeful Ancestor was not so boastful as to ornament it with his own likeness.

The argent surface was semi-translucent, a film rather than a barrier, and the visions that passed within it were in a state of constant flux. The only object of permanence was Grimnir himself. Locked in his eternal battle, the Ancestor was a true colossus. The being that Felix watched through rippling silver was greater even than the avatar that had vanquished Gotrek so off-handedly in the halls above, his scale more readily comparable to large buildings or small hills than mortal flesh. How much of that impression was due to Grimnir’s own godly proportions and how much was affected by the portal’s distortions, Felix could not say. However, in the brief period Felix had to observe he saw the Ancestor grapple with a two-headed daemon whose own rust-red torso was muscled like a mountain, levering the bawling monster to its knees and cracking its spine with his knee before moving on, all in utter silence but for that charged hum.

Felix wanted to see more. There was something hypnotic about the endless flow. But there was no time and he forced himself to look away.

He turned back the way they had come, raising his sword with a frustrated hiss as semi-feral daemonic footsoldiers poured in through the ravaged door. They swarmed around the walls, forming a horseshoe-like body of gibbered taunts and twitching claws, but avoiding the central floor space as a night goblin would the sun.

Felix backed away from them, risking a glance over his shoulder and noticing only then that his companion was no longer with him. Gotrek was a few paces ahead, just about at the centre point of the circular chamber between the two hanging chandeliers and glaring up at the portal.

No. Not at the portal. Something in front of it.

Hidden within the portal’s radiant light, enthroned upon a seat of brazen skulls, sat Be’lakor. With the light shining fiercely behind him, the Dark Master was a void from which the eight-pointed star of Chaos blazed, as if the portal shone through him for the sole benefit of illuminating that ill-starred sigil of ruin. Upon his horned head was a crown, and at the foot of his throne four huge and equally terrible figures abased themselves before him.

One was ruddy-fleshed and bestial, clad in archaic armour of rune-scored bronze and clenching an axe that seemed to keen in hunger over its bent knee. Where the first was a brutal knot of blood-caked armour and savagery, the second was supple and slender, a subtle suggestiveness to the bend of her leg. Felix felt an unsettling alchemy of desire and self-disgust gurgle within him. He wasn’t even sure what made him label the creature ‘her’ but nor did it seem to matter;
her
hideous, inhuman beauty transcended such prosaic delimitations of lust. The third was as different from the preceding two as one monster could be from another. Too bloated to kneel, it squatted, a miasma of brownish gases rising from its pestilential hulk. Rusted chains hung from its horns like jewellery. Maggots crawled through its flesh. Buboes swelled and popped, disgorging buzzing flies that swarmed around its head, settling occasionally to lay eggs under sagging folds of dead flesh. Nauseated, Felix turned to regard the final figure. Its avian physique was strangely jointed, bobbing lightly as if it stood upon a raft. It was wrapped up in robes that shimmered like an oasis under the Arabyan sun. A long, bird-like beak protruded from its hood. Above, hidden within the shadows of the hood, deep blue eyes glowed with enlightenment. It held a staff in one scaly, four-clawed hand. It was dazzling, and even before the brilliance of the portal it shone with every colour of the rainbow plus a few extra that Felix had not previously been aware existed.

Greater daemons, Felix thought, an unsteadiness of nerve creeping into his sword’s grip.
Four of them!
One for each of the Great Powers.
This is my destiny,
Felix reminded himself. He swallowed hard.

He had always hated prophecy.

Be’lakor clasped the arms of his skull throne and rose, to the thrilled murmur of his infernal supplicants.

‘Your greatest wish is granted, Gotrek Gurnisson. Your name will ring down the aeons, but as he who opened the doorway to divinity for the fifth Great Power. You are witness to the commencement of a new era, when four powers unchanged since the birthing cries of creation must bow and admit the Master of Darkness to their pantheon.’

Be’lakor laughed coldly, stepping from the throne and spreading his arms as if eulogising to the daemon hordes that were still piling into the rear of the chamber. ‘I am the Dark Master. Prodigal. Pariah. Everchosen. Only I can unite the forgotten servants of the Four and at long last put an end to Grimnir’s eternal war.’

The Bloodthirster snarled, turning its animalistic visage towards Gotrek and Felix. Fire dribbled from its maw. Hatred burned in its eyes.

Be’lakor gestured back to the stone dolmen. ‘Here is where the banished fall, this purgatory, here to rage in mindlessness and hunger for millennia or else to relent and perish on Grimnir’s axe. Only I can free them. Only I can lead their legions to ash and hellfire upon your world.’

The exquisite daemon-woman of Slaanesh climbed languorously to her feet and stretched, running her gaze over Felix and then Gotrek. A knowing half-smile played on her lips. ‘I prophesied that one greater than I was to die killing you, Slayer, do you remember? He has killed you. And now he must die. You opened the door for the Dark Master, my jewel, and now your death will be the death of Grimnir himself.’

