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Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer

Map

ROAD OF SKULLS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

THE SERPENT QUEEN

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

LOST TALES

CHARNEL CONGRESS

THE RECKONING

INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH

CURSE OF THE EVERLIVING

MARRIAGE OF MOMENT

BERTHOLD’S BEARD

THE CONTEST

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘Ghoulslayer’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

ROAD OF SKULLS

Josh Reynolds

PROLOGUE

Worlds Edge Mountains,
The Peak Pass

The sun was an ugly knot in the sky, its harsh light catching at armour and movement in the distance as the enemy approached the throng of Karak Kadrin’s position through the winding, crooked crags of the Peak Pass. Borri Ranulfsson, thane and commander of the throng, blinked and squinted, a thin wisp of smoke rising from the bowl of his pipe. ‘There are more of them than we thought,’ he said gruffly, tugging at one of his beard’s plaits. He stood on a heavy, embossed shield that had been braced across two upright stones, worn smooth by time and tide.

‘How many d’you think?’ a quiet voice asked.

Ranulfsson glanced over at his nephew. The two dwarfs were mirror images of one another, for all that Borri’s ginger hair and beard were streaked with white and Kimril’s were still dark with youth. Both had the wide, keg-shaped build of their people, and their armour was without the frippery or fancy that adorned the war-panoply of some of the clans of Karak Kadrin. There were better places for wealth to sit than on a shield or an axe’s haft or cuirass.

‘A thousand, at least,’ Borri said, sucking meditatively on his pipe. The contours of the pass made it hard to judge distance properly. It widened and thinned at odd points and the avalanches that were not uncommon in the Worlds Edge Mountains had a tendency to wreak drastic changes on the topography. Too, battle was as common as the avalanches in this region and as in the lowlands, and it had a tendency to re-shape the ground even as it was fought over. More than one throng had been buried in a sudden avalanche or the collapse of a cliff-face, entombed alongside their enemies forever. ‘Hard to tell at this distance, but I expect we’ll be getting a better look soon enough.’ He pretended not to see the jerk of his nephew’s throat, or hear his soft intake of nervous breath.

Kimril was nervous, and there was no shame in it. Borri had been nervous as well, the first time he’d been called to the killing fields. His armour had had the weight of a mountain that day, and he’d dropped his axe more than once. Nerves were natural.

Then, he’d only been fighting grobi. This… this was a whole other cart of ore.

The cool wind of the heights carried the stink of old blood and men and something else, something infinitely more unpleasant than either of the former, through the Peak Pass and Borri grimaced. Only one thing he knew of smelled that way.

He looked back at the approaching horde, and the feeling of worry gave way to disgust. It wasn’t the first time something foul had swept down out of the north. The Chaos filth tried to march through the pass at least once a season, sometimes in fewer numbers, sometimes in greater. Granted, this lot were quicker than usual, and it was a bigger group than he’d been prepared for, thanks mostly to the failure of his scouts to report back.

It had been six days since he’d sent Fimbur and his rangers to inspect the enemy. Borri had a grudging respect for the ranger, though he didn’t think spending that much time in the open was entirely healthy for a dwarf, and he hoped they hadn’t been caught. There were worse things than being captured by enemies such as these, but none he could bring to mind at the moment.

The horde had swarmed out of the eastern mountains in such numbers that the traders who’d brought word of their coming to Karak Kadrin had said that the dust of their passage had darkened the sky above the Skull Road for miles. They’d thought it exaggeration at first, which was why his throng numbered only five hundred stout clansmen. But now, seeing it, and with the failure of Fimbur to report back, he was starting to think that the traders hadn’t been exaggerating at all; they’d been underplaying, if anything.

Borri gave his nephew’s shoulder a quick pat. ‘We’ll be fine, boy. They’ll catch one look at this throng waiting on them, and they’ll run back north, tails between their legs,’ he said quietly. He turned, looking at the throng arrayed behind him. A sense of fierce pride swelled in him, a pride he saw reflected in the eyes of those warriors closest to him.

They were the throng of Karak Kadrin, and they had never failed to hold the Peak Pass when it counted. Borri expelled twin trails of smoke from his nostrils and pulled his pipe from his lips, tapping it on the rim of his shield. He refilled it without looking at it, the habit second-nature to him.

The throng stood arrayed for battle across the point where this part of the Peak Pass grew narrow and began to rise towards the upper reaches which Karak Kadrin occupied. The high ground was always the best place to be in a slugging match such as this was shaping up to be. Representatives from four clans were present, and their standards, as well as those of the sub-clans, rose above the bristling block formations. The light caught on the golden discs carved in the shape of the faces of the ancestor-gods, and Borri turned away, knowing that Grimnir and Grungni looked down on the throng and were proud.

His reverie was interrupted when another dwarf ambled towards them, his beard tied into two plaits with copper wire and iron hair-clasps, pulled tight over his broad shoulders and tied off to hang down the back of his armour. His armour was heavier than that of either of the others, and he carried a long-hafted hammer slung casually across his shoulders. An ornate full-face helm rested in the crook of his other arm. He whistled softly, not looking at them.

‘Feel up to a wager, Ranulfsson?’ he said, squinting at the approaching enemy.

‘With you, Durgrim, no,’ Borri said, lighting a taper on the inside of his shield and holding the tiny flame beneath the bowl of his pipe. Durgrim snorted, his eyes flicking towards Kimril.

‘What about you, young Kimril? It’s your first taste of battle today… How about a wager to spice things up?’ he said.

Kimril glanced at his uncle, who shook his head. Durgrim caught the gesture and rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t be such a wanaz, Borri,’ he said.

Borri frowned and glared at the other dwarf, irritated by his lack of respect. ‘Where are your ironbreakers, Durgrim? Lounging in the back somewhere, gambling away their weapons?’

Durgrim gave no sign that the jibe bothered him. He extended his hammer. ‘We’re in the centre of the line, as is our right, Borri,’ he said. He smirked. ‘Where are your warriors?’

‘Right where they should be, Durgrim,’ a harsh voice interrupted, before Borri could reply. ‘As you should be,’ the speaker went on, joining them. Bare-chested and scar-faced, the dwarf was a terrifying sight. A thick ridge of greased and crimson-dyed hair flared up from his otherwise shorn skull, and thick steel bands covered his massive forearms. He leaned on the haft of an axe, and a necklace of orc tusks hung from his neck.

‘Ogun,’ Borri said respectfully. Durgrim looked away.

‘Thane Borri,’ the Slayer rasped. ‘It will be a good day, I think.’

‘One can hope,’ Durgrim muttered.

The Slayer looked at him, face as hard as stone. The ironbeard pretended not to notice. Durgrim was an effective warrior, but he had any number of bad habits, bred in his time in the deep dark, and he was unhappy being in a subordinate position. But then, Ogun was simply a discomfiting presence.

Even more discomfiting, Ogun had brought a number of his mad brethren with him, though Borri had neither requested nor wanted them. For all that Karak Kadrin was ruled by a Slayer King, Borri had the proper amount of wariness regarding the dishonoured and the doomed. They would not hold the line, nor would they obey his commands. Even Ogun could barely control them, and then only because he had knocked heads in a grand runk the night before.

Borri examined the Slayer surreptitiously. Ogun was old for a Slayer, and pragmatic. If he was mad, it was in a quiet sort of way, and he felt a brief flicker of sympathy for the warrior. To be without honour was to be set adrift in a world without sense. He could not imagine what it would be like to lack the solidity of hearth and home and his clan ties. To be so mired in shame that only death could erase the stain. Hopefully, he would never find out.

Kimril’s armour clattered as he shifted his shield to a more comfortable position. Borri watched his nephew for a moment, and then noticed Ogun doing the same. The Slayer grunted. ‘If we fall here, warning will need to be delivered to King Ungrim,’ he said.

Borri met Ogun’s eyes. ‘We won’t fall.’ They couldn’t afford to. If they gave ground, the horde would have a clear path to Karak Kadrin, though it would take them many days to reach the hold. The Peak Pass was a major trade route and had been since the Golden Age of the dwarf empire. Here and there, hidden now by time and fallen rocks, were the ancient stones of a long-vanished road, which had been ripped and shattered by some forgotten cataclysm. It was claimed that the Peak Pass only existed thanks to Grungni’s ingenuity, that the ancient ancestor-god had carved the pass with some long-lost mechanism of masterful artifice.

Ogun grunted and turned away. Borri knew what the Slayer’s look had meant and he looked back at Kimril, who nervously shifted his grip on his axe. He had been considering much the same himself, but the lad had to be blooded sooner or later. To deny Kimril the right to stand or fall with his clan was not something that Borri was prepared to do.

From above, a brass-bellied ram’s horn gave an eerie moan. The enemy were drawing close. Borri raised his axe, and war-horns sounded from within the body of the throng. The block formations dissolved into heavy overlapping lines. The pass was wide enough to accommodate a half-sized throng such as this one, but their foes would be squeezed tight, with nowhere to go but forwards and upwards, into quarrel and shot. And those that survived would meet the axes of the clan-warriors, Durgrim’s ironbreakers and Ogun’s motley lot.

Borri puffed on his pipe in contentment. Ogun was right. It was looking to be a good day.

‘This will be a good day,’ Hrolf growled, hunching low over his horse as it trotted forwards, scaly hide rippling with colour. ‘The wind stinks of slaughter.’ Hrolf was built large, and as he shifted in his saddle, muscles swelled beneath his scarred flesh. As if to emphasize his point, he took a deep sniff of the air. His lips peeled back, revealing yellowing fangs that jutted from his gums and jockeyed for space with more normal, human teeth.

‘You say that every day,’ his companion said, his voice echoing oddly from within the black helm he wore. Unlike Hrolf, every inch of the man was shrouded in black iron. The armour was bulky and imposing, but shorn of ornamentation save for the yellowing skulls with strange marks carved into them that had been hung from his pauldrons and cuirass by small, wickedly curved hooks. The armour creaked as he leaned back in his saddle. ‘Sometimes I think your nose is clogged with the effluvium of the butcher’s block.’

‘Efflu-what?’ Hrolf growled, his eyes narrowing.

‘He’s mocking you, Hrolf,’ a soft, rasping voice said. ‘Aren’t you, Canto?’

‘That is what I’m here for, Ekaterina, as you never fail to remind me,’ Canto Unsworn said hollowly, craning his head to look at the woman who rode on the other side of Hrolf. She was a lithe creature, clad in the ragged ruin of a Kislevite boyar’s brass-buttoned coat, with the scalps of dead men dangling from her shoulders like hideous epaulettes. Heavy gauntlets hid her hands, one of those resting on the pommel of the sword sheathed on one hip. A sleeve of chainmail covered one arm, stretching to the gauntlet from a light pauldron that had been decorated with a leering face.

She had been beautiful once, Canto mused. She was beautiful still, in the same way that a tiger was beautiful. The icy poise of a well-bred woman of Kislev was still there, despite the hair bound in wormy dreadlocks and slathered with blood and fat, and the slit corners of her mouth that gaped to reveal deep-set fangs when she smiled her terrible, too-wide smile. Her eyes were carmine slits that bored into his own dark ones, challenging him, daring him to draw his own sword.

He looked away.

Ekaterina laughed, and the sound scratched his eardrums like razors. ‘You are still so cautious, Unsworn, and so afraid. You should be more like Hrolf.’

Canto glanced over at Hrolf, whose chest swelled as he preened, flashing his ragged teeth at the woman. Canto shook his head. ‘I prefer to be what I am, woman. I remain true to myself.’

‘A coward, beloved by no gods,’ she said.

He ignored her and turned in his saddle. Behind them, the army of Garmr Hrodvitnir, called the Gorewolf by some, spilled through the pass in a cloud of dust and noise. Horns torn from the hairy skulls of beasts wailed and drums made from human skin were beaten, pressing an erratic and discordant rhythm into the very stuff of the air.

Armoured Chaos knights mingled with half-naked Chaos marauders on the shaggy horses of the eastern steppes, and worse things came behind them. A sea of altars and shrines, their brass and iron wheels chewing the rocky ground as monstrous beasts strained against heavy chains, pulling the shrines in their wake. Far behind, men – Norscans and marauders and dark-armoured Chaos warriors – marched, loped or ran in whatever formations made sense to them, and ahead of them all, the Exalted Champions – lords and lady alike – whose combined will worked to hold the natural instincts of their followers in check.

Canto grimaced and looked at the creatures he’d fallen in with. Hrolf was a brute and a lunatic; every dawn shrank the gap between him and the blood-mad beast things that served as his vanguard. The Chaos marauders riding just behind their twitching, muttering leader were nervous of the Chaos hounds that lurched and loped around Hrolf’s horse. Even their horses were nervous of them, snorting and bucking every so often, trying to ward off the monstrous canines.

Past Hrolf’s warriors were those who followed Ekaterina. Like their mistress, they had been Kislevite, once. There was a rumour, a whisper of a ghost of a story, that those men were all that remained of those who had ridden in pursuit of the remnants of Asavar Kul’s once-mighty horde as it retreated north, a captive boyar’s daughter in their clutches. Some had been suitors, they said, brothers, cousins, lovers, and now… what?

Ekaterina caught him looking and opened her mouth, the slit edges of her smile gaping to reveal the inwards-curved maw of threshing fangs that hid behind her human lips and teeth. Canto turned away. His own followers, a bevy of horsemen riding powerful, foul-tempered steeds, trotted in his wake, at a respectful distance. Like him, they wore heavy armour, though theirs lacked the protections woven into his during its forging. He noted that several of his men were already showing signs of bending beneath the weight of the gods. Blood-daubed sigils and massive studded collars marked out those whom he might have to cull sooner rather than later.

There were other lieutenants of course, other chosen or Exalted warriors; dozens if not hundreds, whose individual retinues and ranks made up the army, though only eight were of any importance. And of those eight, only four were of importance to him, and of those four, only one was truly important.

He sought out the Gorewolf. He was easy enough to find. Garmr liked to be at the front, where Khorne could see him clearly. Canto fought to restrain a smirk. No one would be able to see it, not with the helm he wore, but lowering your guard, even in private – especially in private – was a sure-fire way to wind up with your skull added to one of the shrines. Or worse… Canto shifted uncomfortably in his saddle.

Garmr rode some way ahead of his lieutenants, his night-black horse a handbreadth larger than any other in the army. His armour was the colour of clotted blood and the stink of him was enough to choke even a follower of Grandfather Nurgle on a hot day; or so Canto thought, though only in private. Indeed, Hrolf and Ekaterina seemed to quite like the Gorewolf’s stench. Then, he’d once seen Hrolf burrow into the carcass of a daemon-beast and fall asleep; there was little sense in what the worshippers of the Blood God found pleasurable.

Garmr, like his mount, was large, bigger than any man, with arms and legs like bunches of thick rope crammed into baroque armour. He rode almost dejectedly, his great head bowed and his gauntlets limp on the pommel of his saddle. Hundreds of hooks dangled from the edges of the plates that made up his armour, swinging from braids made of hair, flesh and metal. His helm was a snarling brass daemon’s head, surmounted by a mane of matted animal hair. A number of chin-scalps – blood-matted beards taken from the mauled bodies of the dwarf scouts they’d run across a few days prior – hung from his saddle.

Canto had never seen Garmr’s face. For all he knew, that silently growling visage was the Gorewolf’s true face. He touched his own helm, featureless save for the ragged gash of his visor. He had personally herded over a hundred screaming men, women and children into the great black iron wagons that would take them to smouldering citadels in the Dark Lands in payment for his armour. He wondered what Garmr had traded for his. He wondered whether Garmr, like Canto himself, ever wondered if the deal had been worth the making.

Garmr twitched in his saddle. His horse came to a halt, savage hooves digging into the rock as it screamed in impatience and hunger. Garmr straightened, the brass muzzle of his helm rising, as if scenting the air. A long arm rose. The army ground to a halt like an avalanche. Somewhere, someone stumbled against someone else. A horse squealed and swords bit the light of the sun. Canto turned in his saddle, about to order someone to break it up, but the command died on his lips. He shrugged and turned back. It would sort itself out soon enough.

It always did.

‘Ahhhhh,’ Garmr groaned. And it was a groan. There was pleasure in that sound, and longing, and it carried through the ranks like a plague. His arm fell, and as one his lieutenants rode forwards to join him as the dust of the army’s passage enfolded them like a morning fog.

‘They have come to meet us,’ Garmr said. The dwarf army had occupied the other end of the section of pass the horde was moving through, and awaited them, arrayed in gleaming ranks of sturdy warriors. So disciplined were they that they resembled nothing so much as small, broad statues, paying no heed to weather, time or tide. Even so, there were not many of them.

Hrolf let loose a rippling snarl and his horse stirred uneasily. Canto did as well. When the brute had his blood up, he was dangerous, even to those who nominally shared the same standard.

‘How many?’ Ekaterina asked, leaning forwards.

Canto stood slightly in his stirrups. ‘That’s a small throng, even by the standards of the stunted ones. I wonder if we should be insulted…’ he said.

‘Quiet,’ Garmr said. His voice was like the warning growl of a predator. He urged his horse into motion. ‘Canto, Ekaterina, Hrolf… follow me. I would see their faces before I peel the meat from their skulls.’

‘What?’ Hrolf grunted.

‘We’re parleying,’ Canto said.

‘We do not parley,’ Ekaterina said.

‘Well, what would you call riding alone towards the enemy?’

‘Fun,’ Ekaterina purred.

Canto fell silent. She was right. It wasn’t a parley. A parley implied diplomacy. There was no diplomacy, no politesse in Garmr, simply purpose. All of them had purpose, except for him. He jerked his horse’s reins, urging the beast forwards, and it snapped its fangs in anger. He joined Garmr ahead of the others. ‘This is foolish, Lord Garmr.’

‘It is what Khorne wills,’ Garmr said. ‘We will take the skulls of all who stand in our path. Would you have me add you to the tally, Canto?’ Garmr’s voice was harsh.

Canto shook his head. ‘Of course not,’ he said quickly. ‘But why not simply smash them?’

Garmr’s only reply was to stroke the haft of the great axe that was slung across his saddle and bring his horse to a halt. The weapon was a crude, hateful thing. It was sharp in a way that seemed the apotheosis of the word. It could slice the wind in two, that axe, and Canto had seen it spill what passed for the brains of daemons in the madness of the far north.

He knew the answer to his question, despite Garmr’s silence. There were proprieties to be observed, even among the worshippers of the Blood God. Enemies must know each other’s faces, for the sacrifice to be a proper one. It lent crude meaning to otherwise meaningless butchery.

Canto shook his head again, and examined the arrayed ranks of the dwarfs. He had faced them once or twice, in other hordes, under other banners. They were fierce, and hard and stubborn in a way that men, even men like him, could not understand. They stood in disciplined ranks, shields held up and weapons low, like stones ready to weather the storm. He calculated less than six hundred, which was no small force, despite his earlier comments to the contrary. Disciplined, holding the high ground, they might be more of an obstacle than Garmr would have liked to admit.

Four squat figures trotted to meet them, their pace unhurried and deliberate. One was red-bearded and clad in dusty, ornate armour; he was followed by a younger, similarly attired dwarf, and a bare-chested, broadly muscled one with an impressive ridge of crimson hair jutting from his skull; the last was more heavily armoured than the first two, and had a hammer slung across his shoulders. The dwarfs were big on formality as well, Canto remembered.

‘Turn around,’ the red-bearded dwarf grated. ‘Go back where you came from. The Peak Pass is property of Ungrim Ironfist and the folk of Karak Kadrin and you will find no passage here, unless it is bought in blood. So swears Borri Ranulfsson.’

Ekaterina chuckled. Garmr raised a hand, silencing her. ‘We will grind you into the dust,’ he said. He said it as if he were talking of the weather. For Garmr, victory was inevitable and his due.

‘Then there’s no need to talk, is there now?’ the dwarf with the ridge of jutting crimson hair growled. Canto eyed him warily, smelling the rage that boiled off him.

‘No,’ Garmr said. ‘Your souls are already harvested, and your skulls spoken for.’

‘Borri–’ the fourth dwarf, clad in heavy armour, began. The thane made a sharp gesture.

‘Then why bother with a parley?’ he said. ‘We aren’t planning to move.’

‘Proprieties,’ Garmr grunted. He reached towards his saddle and plucked loose the bloody lot of beards. ‘These were yours. This is what awaits you.’ He tossed the beards at the thane’s feet, and Ranulfsson’s face became as still and as cold as ice. Garmr gestured. ‘Send me a champion. We must sanctify this ground before battle.’

‘What?’ Ranulfsson said through gritted teeth.

‘Maybe him,’ Ekaterina said, leering at the younger dwarf, whose features paled noticeably.

‘I’ll do it,’ the third snarled, stepping past the young warrior. ‘I am Ogun Olafsson and I will kill any daemon-lover you send against me, Northman.’

Garmr nodded. ‘You have until the fight ends. Retreat or stand, it makes no difference. We will add your skulls to the road regardless.’ Without waiting for a reply he turned his horse’s head and galloped back towards the waiting horde. Canto and the others followed. As they rejoined their men, Garmr looked at Canto and the others. ‘One of you will bring me his skull. Decide amongst yourselves.’

Canto shook his head and stepped back immediately. ‘Leave me out of this,’ he said.

‘Coward,’ Ekaterina said, but mildly. ‘The honour is mine, Hrolf Dogsson.’ She pointed her blade at Hrolf, who gave a bark of laughter.

He looked around, at his men, smirking. They growled and nodded and the Chaos hounds echoed them, displaying maws full of crooked fangs and tearing the ground with malformed talons. ‘I think not. No soft southerner is worthy to spill blood for Khorne, least of all a woman.’

‘Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, nor whose hand sheds it,’ Ekaterina said. Then, more loudly, ‘I am Ekaterina Maria Anastasia Olgchek, Sword-Maiden of Praag. I danced before the balefires of the Beast-Queen and took the heads of the Chattering Legion. I bathed in the Rivers of Red Dust and spat in the eye of the Sleeping God. I have slain a hundred-hundred men and offered up their skulls to the Blood God and I will offer up a hundred-hundred more.’ She gestured with her blade, and said, ‘Including yours, Dogsson, if you cross me.’

Her followers set up a chant, calling out her name and shaking their weapons. Men among the army, marauders as well as Norscans, took up the chant as well and the rattling hiss of hundreds of weapons clashing against shields filled the air.

Hrolf laughed and spread his long arms. ‘Fierce words from a pampered child. I am Hrolf Wyrdulf, Prince of the Vargs. I am the Promised Son of the Witch-Moon and I slew the sea-worm Ship-Crusher after a battle of thirty days and thirty nights. I can lie on the ice and not freeze and I can drink an ocean of blood and not burst. I stalked Hrunting Iron-Axe from pole to pole and placed his smoking heart on Khorne’s board. I took the star-skulls of the Women-With-Skull-Faces and flung them into the Sea of Chaos!’ His hounds howled and his men roared, shaking their blades at their rivals.

Canto watched them, as they went back and forth. It was a ritual as old as yesterday, or perhaps longer. Every Exalted Champion had a litany attached to their name, mighty deeds and sagas that spoke to their prowess and skill. If there was one thing servants of the Blood God liked almost as much as spilling blood, it was talking about blood they had already spilled. Duelling with stories, however, was only a prelude to the more physical sort. In many ways, the battle had already been settled. Ekaterina’s supporters outnumbered Hrolf’s and no wonder – no one loved a berserker, even in an army of indiscriminate killers.

Frustrated, pushed beyond the bounds of propriety by Ekaterina’s mockery, Hrolf swept his blade out, slicing the air where his tormenter had been. Ekaterina laughed and whirled around him. Hrolf spun, but not quickly enough. Ekaterina’s boot caught him in the belly, sending him sprawling. The cheers redoubled in volume and she preened, drinking in the adulation.

Hrolf howled and sprang to his feet. Ekaterina’s sword flashed out and the pommel crunched against Hrolf’s skull, sending him to his knees. She wouldn’t kill him, Canto knew. Garmr still needed bloody berserkers. Too, this wasn’t a duel so much as a temper tantrum.

Hrolf collapsed, wheezing, clutching his skull. Ekaterina kicked him in the side for good measure and then extended her sword at the dwarf, Ogun, in a traditional fencing style that had been popular in the Empire decades ago. She wasn’t even breathing hard. She looked back at Garmr, who raised his hand as if in benediction, and she smiled, pleased.

The dwarf had watched the fight with studied indifference. At some point during the duel, the other three had walked back towards their lines, leaving the fourth to face Ekaterina, his axe in his hands. It wasn’t cowardice, Canto knew, but pragmatism. However long their champion could buy them was time well spent; every moment counted when preparing to receive a charge. The dwarfs would not retreat. They would dig in and stand and the toll they claimed for the horde’s inevitable passage would be terrible. ‘Well, stunted one?’ Ekaterina said, spreading her hands in a gesture of invitation. ‘What do you say?’

The dwarf said nothing. Ekaterina laughed and her men chuckled and grinned. Canto climbed into the saddle and walked his horse back a few feet. Hrolf scrambled up and did the same, glaring at Ekaterina as he went. She paid him no heed, her eyes unnaturally wide and her grin nearly splitting her face. She and the dwarf circled each other slowly. From the horde came the thump of drums and the chants of warriors. The dwarfs remained silent.

Then, with a cat-scream, Ekaterina moved. Her blade flickered, and Ogun only brought his axe up just in time. Metal rang on metal, and Canto could tell by the dwarf’s grunt that he was surprised by her strength.

His surprise didn’t last long. The axe looped out, and Ekaterina flipped backwards, the soles of her boots grazing the blade. She landed and sprang, stabbing. The sword caught the dwarf on one muscular arm, releasing a splash of red. She sprang back and tipped her head, holding the sword aloft. Blood drizzled into her mouth and she licked her lips as the dwarf roared and charged.

They moved back and forth, until the shadows cast by the sun draped the pass in curtains of darkness. Hrolf had already rejoined his howling comrades, bored. Canto couldn’t bring himself to leave, so instead he sat on his horse like some black iron statue, watching and waiting and hoping.

After an hour, the moment he’d been hoping to see came. The edge of the dwarf’s axe gashed her side and her laughter turned to a snarl of rage. She was spun by the force of the blow, and Ogun pressed his advantage, his weapon spinning in his hands. Canto leaned forwards. The axe rose, the flat catching Ekaterina in the jaw and knocking her sprawling. Ogun bellowed in triumph and the axe swung up in a headsman’s blow.

Ekaterina’s sword moved so quickly, Canto didn’t see it until the blade was exiting the meat of the dwarf’s torso. Ogun’s eyes bulged, but no sound escaped his lips. Ekaterina rolled to her feet as the axe fell, burying itself in the rock and hard soil. The dwarf leaned forwards, breathing heavily. Blood spilled from his belly, coating his legs and drenching the ground. He hunched over, one wide hand pressed to his belly, looking at nothing.

Ekaterina darted forwards, pinking him. The dwarf tried to hit her, but his movements had become slow and pained. More of his blood joined the first deluge, spattering the rocks as he weaved drunkenly after his tormentor. Finally, she darted behind him and her sword swept through his legs, severing the tendons. The dwarf toppled with a grunt and lay panting in the dust. And still, Ekaterina did not deliver the killing blow. She capered and howled, thrusting her arms up, eliciting roars from the tribesmen and warriors beneath her banner as she danced a gavotte.

Disgusted, Canto drew his sword and urged his horse forwards. Ekaterina’s shriek stopped him. ‘He’s mine, weakling,’ she snapped.

‘Take his head and stop playing with him,’ Canto snapped back.

Ekaterina was in front of him even as the words left his mouth, causing his horse to rear and bugle a challenge. Her blade flashed, slashing through his saddle, pitching him to the ground. He rolled to his feet, clawing for his sword.

‘Blood for the Blood God,’ Ekaterina hissed, and the words seemed to bounce from peak to peak, carrying to every ear in the pass. ‘Blood and souls for my Lord Khorne,’ she said, stalking Canto, forcing him to scramble back. She lunged, her carmine eyes burning with slaughter-lust. Canto grabbed her jacket and jerked her aside – even as he instinctively interposed his sword between her back and the dwarf’s axe as it bit at her spine.

The tableau held for a moment. Even Hrolf’s baying madmen fell quiet. Impossibly, the dwarf had gotten to his feet. Impossibly, he had covered the distance, leaving a red path to mark his trail. Impossibly, at that moment, the dwarf was the most terrifying thing in the pass, his axe creaking against Canto’s sword, his muscles bulging and his face set with a grim fatalism that defied even Ekaterina’s berserk enthusiasm.

And then she screamed and the horde joined her in that howl as she twisted out of Canto’s grip and tackled the dwarf, knocking him flat. Her mouth opened like a flower at the first spring rain, revealing clattering fang-spurs hidden behind her teeth, and she ducked, fastening her too-wide mouth on the dwarf’s face, cutting off his last roar. Canto backed away, sword still in his hand, unable to look away as Ekaterina’s spine tightened and rippled and her head shot back, gory locks flaring as she tore the meat from the dwarf’s skull in one go.

She turned to Canto, shreds of meat dangling from red-stained jaws. Her eyes were wide and staring and he had the sense that she was not looking at him so much as something behind him. And then there was no time to ponder it further.

‘He was worthy,’ she hissed, her jaw working as she swallowed what she had torn loose from the dwarf. ‘Unlike you,’ she added, and sprang into the saddle of her horse and screamed again. The horse shot forwards, galloping up the slope towards the dwarf lines.

As one, like some hungry beast that had slipped its chain, Garmr’s army surged in her wake, eating distance even as Ekaterina’s horse flew over the heads of the front rank of dwarfs and she crashed down among them, her sword flashing in the fading light as she howled out the Blood God’s name. Canto, caught between the dwarfs and his side, raced towards the former, cursing with every step.

It was going to be a slaughter.

Canto was not opposed to slaughter; indeed, he had instigated more than one. But since joining Garmr, he’d been glutted on it. Whatever fire it had once stoked in him was now only guttering ashes, and though he could lose himself in the rhythms of battle easily enough, it lacked the comfort it had once provided.

Crossbow bolts struck his armour as he charged up the slope in Ekaterina’s wake. He was faster than a man, even in his armour, but even so, the vanguard of the Chaos horde swept him up in its momentum and he crashed into the dwarfs a moment later, using his greater weight and size to bull them aside. He was stronger than any man or dwarf, and a backhand blow from his fist broke necks as surely as his sword cut through them. He lost sight of Ekaterina in the melee as the dwarfs sought to simultaneously pull him down and prepare themselves for the blitzkrieg thundering towards them. Determined not to be caught in the main crush when it came, Canto waded deeper into the dwarf lines, striking out with calculated brutality as, around him, the armoured warriors of Chaos hewed at their enemies with brutal abandon.

The dwarfs held their ground, and hammers and axes sang hollow songs as they struck sparks from his armour. Somewhere, a dirge began, and was taken up by every dwarf with the breath to do so. ‘This far,’ it seemed to say, ‘and no further.’

It was an admirable sentiment.

Canto swept his sword out in a wide arc, bisecting two warriors. An axe crunched into his side and he stumbled, almost knocked from his feet. Blindly, he lashed out. An oath was cut short as warmth spilled down his sword blade. The thunder of hooves was so loud that it shook the slopes, and small avalanches of rock and dust tumbled into the dwarf ranks. Canto, momentarily bereft of enemies, turned.

Hrolf was in the vanguard, of course. His horse was shrieking in reptilian eagerness as he howled wildly and his men howled with him, the dread sound rising above the first clash of weapons, the creak of crossbows firing and the war-horns of the dwarfs. Chaos hounds ran alongside their horses, screaming and snarling.

Canto’s blade rose and fell in the red storm that followed, monotonous and unceasing.

It was a slaughter.

And Khorne found it good.

‘As any who have met him can attest, my companion, Gotrek Gurnisson, was possessed of an erratic personality on the best of days. While I had grown used to it over the course of our journeys together, his sudden swings of temperament could still surprise me.

In the weeks following our disastrous (at least from Gotrek’s perspective) encounter with the creature calling itself Mannfred von Carstein, Gotrek became surlier than ever, as if his near-plunge into the Stir had awakened some long pent-up streak of obnoxious fatalism.

‘As anyone who has read the previous volume knows, the Slayer is a seeker of death. And Gotrek’s death eluded him with the cunning of a fox fleeing before hounds. If I hadn’t been convinced that he was already mad, I would have thought that he was teetering on the precipice of it then. I know better now.

‘It wasn’t madness that drove Gotrek.

‘It was something infinitely more terrible and in its own way, sad.

‘So it was that I found myself journeying once more into the dangerous wilds of the Worlds Edge Mountains on the eve of what was to be one of the most peril-fraught experiences in my career as Gotrek’s shadow…’

– From My Travels with Gotrek, Vol. II
by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)

CHAPTER ONE

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
near Karak Kadrin

‘Move, manling,’ Gotrek Gurnisson rumbled, grabbing a handful of Felix Jaeger’s red Sudenland travel cloak and yanking his companion backwards as the sword in the frothing Chaos marauder’s hands whipped out, scorpion-quick. The blade missed the tip of Felix’s nose only by the smallest of margins as he tumbled backwards onto the hard surface of the path.

The Slayer stepped past Felix, his axe chopping into the marauder’s contorted features with a wet crunch. Gotrek pulled the weapon free of the ruin it had made of the dead man’s skull without apparent effort and looked darkly at the Chaos marauders who had ambushed them. ‘Well, who’s next?’ he said. He sounds almost cheerful, Felix reflected sourly as he scrambled to his feet. He drew his own blade. Karaghul seemed to purr as it slid from his sheath, and it was light in his hand as he gripped it and watched the Slayer toss his challenge into the faces of the men back-lit by the flames rising greedily towards the sky from the ruined structure behind them.

Said structure was a dwarf outpost which clung to the side of the mountain crag like a limpet. It was a blocky thing, and it had been well camouflaged to look like part of the crag it was attached to. Now, however, the outpost belched fire through its entrance and the arrow-slits that lined the craggy, rough walls. The stink of roasting flesh clung to the rocks and Felix had seen the bodies of several dwarfs lying nearby, contorted in death. They had almost killed him then, while he’d been busy staring in stupefied horror.

The path to the outpost was a narrow outcropping that looked out over the River Stir far below as it wound its way into the Worlds Edge Mountains. They’d followed the course of the Stir from the river-town of Wurtbad into the mountains for several days, hunting its origins in the valley near the dwarf-hold of Karak Kadrin. Felix had heard the latter once referred to as ‘the spine of the world’, and from this height he could see the resemblance. The mountain range extended from horizon to horizon, and spread as far as his eyes could see. The roof of the world, studded with stars, spread overhead, and if one had been prone to vertigo, simply looking up for too long would have been enough to provoke a fit.

Gotrek had insisted on climbing to the outpost when he noticed the light of the fire. ‘Dwarfs know better than to light fires by night in these hills, this close to Karak Kadrin or not, unless there’s good reason,’ he’d growled. How he’d known the outpost was there to begin with, Felix hadn’t asked. Slayer or not, Gotrek was still a dwarf with a dwarf’s natural taciturnity in regards to the comings and goings of his people.

Why Gotrek should be suspicious was another question he hadn’t asked. There was more than smoke on the night wind, and a rumble way down deep in the ground which Felix had felt before. There were forces on the move in the mountains. He’d expected greenskins… Sigmar knew there were thousands of the beasts infesting these hills.

But instead of orcs, there had been a half-dozen tattooed Northmen clad in ratty furs that exposed bare, scarred chests. Scar-brands and vile-looking tattoos curled across their wind-roughened flesh and they spoke in a coarse tongue. Whether they were Norscans or members of one of the thousands of marauder tribes which infested the Wastes beyond Kislev, he couldn’t say. Nor, in truth, did he care. They were here and they wanted to kill him and that was enough.

But while the mountain range held many dangers, including ravening orc tribes and brutish herds of subhuman beastmen, men from the Chaos Wastes were not known for being this far south. The thought sent a queasy shudder through him even as he joined Gotrek, as the Slayer launched himself at their enemies, his axe slicing the air with an audible hiss. Worry later, Jaeger… Fight now, he thought, as the Chaos marauders lunged to meet them.

Gotrek moved quickly for a being of his size, and the marauders were taken aback. Two fell in a red rush, and then the rest remembered their weapons. Felix locked swords with a bearded warrior who snapped blackened teeth at him like a dog even as he forced his blade towards Felix’s face. Felix was bent nearly backwards by his opponent, but he recovered quickly, driving his heel into the warrior’s instep and slashing Karaghul up and across in a classic example of an Altdorf mittelhau, by way of Liechtenaur’s third law. He had ended a promising academic career with that blow once – two, in fact, if one counted the other student he’d killed in the duel.

The Chaos marauder staggered, vomiting crimson. Felix, the words of his old fencing master beating his instincts into cruel intent, let loose a schielhau, parting the warrior’s hair permanently. As the man fell, skull cleft, Felix was already moving.

Gotrek’s axe had already done most of the work, however. Another marauder was down, looking as if he’d been trampled and gored by a beast. Gotrek pressed the last two hard, uttering the occasional hard bark of grim mirth as a lucky blade touched his flesh or passed close enough to be felt. Felix considered going to his aid, but he’d been the dour Slayer’s companion long enough to know that Gotrek wouldn’t thank him for such presumption.

Gotrek stamped forwards, never wavering or retreating. Felix thought that he might actually be incapable of even thinking of doing either. One of the Chaos marauders lunged desperately, but Gotrek simply shrugged out of the way, letting the edge of the blade graze his impossibly muscled forearm even as he grabbed the shaggy furs the warrior wore and jerked him forwards into a skull-shattering head-butt. The last warrior, rather than fleeing, flung himself at Gotrek. Gotrek’s blow was lazy, and he watched the two halves of the marauder fall with disinterest. He looked at Felix. ‘You walked right into that one, manling,’ he said. ‘If you get your head lopped off, who will record my doom?’

‘I hardly walked into it,’ Felix protested, cleaning his blade on one of the dead man’s furs. He glanced around the burning outpost. It was a small thing, as judged by a man. It wasn’t meant to be a home so much as a blind, keeping watch on western passes. There were dozens of similar outposts scattered across dozens of peaks. How they stayed in contact, Felix didn’t know. Gotrek had mentioned signal fires once, and mirrors. Felix didn’t look too closely at the dead dwarfs. He was too intimate with death as it was.

‘They were taken unawares,’ Gotrek said, before Felix could broach the question. He dropped to his haunches and yanked a corpse’s head up, examining the dead marauder’s face with his one eye. The Slayer looked positively simian in that position, all bloated muscle sheathed in weather-hardened flesh, his shorn scalp topped by a towering crest of red-dyed hair. Tattoos and scars clung to his frame. Felix had been present when Gotrek had acquired some of the latter, including the ugly mark that had torn the Slayer’s eye from his head. Gotrek hid that one behind a crude leather patch, for which Felix was grateful.

Gotrek thrust a finger beneath the patch, scratching the socket idly. Felix winced and sheathed his sword. ‘Why are they even here?’ he said. ‘I thought they rarely came this far south. And how could they have taken them unawares?’

‘Magic, manling,’ the Slayer spat as he glared at a dead marauder. There was an area that had been carved to appear as if it were a natural outcropping before the outpost, and Felix strode to the edge of it and looked out over the rim of the world.

The night wind moaned through the crags, and he pulled his cloak tighter about himself as he listened to the crackle of flames. Darkness spread out over the mountains, vast and all-consuming. Felix glanced up at the roof of the sky and saw that the moon was the colour of blood. Flickers caught his attention, drawing his gaze back down. He squinted. ‘Gotrek,’ he said and pointed.

Gotrek joined him. ‘More fires,’ he said.

‘Those signal fires you mentioned?’ Felix said hopefully.

Gotrek didn’t reply. His single eye stared off into the distance. The dwarf’s sight was better than Felix’s, even with only one eye and in the dark. Then, tersely, he said, ‘No.’

In the distance, something boomed. The rock beneath his feet trembled and he hastily stepped back from the edge. ‘What–’ he began, but a rumble like distant thunder cut him off. A distant light flared; a burp of luminescence that briefly revealed… what?

The crag they stood on looked almost straight down into the valley, and the raging river that curled through it. There had been a forest there once, Felix knew, though the dwarfs had long ago chopped down every tree and uprooted every stump in order to create a killing ground quite unlike any other in the world. The valley was a bowl, and more than one army had funnelled into it, looking to lay siege to what he assumed at first glance must be the infamous Slayer Keep. It looked to Felix’s horrified eyes as if that was the case now. He was reminded of ants swarming a dog’s carcass. How many men must be down there, hurling themselves against the walls? He swallowed a sudden rush of bile. ‘Maybe we should head back west. See if we can–’

Gotrek’s axe sank into a jagged fang of rock, shearing the tip off. Felix fell silent, and turned back to the valley below. With the light of the burning outpost behind him it was hard to make out what was going on down in the valley, but the brief bursts of firelight from below and the crimson light of the moon reflecting off the river helped with that. In any event, the citadel would have been hard to miss.

The edifice spoke of brooding power. The fortress had been wrought from the rock of the mountain; the massive outer walls had been built from chunks of lichen-encrusted stone, as had the inner wall, which rose above the wall immediately preceding it to climb the slope of the mountain. To Felix’s untrained eye, it resembled nothing so much as half an onion, with a layer pulled free of the rest, though he did not voice this idle thought to Gotrek. Regardless, the fortress dominated the valley in which it crouched. Felix felt his heart skip a beat as he judged the scale of the walls, calculating their true size. ‘Those walls are larger than those of Altdorf,’ he said in awe.

Gotrek grunted and spat. ‘One of Ungrim’s ideas. The true hold is deep in the mountain, as is proper. But Ungrim had a smaller false one constructed, for you humans. They call it Baragor’s Watch, after the first Slayer King.’ Gotrek’s expression twisted into a harsh smile. ‘Bait for a trap. Never met a Northman yet who can resist attacking a wall.’

‘If it’s only bait, why bother to construct them so solidly?’ Felix asked.

Gotrek looked at him. Felix raised a hand and said, ‘Never mind.’

‘Baragor’s Watch is nothing, manling. It is a toy, constructed to house merchants and occupy enemies while proper dwarfs go about their business. There – that is Karak Kadrin!’ Gotrek growled, gesturing with his axe to the structure which rose behind the fortress and easily overshadowed it.

Baragor’s Watch had been built on a rising slope, and from its upper levels extended a great stone bridge which was lit by the flames of a hundred braziers mounted on the stone stanchions that lined its length. The bridge spanned a massive chasm and connected the fortress on the slope with an even larger plateau gouged from the very heart of the mountain, where a second structure waited. That one, Felix knew, even if Gotrek hadn’t pointed it out, was the true Karak Kadrin. There, on the plateau, a pair of large doors were set into a titanic portcullis which was itself surmounted by the shape of two massive axes, carved into the surface of the mountain.

‘Karak Kadrin,’ Gotrek said again, his fingers tightening on the haft of his axe. Ancient wood and leather bindings creaked beneath the pressure of that grip. Felix didn’t reply. The Slayer had insisted that they travel to Karak Kadrin, though he hadn’t said why. Felix had tried to find an outgoing caravan, or even just a group of travellers heading in the same direction, but Gotrek’s surly impatience had put paid to that plan before it had even gotten off the ground. Thus, they had wandered into the mountains alone and on foot. Weeks of walking and climbing had worn Gotrek’s temper to a nub, easily plucked, and Felix felt little better, though his ailments were physical, rather than mental. Gotrek had shown little sign of wear, setting a punishing pace, as if something were driving him on. Now, staring at the distant fires, Felix wondered whether they were drawing close to that something.

More light splashed across distant stonework, as ancient as the mountains. ‘Fire-throwers,’ Gotrek muttered. He spat over the side of the outcropping. Felix saw that Baragor’s Watch wasn’t as sturdy as he’d first thought. The outer wall was already down, or at least no longer in one piece. Breaches had been made and men surged through as another roar of faint sound echoed upwards.

‘It sounds almost like cannons,’ Felix said. ‘But that’s impossible, isn’t it?’ He looked at Gotrek. ‘The Chaos worshippers don’t use such things, do they?’

Gotrek’s face settled into an expression of grim resolution. He didn’t answer Felix’s question but instead said, ‘We need to get in there, manling.’

‘And how do you propose that we do that?’ Felix said, unable to look away from the battle raging far below. ‘I don’t fancy our chances trying to wade through that.’

Gotrek clutched his axe and for a moment, Felix thought that the Slayer was contemplating doing just that. Then the dwarf shook his head. ‘There’s more than one way into Karak Kadrin, manling. These mountains are honeycombed with hidden doors and secret gates. If I recollect rightly, there’s one close by. We’ll find it and then, by Grimnir, we’ll find out what’s going on down there,’ Gotrek snarled, gesturing towards the Chaos forces with his axe.

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Valley of Karak Kadrin

Hrolf’s skin had taken on a waxy sheen, like something not quite solid. He could feel his hair rasping against the inside of his skin. His horse hissed in unease and he dropped a fist between its leathery ears. The Witch-Moon was high, and his beast stirred uneasily in him.

He and his mount sat a few miles from the keep, in a rough camp that Canto had insisted they set up. Hrolf saw little need for a camp; if men suffered in the weather, then they would take the walls all the quicker. The camp was by the river, ‘close to a water source’ as Canto said. Why they needed water when blood was readily available, Hrolf didn’t know.

Still, it served the plan. He licked his teeth. He looked around him at the men who were moving into the hills, carrying the devices he would use to win victory. He denied himself the joy of battle to oversee them, because of the plan. It was a good plan. Better, it was his plan, not Canto’s or Ekaterina’s or one of the others’. Something exploded and he jerked in his saddle. The stink of the war-engines of the dawi zharr irritated his senses more and more as the siege progressed. The stunted ones had spent millennia perfecting the arts of siegecraft, and their black-iron engines were some of the only things capable of knocking down the fortifications of their southern kin.

They had already done so, in fact. The great outer wall of Karak Kadrin had been cracked open like an eggshell by the cannon that the crooked little daemonsmiths had provided, only to reveal another. Walls, walls, walls… Hrolf spat, growing angry as he thought about the walls and those who crouched behind them. Then he grinned. The inner wall wouldn’t be a problem for long. A great spurt of fire lit up the night as one of the war-engines – a magma cannon, he thought they called it – vomited out a stream of flame that brushed across the stones.

The fire wasn’t hot enough to melt stone, but it drove the defenders back, and his warriors had no fear of climbing into or walking through fire. Hrolf smelled burning pork and saliva washed the inside of his mouth, mingling with the omnipresent tang of blood. His body ached abominably, his bones creaking in their sheaths of muscle like the supports of a dilapidated house caught in a strong wind. Hrolf frowned as crude frameworks of bone and animal gut thumped against the walls, carrying the warriors of Garmr into battle.

They would be driven back soon enough. Hrolf strangled a snarl. They were always driven back and had been for weeks now. Garmr had grown bored after three days and taken the rest of the army back towards the Peak Pass, leaving Hrolf and Canto to take Slayer Keep. There were more enemies than dwarfs to fight in these mountains, and Garmr was intent on killing every last one of them it seemed.

A snarl caught his attention and he shifted his gaze, taking in the war-shrines that stood behind him, overlooking the battle. The beasts that had pulled them had been pressed into service, carrying battering rams and siege equipment into the valley. Now, only their bipedal attendants remained: grunting, slobbering madmen and women, chained to the icons by their thick collars, screeching hoarse praises to Khorne as they tore at each other in a berserk frenzy, driven wild by the scent of a battle they would never be able to participate in. Hrolf grimaced, disturbed by the fanatics. They were being punished, or perhaps rewarded. It was hard to tell sometimes.

Chaos marauders loped past. They wore heavy furs and armour, and their weapons were a motley assortment. Sieges were the one place where Garmr’s preference for mounted warfare had to be disregarded. It was rare that those unlucky enough to have a mount got to do more than clean up after the fact. These were chanting the Blood God’s name, or the name of their tribe or champion. The words were all one to Hrolf, and he shook his head irritably. He longed to join them. His throat had swollen with an insistent pressure and he gave a grunt as something shifted inside. It was growing harder and harder to control the beast that squatted within him. It was growing larger, and his skin strained to contain it. He touched his flesh, and felt eagerness well up within him. Soon, soon he could shed this worthless skin and rend and slay the way the Witch-Moon wished.

‘Hrolf,’ Canto said, riding up to join him.

‘What?’ Hrolf snarled, twisting in his saddle, jaws snapping. He felt his teeth slide in his gums, and blood filled his mouth, calming him. Canto raised a hand in a placatory fashion and Hrolf glared at him. The Unsworn was accompanied by the two other Exalted Champions who had been ordered to attend the siege, Kung of the Long Arm and Yan the Foul. Hrolf was in overall command, but it was a tenuous thing at least where the latter was concerned, and all four Exalted shared such duties as Hrolf did not care to attend to himself. Canto, as ever, seemed to have no interest in doing anything save hiding and complaining. He was no true warrior – he might as well have been a Slaaneshi for all the good he was in a fight. Canto knew nothing of the joys of battle and blood and slaughter. Hrolf blinked away red-meat images, trying to focus. His armour felt too tight, and he longed to strip it off, but he knew that was impossible.

The armour had long ago set roots into him, merging with his flesh as effectively as the iron collar he wore about his thick neck. The collar too was a part of him. Like the armour, it stretched and spread when his form warped, protecting him even at his most battle-maddened. Khorne’s gift to a favoured son, he knew.

He traced the eight-pointed star that graced the much-abused cuirass and felt the warmth of the strange metal. It felt as if it had been just plucked from the forge when he rode into battle, searing his skin and maddening the monster within.

For a moment, he was lost in red memories of those first few days of the siege. He had led his men in taking the first section of wall, striking fast and hard, ignoring the death that rained down on them from above. The dwarfs defended every square of stone as if it were the last, giving ground grudgingly. Hrolf recalled how the boiling tar poured over the crenellations of the parapet and how his men had screamed as the concoction had splashed over them, pulling flesh from bone. He had ignored it then, scrambling up the ladder, blade in hand, head and heart thundering with the rhythm of war. Around his waist he’d worn a kilt of dwarf beards, scalped from the dead in the Peak Pass.

He could still feel that first crunch of blade on bone and taste the first drop of dwarf blood. The wall had fallen quickly, though the dwarfs had not been unprepared. He had had more troops then, and had spent their lives freely, sacrificing dozens to pull down a third that number of dwarfs. The wall had shuddered beneath his feet, pounded by the war-engines of the dawi zharr, and he had laughed as part of it collapsed, nearly sweeping him away.

‘Hrolf,’ Canto said again, more insistently, his voice a hollow rumble. Hrolf looked at the featureless helm and the dead shark eyes staring at him through the ragged visor.

‘What is it, Unsworn?’ he rasped.

‘They’ve taken down another section of wall,’ Canto said.

‘We are ready to press forwards,’ Kung rasped, stroking the serpentine length of his horse-gut-cord bound beard. It hung down to his saddle, and the end was capped with a round ball crafted from bone. His hair was loose and whipped around his head like a black halo in the smoke-riddled wind; Kung’s status was marked by his unbound hair rather than ornamentation. Only chieftains and war-leaders could leave their hair untied among the diverse tribes of the territories of the eastern reaches of the Chaos Wastes. He wore heavy armour, its blood-stained plates engraved with thousands of gaping, fanged jaws that seemed to snap and bite the air in the light cast by the fires of the war-engines. An axe rested across his saddle; its haft was made from a carved femur and the blade was a beaten crudity which glared at the world with blazing eyes that were set to either side of the jagged edge. Hrolf did not know whether the weapon was alive in the conventional sense; some whispered that it contained the soul of Kung’s brother, whom he’d slain to take control of his tribe.

‘Your exuberance is matched only by your idiocy, Kung,’ the other champion growled. Yan was a Khazag and his armour was covered in the stretched and stitched faces flayed from the skulls of his opponents. Where Kung was big and broad, Yan was lithe and deadly looking, like a needle wrapped in iron. The falchion on his hip had seen use in a thousand battles across a hundred years, and it bore the stamp of the daemonsmiths of Zharr Naggrund. ‘There is another wall, Dogsson. And another beyond that like as not… We will grow old and our bones will be dust before we are done with walls.’

‘Are you accusing me of building them, Yan?’ Hrolf growled. ‘Or are you simply yapping to hear the sound of your own voice?’

‘I am saying that this is a waste of time,’ Yan said. ‘We should rejoin Garmr. Let the stunted ones cower in their stone hole.’ Yan was a supporter of Ekaterina’s, Hrolf recalled, even as Kung was one of his. While every man in Garmr’s army was theoretically loyal to the Gorewolf, most were, in reality, loyal only to whatever chieftain or sub-chieftain they had followed before being absorbed into the horde. The Exalted who led the warbands that made up Garmr’s horde constantly fought for dominance. Eight warbands, made up of sixty-four smaller bands, and each of those made of still smaller bands with their own pecking orders, for a total of eight thousand men or more. It was only fear of Garmr that kept everything moving in the same direction.

But Garmr wasn’t here. Even when he was, it was odds on that a battle would break out between one tribe or group and another. But without him, it was worse. The enemy were unreachable. That meant the warriors of the army now had no one to fight but each other.

‘Garmr has commanded that we take this fortress for the glory of Khorne,’ Hrolf said.

‘Garmr is not here!’ Yan said, spitting Hrolf’s own thoughts back at him. ‘Garmr is off taking skulls and reaping glory for himself, while we sit in the mud and waste ourselves on stone.’

Hrolf felt his hackles rise. This had been a long time coming. Yan had been sniping at Garmr since before they’d crossed the Plain of Zharr, questioning his decisions, taking too many liberties. Yan wanted to be pack leader. But Garmr was pack leader; he would lead the pack to glory whether they wanted it or not, and Hrolf would help him. ‘You are impatient, Yan,’ Hrolf said. ‘We are all impatient, but you take it too far.’ Things moved in him, insistent. He forced them down, smashing all of his will down on the wolf, quashing its struggles. He flexed his aching hands, listening to the bones pop and the ligaments quiver. ‘Garmr is lord, and we serve him.’

Yan sneered. ‘Maybe it is time to have a new lord.’

Hrolf found it hard to think with the smell of blood in his nostrils, but he forced the waking dreams of slaughter out of his head and tried to focus. He needed to remain in control. His time would come, when the plan had been implemented and the damnable walls cracked wide. ‘Are you certain that you wish to do this here, Yan?’ he said. He spat blood. Some of it speckled Yan’s hand. The Khazag’s eyes narrowed and he made to draw his falchion. Hrolf urged his horse close and reached out, grabbing Yan’s hand, forcing his sword to remain sheathed.

‘Release me, dog!’ Yan hissed, snapping filed teeth. The others pulled their horses back, watching speculatively. Yan had seized this moment for his own, for good or ill. ‘The Blood God demands skulls and I shall give him yours,’ Yan continued, his free hand flashing to his hip, where a curved dagger hung. He drew it and slashed out, across Hrolf’s face, opening him brow to cheek. Blood-matted hair hung lank from the depths of the wound, and a stink like a dog dead in a ditch for two weeks struck the gathered chieftains.

Hrolf grabbed Yan’s throat. Yan’s eyes widened as Hrolf jerked him from his saddle and flung him to the ground. Then, muscles quivering, he prepared to leap on the other champion.

‘Hrolf, ’ware!’

His eyes snapped around. Yan’s men, his lieutenants, moved forwards with deadly intent. The Khazags took their honour seriously. They wouldn’t take the humiliation of their war-chief quietly. Hrolf glanced back and saw Canto moving forwards with his armoured killers in tow. It had been his voice that had shouted the warning. Hrolf snarled. The coward wanted to seize his glory!

He started his horse towards the Khazags, but Canto interposed his own mount. ‘No,’ he said. Kung followed suit, gesturing lazily with his axe.

‘There are enemies aplenty, Yan,’ Kung rumbled. ‘Do not make new ones before you finish the old.’

‘He struck me!’ Yan snarled.

‘I should have killed you,’ Hrolf nearly roared.

‘And then your plan would be ruined while we waited for Yan’s subordinates to sort themselves out and for a new champion to replace him,’ Canto snapped. ‘Or, we can follow through with your grand stratagem and end this whole futile affair in one fell swoop.’

Hrolf growled. Canto was right. Canto was always right. Red images blossomed in his head; he longed to kill the man, to prove his superiority over the weakling, but Canto resisted every challenge. Even Ekaterina couldn’t draw him into battle, infuriating as she was.

Canto was a coward. Hrolf hated cowards. They refused to walk the Eightfold Path, to set foot on Khorne’s stair, and they deserved to die. But Garmr wanted Canto alive. Garmr thought Canto was amusing. Canto was Garmr’s pet.

They were all Garmr’s pets.

Garmr had beaten him in a duel at the Battle of Ten Thousand Blades, forcing him and his pack into slavery. Khorne only respected strength, and there was glory to be won serving one as strong as Garmr. But even more glory to be won in killing him. Saliva and blood mingled in his mouth and he swallowed, trying to placate the beast. He longed to give in. The dwarfs in the Peak Pass hadn’t been enough. He needed more.

He’d sent his Chaos hounds into the peaks to bring him word of any relief force or kill any dwarfs not cowering in their stone hole. The dwarfs had launched a number of counter-attacks in the first week, erupting from hidden gates and holes. The mountains were honeycombed and Hrolf had lost hundreds of men to the trickery of the stunted ones. His army was bleeding soldiers but that didn’t matter. There were plenty left.

Besides, he had tricks of his own. His knuckles popped as he gripped his reins. He could taste the flesh of the dwarfs already. He grunted in pleasure. ‘Are you coming or will you stay here, safely away from the blood-letting?’

‘I’m coming,’ Canto said.

‘Good.’ Hrolf felt his grin threaten to split his face. ‘Now, now you will see how wolves hunt.’

CHAPTER TWO

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
near Karak Kadrin

Gotrek led the way deeper into the crags, eye narrowed. Felix followed, tired and cold. His nose was running and his legs ached. The climb from the outpost had been torturous, and more than once, he’d almost fallen from the narrow ledges and crumbling inclines that the Slayer had crossed with a mountain goat’s lack of concern. They’d piled stones over the bodies of the dwarfs before they’d left, and his arms and back were still sore from the effort. And he still had no idea where Gotrek was leading them. Not straight into the melee around the walls of Karak Kadrin, as he’d first feared. Regardless, Gotrek seemed determined to reach somewhere.

Then, Gotrek was always determined. But this was different. It had been building for weeks, like a storm on the horizon. A nagging had grown into an obsession, and Felix had watched, afraid. As they had drawn ever closer to Karak Kadrin, Gotrek had spent his nights staring at his axe, as if it were speaking to him. Worse were the times his eye would slide into vagueness and more than once, Felix feared that the Slayer had finally snapped. Maybe he had.

He studied their surroundings as they moved. The Worlds Edge Mountains never changed; or, if they did, it was with such slowness that it was imperceptible to the human eye. Dark, jagged rocks thrust fiercely towards the black, star-studded sky. There was a ragged quilt of green below them. The mountains were threaded with arboreal veins, brief bursts of forest surrounded by broken rocks, full of scraggly trees struggling in the shadows of the mountains. The mountains themselves rose and fell like glacial waves and in places it was easy to forget that there was a world beyond looming walls of lichen encrusted rock. Once or twice, he caught sight of the besieged Baragor’s Watch and Karak Kadrin beyond it and he thought perhaps Gotrek was leading him around the circumference of the valley, towards the mountain peak which the dwarf hold occupied. The high road was fine with Felix, as long as it meant avoiding the nightmare in the valley below. Better the crags than a Chaos army. But as the days passed, they’d drawn ever closer to the latter.

They were on a path now, a proper one. It had been carved and shaped by dwarf hands, he suspected, given the comforting regularity of it. There were other paths running above and below them, as if this particular peak were ringed about by bands of stone. The dwarfs were meticulous about creating redundancies for the most menial of structures. Men, Felix knew, made do with the barest essentials – rickety bridges and crumbling walls, repaired only when necessary – but dwarfs rarely left such things to the first attempt, or even the second.

Opposite them, across a narrow chasm, more paths rose upwards in a parallel trajectory. The regularity of the chasm was broken at certain points by ancient stone bridges, none wider than two dwarfs and all now mostly split in two, as if whatever great shift had opened the chasm had also cracked the bridges that spanned it in twain. It reminded him of certain cramped back streets in the Luitpolstrasse in Altdorf, where the roots of old bridges reached in vain across the fingers of the Reik that spread throughout the city. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering what the dwarf empire had been like at its height. What secrets did these mountains, once the cradle of that majestic civilization, still hold?

‘Where are we going?’ Felix said. He kept his voice pitched low. Sound carried surprisingly far in the mountains, as he’d learned to his cost more than once. And with a Chaos force in the immediate area, the slightest shout could draw the veritable wrath of the Dark Gods down on their heads. ‘I trust you have a plan of some sort.’

‘We’re going where we’ve always been going, manling. Karak Kadrin,’ Gotrek said.

‘Gotrek, it’s back that way,’ Felix said, ‘and under siege.’

‘So?’ Gotrek said. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘I will go to Karak Kadrin, siege or not.’

‘Can we at least wait it out?’ Felix said.

‘It cannot wait,’ Gotrek snarled.

‘Why?’

Gotrek spun, the edge of his axe stopping just short of Felix’s throat. ‘I said, it cannot wait,’ he rasped. Felix risked a look down. The axe trembled faintly, but Gotrek’s hand was steady. Felix swallowed. ‘How are we getting in?’ he said softly. ‘You don’t intend to carve a path to the front gates, you said as much.’

Gotrek blinked and shook himself. ‘No,’ he grunted, turning away. He didn’t apologize. Felix hadn’t expected him to do so. Whatever was eating away at Gotrek, the Slayer wasn’t likely to share it. Not with a human. Gotrek had his pride.

‘I told you, there are other ways in,’ Gotrek said.

‘And you know of these ways?’ Gotrek looked at him. Felix flushed. ‘Of course you do. I’m an idiot.’

Gotrek hesitated, and then clapped him on the arm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s not far.’

‘And what is it exactly?’

‘We’ll enter Baragor’s Watch through the old Engineers’ Entrance,’ Gotrek said.

‘What’s the Engineers’ Entrance?’

Gotrek grunted. ‘Old King Ironfist doesn’t hold with engineers. He ordered them to use a separate entrance, so the guild could move their supplies of black powder and inventions without endangering Baragor’s Watch. They recommissioned an ancient trading road, and sank shafts and haulers within the mountain. It’s a secret. No one but the engineering guild is supposed to know about it.’

Felix didn’t ask the obvious question. He knew little about Gotrek’s past, but what he did know included the fact that the Slayer had once been a member of the Engineers’ Guild, though for how long and when, he had never said. He wondered if the Slayer had perhaps even had a hand in creating the entrance.

Gotrek abruptly raised a ham-sized hand, waving Felix back. Felix tensed, freezing in place, his fingers brushing against his sword’s hilt. The path widened ahead of them, spreading into a dais or plateau of raised stone wide enough for dozens of men. A broken archway, decorated with ornate dwarfish carvings, loomed over them, and beyond it, a number of smaller archways and paths that spread upwards towards a higher, as yet invisible, point.

As they stepped beneath the largest arch, Felix saw that the lichen growing on the ancient stone had been scraped away in places. Gotrek noticed his look and nodded. Felix swallowed. They hadn’t been the first to come this way.

The plateau had been sanded flat long ago and the crumbling remains of a curved wall occupied the far edge, rising up as if it and the path as well had once been completely enclosed. On the walls were the remains of weathered carvings that might well have once depicted scenes from the golden age of the Under-Empire. There were more such carvings on the few ragged chunks of the roof that remained. Dwarfs weren’t fans of the open air at the best of times, wandering Slayers aside, and Felix wondered what cataclysm had occurred to crack such a structure open. Had that event been the same one that Gotrek had often hinted was responsible for crippling the dwarf civilization?

He opened his mouth to ask Gotrek, and abruptly, he realized that he was alone. While he had been distracted, Gotrek had continued on, unaware of Felix’s absence. His heart began to thump in his chest, fear making the rhythm erratic as he hurried on up the closest path, looking around wildly. ‘Gotrek,’ he hissed. ‘Gotrek, where are you?’

Something snuffled. Felix turned. Lupine shadows crossed the surface of the rock wall, prowling parallel to him. He dropped to his haunches, below the line of the broken wall, one hand on his sword and his heart in his throat. Cautiously, he peered through a gap in the wall. The moon rose high and red over the opposite peaks and he saw a hint of hunched, furtive movement.

More shadows, stretching across the rocks, rising and straining away like ink spilling across a page, and more beast-noises, snuffling and growling and panting, echoing weirdly among the rocks. They were going somewhere, but where? Had they caught his scent? Something made a hoarse noise and he rolled into the lee of a fallen stone. Shadows crept across it, cast by the beasts that he felt must surely be stalking him, back along the path he had just ascended. Felix crouched in the shadows, breath straining against his clenched teeth.

The sound of malformed paws striking the ground echoed in his ears, warring with the pounding of his own heart. Eyes like embers peered in his direction from across the chasm, and he heard the sizzle of poisonous saliva dropping from a nearby muzzle to the ground. He eased his sword loose, knowing that if the unseen beast lunged, he’d likely have only seconds.

A howl blistered his eardrums, impossibly close. The eyes vanished and he heard a heavy, awkward shape lope away. Felix let loose a shaky breath.

Something clamped down on his shoulder.

His mouth flew open, and something that smelled of grease and forge smoke clamped tight over it before the cry could escape his lips. ‘Quiet,’ Gotrek said. ‘You’d think even a witless manling would manage better than to get lost in a place like this.’

‘W-wolves,’ Felix stuttered when Gotrek released him. The Slayer gestured behind him. Felix saw a heavy black shape lying nearby, body cooling on the rocks. Bulging beast-eyes stared at him sightlessly. Gotrek had burst its skull. Felix shivered, realizing that the beast had been creeping up on him. Would he have felt its breath before it closed its jaws about the back of his skull? Nausea rippled through him.

‘Not wolves, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘They’ve been stalking us since the outpost.’

‘What is it?’ Felix said, swallowing the bile that burned at the back of his throat.

‘A hound of Chaos,’ Gotrek said, and spat. Felix grimaced. Dogs and men were never far from one another, even in the Chaos Wastes. But Chaos hounds were no nobleman’s hunting hounds or pampered lady’s pets; they were malformed and malevolent beasts, as twisted in body and mind as their human masters. The thought that there were more of them, and close by, caused his stomach to knot in fear. Even worse, such beasts never strayed very far from their masters.

Rocks rattled and fell around them. Felix, against his better judgement, looked up. He saw several shapes scrambling down the rough slope from the path above. Eyes like pinpricks of hellfire gazed down at him and something in him shrivelled. He pushed himself away from Gotrek as the closest of the creatures sprang straight up.

Gotrek whipped around as a wave of beast-stink washed over them. It was a slaughterhouse smell, animalistic. The Slayer’s hand snapped out, catching the lead hound’s snout and flinging it aside with barely a shiver of effort as it lunged at him. Gristle and wet shreds of tattered meat clung to the beast’s stiff red fur. And it scrambled to its feet, panting harshly, ribcage swelling like a bellows. Its talons trailed lazy scratches in the rock and its eyes were empty of even animal intelligence. There was nothing in its hell-spark eyes save the most terrible of hungers. Its muzzle peeled back from daggerlike teeth and it gave out a deep bay. The sound rolled across the peak, and was joined by a cacophony of howls as its pack-mates scrambled towards the duo.

Felix’s hand dipped for Karaghul’s hilt. More canine shapes loped towards them from the way they’d come, slinking through the archways and over the broken walls. ‘Gotrek, they’re all around us,’ Felix said hurriedly.

‘Good,’ Gotrek grunted, eyeing the closest Chaos hound with an almost avaricious gleam in his eye. When the creature sprang towards him, Gotrek was there to meet it, his axe cleaving the air with a savage whistle. Claws scored his flesh, but the Slayer paid little heed. His axe chopped down into the beast’s shoulder joint and it screamed, lurching back, pulling the Slayer from his feet as it reared and spun. Gotrek’s free hand shot out, grabbing the beast’s muzzle in an iron grip.

Felix had no time to see what came next. Claws scraped stone and something heavy and hairy lunged for him out of the darkness, smelling of the butcher’s block. He ducked, and claws skittered off his chainmail shirt, leaving ragged holes and bruises beneath. He rolled to his feet, drawing Karaghul just in time. Fangs like kitchen knives snapped at him and he whirled. Karaghul bit deep into a hairy throat, silencing a hungry howl. The body fell, limbs jerking, and then another was coming for him, jaws agape, tongue lolling.

Fear rippled through him as the thing’s eyes caught his own. He jerked back, narrowly avoiding the snap of its jaws. His blade sank home, and something hot and foul washed over his arm. As it rolled away, he heard the crackle of snapping vertebrae and looked up. Gotrek, with brutal élan, had hauled his creature backwards by its muzzle, and, with a second sharp blow of his fist, finished breaking its spine. It flopped limply to the stone, the light in its eyes snuffed by a hunger greater than its own. Gotrek jerked his axe free and brought it down, severing the brute’s head, and then shook the blood from his axe blade. He gestured to the one Felix had killed.

‘Take its head, manling. These beasts are almost as bad as trolls, especially when the moon is high,’ Gotrek said. Felix looked down and then hopped back with an oath as the beast he’d thought dead snapped at him. He stumbled back and it slithered, snake-like, after him, jaws champing mindlessly. Gotrek’s axe crashed down, splitting its skull. The Slayer jerked his weapon free and then beheaded the beast. He snatched up the mutilated head and hurled it away.

‘Cut their heads off, I said,’ Gotrek rumbled.

Before Felix could reply, more howls filled the night, shattering what silence there was. Gotrek spun, his eye blazing with maniacal ferocity. By the sound of it, Felix fancied there were hundreds of the beasts surrounding them, more even than Gotrek could handle, though he looked ready to try his luck. Black shapes crawled across the rocks above them or up onto the edge of the plateau, climbing with distinctly un-canine-like agility.

Felix swallowed thickly, and his palms were slick with sweat as he took Karaghul in a two-handed grip and made ready to die. There were too many of them. Gotrek might live through it, but Felix was only a man, and he knew only luck had kept him alive thus far. And luck had a bad habit of deserting him when he needed it the most.

How else to explain how he was even in this predicament in the first place?

Surely he had paid Gotrek back a hundredfold for plucking him from beneath the hooves of the Emperor’s household cavalry back during the Window Tax Riots in Altdorf, how many years ago? He had accompanied the Slayer into the dark beneath the world and worse places, fighting mutants, monsters and madmen. Surely, that drunken oath was more than fulfilled.

No. He shook his head free of those thoughts. There was only one way the oath could be fulfilled. There was only one path open to him, and he had come too far not to take it. ‘It will be a good story. Several volumes I think; thirteen at least, with perhaps a few more,’ he murmured.

‘What are you muttering about, manling?’ Gotrek grunted.

‘I’m composing paragraphs,’ Felix said. ‘I’ll need an accurate accounting, in case you fall here.’

Gotrek gave a bark of harsh laughter, obviously pleased. ‘Make them good ones.’

‘I hardly see how they could be otherwise,’ Felix muttered, stung. He raised Karaghul.

The closest of the Chaos hounds tensed, preparing to leap. Then, from somewhere in the crags above, a howl echoed down. Its effect was immediate. The circling hounds turned as one, their gore-stained muzzles tilting to unleash a communal howl. Gotrek stumped forwards, but not swiftly enough. The hounds turned and with great, bounding leaps, left Slayer and Remembrancer staring after them, the one in rage, the other in quiet relief.

‘Get back here!’ Gotrek roared, shaking his axe at the departing beasts.

‘Stroke of luck, that,’ Felix said shakily.

‘Luck isn’t the word I would use, manling,’ Gotrek snapped.

‘Where are they going?’

‘Same place we are by the looks of them,’ Gotrek said. His bad mood evaporated. ‘Come on, manling. I don’t know how they know about the Engineers’ Entrance, but they do, and if those things get into the hold, they’ll kill many good dwarfs before they’re put down.’

Felix set off after Gotrek as he moved quickly in pursuit of the Chaos hounds. ‘What are we going to do?’ he said, already knowing the answer.

‘We’re going to kill them, manling. What else would we do with them?’ Gotrek replied.

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
near Karak Kadrin

‘Move, laggards!’ Canto bellowed, standing on a rock, sword in hand. Chaos marauders trotted past in a hurry, many with heavy baskets tied to their backs. The latter looked nervous, and they had good reason to be, Canto thought. The explosives they carried were volatile at best, composed of crude fire-pots and thunder-powder, packed into iron spheres; secrets bartered from the Chaos dwarfs who accompanied Garmr’s horde.

Canto frowned as he thought of the stunted creatures. Several had accompanied them to Karak Kadrin to oversee the use of their war-engines, and even now, they were with Kung and Yan on the fields before the outer hold, watching and scheming while the two champions led yet another assault. Dark and malformed, with thick tusks and horns protruding from their oily beards and hair, and eyes like guttering embers, the dawi zharr were far too cunning to be trusted, with minds that moved like twisted clockwork.

He’d dealt with the creatures often enough in his time, but he had no love for them. They were as alien in their thinking as any blood-hungry Khornate berserker. He turned and thought, speaking of which, as Hrolf clambered down the side of the crag, followed by several of his hounds. The echoes of the other champion’s bestial howl still lingered among the rocks. The hounds had been scattered in their packs through the crags as an early warning system, just in case the dwarfs decided to ambush them. Little could escape the noses of the beasts and by their howls, they had found something, though likely it was only an unlucky tribesman or scouting party. The Chaos hounds were indiscriminate when no one was there to crack the whip on them and they often returned famished and mad, catching and killing dozens every time he summoned them home with one of his bellicose howls. Maybe the appellation of ‘Dogsson’ was less mockery than the others intended, Canto thought.

‘Your hounds are returning?’ he called out tersely.

‘What?’ Hrolf said dully.

‘If your beasts are returning, man, you had best keep them under control or they’ll tear through our men for lack of better sport!’ Canto’s voice was a whip-crack.

‘Don’t tell me that, I know that,’ Hrolf growled, shaking his head.

‘Then do something about it,’ Canto said, one hand on his sword. Hrolf looked at the hand and the sword, and then at the man they belonged to. Canto prayed that he wouldn’t choose now to exercise his frustrations. Not when they were close to being done with this whole shambles. Hrolf snarled and trotted away to gather up his brood of filthy killers, leaving Canto feeling at once relieved and nervous.

Hrolf wasn’t as stupid as Ekaterina and the others liked to claim. Fools like Yan openly challenged him, thinking he hadn’t the wit to notice. But Hrolf knew and remembered every slight and insult, even as a dog remembered every kick. And despite his brutish mien, the champion had come up with a cunning stratagem, as such things went.

While the attentions of the defenders of the outer hold were on the massive army storming their walls, Canto and Hrolf would sneak in through this entrance Hrolf’s scouts had found earlier in the week, and they’d blow the unbreakable walls of the fortress down from below. Or at the very least, they’d create havoc and set loose a pack of Chaos hounds and Chaos marauders into the outer hold to collect what skulls they could before the dwarfs rallied. Khorne cared not from whence the blood flowed, as Ekaterina was fond of reminding him.

Canto, of course, would happily allow Hrolf the honour of leading the assault. He leaned on his sword. The stone portal, wide enough for two men to step through shoulder-to-shoulder and covered in strange engravings, had been well-hidden, but they’d found it after a few weeks. Granted, they never would have even suspected such a thing existed had not the Chaos dwarfs mentioned the possibility of such, in passing.

‘They would know about such things, wouldn’t they?’ Canto muttered. The shaft clung to the rock of the crag at an angle, and once through the stones that had been used to seal it they’d seen that it was a sheer drop into a belly of hidden scaffolding crafted from stone, metal and petrified wood which spread across the steeply slanted shaft like a spider’s web. Stone and wood structures and devices of intricate design were set in odd places, and there was a platform which could descend and ascend under the control of a number of levers and pulleys. The whole thing reminded Canto vaguely of the foul mines that dotted the Plain of Zharr like blasphemous molehills, albeit smaller and more claustrophobic. It was a mine-shaft as opposed to a mine.

When it came down to it, he supposed that there wasn’t much difference between one group of dwarfs and another. Though the ones in Karak Kadrin didn’t seem to have much use for slaves, he thought. Ancient gear-work creaked as levers were pulled and the platform began to descend at an angle into the shaft even as another rose. Hrolf and his beasts would go down next, as the others who had gone ahead set the explosives against the deep portals that the dwarfs had sealed.

They wouldn’t have much time, once they blew open the first entrance. Hrolf would lead his beasts into the tunnels that led to the hold, to bite and slay even as Canto and the Chaos marauders sought out the roots of the wall. An entire latticework of ancient roads ran beneath their feet. If they could find the right one, they could set the remaining explosives and crack the hold like a nut.

Or, such was the plan. Canto grunted, shivering in his armour. Something indefinable passed over him, and the feeling of being watched burned itself against his nerves. He cast a surreptitious look around, prepared to see dwarfs popping out of another of their accursed blinds, axes in hand and his death in their crooked little minds. But no enemies revealed themselves.

He looked back at the shaft. It seemed to yawn hungrily, swallowing the tribesmen. Why had the dwarfs left it undefended? True, they had sealed it, but why nothing more? Perhaps they thought that no one would find it.

Canto shook his head. It didn’t matter. There was nothing for it. Hrolf’s impatience had grown to monumental proportions, and he chafed at being kept from slaughter. Garmr had left them with no warning, up and taking two-thirds of the horde with him to fresher carnage, leaving them the dull, dangerous job of breaking Karak Kadrin open.

The last lot of men had gone down into the pit, leaving only Canto and his bodyguards. Eichmann and Schaever had been with him since the Battle of the Seven Sundowns in the lands of the Mung. Both wore armour similar to his: big and baroque and shorn of sign or sigils. ‘We’re going to die down there,’ Schaever said. Eichmann grunted, saying nothing.

‘Possibly,’ Canto said. ‘Or maybe it will just be you, Schaever.’ Schaever had been a philosopher once, in Nuln, or so he claimed. Now he was a gloom-addled berserker. Eichmann was… Eichmann: unpleasant, blessedly quiet and efficient in his work. Neither was a worshipper of the Blood God, or any god for that matter, though Schaever blithely argued with or perhaps prayed to something called Necoho when he thought no one was listening.

‘One can only hope,’ Schaever said.

Canto shook his head. A wafting odour of spoiled meat heralded the arrival of Hrolf and his pack. The other champion was looking the worse for wear, his face covered in oozing sores. Stiff red hairs extruded through the sores, quivering in the breeze that swept across the crags. Strange shapes squirmed under the nearly translucent skin of his head and neck, and something with hot, hungry eyes and too many teeth stared at Canto through the cloudy barrier of Hrolf’s bloated throat. Hrolf made a strangled burping sound and shook his hairy head. He was on foot, and he bore no weapons.

‘Issh-is ith-it ready?’ he grunted, one eye bulging in its socket as if something pressed taloned fingertips to the back of it. Slobber ran down from the corners of his mouth and his hands flexed in eagerness. His eyes kept straying to the attack on the walls, where men died in their dozens, flung back by the dwarf defenders to fall and be broken on the rocks below.

‘It is,’ Canto said, stepping down from his perch, his men following. The creeping shapes of the Chaos hounds followed, lean and irritable and savage. They growled at him, and Eichmann made to draw his sword, his flat, empty eyes showing neither fear nor interest. Canto waved him back and gestured to the pit. ‘After you,’ he said.

Hrolf eyed him for a moment, as if contemplating tearing out his throat. With a grunt he stagger-loped towards the pit and leapt down, his pack following him with a chorus of howls and snarls. The tribesmen manning the levers cringed, holding their weapons close, eyes wide, as the gods-touched beasts descended into the shaft. After what seemed an interminable amount of time, the platform was winched back up.

‘Let’s go,’ Canto said, hesitating only for a moment. There were over a hundred men down there, and it was up to him to see that Hrolf didn’t waste them before time. He led the others onto the platform and he marvelled silently at the structure as it swallowed him up, wondering what might remain when Garmr was finished. Would any of this be left or would it all be rendered unto smoke and ruin in the name of a mad god?

‘We’re going to die down here,’ Schaever said again.

Canto turned to reprimand him, only to stumble back in shock as a massive axe-blade sank into Schaever’s helm and split the skull within like a melon. A roaring, red-crested nightmare fell upon him, its axe stained with the blood and brains of his bodyguard.

He barely drew his sword in time, narrowly deflecting the axe. And then he was fighting for his life even as the platform sank into the darkness.

‘Gotrek, wait!’ Felix cried out, even as Gotrek barrelled into the Chaos marauders near the edge of the pit. There were only a few of them, and they acted as if they thought that Gotrek’s sudden appearance heralded a dwarf ambush. They attacked wildly, and the Slayer butchered them without hesitation. Gotrek barely paused, flinging himself through the strange stone portal into the darkness of the shaft beyond. Felix followed, cursing himself, the Slayer and dwarfs in general. He’d seen the armoured giants, Chaos warriors, descend somehow, vanishing down into the darkness. Wherever they were going was somewhere he most certainly didn’t want to be, but there was nothing for it.

Felix stepped through the portal, tensing as his boot slid across empty air, and then he was plummeting downwards. He screamed wildly as a kaleidoscope of stone, wood and machinery whirled around him and then he struck something hard and rough. Pain shot through his shoulder and he knew it had been dislocated. He choked on a howl of pain and looked for Gotrek.

The platform wasn’t very big, large enough for a loaded wagon, perhaps. Gotrek and a dark-armoured Chaos warrior duelled on its edge, neither giving ground, Gotrek’s axe dragging fat sparks from the warrior’s sword. A second warrior lay nearby, quite obviously dead, given the state of his skull. And there was a third–

Felix rolled aside, moaning as his shoulder was crushed under his weight, even as the sword chopped down into the platform. The armoured giant was a full hand taller than Felix and three times as broad. His armour glistened as if it were covered in pitch and it stank of wet, deep places and foul rites. The warrior jerked the sword free and raised it again. Felix, panicked, lunged to his feet, trying to draw his sword. Instead, he crashed into the warrior, unbalancing him.

The warrior reeled back, dangerously close to the edge of the platform. Felix, head spinning, drove his good shoulder into his opponent’s midsection and sent him flying off. The Chaos warrior struck a support beam and vanished from view as the platform began to pick up speed. ‘We’re going faster,’ Felix said mushily. ‘Gotrek, why are we going faster?’

Gotrek didn’t reply. The air rang with the sound of steel on steel as the Slayer and the Chaos warrior traded blows. Felix realized that Gotrek killing the controllers above meant that they were now in an uncontrolled free-fall. He staggered to his feet, grabbing one of the braziers mounted on the platform for balance. Pain radiated from his arm through his body and he gritted his teeth.

Gotrek leapt, his axe swinging down. His opponent sank to one knee beneath the dwarf’s assault, bringing his blade up. It was sheared flat by the force of the blow, and rebounded from his helm. Felix’s ears were stung by the crash of metal. The warrior gave a snarl, slashing out blindly. Gotrek wove aside, rolling around the blow, his axe whirling, crashing. The warrior fell onto his back. He began to crab-crawl backwards, sword extended, trying to keep Gotrek at bay.

Gotrek snarled, heedless of anything save the enemy before him. Felix could only cling to the brazier and watch as Gotrek renewed his assault. The warrior squirmed out from under the attack, impossibly quick in his heavy armour. Gotrek’s axe carved a canyon in the back of the warrior’s cuirass even as the latter leapt, hands stretching into the darkness.

Then, with a crash, he was gone.

‘He ran,’ Gotrek said, in disbelief. He looked at Felix, his eye wide. ‘He ran! They’re not supposed to run!’

‘Yes, and we’re crashing,’ Felix yelped.

Gotrek stumped across the rocking, shuddering platform. ‘We’re not crashing, we’re just moving very fast,’ he growled, grabbing Felix’s dislocated arm. Felix howled as Gotrek idly popped it back into its socket even as he examined the support ropes that kept the platform held level.

‘Will we stop?’ Felix said, biting back a whimper as he clutched his aching arm.

‘No, we’ll crash,’ Gotrek said. He grabbed hold of one of the ropes and tested its tension. ‘Grab hold of the rope, manling.’

‘What?’

Gotrek didn’t reply, but Felix saw what he intended immediately. The support ropes weren’t tied to the platform, but instead connected to the pulley system that lowered it. The ropes themselves weren’t moving, the platform was sliding along them, the ropes slithering through its inset iron rings. ‘Gotrek, don’t–’ he began.

Gotrek grabbed a rope and cocked his axe. Felix leapt to grab the other rope even as the axe flashed, cutting through the support ropes. The platform swung away from his feet, crashing flat against the incline and hurtling into the darkness of the shaft. Felix’s shoulder burned with pain as he clung tightly to the rope. Gotrek’s bulky form dangled nearby, though Felix could barely make him out.

‘I hope you have a plan for getting down,’ Felix hissed. The dark seemed to close a tight fist around him, muffling even the thunder of his heart. He could see nothing; he could only make out vague shapes around him.

From below, there was a sudden crash, and Felix realized that the platform had reached the bottom of the shaft. Gotrek grunted and began to lurch back and forth, causing his rope to brush disturbingly close to Felix’s. Felix squawked and tightened his grip, his breath whistling in and out between clenched teeth.

‘Swing, manling, there’s a brace-beam just behind you,’ Gotrek said, swinging past him. The Slayer let go of his rope and Felix heard what could only be his axe chopping into the beam. He heard a grunt, then, ‘Come on,’ Gotrek said.

‘Gotrek, I can’t see!’

‘Jump anyway,’ Gotrek said.

‘Gotrek, this is no time for jokes,’ Felix said, peering into the darkness.

‘Manling, I’ll catch you. Jump,’ Gotrek rumbled.

Felix cursed virulently for a moment, prompting a chuckle from the Slayer. Taking a breath, Felix began to move back and forth, causing the rope to swing. Then, as it swung towards the sound of Gotrek’s voice, he let go, jumping. Vertigo took him in its claws, causing his stomach to flip-flop; the dark seemed to coil around him, cutting off his breath, and he thought, for a moment, that he’d miscalculated.

Then, something grabbed the front of his jerkin and he was dragged out of the void and deposited on a blessedly solid surface. Breathing heavily, he looked around. ‘I still can’t see anything,’ he wheezed.

‘I can,’ Gotrek said. ‘There’ll be a ladder here, for repair crews to use. Up,’ he added, hauling Felix to his feet. With Gotrek guiding him, Felix found the ladder.

‘How far down does this go?’ he said.

‘Far enough,’ Gotrek grunted. ‘Hurry up, manling, there’s beasts to kill!’

CHAPTER THREE

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Engineers’ Entrance of Karak Kadrin

The climb down into the depths of the immense shaft was surreal. Several times, Felix thought he might slip and fall, only to suddenly find the next rung. The ladder was built for dwarfs, but he climbed down it easily enough, despite the ache in his arm. Nonetheless, it took what felt like hours to reach the bottom. When he mentioned such to Gotrek, the Slayer only grunted, ‘We could have done it the fast way.’ Felix fell silent. After another interminable length, torchlight became visible and he skinned down the remainder of the rungs, sliding the last few without pausing. Felix dropped gratefully, if not gracefully, to the stone floor.

The light hadn’t been cast by torches. When the platform had crashed, the braziers mounted to it had been burst and now the wood was being hungrily, if slowly, consumed by flames. Bodies lay scattered around, Norscans, wearing dark leathers and furs. They’d been caught unawares by the platform, and had paid the price. The destruction had been sudden and complete and he counted at least a dozen men or more. They’d obviously been waiting for the three Chaos warriors who’d been on the platform when Gotrek had launched himself upon them. Struck by the thought, Felix looked up, wondering whether or not the third warrior, the one who’d flung himself from the platform rather than face Gotrek, had survived. Was he still up there somewhere, clinging to the structure in the dark? Shivering, Felix turned back to the Slayer.

Gotrek picked his way through the bodies without even glancing at them. Felix followed him silently after hefting a chunk of burning wood to use as a makeshift torch. Distant voices echoed off the stone. Felix wondered whether they’d heard the crash, and whether they cared. Sound travelled oddly in these deep spaces. Gotrek started forwards, towards a stone archway set into the wall. Felix noted a series of tracks set into the rock, much like those he’d seen in dwarf mines. The tracks moved from where the platform would have come to rest and extended into the arch. Gotrek followed the tracks, his pace quickening. Felix hurried to keep up.

Past the arch, the tunnel floor sloped at an angle. Felix had to stoop slightly as they moved down the tunnel. It was one of several, all of them moving out from the bottom of the shaft, and all large and imposing. They had been shaped with the moving of wagons and other heavy loads in mind and the tunnel was wide and solid, made of heavy stacked blocks which seemed easily capable of holding the weight of the mountain.

Despite the openness of the tunnel, there was a strong smell clinging to everything. It wasn’t just the stink of unwashed bodies and the beast-stench of the Chaos hounds. It burned his eyes and throat, and he was forced to cover his mouth and nose with his cloak. ‘Fire-pots and thunder-powder,’ Gotrek muttered.

‘I didn’t realize that the Northmen had such things,’ Felix said softly.

‘They don’t,’ Gotrek said. ‘They stole the secrets from my people. Or else…’ He trailed off. Felix wanted to prod him to finish, but the look in the Slayer’s eye stole his voice.

The tunnel ended, expanding into a vaulted space that took Felix’s breath away. It was larger than any cathedral man had built, and more graceful for all that it was built of stone and solid, bulky shapes. The walls of the massive chamber were honeycombed with tunnels, stairs and tracks going in hundreds of directions. Great cracked archways and crumbled statues lined the expanse. Felix caught sight of what must have once been ancient bridges and stairs that curved down into the darkness. ‘What is this place?’ he murmured.

‘Ungdrin – the Underway,’ Gotrek said, almost reverentially. He touched the wall with a hesitant hand and fell silent. Then, ‘Once, these roads led to every Karak and Karaz, manling. Every hold, it was said, was linked one to the next. A dwarf could travel Karak Vlag to Karak Zorn without ever seeing daylight.’ Gotrek’s voice was wistful. His face fell. ‘All lost now. As everything is lost or will be lost,’ he said, and Felix felt a chill whisper across his backbone.

‘What… what happened?’

Gotrek didn’t answer. ‘Come,’ he grunted. ‘I smell Chaos filth.’

Felix did as well, come to that. The foul blood-odour was stronger down one of the tunnels. Gotrek paused. ‘This path leads to the fortress. There are only a few ways into the hold proper, and this isn’t one of them, but I’d wager that they don’t know that. Still, if they get in among the defenders of the fortress, they might just open the gates and get many good dwarfs killed,’ the Slayer said. He stepped into the tunnel and Felix followed with one hand on his sword hilt.

There was no question what would happen when they found their prey, only whether or not they would survive the finding. You could move armies down here, he knew, and no one would be the wiser for it. The dwarfs had done so, in their time, but had the Chaos forces now done the same? How many men were they facing down here? Was it dozens or was it hundreds? And that wasn’t even taking into account the Chaos hounds. Had they come down here as well? The thought of facing those four legged nightmares down here in the dark wasn’t a pleasant one.

Despite his fears, calmness settled on Felix at times like these, a chill resignation. When death lunged suddenly from the darkness, he feared and fought like any man. But when they sought it out, grim necessity washed aside the fear.

From somewhere far above, the noise of the siege drifted down like the occasional curtains of dust that fell upon them from the vaulted roof, the distant sounds carried on the bones of the mountain. What was going on? Were the walls holding? Dark thoughts flapped across the surface of Felix’s mind. At first, he’d thought that getting into Baragor’s Watch was their best chance for survival. Now he wasn’t so sure.

The sound grew louder as they travelled, and Felix hoped that they were getting closer to the fortress. Despite Gotrek’s impatience, they stopped for a time in a narrow antechamber, where a thin, pathetic stream of cool, clean water ran through the cracks in an ancient wall carving, splashing out of the open mouth of a carven effigy of some nameless dwarf hero. They consumed the last of the supplies they’d bought in Wurtbad, and assuaged their thirst; though Gotrek drank the water only grudgingly, no ale or beer being to hand. In the dark, Felix rested fitfully, unable to sleep despite his best efforts, and Gotrek, he thought, slept not at all.

When Felix at last gave up on getting any sleep and opened his weary eyes, Gotrek was stepping back into the antechamber. ‘We’re not as far behind them as I thought, manling,’ he said. ‘We may just catch up with them in time.’

‘Oh joy,’ Felix muttered, climbing stiffly to his feet. Sitting on cold stone was something he had grown depressingly used to over the course of his journeys with Gotrek, but his thoughts had been dark and unpleasant. He supposed it was his surroundings. It wasn’t so long ago that he and Gotrek had been lost in the tunnels beneath Wurtbad, battling old, dead things. He recalled pale, feral features and the hideous strength of undead claws on his throat. He shook his head, banishing the thoughts. Better to worry about the horrors he had yet to face than ones he had already survived.

Gotrek grinned at his obvious discomfort. ‘Hurry up, manling. There are things needing killing.’

They crept out of the antechamber and back onto the path. The tunnel gave way to a wide cavern; indeed, not just a cavern, but something which would have easily contained the dark, ghoul-haunted crypts beneath Wurtbad or the massive chamber they’d just left a hundred times over. Barely visible in the light cast by his torch were what could only be vast supportive arches of carefully placed stone holding up the cavern roof, putting Felix in mind of the roofs of the larger temples he’d had the misfortune to visit during his life.

Things flew through the darkness above, though whether they were large or small, he couldn’t say. Too, strange noises echoed, mingling with the sounds from above and what could only be the distant thunder of the Stir as it raced through the underground arteries from which it originated. He’d never thought that such deep places could be so loud, but time and again, he’d been proven wrong.

Ahead of them was a wide stone bridge which crossed a deep gash in the floor of the cavern. The bridge had been a thing of beauty once, but now it was cracked and missing chunks. The statues which had once lined it had all fallen or been shattered to lay across the expanse of the bridge with the other rubble. They were forced to make their way along the far edge, and Felix made the mistake of looking down into the almost solid darkness of the chasm below. For a moment, the world spun and he felt that if he fell, he would not stop until he came out the other side of the world. ‘How far down does it go?’ he said, half to himself.

‘All the way to the guts of the world,’ Gotrek said. ‘Best not to fall, if you can help it.’

‘Duly noted,’ Felix said and swallowed nervously. ‘How in Sigmar’s name did those engineers you mentioned get their mechanisms across this thing?’