‘Come on down here, daemon,’ Gotrek shouted, brandishing both his axes. ‘One at a time or all together, this here is as close to Grimnir as you’ll come today. Don’t make me walk up those stairs or on my oath it’ll go harder on you.’

The Bloodthirster bristled and made to rise, only for Be’lakor’s firm hand on its shoulder to hold it at bay.

‘The leash suits you,’ Gotrek leered, drawing a vengeful snarl from the daemon of Khorne.

‘I will feast on your brain yet, mortal. Do not for one second of your short life believe that I will not.’

‘Leave these two rats to the dogs,’ said Be’lakor, releasing the Bloodthirster and raising a beneficent claw to the rabid daemon pack that gibbered and howled, inching forward in response. Felix tightened his grip on his sword. ‘You have greater concerns. Rally your legions. You all know what I require of you.’

The androgyne, the plague hulk and the shimmering oracle bowed their heads and rose – each to their abilities – before turning towards Grimnir’s dolmen.

They were going after Grimnir!

‘When I give the word, manling, you run.’ Gotrek had turned his body so one axe was held ready for the daemonic foot-soldiers behind them while the other remained on Be’lakor and the remaining greater daemon. With his eyebrows he gestured to the alcove beneath the mezzanine. It was about man-height, separated from the portal by a layer of stone and from the daemon tide by Gotrek and his axes.

It was probably the safest place in the temple, although all things were admittedly relative.

Setting his jaw, Felix slid up against his companion’s back and raised his sword. ‘Not this time. We’ll fight them together.’

‘It’s your funeral,’ Gotrek grunted, and then, with a grumbling melancholy: ‘This isn’t getting into my death poem, is it?’

‘Probably not, no.’

‘Pity.’

One after the next, the greater daemons passed through the silvery waters of the portal and Be’lakor turned to the unmoving Bloodthirster. The Khornate daemon was still glaring down at Gotrek and Felix, pinions flexing as though mentally powering it through the air towards its hated foes. Be’lakor’s regal features twisted with impatience, but before he could utter a word of admonition the Bloodthirster exploded forward, giving vent to a soul-tearing howl as it pounded towards the balcony’s edge, flung out its wings, and leapt.

Felix felt his courage shrivel as its wings blacked out the portal’s light.

The daemon’s cloven feet punched into the flagstones. Felix felt the impacts shake him. He watched as the berserker shook off its wings, whipped up its axe, and bellowed. Blood and flame spittled its knife-edged teeth. The runes of its armour shone. The fire-crack of its whip startled Felix out of his horror that he might cower before it more completely, but he didn’t get the opportunity.

As if given a signal, the daemon mob bayed and surged forward.

Without a word spoken between them, Gotrek gave a roar and charged towards the Bloodthirster while Felix spun around to address the lesser daemons galloping for his back.

There was an apocalyptic clang as meteoric iron clashed against infernal brass, and then every last one of Felix’s senses was overwhelmed by a tidal wall of scabs, claws, eye-sacks and twisted blades.

He parried the first blow, a meat cleaver smeared with bilious juices, and exerted the least possible effort to divert it across his body. He had to conserve his strength if he was going to last more than a few seconds. Unable to fight the momentum of the tide, he gave ground. A brown-skinned daemon with three asymmetrically positioned horns and a swinging ball-and-chain lunged for him. Felix sidestepped. The spiked mace-head swept across his turning body as a well-timed elbow from Felix caused the daemon’s soft jaw to erupt. White maggots slopped over Felix’s arm and he backed hurriedly away. A squat, simian horror armed with nothing but its maul-like fists barrelled straight past Felix towards Gotrek. Felix stuck out a leg and brought the daemon crashing down. A vicious satisfaction gave him the strength to hold his ground a minute longer; short, economical cuts making the tiniest of nicks in the unending body of the horde.

Ignore Felix Jaeger, will you?

Parry, feint, riposte; his sword whipped out as though drawn to the blades and weaponised appendages of his attackers. His arms were numb up to the shoulders. His breath came in rasps that his chest seemed to resist accepting, as if doing so was a burden it could do without. Every so often the opportunity presented itself to slide Karaghul through some monster’s belly, but more often than not he let it pass – better to live a moment longer than risk it. No two daemons were even superficially alike, he knew, and it was impossible to say which would have entrails that would tighten around his sword like a boa, or which would have abdominals of iron that would ring the blade from Felix’s hands.

Something tore open the mail beneath his left armpit and gouged into flesh. Felix didn’t see what it was. He barely even felt it. If he survived, then he would look forward to feeling it then. Under the circumstances, that passed for optimism. If he were to somehow find the strength and the luck to fight on all day there would still be thousands of enemies left to kill, and for every daemon he blocked or cut down, dozens more swarmed past him.

He was just one man: waist deep in the sea, holding out his arms, trying to defend the beach from the rising tide.

The ground beneath him went from being flat to being tiered. He backed up a step and then another, realising only after taking the third step that despite his efforts he had been driven back onto the left-hand staircase. He sought out Gotrek, whose back he was at least notionally defending, and found him almost exactly where he had left him in the middle of the chamber.