‘What sort of fool question is that?’ Gotrek grunted, ‘One piece at a time, of course. It only took them a few weeks at worst. Not long at all.’

Felix shook his head. The sort of patience such an undertaking must have required was incomprehensible to him. Looking sideways at Gotrek, he found himself wondering if the Slayer, impatient and quick to become angered by even the most minor of delays, had ever possessed such qualities. Gotrek boosted himself up onto a statue that lay on its side, its stone eyes glaring accusingly back the way they had come. He crouched and waved a hand at Felix. ‘Stay down, manling,’ he hissed through the gap in his teeth.

Felix sank to his haunches behind the statue, one hand on his sword hilt. ‘What is it?’ he whispered. Gotrek slithered off the statue and dropped down beside him.

‘Sentries,’ he muttered. ‘They’re taking no chances on my people catching them unawares.’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘Three,’ Gotrek said dismissively. ‘But one has a horn, and sound carries quickly down here. One good blast and we’ll have the rest of them down on our heads before the echo fades.’ He gnawed on his lip, visibly considering the problem.

At any other time, Felix knew that the Slayer would have simply bulled ahead, shouting for all he was worth and damn the consequences. But Gotrek had other priorities now, for which Felix breathed a silent sigh of relief. Long odds were fine for gambling, but not so much for combat. ‘We could sneak past them,’ he said.

Gotrek growled wordlessly. Felix shook his head. ‘Fine, what do you suggest then?’

‘We kill them,’ Gotrek said. ‘But quietly,’ he added.

Felix snorted. ‘That’ll be a first,’ he said.

‘What was that?’ Gotrek said.

‘Nothing,’ Felix said hastily. ‘Just some dust in my throat.’ He peered through a gaping crack in the statue and saw the not-so-distant shapes of the sentries. They were, like all Chaos marauders, big and bulky and one had a large, brass-banded war-horn dangling from a strap across his shoulder. He could not make out their expressions, despite the flickering light of the half-dozen watch-fires they’d lit around them at various spots on the bridge. The latter consisted mostly of overturned shields that had been turned into makeshift braziers, piled high with something flammable and set around at certain points.

‘I’ll take the one with the horn,’ Gotrek said, heading for the other side of the statue.

‘Which means I have to take the other two?’ Felix said, but Gotrek had already vanished. Felix cursed under his breath and moved carefully through the field of rubble that separated him from the sentries. He left his torch behind. There was no need for it, and he didn’t want to attract any undue attention. He moved in quick bursts, scrambling on all fours, his cloak, which was coated in dust from their journey thus far and now less red than brown, draped over him to stop any light from catching on his mail shirt. He stalked the Chaos marauders, keeping his eyes on them at all times and trying not to imagine what sort of horrors might be doing the same to him as he crept through the forest of fallen stones and toppled statues.

The three warriors grunted to each other in their own barbarous tongue. Two stood and the third sat slumped, occupied in running a whetstone across his sword. As he drew close enough to smell the unwashed stench of them, Felix realized that he would have to step into the light to confront them. Unless…

Felix undid the clasp on his cloak and slowly pulled it off. Then he snatched up a heavy stone and tossed it back the way he had come. The sound was loud and its result, sudden. The sentry who had been slumped in apparent indifference sat up immediately, eyes narrowed. He barked a question at one of his companions, and the latter hurried towards Felix’s position, a cruel looking axe in his hands. He wore no armour save for fur-covered pauldrons crafted from wolf skulls. Felix pressed himself back against the gloomy brow of a toppled statue, his cloak held in both hands, and his legs and arms tense and trembling as he fought down the queasy anticipation of the next few moments.

Though he had killed, and often, since he’d become Gotrek’s Remembrancer, this wasn’t the same. It reminded him too much of his last days at the University of Altdorf, Three-Toll Bridge and the Luitpoldstrasse. He remembered the shock of his sword sliding into Wolfgang Krassner’s belly, and the way the other student had folded over and expired. He shook his head, clearing the cobwebs of memory.

The Chaos marauder stepped past him and Felix flung his cloak over the bigger man’s head. Then, before the warrior could react, Felix twisted the ends of the cloak tight, jerked his captive off-balance and pivoted, dragging the Chaos marauder from his feet and slamming him against the face of the statue. In an eye-blink, Felix had his dagger out and thrust it upwards into his opponent’s heart, burying it to the hilt. Foul air whooshed through the weave of his cloak and washed over him as the Chaos marauder sighed and bent forwards, limp. Felix took the weight on his shoulder and pulled the body out of the way, back deeper into the shadows. He extracted his dagger and absently wiped it clean on his cloak as he pulled it free of the corpse.

A grunted question echoed among the stones. Felix crouched and waited, his heart thudding in his chest. When he heard no movement, he crept back to his previous position. The two Chaos marauders were peering in his general direction, and both looked distinctly suspicious. The one with the horn began to raise it.

Out of the darkness behind him, wide hands appeared to either side of his head. The hands snapped shut like the jaws of a trap, catching the sentry’s head in a vice-like grip. With a motion so swift that Felix could barely follow it, the sentry’s head was twisted all the way around in a corkscrew motion. Bones popped and snapped loudly and the remaining sentry whirled, mouth opening. Felix darted from hiding, dagger in hand. He grabbed a handful of the Chaos marauder’s hair and made to cut the man’s throat, but brawny hands grabbed his and he found himself suddenly hurtling over the sentry’s shoulder. He slammed into the ground and Gotrek vaulted over him.

The Slayer’s meaty paws fastened themselves on the sentry’s windpipe with ferocious accuracy. Cartilage crunched as the man’s eyes bugged out of their sockets. Gotrek hefted the Chaos marauder and wrung his neck as if he were a chicken. After several moments, the Slayer gave a satisfied grunt and let the body flop bonelessly to the ground. ‘Where’s the other?’ he said.

‘Back there,’ Felix said.

‘Dead?’ Gotrek said.

‘Of course,’ Felix said, slightly insulted.

‘Good, manling.’ Gotrek grinned at him and Felix felt his gorge rise. For the Slayer, this was little more than an exercise in pest control. Gotrek retrieved his axe from where he’d set it aside and took the war-horn from the dead man’s body.

‘Why are you taking that?’ Felix said, swinging his cloak about his shoulders and re-attaching the clasp. ‘Surely it will only alert the enemy.’

‘Aye, that’s the plan,’ Gotrek said, starting off towards the entrance to the tunnel that the sentries had been set to guard.

‘We have a plan?’ Felix said.

‘Of course we have a plan, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘There’s always a plan.’

‘Silly me, I didn’t think “run at them and chop them off at the knees” was a plan,’ Felix muttered.

‘Best one there is,’ Gotrek chortled. He waved the horn. ‘But this is a different one.’

‘Oh?’

‘Aye, in this plan, they run at us,’ Gotrek said. Felix fell silent. The tunnel beyond the bridge was marked by a sturdy portcullis set into the cavern wall, which had long since been blasted to jagged stumps by some fell force. Above it, he could see the squat shapes of blockhouses that projected from the stone like grotesques on a temple wall, such as lined the walls of the frontier forts of the Empire – enclosed boxes that sat atop towers, though these were constructed of stone rather than wood. The tunnel beyond the portcullis was larger than any of the others they had so far traversed, and had all of the appearance of being an ancient entry hall. ‘The Engineers’ Entrance,’ Gotrek hissed. Felix could hear the sound of bestial voices, echoing off the stone.

Gotrek waved Felix back, and they pressed themselves tight to the wall. Normally, Gotrek was without caution. He was taking this more seriously than normal, Felix knew. Just as he knew that the Slayer was not seeking death, for once. For Gotrek, this was more important than his doom.

Gotrek cast a wary eye in the direction the noise was emanating from, and then turned to the wall. He muttered to himself in Khazalid, the dwarf tongue, as he ran his hands across the wall. Felix heard a click and then a square of stone, about the right size for a dwarfish door, swung inwards to reveal slabbed stone stairs. Gotrek nodded in satisfaction. He caught Felix’s astonished look and said, ‘We build to last, manling. It’ll be another six centuries before those hinges even start to rust.’

Felix followed Gotrek up the stairs as the door slid shut behind them. They were plunged into darkness, but only for a moment. A soft glow spread across the stone walls. ‘Glow-moss,’ Gotrek said softly. ‘Watch your step.’

Felix took the stairs slowly and the going was awkward. They weren’t made with men in mind, and he had to stoop and contort himself to keep up with the Slayer. ‘Where are we going, Gotrek?’

‘Up to the old badger-run,’ Gotrek said. ‘When this entrance was first constructed, back before the Engineers’ Guild got their hands on it, it was a strong-point of the Underway. The ironbreakers of Karak Kadrin were stationed here, between delvings. It was built to hold off an army, or contain one, if the worst happened.’ At the top of the stairs was what Felix assumed was an enclosed parapet, running between the blockhouses. Gotrek led him to one of the blockhouses that overlooked the bridge. Inside, Felix saw two large bolt throwers, one at each corner of the wide opening that marked the front of the structure; each was stationed on a stone dais that he suspected would rotate. Gotrek had no interest in the bolt throwers, however.

‘Manling, come here,’ he said. Felix joined him in the centre of the blockhouse, where a heavy wooden lever jutted from the floor. Gotrek gestured to it and said, ‘When I tell you to, throw this.’

‘What does it do?’

‘It evens the odds,’ Gotrek said. The Slayer stumped to the opening and lifted the horn. Felix realized what he was about to do a moment before the Slayer planted the horn against his lips and blew a winding note out towards the bridge.

‘What does that accomplish?’ Felix cried.

‘Just do as I tell you, manling,’ Gotrek growled. Then he blew the horn again. The horn was a crude instrument, but the power of the dwarf’s lungs compensated for it. The note was flung out over the bridge, to echo through the vast cavern. And someone below took note. Felix shuddered as he heard more horns howl and then heard the sound of running feet.

Gotrek flung the horn aside and crouched at the opening, peering down. His one eye glinted in the dim light. He raised a hand, but didn’t look back at Felix. ‘Get ready, manling.’

Felix set himself. What was Gotrek up to?

More horns sounded, and the cries of Chaos marauders drifted up towards them. The blockhouse seemed to tremble with the fury of their passage through the entryway below. How many of them were down there? For a moment, Felix thought that Gotrek was counting them, tallying future notches for his axe. It was the sort of thing he thought the Slayer might do.

‘Now,’ Gotrek barked and chopped the air with his hand.

Felix thrust himself against the lever and it moved grudgingly at first, then, as if some massive weight had shifted, it was ripped from his hands and slammed against the floor in the direction he’d been pushing it. The floor trembled. Gotrek gave a bellow of laughter and shook his axe as the sound of ripping stone filled the air and Felix stumbled back, his hands clapped to his ears. ‘What happened?’ he shouted. ‘What did we do?’

‘See for yourself, manling!’ Gotrek said. Felix stumbled towards him and peered out over the lip of the opening. Down below, all was chaos. Almost fifty men or more were on the bridge and a cloud of dust had enveloped them. Some were standing while others were lying still, their bodies caught in the explosion of falling rock that had sealed the tunnel beneath his and Gotrek’s feet. Gotrek gazed longingly at the bolt throwers, as if weighing the effort it would take to load them and vent his fury on the men trapped below. Instead he shook his head and left the blockhouse. ‘Come, we need to see to the rest of them before they do whatever it is they’re planning to do.’

‘How long will those rocks keep the rest out, you think?’ Felix said, hurrying after him.

‘Only dwarfs possess the skill to move those rocks, manling,’ Gotrek said and then frowned. He muttered something in Khazalid.

‘What?’ Felix said.

‘Nothing,’ Gotrek snapped. ‘Hurry, manling.’ He led Felix across the parapet towards a second set of stairs. These curved downwards and led to a flat landing that looked down into the courtyard below. A further set of stairs led to the latter, but the way out was blocked by what looked to Felix to be a silk screen. He and Gotrek crouched on the landing, the Slayer waving him to silence. ‘Quiet, manling. The rock-cloth will mute any sounds from us, but hounds have keener hearing than men.’

Felix looked at the rock-cloth and recalled that Gotrek had once mentioned that it was used by dwarf rangers for camouflage when they camped in the hills. It was darker on one side than the other, allowing them to look through it with effort but thanks to the unguents and coarse weave, it would appear to be a part of the surrounding stone if anyone looked at it from the other side. Of course, that didn’t stop the Chaos hounds from sniffing them out, but the beasts were too agitated by the sudden collapse of the tunnel to be curious.

The chamber beyond was the size of a temple, albeit one that was less the size of the Grand Temple of Sigmar than the Plaza of Saints in Nuln. There were close to thirty Chaos marauders remaining, and they were quickly manhandling baskets and crude-looking iron spheres into position against a large sealed archway as their leader, a bulky monstrous-looking man, bellowed orders in a slobbering tone. Behind them, more Chaos hounds prowled, snuffling eagerly, their grotesque limbs jerking and twitching with feral impatience. Counting those they’d trapped outside, Felix knew they’d only brought around a hundred men. It was small for an assault, but then, how many were really required? Once a hole had been made, how hard would it be to ferry more men inside? Karak Kadrin would be under siege on two fronts.

More baskets and spheres were set off to the side, guarded by a half-dozen burly Chaos marauders with faces like carved teak and dark scalplocks. They carried hide shields and curved spears or butcher’s blades, with ring-holes punched in the rusty metal to lighten their weight. They were armoured better than the others, and bore themselves like professional killers, albeit nervous ones who seemed ready to face an ambush at any moment. Dust boiled through the chamber, issuing from the tunnel that the rocks had sealed. If the Chaos marauders were wondering at the fate of their comrades, they didn’t show it. Felix supposed that they had grown used to the dwarfs’ mechanical trickery in battle, and so assumed that any unexplained noise was another trap or ambush.

‘If they blow open that door, they’ll be into Baragor’s Watch,’ Gotrek growled softly, his eye narrowing as he gauged the distance from the landing to the aperture. One good leap would carry the dwarf through the rock-cloth and into the chamber.

‘And we can’t let that happen, can we?’ Felix said, knowing the answer. Gotrek gave him a brief, gap-toothed grin. Then, with a roar, the Slayer pushed himself away from the wall and into the chamber beyond, his axe looping out to sweep the cloth aside.

Gotrek caught a surprised hound in its arched spine. It screamed and folded, but the Slayer didn’t pause, jerking his axe loose and turning on his heel to send a second blow chopping into a Chaos marauder’s belly. The warrior was lifted from his feet, his cry of agony caught in his collapsing lungs. Gotrek was a hurricane of single-minded destruction, not bothering to kill, only to maim or bludgeon. And as all eyes were drawn to the diminutive killer, Felix took his chance and darted towards the tribesmen setting up their explosives at the archway.

He didn’t really have a plan, only a vague notion of preventing the explosion for as long as possible. His guts felt like ice as Karaghul hummed through a raised wrist. The blade caught on the bone and Felix was forced to lash out with a boot to dislodge it from the screaming tribesman. He felt a whisper of air on his neck and spun, letting Karaghul slide into the softness of an unarmoured torso.

Felix felt an iron grip fall on his shoulders and then he was flying through the air. He hit the ground and skidded, all of the wind knocked out of him. A man stalked towards him, big, bigger than he had any right to be, and looking as if he were gripped by some degenerative disease. His flesh rippled with blisters and boiled-looking patches and things moved within the waxy opalescence, like maggots in a wound. He bore no weapon, but his mouth was a nest of fangs.

Felix scrambled to his feet and gasped as agony flared in his shoulder. It still ached from before and though adrenaline had let him ignore it, he was paying for it now. He shifted Karaghul to his other hand as he backed away from his opponent.

The man stretched lazily, and Felix felt queasy as bones popped and ligaments squelched. His flesh puckered and thin drizzles of blood dripped from the corners of his mouth. Hooked fingers reached up, grabbing the flesh of his face. Felix saw his belly bulge obscenely beneath his cuirass, followed by his throat, and then his mouth spread impossibly wide as something evil and red was vomited into the torch-light.

The man’s flesh slithered down the length of the red-furred form, like the shed skin of a snake. In places, it snagged and tore, leaving gory rags wrapped about the beast’s limbs. It was akin to the Chaos hounds, but larger and darker and even more savagely terrifying. Brass-hued horns jutted from its wolfish skull and the crimson hair that covered it was shot through with patches of brass scales. It stared at Felix in hungry anticipation and then rocked back on its haunches and tilted its muzzle up, releasing a howl that curdled the marrow in Felix’s bones.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
Karak Kadrin

With a roar, the monster lunged, claws scraping stone even as Felix hurled himself aside. The monster whipped around, yellow eyes opening in its arms and torso, gazing at him with fiery hate. It took a step towards him. Old, half-remembered stories swam to the surface of his mind, scraps of stories told to him by his mother and her maids, of black-souled men that became beasts when the Witch-Moon was high. ‘Sigmar help me,’ he whispered, the words packed with loathing and fear.

‘Just another beast, manling,’ Gotrek said.

The monster turned, and looking past it, Felix saw Gotrek, streaked with blood, gesture with his axe. ‘Leave the manling alone. He owes me a saga, and I’ll not have him eaten before he can pen it.’ The monster howled again and leapt, and Gotrek moved to meet it.

Felix thrust himself to his feet as Chaos hounds bounded towards him, slavering jaws wide. The Chaos marauders were staying back, save those setting the explosives, letting the beasts have their fun. Breath burning in his lungs, Felix ran towards the archway.

While he’d been occupied, they’d lit the fuse cord and a spark of flame crawled towards the heap of spheres and jugs. He had to reach it! The moment stretched, impossibly long. He heard Gotrek’s bellow of pain, and a beast’s howl of triumph. Felix lunged, stretching, Karaghul descending. He groaned as he missed and the spark sped out of his reach. Jaws seized his legs and he was wrenched around and dragged back towards a snarling morass of Chaos hounds even as a grimy foot slammed down on the spark, extinguishing it.

A mace snapped out, crashing into a toothy muzzle, sending a shower of teeth peppering Felix’s face. And then, a roar from a dozen or more throats, and bodies surged into the chamber from a hidden opening. Felix was jerked to his feet by strong hands and pitched into the arms of a man, a human, he noted with surprise.

The battle was joined. Slayers, dozens of them, fell on the snarling beasts and shouting tribesmen. Brightly hued crests cut through the ranks of the Chaos horde like the fins of sharks in shallow waters. ‘What–’ Felix began.

‘Koertig,’ the man said gruffly. He wore a battered cuirass over clothing that had seen much hard travel, and a dented helm that covered the top half of his face, leaving an unsmiling mouth and square jaw exposed. ‘Can you use that sword?’ he said. His accent possessed the guttural tones of Nordland and he carried a long-hafted war-axe.

‘Yes, but who–’

‘I told you. Introductions later; now we fight,’ Koertig grunted, lunging at a screaming Chaos marauder. His axe sheared through the warrior’s jaw and the force of the blow spun the dying man. Felix parried a thrust spear and spitted its wielder even as he sought out Gotrek.

The Slayer was clinging to one of the monster’s brass horns, his axe embedded in the ornate cuirass it still wore. Its claws tore trails in Gotrek’s tattooed flesh, but the Slayer hung on with inhuman determination. Around them, the beast’s followers battled the newly arrived Slayers, including the one who’d saved Felix.

The latter was bare-chested like most Slayers, though he lacked the shorn skull. Instead, his hair had been greased and twisted into long spikes, as had his beard. A ring had been clipped to each nostril, with a chain attaching it to the appropriate earlobe, and he wielded a mace that looked to have been crafted from a chunk of firewood and an orc skull. The Slayer bellowed with laughter as he swatted a Chaos hound in the head, knocking it sprawling. Koertig grunted unhappily. Felix glanced at him.

‘Are you–’ he began.

‘Yes,’ Koertig said, sullenly.

‘How–’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Felix glanced back at the Slayer, who had fastened his teeth in a wolf’s ear even as he brought his mace down on another’s paw. ‘Is he–’

‘I said I don’t want to talk about it,’ Koertig growled.

‘Fair enough,’ Felix said. A Slayer hurtled past him, wreathed in red. The newcomers weren’t having it all their own way, despite the element of surprise. The dwarf struck the wall and flopped bonelessly to the floor, his doom found. Felix stared at the body for a moment, wondering whether the Slayer had found satisfaction, or at least relief, in those final, painful moments.

Then, a paw almost took off his head, and he shook himself from his reverie. Karaghul pierced a hairy flank, eliciting a shriek of pain. The Chaos hound was large for its kind, and all the more vicious for that. Claws hooked his cloak and Felix stabbed out. Koertig joined him, bellowing a war-cry and sinking his axe into the creature’s back. It shrugged the Nordlander off and, frothing, snapped its jaws at Felix.

An orc-skull mace cracked down on the creature’s muzzle. It staggered, shaking its head. It stumbled back, pressed by the Slayer’s enthusiasm if nothing else. Felix started forwards, but the orc-skull mace tapped him on the chest, stopping him. The spiky-haired Slayer looked back at him and shook his head. ‘Mine, I think,’ he said, flashing metal teeth.

Felix nodded curtly. He looked for Gotrek, determined to help at least one Slayer. The chamber was growing quiet. The hounds, blood-hungry and savage, were growing few. The Chaos marauders were all dead, lying in broken heaps, their only-human savagery paling in comparison to that of the Slayers. Only the beast-thing that had led them into the dark remained.

The latter stood amongst the bodies of a half-dozen Slayers, still clawing at Gotrek, who clung limpet-like to its armour. It staggered back and forth, its howls having degenerated to wheezing pants of effort. Gotrek too looked winded. Even so, his shoulder muscles swelled and he pried his axe free from the thing’s armour. It tossed its head and Gotrek swung his axe and then he was flying free, a shattered horn in his hand. Gotrek hit the ground and bounced almost immediately to his feet, albeit unsteadily. Breathing heavily, Gotrek eyed the beast. ‘Come on,’ he hissed.

The creature snarled and lunged. Gotrek met it, axe in one hand and its horn in the other. Felix ran towards them. He heard shouts behind him, but he paid them no heed. Something hairy and strong snaked around his throat and hefted him from the ground, talon-tips digging into his neck. An animal stink washed over him and he stared up into eyes that swam with blood and rage.

Malformed jaws dipped in anticipation, and Felix screamed.

‘Ho, beast, he’s not yours to kill!’ Gotrek’s axe thudded into the hairy arm, eliciting a screech. Felix was flung through the air. He hit the ground and lay, breathless. ‘Come on then,’ Gotrek continued. ‘Or did that hit take all of the fight out of you, cur of Chaos?’

The creature’s only response was a howl as it ripped through the air towards the Slayer, talons flailing. Claws thudded down and Gotrek only narrowly avoided a messy bisection. His own weapon whipped out, carving a crimson canyon across the thing’s malformed shoulder, causing it to reel back with a wail. Gotrek spat in disgust and closed in. A fist backhanded him with bone-bruising force and sent him skidding across the ground.

‘Ha! My turn,’ the Slayer wielding the orc-skull mace yelped, his weapon thumping against the creature’s skull. The Slayer leapt and dived, avoiding blows that should have pulped him and returning them with interest. Nonetheless, the monster barely staggered and a contemptuous kick sent the mace-wielder flying past Felix. It was looking as if the damnable thing was impossible to kill. It lunged and its jaws closed over another dwarf’s head. It tossed its head and decapitated its prey, sending a crescent of blood spattering across the other Slayers who pressed close about it. ‘S-skulls,’ it snarled as it spat out the mangled head. ‘Skulls for the Skull Road!’

‘You want skulls? I see one ripe for the plucking,’ Gotrek growled as his axe buried itself into one hairy thigh. The beast screamed and whirled, reaching for him. The Slayer avoided the talon, but only just, and he lost his grip on his precious weapon. The creature wrenched the axe from its leg and flung it aside, hard enough to drive the blade into the rock of the chamber floor. Slavering, it stalked towards Gotrek, who climbed to his feet and waited for it, fists raised.

Felix knew that even the Slayer had little hope of defeating such a beast without his axe. Even with it, it was looking to be impossible. There had to be something he could do. He cast about, mind racing, and then he caught sight of one of the metal spheres the Chaos marauders had brought into the catacombs. It was an ugly thing, made of sharp-edged iron plates welded together, with a fuse that extended like a rat’s tail. He snatched a striker up from out of the limp hand of a dead Chaos marauder and sliced the fuse to barely more than a nub with Karaghul. Then, with a shaky prayer to Sigmar on his lips, he lit it and gave it a kick, sending it rolling. The dwarfs who saw it coming scrambled aside with what, in other circumstances, Felix might have considered amusing alacrity.

‘Gotrek,’ he shouted. ‘Get out of the way!’

The Slayer’s eye widened as he saw the explosive sphere rolling towards him. Then, to Felix’s horror, he snatched the sphere up and, muscles bulging, hurled it straight into the chest of his monstrous opponent. The beast caught it instinctively and grunted in confusion. Felix felt someone grab him. ‘We have to get out of here,’ the spiky-haired Slayer barked. ‘Everyone out, now!’

The explosion, when it came, was sudden and violent. Felix was flung back into blackness as the world fell in on them. Heavy stones fell, and a cloud of smoke and dust rose to meet them. The sound was thunderous and deafening. Felix fell flat, his hands clapped to his ears. He felt as if his skull was about to pop or his bones to vibrate from their envelopes of flesh. When he felt no crushing weight, he cracked open an eye.

He had been pulled back by the spiky-haired Slayer into whatever hidden aperture the Slayers had emerged from. It was yet another tunnel, but this one was more heavily, and more recently by the looks of it, reinforced, with thick stone struts and supports. Even so, it shuddered around them as dust and debris billowed through the opening. Felix flinched as tiny flecks of stone stung his hands and face. He shoved himself to his feet, though the corridor continued to shake. It sounded as if the tunnel section that he and Gotrek had traversed was falling in on itself. ‘Gotrek,’ he coughed, and then, more loudly, ‘Gotrek!’

‘I don’t think he made it out, human,’ the spiky-haired Slayer said. Another explosion shook them, and dust drifted down from the roof of the corridor. More dust and smoke choked the air and the Slayer grabbed Felix. ‘Back the way we came,’ he rumbled. ‘This place is coming down, and we’ll be joining your friend if we don’t get out of here. This whole section is going to collapse.’

‘No,’ Felix said, staring at the billowing cloud of debris. ‘Gotrek,’ he shouted.

A clawed hand erupted from the dust and Felix stumbled back, falling on his rear. The monster coughed blood and its eyes were glazed with agony as it forced itself through the narrow aperture. The collar on its bifurcated neck seemed to pulse and steam. Felix scrambled back, gawping at it.

‘Grimnir’s guts, that thing just doesn’t want to die,’ the spiky-haired Slayer shouted.

Its sides heaved like a bellows as the wounded creature shoved itself towards them. It was bleeding from hundreds of shrapnel wounds and the explosion had seared the flesh from its bones in places. Nonetheless, it continued to move, compelled by some hellish will to continue. Felix felt disgust and horror ripple through him. This – this was the end result of Chaos. A man once, and then a beast, and now some brainless, slobbering thing, trapped in a hulk of broken meat. It was hunger given form, and nothing more, the atavistic need to devour with no will or soul to guide it. To kill it would be a mercy.

It bawled out a challenge, even as it choked on its own blood. Then, before it could lunge forwards, an axe buried itself in its back, cleaving its spine and dropping the creature flat to the ground, where it flopped bonelessly. Its fangs chewed the ground.

‘Stop running from me,’ Gotrek croaked, days of frustration boiling behind the words. His flesh was streaked with blood, ash and dirt, and his crest had been bent and smashed down, but he looked as ready for a fight as ever.

Gotrek dropped off the squirming beast and walked around it. The creature eyed him dumbly, as if unable to comprehend that its doom was approaching. Gotrek stopped and stared down at it, making no move to kill it.

‘For pity’s sake, Gotrek,’ Felix said, unable to stand the sounds the monster was making. ‘Kill the thing and be done.’ Gotrek didn’t acknowledge that he had heard Felix, nor did he deliver the killing blow. Instead, he stood, waiting.

The creature was dying, but not quickly. Whatever fell power had made it had also imbued it with an inhuman vitality that not even such damage as it had already taken could kill it outright. It writhed, jaws snapping. With a convulsive jerk, it flung itself forwards, maw wide. Gotrek made no effort to step aside. For a moment, Felix feared that Gotrek was going to let those maddened jaws close around him. Instead, the Slayer’s axe snapped down with finality, cutting the monster’s noise short.

Gotrek turned. ‘Slayers have no pity, manling,’ he rasped.

‘Gotrek, are you all right?’ Felix said, in the silence that followed.

‘I’m fine, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘Had to get my axe.’

‘You don’t look fine,’ Felix said.

‘What?’ Gotrek growled.

‘Nothing,’ Felix said quickly. He looked around. They were in a sloping corridor that rose upwards. It was in better condition than the tunnels, and showed signs of regular use. He wondered idly how many redundant passageways the dwarfs had in these holds. Did they simply dig new ones when they became bored with the old ones? Or was it more akin to the fabled lost streets of Altdorf – streets that were forgotten and built over after invasions and fires.

‘I’ve never seen a Chaos beastie go out with quite so big a bang,’ the spiky-haired Slayer said cheerfully, his mace resting on his shoulder. ‘I’ve heard the stories, Gurnisson, but I’d have never believed them had I not seen it with my own eyes.’

‘You know of me?’ Gotrek said.

‘Everyone knows you. Gotrek Gurnisson, the Doom-Thief and Jinx-Slayer,’ the other said, chuckling. ‘Slayers tell stories about you when they want to scare themselves.’

Gotrek’s eye narrowed and he spat at the other Slayer’s feet before turning away. The Slayer shrugged, unperturbed. He looked at Felix, flashing a metal grin. Every tooth in his head appeared to have been replaced with what Felix thought were gromril replicas. ‘They call me Biter,’ he said.

‘No one calls you Biter,’ Koertig said sullenly.

‘Everyone calls me Biter,’ Biter said, still smiling. ‘Except for my Remembrancer here,’ he added. He slapped Koertig companionably on the arm, nearly knocking the Nordlander off his feet. Felix looked at the scowling Nordlander and nodded in sympathy. If Koertig saw, he gave no sign.

Biter sniffed at Gotrek’s back. ‘He’s not exactly pleasant company, that one. Then, neither am I.’

‘And why should any of us be?’ another Slayer grated, rubbing ruefully at a set of slashes in his chest. He wore a harness with a number of strange clay pots attached and there were powder-burns on his cheeks and jaw. ‘There are only so many dooms to go around and fewer now. Less, if Gurnisson is here.’

Felix looked around. Of the thirty or so Slayers who had poured into the chamber, only half were left, the others lying tangled in death with the wolf-things and the human tribesmen. He was startled by the number, wondering if Gotrek’s determination to find a worthy death was unique to him.

‘Quiet, Agni,’ Biter said.

‘I am merely saying what we’re all thinking,’ the Slayer protested. He pointed at Gotrek. ‘Gurnisson is a jinx! You said so yourself!’

‘I said… quiet,’ Biter said, not firmly, or harshly. He tapped Agni’s bulbous nose with his mace. ‘You are being impolite.’

Gotrek stood apart from the others, and they seemed content to leave him be. Whether he had heard Agni’s outburst, he gave no sign. Felix joined him as did Biter, unbidden.

‘We’ve been waiting for them to give this entrance the old Guild try since they found it,’ Biter said, idly kicking a rock aside. ‘I thought Iron-Rear was mad for–’

‘Ironfist,’ Gotrek snapped.

Biter grinned. ‘I thought Ironfist was mad to station us there, away from the fighting, but he’s cannier than he looks, the beardling.’

‘Beardling,’ Felix said. ‘I was under the impression that the Slayer King was older than that.’

Biter snorted. ‘Who said anything about the Slayer King? I was talking about–’

Before he could finish, a grinding of stone made the survivors turn to the archway, where the wall of rocks that had seemingly sealed it off revealed itself to be a cleverly designed rotating door. As it shifted aside, a Slayer stepped through. But he was unlike any Slayer Felix had seen before – his beard was woven into five thick plaits and golden discs stamped with the scowling faces of dwarf ancestor-gods dangled from each. His scalp was surmounted by three large crests of orange-dyed hair. In his hands he clutched twin axes, which were connected to thick iron bracers on his equally thick wrists by heavy chains which rattled softly as he walked. He smouldered with a visible resentment and his gaze was hard. Behind him came a number of dwarf warriors, clad in armour and carrying crossbows.

‘Garagrim,’ Gotrek said. ‘The War-Mourner of Karak Kadrin.’

As the words left his mouth, the new arrival’s eyes found Gotrek and instantly narrowed to slits. He raised an axe and barked something in Khazalid. The newcomers raised their crossbows and, without hesitation, aimed them all squarely at Gotrek.

‘Gotrek Gurnisson,’ Garagrim Ironfist said. ‘You will lay down your axe and surrender yourself to the justice of Karak Kadrin, or you will die here, unmourned and unabsolved.’

Felix’s hand found his sword-hilt, but Gotrek’s meaty paw caught it before he could draw Karaghul. ‘Gotrek,’ Felix said, eyes widening.

Gotrek shook his head.

‘I will come,’ he said. But it was evident to Felix that he wasn’t happy about it. His shoulders and arms were tense and his grip on his axe was tight. The newcomers must have noticed too, for the guards took Gotrek’s axe from the Slayer and Karaghul from Felix as well. Felix, bewildered, allowed the guards to move them through the hidden doorway. Gotrek said nothing, his expression vague as he stumped along. Felix tried to talk to him, but a glare from one of the guards silenced him. In the years he’d known him, Gotrek had proven more than once that he’d rather die than be parted from his axe.

The other Slayers followed at a respectful distance, Biter leading the way, Koertig beside him. Felix didn’t bother asking them what was going on. They looked as confused as he did, though one or two, including Agni, looked pleased.

Was Gotrek really so hated? They had met other Slayers on their travels, and it had seemed to Felix that wariness was built into them, as essential to dwarfs as their beards. But what if it was something else? What had Biter called Gotrek – Doom-Thief? Was that what this was about?

He looked at the Slayer. Gotrek looked tired. Not weak or fatigued, not in body, but in soul. His eye held little of its usual intensity, and his hands, normally active with pent-up energy, were balled into tight fists. Felix knew the Slayer was angry as well, but it was a smouldering anger, rather than the more usual volcanic rage. Something was going on. But until someone chose to fill him in, he wasn’t going to know what it was.

Felix took the time to examine his surroundings. Baragor’s Watch was a forbidding place, even once inside the walls. The keep was a thing of crude design, though whether that was by intent or happenstance, Felix couldn’t say. There was none of the sturdy beauty of the dwarf holds here – this was a foundry of war and trade and little else. Dour and effective, it needed no grace, much like its inhabitants.

On the walls, horns sounded and drums beat, the echoes of the noise thrumming with vibrant power through the stones beneath his feet. Warriors were on the wall and the clash of weapons was loud in Felix’s ears. Bolt throwers and grudge throwers sent death flying into the as yet unseen foe. They were moving through a covered corridor at the base of the inner wall. Felix heard the tread of feet above as dwarfs moved up steps onto the wall. The stink of fire-pots and blood choked the air. Screams and cries and howls wrestled and mingled overhead.

The corridor trembled around them as something big hit the wall. It was an explosion, perhaps, or something worse. He paused, but a nudge from one of the guards set him to moving again. Dust sifted down into his hair and across his shoulders. Gotrek looked upwards longingly. ‘We should be up there, manling,’ he said.

‘Honour is for those who deserve it,’ Garagrim said. They were the first words he’d spoken since he’d ordered them taken into custody. Felix looked at the War-Mourner; he was slimmer than Gotrek, and younger, though by decades or centuries, Felix had no way of telling.

‘And you and your father would know all about who deserves what, aye?’ Gotrek said, with a hint of his normal quarrelsomeness.

Garagrim stopped and spun, gesturing with one of his axes. ‘Better than you, Doom-Thief,’ he growled.

‘I’m no Doom-Thief, princeling,’ Gotrek rasped.

‘What you are is yet to be decided, son of Gurni,’ Garagrim said, turning away.

Felix watched the exchange in silence. He caught Biter’s eye, and the cheerful Slayer shrugged, obviously at just as much of a loss as Felix himself.

They left the corridor behind and Felix felt relieved, just for a moment, to be out in the open air, away from the stifling tunnels. Then, the smell of war hit him, and the yearning to find cover quickly replaced the relief. They were in the inner keep of Baragor’s Watch, Felix judged. The sky overhead was black with smoke. The noise, previously somewhat muffled by the rock surrounding him, now gave full vent to its fury and he winced. Dwarfs not on the walls were hard at work, tearing down the by-comparison flimsy houses and businesses of the human population of Baragor’s Watch. Felix had been surprised at first when he’d learned that men and dwarfs lived in such close proximity anywhere outside the Empire, but it made more sense now, knowing that the former were confined to this bastion. Karak Kadrin was a centre of trade famed far and wide, and there was a substantial human community in the outer fortress, including businesses of various sorts. That the dwarfs tolerated such bespoke the relatively cosmopolitan nature of the Slayer Keep.

The humans who’d owned those homes and businesses were refugees now and were streaming across their path in a less-than-orderly queue towards the portcullis that allowed passage from the inner keep of Baragor’s Watch to Karak Kadrin proper. There were hundreds of them, men and women and children, and Felix felt a stab of pity for them. How many had lived here all their lives, only to now lose the only home they’d known? ‘Where are they all going?’ he said.

‘They’re seeking refuge in the hold. There are spaces in the lower levels where they will be put on boats and sent down the Stir back where they came from,’ Garagrim said, in what Felix suspected was smug satisfaction. ‘For too long, these humans have dirtied our stoop. This invasion was a blessing, according to some.’

‘Like you, beardling?’ Gotrek said. Garagrim ignored him. He ordered some of his followers forwards and they moved to clear a path through the refugees in a less than kindly manner. Felix’s palm itched for the hilt of his sword as he saw men and women shoved aside by the dwarfs and separated heedlessly from their loved ones.

Biter thumped his mace into an open palm. ‘War-Mourner, might we trouble you for a bit of relief from guard-duty?’ he said.

Garagrim looked at the surviving Slayers and frowned. ‘If you would go, go. Or stay, I care not. The Engineers’ Entrance has been effectively sealed, thanks to Gurnisson’s rashness.’ He glared at Gotrek, who matched Garagrim’s two eyes with his one.

‘It was a pleasure, Gurnisson,’ Biter said, saluting Gotrek with his weapon. ‘Come, Remembrancer. It’s time for you to watch me kill various and sundry things.’

‘My joy knows no bounds,’ Koertig muttered, hefting his axe. He slumped after his capering Slayer, the image of dejection. Gotrek looked similarly stricken, watching his brethren in madness go to war.

‘It was hardly rashness,’ Felix said, stung on Gotrek’s behalf. ‘And better it is sealed than sit inviting attack as it was, I’d have thought.’

‘What you think is of no concern to me, human,’ Garagrim said haughtily. ‘Only my father’s wishes matter.’

‘Then let us cease yapping and see him,’ Gotrek rumbled. ‘I grow weary of your company, beardling.’

Garagrim flushed and his axes twitched. Was Gotrek trying to provoke him? But before Garagrim could reply, something arced up over the walls and crashed to the street, hurling flaming potsherds in every direction. One of Garagrim’s warriors fell, his armour wreathed in sticky flames. Felix rushed towards the fallen dwarf and whipped off his own cloak, thinking to smother the blaze, but Gotrek grabbed him.

‘Leave it, manling, there’s no putting out a fire of that sort. You’ll just burn with him,’ the Slayer rumbled as the dwarf died. Alarm bells were sounding in the city. More flaming pots crashed down and liquid fire crawled between the cobbles of the street. Horns wailed and the relative order of the refugees had dissolved into madness as people ran as fast as they could towards the supposed safety of the next wall. The dwarfs, in contrast, were heading towards the noise, faces set and weapons ready.

‘What is it? What’s going on?’ Felix said.

‘They’ve gotten through what’s left of the outer wall,’ Garagrim snarled, clashing his axes together in frustration. He looked at Gotrek. ‘I have no time to deal with you, Doom-Thief, and it seems you’ll get your wish.’ At a barked command, his warriors returned his and Gotrek’s weapons. ‘To the wall,’ Garagrim roared, raising an axe high.

‘Let’s get to the wall before all of the enemy are dead and the beardling changes his mind,’ Gotrek said eagerly. He shoved Felix along and they joined Garagrim as the War-Mourner led his followers towards the steps which led to the parapet of the inner wall.

‘I don’t think there’s any danger of that, more’s the pity,’ Felix muttered. Garagrim and his warriors were already climbing the stone steps leading to the top of the closest section of the inner wall, where great grudge throwers hurled stones and massive bolt throwers fired into the unseen ranks of the enemy. Felix followed Gotrek, his heart thudding in his chest, his hand on his sword hilt.

As they reached the top, he could make out the shape of Baragor’s Watch better. From these walls, narrow stone walkways spanned across the keep towards the final wall. The parts of the outer fortress which were above ground were designed like a series of ever-shrinking half-rings within half-rings. Invaders would be forced to breach two great walls and cross the inner killing grounds before they could even attempt to assault the final wall that separated Baragor’s Watch from the bridge to Karak Kadrin. Felix passed a number of dwarfs who were pulling back to that wall. Some carried only their weapons while others were manoeuvring war machines off their rotating platforms and dragging them to platforms set further back. When he mentioned it to Gotrek, the Slayer grunted, ‘Ironfist is canny. If Baragor’s Watch falls, he’ll need warriors in place to cover the retreat.’ Gotrek said the last as if it were a dirty word.

‘And the war machines?’ Felix said, watching as a group of dwarfs grunted and cursed as they unhooked a catapult from its stone and metal stabilizers.

‘Range, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘If they get past the outer wall, they’ll need to be able to fire into the keep to destroy any buildings that haven’t been torn down that the enemy can use for cover or shelter. Better to see such things destroyed than touched by followers of Chaos.’

Felix frowned. There was a pragmatism to the way Gotrek said it that only served to reinforce the differences between the Slayer’s people and the men of the Empire. Felix had known more than a few men who went in for burning fields and homes in order to deny them to the enemy, but they were, by and large, considered extremists. But for the dwarfs, it was a given that destruction was preferable to surrender. Gotrek had told him more than once of entire holds that had collapsed into darkness and silence and ruin when it looked as if they’d be overrun.

For men, where there was life, there was hope. But for dwarfs, hope was secondary to honour, and seemingly no dwarf sought a better life when a good death was easily available. They were a fatalistic people, but stubborn in that fatalism. Hope was compromise, and for the dwarfs compromise was weakness. Thus, they had no hope and no reason to surrender, even when the odds were stacked so high a giant might not see the uppermost.

Following the Slayer onto the parapet, Felix again contemplated what strange set of circumstances had set him in Gotrek’s wake. Did the dwarf fatalism extend to Gotrek’s own desire for a grand death? That didn’t seem right. Gotrek appeared hopeful, at times.

Maybe that hope was part of his shame. Or maybe it was something he allowed himself now that he was outside of the rules and strictures of orderly dwarf society. Felix shook his head. Or maybe Gotrek was simply suicidal and mad.

At the top of the parapet, a vista of horror unfolded before Felix like something out of a nightmare. He looked out over the serried ranks of the enemy army, and his breath died in his lungs and all thoughts and musings over honour and hope vanished from his mind. ‘Sigmar’s oath,’ he whispered.

It seemed as if a howling sea was crashing against the walls of the inner keep. The ruined shapes of the lower wall thrust up crazily from the depths of that sea, and as Felix watched, a section crumbled, collapsing atop the invaders with a roar of grinding stone. The remaining Chaos troops didn’t seem to have noticed, or else didn’t care.

They stretched as far as the eye could see: a rolling, ever-shifting tide of enemies. Chaos marauders and Norscans charged towards the wall that Gotrek and he now stood on, chanting the names of their dark gods. Grisly banner poles jutted from that morass of moving bodies, heavy with skulls, scalps and ruinous icons that stung Felix’s eyes, even from a distance. Many warriors carried hideous looking siege-ladders crafted from what could only be giant bones and strange metals and sinews on their shoulders, while others wielded great torches to light the way. Some of the latter were sent whirling into ruined buildings, where the wood quickly caught and blazed high, casting a grotesque light over the invaders. They seemed undeterred by the steep slope between one wall and the next, and chanted as they ran. Chaos hounds threaded through their feet, loping alongside their human masters, and giving voice to terrible bays full of un-canine like ferocity. The heavy, ponderous shapes of mutated trolls and bellicose, monstrous ogres forced their way through the press eagerly. At the head of the horde, the heavy, armoured shapes of the Chaos warriors led the way, silent and inevitable. Some wore black armour, others brass or virulent crimson, all the colours of savage death and brutal violence.

Felix sucked in a breath. They looked unstoppable, inexorable, like an oncoming storm. Part of him wanted to flee, to find a hole and pull the earth in over him and wait for this all to pass. But one look at Gotrek sent his fear fleeing. The Slayer stood on the parapet, legs braced, axe extended before him and he bellowed an extensive litany of curses, in Khazalid as well as several languages that Felix didn’t recognize, at the onrushing Chaos troops.

A moment later, the siege-ladders struck the stone and the barbaric shapes of Chaos marauders clambered up them, screaming blasphemous prayers. As soon as they set foot on the parapet, Felix was subsumed into the frenzy of battle. A bellowing Chaos marauder, his face almost featureless amidst the scrawled scars that covered him brow to jowls like a mask, swung a rusty axe at Felix’s head as the siege-ladder he rode crashed against the parapet. Karaghul slid easily from its sheath and Felix chopped down. His blade sank between the marauder’s neck and shoulder and screeched as it grated against the single rusty pauldron the barbarian wore.

The warrior slumped back, only Karaghul’s bite keeping him from toppling backwards into those of his companions who were climbing the siege-ladder. Felix grunted and jerked the sword loose. The marauder disappeared, only to be replaced by another. Then Gotrek was there, shouting in harsh joy as his axe swept out, beheading the next warrior to try his luck on the wall.

More ladders settled on the parapet. Hundreds of marauders surged up the bones, throwing themselves on the defenders with brute abandon, seemingly not caring whether they lived or died. Felix was momentarily adrift, his sword lashing out automatically at foes he barely had time to glimpse before they were gone, the only sign of their presence the blood on his hands and face.

Soon his arms burned and ached as he cut and thrust with mechanical repetition, killing in a dull fog. For every Chaos marauder who fell, another seemed to take his place. Had every attack been like this, Felix wondered? The sheer mindless ferocity to the assault was mind boggling. Surely no army, not even one made up of Chaos-worshipping savages and daemon-worshippers, could sustain this sort of savage pace. But bad as it was for the attackers, it was worse for the defenders.

The dwarfs were doughty enough, but they were not many. Even the Slayers among them were like rocks in the tide and not entirely stable ones, and as Felix watched, a Slayer screamed wildly and hurled himself over the parapet, into the maw of battle. Instinctively, he sought out Gotrek. He hoped the Slayer wouldn’t be tempted to do the same.

Gotrek had climbed atop the parapet and was roaring, ‘Come on, scum! Come to Gotrek! My axe thirsts!’ Warriors rushed to answer his challenge. Two siege-ladders dropped towards the Slayer, snarling warriors crouched atop them, spears in their hands. Gotrek chopped his axe into the stone of the parapet and reached out. The heads of the ladders slapped into his waiting palms and he gave a grunt of exertion, his muscles straining. For a moment, Felix feared he would lose his balance, and he stretched out a hand. The spears of the warriors on the top of the ladders stabbed out, one skidding over the flesh of Gotrek’s shoulder. Felix struck, slicing the weapons in half and leaving their wielders staring in stupefaction at their broken weapons. A moment later, Gotrek gave a great heave, sending the ladders hurtling away from the wall. Those warriors still clinging to them screamed as they were carried away from the wall and disappeared into the successive waves of the horde.

Another ladder slapped against the wall in front of Felix, forcing him to jerk back. He stepped forwards and drove his shoulder into the edge of the siege-ladder, his flesh crawling at the touch of it. Strange runes had been carved into it and he felt an unnatural heat emanating from it. ‘Gotrek, help me!’ he shouted.

Gotrek reached out with one hand and gave the ladder a shove. It slid sideways, carrying its cargo with it. A fire-pot struck the wall nearby, and Felix twitched as a wash of stinging heat caressed him. ‘There must be thousands of them,’ he said.

‘The more the merrier,’ Gotrek said, uprooting his axe. Felix turned, looking for the others. Garagrim and his warriors had moved to the centre of the wall, where the fighting was heaviest. The prince’s axe flashed out, sweeping the head from a screaming warrior as Felix watched. Then, from within the guts of the horde, horns sounded. As if in reply, from a high dais on the wall, a dwarf blew a large, curled horn.

As they watched, the seemingly endless horde, improbably, impossibly, began to retreat. Not out of fear, Felix knew, but simply because their momentum had been broken. A dulled edge needed to be re-sharpened. They left their dead heaped where they lay, retreating in grudgingly good order. Champions, marked by the gods, stood and shouted parting imprecations at the defenders before turning and trotting after the rest. Gotrek spat over the side of the wall. ‘They’ll bring up the siege-weapons,’ he growled.

‘Aye, but they’re done for now,’ Garagrim said, marching towards them. ‘We have unfinished business, Gurnisson. The king waits, and you shall see him.’ Felix stepped back, only to be nudged forwards by one of the dwarf warriors. Garagrim, without waiting for either of them to reply, turned on his heel, leading the way towards the palace of the Slayer King.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Valley of Karak Kadrin

Canto cursed for the fifth time in as many minutes as he watched Hrolf’s lieutenants battle each other for the honour of taking control of his warband. They were a hairy, uncouth lot, Vargs and Sarls for the most part. Norscans, rather than marauders, like Kung and Yan. The latter stood beside him, watching the ritualized idiocy with apparent glee.

‘So the idiot cur finally got what was coming to him, eh?’ he cackled, touching a burned patch of flesh on his arm. ‘Good, more glory for the rest of us.’

‘Why aren’t you with Kung, seeing to the assault?’ Canto said, not looking at him. A Varg named Gurn roared and stamped, and the pulsing tendril that replaced his left hand shot out, undulating around the scaly throat of another champion, this one a bloated cannibal clad in ragged armour that barely fit his overly muscled and bulky frame, named Harald the Lean. Harald grabbed the tendril and bit down, sinking scissoring wide, shark-like fangs into it. Gurn yelped and jerked his arm back, flinging Harald to the ground.

‘Because Kung enjoys scaling walls and I don’t. Besides, there are more profitable things to be done,’ Yan said, flexing his scorched arm. ‘That’s why you’re here, after all.’

Canto glanced at his fellow Chaos champion. Yan grinned at him. ‘I know you, Unsworn. Always seeking the advantage, looking to make allies. You’re here to get Hrolf’s replacement, whoever it is, on your side.’

‘And is that so unheard of?’ a deep voice gurgled. Both champions turned as two stunted, broad shapes stumped towards them. The face of the first was obscured by a featureless iron and brass mask; a heavy black beard, curled and bound into worm-like plaits, hung below it, fanning out across a deep chest hidden within a heavy cuirass of blackshard iron. The Chaos dwarf wore the heavy armour of the Infernal Guard, and carried a large axe. The axe’s cruel blade was wreathed in runes of torment and death and it steamed and hissed as if it were fresh plucked from the forge.

It was the second who had spoken. Unlike the first, his face was uncovered, revealing cruel features the colour of fire-blackened stone to the world. Thick tusks jutted from his mouth and small horns protruded from his broad brow over eyes that glowed like forge-struck sparks. A wide, spade-shaped beard, divided into oiled and curled ringlets, jutted from his thick chin. More disturbing than the tusks were the thin cracks that ran through the flesh of his face, and the red light that seeped from them. He wore heavy-looking armour covered in strange runes and grotesque gargoyle faces. Khorreg the Hell-Worker, Daemonsmith of Zharr Naggrund, smiled at the two Chaos champions, displaying teeth the colour and shape of obsidian shards. ‘Indeed, I had feared that none of you possessed even the slightest modicum of cunning, manling,’ the Chaos dwarf sorcerer croaked, nodding to Canto.

Khorreg was the leader of the small party of dawi zharr whom Garmr had hired for use of their war machines. The Hell-Worker had accompanied the bulk of said engines to Karak Kadrin to oversee their proper testing in battle, leaving two of his assistants to oversee the rest with Garmr. The silent, masked dwarf beside him was called Khul, Canto thought, though he’d never heard the Ironsworn speak.

Canto had known Khorreg for longer than was entirely pleasant to consider. The creature was not a friend, never that, but familiarity formed its own bonds. It was Khorreg who had crafted his armour, and Khorreg with whom he’d bartered slaves for weapons and devices. And it was Khorreg whom he’d saved in a moment of black cunning at the Battle of Seven Towers, when the vast fortress-leviathans of the dawi zharr had been swept aside by the daemon-princes of the Arashem Conflagration. Canto had acted as Garmr’s envoy to Zharr Naggrund, bargaining with his old acquaintance for use of the war machines that even now pounded the walls of the dwarf fortress.

Canto returned Khorreg’s nod. ‘You have it?’ he asked. Khorreg grinned and extended the cloth-wrapped bundle he held. Canto took it and quickly unwrapped it, exposing a black-bladed sword that glistened with vile runes and sigils. ‘Beautiful,’ he said.

‘A toy,’ Khorreg said, mouth twisting in what was supposed to be a smile. ‘Barely worth the effort, Unsworn.’

‘Nonetheless, you have my thanks, Khorreg,’ Canto said gravely, settling the sword in his sheath. It fit perfectly, and he grunted, happy to have a replacement for the sword he’d lost in the shaft.

‘It’s not your thanks I want, Unsworn,’ Khorreg said. ‘The second of my debts to you is settled.’

Canto inclined his head, ignoring Yan’s look of suspicious curiosity, and turned back to the fight. Gurn was on his back, jerking and choking as Harald gnawed at his throat. The gods had blessed Harald with an unholy resilience and a strength that rivalled Hrolf’s own. Harald rose from Gurn’s twitching body and raised a bloody fist in triumph. Then he pointed a crooked finger at the next challenger, a thin, slim-muscled creature called Alfven, whose apparent youth was belied by the cold, calculating look in his unnaturally bright eyes. ‘Come, stripling,’ he hissed, gnashing his teeth. ‘Come get in my belly.’

‘All the better to have your heart, Lean one,’ Alfven purred, stepping forwards lightly. His armour was less bulky than that of his fellows, though equally baroque and, it was said, oiled with the unspoiled blood of virgins, though where he’d found them nobody could say. Long hair, greased with blood and offal, hung down his back, tied into a single serpentine lock. His sword hummed like a wasp as it sliced up across the palm of Harald’s too-wide hand as the latter groped for him.

‘I’ll bet two horses and a hound on the pretty one,’ Yan said gleefully, rubbing his scarred hands together. Canto said nothing. He had already calculated Alfven’s chances. Harald was a brute, like his late unlamented master, and lacked the finesse and skill of his current opponent, though he did outmatch him in raw strength. But strength alone did not make one the strongest, and only the strongest could lead a warband within Garmr’s horde.

But, determining who was the strongest was never a simple thing, nor a quick one. Chaos warbands were disorganized things, little more than ambulatory battles where everyone happened to be moving in the same direction. Scouts had reported that tribesmen had already begun killing each other in the crags around the hold, fighting over territories not yet earned. Such was the way of it, and where one group was annihilated, two more waited to take their place.

Canto shook his head. There was still a wall between them and the object of their siege and their forces were being bled white the longer the dwarfs held out. He needed Hrolf’s men, now more than ever; especially considering that the Dogsson had gotten himself buried in his own trap. Canto had barely made it out alive. He touched the mark on his cuirass where the dwarf’s axe had gouged him. He felt no shame in his flight from the dwarf, nor any regret. The dwarf had been mad, obviously. Practically foaming at the mouth, and that axe… There had been something about that axe that set his hackles to bristling. It hadn’t been a normal weapon, and the dwarf who’d wielded it as if it weighed no more than a feather had been no normal dwarf.

Canto knew about Slayers. He’d even killed one, once. They barked and howled like broken-backed wolves and fought like devils, but they were mortal, and they died easily enough. But that one hadn’t. He was something else, something that had terrified Canto to his very core.

He knew enough to listen to his fear and to flee when the fight turned against him, even if flight meant hurling himself into the void. It had only been by sheerest luck that he had slammed into something solid and managed to climb back out into the light.

Khorreg had seen his gesture, and stepped closer. The Chaos dwarf smelled of burning metal and ash. ‘Proper blackshard iron, this,’ he rasped, running stubby, probing fingers across the mark. ‘To mark it thus must have required great strength and magic, or both.’

Canto grunted. ‘Yes. He’s the one who did for Hrolf, I’d wager. Little one-eyed maniac.’

Khorreg grunted. ‘One eye,’ he murmured. ‘An axe, was it?’

‘Yes,’ Canto said, stepping away from him. ‘Quite a big, unpleasant one.’

‘The best ones always are,’ Khorreg chuckled, grinning nastily. ‘Oh, that’s unfortunate.’

Canto looked and saw Harald sink to his knees, his thick arms held tight to his belly in a doomed attempt to hold his guts in. Alfven took his head a moment later and gave the still upright body a contemptuous kick. The handsome champion spread his arms and flashed a smug smile. ‘Come, who will challenge me? You, Skrall, or perhaps you, Hrodor?’ he asked, gesturing to two of the other champions.

Skrall wore a horned, featureless helm and his body was twisted with overlapping scaly plates the colour of dried blood that seemed to grow through the gaps in his armour. Both of his arms terminated in festering, boil-covered bone spikes that glistened with blood and serum. Hrodor was comparatively normal looking, clad in heavy armour festooned with spikes and ridges, and he wore no helm, exposing a hairless head studded with dozens of iron nails that formed strange, nauseating patterns.

‘The gods are watching us,’ Alfven said, smiling widely. ‘Bow or fight.’

Both of the remaining champions stepped back after sharing a look. It was a wise move, Canto knew. Alfven was an old hand at challenges such as this, and the Blood God doted on him. Alfven laid the flat of his sword across his shoulder and turned, eyes blazing with infernal pride. Yan gave a wordless shout of encouragement.

Canto moved, quicker than any of them could react. He lunged forwards, one hand on his sword hilt. It sprang out of its sheath even as he slid past Alfven. The handsome champion lurched forwards, shocked. He staggered around, mouth working, his hand trembling as he reached up to touch the thin red line that grew around his neck. Then, with a ripping sound, Alfven’s head toppled from his shoulders. Canto twitched the blood from his new sword and sheathed it.

Yan stared at him in shock. Khorreg wheezed laughter and clapped his hands. Canto looked at the remaining champions. ‘I am Canto the Unsworn. I serve no god save ambition, no master save necessity. Follow me or you will be served thus.’ He kicked aside Alfven’s head as he turned and rejoined the others. Yan frowned at him.

‘You cannot do that! Alfven won his challenges! The Dogsson’s warband was his by right.’

‘Unless you’re planning to challenge my actions, Yan, I’ll thank you to shut your mouth and rejoin your men. We have a fortress to take and we have wasted enough time with this spear-shaking ritual nonsense,’ Canto grated, not looking at him. ‘Garmr has charged us to take this fortress and I will do so, with your help or without it.’

Yan growled wordlessly and strode off, one hand on his falchion, leaving Canto with Khorreg and Khul. Behind them, Canto’s new lieutenants fell to squabbling over the armour and weapons of their dead companions. Soon enough, Alfven’s fine armour and sword would decorate the frame of another warrior, as would the gear of Gurn and Harald. Canto left them to it.

‘Well done, Unsworn,’ Khorreg said, his weird eyes glittering with malice and cunning. ‘You are cunning indeed. Almost as cunning as my people.’

‘High praise indeed,’ Canto said in a tone that implied anything but. If Khorreg took offence he gave no sign. Instead he gave another gurgling chuckle and he turned his gaze towards the fortress keep. Horns blew as Kung pulled the horde back. ‘One wall left.’

‘There will be nothing left, if you let me unleash my pets,’ Khorreg said. Canto grunted at the mention of ‘pets’. The Chaos dwarf was talking about the siege-giants he’d brought from Zharr Naggrund. The idiot brutes had been the work of the daemonsmiths of Zharr Naggrund; Garmr had traded a thousand captives for each of the beasts, and they were, next to the Hell-Worker’s war-engines, some of the Gorewolf’s most prized weapons.

‘And then you can get your engines in position to attack the hold proper?’ Canto asked. Khorreg smiled cruelly.

‘If your warriors can hold the bridge, we can knock down our cousins’ paltry walls. But we must do so quickly. If they have time to fall back, they will destroy the bridges that lead to the hold, and your army will be trapped on this side, now that the Underway is lost to us.’ Khorreg looked at him. Canto nodded. The Chaos dwarf was right, of course. With the explosion that had killed Hrolf, they had lost access to the Underway. Barely a score of men had escaped the subsequent collapse of the caverns, and they were still down there, as far as he knew. There was no way to retrieve them, and he wasn’t inclined to waste time doing so in any event.

It would take too much time to burrow through those collapsed caverns, time they didn’t have. If Garmr were here, perhaps, but he wasn’t and there simply weren’t enough men to simultaneously see to clearing the tunnels as well as taking the walls of the outer keep. If they lost the bridge as well, the siege was as good as done. The dwarfs could sit behind their walls forever, and Garmr’s forces would tear themselves apart out of boredom.

‘Bring your pets up, Hell-Worker,’ Canto said. ‘That fortress must fall.’

Baragor’s Watch,
Karak Kadrin

The palace occupied part of the central plaza of the inner keep. Like the rest of Baragor’s Watch, it was a thing of hard angles and rough artisanry. It had been built as a fortress within a fortress, rather than a place of opulence and comfort. It reminded everyone who entered that the fortress was the first line of defence from any assault from the north. Gotrek had mentioned once that the king used it for greeting guests away from the sacred confines of the hold proper. Here, Ungrim Ironfist could meet with foreign dignitaries, merchant-princes and the like, without risking the secrets of Karak Kadrin.

The throne room was large, almost grandiose in its sweeping, vaulted ceiling. Pillars lined the entryway and led the eye to the throne of the Slayer King. That the king had chosen to meet them here, rather than someplace more sensible given the circumstances, told Felix that whatever was going on, it had more weight than he’d first thought.

Around the throne was arrayed a small bodyguard; not Slayers these, but elite hammerers, as the dwarfs called them. Heavily armoured and wielding two-handed war-hammers, they looked capable of taking on twice their weight in opponents. Felix was momentarily bemused by the thought of acting in such a capacity for a king who had taken the Slayer’s Oath. Were the bodyguards there for his protection, or to keep him from getting himself killed? Was there any difference?

The Slayer King was a brooding, squat figure, seated upon a throne of stone, gnarled fingers tapping out a martial rhythm on the armrests. Like his son, Ungrim Ironfist was a Slayer, though in deference to his title and position, he wore a weighty crown which cast some slight shadow on his heavy features. His nose was thin and hooked, like the beaks of the eagles that inhabited the peaks and crags of the mountains, and his eyes burned with a feverish intelligence. When he spoke, his voice was as deep and as resonant as the Mourning Bells of the Grand Temple of Morr in Altdorf.

‘Greetings, Gotrek, son of Gurni. Greetings, Felix Jaeger,’ Ironfist said. The words and tone were measured and polite, in contrast to Garagrim’s snarling.

Felix was tempted to bow, but when he saw Gotrek remain standing, he resisted the urge. Instead, he stood just behind the Slayer, his hands at his sides. ‘I am told that we have you to thank for the defence of the Engineers’ Entrance,’ Ironfist went on. ‘Though in an unorthodox fashion,’ he added.

‘Good riddance,’ one of the hammerers said. He was as broad as he was tall, and had the heavy white length of his beard tucked into his wide leather belt.

‘Snorri, Son of Thungrim,’ Ironfist said, gesturing. ‘He is my hearth-warden and Reckoner. My right hand, even as my son is my left. It is on his counsel that you stand here, Gotrek, son of Gurni. His and that of Oleg Axeson, priest of Grimnir, warden of the temple.’

‘Axeson,’ Gotrek muttered, his eye flashing. His knuckles popped as his massive hands clenched.

‘Aye, you know him, and he knows you, Gurnisson, and neither of you have much liking for the other, of that I am well aware.’ Ironfist leaned forwards on his throne. ‘But it is because of that dislike that I heeded his words. He asked that we send a messenger to you, before…’ He gestured. As if to emphasize his point, another thunderous boom sounded. The hammerers shifted uneasily. ‘Well, but it seems that won’t be necessary now.’ His eyes glittered. ‘You are here and they are here and it seems the portents were correct.’

Gotrek blinked and said, ‘Portents?’

Felix felt a chill sweep through him at the word. He thought he heard something, just at the limits of his hearing. A throaty, purring laugh that demanded he risk a glance. But he saw nothing save the shadows coiling in the spaces between the great pillars. Nonetheless he could not shake the feeling that his every thought and action was being observed.

‘Portents and prophecies, Gurnisson, that concern you and us, and the army that currently sheds its foul blood on our walls,’ Ironfist said.

‘Where did it come from, if I might be so bold, mighty king? This army, I mean? We heard nothing about it travelling from Stirland,’ Felix said. Rumours travelled fast on the rivers, carried by peddlers and merchants and mercenaries. And Chaos armies were notorious for being less organized military undertakings than natural disasters, spilling over into neighbouring lands like a spreading wildfire. Even this far from the Empire, the rumours of its movements should have been flying fast and thick through frontier towns like Wurtbad.

‘Why would you have?’ Garagrim spat. ‘They besiege us, not your precious provinces.’

Ironfist raised his hand and his son fell silent. He looked at Felix with a measuring gaze. ‘They keep to the crags, these ones,’ he said finally. ‘They do not stray far afield, as such forces are normally wont. They are unusually focused, and on Karak Kadrin. We first got word of them some weeks ago, and we sent a throng to deal with them. In vain, as it turned out. They perished, to a dwarf.’

Gotrek was silent. Then he nodded. ‘So what’s this got to do with me, then?’

‘Everything, unfortunately,’ a deep voice growled. Felix turned.

The dwarf who’d spoken was as broad as Gotrek and his face looked as if it had been set into storm-clouds, such was the sheer mass of silvery-grey hair that he possessed; though from his features, Felix thought he was too young for it, even for a dwarf. His beard was forked and curved, jutting out like a defensive palisade, and his eyebrows were parapets. He wore thin robes over a heavy, ornate cuirass. From the front of the cuirass, a symbolic representation of Grimnir’s scowling features glared at them. From that, Felix knew he was the priest that Ungrim had mentioned.

Oleg Axeson matched Grimnir’s scowl when he caught sight of Gotrek. ‘Well, I see you’re still alive,’ he said as he strode past Ungrim’s guards, who made no move to stop him, to join them.

‘Not for lack of trying,’ Gotrek grunted.

‘Try harder,’ Axeson said.

Gotrek growled and his axe twitched in his hand. Garagrim stepped forwards, before Gotrek could reply. ‘I have brought him, Axeson, as you asked.’

‘I see that, Garagrim,’ Axeson said. Garagrim’s cheek twitched. ‘And you didn’t bring him. He came of his own will, didn’t you?’ Axeson looked at Gotrek, eyes narrowed speculatively.

Gotrek glowered at Axeson, but said nothing. Uncomfortable, Felix stepped forwards. ‘If I might be so bold, why did you ask King Ironfist to send for us?’

Axeson glanced at him, as if surprised he could speak. ‘I didn’t ask him to send for you, human. Just Gurnisson,’ Axeson said harshly.

Felix flinched at the tone. Axeson seemed to be an equal opportunity insulter, and he wondered whether perhaps he had found a dwarf even more irascible than Gotrek.

Gotrek stepped forwards. ‘Talk then, priest,’ he said. Had Gotrek hesitated before that last word? Felix looked at the Slayer.

Axeson frowned. ‘Have you put your name on the pillar in the Temple of Grimnir yet, Gurnisson?’

‘What does one have to do with the other?’ Gotrek said, knuckling his eye-patch. ‘No, I haven’t, as you well know.’

‘Aye, you haven’t. You were never one for tradition, were you?’ Axeson said.

‘Is that why you brought us here?’ Felix asked, before he could stop himself. Gotrek didn’t look at him. Axeson smirked.

‘Of course it wasn’t, human. No, Gurnisson came because he couldn’t do otherwise, not when there’s doom on the wind.’

Gotrek stared at Axeson. ‘What doom, priest? Stop talking in riddles or else–’

‘Or else what?’ Axeson said. ‘Will you smash the life from me, Gurnisson?’ He stepped close, his beard bristling, and for a moment, Felix wondered whether Gotrek would. Gotrek’s eye widened slightly and he stepped back, shaking his head. Axeson’s expression changed then. The sneer faded, and Axeson looked away, almost ashamedly. Something had passed between them, Felix knew, but he couldn’t say what, and for a moment, just a moment, a surge of jealousy possessed him.

It wasn’t the first time that some hint of Gotrek’s past had been teased before him, some moment, frozen in time, that he would never be allowed to examine. Mostly, he didn’t think about it. It served no purpose other than idle curiosity. But other times, the need to know was almost overpowering. Did Axeson know Gotrek’s shame? Did he know what crime had set Gotrek on his current path? Was that the source of their mutual dislike? Felix knew that if he were foolish enough to ask, he would never receive an answer.

‘The Skull Road,’ Axeson said. ‘What do you know of it?’

‘It is the road of retreat,’ Gotrek said. ‘We walked it when the coming of Chaos drove our people south.’ Felix had heard the term before, though only rarely, and only from dwarfs. The path that led into the Worlds Edge Mountains from the Chaos Wastes was a road few travelled and fewer still returned from.

‘Some clans call it Grimnir’s Road,’ Ironfist said, softly.

Axeson nodded. ‘Aye and it is at that.’ He looked at Felix. ‘Do you speak for this manling, son of Gurni?’ Gotrek nodded once, brusquely. Axeson grunted and went on. ‘The skulls the road is named for are not ours, or those of elves or men. They are the skulls of daemons and those foul things which marched beneath the banners of Chaos. They are the skulls which Grimnir took on his last march north.’ Axeson shook his head. ‘Grimnir cut through the very stuff of Chaos, and made order from it, in that place. He bathed those lands in the blood of daemons and drove back the Wastes.’

Felix’s mouth was dry. As Axeson spoke, he could almost see that which he described. In his mind’s eye, he saw one lone dwarf, pitting himself against the entirety of Chaos, and forcing it back, mile by painful mile, through sheer determination and ferocity. He glanced at Gotrek and the others and knew that they were seeing something similar in their heads.

‘Grimnir made a road of skulls into the north, and disappeared. And now, something has come south, following the same route and bringing ruin with it.’

A chill mass settled in Felix’s gut. He had seen the horrors of Chaos before, far too closely for his liking. He wanted to speak but couldn’t. Gotrek didn’t have that problem. ‘And what has this to do with me?’ he said, almost hopefully.

‘Nothing,’ Axeson said. The word echoed in the silence of the temple. ‘In fact, you shouldn’t be here at all.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Gotrek snarled, a vein pulsing in his head. His own eye bulged and blazed with barely restrained fury. ‘Speak, priest, what do you mean?’

Before Axeson could reply, there came the deep, rolling sound of a war-horn. It echoed through the temple, and King Ironfist sat up straight on his throne, cursing. Felix couldn’t tell the difference between one horn blast and another, but the dwarfs reacted as if this one was different to the others. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s another assault,’ Garagrim growled, hefting his axes. ‘A big one,’ he added, smiling crookedly at Felix. ‘Gurnisson’s stunt in the Underway must have annoyed them.’

‘So?’ Gotrek snapped. He glared at Axeson. ‘Get back to this doom of yours, priest!’

Ironfist and his son were already heading for the doors, the hammerers marching in formation around them. There was neither discussion nor argument. They simply moved as one, knowing their priorities instinctively. Ironfist paused at the doors and turned back. ‘Son of Gurni, if you are interested in a doom, there will be more than one on the walls!’ he called out.

‘Listen to him, Gurnisson,’ Axeson said, locking eyes with Gotrek. It was something few others had ever done, and Felix found himself quietly impressed with the aged priest. ‘I will still be here when you are finished.’

‘Maybe I will find my doom here,’ Gotrek said, not looking away.

‘Do you really believe that?’ Axeson said.

Gotrek flushed. His teeth surfaced from his beard, flashing in a tiger’s grimace. He was working himself up to a killing fury, Felix knew. ‘Gotrek,’ he said. Gotrek hesitated, and then looked away from Axeson.

‘Let’s go, manling,’ he said, stumping past. ‘I want to kill something.’

Felix made to follow him. A hand on his wrist stopped him. He looked down at Axeson.

‘Keep him alive, Remembrancer,’ Axeson said quietly. It wasn’t just a warning, he thought, but almost a plea. Felix blinked, suddenly uncertain. Gotrek was already gone, following the others. Felix nodded jerkily in reply to the grim-faced priest and hurried after the Slayer.

CHAPTER SIX

Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

‘Tell me of the road, Grettir, and you will live another day,’ Garmr said to his cousin, as he stood atop the war-shrine and placed another skull. It was the fifth today, and it was still red and raw and wet.

At the foot of the shrine, Grettir gazed hatefully up at his enslaver and said, ‘The road is blocked, as it was yesterday and the day before, cousin.’

Garmr grunted, one steel-shod finger tapping the skull. ‘Karak Kadrin still stands.’

‘Of course it still stands,’ Grettir spat, hauling at the chains that held his slim form bound to the altar. He was, or had been, a tall man, as tall as Garmr. Now he was hunched and broken from years of being dragged behind the war-altar he was chained to. More chains criss-crossed his chest and arms like a harness, making it hard for him to move or even breathe. His robes, once fine and the colours of magic itself, were now soiled and stiff with grime. His hands were locked in taloned golden gauntlets and they flexed as if aching to unleash the magics which were his birthright. Instead, the fingers curled into tight fists and he glared at his cousin’s back through the hundred and one eyes which blinked on the surface of his crystal mask.

‘Of course it still stands,’ he said again. ‘It stands because you dragged half of your army away to do… What? What are we doing here, cousin?’

Garmr glanced at Grettir. ‘So much spite, Many-Eyes,’ he murmured. ‘What a warrior you would have made.’

Grettir snarled wordlessly and jerked at his chains. Garmr chuckled and turned back to the skull. He ran his fingers over it, tracing sharp patterns in the red. Then, abruptly, he turned and strode down the eight stairs of the altar and jerked his axe free from where he’d embedded it in the ground. With one hand he grabbed Grettir, and with the other, he swung the axe down, severing the chains that held the sorcerer tied to the altar.

The war-altar and shrines sat amidst the ragged camp that the army had created amidst the crevices and crags of the Peak Pass, and the nooks and crannies of the nearby mountains were now stuffed with skulls. Garmr had collected thousands since he’d left the far north, and their placement was the careful work of weeks. Auguries had been cast, and each skull had its place. Some had been set into the ground like paving stones. Others had been hung from the scabrous trees which clung stubbornly to the hills. Still more had been placed in cracks in the stones of the slopes. Eight had been nailed to the walls of a long abandoned dwarf outpost. Three had been hung carefully from the neck of a wild griffon, though it had cost the hanger’s life to do so. The creature had gone mad, bucking and screaming, and flown off.

Orcs and worse things occupied these peaks, and his army had spent their time here well. There were enemies aplenty, including the servants of lesser gods. Garmr glanced to the side as he hauled Grettir along. A lithe warrior, hermaphroditic and alluring even now in its agony, dangled from a roughly constructed wooden ‘X’. Shreds of black robes and the ragged remnants of pink and cerulean armour hung from its androgynous form as it strained against the brass spikes set into its hands and feet.

The Slaaneshi had attacked soon after they’d begun to travel up the serpentine length of the Peak Pass. They had a fortress here, in a fallen dwarf hold somewhere in the deep mountains, many hundreds of miles to the north. Hundreds of hell-striders, men with coruscating tattoos, riding hideous daemon-things that were more serpent than horse and more woman than serpent, had ridden down on Garmr’s army in an orgy of violence, accompanied by scything hellflayers and screaming seeker chariots. Horsemen had clashed in the narrow crags, and Garmr himself had brought this one, a rival champion, down, shearing through the neck of its mount with one blow of his axe.

It had put up a semi-respectable fight, even then, leaping and slashing with its wailing, weeping spear. Garmr had easily silenced the spear’s noise and had beaten the champion to the ground. He’d considered killing it then and there, and taking its skull, but the potential for future amusement had stayed his hand. They were fragile, the Slaaneshi, but they recovered quickly enough.

Garmr stopped, looking up at it. It snarled down at him, a long, serpentine tongue extending from its lamprey mouth, the stinger on the tip jabbing uselessly at the air between them. Garmr laughed. ‘Look at it, cousin. Look at the weakness that it embraces.’

‘One man’s weakness is another man’s strength, cousin,’ Grettir said. Garmr looked at him, his gaze unreadable behind his snarling helm.

‘What would you know of strength?’ Garmr asked softly. ‘You chose the path of weakness, cousin. Our tribe would spit on you.’

‘You mean if you hadn’t slaughtered them?’ Grettir spat. ‘You mean if you hadn’t butchered every single one of them, including my wife and children, your nieces and nephews – our kin!’

‘It was an honour. Their skulls are the roots of the road, cousin.’ Garmr stared in incomprehension at the cursing sorcerer. ‘They would have understood.’

‘What would you know about it?’ Grettir barked, throwing Garmr’s words back into his face. ‘I cast my lot with the Changer to find a way to teach you the error of your ways, cousin. I sold my soul for vengeance.’

‘You sold it cheaply then,’ Garmr said, chuckling. ‘The Changer delivered you into my grasp quickly enough. You should be grateful I didn’t simply kill you out of hand.’

‘I’ll make you wish you had,’ Grettir snarled.

‘Maybe. But until then, you have your uses. Bring a beast,’ Garmr roared out, dragging Grettir into the centre of the camp. ‘I would speak to my servants.’

Slaves wearing little more than scars and collars hustled to obey; one of the massive gorebeasts, mutated animals fit only for labour, war or slaughter, was jerked forwards on heavy chains by dozens of slaves. It shrilled as it was hauled from the traces of the chariot it had been attached to and thrust out with its horns and talons. Its porcine jaws slammed shut on a slave who got too close and the man’s howl of agony was cut short as he was flung into the air and trampled beneath the creature’s claw-hooves. It bucked and kicked, crushing bone and pulverizing men with every wild motion.

Nevertheless, the slaves managed to drag it towards Garmr, who shoved Grettir to the ground and raised his axe. The gorebeast shrugged the slaves off with a last burst of frantic strength and gave a deafening grunt as it charged forwards. Garmr didn’t move. As the beast drew within an arms-length of him, Garmr’s axe crashed down, splitting its brute skull from crown to chin. The beast dropped to the ground, dead on the instant. Its back legs lashed out, once, and then it was still.

Garmr pulled his axe free and gestured. Slaves hurried forwards, grabbing the beast’s legs and hauling it over onto its back. Garmr put a foot on its chest and split its sternum with another stroke of his axe, opening its chest wide. Then, at a slight motion, warriors lunged forwards, grabbing several slaves before they could scurry away. A gibbet, heavy with meat-hooks and iron chains, was wheeled forwards and the struggling slaves had their arms lashed to their sides and their ankles tied together as they wailed and howled. Then, one by one, they were hung upside down on the gibbet, their heads dangling over the gaping cavity of the dead beast’s torso.

‘Ekaterina,’ Garmr said. ‘Fill the bowl.’

The sharp-toothed woman slid forwards through the crowd, holding a curved blade in one hand. With practised efficiency, she slit the throat of each slave in turn, cooing and gently scolding the next in line as she did so. Blood spilled into the dead beast, overflowing its split ribcage. When each slave was silent and draining, Ekaterina stepped back, her tongue caressing the dagger’s blade.

‘Work your witchery, cousin,’ Garmr said, looking at Grettir. ‘Show me what I wish to see.’

Grettir leaned over the blood-soaked carcass, grunting in distaste. His clawed fingers cut the air above the blood, swirling it. Garmr watched intently, hungry for something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

The hunger, the need, had been with him for centuries as mortals judged such things. He had spent what seemed like millennia wreathed in the comforting savagery of the eternal battle which raged across the northern pole. Garmr had fought his way there from the lands of the Kvelligs, butchering hundreds in the process. He led armies and warbands and marched alone when no one else was left. He had clawed his way ever northwards, drawn by the scent of the Blood God’s breath.

Farther and farther north he went until he entered the mad cacophony of the Eternal Battle, where immortal armies waged unceasing war. Brazen fortresses rose over blistered veldts of hairy flesh and plague-clouds spurted from brightly-hued rocks. It was everything he could have wished.

There, amid the cosmic blood-letting, Garmr had earned the title ‘Gorewolf’, bathing in seas and messes of blood, piling skulls to Khorne. And it seemed to him, in those heady days of war, that Khorne’s fiery gaze fell upon him and found his efforts good. As Garmr’s strength waxed, so too did his prestige. Chieftains and captains and heroes flocked to his banner, killing each other just for the chance to serve him. He roamed the Wastes, spreading the Gospel of Murder.

But it had not been enough. It was never enough.

‘I can drink an ocean of blood, and my belly will not burst,’ Garmr murmured. It was something Hrolf was fond of saying, and for Garmr it was the truth. He looked away from Grettir’s display. It would take time for his cousin to shape his auguries. Every minute not spent in pursuit of Khorne’s will felt wasted and the urge to kill rose in him. It was a sign that he was favoured. And why would he not be favoured? Was he not the Gorewolf? Had he not taken the skulls of the mightiest champions? Was he not the one who had defeated the King of Skin and the Howling Queen? Had he not taken the spine-ring of the Gynander? Had he not bound the Slaughter-Hound?

At that thought, he shifted slightly, feeling the red haze of the Slaughter-Hound as it prowled the crags nearby. Brute-thoughts, mere bursts of desire and frustration, sizzled up and down their mental link, enhancing his hunger for battle. The Slaughter-Hound was always hungry. It was always angry. It existed in a state of constant berserkgang, never calming, never sleeping, but only killing, even as he once had.

It was not a thing of Khorne, not really. And yet Khorne had gifted it to him. Khorne had led him to it, had delivered Grettir into his hands, giving him the tools necessary to bind it. It was as much a part of Garmr as Hrolf’s beast was of him.

Ulfrgandr, the Slaughter-Hound, the Great Beast of the Tenth Peak, whose jaws had cracked the scales of Scaljagmir the toad-dragon, and whose claws had shredded the Storm-Pillars of the Mountainous Hierophant. The beast whose heart now beat in time to his and whose bloodlust he could feel. It was unstoppable and immortal and as a consequence, so too was Garmr. Bound to the beast as he was, he was unkillable as long as it lived. And there was nothing short of Khorne himself that could slay the Slaughter-Hound. His fury fed the beast and calmed the red tides that washed his soul. It took the war-madness from his eyes and let him see the world clearly.

It had let him see that the world was not enough. There was more to be had. There were greater battles, wars undreamt of by mortal man, waged on worlds far from this, against enemies unseen. An eternity of slaughter beneath the stars was what he wanted.

The Eternal Battle was what he desired, not just to participate, but to spread it. He would banish the barriers that kept the Chaos Wastes confined and the Eternal Battle, the war without end, would spread with the Wastes, engulfing the wide world in a conflagration of cosmic proportions. Khorne would teach men new ways to revel and rejoice and kill and the world would become a cinder, burned clean by unceasing slaughter. A battlefield as wide as the horizon, and enemies everywhere, that was what Garmr wanted. That was what all of this was for.

Warriors murmured. Garmr’s eyes snapped open. Grettir’s ritual was reaching its crescendo.

A pillar of blood had risen from the dead beast’s carcass, coruscating reds and browns that shimmered with buried images. Grettir dragged his talons through the shimmering column, painting the air with great sweeps of blood that did not splatter or fall. At his gesture, the bones of the carcass punctured the flesh and rose with splintering cracks and crunches, forming a floating ring that spun about the column of blood like a halo, and intestines draped over the broken bones like decorations. The creature’s hide ripped and spread like a carpet and faces that hissed and babbled in a hundred different tongues rose on the mangled hide like blisters. The bones cracked and shed layers, unravelling like scrolls as strange writing was scratched into them by unseen talons.

Grettir stepped onto the carpet of faces and tapped the bone-scrolls with the tips of his fingers, and then sank his arms into the column of blood. His hands moved and worked at something unseen and faces and words formed in the viscous liquid, showing distant events.

He saw his army crash like a wave against the high walls of the outer fortress that barred their path, surging and retreating as the dwarfs met them and forced them back. He saw cramped tunnels. He saw a one-eyed dwarf, and an axe cutting contrails of fire in the dark. He saw it all and he let loose an anticipatory breath.

‘Is he the one?’ he said. ‘The Doom-Seeker?’

Grettir dropped his hands and the blood slopped downwards, splashing over everything. Bones fell and the faces diminished with soft, lingering sighs. ‘Who can say, cousin?’ he said. He looked at Garmr. ‘Why not ask your god yourself, cousin, since you two are so close–’

Garmr’s hand slashed out and Grettir toppled backwards, falling into the mess of the dead beast. ‘Even my tolerance has limits, Grettir. There are sorcerers aplenty, should I require one.’ Before Grettir could reply, Garmr turned away and stalked towards his tent, his mind occupied by the image of the one-eyed Slayer.

Was he the one?

Yes. Yes, he had to be. Why else would he have seen him in the augury? Yes. He was the one. Garmr would take his skull. And then the road would be complete and the world would drown in War Everlasting.

‘Skulls for the Skull Throne,’ he said.

Karak Kadrin,
the Walls of Baragor’s Watch

Outside the palace, the air had darkened. More smoke, augmented by the crackle of flames. As he stepped away from the doors, Felix saw more dwarfs heading for the walls. The tide of refugees seemed undiminished, and he feared what would happen if the wall fell before they were through the last portcullis. It would be a slaughter of monumental proportions. ‘How are they going to get them all across in time?’ he said.

‘We will buy them the time in blood,’ King Ironfist said, almost cheerfully. ‘That is what dwarfs do best, Felix Jaeger. We sell lives to hold back the inevitable.’ His hammerers had formed up around him in a phalanx and they started towards the stairs that would take them to the parapet. ‘It will be glorious, manling, glorious!’

‘I haven’t seen Ungrim that happy in a long time,’ Gotrek said grimly.

‘Well, he is a Slayer,’ Felix said.

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said, after a moment. ‘Let’s go, manling, there’s no sense in letting him have all of the fun.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Felix said, as he followed the Slayer. The parapet was crowded with dwarfs, most of whom were sitting down, resting after the stresses of the last attack. Grudge throwers and bolt throwers sat silent and ready, and keen-eyed crossbowmen picked off Chaos marauders who got too close to the wall. On the wide landings set below the parapet at regular intervals, dwarfs gathered around cooking fires and drank ale and beer and gambled, even as warning horns sounded and others struggled to get back to their posts.

Biter was the centre of attention in one of the latter groups, flinging bone dice with more energy than skill and crowing over every roll whether it was successful or not. Felix watched the Slayer for a moment, wondering what shame crouched in him, driving him. Had he always been so boisterous, or was it, like Gotrek’s reticence, a facet of the life he had chosen?

‘They retreated into the cover of the lower wall after that last sortie, but they’re ready for another go, by the look of them,’ Biter called out as Gotrek and Felix climbed past him.

‘Good,’ Gotrek said loudly. ‘So am I.’

Garagrim and his warriors were already atop the parapet, when they reached it, looking down at the heaving mass of Chaos marauders, who seemed less concerned with the enemy before them than each other. As Felix reached the top, he looked down. The Chaos forces had, for all intents and purposes, carved a canyon through the lower wall of Baragor’s Watch, steadily knocking holes in each section of wall and spilling through those gaps into the next ring of the fortress. They had paid for their methodical advance in oceans of blood, but such losses seemed only to have inflamed them, rather than sapping their courage.

‘What in Sigmar’s name are they doing?’ he said as he looked down. Below, Chaos marauders fought each other with as much fury as they’d shown the dwarfs. A closer look showed him that not all of them were involved, but only select groups. Champions, he supposed. ‘They’ll finish each other off at that rate,’ he muttered.

‘They’re followers of the Blood God, manling,’ Gotrek said, leaning over the parapet to watch. ‘When no enemy is at hand, they’ll tear their own guts out just to see some blood.’ The Slayer spat and turned away. ‘Like as not, they’re simply deciding who’ll lead the assault,’ he said.

Felix didn’t reply. His attention had been caught by a heavily armoured man who stood on a collapsed section of the fourth wall and watched the sprawling combat playing out below him, his posture one of attentive satisfaction. Felix studied him. He was a big man, with a serpentine length of beard that hung down to his waist, the end capped with a round ball. His hair was loose and whipped around his head like a black halo in the breeze. His armour was crafted of thick, stained plates and his gauntlets rested on the haft of the large axe planted head-first on the wall between his feet.

‘Offhand, I’d say it’s him,’ he said, gesturing. Gotrek snorted.

‘Aye, likely you’re right.’ He peered at the distant champion and pursed his lips. ‘He’d make a fight, by the look of him.’

‘He’s mine, Gurnisson,’ Garagrim said, striding over to join them. He puffed out his chest. ‘I am War-Mourner of Karak Kadrin and it is only fitting that the leader of the enemy be my doom.’

‘If you get to him first, beardling, be my guest,’ Gotrek said, grinning insolently. The grin slid from his face as he looked back towards the fallen wall. As Gotrek spat a curse, Felix followed his gaze. A duo of heavy machines was being pulled through the gaps in the wall by a number of ogres. The brutes were heavily scarred and their limbs were chained together, and there were cruel-looking collars about their thick necks.

Suddenly, the air was filled with a particular sort of tension. Every dwarf on the parapet, Slayer and clansman alike, had a look of intense loathing on their faces. Mutters and curses slipped quietly into the air. Felix looked from the dwarfs back to the devices, which he thought must be the war machines of the enemy. The engines were harsh-looking things, heavy with what he thought were unnecessary scalloped blades and scything edges. One was recognizably a cannon of some sort, while the second machine appeared to be some form of bolt thrower. The ogres pulling them had the dull look Felix associated with broken farm animals, beasts used to the lash and the chain. Regardless, they still looked fully capable of ripping a man’s head off with one twist of a meaty paw.

Felix wondered what it was about the machines that had set the dwarfs off, but before he could even attempt to frame the question, the reason became obvious. Two squat figures stumped into view through the ruined section of third wall to join the machines. They wore coats of dark, burnished mail and cuirasses of complex design. Heavy helms sat on their squat heads, and great beards flared out from their jutting chins. One carried a heavy glaive, while the other rested his palms on the butts of the two pistols holstered around his waist. Their faces were twisted into expressions of brutish malice and cold-blooded glee as they surveyed the obstacle before them.

Felix felt a rush of horror fill him as he stared at the twisted mockeries of dwarf-kind. His mouth felt dry and he looked at Gotrek. The Slayer’s teeth were exposed in a snarl that conveyed the millennia-old grudge of the dwarfs for their corrupted kin. Felix had heard dark legends of such Chaos dwarfs, though he’d never attempted to broach the subject with Gotrek, thinking the former merely a slanderous myth and not wanting to antagonize the latter.

‘Gotrek,’ he said softly. ‘Are they–?’

‘The dawi zharr,’ Gotrek spat.

As Felix watched in horrified fascination, the Chaos dwarfs saw to the placement of their war machines. A whip was uncoiled and snapped, directing the ogres. The cannon was a massive construct of iron and brass that seemed to growl and shake in its traces like a beast of prey as the ogres shifted it into position behind a bulwark of toppled stone. The great chains used to move it were then attached securely to the ground by iron stakes and the furnace attached to the rear was wrenched open by an ogre. A burst of predatory heat escaped from it, washing over the ogre and sending the poor beast into paroxysms of agony. It fell to the ground, its body cracked and blistered. The Chaos dwarf with the pistols stomped towards the groaning ogre and drew one of his weapons, an expression of annoyance flashing across his barbaric features even as he shot the brute in the head. At a barked command from the Chaos dwarf, the dead ogre was swiftly torn apart by his fellows, whose gleaming, sweat-streaked muscles bunched as they each grabbed a limb and twisted. Then each chunk was tossed into the waiting furnace. Felix looked away as more bodies, Chaos marauder and dwarf alike, followed.

That there were masses of Chaos marauders between the cannon and the wall did not seem to concern the Chaos dwarfs. Steaming liquid dripped from the end of the cannon’s barrel and it melted the stone of the ground where it fell.

The second device was smaller than the other, but Gotrek’s grunt of concern caught Felix’s attention. ‘Rockets,’ the Slayer said, scratching his beard. ‘No wonder they got through the walls so quickly.’

‘Aye, Gurnisson,’ Garagrim said. ‘They can clear a parapet with one of those.’

‘You should have led a sortie to destroy them when you had the chance,’ Gotrek spat. Garagrim flushed and half raised his axes.

‘We did,’ Ungrim said, bustling towards them, his axe balanced on his shoulder and the thumb of his free hand tucked into his belt. A cloak of dragon scales hung from his shoulders and his crown gleamed in the weak, smoky light of day. ‘But the dawi zharr can repair those devices of theirs as quickly as we can spike ’em. Not to mention that they’ve never brought them this close to our lines before today.’ The King of Karak Kadrin hawked up a gobbet of spit and sent it sailing over the parapet. ‘No, they want to be in at the kill now, the bastards.’

‘How long have you known that they were out there?’ Gotrek said, almost accusingly. Ungrim frowned.

‘Does it matter?’ he said, looking towards the machines.

Gotrek’s scowl spoke volumes. But before he could reply, the air was split by a whistling shriek that had everyone groping to cover their ears. A moment later, a thunderous boom cracked the sky and then, farther down the parapet, a huge chunk of stone was blasted free, carrying dwarfs with it to their doom. The whole wall shuddered from the impact and Felix nearly lost his balance. ‘What in Sigmar’s name was that?’ he shouted.

‘Mortar,’ Gotrek roared. ‘There’s a Grimnir-be-damned mortar out there somewhere!’

As if that had been the signal he had been waiting for, the Chaos leader lifted his huge axe in one hand and flung out his other towards the fifth wall. He roared out a single word that Felix needed no one to translate for him. With a communal roar that shook him down to his bones, the Chaos forces launched themselves to the attack.

The dwarfs responded swiftly. Signal horns wailed and crossbows and handguns spoke, dropping the first ranks of the attackers as they sought to clear the distance to the wall. The withering hail of fire did little to diminish the Chaos marauders’ enthusiasm. Fallen banners and siege-ladders were scooped up from the hands of the dead and dying by those who trampled over them, and the armoured shapes of Chaos warriors chivvied the mortals along, urging them to greater speed with hoarse, hollow bellows.

More dwarfs joined those already on the parapet. Ungrim marched up and down, shouting out encouragement and orders in a booming voice. The dour being that they had met in the palace had been replaced by an eager berserker, Felix realized with a chill. Garagrim took up position amongst his men and clashed his axes over his head in an eagerness that rivalled his father’s. He began to sing a war-song, his voice carrying with more strength than rhythm.

For his part, Gotrek waited silently, his eye locked on the enemy commander. As Felix watched, the Chaos champion stalked down towards a waiting bodyguard of malformed, armoured shapes. A moment later, they joined the flow of bloodthirsty bodies sweeping towards the wall, their banners lost amongst the sea of such that rose and shook over the army. Gotrek grunted and shook himself. He gave Felix a grin. ‘Prophecies be damned, eh, manling? Give me a battle any day.’

Felix didn’t reply. His blood had frozen in his veins. With a shaking voice, he said, ‘Gotrek, look. What are those things?’

Titanic shapes loomed over the warriors scrambling ahead of them towards the walls. They shoved their way through the ruins, scattering rubble in their wake. They were immense, far larger than any living thing had a right to be, and when they roared, the sky itself seemed to shiver in fright. The lumpy, awkward figures strode forwards, heedlessly crushing men with every step. They were clad in piecemeal armour, and great plates were seemingly riveted to their gangly limbs. Faces that were yards across squirmed and grimaced in berserk pain within cruel helmets.

As he watched in growing horror, a bolt thrower on the wall fired, sending an arrow the size of a man towards one of the giants. The bolt struck the overlapping armour plates and shattered, the force of the blow barely staggering the monstrosity. Indeed, it only seemed to spur the beast and it roared and stumbled forwards, raising its arms to reveal that its hands had been cruelly amputated and replaced with massive steel hook-blades that looked as if they could pull apart stone.

Another beast had a set of flails attached to its forearm stumps, each length of chain tipped by a weighted iron sphere. It jerked its arms and the flails swung ponderously. The third had wide-bladed pick-axes, each as large as an ore-cart, chained to its gauntleted hands and it clashed them together in a discordant cacophony as it stomped forwards.

In addition to their weapons, each of the monsters wore a heavy harness of chains and ropes that swung about their legs. As Felix watched, the boldest among the men who ran around the giants’ feet clambered up the ropes and chains with wild shouts. The walls trembled beneath Felix’s feet with every step the creatures took.

‘Siege-giants,’ Gotrek said, and spat. ‘Prepare yourself, manling. They intend to tear this wall apart and us with it.’

The giants stomped forwards, their cries of mingled anger and agony washing over the defenders. Felix wanted nothing more than to run, to jump down from the wall and to go elsewhere. Anywhere was better than here. Gotrek, in contrast, seemed to be right where he wanted to be.

‘Grungni, they’re huge,’ a dwarf said in a horrified voice.

Felix turned to see the dwarf stepping back from the wall, his eyes wide. He held his axe loosely, as if he’d forgotten he had it. He saw Felix looking at him and he said, ‘How do we beat them?’

‘You fight,’ Garagrim snarled, hooking the dwarf’s arm with the curve of his axe. Blood ran in thin rivulets where blade met flesh, and Felix felt a stab of pity.

‘Leave him,’ Gotrek rumbled.

Garagrim glared at the other Slayer. ‘Who are you to give me orders, Gurnisson?’

‘No one,’ Gotrek said, stepping past Felix. Garagrim stepped back, pulling his axe away from the dwarf, and Gotrek took the latter by the bicep. His eye narrowed. ‘When we were crafted, fear was not part of our forging,’ he said, so softly that Felix almost didn’t catch it.

The dwarf looked at him, mouth open as if he wanted to reply. Gotrek met his questioning look squarely and said, simply, ‘Turn around.’

The dwarf stiffened and turned back to the wall, his jaw and throat working, his eyes wide. Garagrim met Gotrek’s gaze and nodded sharply. Gotrek grunted and turned back to the wall, his eye on the giants. Felix noted, however, that the taciturn Slayer stayed within grabbing distance of the dwarf. Whether perhaps to prevent another outburst, or simply to provide some form of comfort, Felix couldn’t say.

Then, there was no more time to think of anything save survival. The fastest of the siege-giants had reached the walls, its flails lashing out in wide, wild blows. Vast swathes of ancient rock were scoured from the wall as the weapons connected and the parapet was cracked and shattered in that first explosive stroke. Dwarfs were sent hurtling from the wall, their bodies bent and twisted by the force of the blow. Shrapnel filled the air as the giant set about methodically smashing the wall and those who stood upon it to flinders.

Felix ducked beneath a flying chunk of stone and ran to join Gotrek as he charged heedlessly towards the monster, his lips peeled back in a wild grin. A length of chain cut the air with a whistle and Felix felt it pass just over his head as he hunched low. This close, the giant stank of decay and he felt sickened as he saw that its armour had been riveted to its very flesh. Blood and pus wept from the joins and seams of its armour as it struck about it with its flails. No wonder the brute was in pain.

The massive sphere topping one of the flails struck the parapet in front of Gotrek, splintering the stonework. The Slayer didn’t stop. Instead, he propelled himself into the air, through the cloud of dust and stone shards. His axe licked out, chopping into rust-riddled armour plating. And then he was in the air, hooked to the giant’s arm as it brought its flails back for another blow. Felix didn’t stop to watch. He leapt straight up as a second set of flails skidded across the parapet just beneath his feet, and landed awkwardly, pain shooting up his leg. The chains rasped as the giant pulled them back, but Felix was already moving. Crossbows thrummed as dwarf quarrellers fired at the beast.

The second giant had moved off, and the great hooked blades it had in place of hands chopped straight through the wall before becoming lodged in the stone somewhere in the middle. As the beast struggled to free itself, the men who’d caught a ride on its chain and rope-bedecked harness swarmed up and across it onto the damaged wall.

Felix moved towards them, leaving the giant to Gotrek. Once again, he thought of Axeson’s words, but he brushed the thought aside. There was little he could do to help Gotrek in any event. Karaghul vibrated in his hands as he brought it down on a hastily interposed shield made of crudely beaten metal, with strange glyphs and markings scattered across its surface. The warrior who bore it shoved Felix back with a growl and struck at him with an axe. Felix gave a frantic shout and grabbed the man’s matted beard, and jerked his head down against the stone of the parapet. His head cracked like an egg.

Behind them, the siege-giant howled. Felix turned and saw that Gotrek had reached the rounded shoulder-guard and that his axe was buried in the giant’s cheek-guard. As he watched, Gotrek wrenched his blade free and chopped it in again. He was hacking at the armour, trying to get at the creature within. Marauders were climbing up towards him, intent on stopping him from killing their living war machine, or perhaps just intent on killing Gotrek.

Something grabbed him and jerked him aside even as a sword looped towards him. ‘Watch yourself, Jaeger. If you lose your head, Gurnisson will be inconsolable, I have no doubt.’ Felix turned and saw the gleam of metal teeth. The Slayer called Biter smiled up at him and then whirled him out of the way so that he could lunge past him with his mace. A Chaos marauder slumped, head burst like a melon. ‘Glad you could join us,’ Biter continued, flicking blood from his weapon.

‘Wouldn’t have missed it,’ Felix grunted.

‘That’s the spirit!’ Biter said cheerfully. ‘Oh look. More toys!’

Felix looked. Behind the siege-giants, siege-towers had been mobilized. They were, like everything else the enemy had constructed, brutal-looking things, built heavy and impossibly vile looking. They were pulled by teams of mutant spawn and mutated trolls, who roared and gibbered as they dragged the towers towards the wall. There weren’t many of them, but with most of the defenders concentrating on the trio of giants, they were unopposed as they drew close to the walls.

The third giant drove its shoulder into the wall further down, close to where King Ironfist had made his stand. The massive pick-axe in its hand slashed out, not at the rock, but at the dwarfs who stood on it. The armoured body of a hammerer flew backwards from the wall. Ungrim roared out a dour chant as his axe flashed, chopping through the haft of the giant’s weapon, shattering it. The giant screamed in rage and its second pick-axe sank into the parapet with a crash. With a jerk of its deceptively gangly limb, it tore a section of the wall away and flung it heedlessly behind it. A siege-tower exploded, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ungrim didn’t seem perturbed by this display of monstrous strength. He tossed his axe to his opposite hand and snatched up the hammer of one of his fallen guards. With a snarl worthy of the beast he faced, he crushed the skull of a marauder who’d dared to try the parapet.

Garagrim howled as he flung himself at the second giant. His twin axes clashed against the giant’s blades, causing it to jerk away from the wall. Felix heard the screams of the warriors it crushed beneath its heels. Then his view was obscured as a siege-tower smashed into the cracked and shattered parapet. Biter gave a pleased bark as the ramp dropped and marauders leapt out, almost as eager as the Slayer who went to meet them.

Felix saw Koertig wade into the warriors from the side. Biter’s Remembrancer fought without his charge’s glee. Felix could sympathise. He knew what it was to be pulled in the wake of a Slayer. It required a certain flexibility that he thought the Nordlander struggled with. Dwarfs hurried to join the duo in repelling the enemy. Felix left them to it, even as another tower joined the first. As the ramp fell, he set a foot on it and charged in. Biter followed him with a whoop.

In the sweltering darkness, Felix sliced Karaghul across the line of snarling faces. He had no thought save preventing any more of the enemy from getting onto the wall. A giant roared and there was a crash that shook the tower. What’s left of the wall, Felix thought grimly. Biter was screaming curses as he thrashed and battered at the marauders. Felix tried to protect the wild-haired Slayer as best he could.

A serrated spear-blade dug at him, opening a line along his face. One more scar for the collection. Warmth spilled down his neck and he stumbled, falling back against the wall. The spear came for him again, stabbing into the wood and bone of the tower.

With a stupefying crash, the top of the tower was ripped free by a tornado of slithering chains. The spearman was gone, ripped into the sky by the giant’s flail. Felix sank down, watching as the flail slashed down again, taking half of the siege-tower with it in a cascade of splintered wood and bone. The giant had staggered into the tower and was jerking and lashing out wildly, screaming in agony.

Gotrek clung to its head, one hand gripping the cheek-flap of its helm. The flap was attached to the flesh of its jowl, and every flex of Gotrek’s muscles pulled it painfully taut. The Slayer wielded his axe one-handed, slashing at the marauders who crawled like fleas across the giant’s shoulders and chest. A Chaos marauder was struck and he screamed as he was catapulted off the giant, trailing red.

‘That’s the way, Gurnisson! Ha-ha!’ Biter howled, shaking his mace. The siege-tower shuddered, already beginning to come apart thanks to the giant’s blow. Felix and Biter made it off just as the tower gave a groan and slumped, crashing down to the ground in stages. Another tower burned merrily, but there were more Chaos-worshippers on the parapet than off. The wall shuddered again as the hook-claw-armed giant tore singlemindedly at the stonework, despite the wounds Garagrim’s axes had made in its arms and shoulders. The War-Mourner himself was occupied by marauders, who swarmed around him, stabbing and hacking, trying to bring the princely Slayer down. Garagrim cleaved through ragged furs and primitive armour, but he was steadily pushed away from the giant despite his best efforts.

Biter caught Felix’s eye. ‘You handle yourself, Jaeger?’

Felix nodded brusquely. ‘Go help him,’ he said. Biter grinned and charged wildly towards the struggling knot centred on Garagrim. Felix swatted aside a heavy blade, nearly numbing his wrist in the process, as a marauder frothed at him. Karaghul spun up and across and the marauder staggered back, clutching at his face. Felix moved past him, pushing the wounded warrior over the parapet with his elbow as he went. It wasn’t strictly honourable, but as far as Felix was concerned, honour went out the window when it was life or death.

Gotrek had surmounted the siege-giant’s head. His axe drew sparks as he hammered at the helmet, seeking to crack it. The giant was no longer concerned with the wall; instead it pawed vainly at its head with its wrist stumps, its flails clattering as they struck its armour. It staggered away from the wall, and for a moment Felix feared that it would carry Gotrek out amidst the enemy. Then, the helmet split in two with a screech, tumbling from the giant’s head, tearing flaps of skin and scalp as it did so. The giant stiffened and gave an agonized shriek. Gotrek had one hand dug into the raw morass of the giant’s head, holding on for dear life. His axe came up and slammed down, right at the central point of the crown of the giant’s skull. Its shrieks became slurred and it staggered forwards, straight towards the section of wall Felix was occupying.

Felix threw himself out of the way as the monster collided with the wall, dislodging stone and shaking the edifice down to its roots. It collapsed, head and shoulders over the parapet, its flails striking ineffectually against the stone. Gotrek, still perched on its head, jerked his axe free and struck home again. The giant thrashed but it seemed unable to pull itself up. Gotrek roared out an oath and struck a third time. The giant gave a wheezing whine and went limp. A death-stink billowed from its massive carcass, washing over Felix, causing him to gag. Gotrek dropped off it onto the parapet. He was breathing heavily, and his entire frame was streaked with blood and sweat and grime. He grinned at Felix. ‘That one took a good bit of killing,’ he said. ‘Too stupid to know when they’re dead, these big ones.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Felix said.

‘What was that, manling?’

‘I said things look bad,’ Felix said. The wall was swamped; organized defence had given way to chaotic melee. Despite the dwarfs’ best efforts, the siege-giants had done their work and done it well. Whole sections of the wall were shattered and split by the war machines of the Chaos dwarfs, and Chaos marauders poured through the gaps on horseback or on foot, howling as they entered the inner keep.

The final wall had fallen.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Ekaterina spun, her curved blade licking out like the tongue of a serpent. The Norscan howled as she opened his guts to daylight. His companions backed away, nervous. The dying man sank to his knees and she used him as a springboard, lunging for the next. He narrowly blocked her blade, his eyes wide with fear. She could smell the stink of his weakness and it infuriated her. She hissed and bent back, hooking his ankle with her foot. As he fell, she split his skull. The third man screamed and charged. His axe lopped off a lock of her hair as she jerked her head out of the weapon’s path. Her sword caught him in the belly and with a cruel smile she dragged it upwards, angling to avoid the heart.

He gasped and slid off the blade. She watched him writhe dispassionately. His next few moments would determine his final fate. In satisfaction, she watched him flop forwards and try to lift his axe.

She walked around him, tracing the circumference of his scalp with the tip of her sword. ‘You are as brave as you boasted, Artok. Maybe you are worthy at that.’

He gave a wordless roar and swiped clumsily at her. She stepped on the flat of the axe and drove it down, and pierced his eyeball with the tip of her blade. With a casual shove, she perforated his brain and then retracted her sword smoothly. Artok toppled, dead.

Around her, the horde set up a roar. Weapons rattled and men shouted until they were hoarse. The madmen harnessed to the war-altars shrieked and snarled, pawing at the air. Ekaterina traced her fingers through the blood on her blade and stuck them in her mouth as she stepped over the bodies and sauntered towards her master.

The thought set a snarl rumbling in her belly. No man was her master. Not even a man like the Gorewolf. Once, maybe, he might have been, but she knew better now. There was only one master, and her oaths of loyalty to him were of sterner stuff than any foresworn words to a mortal warlord.

Garmr sat slumped in his throne-altar, watching her, his eyes as unreadable as ever. The lupine features of his helm resembled those of the leering face she saw sometimes in her dreams, but Garmr was only a pale imitation of the god he professed to serve.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘Two skulls for the road, my lord; the third stank of fear.’

Garmr grunted. She licked her fangs. ‘I have tested them, as they wished, and found two more step-stones for our Lord Khorne to march upon.’

Garmr nodded. At a lazy gesture, men scrambled forwards, skinning knives in their hands. Swiftly they set to work, freeing the skulls from their casings of flesh. The third body was dragged away, to be fed to the beasts. Ekaterina glanced at Grettir, who squatted, as always, beside Garmr’s throne like a malevolent toad. The eyes on his helm blinked in strange patterns and made her queasy if she looked at them for too long.

That Garmr had not yet killed the creature was incredible. They needed no sorcerers for their task, and she could feel Khorne’s displeasure thrumming through her every time Garmr sought his cousin’s auguries. But Garmr insisted on keeping the maggot alive. It was a folly on his part, one of many.

Garmr jerked on Grettir’s chain, pulling the sorcerer off his feet and into the dust. ‘Tell me of the road, cousin. Tell me what I wish to hear,’ he rumbled.

‘It is not yet complete. The skulls of barbarians, brave or not, you have aplenty. You lack keystones, cousin,’ Grettir spat. ‘I have told you that.’

‘Have you?’ Garmr snarled. ‘It grows harder to pierce the veil of your mewling and glean meaning.’

Something howled, as if to echo his snarl. Horses and gorebeasts screamed and squealed as the reverberations of the cry slithered over the rocks and sent daggers of ice into the nape of every warrior’s neck. Even Ekaterina shivered. The Slaughter-Hound bayed again, high in the wild crags. Something shrieked, the sound caught and buffeted by the deep, thunderous bay. A troll perhaps, or some devolved Chaos-beast following in the army’s wake. Regardless, the Slaughter-Hound had it now and it would soon be nothing at all.

On his throne, Garmr shuddered, and Ekaterina knew that he was seeing what the creature saw, and tasting the blood it tasted. She remembered Garmr before he had bound himself to the beast; he had been a warrior then, all blood and fire and ferocity. But something had changed. Spilling blood for Khorne was no longer enough for the Gorewolf. Something, some desire, ate at him. It had grown worse when he’d forced Grettir to bind the Slaughter-Hound, Ulfrgandr. In binding the beast, Garmr had lost something. His ferocity had dimmed and his love of battle had passed into the beast that loped on the far flanks, venting its fury on the world, rather than their enemies.

Garmr was no longer beloved of Khorne. She knew it, though she could not say how. She heard whispers sometimes, and the rattle of cloven hooves just out of sight. She felt hands on her shoulders, guiding her, stirring her rage to a fine white heat. Eyes like twin stars, red and dying, met hers and a soft voice, like the rasp of a cat’s claws on flesh, spoke in her head and she felt powerful.

‘Mistress,’ a voice said.

She turned. ‘Boris,’ she said. Her man was bulky, his face hidden behind a leather mask. He had followed her from the dark, distant times before she had taken her destiny and throttled it, and his composure now belied his rage in battle. ‘Well?’

‘He sent them, as you said,’ Boris growled. ‘Two riders, with news of the siege.’

‘What news?’ she said, feeling not hot now, but an icy calm.

‘They’ve taken the outer keep. The men said that Hrolf is dead’

She grunted and said, ‘And what of Canto and the others?’

‘They said nothing of Kung or Yan, but Canto demands that Garmr return,’ Boris said, his disdain evident. Ekaterina’s lips curled.

‘Coward,’ she muttered, but her contempt was tempered with thoughtfulness. The army at Karak Kadrin would fail. Garmr was counting on it, she knew. Another of Grettir’s blasted prophecies. But Canto was resourceful. Cunning, even, and more so than Hrolf, especially, and he would retreat, rather than die fighting. The question was, would he return, or would he flee west or further south?

‘What about the Hell-Worker?’ She would not weep if the stunted ones were killed; she had little love for their clanking contraptions, and could not imagine that Khorne favoured those who used them. Two of Khorreg’s assistants – daemon-smiths, they called themselves – still remained with the horde, overseeing the growling, shuddering hellcannon that the dawi zharr had brought at Garmr’s request. As much as she despised the stunted creatures, she liked their war-engines even less. Something about the cannon put her in mind of the Slaughter-Hound; it was all crouching menace and bloody promise. It ached to break its chains and destroy all that lay in its path. While she could well understand its feelings in that regard, she had no wish to be in its path should it ever gain its freedom.

‘He still lives,’ Boris grunted. She nodded. If Khorreg fell, it was likely that the remaining dawi zharr would leave the horde. Garmr’s bargain had been with the Hell-Worker alone, after all. She had intimated to Yan that if something were to happen to the Hell-Worker, it would be all to the good.

‘What of the messengers?’ she said.

‘We did as asked,’ Boris said and mimed slitting his throat.

Ekaterina nodded, satisfied. Garmr grew more impatient by the hour and every day without news drove him to use Grettir to see what was going on. The horde could sense their lord’s impatience and were growing restive. The battle with the Slaaneshi had not been enough. More and more fights broke out by the day, as the warriors’ bloodlust sought an outlet among their closest companions. The army would be drowning in blood within days or else be on the move, as Khorne willed.

Someone laughed. She turned and saw Grettir watching her. Garmr was preoccupied, watching the images the sorcerer had conjured in the puddles of blood spilled by her opponents. She lifted her blade and raised the sorcerer’s chin with the tip. ‘What amuses you so, Many-Eyes?’

‘A great number of things, woman,’ Grettir said, shuffling forwards, his chains rattling. He let her blade drift across his windpipe and past his jaw. ‘Do you plot treachery, or aid?’ he hissed. ‘What thread do you pluck?’

‘I serve the Blood God,’ she said, stepping back. Grettir smelled of thunderstorms and sugar and her stomach lurched.

‘Of course you do,’ he said. ‘We all do.’

‘Not you.’

‘Don’t I?’ Grettir said. ‘Not willingly, I admit.’

Ekaterina chuckled and sheathed her sword. ‘What do you care what I do, sorcerer?’ she said.

‘I don’t. I am merely curious.’

‘A lie,’ she said.

Grettir shrugged. ‘You intend to challenge him. He will kill you.’

Ekaterina’s smile faded. She longed to split his skull and spill his crooked mind in the dirt. ‘You have seen this?’ she demanded. She immediately regretted it. That was Garmr’s weakness, not hers.

Grettir chuckled. It was a wet sound. ‘I see many things. This, I simply know. You are not strong enough to challenge him. That is why you are still alive,’ he said.

Grettir stepped back and shuffled away, leaving her standing staring after him. Ekaterina looked at Garmr, slouched on his throne, his great helm nodding, though whether in sleep or boredom she could not say. For a moment, it seemed as if he were cloaked in the shadows of great wings. And then the moment passed and Ekaterina’s hand slipped to the hilt of her sword, her fingers playing across the pommel.

She gnawed on her lip with a fang and then turned away. In the depths of the camp, she found Bolgatz the Bone-Hammer and Vasa the Lion. As she came upon them, Vasa sank curved fangs into the neck of a horse that had been strung up on chains from a tree. As the creature kicked and shrieked, he tore out its throat and chewed hungrily. He was a big man, bigger than any who followed him; almost a giant, with rolling muscles covered in fur the hue of rust, and he had the head of the beast he was named for. Feline jaws worked methodically as he chewed the meat, his eyes tracking her warily. Claws slid from his fingers as he reached for the heavy broadsword sheathed on his hip.

Bolgatz sat nearby sharpening the bone spurs that jutted from his hands with a whetstone. The Bone-Hammer had been named such for good reason; his fists could shatter armour and he had ripped beasts and men alike apart with his bare hands. Bolgatz’s fame had been assured when he had crushed and eaten the contents of the skull of the great Shaggoth Hurgrim Peakgouger.

Their warbands, along with hers, comprised more than half of the remaining warriors of the horde. Like she and Canto and the rest, they had given oaths of servitude to the Gorewolf, and they chafed beneath them, now more than ever. It was easy to follow another into battle, but this sitting had frayed their tempers and weakened whatever bonds of loyalty they felt for Garmr.

‘Hail, Ekaterina of Kislev,’ Bolgatz rumbled. ‘The Bone-Hammer greets his sister-warrior.’

‘And I greet you, Bone-Hammer,’ she said, inclining her head. ‘And you, Vasa.’

‘Woman,’ Vasa said, licking his bloody jowls. ‘Come to challenge me at last?’

‘Not today,’ she said, smirking. ‘Though it is challenges I wish to speak of…’

Karak Kadrin,
Baragor’s Watch

Gotrek cursed, and Felix knew he was contemplating hurling himself onto the sea of enemy troops pouring into the hold. The sound of horns filled the air and Felix turned to see Garagrim hurrying towards them, his remaining men following him. ‘Fall back across the bridge, Gurnisson, unless you’d like to find your doom out here,’ Garagrim said stomping past Gotrek.

‘Fall back? We’ve got them right where we want them!’ Gotrek blustered.

‘You mean in control of Baragor’s Watch, running riot?’ Felix said, hurrying after Garagrim.

Gotrek said nothing, but Felix took his silence for assent, and the Slayer followed them. Dwarfs still struggled with knots of Chaos marauders on the crumbling wall, even as most of the surviving defenders made a fighting retreat across the stone walkways that connected the two walls. War-engines rained death on the Chaos marauders pouring into the space between the walls even as lines of dwarf quarrellers and thunderers blasted those on the parapets to cover the withdrawal of their comrades. But the Chaos forces had war-engines of their own; screaming rockets spiralled into the remaining wall, opening great craters in its surface.

Felix knew with sickening certainty that the last wall would not hold for long. Not against a concentrated assault. As they joined the withdrawal, Gotrek stared longingly at the remaining two giants. ‘Stay, if you wish,’ Felix said, disregarding Axeson’s warning to him. Gotrek shook his head and grunted.

‘There is a grander doom awaiting me than this,’ Gotrek said.

‘Besides, it’s not like you’d die anyway,’ Biter said, flashing his metal teeth at the other Slayer. He and two other Slayers were standing beside the great stone bridge that connected the outer keep to the plateau of Karak Kadrin, waiting for the other dwarfs to pass them. ‘Care to help us hold the last path, Gurnisson?’ Biter asked. ‘The engineers will need time to break the keystones and collapse the pathways, and we thought it might be a nice gesture on our part to give them that time, eh?’

‘No! Let him hold some other path,’ another Slayer snapped. Felix recognized him as the same one who’d first called Gotrek a ‘doom-thief’ in the Underway. He wore a thin harness from which a dozen metal flasks hung. Felix had a feeling that whatever was in those flasks would make someone, somewhere, unhappy.

‘I go where I want to go,’ Gotrek said. He raised his axe for emphasis. ‘Feel free to try and stop me, Agni Firetongue.’

Agni blanched and gripped his own axe more tightly. Biter laughed. He nudged Koertig. ‘Gurnisson knows the secret to making friends and influencing people, eh?’ he said, chuckling. Koertig didn’t laugh. The Nordlander looked exhausted, and his armour was as stained and battered as the man wearing it. Like Felix, the other Remembrancer had been in the thick of the fighting.

Felix looked at the parapet. The two remaining siege-giants had pulled back, their job done. The last he’d seen, they were crouching some distance from the wall, eating their dead companion. Felix felt a surge of disgust, but pushed it aside. Even with the giants gone, the Chaos marauders were climbing the wall. More and more ladders and at least one siege-tower were in place and there weren’t enough dwarfs remaining on the wall to dislodge them. Too, the war machines of the Chaos dwarfs were belching fire and flame. The wall separating the inner keep of Baragor’s Watch from the bridge to Karak Kadrin, thick and sturdy as it was, would not last long.

Ungrim and his remaining guards were the last across, and the Slayer King looked disappointed that his advisor Thungrimsson wasn’t going to let him help hold the bridge. ‘You are needed elsewhere, my king,’ Thungrimsson said firmly. ‘Orders must be given and hearts bolstered, and that is the King of Karak Kadrin’s duty.’

‘Do not worry, father, I will fight for the both of us,’ Garagrim said, almost gently. He placed his hand on his father’s arm and Ungrim laid his own over his son’s. ‘And if the time is right, I will gladly die for the both of us as well,’ he added. Ungrim scowled, but said nothing in reply. He didn’t seem particularly happy with his son’s assertion.

‘And what’s that about then?’ Felix murmured to Gotrek.

‘Ask them if you wish to know, manling,’ Gotrek said sourly. He didn’t seem pleased at the prospect of fighting alongside the War-Mourner. Going by Garagrim’s idle glare in Gotrek’s direction, Felix thought that the feeling was mutual.

‘Are you planning on telling me what you did to make the prince of Karak Kadrin hate you?’ he asked quietly.

Gotrek didn’t reply. Felix snorted. He should have known better than to have asked the question. Dwarfs were close-mouthed by nature, but Gotrek’s taciturnity was almost a weapon. He parried inquiry as easily as he did the swords of the enemy.

When Ungrim was across the path, the Slayers arranged themselves across the width of the bridge. Garagrim and Agni took one side and Gotrek, Biter and a Slayer called Varg took the other. Koertig and Felix stood behind their respective Slayers on the bridge.

The air was thick with smoke and the hum of crossbows. The Chaos marauders on the parapet were trying to regroup, but the remaining dwarfs were giving them no leeway. More of the northern warriors were climbing the interior stairs to reach the top of the outside wall, chanting as they ran. There was no strategy that Felix could see, only a blind hunger to get to grips with the enemy. The Chaos marauders didn’t seem to care that the bridge was a vital strategic objective, they only wanted to wet their blades in dwarf blood.

On the whole, Felix preferred opponents who wanted to live as much as he did. It meant he stood a better than even chance of survival. He tensed, holding Karaghul in both hands. Koertig leaned on his axe, his shield hanging loosely from his arm. ‘Nervous,’ the Nordlander said. Felix didn’t know whether it was a question, but he nodded.

‘Always,’ he said.

‘I meant me,’ Koertig said.

‘Oh,’ Felix said, glancing at him.

‘I hope he dies this time,’ Koertig muttered. He had the slightly glazed look of a man pushing the boundaries of exhaustion. Felix knew the feeling, and thought he might have the same look on his own face.

‘You mean Biter?’

‘Who else would I mean?’ Koertig grunted. ‘He’s been promising me that he’s going to die soon. Swears by all his little stunted gods that today is the day, but he never does.’

‘Slayers can’t simply die,’ Felix said, recognizing the frustration in Koertig’s tone.

‘I know that,’ the Nordlander spat, rapping the head of his axe against the bridge rail. ‘He’s making a mockery of me.’

Felix didn’t know how to respond. He looked back at the plateau, where the last of the refugees were being ushered through the great doors of Karak Kadrin. Cannons, organ guns and grudge throwers lined the edge of the plateau and were unleashing a storm of death on those Chaos marauders who had managed to get over the final wall and down to the courtyard before the bridge. Dozens died, ripped apart by the war machines. Nonetheless, the followers of Chaos came on remorselessly. Sickened, Felix looked away. His gaze was drawn down, over the edge of the bridge into the chasm below. He was reminded of the bridge he and Gotrek had traversed in the Underway, and wondered if the chasm now yawning beneath his feet was part of the same great gap.

He was surprised to see a second bridge – no, less a bridge than a simple walkway – extending far, far below the edge of the plateau and slightly off to the side of the one he stood on. Indeed, such was the cleverness of its construction, Felix doubted he would have noticed it, save that he was staring straight down at it. He knew that it must extend into the Underway from the depths of Karak Kadrin, and he wondered whether it was part of the now destroyed Engineers’ Entrance, or some other route into the depths of the mountains.

A shout dragged him from his reverie. The Chaos marauders had reached the Slayers. Gotrek, of course, was the first to react, leaping to the attack. His axe caught the firelight as it slashed out in a wide arc, opening the guts of a quartet of marauders. Those behind stumbled on the bodies, and Gotrek shoved himself into the momentary gap like a hound at the kill.

Biter gave a high-pitched yell and shook his mace. He seemed to be enjoying himself, which only made Koertig glower darkly. Varg started forwards to aid Gotrek, but Biter grabbed his arm and shook his head. ‘Best give Gurnisson room to work, friend. We’ll get the run-off.’

‘I’ll not have my doom filched by that jinx,’ Varg growled. ‘You might be content to live with your shame, but some of us have more honour.’

‘Who was talking about honour? I just meant that we can’t trust the manlings to hold the bridge alone,’ Biter said. He glanced back at the two men and added, ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Felix said. Koertig grunted. By the same token, Varg seemed mollified. He gripped his axe in two hands and swung it experimentally.

Gotrek’s attack had blunted the assault, but only momentarily. Warriors clad in the stiff hide armour of the eastern steppes and carrying short, serrated blades bounded forwards like wolves alongside the bulkier tribesmen from the north, both groups screaming. Felix tensed, readying himself to meet any that got past the two Slayers. The haft of Biter’s mace slid through his hand and swung out, smashing aside the first Northman to reach him. Varg jerked forwards and cut the legs out from under a screaming nomad.

Then the first marauder squeezed past the occupied Slayers. The man was big, but whipcord-thin, with scars that created patterns in the shape of screaming faces across his bare flesh.

‘Valkia, see me!’ the warrior screamed, lunging for them, his blade licking out with more enthusiasm than skill. ‘Collect their skulls for the road!’

‘Collect your own skull, savage,’ Koertig growled, catching the lunatic’s sword blow on his shield. Felix seized the opening, driving Karaghul between two of the man’s ribs. The marauder’s eyes locked with Felix’s own.

‘Valkia,’ the Chaos marauder hissed, reaching bloody fingers towards Felix. Felix jerked back and ripped Karaghul free. The abrupt motion sent the warrior tumbling from the bridge and down into the chasm below. Felix shuddered. He felt as if he had swallowed something hot and unpleasant. He looked around. Garagrim and Agni fought grimly nearby; both Slayers looked as if they had waded through a river of blood and gore, and the War-Mourner’s flashing axes were taking almost as terrible a toll as Gotrek’s. Biter laughed and swung his mace, crushing skulls and breaking weapons with every wild blow.

Felix’s attention snapped back to Gotrek as the Slayer roared and backhanded a bearded giant of a man who had stooped to stab him. The Slayer seemed to spin in place, his axe levying a brutal toll. However, there were simply too many of the Chaos marauders. They poured towards the path with undimmed ferocity, cheered on by their companions. Their chants hammered at the air, and Felix’s skin crawled at the sound of Khorne’s name as it echoed all around him. The name felt like a slow acid, etching his bones with its darkness.

The marauders seemed to gather strength from the noise. Varg shouted in pain as a hook-bladed spear sank into his belly. The Slayer’s axe took off the top of the spearman’s head, but his moment of weakness drew more blades, spears and axes. Felix felt a sinking sensation in his gut as a dozen marauders fell on the staggering Slayer, hacking and stabbing.

‘Lucky wanaz,’ Biter laughed as his fellow dwarf died. ‘Hey, Gurnisson, looks like someone else beat us across the finish line!’

Gotrek’s bellow was equal parts frustration and anger. He barrelled into the marauders gathered around Varg’s mutilated corpse, his axe slapping the life out of them one after another. Blades dug for Gotrek’s squat form, and a spear grazed his calf, nearly hamstringing him. Felix felt his heart seize and Axeson’s plea echoed in his head.

He started forwards, ignoring Koertig’s cry of protest. But before he could reach Gotrek, a familiar shape hove into view, armoured fists beating aside Chaos marauders, and a crude axe blade surmounted by cunning, daemonic eyes slashed out in a wide arc, lopping off heads and arms with contemptuous ease.

‘Away, dogs,’ a growling voice roared. ‘Away! Kung of the Long Arm comes for his due!’ The armoured champion Felix had seen earlier tore through his own men in his determination to reach Gotrek. The Chaos marauders pulled back, opening a space for Chaos champion and Slayer to face one another. Kung gesticulated with his strange axe. ‘You shed blood like a hero, dwarf,’ the champion rumbled, displaying yellowed fangs in a grin of exultation. ‘But I have killed many heroes. Kung of the Long Arm has built a mountain of corpses to take the sweet kisses of daemon-women and has fed the crows of a thousand battlefields!’ His armour was composed of baroque blood-stained plates engraved with thousands of gaping, fanged jaws that seemed to snap and bite the air as he moved.

‘You’ll feed them here as well,’ Gotrek said. He leapt forwards, and the two axes crashed together with a shivering noise that caused Felix’s ears and eyes to sting. The eyes on the Chaos champion’s axe rolled frightfully as the crude weapon connected again with Gotrek’s. Runes flared on the champion’s blade and Gotrek’s own weapon seemed to glow with an inner light.

They traded two more blows and then broke apart. Kung’s eyes narrowed. ‘You fight well, dwarf. But the bridge is ours. We will pull down your hold, stone by stone, and perform the Blood Eagle on your men and give your women to the dawi zharr as their due.’

Gotrek’s eye blazed at the mention of the Chaos dwarfs and he roared in fury. He sprang at Kung and his axe spun so fast that Felix could not follow the path of the blade. Sparks flew as daemon-weapon met rune-axe and Kung held his ground for a moment, but only a moment. Inexorably, the Chaos champion was forced back, step by step, off the bridge. By the way his eyes bulged Felix could tell that he was surprised by the sudden onslaught. He stumbled back into his warriors, but found no respite. Gotrek tore into them as if they were nothing more than chaff, his axe releasing a swathe of crimson and screams from the Chaos marauders who got in his way in a gory display.

Kung swung his axe up in a desperate blow, his mouth working in a silent snarl of battle-fury. The daemon-weapon shrieked as it descended. The shriek became something altogether more horrible as Gotrek’s axe rose to meet it and the edges met in a shuddery display of sparks and tearing metal; and then, with a howl, the daemon-weapon exploded, showering the crowd of Chaos marauders with shards of steaming iron.

Kung reeled, gaping at the decapitated weapon in his hands. Gotrek gave him no time to recover and darted in for the kill. His axe sank into the point where the Chaos champion’s neck met his shoulder, dragging the big man to his knees with brutal speed. Gotrek wrenched his blade free in a splatter of blood and buried it into Kung’s skull with a loud, wet sound. The Slayer’s foot shot out, catching the twitching champion in the chest, and kicked the corpse free of the blade. Chest heaving, Gotrek glared about him, as if daring the Chaos marauders to seek vengeance on their champion’s behalf.

For a moment, Felix thought that Gotrek’s look alone would be enough to hold the enemy at bay, but all too quickly, the marauders began to close in on the Slayer. Gotrek readied himself as they closed in around him.

Then, suddenly, a burst of heat and light sent the marauders fleeing in screaming disorder. Felix turned and saw Agni Firetongue stomp forwards, holding a flask in one hand and his axe in the other. As Felix watched, Agni tipped the flask back, gargled and then spat a plume of fire onto the closest of his enemies. He had cleared much of the bridge in the same manner, and his path was littered by burning bodies.

A crash followed moments later, and Felix flinched as part of the remaining wall crumbled, showering the enemy below with fragments of rock that caused almost as much damage as the Slayers themselves. Garagrim followed Agni, dispatching any marauders who had survived the other Slayer’s fire-breath. Felix knew that when the sixth wall finally came down, there would be nothing standing between the enemy and the bridge.

Smoke coiling from his char-stained lips, Agni glared at Gotrek. The Chaos marauders’ momentum had been broken, but they were regrouping. Agni hiked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Get across the pathway before they blow it, Gurnisson. I’ll not risk this.’

Gotrek growled. ‘Who are you to tell me where to go, fire-eater?’

‘I’m a Slayer who’s owed a doom,’ Agni snarled, nearly bumping against Gotrek. ‘You’ve had your taste of glory. It’s my turn now!’

‘Gurnisson, get across the path,’ Garagrim said. The War-Mourner glared Felix and Koertig into motion. ‘The rest of you as well. The Firetongue has claimed this doom for his own, and as War-Mourner I declare it his.’

Gotrek opened his mouth to argue, but said nothing. He glared at Agni, who smirked, and then stumped across the bridge without a backwards glance. Biter followed him, whistling tunelessly. At the other end of the bridge, dwarf engineers worked furiously, dislodging the last few stones. The pathway trembled beneath Felix’s feet and he picked up his pace.

‘I wasn’t aware that the War-Mourner could do that,’ he said to Gotrek as they crossed.

Gotrek sneered. ‘It’s an old custom. If he wasn’t Ungrim’s boy, I’d–’

‘You’d what, Gurnisson?’ Garagrim said, close behind.

Gotrek flushed. ‘I’d show you what happens to arrogant beardlings who stand between me and my doom.’

‘Any time, Doom-Thief,’ Garagrim spat.

‘Garagrim,’ Ungrim roared. Garagrim blanched. Felix saw the Slayer King coming towards them. ‘Now is not the time,’ Ironfist grated, staring his son down.

The path collapsed with a groan. A massive cloud of dust washed upwards as the bridge collapsed into pieces and those pieces fell down into the chasm below, gouging the sides and tumbling past the smaller pathway below. Felix turned with the others to watch Agni. The Slayer, true to his word, had remained behind, calmly barring the path to the Chaos marauders. Now that the chance of reaching the bridge was gone, the tribesmen seemed intent on revenge. Agni seemed content with this and he used the tip of his axe to nick each flask, weakening the seal on each in turn. He waved his axe in a ‘come hither’ gesture. ‘What’s in those things?’ Felix murmured.

‘Fire water,’ Gotrek grunted. ‘It burns until there’s nothing left to burn, when it touches the open air.’ The Slayers watched almost reverentially as their brother stalked towards the enemy. Felix thought that with the War-Mourner’s declaration, Agni’s doom had become less a personal moment than a public rite. Here, in the city of the Slayers, beneath the eyes of Grimnir, one of their own was carrying out his oath. It was almost a religious affair. Dwarfs up and down the edge of the plateau began to sing a dirge and their voices met and matched the bloodthirsty cries of the horde with inexorable strength.

Felix felt a chill as the dirge grew in volume. Agni seemed to swell as the sound swept around him. Gotrek hunched forwards, nostrils flaring, his eye burning jealously. He had remained silent as the others joined the song. Then, as if against his will, he added his own voice to the dirge.

Agni drained his flask. Smoke curled from his nostrils. He spread his arms.

The Chaos marauders charged as one. Agni spewed fire. Then, with a hoarse cry, he slammed into the charred wreckage of his attackers. As he fought he tore open flasks and drained them, spitting fire. Felix had a momentary premonition, guessing what would happen when a lucky blow struck one of the flasks.

That premonition was fulfilled a moment later. A sword chopped into Agni’s chest and a flask exploded, spreading fire around. Agni was silent as flames crawled across his body, turning his beard black. He fought on, wreathed in flame. Other flasks, touched by the fire, popped like handguns going off, spreading more fire. Agni staggered forwards, a dwarf-sized torch, his burning axe smashing out without pause.

Silently, remorselessly, the burning shape of Agni Firetongue fought the invaders. Those that faced him burned or were chopped down. The rest staggered back, their chants to Khorne turning to ashes in their mouths. The horde had fallen silent, their eyes on the Slayer as he began to stalk towards them, his enemies retreating before him, their eyes wide with what might have been fear. One step, then two steps and Agni stumbled. He was completely engulfed in flame now. His eyes were gone, burst by the heat. His beard, his crest, all singed to scrapes of greasy smoke. Several of the flasks hadn’t yet exploded. Dwarf workmanship was sturdy. His axe fell from his hands, trailing bits of his fingers. Felix wanted to close his eyes but he couldn’t look away. The dwarf dirge rose, cresting high.

Agni leapt towards the closest knot of Chaos marauders.

The explosion sent tendrils of fire coursing through the packed keep. Stone and flame flattened the marauders in their dozens. Men and horses ran screaming and burning. The ground behind the sixth wall became an inferno as the fire spread, clinging to greasy furs and oily flesh.

Felix turned away, his cloak held over his nose and mouth as the smell drifted across the chasm. He met Gotrek’s eye. ‘It burns until there’s nothing left to burn,’ Gotrek repeated. He chuckled bitterly and the fire was reflected in his single eye.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

The great doors to Karak Kadrin had swung shut hours earlier, but Felix could still feel the reverberations in his bones. Huge and ancient, their motion had set the mountain shaking and he thought that even now the echoes of their closing probably sent ripples across the surface of any underground lakes and streams below Karak Kadrin. He and Gotrek had not moved past the entry hall, and the Slayer’s eye had not left the doors since they’d closed. All of the war-engines had been pulled back into the hall, to save them from being bombarded to bits by the siege-engines of the Chaos dwarfs, which had arranged themselves in the ruins of the outer keep and were even now firing at the mountainside in which Karak Kadrin nestled in what Felix considered to be sadistic petulance.

Faint trickles of dust occasionally drifted down from the far upper reaches of the hall. Other than the dull reverberations of the shrieking rockets and belching cannons, that was the only sign that an attack was even under way. He couldn’t bring himself to feel more than faintly concerned; Gotrek had assured him more than once, vociferously, that dwarf holds were nigh impregnable from without.

There were hundreds of humans in the hall, and about that number of dwarfs. The humans were being taken in groups deeper into the mountains, to the far distant underground docks, where boats waited to go by the underground waterways – long ago constructed by the first dwarf inhabitants of the hold – to the safer reaches of the Stir. Karak Kadrin’s docks were no patch on those of Zhufbar, according to Gotrek, but Felix thought the very idea of underground docks was impressive enough.

In fact, everything about the Slayer Keep was impressive. The entry hall was a huge space, with vast fluted galleries that swept up into smooth balconies that looked as if they had been coaxed from the stone by the hands of a sculptor rather than a stonemason. Ancient tiles, worn smooth by generations of traffic, lined the floors, each one a work of art in and of itself, depicting a moment from the history of the hold. Large ancestor statues, representing past generations of kings, thanes, and lords of Karak Kadrin, lined the walls, each ensconced in its own nook or cranny.

Globes containing luminescent liquid hung from stone half-arches spaced evenly along the length of the hall, casting a soft glow across everything below, and the light carried far better than any torch or lantern Felix had seen. At the other end of the hall was a second set of great doors. These were another defence measure, sealing off the next section of the hold from invasion. Felix knew that dwarf holds had many entrances – not just the ones you could see. There were doors everywhere on every level, some hidden, some not.

Regardless of the size of the attackers’ force, there was simply no way to lay siege to a dwarf hold. Not in the sense of the common understanding of the word. A mountain could no more be surrounded than it could be levelled by conventional means, Chaos dwarf ingenuity aside. With the destruction of the bridge connecting the outer keep to the plateau on which Karak Kadrin’s doors sat, the Chaos forces were stymied. Or so Felix hoped.

‘They can’t really build another bridge, can they?’ he said. ‘Not just like that.’ Gotrek didn’t reply. Felix looked at him. ‘And even if they did,’ he went on, ‘it’s not like they could burrow into the mountain.’ He peered at the Slayer and said, ‘Gotrek?’

Gotrek glanced at him and knuckled his eye-patch irritably. ‘That death was mine, manling,’ he said. ‘It would have been legendary.’

Felix shook his head. He’d known it was going to come back up. ‘It would have been stupid,’ he said.

Gotrek flushed. ‘What?’ he snarled.

‘I said it would have been stupid, going up like a powder-keg, like that. Is that really how you want people to remember Gotrek Gurnisson dying?’ Felix knew he shouldn’t be challenging Gotrek this way, but he’d grown tired of the Slayer’s more-than-normal surliness over the past few hours.

‘Careful, manling,’ Gotrek rumbled warningly.

‘I am tired of being careful, Gotrek. If I am doomed to write about your doom, it had best be a doom worth being doomed to write about!’ He fought to calm himself. ‘Besides, you weren’t planning to stay anyway, were you? You said so yourself. You’re meant for a grander doom.’

Gotrek snorted. Then, not unkindly, ‘Perhaps you’re right, at that.’ Then, he blinked. ‘What did you say, manling?’

‘What?’ Felix said.

‘Just now, about powder-kegs,’ Gotrek said. He stroked his beard. He looked at the doors again. ‘Ha,’ he said, darkly amused.

‘What is it?’ Felix said.

‘Come, manling. I must speak with the king,’ Gotrek said, moving towards a set of stone stairs set into the walls beside the doors of the hold. Felix shoved himself to his feet and followed. He hurried after Gotrek, squirming through groups of dwarfs to keep up with the Slayer.

They found Ungrim in one of the stone blockhouses which lined the cliff-face above the doors of Karak Kadrin. The section of the blockhouse that faced out over the chasm was solid stone, reinforced by iron bands. Where the roof met the wall were a number of thin slits. Thunderers stood on a ledge that allowed them to aim their weapons out. A circular stairwell rose up at an angle into a reinforced cupola. A dwarf sat within the cupola, which rotated with a hiss of steam and a whine of gears, startling Felix. Every so often, the dwarf would shout down to a companion, who scribbled something into a heavy notebook.

Gotrek saw Felix’s questioning look and grinned. ‘Have to keep accurate records, manling. They’ll identify the tribes and such afterwards and record the grudge appropriately. Can’t let scum like that out there get away with knocking down a keep like that.’

‘Future generations must know of such perfidy,’ Ungrim said. The king stood at a circular stone table, leaning forwards on his knuckles. Before him, flat on the table, was a disc of hammered gold upon which what Felix took to be a map of the hold had been engraved. Snorri Thungrimsson and Garagrim stood nearby, as well as three other dwarfs that Felix thought must be the other prominent clan leaders.

‘If we survive,’ Snorri grunted.

‘Karak Kadrin will weather this, as it has weathered every other affront to our sovereignty,’ Ungrim said confidently. He looked at Gotrek warily. ‘What do you want, Gurnisson?’

‘To help,’ Gotrek said bluntly.

‘Go man the interior defences,’ Ungrim said.

‘The enemy aren’t inside,’ Gotrek said, his axe resting on his shoulder. ‘Not yet anyway. I want to lead a sortie.’

Snorri goggled at him, as did the other clan-leaders. ‘Are you mad?’ Thungrimsson said. The hammerer caught himself. ‘Never mind, of course you are. No,’ he said.

‘What sort of sortie, Gurnisson?’ Ungrim said.

‘A quiet one, right up until it gets very, very loud,’ Gotrek said, flashing a gap-toothed smile. ‘They tried to blow their way in before. I simply want to return the favour, with interest.’

Ungrim stared at him for a moment. Felix could almost hear the gears turning in the king’s head. Then the Slayer King slapped the table and gave a loud bark of laughter. ‘Ha! That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day!’

‘Indeed. One might almost suspect that Gurnisson had ulterior motives,’ a familiar voice said.

Gotrek swung around as the priest, Axeson, stepped into the blockhouse. The priest of Grimnir was clad for war, but he raised a hand in a peaceful gesture as Gotrek glared at him. ‘I intended no insult.’

‘You gave one anyway,’ Gotrek said.

‘When I heard that a mighty doom had been achieved, I thought it might have been yours,’ Axeson said.

‘It wasn’t,’ Gotrek said.

‘No,’ Axeson said, nodding agreeably. ‘We have business, you and I.’

‘None that I can see,’ Gotrek snapped.

‘No, but then you only have one eye.’

Gotrek’s mouth thinned to a razor-line of disapproval. It didn’t take much to set him off, and Axeson seemed to be trying to make him angry, though there was no gain in doing so, to Felix’s mind. For some reason, the priest’s waspishness put Felix in mind of his own, back when he’d argued regularly with his father over his intent to become a poet, rather than a merchant. The insults had flown fast and thick and personal between them. ‘I did not come to Karak Kadrin to be insulted by you,’ Gotrek growled.

‘Then why did you come?’ Axeson said.

Gotrek’s mouth opened and then closed with a snap. Felix, who had been leaning forwards in interest, felt a surge of disappointment. ‘That’s none of your concern,’ Gotrek said after a moment.

‘It is my concern, Gurnisson,’ Axeson said softly. His eyes fell to the axe in Gotrek’s grip, and then up, meeting Felix’s gaze. The look in the priest’s eyes was sad, as sad as Felix had ever seen a dwarf look, but also bitter, as if he bore Gotrek a personal grudge, just like everyone else in this fortress of madmen. ‘Your doom is the concern of all who dwell within Karak Kadrin.’

Gotrek grunted. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I have seen you fall, Gurnisson. I have seen your doom, and writ in that doom was the end of all dawi. Karak Kadrin will be but the first,’ Axeson said. His tone was portentous, but Gotrek gave no mockery. Instead he shook his head.

‘Speak plainly, priest. What do you mean?’

‘I mean what I say, son of Gurni. If you meet your doom, Karak Kadrin falls.’

Gotrek was visibly dumbstruck. Felix said, ‘How do you know this?’

Axeson looked at him. ‘I have seen it, as I said. More is not for you to know.’

‘It damn well is,’ Gotrek snarled suddenly, lunging forwards, his hand knotting in the priest’s beard. He shoved him back against the wall. ‘How do you know this? Who denies me my doom?’

‘Release him, Gurnisson! Release him, I say,’ Ungrim bellowed. Dwarfs leapt to grab Gotrek, but none could break his hold on the priest. The Slayer was immovable.

‘Grimnir,’ Axeson said simply, answering Gotrek’s question. ‘There is a mighty doom coming from the north, Gurnisson. Something that will eat an army of Slayers and still not be filled, and if you face it, if you meet it in battle, you will find the death you seek, but the world will die with you.’

Gotrek released the priest and stepped back as if he’d been struck. ‘No,’ he said hoarsely.

‘Is my word not good enough?’ Axeson said.

‘No. Not yours. Never,’ Gotrek hissed. His eye glinted. ‘Prove it, priest, or I shall march through those gates tonight.’

‘You will not,’ Ungrim said. He looked at Axeson. ‘You are certain?’

‘As stone, my king,’ Axeson said.

‘No,’ Gotrek said, shaking his head. His hand clenched and unclenched and his axe trembled. ‘No, you lie,’ he burst out.

The blockhouse fell silent. Gotrek flushed. Felix’s hand crept towards his sword-hilt. Every eye in the structure was turned towards the Slayer and every face was set like the stones that made up the walls. Gotrek hunched into himself, jaw jutting as if he were, for once, feeling the weight of his people’s disapproval. He took a breath and straightened.

‘I do not lie,’ Axeson said.

‘I do not care,’ Gotrek retorted, but calmly. He looked at Ungrim. ‘I will lead my sortie now, before the Chaos filth figure out that they’re sitting ducks.’

‘The sortie will go ahead, aye, but you will not be the one leading it, Gurnisson,’ Ungrim said harshly. ‘No, you will stay here, where someone can keep an eye on you.’

‘And how will you make me, oh king?’ Gotrek said.

Ungrim flushed. Despite being a Slayer himself, Felix could tell that King Ironfist was unused to having his authority challenged so blatantly. Felix tensed, knowing that the next words out of the king’s mouth would be something to the effect of ‘chains,’ ‘imprisonment’ or ‘arrest them’. Would Gotrek insist on fighting his way out? He hoped not.

‘There is no reason for Gurnisson not to go,’ Axeson said, piercing the growing tension. Felix glanced at the priest. ‘The doom I foresaw is not here. Indeed, I’d say that without him, this sortie he proposes is likely to fail.’ He looked at Gotrek. ‘I will prove my words when we return, Gurnisson, if you are brave enough to heed them.’

Ungrim stared hard at the priest. Gotrek did as well. Neither seemed quite able to believe the words that had just come out of Axeson’s mouth. Ungrim’s hard gaze swivelled to Gotrek. ‘My son will lead the sortie, Gurnisson. You will accompany him, but in an advisory capacity. I well know of your skills in such matters, and so the priest may be right.’

Gotrek stood still and silent for a moment, but then he nodded brusquely. ‘I will go with them as well,’ Axeson said, with his thumbs hooked in his belt. Ungrim gaped at him, but recovered quickly.

‘Yes, fine, go,’ Ungrim said, twitching a hand in assent.

‘No,’ Gotrek growled, shaking his head.

‘Now who’s denying whom?’ Axeson said, eliciting another glare from Gotrek. ‘You hold no sway over me, Gurnisson. Not now and not here. It is the will of Grimnir that I go, so… I go.’

Gotrek turned away, mouth working. Felix thought he looked as if he were choking on whatever it was he wanted to say, but in the end he swallowed the words and stomped out of the blockhouse. Felix made to follow, and Axeson fell in beside him, keeping pace easily.

‘You seem to get some pleasure in pricking him, master priest,’ Felix said. It was obvious that Gotrek knew Axeson from a previous encounter. He had never mentioned the priest before, but that wasn’t unusual. Gotrek was as frustrating a subject as any biographer had ever had the bad luck to be pledged to. He refused to speak of his past or even of his present. To Gotrek, only one thing mattered, and that was how his story would end.

‘So it must seem to a manling. I assure you, I get no pleasure from it,’ Axeson said, not looking at him. ‘Very little about this pleases me, in fact.’

‘How long have you known Gotrek?’

‘Longer than is healthy,’ Axeson said. Felix was surprised. He hadn’t truly expected an answer. Despite Felix’s first impressions, the priest seemed not to hold him in the same casual contempt that most dwarfs held for men. It was no coincidence that the Khazalid words for ‘badly made’ and ‘man’ were very similar.

‘So longer than a week then,’ Felix said.

Axeson surprised him again by chuckling. ‘Oh yes. The last time I saw him, he did not have a Remembrancer, nor, it seemed, a desire for one. Even then, he was selfish.’ He caught Felix’s look. ‘All Slayers are selfish, Jaeger. Grimnir marched north against the advice of his fellows and deprived our people of his might in our darkest hour. Thus do Slayers emulate him, separating themselves from our society and spending their remaining years seeking their own way,’ he continued.

‘I have always assumed that it was by mutual consent that Slayers leave,’ Felix said, glancing at Gotrek moving ahead of them, pushing his way through the dwarfs in the blockhouse with single-minded heedlessness. Most got out of his way quickly enough and more than one dwarf turned away from Gotrek’s belligerent gaze. Everyone knew who Gotrek was, it seemed, and no one seemed happy to see him.

‘Does that make it any less selfish, that we let them go?’ Before Felix could reply, Axeson made what might have been a frustrated noise. ‘But it is a facet of our people to be selfish. Just as it is a facet for us to be generous, or dour or boisterous. The gods crafted us as artificers craft gems, and we are complex and varied.’

‘You have a way with words,’ Felix said.

‘A good priest must know how to talk. And we dwarfs appreciate words in ways that your people do not. To speak is to chisel the air, which is why it must be done sparingly and with precision. Careless talk causes as much damage as a rock fall. And to write… Well, to write is to carve the very stuff of history, Jaeger.’ He looked at Felix. ‘He did not choose wrong in you, I think.’ He looked back at Gotrek, his expression considering. ‘He is prideful. Ufdi, as my people say. Vain, as you manlings might call it. He is too proud to submit to death’s whim, too proud to seek an appropriate end. For him, it must be the greatest doom, the final doom, because nothing else will extirpate his shame.’

‘Was it so bad then, what he did?’ Felix said, hesitantly.

Axeson was silent. Then, ‘He thinks so. And that is enough.’

‘If you’re finished talking about me, I would have you with me when I speak to the beardling, priest,’ Gotrek grumbled, without turning around. Felix felt a stab of shame. How long had Gotrek been listening? Axeson seemed unperturbed.

‘A sensible plan. The War-Mourner finds you offensive, Gurnisson,’ he said.

‘The War-Mourner finds much to be offensive. Let him stew, I care not,’ Gotrek said. They had arrived at a second blockhouse. This one was much the same as the other, though the noise-level was louder and more raucous. Inside, a dozen Slayers surrounded Garagrim, arguing over one another in a display of obstinate determination that was awe-inspiring to behold. The War-Mourner was trying to keep the peace, but his voice was only one among many.

Biter and Koertig stood off to the side, the madcap Slayer leaning on his mace, the orc skull easily taking his weight. He caught sight of them and waved them over. ‘What is this madness?’ Gotrek demanded.

‘It’s madness all right,’ Koertig muttered. Biter swatted him in the belly with a casual thump of his hand.

‘They want a sortie. The story of Agni’s doom has spread and now the others are getting all hot in the trousers to get their own. The largest Chaos horde in years is camped on their doorstep, and they want to have some fun,’ Biter said.

‘You’re not with them?’ Felix asked.

‘My doom is written, what good is it to seek it out or run from it? It’ll happen when it happens,’ Biter said shrugging.

‘Not soon enough,’ Koertig said.

‘Does your Remembrancer have as much faith in you as mine in me?’ Biter said, grinning cheerfully at Gotrek. But Gotrek had already moved away, towards the crowd of bawling, bellowing Slayers. Felix felt a knot in his gut. Axeson smiled thinly.

‘This should be interesting,’ the priest said.

‘If old Ogun were here, none of this would be happening,’ Biter said. ‘He was the beardling’s second-in-command. Kept the rest of us in line, old Ogun did.’

‘What happened to him?’ Felix said.

‘He died,’ Biter said cheerfully.

Gotrek had climbed up on the table, a second axe gripped in his free hand. As he stood, he brought the axes together with a crash. All eyes turned towards him. ‘You want a sortie?’ Gotrek rasped, facing the expectant Slayers. ‘I’ve got a sortie for you.’

‘Gurnisson–’ Garagrim began, face twisting in anger.

‘King Ironfist has already agreed, Prince Garagrim,’ Axeson said, loudly. Garagrim transferred his glare, but Axeson met his gaze blithely.

Gotrek nodded brusquely to Axeson and then raised his axe. ‘I go to rip the guts out of the Chaos army with their own weapons. Who will come with me?’

‘And how will you do this, death-jinx?’ a Slayer called out. ‘Will you walk amongst them and let them kill each other rather than you?’ His laughter faded as Gotrek pinned him in place with a one-eyed stare.

‘Come with me and see, Dorin Borrisson. Unless you fear to do so,’ Gotrek said. The Slayer called Dorin bristled, one hand reaching for the fat-bladed dwarf sword sheathed on his hip. Another Slayer grabbed his arm and shook his head. The latter spoke up.

‘Come where and do what, Gurnisson?’ he said. Other Slayers spoke up in support of the question. Gotrek looked at him.

‘We will go into the Underway, and take the fight to that cowardly filth outside,’ Gotrek said. His gap-teeth flashed. ‘We’re going to blow up the ground beneath them and by Grimnir we’ll cut the heart of their army out in one blow!’

In the end, twenty Slayers were selected. Felix felt relief when it was over, and without the violence he’d feared. Garagrim joined Gotrek on the table and chose Slayers seemingly at random, among them Biter and Dorin. The others dispersed with much grumbling, but no violence. ‘That went better than I thought,’ he muttered to Axeson, who nodded.

‘Such is the War-Mourner’s responsibility. It is he who chooses those whose turn it is to be slain, when the great throng of Karak Kadrin marches forth. Once, it was the responsibility of the temple. I am glad that it has passed on.’

‘Were you ever–?’

‘How old do you think me, Jaeger?’ Axeson said, cocking an eye at Felix. Felix spluttered, trying to take back what he perceived to have been an insult. Axeson’s chuckle alerted him to the contrary. He smacked Felix on the arm, in much the same way as Gotrek. ‘Easy, manling,’ he said.

‘I’m not used to dwarf humour, I fear,’ Felix said, rubbing his arm.

‘No, I don’t suppose you would be,’ Axeson said, looking at Gotrek.

Gotrek conferred with Garagrim for a moment and then joined them, looking inordinately pleased. ‘Well, manling, ready to go back underground?’ he said, grinning at Felix.

‘If we must,’ Felix said.

The chosen Slayers were a loud bunch, excited by the prospect of battle. One of them started a song, and another broke out a cask of ale, one of many stored in the blockhouse.

‘I still don’t understand what you’re planning,’ Felix complained as Gotrek joined him, a foam-capped mug in his hand. ‘What good can come of creating a crater in the middle of their army, save giving them another avenue of attack? We nearly died keeping them out of the Underway once, now we’re inviting them in?’ He swept a hand out. ‘They care nothing for losses, Gotrek, nothing for odds or strategy.’

Gotrek nodded agreeably. ‘True enough, manling. But even the bravest man will be crushed when he is caught between two forces.’

Felix blinked. ‘The explosion–’

‘Gets us amidst them,’ Gotrek said, running his thumb along the edge of his axe. He watched blood bead on the ball of the digit and then flicked it to the floor. His eye caught Felix. ‘Twenty Slayers will set the blood to flowing, manling, but five times that of stout clan warriors will march out of that pit while we keep them occupied; more than could attack from any hidden tunnel or disguised door set into the mountains. And when they turn, and they will turn, Ungrim will lead a sortie of his own through those hidden doors and tunnels. We can move hundreds from a dozen different directions while they’re occupied.’ Gotrek made a fist. ‘They will learn what it means to attack us, manling. They will learn that we are not men, to cower behind walls until the last gate falls. These are our mountains and we will not suffer northern beasts to desecrate them.’ He smiled a hard, wild, cruel smile. The smile faded as abruptly as it had come, and Gotrek went quiet.

Felix looked askance at him. ‘Why did we come here, Gotrek?’ he said, quietly.

‘What was that, manling?’

‘Why did we come? Axeson said that you couldn’t not come… What did he mean by that?’

Gotrek frowned. ‘You shouldn’t listen to that stripling,’ he said sourly.

‘You’ve been acting oddly for weeks now,’ Felix said, overriding his fear of Gotrek’s temper and plunging ahead. ‘You’re moodier than normal, though that’s hard to tell sometimes.’

‘Moody?’ Gotrek said, raising his eyebrow.

‘You know what I mean,’ Felix said hastily.

‘No, manling, I don’t. Enlighten me,’ Gotrek growled.

‘Something is bothering you.’

Gotrek didn’t reply. Felix sighed. ‘We didn’t know that Karak Kadrin was under attack, so it couldn’t have been that,’ he said. He looked at Gotrek. ‘Could it?’

Gotrek was as stiff and still as a statue. Only his eye moved, his gaze dropping to the axe in his hand. His thumb caressed the runes carved into the width of the blade. ‘I had a dream,’ he said, after a long silence. Felix waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

They stood in silence after that, Gotrek likely imagining the sea of enemies awaiting him, and Felix looking inwards, thinking of what awaited them below. As plans went, he could see little fault in it. It was direct and to the point. There was no subtlety to it, but then, there was little enough to Gotrek. If it worked, the army laying siege to Karak Kadrin would be broken. What little Felix knew of military matters assured him of that, as did his experience with the followers of Chaos. Like orcs, they were brave in numbers, but as individuals they were as easy to spook as any provincial peasant. Some would fight, but those would die. The rest would run. Or so he hoped.

Karak Kadrin was not quiet, as the evening deepened. Fires burned in the entry hall, and dwarfs spoke and sang and boasted. A grim sort of mirth pervaded the hold, Felix thought. Not quite amusement, but almost a fatalistic joy, akin to the cynic’s pleasure at being proven right. For the dwarfs, this was the way of things. Every stand was the last, and every dwarf knew that it was not a question of if, but when.

For men, every dawn brought new hope. For dwarfs, it brought new grudges. Felix looked at Gotrek, examining his bloated musculature, so different to that of even the other Slayers. Gotrek was a dwarf’s dwarf and the epitome of his people to Felix’s eye, taciturn, brutal and dour. Perhaps that was why he seemed to offend them so… In Gotrek was every failing and strength of the dwarf race made manifest, and to look at him was to see those qualities with dreadful clarity.

‘Gurnisson, come,’ Garagrim said, stepping out of the blockhouse. Felix jerked out of his reverie, realizing that the cheerful noise from the blockhouse had died. While the others had celebrated, Gotrek had stood with him, staring into the darkness for who knew how long. The Slayer met his eyes and nodded sharply. Felix followed him as they joined the others.

Garagrim marched purposefully down the stairs from the blockhouse, Gotrek just behind him. Felix fell in beside Axeson. Behind them came Biter and Koertig and the other Slayers chosen for the sortie. At the bottom of the stairs, Snorri Thungrimsson was waiting for them, a number of his hammerers in tow. Past them, Felix saw a small throng of dwarfs, each carrying a crossbow and an axe. They had a rough look to them, and their armour bespoke hard use. Two from among them stepped forwards to join Snorri. One was tall, the other short, but both were muscular and stout.

‘Lunn and Steki Svengeln,’ Thungrimsson said. ‘They are cousins to Fimbur Svengeln, who fell at the Peak Pass, and rangers, like him. Good ones, if the truth be told.’

‘The best,’ Lunn said.

‘Better than any of the rest,’ Steki added.

An armoured dwarf stepped forwards at Snorri’s curt gesture. ‘Bael Grimbold, ironbreaker.’

He was slim, by dwarf standards, but his armour added bulk to him. Young as well, Felix judged. He tapped his brow with the back of his axe. ‘We are ready to go into the dark, War-Mourner,’ Grimbold said, his voice surprisingly deep.

‘Who isn’t?’ another dwarf spoke up, pushing past Grimbold, who grimaced. He was ancient, judging by the pure white of his beard, and he wore a dented and wax-splotched helm and his armour was stained with dust and ash. ‘Always up for a stroll, me,’ he said, tapping the ironbreaker on one gleaming pauldron with a wicked looking pick-axe. ‘Gurnisson, I hear this was your idea, you great wattock.’

‘Aye, Copperback,’ Gotrek said, his eye alight with amusement. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘Bah,’ Copperback waved his pick, forcing Grimbold to step back to avoid its keen bite. ‘I’ve lived long enough, I expect.’

‘Are your kin still trying to find your hoard, you old boki?’ Gotrek said. ‘If they hear you’re going with us, they’ll probably throw us a leaving party.’

‘It’ll be a poor one,’ Copperback said, yellow teeth surfacing from the white spray of beard in a crooked grin. ‘Not a nugget between them, the wazzoks.’

‘If you’re done socializing,’ Garagrim growled between gritted teeth, ‘we have a sortie to get under way.’

‘Impatient as always, these beardlings,’ Copperback said, letting his pick rest on his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Prince Ironfist. My miners and I will lead you straight and true.’

‘And then, we’ll show the daemon-lovers what Slayers can do,’ Gotrek said. He raised his axe, and the other Slayers followed suit. ‘Their god wants blood and skulls? Well, we’ll choke him with equal measures of both!’

Canto cursed as he looked down at Kung’s body. The latter still clutched the shattered remains of his axe, and his eyes stared up blindly on either side of the cleft in his skull. That was why he had ever evaded the eyes of the gods. Only so many ascended into their graces, the rest fell and became food for worms.

Once on that path, those were the only two fates allowed you, victory or death. It was so limiting, that path, and yet so many gleefully trod it, hoping, anticipating that they would be the ones to please the fickle gods and become as the daemons which whispered on the northern wind, that they would be as those whose names were inscribed on the ancient monoliths which jutted like signposts in the bleaker regions, names like Valkia or Lothar Bubonicus.

Canto hated them. He hated them and respected them in the way that a jackal respects a wolf. They had had the courage of their convictions and had reached a dark pinnacle only dreamt of by many. It was hard not to admire that. But he hated them none the less.

He was tempted to go south. To take what forces he could gather and head into the bleak wilderness to burn and pillage and sate the ache in him for another century. When he’d been only a man, he’d dreamed of owning a villa in the south of Tilea, on the golden shores. A stupid dream for a down-at-heels nobleman, but one he’d never been able to shake. Comfort, not carnage, was what he desired.

But if he did that, Garmr would have no choice but to hunt him down. Rebellion and betrayal the Gorewolf could tolerate and even encourage, but desertion – never. No, Canto was bound to the horde now, by ligaments of fate.

At the time, it had seemed the lesser of two evils. He recalled the battle – multi-coloured dust coating the air as thick as paint, a million men crashing against one another like waves made of flesh. There had been a hundred sides present, all striving against one another. There had been a hundred champions, leading their followers in battle beneath the frosty gaze of the northern sun, bellowing out bellicose cries to their gods. Banners crafted from stretched human flesh, gemstone feathers and motes of light dancing like fireflies around brass poles swung high above the fray, heralding identities and allegiances.

Canto had been in the thick of it, not by choice, but his bargain with Tzerpichore the Unwritten had been binding. The squawking bird-brain had ridden a tortoise of iron and crystal into battle, and he had hurled witch-fire from a golden palanquin mounted on the golem’s shell. His acolytes had joined him, their heads bobbing like a harmony of song-birds as they lent their petty centuries’ worth of accumulated arcane knowledge to their master’s design.

Tzerpichore had been collecting daemons, the weaker kind, those unaligned, amorphous entities which clung to the undersides of magical storms and mighty rituals. The sorcerer had been plucking them from the aether that collected above such battles, where they circled like carrion birds. Canto had been there to protect him from the madness of battle.

In retrospect, he hadn’t done a very good job.

Garmr had bulled through the chaos of battle, hacking his way towards Tzerpichore, who by his very nature, was offensive to the Gorewolf. Canto had tried his best to delay the killing-mad warlord, but he’d been swatted aside again and again, only the enchantments woven into his armour saving him from death. Garmr had leapt up on the tortoise and for a moment, it appeared as if Tzerpichore’s magics had undone him. Fire had wreathed Garmr, consuming him. Then he stepped through it, his axe singing out, and Canto watched as Tzerpichore’s head had bounced across the ground towards him, a vaguely accusing look in the fast-dimming eyes.

After that, the tortoise had plodded on, uncontrolled and abandoned as Garmr had lifted Canto’s chin with his axe and given him an ultimatum. Canto had agreed quickly enough.

Sometimes, though, he wondered what had happened to the tortoise.

‘Well,’ Canto said, thinking of the tortoise, ‘that’s that.’ He looked at the shattered bridge in frustration. He’d been counting on Kung to take it. Without it, Karak Kadrin was effectively inviolable.

Khorreg the Hell-Worker frowned and turned to watch as the ogres dragged the third of the war-engines into position. The Dreadquake mortar had done its work well, hammering most of the outer fortress flat. Now the weapon was being reloaded in preparation for bombarding the mountain that threw its shadow over them. Privately, Canto had doubts that the war machines, effective as they were, would do any good given the current situation.

‘It’s not,’ Khorreg said, eyeing him with smug assumption. Behind the Hell-Worker, Khul stood silently, axe gripped horizontally in his hands, his featureless helm fixed on the enemy bastion.

‘What?’ Canto said, irritated.

Khorreg gave a rasping laugh. ‘It can be brought down.’

‘By your devices,’ Canto said.

‘Possibly, or others,’ Khorreg said, his cracked and unpleasant features twisting into an expression of cunning. ‘More deals could be struck, more engines brought from the east, with such a prize to be gained.’ He gestured towards the massive double doors across the chasm.

‘Unfortunately, Garmr is not here to make those deals or bargain for those engines, Hell-Worker,’ Canto said. He clasped the hilt of his sword and shook his head. ‘Besides, I doubt the dwarfs will sit around and wait for us to knock down yet more of their walls.’

Khorreg snorted. ‘They are weak, and content to sit and wait where braver folk attack.’ The Chaos dwarf chuckled, and the glowing cracks on his face widened disturbingly. ‘They will not come. We have time.’

‘Maybe,’ Canto said. He turned and saw Yan approaching, a number of other champions behind him, including Skrall and Hrodor. The latter duo looked wary, but Yan was grinning insolently, his fingers dancing across the pommel of his falchion. His armour was covered in dried blood and soot, but he looked as fresh as if he’d newly arrived to the field of battle. ‘Then, maybe not,’ Canto said. ‘What news, Yan?’

‘There’s little to pillage here,’ Yan said, shrugging. ‘Nothing useful, at any rate, and the men are getting restless. With the bridge gone, there’s no reason to stay.’

‘Except that Garmr ordered us to take Karak Kadrin,’ Canto said.

‘Except that,’ Yan said. His eyes drifted down to Kung’s broken form then back up to Canto. ‘I have accepted the sworn oaths of Kung of the Long Arm’s warriors. They are grateful to join a warband whose leader is not so great a fool, they assure me.’

‘Do they?’ Canto said. Yan nodded.

‘Your men, meanwhile, asked me to speak with you,’ he continued.

‘Did they?’

‘There is nothing to be gained by staying here, Canto,’ Yan said, loudly. Canto could feel the eyes of Chaos marauders and Chaos warriors alike drawn towards them. It was less an ambush than a long-delayed thrust from an expected quarter. With Kung dead, that left only they two in control of the army. It didn’t matter who the other champion was – it could have been Kung or Hrolf, for all that Yan cared. He would have chosen his moment regardless.

He chose his next words carefully. ‘Is that cowardice I hear? I should have expected such from one called the Foul.’ His voice was deeper than Yan’s, and louder. It echoed from shattered pillar to cracked post and more men joined the rest in watching the confrontation. More softly, Canto said, ‘These aren’t your words, Yan. They’re Ekaterina’s or I’m a Slaaneshi concubine. Is that why she insisted that you be sent, rather than Vasa or the Bone-Hammer? You’ve been trotting in her shadow since we crossed the Howling Chasm.’

Yan snorted. ‘She is strong, Unsworn. She is blessed and beloved. My folk know of the deadliness of queens.’

‘And Garmr is not?’

Yan made a face. ‘Garmr is not here. Ekaterina is not here. We are here and there is nothing for us.’ He swept out his falchion, gesturing across the chasm. ‘They hide from us. We cannot reach them and we cannot pluck their skulls, so why do we stay? Let us find battle, Unsworn, unless your heart is too craven to do so!’

Canto looked around. Two accusations of cowardice; if he and Yan had been different sorts of men, they would have already come to blows. But Yan hadn’t become a Horselord of the Khazags by being rash to action. Even the most warlike nomad favoured the surgical thrust over the bull-headed frontal assault. So where–

Skrall made a sound halfway between a squawk and a cough and raised the boil-covered bone spikes that had long ago replaced his hands. His horned, featureless helm bobbed, and he gurgled something and clashed his spikes over his head.

Canto nodded. So that was it. Yan intended to let Skrall do the dirty work. The red-scaled champion wasn’t quite the berserker Hrolf had been, but he was dangerous nonetheless. His spikes could rip through stone and puncture iron as easily as they did flesh. Canto knew that he couldn’t simply kill Skrall, not as he had Alfven. Once was a lesson, twice a blasphemy. So it was to be a fight, but that didn’t mean it had to be a long one.

‘We don’t have these problems among my people,’ Khorreg said helpfully.

‘Yes, assassination and enslavement is so much easier,’ Canto muttered. Khorreg nodded agreeably.

‘You manlings are inefficient as well as stupid. Frankly, you need overseers,’ the Chaos dwarf said and laughed, clapping his hands to his belly.

Canto ignored the horrible chortling of the stunted Daemonsmith and drew his blade. Skrall gurgled again and gesticulated with his spikes. Canto had never bothered to learn how to translate the champion’s speech, so couldn’t say whether he was being cursed at or whether Skrall was simply reciting his pedigree. Nevertheless, he didn’t wait for him to finish. His sword licked out, carving a scar across the cheek-piece of Skrall’s helmet, startling him. A spike punched towards him, driven by a muscular, scaly arm. The overlapping scaly plates that covered Skrall’s body were as effective as any dwarf-forged armour and Canto’s riposte crashed harmlessly off the champion’s upper chest.

Men were cheering now and stamping their feet. Yan watched with a wide smile. Hrodor was circling around the fight, armoured fingers tapping at the dagger sheathed on his belt. Canto took it all in at a glance, his well-honed sense of self-preservation screaming a warning at him. Nomads always went for the hidden thrust and, truth to tell, if the situation had been reversed, he might have tried something similar. Skrall came in again, bisecting the air with his spikes, throwing his arms out in a wide, sweeping gesture and forcing Canto to step back. Hrodor, the nails in his skull glistening weirdly, drew his blade and lunged, seeking to plant the dagger in the small of Canto’s back.

Except that Canto wasn’t there. The blade plunged into Skrall’s throat, lodging itself in the reptilian scales there and causing the champion to reel and gag. He staggered back, pawing ineffectually at the blade’s hilt with his spikes. Hrodor gawped in confusion, but his hand was already dipping for his sword hilt instinctively as he turned to see Canto beside him, the edge of the latter’s sword pressed tight to Hrodor’s throat. Skrall sank to his knees, still pawing at the blade. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it would make it hard to concentrate on anything else. Canto lifted a boot and kicked the hilt of the dagger, lodging it further into Skrall’s larynx and knocking the champion onto his back. Then he looked at Yan, whose grin was stretched tight and becoming a rictus snarl.

‘They call me the Unsworn, Yan, not the Unobservant,’ he said.

‘They’ll call you nothing at all, soon enough,’ Yan snarled, slicing the air with his falchion. ‘I’ll take your skull for my banner and lead this army to war–’

Khorreg said something in his own language. There was a spurt of heat as the magma cannon belched and strained in its chains, spattering onlookers with burning dollops of liquid fire. At some point during the confrontation, Khorreg had signalled that the cannon be turned about to face the gathered Chaos forces. The ogres were already dragging the Deathshrieker launcher around as well. Khorreg’s two assistants had joined him, and they chuckled and laughed harshly at the dumbfounded expression on Yan’s face as he took in the steaming, dripping barrel of the magma cannon. The champion lurched towards Khorreg, blade out, but the armoured bulk of Khul interposed itself.

The Ironsworn was only half the height of the champion, but thrice the width. Yan stopped dead. Khul raised his axe slowly, letting the fading light of the day catch on the runes of death and pain that had been wrought into the blade.

Yan licked his lips. ‘You only get one chance, dwarf,’ he said. ‘There are more of us than you can kill quickly enough with those weapons. We’ll take your beards as surely as we took those of these others,’ he added, gesturing around at the fallen keep.

‘Either way, you’ll lead an army without our help, manling,’ Khorreg rumbled. His eyes glinted with ageless malevolence and cunning. ‘And you do need us, if you want to reap the skulls and spill the blood your puny god has demanded.’

‘We need no cowardly weapons such as these,’ Yan protested.

‘I wasn’t talking about weapons, manling,’ Khorreg said. He hiked a thumb over his shoulder at the chasm separating the Chaos army from their chosen prey. ‘I was talking about a bridge.’

‘What do you need?’ Canto said quickly, not taking his eyes from Yan.

‘Slaves, raw materials,’ Khorreg said, stroking his beard. ‘One will serve as the other, in a pinch.’

‘Take these two and what remains of their warband,’ Canto said, nodding to Hrodor and Skrall. ‘They’ll be useful one way or another. Unless you’d like to disagree,’ he added, looking at Yan.

Yan opened his mouth, but then closed it with a snap. His eyes were on the hold across the chasm, and his mind was on the glory to be reaped and the skulls to be collected. Canto nodded in satisfaction. ‘How long?’ he said to Khorreg.

‘A few days,’ the Chaos dwarf said. ‘Depends on the strength of the materials,’ he added wickedly, leering at Hrodor.

‘Good enough,’ Canto said. Then more loudly, to the cheers of the surrounding warriors, ‘And then we pull Karak Kadrin apart stone by stone!’

CHAPTER NINE

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

‘They’ve gone below,’ Thungrimsson said as he entered the blockhouse.

Ungrim Ironfist looked up from the map. He had not left the blockhouse since the great doors had closed, needing to be as close to the battle as possible, Thungrimsson knew. ‘How long will it take for them to reach their goal?’

‘A matter of hours, if Copperback can be trusted,’ Thungrimsson said.

‘Are your warriors ready?’ Thungrimsson and his hammerers would be at the forefront of the second sortie, the edge of Karak Kadrin’s axe as it cut into the army at their gates. It was an honour to be the first to battle, and his chest swelled slightly as he thought about it. He had fought in dozens of campaigns over his lifetime, battling grobi and ratkin and worse things, and he had never failed in his duty.

‘Are you?’ Thungrimsson said. They were alone in the blockhouse, by the king’s command, so there was little need for formality. Outside, weapons rattled and the stone vibrated with the tread of booted feet as the defenders of Karak Kadrin readied themselves for battle anew. Past the walls, horns wailed and beasts howled as the Chaos army was brought under control and aimed once more at their enemies. Something was going on out there, over the chasm, but no one had figured out what yet.

Ungrim snorted. ‘Need you ask? I ache for battle, old friend.’ He stepped away from the table, hefting his double-headed axe. ‘My axe is thirsty.’

‘Speaking of thirsty,’ Thungrimsson muttered, striding to the keg set upright near the table. He filled a mug and threw it back. Wiping foam from his mouth, he looked at his king. ‘Gurnisson is quite charismatic, when he wants to be.’

Ungrim grunted, watching the lantern light play across his axe. He said, ‘And what of my son?’ Thungrimsson fell silent. Ungrim grunted again, and sighed. ‘I know,’ he said.

‘He will learn,’ Thungrimsson said, setting his mug aside. ‘You have taught him much.’

‘I have little left to teach him,’ Ungrim said. ‘And what I have taught him, I fear, has made him less than he should be.’ He looked at Thungrimsson. ‘I should not have let him take the vow.’

‘That is not for me to say, my king.’

‘You are my hearth-warden, and my Reckoner, and come to it, my Remembrancer, Thungrimsson. Of all those who serve me, you alone have leave to say what you wish, when you will,’ Ungrim said. ‘I should not have let him take the oath.’

‘No, you should not have,’ Thungrimsson said.

Ungrim looked up, eyes blazing. He bit off a retort and then released an unsteady breath. ‘He insisted,’ he said. It was less an excuse than a simple statement of fact. Garagrim had insisted, and Ungrim could deny his only son nothing. Not even the decision to take on an oath that would doom him. Thungrimsson nodded.

‘He had his reasons,’ he said.

Ungrim’s face twisted. ‘Oh aye, he had reasons, and foolish ones at that. The king of Karak Kadrin carries the burden of our shame, not the prince. He thinks to buy my freedom with his death, and I’ll not pay that price, not for all the gold in these mountains.’

‘Have you told him that?’

Ungrim slumped. ‘What good would it do, Snorri? Would he listen? Has he ever listened?’

Thungrimsson had no answer for his king. Ungrim stumped back to the table. ‘If Gurnisson makes good his vow, we will know it. Nonetheless, we need to keep them occupied and looking at us.’ He stroked his beard, losing himself in the sway and flow of future battle. Thungrimsson couldn’t help but admire his king. Ungrim Ironfist possessed the finest battle-sense of any dwarf king yet ruling a hold, and Karak Kadrin had been shaped over the centuries by that sense. It was as much a war machine as any catapult or bolt thrower, when Ungrim saw to its defences.

‘There are paths from the inner keep to the outer,’ Ungrim said, referring to the hidden, sloped tunnels that acted simultaneously as drainage as well as strong-points for the defenders of the hold to launch blistering guerrilla attacks. The paths weren’t large, and once revealed, would have to be sealed after the dwarfs had retreated. If they had to retreat, if any of them were left to retreat.

‘Thunderers,’ Thungrimsson said.

‘Mm,’ Ungrim said noncommittally. ‘No, axes, I think. We’ll wait for those blasted gronti to get close,’ he said, referring to the siege-giants.

‘That’ll be a suicide mission,’ Thungrimsson said softly.

Ungrim nodded grimly. ‘There are over a hundred Slayers left in the hold, maybe more. Gather as many as you can find. They’ll be happy enough to do it.’ There was no way to keep an accurate count of Slayers at the best of times, let alone in a siege. They came and went as it pleased them, and there were always more hanging around than was entirely healthy to Thungrimsson’s thinking. Not without reason was Karak Kadrin called Slayer Keep. Nonetheless, the way Ungrim spent them like quarrels from a crossbow did not sit well with him, even in circumstances such as this.

Ungrim saw his expression and sighed. ‘I know your feelings, old friend. But you are not a Slayer, and Grungni willing, you never will be. They – we – are already dead and we have been since our names were inscribed on the pillar in the temple of Grimnir. Some, like Gurnisson, are simply more stubborn about it than others. Bringing down one of those thrice-cursed walking siege-engines will be a doom equal to Agni Firetongue’s.’ Ungrim’s eyes glinted. ‘I’d go myself, if I thought you’d let me.’

Thungrimsson tensed, but Ungrim waved a hand. ‘I know. My oath as king supersedes my personal shame. I will lead the second sortie, and, Grimnir willing, you will crown Garagrim as king and strip the dye from his hair and perhaps Karak Kadrin will have a proper king again.’

‘It has a proper king now,’ Thungrimsson said. Ungrim didn’t reply, his eyes on the map. His king was no longer listening. He rarely listened. At times, Thungrimsson thought that there was very little left of the beardling who’d taken the throne, his jowls and pate stained with dye. He’d been much like his son, devoted and determined. Now, he was obsessed. Under his unflagging leadership Karak Kadrin had grown in prestige and power. For many in the city, the hold was the fulcrum about which the world revolved, and it was at Karak Kadrin that the last battle before the end of the world would come. When war was on the wind, the Slayers came, hungrily hunting doom in defence of the bar that kept the cursed north at bay. But even as he’d made an impregnable fastness of the hold, he’d become more and more doom-hungry himself.

Ungrim wanted to die so badly that he invited war to his people’s doorstep. Expeditions to the north left from Karak Kadrin, bearing his seal. They were challenges, tossed into the teeth of Chaos. Trapped here by duty, he tried to draw enemies to him, without regard for the consequences.

Somewhere, somewhen, Ungrim Ironfist had joined his Slayer brethren in madness, Thungrimsson knew. And it was a madness that could very well spell the doom of not just Ungrim, but his people as well.

Karak Kadrin,
the Underway

The dwarfs called the bridge the Deep Span. It was a narrow thing, barely wide enough for two dwarfs to cross side-by-side. Besides the massive main bridge that had extended from Baragor’s Watch to the entryway to Karak Kadrin proper, it was the only way into the section of the Underway directly beneath the ravaged outer keep that didn’t involve an arduous week-long trip through the mountains. Felix eyed it with trepidation as he squatted in the lee of the great portcullis that marked the beginning of the bridge. A similar portcullis occupied the other end.

The bridge didn’t look as big as he’d have liked, or as wide. The sheer enormity of the chasm wasn’t helping matters. It was a vast, yawning silence that seemed to swallow up all noise and light. Even worse, they were travelling across it in the dark in small groups, so as not to attract any undue attention from the forces perched on the lip of the chasm above.

Felix started as Gotrek slapped his back. ‘Just keep your hand on my shoulder, manling. We can’t have you slipping off, not so close to what may be my hour of doom.’

‘No,’ Felix said through gritted teeth. ‘What will we face up there, Gotrek?’ he said, changing the subject as they waited for their turn to cross.

‘The enemy, manling,’ Gotrek said.

‘I meant from the – ah – the dawi zharr.’ He said it hesitantly, half expecting Gotrek to explode with fury. Instead the Slayer became quiet.

‘There won’t be many of them,’ he said at last. ‘No more than a handful. They never come this far south in numbers more than a handful.’ He grunted. ‘Watch their hands, manling. They are dwarfs, and though they are debased and twisted, they still have cunning. They make terrible weapons and they use them at the least provocation. Don’t let them get close, don’t let them see you or catch you unawares.’

‘What about their weapons?’

‘We will destroy their corrupt machines. That shall be the task of the Slayers,’ Garagrim said, joining them, Biter following behind him. ‘When we emerge, we shall make for their guns, to destroy them and their masters. The dawi zharr cannot be allowed to escape.’

‘No,’ Gotrek said, in agreement, ‘They cannot.’ Garagrim looked almost surprised at Gotrek’s statement, but he refrained from commenting. Gotrek smiled sourly. ‘That is more important than any doom, War-Mourner. The safety of the hold comes first.’

Garagrim gave a curt nod. A moment later, it was their turn to cross. Felix thought about closing his eyes, reckoning that sight would do him little good in any event, but decided against it and instead kept his eyes firmly on the back of Gotrek’s head. The trip across the bridge did not go quickly, but Gotrek’s sure-footed movements kept Felix to the path without a misstep, and his hand on the Slayer’s shoulder kept him from wandering too close to the edge. He looked up only once as they moved across the span, but could see nothing save a distant slash of starry sky. The sounds of industry rattled down periodically from above, and dim sounds that might have been screams.

As they reached the other side, he said, ‘What are they building up there?’ For he knew that was what those sounds had been, and he had a dark premonition of the stunted shapes of the Chaos dwarfs crafting some new hellish engine in the ruined belly of the captured keep.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Gotrek muttered. ‘They’ll never finish it, whatever it is.’

The darkness of the Underway was even more claustrophobic the second time around, Felix felt. One hand clenched achingly tight on Karaghul’s hilt, he moved through the vast silence, one shape amongst many. Dwarf engineers carried explosives in heavily reinforced kegs. They were surrounded by ironbreakers and rangers, protected from any threat that might choose to try its luck on the small army moving through the depths.

As improbable as it sounded, Felix had been assured that there were such things. Brooding horrors unleashed into the depths by an ancient cataclysm and by more recent incursions by goblins and skaven and worse things. ‘There are worse things than grobi in the depths,’ the miner Copperback had said, with far too much enthusiasm for Felix’s taste.

After hearing that, Felix couldn’t help but see monstrous shapes in every shadow and nightmares crouching in every forgotten archway. Even worse, from above, he could hear the sounds of cannon-fire picking up once more where it had left off. Every boom from above echoed and re-echoed until it was a thunderclap below.

‘The ground is weak,’ Gotrek said as dust drifted down in a choking cloud.

‘It’ll be weaker after we blow a chunk of it into the sky,’ one of the Slayers murmured, his voice echoing oddly in the suffocating quiet.

‘If you have a problem with it, you should have stayed behind,’ another rasped. ‘It’s not like we’d miss your axe, Berengar.’

The Slayer called Berengar let loose a punch that connected audibly with the other Slayer’s shoulder. Garagrim, not far ahead, turned. ‘Quiet, the pair of you,’ he growled.

‘Quiet yourself, beardling,’ an older Slayer, with one milky white eye and a short, stiff crest that looked like a white stripe painted across the top of his sun-browned scalp, said, glaring at the War-Mourner. Garagrim blustered, unused to his authority being questioned. Gotrek grinned mirthlessly, watching the exchange.

Felix let himself fall back from the main bulk of the Slayers. He dropped into a trot beside Biter. The latter was the most open-mouthed dwarf he’d ever met. Biter was watching one of the younger Slayers, who walked beside Garagrim. ‘Why does Garagrim keep him so close?’ Felix asked.

‘That’s the War-Mourner’s duty,’ Biter said, the head of his mace bouncing on his shoulder. ‘He chooses who’s to die. Then he makes sure that it happens.’ He chuckled. ‘Most of us don’t need his help, which annoys the beardling no end. Princes are worse than kings for royal commands.’

‘You could probably use his help,’ Koertig said.

Biter laughed. Felix looked from the sour-faced Nordlander to the Slayer.

‘Forgive me for asking, but–’ he began.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Koertig growled.

‘I got him drunk,’ Biter said, leering suggestively. ‘You manlings swear your strongest oaths with a bit of ale in your belly.’

‘Why?’ Felix said.

Biter shrugged. ‘I needed a new Remembrancer.’

‘What happened to your old one?’ Felix said, though he didn’t think he really wanted to know the answer.

Biter’s smile faded. ‘He got old,’ he said. He looked at Felix. ‘You humans grow old so quickly. One day he was by my side and then, he was gone. He went in his sleep.’

‘That doesn’t sound so bad–’

‘A giant stepped on him while he was sleeping. We probably shouldn’t have drunk so much,’ Biter said mournfully. ‘My fault, I suppose.’ He grinned. ‘Still, I feel lucky this time.’

‘You said that the last two times,’ Koertig said. ‘And the dozen times before that.’ He looked at Felix. ‘At least yours tries. Mine thinks it’s a joke.’

‘It is a joke,’ Biter said. He looked at Felix. ‘Grimnir had no sense of humour, they say. Not a smile to be had when he was around. So we do the same. We cut it out, the way we cut our beards. Not me, though. If I’m already dead, I intend to enjoy the afterlife. Wine, women and song, isn’t that what you humans say?’

Felix couldn’t help smiling. ‘Yes, something like that.’

‘I can do what I want now, Jaeger,’ Biter said. His eyes were bright with a peculiar sort of madness. ‘For the first time in my life, I can do what I want. No clan, no king, no rules. That’s the joke, that’s why Grimnir went north, you know. Not for shame or duty or honour, but because he was just so damned tired of being told what to do by his peers, by his king, of being crushed by the mountains we dwarfs carry on our backs,’ he continued. Then, ‘That’s the joke,’ he said, more softly.

Felix looked away, feeling faintly ashamed though he couldn’t say why. Koertig merely grunted. The Nordlander was used to his Slayer’s mercurial shifts of mood, obviously. Biter fell silent, his eyes locked on that middle distance that Felix knew well enough.

The dwarfs moved mostly in silence. If they felt any nervousness, no bearded face showed it. The ironbreakers walked on the outskirts of the throng, alert gazes sweeping the darkness. The rangers stayed close to the engineers, and most of the miners moved far ahead, the lights of their candle-helmets piercing the gloom. The rest walked with the throng, holding long poles topped by enclosed lanterns that enveloped the other dwarfs in a warm, protective glow. The Slayers, of course, strode through the darkness, their voices loud. Some shouted challenges into collapsed tunnels, while others occasionally wandered off, only to return looking disappointed. Only Gotrek, Garagrim and Biter stayed with the throng the entire trek. Was it a sign of patience, Felix wondered, or was it simply that once they had a doom in their sights, they were determined not to waver from it?

Axeson walked amongst the throng, whispering softly to the younger warriors at times. In other instances, he walked out into the darkness and returned with a shamefaced Slayer trotting dejectedly in his wake. Felix joined him. Axeson gripped a heavy axe, its blade dripping with strange runes.

‘Why did you come with us?’ Felix said. Axeson glanced at him, but didn’t reply. Felix frowned, irritated by the priest’s sudden taciturnity. ‘What does it have to do with Gotrek?’

‘Who says it has anything to do with Gurnisson?’

‘You told me to keep him alive. Then, later, you said that if he died, Karak Kadrin would fall. What did you mean?’

‘I merely passed on what the ancestor-gods told me,’ Axeson said.

‘I was given to understand that Grimnir was not the most talkative of gods,’ Felix said.

‘He’s not. Which is why dwarfs listen when he chooses to speak,’ Axeson said. They walked in silence for a while. Then, ‘The ghost of civilization,’ the priest murmured. ‘What do you think of it, Jaeger?’ He waved a hand at the arching, vaulted roof of the Underway, stretching high into the shadowed recesses above them.

‘Gotrek said it once stretched the length of the Worlds Edge Mountains,’ Felix said. Immense archways lined this section of the ancient road. Without exception, all of them had been sealed with massive blocks of cut stone. Felix shivered, briefly imagining what might be scratching at the other side.

‘Farther,’ Axeson said. ‘My–’ He hesitated. ‘My father used to tell me that it was the spine of the world, connecting the far northern holds to those in the distant south. Thousands of dwarfs – merchants, peddlers, adventurers – would travel these deep roads, spreading out in a vast wave, taking our artisanry, our civilization, to every corner of this world. Some say that we even had roads that travelled beneath the sea,’ he said wistfully. He coughed in embarrassment.

‘What happened?’

‘What always happens, manling,’ Gotrek said, appearing suddenly at Felix’s elbow, causing him to jump. ‘Chaos came, and brought the Golden Age to an end. Then the elves turned on us.’

‘And your people superseded both of ours in the aftermath,’ Axeson said.

‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ Gotrek said. ‘And it’s a debate for another time.’ He pointed. ‘We’re here.’ The road had widened into what resembled a large antechamber, and great statues stood silent sentry over shadowed corners. Grime-shrouded mosaics covered the circular walls and despite the detritus of years, the sheer artisanry of the edifices that lined the space was impossible to deny. Ancient aqueducts stretched along the ceiling, and, impossibly, water still sloshed softly through them.

‘It was a marketplace once,’ Axeson said. ‘We’re beneath the section of the keep where Ungrim’s outer palace was built. This was once the central hub of the Karak Kadrin markets.’

Felix could believe it. He imagined that stalls had once filled the shadowy berths that lined the chamber and the corridors that spread out from it. What had it been like, in those long-gone days? How many dwarfs had packed into this place to dicker and bargain over goods?

‘The markets were famed throughout the Empire,’ Garagrim said, picking up where Axeson had left off. The War-Mourner’s hand stroked the stone wall reverentially. ‘We were the centre of the world then: Karak Kadrin, where all roads met and gold from a thousand holds traded hands.’ He turned and gestured. ‘That road led to Barak Varr, and far below, at the bottom of the Hundred Thousand Steps sits the Market-Dock, where the traders who once plied the deep rivers and oceans upon which the good stone of the earth rests would set sail for the sea-fortress and Zhufbar on the Black Water. And there, the pathway into the Badlands that once led to the Silver Pinnacle, aye and long lost Karak Eight Peaks. We were the centre of the empire; not its heart, perhaps, but mighty in our own way. Mighty…’

Garagrim trailed off and shook his head. The dwarfs had paused in reverential silence, even the Slayers. For them, this was their history, rendered in stone and inviolate despite all that their people had undergone. It was as much a part of them as their beards or their songs. And now, they had come to destroy it, in order to destroy an enemy, and Felix was struck by the sad necessity of what was to come.

Gotrek seemed to know what he was thinking, and he grunted. ‘It has always been thus, manling. We sacrifice of ourselves to kill our foe. Stone or flesh, it makes little difference. When the time comes to pay the price, we pay it gladly.’

‘Some of us more gladly than others,’ Garagrim said. He slapped the rock wall and the sound echoed throughout the chamber. ‘We were mighty once. We could be mighty again!’

‘Those days are gone,’ Gotrek said, and his words settled like a shroud over them all. ‘These caverns are tombs now, fit only for memory and death.’

No one spoke for a time. After a long silence, the engineers set to work. While half began to oversee the construction of bulwarks against the force of the explosion from tumbled stone and debris, the others set about placing the explosives. They placed their explosives more carefully than the Chaos marauders had. Felix thought that they were perhaps almost hesitant, and that this might almost be a taboo of some sort. Would the dwarf gods look kindly on their people unmaking that which they had made aeons past? For that matter, would their fellow dwarfs? Or would there be a particular sort of unacknowledged shame attached to the names of those who had taken part in this mission, that they had committed some crime; a necessary one, but inescapably wrong for all of that?

Gotrek alone seemed unbothered by that fact, though Felix thought that he simply hid it better than the rest. ‘The roof was made with escape in mind,’ Gotrek said approvingly, turning in a short circle. ‘Flat braces of rock that will tip and crash if the supports are blown. It was supposed to give our people a way to get above-ground in the event of a collapse. Blowing down just one is enough for our purposes.’ He rubbed his patch with the heel of his palm. ‘Which is good, because the rest of them will shatter, if I judge their condition right,’ he added. ‘Time cripples even our work.’

Puzzled, Felix watched them work. There was an art to it, it seemed, and it was one that Gotrek seemed proficient in. He oversaw the placement, ordering changes with brusque directness when something didn’t match up to the calculations in his head. The other Slayers, and not a few of the other dwarfs besides, watched him with a mixture of wariness, hostility and admiration.

When they had finished, Felix felt a sudden nervousness. There was no guarantee that the dwarfs’ explosives would serve them any better than theirs had the Chaos marauders. He’d heard tell of accidents at the Nuln Gunnery School that had resulted in even experienced gunners and sappers being blown sky high by their own weapons, and he didn’t want to experience that first hand. The dwarfs, on the other hand, seemed eager for the fireworks to begin as they moved back into the tunnels and behind the makeshift bulwarks. An engineer poured a trail of black, sulphur-smelling powder from and to each keg and then away, towards the group. When he’d finished, Garagrim lit a torch and held it aloft. ‘Well, who wants it?’

A dozen Slayers raised their hands. Garagrim snorted and handed the torch to the Slayer Berengar, who looked at it as if it were an adder about to bite him.

‘Time to stand back, manling,’ Gotrek said, laying one ham-sized hand against Felix’s chest as Berengar stepped towards the trail of powder and let the torch dip. Around them, dwarfs crouched and placed their hands over their ears and let their mouths open the way Imperial gunners did before a cannon fired. ‘It’s about to get very, very loud in here.’

And then, very abruptly, it did.

Karak Kadrin,
Baragor’s Watch

Standing before the broken remains of the bridge leading to Karak Kadrin, Canto watched the Chaos dwarfs work with a mixture of disgust and admiration. The stunted ones had set up a makeshift workshop in the lee of the final wall of the outer fortress and were busy at work.

On the precipice, the siege-giant howled in agony as it was forced to kneel, its abused ligaments popping like cannon-fire. Even stretched out, the beast wouldn’t reach across the chasm, but that wasn’t Khorreg’s intent. Instead, he and his assistants had overseen their ogre-slaves in extracting certain materials from the gutted ruins of the keep. Iron struts and ironwood supports from the fallen walls were dragged towards the chasm by the ogres as well as the remnants of Hrolf’s warband, now pressed into service by Canto’s order. The lengths of solid wood and stone were held by the giant as the ogres, under the cold gaze of one of the Chaos dwarfs, began to drive immense lengths of twisted metal through the wood and into the stone below, anchoring it in place.

‘The giants are no use in cracking the hold,’ Khorreg said, stroking his beard and watching the construction. ‘The brutes wouldn’t live long enough to get through the doors let alone into the upper levels of the hold – they’d be dead the minute they assaulted the gates. But, he who wastes not wants not,’ Khorreg continued gleefully. ‘My kin have used breathing bridges to great effect elsewhere. We’ll just need to see that they’re properly supported, but once that’s done, we’ll have them lay down and then we’ll make sure they don’t get any ideas about moving. And we’ll need to be quick about securing a hold on the plateau. We’ll take the magma cannon over first and get it chained to the ground before the doors. Your savages can see to keeping it protected, just in case our weakling cousins decide to try a sortie through the main gates.’

‘How long will this… breathing bridge hold out?’

‘As long as the beasts do,’ Khorreg said. ‘They’ll last long enough to get most of your troops over and into the hold through whatever cracks we carve into it. After that, well, your troops are in need of supplies, aren’t they?’

Canto grimaced at the thought of eating one of the smelly beasts. ‘Once we’re in, how long will it take you to build something more permanent?’

‘A few weeks, more or less,’ Khorreg said confidently. ‘I have no doubt our cousins have the materials within their pathetic hold somewhere.’

The Dreadquake mortar gave a rumbling roar that shook the ground beneath Canto’s feet and fired a moment later, belching destruction towards Karak Kadrin. Part of the mountain face crumbled, showering the plateau with rocks. It was followed by a number of rockets, which streaked towards the doors, leaving behind immense craters to mark the points of impact. The doors held firm, though Khorreg didn’t seem disappointed. When Canto mentioned it, the Chaos dwarf gave a cackle.

‘Doors won’t matter when we rip the front of that mountain off, manling,’ he said.

Canto was about to reply when the world was suddenly ripped asunder, as if by the hands of the gods. Stone was wrenched from the ground and hurled skywards, along with men and animals, in a vast volcanic gout of hot air and destruction as the ground was ruptured from below. The wall behind them disintegrated into a hurricane of stone flinders and death. Men were reduced to pulp by flying stone and debris. The Deathshrieker rocket launcher was knocked over and the remaining rockets exploded, ripping apart both the ogres responsible for loading them as well as the Chaos marauders and Chaos warriors nearby. The magma cannon broke its traces and the massive engine rolled through the destruction with a booming snarl of triumph as the daemon animating it suddenly found itself free to hunt its own prey.

Canto, knocked flat on his back, saw the daemon-engine lurch towards him through the shower of rock and flaming debris. As it lunged past one of Khorreg’s assistants, its great iron and brass wheels pulped the Chaos dwarf, reducing him to a dark red smear on the cracked stone of the ground. He clawed for the hilt of his sword, knowing even as he drew it that it would be of little use. The cannon would devour him, sword and all. Then Khorreg was there, and he flung out his hands and something round and hissing flew towards the engine – a small explosive, Canto belatedly realized. The cannon’s wheels exploded and the engine toppled over with a roar.

Khorreg glanced over his shoulder at Canto. ‘The third debt, Unsworn, is settled. Two left, by my reckoning,’ the Chaos dwarf said.

Canto rose to his feet. The ground trembled as tremors rippled outwards from an immense column of smoke that now dominated the sky above them. ‘What was that?’ he snarled.

Khorreg grinned. ‘Big explosion, manling… Looks like our cousins are coming out to play after all,’ he said. The Hell-Worker turned and began to bellow orders to his surviving assistant. He turned back to Canto. ‘Best get your troops facing the right direction, before you find yourself cut off at the knees.’

Canto grunted and grabbed the first Chaos marauder to stagger out of the smoke and dust. ‘Sound the rally,’ he roared. ‘We’re under attack!’

CHAPTER TEN

Karak Kadrin,
Baragor’s Watch

The explosion rocked the chamber and though he’d been prepared for it, Felix was sent flying. He struck an outcropping and slumped, dazed by the sudden rush of sound and fury. For a moment, the air was filled with an almost solid bombardment of noise and destruction and Felix scrambled about on his knees, his hands clapped to his ears as a flood of stone dust billowed through the chamber. The echoes of the explosion faded, and Felix caught the groan of collapsing stone as he cautiously removed his hands.

The antechamber was large, almost the length of the outer wall of Karak Kadrin. The explosion had been like a precise blow, tipping the first in a row of pegs. Bodies tumbled into the gash opened in the roof even as that gash split and spread like cracks running across ice. Gotrek had been correct, the ground above was weak; what age and disuse alone had failed to do, the explosion had accomplished. Vast flat stones, formerly part of the roof of the Underway, slammed down against the road, creating rough ramps, even as Gotrek had predicted. Even as Felix staggered to his feet, dwarfs covered in dust and grime shook themselves free of the devastation and the Slayers charged up the makeshift ramp, scrambling part of the way then running with their weapons swinging.

Dazed Chaos marauders who had somehow not fallen were slapped aside, and dead ones were trampled. The bodies of the latter littered the floor of the chamber three-deep, and Felix was forced to clamber over them, his stomach rebelling at the sight of what the force of the blast had done to them. Even the hardy men of the Chaos Wastes were as nothing before the power of the explosion that had ripped open the ground beneath them.

The dwarfs moved surprisingly quickly, following the Slayers. The miners had given a number of the latter sturdy metal ladders that could be carried rolled up and then unrolled when needed. The Slayers had done so as they reached the top, and the rangers followed them, climbing swiftly. Felix went up with Koertig and Axeson. Both men had been abandoned by their Slayers.

The climb was arduous, despite the relative shallowness of the slope. The dwarfs managed it easily, but both Felix and Koertig were sweating and shaking by the time they reached the top. At some point during their travels, the sun had begun to rise, and thin daylight pierced the heavy cloud of dust and smoke that the explosion had thrown into the air. He emerged from the oppressive silence that followed an explosion into the clangour of battle. His eardrums ached and Karaghul was in his hand, though he didn’t recall drawing it.

The devastation was breathtaking. The explosion hadn’t simply opened a hole in the battlefield. It had gouged titanic talon marks through the already ruined outer keep, ripping the bastion open like a savaged lamb. Felix could not even begin to comprehend what the reverberations had done to those distant portions of the Underway. How much ancient history had been lost, buried forever by one lit trail of powder? The fortress looked as if it had been raised up and then tossed down, some places sunken lower than others as buried supports collapsed in a slow domino-tilt of destruction. Smoke and dust obscured the sky, issuing in ominous clouds from the ruptured soil. It was as if the very ground had decided to reject the Chaos horde’s presence.

The rangers had arrayed themselves around the circumference of the newly made crater and their crossbows were pointed outwards, firing into the melee that surrounded them. Felix hastily moved away from the crater as ironbreakers and miners clambered to the surface. He looked for Gotrek, but couldn’t spot him in the chaos of battle.

The Slayers had seized the initiative, and their assault rippled outwards in a spreading circle of destruction as twenty doom-seekers pitted themselves against ten times their number in an orgy of violent redemption. The explosion had shattered whatever cohesion the marauders had possessed, erupting beneath the largest mass of men. Now they fought not as a horde, but as individuals or small groups, and in that, they were little match for the ravening Slayers.

Felix caught sight of Dorin, wide sword in hand, as he lopped off a leg at the knee and bounced over the falling warrior to launch himself at the man’s wide-eyed fellows. A milky-eyed old Slayer spun his axe in a crooked figure-eight and tattooed tribesmen shrieked and fell. But where was Gotrek?

He heard a shout, and found himself thrust aside by the metal-plated arm of the ironbreaker, Grimbold, whose axe looped out, shearing off the jaw of a howling Northman. ‘Step aside, manling, and let us do our job,’ the ironbreaker snarled. Behind him, another ironbreaker raised a curling war-horn to his lips and let loose with a low, loud sound that rose up over the fading noise of the explosion and bounced through the ruins. Grimbold and his warriors moved outwards in two rings past the line of rangers, dispatching those men the Slayers hadn’t. Unlike the latter, however, the ironbreakers did not spread so far as to weaken their own lines. Felix felt a bit in awe of the dwarfs’ martial precision. Each of the dwarfs seemed to know by instinct where his companions were and move accordingly, shield held aloft and axe flashing. As with everything else, the dwarf approach to war was that of craftsmen, organized, precise and effective.

He looked around, sighting the shattered, gaping outer walls of the fortress. Men poured out, abandoning the siege for battle. Horns screamed and tribal chieftains tried to maintain order, but just as with the earlier internecine blood-letting the war-hunger of the Blood God’s worshippers could not, would not be denied. They had been forced to wait for too long; now that their opponents had come to them, they would neither slow nor retreat.

‘I should never have accepted that drink,’ Koertig muttered. He raised his shield and slammed the flat of his axe against it. ‘Come on then!’ The first Chaos marauders reached them a moment later. Koertig caught a blow on his shield and let his axe drop, taking his opponent in the head. The Nordlander knew these men of old, for his people had fought them since before Sigmar had first raised his hammer, and he met their savagery with cold hatred centuries in the making.

Axeson, in contrast, fought with an almost Slayer-like ferocity. His axe in one hand and a short-hafted hammer in the other, he used the latter to break a charging marauder’s leg before cleaving his head with the former. He fought in silence, unlike the warrior-priests of the Empire who went into battle belting out hymns.

Karaghul shot up, narrowly deflecting a clumsily hurled spear. Weaponless, the frothing warrior leapt at Felix, arms outstretched. Felix ducked beneath those arms and his blade sank home. As the Chaos marauder fell, dragging him around, Felix jerked the blade free and turned to meet his next opponent. A crossbow bolt took that one in the head, pitching him backwards. Felix strode past him without pausing.

He searched for Gotrek. It was instinct by now, a compulsion to make sure that he didn’t miss any moment of what might be the Slayer’s final battle. The battle spun around him, and there were more orange crests to catch his eye than normal.

There! Gotrek’s arm swung out, his massive fist connecting with a helmeted head, denting baroque metal and breaking bone, sending the Chaos warrior tumbling down like a sack of broken sticks. His axe swung out as if independent of him, a predatory curve of steel seeking its morning meal. Like Axeson, he fought quietly, without his usual excitement. It was unnerving, as if the Gotrek he had known had become something else – a mechanism of destruction, feeling nothing, not even anticipation. The Slayer fought steadily, his every step littered with human wreckage.

In contrast, Garagrim fought almost joyously. The War-Mourner seemed to have left behind the weight of responsibility, and his axes licked out as if they weighed no more than feathers. But despite his abandon, Felix noted that he stayed close to the equally wild younger Slayer he had noticed with the older dwarf in the tunnels. The War-Mourner guided the young Slayer into the thick of the battle, almost herding him into combat.

The sound of galloping hooves shook the air. Felix turned and saw a wave of marauder horsemen crushing their own ground-bound allies to reach the dwarf line. The riders whooped and howled as they came on and Felix threw himself to the side, narrowly avoiding being trampled. A Slayer wasn’t so lucky, and the orange crest was flattened ignobly into the mud of the battlefield. Felix couldn’t tell who it was.

He brought Karaghul up in time to block a spear-thrust and then the horseman was past him. Crossbows fired, picking riders from the saddle. Then, it was axe-work. Horses shrieked as pick-axes swept their hooves out from under them and sent them rolling. The dwarfs, while possessing no cavalry of their own, had long ago learned the art of dealing with a charge, especially one as ragged as this.

More riders came on, however. The dwarfs would be overwhelmed, unless–

More horns, but not the brute things of the enemy. No, these were the brass-banded dragon-horns of Karak Kadrin, sounding from somewhere nearby. The second sortie had begun.

So distracted by this was Felix that he only caught sight of the looming rider at the last second, and a falchion sliced through the edge of his cape and across his cheek as he twisted aside.

The Chaos marauder was lithe and deadly looking, like a needle wrapped in iron, and his armour was covered in stretched and stitched faces that looked as if they were screaming. He whooped and jerked on his mount’s reins, his eyes alight with battle-lust. He stank of the stuff of slaughter and Felix gagged as he brought Karaghul up to block another sweeping blow from the falchion. His opponent was stronger than he anticipated, and Karaghul bent back, nearly gashing his shoulder. Felix fell and the hooves of the horse rose over him. He closed his eyes.

A shout thundered in his ears. The young Slayer who’d been beside Garagrim flung himself at the rider, axe licking out to cut through the straps on the man’s saddle, spilling him to the ground in a heap. But as quickly as he’d fallen, he was on his feet, falchion sweeping upwards in a brutal arc that split the Slayer’s skull jaw to crest and sent his body pin-wheeling into the air.

The Chaos warrior gave a bone-rattling guffaw as the body hit the ground. ‘That’s for you, you stunted monkeys. Yan the Foul is no dog to be beaten by apes with hatchets!’

Felix scrambled to his feet and lunged, hoping to bury his sword in the warrior’s back before the latter remembered that he was there. The Chaos warrior turned as Felix’s boot-soles scraped on the stone and caught Karaghul in one gauntlet. Sparks spat from between his fingers as he wrenched the blade down, nearly knocking Felix from his feet. With barely a sneer of effort, the Chaos warrior jerked the sword from Felix’s grip and sent him scrambling back with a cursory swipe of his own blade. He examined Karaghul and gave an appreciative grunt, his weather-seamed face splitting in a vulpine grin. ‘I’ll have this, I think. And your skull to go with it,’ he said, pointing both swords at Felix, who felt his heart drop into his belly.

‘Only if you get past me,’ Garagrim rumbled, clashing his axes together. ‘That manling is a guest of Karak Kadrin and he is under my protection.’

‘Another shaved monkey,’ the Chaos warrior said, turning to face the War-Mourner. ‘Tell me your name, monkey, so that I might have it to remember you by after I knock your stone lair down.’

‘Garagrim Ironfist, Prince of Karak Kadrin and War-Mourner of the Slayer Keep,’ Garagrim growled, stalking towards his opponent.

‘And I am Yan the Foul, Yan of the Khazags, Beast of the Steppes, Wolf of the Plains, Master of–’ Yan began.

‘I don’t care,’ Garagrim said, lunging.

His axes skidded off Yan’s hastily interposed blades. Yan grunted and shoved the Slayer back. ‘Master of the Red Lodge and Servant of the Eightfold Path,’ Yan continued, eyes flashing. ‘There. Now we’re properly introduced. Time to die, little monkey.’

Karaghul hummed like a wasp as it slashed out, shaving the top inch off Garagrim’s crest. The falchion snapped down, nearly catching his leg. The War-Mourner turned and brought both axes around in a sharp arc that caught Yan on his cuirass, shearing away the flayed skin and staggering the Chaos warrior. Yan swept Karaghul up in an awkward slice and Garagrim parried the blade with one axe and then brought his other down on the Chaos warrior’s extended wrist, severing it completely. Karaghul, still clenched in Yan’s fist, tumbled across the stone towards Felix, who leapt for it.

Yan gave a howl and jabbed his gushing stump at Garagrim, blinding the War-Mourner with a spray of brackish blood. The falchion gashed the dwarf’s shoulder and sent him tumbling. The Chaos warrior lunged, trying to capitalize on his foe’s plight. But Garagrim was quicker. One axe snapped out, chopping into Yan’s foot and pinning the warrior in place even as the other sank into his opposite knee. The Chaos warrior screamed and crumpled to his knees.

He slashed ineffectually at Garagrim, and the War-Mourner took his other hand with an almost lazy swipe of an axe. ‘Karak Kadrin still stands,’ Garagrim said calmly. Then he buried the blades of both axes into either side of the Chaos warrior’s neck until the blades met and Yan the Foul’s head toppled free to bounce along the stones, its expression one of bewildered frustration.

‘Up, human,’ Garagrim said, shaking blood from his axes with a rotation of his wrists. ‘There are still enemies to be killed and Slayers seeking doom.’ He looked at Felix. ‘You are a Remembrancer. You should be with your Slayer, so that his doom does not go unseen.’

‘One would think that you wouldn’t mind that,’ Felix said, prying his sword free from the Chaos warrior’s clutching hand. Garagrim’s expression turned sour.

‘Whatever else I may think of Gurnisson, Jaeger, I am War-Mourner and he is a Slayer. My oath is to see that his… that all of their oaths are fulfilled.’ He strode off and Felix followed warily after him. Gotrek and the other Slayers had left a trail of carnage from the crater up to the ragged gap in the sixth wall where the Chaos army had brought their war-engines.

As the Chaos marauders moved to meet the organized dwarf attackers in their midst, the Slayers had been given a relatively clear path to the war-engines. They had chopped and bashed their way through anything and anyone that tried to stand in their way, losing individual Slayers along the way. Now only eight remained, but Gotrek was among them, as was Biter, Berengar and a few others that Felix dimly recognized. Garagrim slapped a Chaos marauder aside and he and Felix joined the group as it made its way towards the engines of the Chaos dwarfs.

‘Not dead then, manling?’ Gotrek said. ‘I thought I’d lost you there, for a moment.’

‘Almost, but not quite,’ Felix said. ‘Garagrim came to my aid,’ he added, somewhat acidly. It rankled a bit whenever Gotrek abandoned him in the middle of a fight to go haring off on his own. The Slayer had saved his life on numerous occasions, but even so, that sum was outnumbered by the times that he’d led or left Felix to situations where he could have easily perished. Gotrek grunted and nodded, as if he’d expected the War-Mourner to do no less. Felix gritted his teeth and turned his attentions to what awaited them.

Someone had been busy organizing a defence of the war machines. Chaos marauders were arrayed in defensive groups around the mammoth devices, as were the ogre crew. The latter brutes, scarred and beaten, clutched tools rather than weapons, but they looked no less imposing for all of that. Those that weren’t readying themselves to fight were lugging the cannon around to face the gap in the wall. Behind them, a large mortar set into a brutal-looking wheeled chassis gave a rumbling bellow that set Felix’s ears to ringing and nearly knocked him off his feet. Somewhere behind them, more of the fortress was flattened in an explosion of dust and fire.

‘Take them,’ Garagrim said, quietly. The Slayers charged and the Chaos marauders came to meet them. The battle was as short as it was brutal. All around them, horns sounded as the dwarf forces in the outer keep swept the disorganized and disarrayed enemy before them. Somewhere along the way, chain of command had broken down in the enemy army, and now individuals and small bands fought not as an army fights, but for survival.

Felix blocked a sword-blow and gutted his opponent, looking past him towards the cannon as it was finally turned about, its maw dripping with fiery liquid. Gotrek saw it as well and as the cannon belched a stream of liquid fire, the Slayer turned and grabbed Felix, jerking him out of the way. One of the Slayers wasn’t so lucky and his form was consumed in moments by the deadly blast.

‘We have to take that blasted thing out,’ Gotrek growled, releasing Felix. With that, the Slayer launched himself towards the cannon and its ogre crew. The two beasts stomped forwards to meet the Slayer, one swinging a hammer, the other reaching out with blistered and blackened hands.

Felix’s attention was pulled from the fight as he heard the crack of a pistol and felt something tug at his cloak, nearly spinning him around. As he spun, he saw a grinning Chaos dwarf lower the smoking wheel-lock pistol he held and raise a second, this one aimed unerringly at Felix’s breastbone. The Chaos dwarf shouted something in what sounded like a debased form of the dwarf tongue and fired. Felix lunged forwards and felt what he thought was the bullet burn across his back and tug at his cloak and his mail shirt. The Chaos dwarf’s piggy eyes widened and he tossed aside the pistols and reached for the hammer hanging from his belt.

Felix stabbed at him with Karaghul and the dwarf roared as the blade danced across a bare bicep, creasing the soot-stained flesh with a line of red. The hammer caught Felix a glancing blow on the side, which was enough to knock him from his feet. He rolled aside as the hammer slammed down, cracking stone. He drove his sword up, piercing the brass-hued scale mail that the Chaos dwarf wore. The dwarf grunted and his weight nearly drove Felix to the ground.

The dwarf cursed and scrabbled at Felix’s throat with his thick fingers. Even with a sword sawing up through his guts, he was determined to throttle Felix. Then, a bloody hand reached down and fixed itself in the Chaos dwarf’s beard and the weight was hauled up off Felix. Gotrek, covered in ogre blood, dragged the Chaos dwarf up and back, tossing the wounded dwarf back onto the stones.

Gotrek glared down at the wounded creature as the Chaos dwarf tried to staunch the blood pumping from his belly. The latter returned the Slayer’s glare and spat a curse. Gotrek raised his axe, but hesitated. Felix knew that dwarfs were reluctant to take the lives of other dwarfs, but did it extend even to these twisted mockeries? ‘Gotrek,’ he began.

The axe fell and a bearded head rolled away across the stones.

The Slayer said nothing, merely turned and glared at the cannon, where it sat untended. ‘It needs to be destroyed, manling. The dawi zharr forge daemons into their engines. It can kill even without the help of a crew.’

‘So it can, and so it will, weakling,’ a raspy voice rumbled. ‘My pretty engines will go forth and maim and slay until this ruin stinks of the dead.’

Gotrek turned, and Felix with him. Behind them, stepping from around the mortar, were two shapes, one big and the other not. The latter was a Chaos dwarf, though broader and more corrupt looking than the one Gotrek had just killed. But the other figure… Felix felt his jaw sag in recognition as he saw the Chaos warrior looming behind the Chaos dwarf who’d spoken. ‘Gotrek, that’s–’

‘Aye, the one who got away,’ Gotrek snarled, raising his axe. ‘I see you, coward! Come and taste my axe!’

‘I tasted it well enough earlier,’ the Chaos warrior rumbled. ‘Kill them, Khorreg!’

‘Don’t rush me, Unsworn,’ the Chaos dwarf, Khorreg, said, licking his blackened lips with a tongue the colour of soot. ‘I want to enjoy this. Khul! See to this dishonoured wretch while I bring that mountain down, eh?’

Gotrek started for Khorreg, a menacing glint in his eye, when a third form interposed itself. It was another Chaos dwarf, but this one was clad in black plate and a featureless helm. The Chaos dwarf held an axe almost as malevolent-looking as Gotrek’s own and the eagerness of the newcomer’s movement mirrored Gotrek’s. ‘Khul Ironsworn, Captain of the Infernal Guard, dishonoured and disgraced, you will win the right to remove your mask if you bring me this dwarf’s skull,’ Khorreg bellowed. ‘Kill him! Kill them! Kill all of them!’

Khul lunged and Gotrek met him, their axes striking sparks off one another. Felix could only stare in awe as, for the first time, the Slayer seemed to have found an opponent who matched Gotrek’s incandescent rage and lust for battle. Khul made no sound as he swung and hacked at the Slayer, and neither did Gotrek. For long moments, there was only the sound of the axes screeching against one another and the slap of the duellists’ feet against the stone.

Then Gotrek roared, ‘Manling, stop them! They’re going to fire the mortar again!’ and Felix was shaken from his reverie. He plunged into motion, diving towards the great war machine. But even as he did so, the Chaos warrior stepped into his path, black-bladed sword shrieking out in an overhanded blow aimed at Felix’s head. Felix stepped aside, but only just and his opponent’s elbow caught him in the jaw, knocking him back against a sagging buttress of stone. The Chaos warrior whirled, lashing out, and Felix ducked. The black blade carved through the stone, showering Felix with debris.

‘I intend to see that hold pulled down, stone by stone, and no one is going to stop me,’ the Chaos warrior boomed hollowly. ‘I’ll have something for my trouble, one way or another.’

‘Death is something,’ a voice said as an orc-skull mace impacted with the small of the Chaos warrior’s back, knocking him sprawling. ‘Hello Jaeger, I see you and Gurnisson are hoarding all the best dooms again,’ Biter said, waving cheerfully at Felix as he stepped quickly towards the Chaos warrior. Biter let his mace rise and fall, but the Chaos warrior’s sword was there to meet it. The mace crashed against the black blade and it shattered, the orc bone no match for the mystically-wrought iron. Biter stumbled back, gaping at his ruined weapon.

The Chaos warrior surged to his feet and his next blow caught Biter across the face, bursting his eye like a grape. Biter roared and staggered and Felix rose to his feet, intending to help the Slayer. The Chaos warrior wheeled, whipping the bloody Slayer into Felix by his beard like a cannonball, and they both went down in a tangle. ‘Khorreg, fire that damn thing,’ the Chaos warrior shouted.

The Chaos dwarf had climbed up onto the mortar, but so had Garagrim and several other Slayers. One of the Slayers died as an axe appeared in Khorreg’s hands and took off his head, but the others closed in on the debased dwarf. Khorreg disarmed a second by chopping through his weapon. The disarmed Slayer had no time to contemplate the destruction of his axe, for Khorreg’s hand closed on the front of his head, crushing his face and skull into an unrecognizable mass in a display of prodigious strength. ‘Bah, soft,’ he said. ‘All soft. Are there no real dwarfs left in these mountains?’

‘Is a prince of Karak Kadrin real enough for you, Cursed One?’ Garagrim said, attacking. His axes carved gouges in the metal of Khorreg’s armour as the War-Mourner’s furious assault drove the Chaos dwarf back until Khorreg toppled from the mortar with a strangled squawk of outrage. He clanged as he hit the ground, and he was slow to rise and strange noises escaped from his armour. Dwarfs – not Slayers, but clansmen – approached cautiously, and as Felix struggled to extricate himself from Biter’s groaning form, he realized that the battle was for all intents and purposes over. The sounds of conflict had faded, leaving only the screams of the dying and the crackle of flames. He saw Axeson among them, and he noted that the priest’s eyes were locked on Gotrek’s struggle with Khul, rather than Khorreg.

‘On your feet, Hell-Worker,’ the Chaos warrior snapped, lashing out at Garagrim and driving the Slayer back before he could leap on Khorreg. ‘The situation has become untenable.’

‘My – ha – my thoughts exactly, Unsworn,’ the Chaos dwarf rasped, glaring about him hatefully. He turned and reached into his robes and drew forth two heavy flasks. With a snarl, he flung them and they exploded when they hit the ground, driving Garagrim and the other approaching dwarfs back with a rush of flames. In the glare of the fire, Felix lost sight of both man and dwarf. From the shouts and curses, Felix thought the dwarfs had as well.

As he got to his feet, he turned and saw that Gotrek was still locked in combat with Khul. The dwarfs strained against one another, their axes locked between them, neither one budging or giving an inch. Then, impossibly, Gotrek’s foot slipped and Khul shoved him back. Gotrek fell and Khul’s axe hissed as it clove the air on a collision course with Gotrek’s skull. Gotrek’s hand shot up, catching the axe just below the blade, halting its descent inches from his face.

Khul rolled his shoulders, trying to bring more strength to bear, to force the blade down into Gotrek’s face, but the Slayer’s muscles bunched and he forced the blade up and to the side, where it sank into the stone. Gotrek’s own axe chopped up into the tangled mass of Khul’s beard, and a gush of blood suddenly spurted from within the hair. The Ironsworn staggered back, groping blindly. He sank to his knees and seemed to stare at Gotrek for a long moment, and then he toppled over, unmoving.

Gotrek looked down at him. ‘Good fight,’ he said. He looked around. ‘What did I miss?’

‘I think we won,’ Felix said wonderingly.

‘You had doubts?’ Gotrek said.

‘Perhaps a few,’ Felix said, stooping to help Koertig haul Biter to his feet. The Slayer had one hand pressed to his ravaged eye-socket. Nevertheless, he still grinned.

‘It was quite a fight, eh, Gurnisson?’ he called out. Gotrek ignored him. Biter took his hand away and chuckled weakly. ‘That was my favourite eye, too.’

‘Not to mention your mace,’ Felix said.

‘Easy enough to get a new one,’ Biter said, ‘or an axe, even. I don’t think Berengar will mind me using his, considering that he got ground into mince. I always fancied it, I must admit.’ He gestured to the body of the Slayer that Khorreg had crushed.

‘Using another dwarf’s weapon? Have you no shame?’ Garagrim said, stomping towards them. The War-Mourner looked as if he had bathed in blood, and his axes still dripped.

‘I’m a Slayer,’ Biter replied.

‘Here,’ Axeson said, handing Biter his own rune-writ axe as he joined them. ‘I shall take Berengar’s weapon and return it to his clan. They shall welcome it, now that his shame has been expunged.’ Biter’s remaining eye blinked.

Then, he nodded. ‘My thanks, priest. I’ll shed much blood with this,’ he said, turning the axe over admiringly in his hands. Garagrim grunted, apparently mollified, and looked at Gotrek.

‘I saw your fight with that… thing, Gurnisson. It was a mighty battle.’ He nodded towards the Chaos dwarf’s crumpled body. The dwarfs were giving it a wide berth, the way Felix had seen men avoid getting too close to the body of a dead mutant or a mad dog, as if even in death, the taint was still dangerous.

‘It was a good fight,’ Gotrek said.

Garagrim scowled. ‘We were not here for your satisfaction, Gurnisson. We were here to break the siege, and we did. We have won a great victory for Karak Kadrin!’ He raised his axes.

‘Don’t confuse this victory with winning the war, my prince,’ Axeson said. ‘This was but the merest tendril of the evil we face.’ He swept his hand out. ‘And we have already suffered much.’

Felix followed the gesture, and had to admit that the priest had a point, however depressing it might be to contemplate it. The dwarfs might have killed their weight in Chaos marauders, but the latter could replace their losses far more easily and far more swiftly than the former.

Garagrim frowned again. He didn’t like being reminded of the cost of his glorious victory. That was one point where men and dwarfs were far too alike at times, Felix thought. He looked back at the flames where he’d last seen Khorreg and his hulking companion. ‘Where do you think that Chaos warrior and his friend went?’

‘Wherever they go, we will follow them,’ Garagrim said, shaking his axe at the enemy. ‘We will harry them back to the Chaos Wastes, if that’s what it takes!’

‘Got to find them first, beardling,’ Gotrek muttered. ‘Them and the ones who sent them.’

Felix glanced at Axeson. The priest’s face was grim, but he was looking at Gotrek, not Garagrim. Felix felt a chill as he recalled the priest’s words. The chill intensified and he heard a snatch of sound; something that might have been laughter, had the wind and distance not muffled it. He turned and his palm was sweaty on the hilt of his sword as he tried to find the source of the sound. A shadow seemed to sweep across the ground, as if something large swooped overhead, but before he could spot whatever had created it, it was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Garmr watched as Grettir’s ritual ended and the blood and meat of the sacrifice tumbled down in a cascade. Karak Kadrin still stood, thanks to the Doom-Seeker, but that did not matter. ‘They are coming,’ he said.

‘Good,’ Ekaterina said. Garmr caught the look she shared with several of his other lieutenants and smiled within the protective envelope of his snarling helmet.

‘The road will soon be completed,’ he said. ‘Khorne will smile favourably upon us, and the world will drown in fire and blood.’ The thought filled Garmr with a thrill of satisfaction. He felt as he assumed an artisan must, approaching the end of his greatest work. Half-fearful that it was coming to an end and half-frustrated that it wasn’t over yet.

Idly, he stroked the baroque surface of his cuirass. It had started off unadorned and featureless. As he had walked the Eightfold Path, and taken his first steps on the Eight Stairs, the armour had changed, becoming something other. Faces and worse things grew on the iron, like burrs on a razor. The armour itself set hooks in him, flaying him inside and out, repairing the metal as it became damaged with blood and scabby flesh. The armour was as much a part of him now as his hands or his voice. It enclosed him and was him.

It was that thing, that voice that was his, and yet not, that had first whispered to him of the Road of Skulls. It had echoed up out of the depths of his armour and bones, showing him what must be done. It was that voice that had set him on Grettir’s trail, hunting the hunter and binding his sorcerous cousin with chains forged by the daemon-smiths of the East. That voice that had led him deep into the Northern Wastes, where he’d found the God Lights and the vast, uneven slabs of glossy stone rising high into the heavens.

She had descended from them, wings spread, the shadows of them smothering him even as the tip of her spear caressed his shoulder and laid upon him the burden of Khorne’s gaze. He saw her eyes still, in the darkness that passed for sleep. Her voice was still with him, and her shadow guided his steps as he gathered his army. She led him to his rivals – Hrolf, Ekaterina, the others – and applauded as he defeated them one after the other and made them serve him. Many hands made quick work… His father had said that, he thought, though he could not remember for certain.

And his work was the road. The last great undertaking that would see the world drowned in eternal war, in oceans of blood. Even now, the bitter tang of the visions that Khorne’s Consort had given him still clung to his lips.

He had seen the dwarf, mad-eyed and bloated with muscle and hatred, stalk north. Tattoos that burned like blue fire had etched those swollen muscles, and his scalp was bare save for a bristling crest the colour of a dying sun. Daemons had died the true death in his wake, ripped from the bosom of the gods by the cruel curve of his axe. He could not tell whether it had been happening in the past or in the future, for all times were the present in the Wastes. A man could meet his long-dead grandfather and his unborn grandson on the same day and kill them both, leaving no ripple in his memory to mark their passing.

Regardless of the when, what the dwarf had accomplished was undeniable. Even Khorne shrank from the raw unfettered fury, for too much nourishment is as bad as too little where gods and men are concerned. A hundred thousand daemons died at the dwarf’s hands and their shattered essences marked his road into eternity, even as their blood washed away the Wastes, forcing them to contract.

The dwarf had not been alone, of course. There had been others… A confluence of coincidences that had sealed the world forever on the edge of midnight. But only the dwarf concerned him. The illusion of stability pleased the gods, hungry though they were. But the insult given by the dwarf could and should be rectified.

A Skull Road had been carved into the north, into Khorne’s domain. And now, a Road of Skulls would be carved south in Khorne’s name. It was only just, only right. And it fell to him, Blessed of Khorne, to do so. He would carve a trail of fire across these mountains and write his name on the Worlds Edge. And when he had placed the last skull, when he had taken the skull of the Doom-Seeker and placed it on the road, when the debt the dwarfs owed the Blood God had been paid… then would Garmr have what he desired – a world of war, of battle unending. It was a beautiful dream, full of raw red things and music that sounded like steel on steel and unending screams.

He stepped down off of his throne-altar, a net woven of human hair in his hand. The net was full to splitting with skulls, each having been engraved with one of the eighty-eight thousand names of Khorne. The camp was not quiet. It was never quiet. Champions battled throughout the sea of tents and yurts, testing their might and trying to draw the eyes of the gods. More skulls would be added to the net before the light turned sour with evening. His army died in stages, every eighth man, then eight in ten, singly or in groups, even as it swelled, distant warbands reaching his camp, begging to be allowed to join, begging to serve Khorne’s cause.

He would never run out of warriors, no matter how many he sacrificed on blood-stained altars or killed with axe and fang. That too was Khorne’s gift to him, his favoured son. Men would come and continue to come until the road was finished. Until Khorne’s path was cleared. The more they killed, the more skulls were collected, the more word of his glory spread and the more who would come seeking to join him.

Garmr moved among his men, trusting in their fear and awe to protect him. Assassinations were not unheard of, especially in an army as long-denied as this. All skulls were equal in Khorne’s eyes, as well his men knew. Even his own – especially his own, for if he was not fit to lead, he must be struck down. That too was Khorne’s gift, the chance to test his abilities against those of the strongest opponents. Garmr strode towards the war-shrine where Grettir crouched. He dropped the net of skulls in front of the sorcerer. ‘Tell me of the road, cousin.’

‘I think you know enough,’ Grettir said, not looking at him.

Garmr kicked him, hard, in the side. Grettir fell and curled into a ball, covering his face with his hands. ‘Up, cousin, tell me what I wish to hear.’

Grettir snapped to his feet, far more quickly than Garmr had anticipated. His many eyes glared, but Garmr knew better than to look into them. One hand snapped out, fastening tight around the sorcerer’s throat. He jerked Grettir into the air and shook him. ‘Tell me of the road,’ he snarled. ‘Is the one-eyed Slayer coming? Is the Doom-Seeker marching to meet his fate? Has Canto done as I hoped?’

‘Y-yes,’ Grettir gasped, clawing at Garmr’s fingers. ‘He comes! He comes!’

‘Good,’ Garmr sighed, flinging his cousin into the dust. ‘And his is the keystone skull?’

‘You know this,’ Grettir rasped, rubbing his throat.

‘Yes,’ Garmr said. He gestured to the skulls. ‘Tell me where to place these, cousin. Khorne grows impatient with my tardiness, and I must finish the road to open his path.’

‘Maybe you should have thought of that before deciding to wait here and let others do your fighting,’ Ekaterina said. Garmr turned slowly. Men stopped what they were doing to watch.

She stood lazily behind him with the other champions arrayed around her, their eyes fever-bright with eagerness. The horde might soon have a new lord – or lady, as it were. Garmr had no weapon, but they were all armed. He felt no fear, nor even anxiety. If they did not challenge him, they were not worthy of serving.

He spread his hands. ‘Battle is a gift, and an honour, Ekaterina, not a chore. Or perhaps you are simply angry that you were not chosen?’

Her eyes narrowed. She was not challenging him, not quite. Not yet. Not until the gods could see her. He took a step forwards. She hesitated, not willing to retreat. One of the others – Bolgatz, the Bone-Hammer – growled and stepped forwards. He was big, with club-like fists and only the barest traces of the Marienburg dock-rough he had been centuries earlier visible in his monstrous face. Tusk-like fangs grated against one another as he said, ‘I am, Gorewolf. The Bone-Hammer is angry. We have squatted in these rocks for weeks, with precious little blood to spill! I care nothing for your road or your bargains! I would have battle!’

Garmr met his hot gaze unflinchingly. Bolgatz was almost as much of a beast as Hrolf, in his way. Bone-plated knuckles scraped together as he thrust his head forwards petulantly. ‘Is it a challenge, then?’ Garmr said, softly.

The gathered Exalted Champions traded looks. They were all, in their own ways, blessed of the Blood God, like Vasa with his leonine features or Ekaterina with her murderer’s grin. But to lead a horde such as this, well, it would prove that the eyes of Khorne were upon them especially and that they were marked for victory.

Bolgatz nodded. ‘The Bone-Hammer challenges you, Gorewolf! The Bone-Hammer will break you! And then he will lead the horde to glory in the Blood God’s name!’ Bolgatz punctuated this cry with a roundhouse blow that would have taken off a normal man’s head. Garmr avoided the blow easily.

He stepped back, avoiding another and another, drawing Bolgatz towards him, forcing the bigger man to get closer. That had not always been Garmr’s way, but now such ways of doing things came to him as easily as killing. Once, he would have flung himself on his challenger and buried his teeth in Bolgatz’s guts. But now, the red mist did not clog his mind and he could see that the true path to victory was not in mindless violence, but in drawing your opponents into an ever constricting web of their own making, to poke and prod and bleed them until their skulls were ripe for the plucking. There was a weapon for every battle; you simply had to find the right one.

He batted aside a thunderous blow with inhuman ease and lunged forwards. Iron-shrouded talons dug into Bolgatz’s throat and he brought their heads together with a crack and then pivoted, tossing the dazed champion over his hip.

Bolgatz scrambled to his feet, blood dribbling from his mouth into his matted beard. He roared and reached out with his bestial paws. He was so incensed that he failed to notice the other champions falling back, stumbling away, eyes wide, their limbs trembling. He failed to notice the vibrations rippling through the ground beneath his feet. He failed to notice the screams and howls of the Chaos marauders, as something monstrous and massive tore through their ranks, heedless of the damage it caused, heedless of anything save Bolgatz. It stank of blood and thunder and its flanks rippled with scars centuries old. It moved with feline swiftness, crushing the men who were too slow to escape its charge.

Bolgatz failed to notice it all, until the shadow coalesced over him. He staggered to a halt, his charge ending before it had begun. He turned, eyes widening. Bolgatz screamed.

‘Take him,’ Garmr breathed.

And the Slaughter-Hound did.

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

It was quiet when Garagrim led them through the outer keep towards one of the secret routes into Karak Kadrin. Dwarfs were not ones for the wild jubilation of men, even after a great victory. Instead, they simply returned to work.

In the ruins of Baragor’s Watch, masked dwarfs hurled bodies onto immense pyres, burning the Chaos dead even as others separated the dwarf dead from their enemies, to be taken in ceremonial silence into the depths of Karak Kadrin, where they would be interred in honoured silence for eternity.

Felix followed Gotrek and the others as they moved through the great rent in the outer walls. One of the remaining giants had fallen there, its mammoth carcass draping the inner wall like a fleshy flag. The smell of it was abominable, and Felix covered his nose and mouth with the edge of his cloak. It didn’t help much, his cloak being stained with the leavings of the battlefield as it was.

The last giant sat slumped against the archway of the portcullis of the sixth wall, head bowed, seeming somehow shrunken in death, its ungainly armoured body twisted awkwardly. Hundreds of crossbow bolts sprouted from its head and torso, obscuring its features, for which Felix was grateful. Dwarfs had attached ropes and chains to its armour and were attempting to pull it down onto a heavy, flat, wheeled sled that was meant for transporting timbers.

As the enormous corpse slumped and toppled with an earth-shaking crash onto the sled, Garagrim led Gotrek, Felix and Axeson through the open gates, bellowing for dwarfs to step aside. Most did so quickly enough, though Felix noted that some glared at the War-Mourner. Garagrim was a brave warrior and regal, but he was lacking in social graces, to say the least.

Felix looked at Gotrek, who had been lost in his own head since he had killed the Chaos dwarf. He had considered trying to convince Gotrek to leave then, but the Slayer had been insistent that Axeson fulfil his promise and prove his assertions. Thus, they were now on their way into the depths of Karak Kadrin where the Temple of Grimnir sat. Felix had been surprised by the number of secret pathways that had been revealed in the final sortie. Gotrek’s earlier statement that Baragor’s Watch was nothing more than a trap for the unwary had been proven, and well. The dwarfs had managed to attack their enemy from multiple directions with almost perfect precision, and the Chaos army had simply disintegrated in the fighting that followed.

A squad of ironbreakers trotted past, weapons hefted and shields held ready, heading towards the lower sections of Baragor’s Watch. There were still small, isolated bands of Chaos marauders holed up here and there, and the dwarfs were flushing them out slowly and methodically. Cannons and grudge throwers had been brought out and their crews were studiously hammering portions of the Watch flat. For the dwarfs, there was no reason to fight vermin; especially when they might as well be entombed, so deeply were they dug in. Thus, for the most part, they simply buried their erstwhile enemies and moved on with mechanical regularity. Those they couldn’t, the ironbreakers and rangers and even a few lone Slayers dealt with.

Throughout it all, dwarfs had been hunting doggedly for the Chaos dwarf, Khorreg, and the Chaos warrior, who had made their escape in the fire and din of battle. Several rangers insisted that they had escaped into the Underway, while others said that they had seen the Chaos warrior flee the outer keep on horseback, accompanied by a rag-tag band of Chaos knights and marauder horsemen, all galloping north. Personally, Felix thought that both Khorreg and his compatriot were long gone. The latter, in particular, had seemed to display none of the stubborn, mindless propensity for fighting to the last that his followers possessed. A fact for which Felix was enormously, if privately, grateful, despite the fact that it seemed as if the escapee was likely, in fact, the leader of the army in question. Or at least one of them, as the various reports of dwarf observers were collected and compared. The dwarfs had a mania for knowing exactly who was behind such an attack, so that his name could be properly inscribed into the Book of Grudges for future generations to curse.

They left Baragor’s Watch behind, moving through the secret routes into the mountains to either side of Karak Kadrin. It took long hours, but Felix was glad enough to be heading into safety, rather than battle. He felt tired, drained of all energy, and though dwarf healers had seen to his wounds, they itched and ached unmercifully. He couldn’t help but probe them, wondering how many new scars he’d acquired. Unlike Gotrek, Felix fancied that he’d been handsome, once. Perhaps he still was, albeit in a rougher sort of way, but there was too much scar tissue on him now for him to ever be called classically handsome again.

Then, that wasn’t much of an issue, was it? Looks mattered little to the sort of folk he now associated with regularly and the circles he now travelled in. Indeed, looking like six leagues of bad road could only be helpful on the frontiers of the Empire, or in the Border Princes.

Gotrek grew surlier and more withdrawn the closer to Karak Kadrin they drew. He soon refused to speak even to Felix, instead merely gazing at the runes on his axe as if they held some answers to whatever was plaguing him. Felix caught Axeson watching the Slayer, and the expression on the priest’s face put him in mind of a man trying to gauge the intentions of a dangerous animal.

The hold was quiet when they entered it through a small, undecorated portal that was nonetheless guarded by several stout clansmen, all of whom made gestures of wary respect in Garagrim’s direction as the War-Mourner brushed past them, leading them towards their destination.

The only dwarf hold Felix had been in prior to this was Karak Eight Peaks, and Karak Kadrin was as different from that dead ruin as a living man was from a corpse. Even now, after enduring a siege, it hummed with activity as clansmen put aside their weapons and returned to their work. But it was not only that. The Eight Peaks had been empty of human or dwarf life, being home only to beasts and monsters; the air had been foul and the waters tainted and the streets and passages befouled.

But in Karak Kadrin, life and order yet reigned. Vast slanted walls and columns double the size of the great Pillar of Sigmar in the Koenigspark in Altdorf thrust upwards from the flat stones paving the floor, into the upper darkness. Angled shafts lined with polished sheets of metal mounted on movable frames carried daylight from outside the mountain down into its depths and immense squares of migratory light lined their way, moving with the pilgrimage of the sun across the sky. Everywhere was a vast sense of age, weight and space. Far more of the latter in fact than Felix had expected. He felt no more cramped within Karak Kadrin than he did in any city of the Empire. Indeed, a good deal less so than he had in Nuln. Truly, the hold of Karak Kadrin made the cities of men seem like rat warrens, though he kept that opinion to himself.

The Temple of Grimnir occupied one of the great halls, a towering edifice which dominated all others, crouching amidst smaller temples to other gods like a tiger amongst lambs. It was a thing of sharp angles and heavy domes and before the doors was a mighty pillar which rose high into the upper reaches of the hall. The pillar was as wide as any Felix had seen, but its purpose was not structural. Instead, every inch of its surface was covered in runes.

‘Names,’ Gotrek murmured. ‘The names of those who have found their doom.’ He gazed at the pillar wistfully. Felix said nothing, struck by the sight of what must have been the names of hundreds of thousands of Slayers. Centuries of the dishonoured dead, remembered in stone for eternity.

The king’s hammerers guarded the doors. They stepped aside, allowing the quartet to enter the temple. The Temple of Grimnir was a shrine to a particular sort of dwarf madness, Felix thought. He would never say so out loud, of course, but it was impossible not to think it, standing beneath the great domed roof in the main chamber of the temple.

The silence was the first thing he’d noticed. In those temples dedicated to the more martial of the human gods, there was always noise, even if it was merely the omnipresent murmur of priests or penitents. But here there was only an implacable emptiness. Dwarfs did not pray as men, he knew. Words were flimsy things; dwarfs measured things in deeds, and it was only for men or elves to mouth words of promise to their gods.

There was no statue to Grimnir, not as Felix was used to them. Instead, two massive stone axes, both as tall as five men, one atop the shoulders of the other, stood beneath the dome, blades crossed, creating a fierce archway over a heavy dais, the centre of which was occupied by a great stone bowl. It was only when he drew closer that he noticed the resemblance between the idealized weapons and the brutally existent one once more clutched in Gotrek’s hand.

King Ironfist turned from gazing up at the great stone axes as they entered and said, ‘It took you long enough. I should have sent my hammerers to collect you as soon as the battle was done.’

‘Did you think the priest needed protection?’ Gotrek said, meeting the king’s gaze. ‘Did you think I would kill him in a petulant fit?’

‘I long ago gave up on predicting your whims, Gurnisson,’ Ungrim said. ‘You do what you want, without regard to anyone else.’

‘Some would say that that is the very essence of a Slayer,’ Felix said quietly.

‘Who gave you leave to speak, manling?’ Garagrim snapped, joining his father.

‘He is right,’ Axeson said, his deep voice silencing the War-Mourner as effectively as a slap. He looked sternly at Garagrim. ‘He is a dwarf-friend and a Remembrancer, War-Mourner. To deny him is to deny Gurnisson, and no Slayer can be denied in the house of Grimnir.’

‘Except that you are denying me,’ Gotrek said, glaring accusingly at Axeson.

Axeson sighed. ‘Aye, we are.’

‘Show him, priest,’ Ungrim said. ‘Toss the stones. I would waste no more time on Gurnisson’s stubbornness.’

Axeson stepped up onto the dais from which the two stone axes rose and leaned over the great bowl that sat there. He reached into his robes and pulled out a small bag. He emptied the bag into the bowl, freeing a cascade of small, flat stones. ‘We taught men the art of the stones, in times long past. The words of the gods are sealed in the rock and the dark and it is from within them that we wring glimpses of what must be and what has been.’

The dwarfs gathered around, silent and grim. ‘Grimnir carved a road of skulls north, and the blood he shed hardened the world, making what was fluid and foul hard and unchanging. But now, something moves south, following Grimnir’s road and making what was solid fluid again,’ Axeson said. ‘We have seen the signs, in the deeps and in the high places.’ He glanced at Felix. ‘Your folk sense it too, though they confuse it for one more storm among many. But it is not. It is the same storm that swept the world aeons ago and sent our people into the dark and set us on our path, and with every step it takes, more of the world is lost.’

The stones rattled in the bowl. ‘It sweeps towards us, and Karak Kadrin will bar its way, as we have done ever. But, this time, the stones whisper that we will join those who have fallen before. For was not mighty Karak Vlag lost to this storm?’

‘The Lost Hold,’ Gotrek murmured, his grip tightening on his axe. He stared into the bowl.

‘We will be as the Lost Ones, ripped from the bosom of the world and drowned in the river of nightmare,’ Axeson continued, his voice taking on the pitch and rhythm of a trained storyteller. ‘Unless a Son of Grimnir once more treads the Road of Skulls and puts right that which is wrong.’

‘A Slayer, you mean,’ Gotrek growled, deep in his throat.

‘Aye,’ Axeson said without looking at him, his eyes on the stones in the bowl. ‘That is what I saw. The truest Slayer must go north and do what has been undone, and find his doom in the process.’

‘I will go north,’ Gotrek said.

‘No, you will not,’ Ungrim said commandingly. Gotrek wheeled about, a protest on his lips. ‘Have you not heard enough? Do you not see?’

‘Aye, and so,’ Gotrek said pugnaciously.

‘I told you,’ Garagrim said. ‘I told you that he could not be reasoned with!’

‘Quiet!’ Axeson roared. The others fell silent as the echo of that cry faded. He looked at Gotrek; again, that peculiar sadness was in his eyes. ‘If you go, Gurnisson, you will find your doom, as I said. But so too we will be doomed with you.’

Gotrek turned away from the bowl. He gripped his axe tightly, almost hugging it to him. Felix made to put his hand on the Slayer’s shoulder, but he stopped short. Gotrek would not appreciate the gesture; indeed, it might even offend him. Making a fist and pounding his thigh, Felix turned. ‘Then who will go? It’s obvious someone must, but if not Gotrek–’

‘I will go,’ Garagrim said, causing Gotrek to whirl. The War-Mourner met Gotrek’s gaze triumphantly. ‘I will go,’ he said again, thumping a fist against his chest. ‘Who better than a prince among Slayers to do this thing?’ he continued, looking at Ungrim and Axeson.

‘A king,’ Ungrim said.

It was Garagrim’s turn to spin. He gaped at his father. ‘But–’ he began.

‘I will go,’ Ungrim said, not looking at his son. ‘It is my right and my duty as the king of Karak Kadrin to do this thing. I will prevent this doom, and accept mine at the same time. I have waited long enough.’ As he said the last, his eyes strayed to Gotrek. ‘I will not have this doom stolen from me, like so many others.’

Gotrek’s jaw clenched. He took a step forwards, one hand tightening around the haft of his axe, the other gripping the rim of the bowl. ‘I stole nothing from you, Ungrim Ironfist. Our debt has long been settled. And this doom should be mine!’ He glared at each of them in turn, as if daring them to naysay him.

‘I am king, Gurnisson, and I will decide when debts are settled,’ Ungrim snarled. His voice echoed throughout the temple like the crack of a whip. He pointed a thick finger at Gotrek. ‘You have heard the words of Grimnir, and mine as well. Would you go against the both of us? Are you truly that mad, Gurnisson?’

‘I–’ Gotrek started, and then he shook his head. His axe dropped, the blade gouging the floor. His eye closed. ‘No. No, Ungrim, I will not go north.’

‘Swear it,’ Ungrim said. ‘Give me your oath, Gurnisson.’

Gotrek’s eye popped open. ‘I have said that I will not. Is that not enough?’ he said hoarsely.

Ungrim said nothing, but his face made the truth of Gotrek’s words clear. Felix felt as if he were standing in the eye of a storm, and his skin prickled uncomfortably. Every stone in the temple seemed to be listening, waiting for Gotrek’s reaction.

When it came, it was loud. Gotrek’s axe crashed down, shattering the stone bowl and causing the others to stagger back. Felix flinched as chunks of stone rattled around him, and he felt one nick his chin. Gotrek kicked half of the bowl down the dais and followed after it, his entire frame trembling with barely repressed rage.

‘Come, manling,’ he growled. ‘I would leave this place.’

Felix spared a final glance for the other three dwarfs. Garagrim and his father both appeared enraged, their faces mottled with anger and their mouths open. But Axeson merely looked… What, satisfied?

‘Manling,’ Gotrek roared, without turning around or stopping. Felix hurried after him, one hand tight on his sword hilt, wondering where Gotrek was planning to go. As soon as they stepped out of the temple, Felix realized that he had an answer, though it wasn’t the one he would have preferred.

A semi-circle of crossbows were levelled, the tips of their quarrels gleaming in the soft light of the distant sun. More than even Gotrek could avoid. The Slayer’s snarl caused more than one quarreller to blanch. Felix swallowed, knowing that more than a dozen fingers had simultaneously tightened on triggers at that sound.

‘Gotrek,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should–’

‘Quiet, manling,’ Gotrek said. More than just crossbowmen surrounded them. Thungrimsson’s hammerers were there as well, their double-handed hammers held ready. The king was taking no chances it seemed. He turned as Ungrim and the others stepped out of the temple. The king didn’t look pleased. That he wasn’t enjoying this somehow made it worse, Felix thought.

‘I would have your oath, Gurnisson,’ Ungrim said.

‘An oath forced is no oath at all, Ironfist,’ Gotrek said, looking at him.

‘You know better than that,’ Ungrim said. ‘An oath forced binds most tightly of all.’

Gotrek swung around, facing the crossbows, as if gauging the distance. Would he chance it, Felix wondered? Gotrek had been unpredictable lately. Felix looked up. Dwarfs were watching the confrontation from the walls. The sounds of celebration in the immediate area had faded.

‘You are honourable, Gurnisson,’ Ungrim said. ‘You will make the oath, and then you may leave.’

‘I will not make that oath,’ Gotrek said. ‘I… cannot make that oath.’ He sounded lost in that moment and uncertain, as uncertain as Felix had ever heard.

‘Gotrek, be smart,’ he murmured. ‘The world is full of dooms. What does one more or less matter?’

‘Because this one is mine,’ Gotrek roared, causing Felix to stumble back. He shook his axe at the temple, as if his rage were directed not at the other dwarfs but at Grimnir himself, and his voice echoed from the stones. For a moment, the tableau held. The other dwarfs appeared shocked at Gotrek’s outburst. Felix knew how they felt.

Then, slowly, Gotrek’s arms fell to his sides. Chest heaving, he looked at Ungrim. ‘I will not make that oath, King of Karak Kadrin. But neither will I resist your authority. Do as you must.’

Ungrim stood like a stone, eyes unreadable. Then, curtly, he gestured. Thungrimsson’s men moved forwards, surrounding Gotrek like a phalanx. Felix hesitated and then moved through the group to stand at Gotrek’s side. Or, he tried to at least. The dwarfs wouldn’t let him until Ungrim made another gesture.

‘Would you join him then, Remembrancer?’ the king said.

‘Can I do otherwise?’ Felix said. He unbelted his sword and proffered it to one of the hammerers. ‘I made an oath, after all.’

‘Aye, you did,’ Ungrim said, nodding in approval. ‘I am glad to see that some men have not forgotten the weight of oaths.’ He barked an order, and the hammerers began to move, taking Gotrek and Felix with them. The quarrellers stayed behind. Despite not trusting Gotrek not to head north, Ungrim seemed to have little doubt that the Slayer would go quietly, having said as much. Gotrek had given him no reason to believe otherwise. Once more, he had allowed someone to separate him from his axe, though in this case it was Axeson who had stepped forwards to accept the massive weapon. The way he grasped it put Felix in mind of a man taking hold of a poisonous snake.

‘Where are they taking us?’ Felix muttered.

‘You should have stayed behind, manling,’ Gotrek said, not looking at him. ‘There is no reason for you to share my imprisonment.’

‘Prison,’ Felix said, feeling a sinking sensation in his gut.

‘Where did you think we were going?’ Gotrek said.

‘I didn’t, truthfully.’

Gotrek chuckled bitterly. ‘That’s the problem with you humans.’

Felix felt affronted. ‘Thank you, Felix,’ he said. ‘No no, my pleasure, Gotrek, after all, after all of our adventures, how could I do less?’

Gotrek glanced at him. ‘Are you finished?’

‘No, but feel free to jump in.’ Felix shook his head. ‘No wonder you seem to have no friends.’

‘What was that?’

‘Nothing, Gotrek,’ Felix said, looking away. He could feel Gotrek’s eye on him and he wondered if he had gone too far. Then, the Slayer sighed.

‘Aye,’ he said. That was it. Felix snorted. That was as close to an apology as the taciturn Slayer was ever going to come.

‘You have something to say, priest?’ Ungrim said, watching the hammerers escort Gurnisson and Jaeger away. Axeson shook his head.

‘Nothing you’d like to hear, my king.’

‘You were the one who said that Gurnisson could not be allowed to go north,’ Ungrim said, turning to face the priest. ‘That was what Grimnir said, was it not?’

‘I did not say that he should be arrested,’ Axeson said. His eyes flashed.

‘And he hasn’t been. He is no criminal, no matter how much I might wish that he were.’ Ungrim stroked his beard and looked at the walls. ‘No, he has honour, though it’s a rougher sort than I like.’

‘You call that honour?’ Garagrim said, emerging from the temple behind them. He glared hotly at his father. ‘He desecrated the temple and spat at your feet. He is an outlaw and you should treat him as such!’

‘Do you even know what it was that he did, boy?’ Ungrim said, looking at his son. Before Garagrim could answer, Ungrim stabbed at him with a stubby finger. ‘No, you don’t. You know that he wronged me, so you condemn him. You take my burdens on yourself without heed, making them yours with neither the right nor the warrant to do so. Gurnisson and I have our grudge, and it is ours. Not yours, not anyone’s. Even as the Slayer oath our forefathers took is mine and no one else’s.’

This last struck Garagrim like a blow. Ungrim felt no pity for his son. He could not afford to. Instead, he marched on, relentless. ‘You are brave, boy, but stupid in the way of all beardlings. You think to defy the proper order and for what, to win glory?’ Ungrim spat a wad of phlegm onto the street. ‘Glory is for warriors, not kings. If you would be king, you must learn that only necessity matters.’

Garagrim had no reply. Ungrim grunted, satisfied that he had been understood. ‘I go to meet with the clan-thanes. The throng-of-throngs will be assembled beneath the Ironfist banner and we will march north and harry the Chaos horde until they lead us to their kennel.’ He made a fist. ‘And then I will free our clan from our shame and save Karak Kadrin.’

He left his son and the priest where they stood and stumped away, followed by Thungrimsson. The hearth-warden said nothing, but Ungrim could sense his disapproval. Then, Thungrimsson was always disapproving. That was his duty. ‘What?’ Ungrim said, already knowing the answer.

‘You have hurt him.’

‘He has been hurt before,’ Ungrim said. ‘He will make a good king.’

‘Maybe,’ Thungrimsson said. ‘But why rush it?’

‘You heard the priest even as I did,’ Ungrim said. ‘Or do you doubt the words of Grimnir?’

‘I doubt everything, Axeson especially. He’s too smart by half, that one.’

‘Are you accusing a priest of Grimnir of playing false?’ Ungrim said. Thungrimsson frowned.

‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘But I am saying that he might be interpreting things in a creative fashion.’

‘And why would he do that?’ Ungrim asked shrewdly. He knew the answer to that as well. That was the secret to being king, or one of them at any rate… Always know the answers before you ask the questions.

Thungrimsson hesitated. He looked uncomfortable. Ungrim had pity on his friend. ‘You and I both know he’s made of sterner stuff than that. And we both know that if he said Grimnir said something, then it’s the plain, bald truth of it. Our gods do not speak in riddles, Snorri. They are not the gods of the elves, calling tunes to some decadent cosmic dance. Our gods speak plain, because to do otherwise is to waste time. No, Axeson’s word can be trusted.’

‘He has no clan, no ties to hearth or honour,’ Thungrimsson said carefully.

‘And we do not trust clanless dwarfs, yes,’ Ungrim said. ‘But every priest of Grimnir is a foundling. It has always been thus. Their only loyalty is to the god and to the hold where their temple sits. So it is with Axeson. And that is enough for me.’ He clapped his old friend on the shoulder. ‘Now, come. It is time to bargain with my esteemed council of thanes and wrest a mighty throng from their greedy fingers.’

They would howl and tug their beards, as they always did. The cost, the cost, he could hear them say. But in the end, they would do as he asked, because he was not alone in wanting to punish the Northmen for their temerity. Some dwarfs liked to savour grudges, nursing them and feeding them until they had a life of their own, but Ungrim was not one of them. Grudges were burdens, weighing him down, crushing him.

He thought of Gurnisson and then, of his wife, Garagrim’s mother. He frowned.

Yes. Some grudges were too heavy to carry alone.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
north-east of Karak Kadrin

Canto rode slumped in his saddle, leading what remained of the army sent to besiege Karak Kadrin towards the Peak Pass. It was only a kernel of the remnant, for most of the surviving Chaos marauder tribes that had left the valley with him had peeled off. Defeat did not breed much in the way of loyalty. What was left was barely an army, more a mob. Men on foot had been left behind; only marauder horsemen moved with Canto and his Chaos knights, and Khorreg, of course.

He glanced down at the wheezing, chuffing form of the Chaos dwarf, who kept pace with his horsemen with barely any effort. Khorreg did not look disappointed, despite the fact they were fleeing in ignominy. Indeed, he looked positively cheerful.

‘Life is the greatest victory, manling,’ the Hell-Worker said, noting his gaze. ‘While we live, we triumph.’ A hiss of foul-smelling steam escaped from his armour’s joints.

‘It’s the living bit that I’m worried about,’ Canto muttered. They would be pursued. Canto had put it together bit by bit, during the helter-skelter of the retreat. They had never been meant to break the hold, not really. They had been meant to anger the dwarfs. He and Hrolf and Kung and Yan had been bait on Garmr’s hook, lowered into the badger’s den, and now the beast would be hurrying in pursuit, teeth snapping. He didn’t resent that fact – indeed, he admired it. He just wished that he hadn’t been part of the bait.

He had abandoned those who couldn’t keep up, shedding men like droplets of water. If he were lucky, the dwarfs would take the time to ferret out the laggards. If he weren’t, well…

If he weren’t, he’d be dead soon enough. He jabbed his horse in the ribs with his heels, trying to urge it to go faster. If he’d had a few of Khorreg’s explosives left, he might have been able to cover his trail. But he didn’t, so his only option was to move quickly if he had any hope of saving any part of what remained of the army.

Not that Garmr would thank him. The skin on his neck itched as he contemplated the fate that likely awaited him. No, he was as much a sacrificial lamb as Hrolf. Garmr was going to kill him, to show his displeasure. Canto ground his teeth. He didn’t deserve to be sacrificed on the altar of Garmr’s ambition; Hrolf maybe, or the others, certainly, but not him. He pounded a fist on his horse’s neck, causing it to squeal in complaint. ‘Quiet,’ he snarled.

There had to be some way out. Some wriggle room somewhere. Nothing presented itself, however. He was going to die, and his only choice in the matter was the timing, and whose hands held the axe.

Unless… He looked back at Khorreg. ‘What are your plans? Your war machines, save the hellcannon with Garmr, are gone.’

Khorreg chuckled. ‘Weapons can be rebuilt, manling. New assistants trained and new slaves gathered. I will return to Zharr Naggrund and rebuild. Perhaps I will come south again and pay the Weak Ones back for their temerity, eh? Would you like that, Unsworn?’

‘What I would like is to survive the next week,’ Canto said bluntly.

‘So survive,’ Khorreg said with a shrug.

‘You owe me one more debt, Hell-Worker and I would collect on it,’ Canto said.

Khorreg looked at him, eyes narrowed. ‘I helped you escape,’ he said cautiously.

‘And I helped you. No, you still owe me a debt and I will collect it,’ Canto said harshly.

‘You try my patience, manling,’ Khorreg said disgustedly. ‘You play hard with our friendship.’

‘Friendship is for the weak, Khorreg, isn’t that what your folk say?’

Khorreg grinned in a ghastly fashion. ‘Aye that we do. Well, what do you want?’ His expression became cunning. ‘Protection from the Gorewolf perhaps… Would you like me to kill him for you?’

‘I want you to leave,’ Canto said.

Khorreg blinked. Then, slowly, he smiled. ‘Oh, I was right, Unsworn. You are a cunning one…’

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

Gotrek and Felix walked in silence for some time, surrounded by their armoured escort. The hammerers took them deep into the hold. The sheer scale of the mountain pressed down on Felix with a physical weight the farther into it they went. Stone bastions passed over him, linking the different levels of the hold, and he noted that they were going up, rather than down, as he had expected.

They passed through the great gate that marked the separation of this level. The gate was open, and guarded by parallel lines of scowling statues, clasping axes and shields tight to their bodies. From the heights, Felix thought that they must resemble pieces for some large game. Dwarfs came in and out of the gate, moving about their business. There were a few thousand dwarfs in Karak Kadrin, Felix estimated, though likely fewer now. The Slayer Keep was one of the largest of the northernmost holds, and Ungrim and his forebears had worked assiduously to create a web of alliances and trade agreements to further lengthen the hold’s reach.

Past the gate, braziers had been lit, and the dim light allowed Felix to see the massive friezes which dominated the mighty walls of the outer chamber. Scenes from the golden age of dwarf history were depicted with intricate skill on a canvas that was staggering in its size and Felix fought to drink it all in. The poet in him hungered to stay and learn, but he did not think their escort would look kindly on a request to gawp at the walls.

Nonetheless, he could not keep a single, ‘Beautiful,’ from slipping from his lips.

‘Yes,’ someone said. Felix turned, and saw a dwarf woman striding towards them, her golden hair bound around her head like a crown, her hands folded beneath her bosom. She was too alien to be attractive, but Felix reckoned that she was a great beauty nonetheless. Warriors stood to either side of her, dressed simply and in utilitarian gear, but they looked as deadly as the hammerers. ‘It is beautiful, Felix Jaeger. And you have our thanks for seeing that it stayed such.’ She swept a hard gaze across the hammerers. ‘We will see Gurnisson to his accommodations.’ The tone brooked no argument.

‘Rinn, we cannot–’ one of the hammerers began.

‘You have my oath that no harm will befall her,’ Gotrek said. His big hands had knotted into fists at his side.

The hammerers exchanged looks, and then one handed Felix’s sword to one of the dwarf woman’s guards. The hammerers turned and marched away. A sad, small smile crept across the dwarf woman’s plump features. ‘Hello, Gotrek,’ she said.

‘My lady,’ Gotrek said, inclining his head. There was a gleam in his eye Felix had never seen before.

‘I am given to understand that we have you to thank for turning the tide and breaking our enemy’s back.’

Gotrek shrugged and looked away, as if the conversation bored him. The woman snorted, as if she had expected such rudeness. She turned to Felix. ‘I regret that it has come to this. If you would both follow me?’

‘Perhaps it’s none of my business,’ Felix began.

‘It’s not,’ Gotrek interjected.

‘But who are you, if I might ask?’ Felix said, ignoring the Slayer.

‘You can’t,’ Gotrek snapped.

‘I am Kemma Ironfist, man of the Empire – queen of this hold and wife to Ungrim, mother to Garagrim and friend to Gotrek Gurnisson. Or at least I was.’ She looked at Gotrek inquiringly. Gotrek nodded abruptly, after a lengthy hesitation.

‘Aye, you are at that.’

‘Follow, please,’ she said, turning. Her men followed, but not closely. Felix studied them covertly, noting the way they carried themselves. They were clan warriors, grim-faced and hardy-looking. Felix looked from the warriors to their charge. Why had the queen come to meet them? A sudden thought occurred to him – could this, whatever it was, have to do with the mysterious grudge that Ungrim seemed to bear Gotrek? He looked at Gotrek, trying to see something, anything, in the Slayer’s scowling, battered features. But nothing revealed itself.

They did not go down, as he expected, but instead, up. ‘Don’t dwarfs use dungeons?’ he said, after a time.

‘Aye, but what sense would there be in putting them below?’ Gotrek said. ‘It never ceases to amaze me how you manlings can take a sensible proposition and invert it.’

‘They are not dungeons,’ Kemma said, not looking back. ‘We do not take prisoners.’

‘Surely there must be,’ Felix said. ‘You have to have a place to put criminals… enemies?’

‘The clans take care of their own, in whatever way they see fit. Offences against Karak Kadrin are punished swiftly. It is the way of our hold. But there are… places, where we can put those whose fate has yet to be decided.’

‘That sounds entirely too ominous to be healthy,’ Felix said, the levity feeling out of place in the silence of the corridors they walked. It never failed to intimidate him, that silence. Dead or alive, dwarf holds were quiet. Human cities and fortresses were filled with noise. This was too much like being in a tomb.

They came to a set of circular stairs, rising upwards in a gentle curve. The work seemed too delicate to be dwarfish, and Felix said so. Gotrek grunted, but Kemma said, ‘It is, now. But once our artisans could make the very stones dance with a grace and beauty that would make you weep, human. We have lost much.’ She stopped with her hand on the curve of the wall. ‘We stand to lose much more.’

‘So the priest said,’ Gotrek muttered.

‘Then you understand why Ungrim does as he must,’ Kemma said.

Gotrek looked at her. ‘I understand. I do not like it, but I understand.’

She pressed a hand against his arm and Gotrek shrugged it off. The queen pulled her hand back. ‘I never thanked you, Gotrek Gurnisson.’

‘There was never a need to do so,’ Gotrek said stiffly. ‘I made an oath, Lady of Karak Kadrin.’

The queen frowned, though whether at his words or at his tone, Felix couldn’t say. He shivered as a gust of wind crawled through the stairs. A moment later he saw where it came from. The stairs led to a small balcony, built high on the mountain peak. It wasn’t large, but there was room for four or five people. There was a stone fire-pit, long cold, and a large, wide outcropping sheltered that and most of the balcony from the weather. Ancient curtains made from thick wool and furs did the rest. Fresh water, carried from hidden aqueducts and pipe-work, bubbled in a stone bowl set into the floor and there was another hole that Felix assumed was some form of primitive privy. Two pallets, stuffed with straw and covered in fur blankets, had been prepared for them.

The balcony was in a place where three peaks leaned close to one another. Felix could see more balconies studding the distant peaks at various points, and, even more impressive, great faces carved into the very stuff of the mountains, rendered visible by moonlight and watch-fires. They were glowering edifices whose construction must have taken generations. He wondered why he had never noticed them before and then realized that they were hidden by the folds of the mountains, visible only when one looked at them directly, as he was doing now. He felt a sense of age, and unworthiness, as if all of the contempt and obstinacy of dwarf-kind had been chiselled into those haughty, proud faces.

‘Who are they?’ he said softly.

‘The first kings of Karak Kadrin,’ the queen said. She gestured upwards. ‘There are others above us, and on the opposite peaks. Our ancestors put their stamp here for all time, marking these mountains as ours for eternity. When Karak Kadrin finally falls, her kings shall gaze down upon her ruin and keep watch unto the end of all things.’

‘And you think that will happen?’ Felix said.

‘Everything dies, human,’ she said. ‘Everything cracks, crumbles and collapses. We cannot weather eternity, no matter how much we might wish otherwise.’

‘That doesn’t stop some of us from trying,’ Gotrek said, suddenly, harshly. ‘Fate is for men and elves. Dwarfs make their own way.’ He looked at her steadily. After a moment, she looked away. Gotrek stumped past her and out onto the balcony, fists swinging. Felix followed him but turned.

‘What–’ he began, even as the heavy door crashed shut, shutting them out of the hold. ‘Oh,’ he said, pulling his cloak tighter about him. ‘I see what you meant,’ he continued, looking at Gotrek.

The Slayer didn’t answer him. Instead, Gotrek’s single eye was fixed north, and he stalked to the edge of the balcony and stood, staring out. Felix sighed and sat with his back against the rocks. ‘Still, compared to some of the holes we’ve been confined in, this is fairly pleasant.’

‘We used to hold elves here, during the War of Vengeance,’ Gotrek said, still looking out.

‘Why did she come to greet us, do you think?’ Felix said, carefully.

Gotrek, true to form, didn’t answer.

‘What did you do to Ungrim? Or he to you?’

Still no answer. The Slayer’s shape was a blotch in the dim light. He might as well have been a part of the balcony. Felix sighed again and settled back, wrapped in his cloak. At least we’re not going north, he thought, with some relief. Sometime between that thought and the next, he fell asleep.

As ever after a battle, his dreams were unpleasant things, the colour of rust and smelling of spoiled meat. In them, he strode across an uneven, mist-shrouded landscape, sword in hand. He was hunting something, but he knew not what. And as he hunted, something kept pace with him, leathery wings flapping. Hands traced the contours of his shoulders and a voice like honey poured over an open wound whispered into his ear, guiding his hands as he swung his sword – not Karaghul, a different blade, red and weeping – out, spilling the blood of hairy, grasping things which came for him out of the mist. As he fought, the mist cleared, letting him glimpse the ground he walked on and what it was made of and he awoke suddenly, his breath strangled in his lungs.

As he sat bolt upright, every muscle in his body seemed to cry out at once and then fall to muttering steadily as he tried to work some limberness back into his stiff limbs. Felix clambered awkwardly to his feet, his cloak falling away. He stretched, listening with dismay to the symphony of pops and cracks that were his only reward for a life hard lived. A twinge of pain shot through his shoulder, reminding him that it had been flopping loose from its socket only a day or so before. The balcony was swept with a thin light, dripping through the clouds overhead.

Grunting, he rubbed the sore joint and blinked blearily. ‘Gotrek,’ he called.

‘Here, manling, where else would I be?’ Gotrek said. The Slayer still stood in the same place where Felix had last seen him before he dropped off into an uneasy slumber.

Felix yawned and shook his head, trying to dislodge the dangling rags of disturbing dreams. He had been exhausted, and for good reason. ‘How long will they keep us here, do you think?’ Felix said, joining Gotrek at the balcony. One glance over the edge was enough to set off his vertigo, and he turned away, stomach heaving, and set his back to the stern faces carved into the slopes opposite.

‘Until the day is won or lost,’ Gotrek said. He spat over the edge. ‘Until Ungrim meets his doom or returns in victory.’

Felix grunted and ran his hands through his ratty blond mane. ‘Why didn’t you make the oath, Gotrek?’ he asked, not looking at the Slayer.

‘I could not. Leave it alone, manling.’

‘Right, well, what can we expect, then?’ Felix said, heeding the warning in Gotrek’s voice. ‘Random beatings or will they just leave us to starve?’

Gotrek peered at him. ‘Dwarfs do not starve prisoners.’

‘No? Glad to hear it. Did I mention that I’m hungry? They do remember that men need to eat more often than dwarfs, I hope.’

As if in answer to his question, the door to the balcony opened with a screech. Felix jerked to his feet, half-formed plans of diving through the aperture fading as he took in the squat shapes of the king of Karak Kadrin and his bodyguards. Gotrek turned more slowly.

‘Well, Gurnisson? Ready to make your oath, I trust. It’ll be your last chance before I leave,’ Ungrim said, his thumbs hooked in his belt, his chest puffed out.

‘You’re wearing armour,’ Gotrek said.

Ungrim’s eyes narrowed. He wore a light shirt of gromril mail, and his helm-crown, with its curving horns. ‘And what if I am?’

‘You have never understood what it means to be a Slayer,’ Gotrek said, disapprovingly. Felix looked askance at him, wondering if he had heard Gotrek correctly. Even Ungrim looked surprised. Then, that surprise became anger.

‘I know more than you think, Gurnisson,’ he said. But before he could say more, Felix said, ‘Please pass my compliments on to your queen, mighty Ungrim.’ It wasn’t a smart thing to say, but Felix knew enough of Slayers to know that both Gotrek and the king were positioning themselves to figuratively charge one another. And if that happened, even if Gotrek won, the results wouldn’t be pleasant for either him or, most importantly, Felix.

Ungrim’s jaw clamped shut and he transferred his glare to Felix, who tried to hold tight to his nonchalant poise as the Slayer King looked at him. It was hard, especially when Gotrek added his own glare to the equation. ‘Mind your own business, manling,’ Gotrek growled.

‘Enough of this,’ Ungrim snapped. ‘If you will not swear the oath, here you will stay. I will order your release upon my return and not before.’ Felix wanted to ask what would happen should Ungrim not return, something the king seemed intent on, but he held his tongue.

Ungrim hesitated then, despite his bluster. ‘Gurnisson, is it so heavy an oath?’ he said, half turned away. ‘For old times’ sake, can you not make it?’

‘Would the debt between us be settled then, Ungrim Ironfist?’ Gotrek asked, arms crossed, his one eye baleful.

Ungrim’s hands clenched. ‘Yes,’ he said, between gritted teeth. The bodyguards shifted, clearly uncomfortable with the discussion.

‘Then no,’ Gotrek said, turning away. ‘Go find the doom that should be mine, Ungrim.’

Ungrim growled and turned, half reaching out. Then, his hands dropped and he left the balcony, back stiff, chin jutting. The guards closed the door behind them and Felix heard the lock click shut. He let loose a frustrated breath. ‘What did you do to him?’ Felix said.

‘I saved his life.’

Ungrim stalked from the clan-hall, satisfaction etched onto his face. Thungrimsson followed at a more sedate trot. ‘At least someone is doing what I ask of them!’ the Slayer King growled. He had demanded a meeting with the thanes of the more reluctant clans after visiting Gurnisson, and the anger fanned by the latter had helped him with the former. Ungrim had been in fine form, browbeating the thanes into providing him with the warriors and treasure needed to organize the grandest of Grand Throngs.

‘Did you truly expect Gurnisson to change his mind?’ Thungrimsson said.

‘Yes,’ Ungrim said.

‘May I speak frankly?’

‘No,’ Ungrim said.

Thungrimsson ignored him. ‘More fool you.’

Ungrim stopped and turned, glaring at his hearth-warden. He pointed a finger, shook it, and then dropped his hand without replying. He turned back and continued walking. Thungrimsson followed. ‘Besides, it’s not like you require the blessings of an outlaw like Gurnisson, is it?’

‘Leave it, Snorri.’

‘Not unless you’re having doubts about Axeson’s prophecy,’ Thungrimsson pressed.

‘I said leave it, hearth-warden,’ Ungrim grated. ‘There is no doubt in my mind, no cracks in my conscience.’

‘I wish I could say the same, father,’ Garagrim said, stepping out of an adjoining corridor and falling in beside them. Ungrim stopped and looked at his son.

‘What do you require, Garagrim?’

‘The Slayers wished me to petition you. They wish to muster with the throng, and as War-Mourner, it is my duty to pass on their desire.’ Garagrim gave his father a gimlet stare, and added, ‘Unless, of course, you’re worried that they too might steal your glory.’

Ungrim glanced at Thungrimsson. ‘See to the preparations, hearth-warden. The prince and I must speak.’ Ungrim waited until Thungrimsson had vanished down the corridor before jerking his head towards a set of stairs. Garagrim followed him as Ungrim started down the stairs.

‘You are upset,’ Ungrim said, tracing the flow of the wall with his hand.

‘Not upset, confused,’ Garagrim said.

‘And you think I should explain myself?’

‘I think you owe me that much, yes,’ Garagrim said.

The stairs wound around and down and the silence gave way to the echo of hammers ringing against metal. A wash of heat ambushed them in the bend and Ungrim led his son out onto a viewing balcony. Below was one of the great clan-forges. Red fires were stoked in the dim light as water-wheels creaked and anvils sang with the sounds of artifice. Once war was done, most dwarfs returned to work, mining, crafting or, as below, forging new tools and weapons and essentials to replace those lost in the siege. Indeed, a dwarf hold was never more productive than in the days following a great battle.

‘Does a king then owe a prince?’ Ungrim said.

‘A king owes all of his people, regardless of rank,’ Garagrim said firmly, arms crossed, jaw thrust out. Ungrim looked at him.

‘I’ve heard those words before, from another,’ he said. ‘Gurnisson, in fact.’ He grinned as a look of discomfort passed across his son’s face. ‘He was a big believer in what a king owes. Even before he took his oath, if the stories are true.’ The grin faded. ‘I am paying my debt to you, Garagrim, though you do not see it that way.’

‘I took the oath–’

‘Against my wishes,’ Ungrim said. ‘Against your mother’s wishes. In one rash action, you deprived her of a son and me of an heir.’

‘I did it for you, and mother. I did it to remove the stain of our shame. To free you,’ Garagrim said, not looking at his father.

‘Do you understand why we still have our shame, boy?’ Ungrim said. ‘There have been plenty of opportunities over the centuries for one of us to die gloriously, but glory is not for kings.’

‘You said that,’ Garagrim said sourly.

Ungrim’s hand snapped out, catching his son on the back of the head. Garagrim jerked forwards and then spun, eyes blazing. Ungrim jabbed him in the nose with a finger. ‘And I shall continue to say it until I am dead or you understand. You were right before, boy. Kings owe their people, and it is a debt that can never be paid, not in full. It renews itself each day, and I will pay it until I fall, and then you will pay it, and your children and your children’s children, until the world cracks and burns. We have responsibilities, and those responsibilities outweigh our own desires.’

‘Yet you intend to lead a throng into the north,’ Garagrim said, stepping back.

Ungrim shook his head. ‘I must.’

‘But not for glory,’ Garagrim said. ‘Not to shed our burden.’ His tone was one of disbelief. His face fell. ‘You deny me one burden only to pass me another?’

Ungrim’s eyes narrowed. ‘Watch your tone. I am still king. I am still your father, and what I do is for the good of all of us.’

‘So you say,’ Garagrim growled. There was no petulance in his tone, only anger.

Ungrim turned away. ‘Tell the Slayers that all who wish may accompany the throng.’

‘Does that include me?’

‘It does not.’

Garagrim fell silent, staring out over the forges. Then, ‘What is the grudge which binds us to Gurnisson?’

Ungrim grunted. ‘That is none of your concern.’

‘It seems nothing is,’ Garagrim said, turning and starting up the stairs. Ungrim let him go. He looked out at the forges, trying to find some comfort in the dance of the distant flames and the heat and the smell of metal and ash.

Karak Kadrin,
the Temple of Grimnir

Axeson stared at the axe as it sat on the dais. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that it was staring balefully at him, or perhaps accusingly. It was a mighty weapon, there was no denying it. Even lying there, separated from its master, it looked deadly. Like a leashed beast, readying itself to spring on the unwary if they drew too close. His gaze drifted to the split bowl. The two halves still lay where they had rolled, as did his rune stones. He bent and began to pick the stones up, one at a time, trying to read meaning in how they had fallen.

He heard footsteps behind him, but did not stop what he was doing. ‘Is that his axe?’ Kemma Ironfist said softly. Axeson straightened and turned, bowing shallowly to the queen of Karak Kadrin.

‘It is,’ he said.

She stepped past him, her eyes as cold as dampened forges as she looked at the weapon. ‘It is a beautiful thing, but ugly as well.’

‘I see no beauty in it,’ Axeson said, after a moment, ‘only cruel necessity.’

‘Nonetheless, there is a beauty in necessity.’ Kemma was silent for a moment. ‘Ungrim intends to march out tomorrow morning. What does Grimnir say?’

‘I have not asked. I doubt he would answer. He has told us all he intended to, I think.’

‘And is this my husband’s doom, then?’ Kemma said, turning to face the priest. ‘At long last, is the shame of our clan to be stricken from the record of years?’

Axeson was silent. Kemma frowned. ‘You have a distressing habit of falling silent just when your voice is most necessary, priest.’ She smiled slightly. ‘It must be a family trait.’

Axeson looked sharply at her. ‘I have no family.’

‘No. I misspoke. Forgive me, priest.’ She had not misspoken, she knew it and Axeson knew that she knew it. Queen Kemma knew entirely too much for him to play wise priest with her. Dwarf women were often seen but rarely heard, at least in Karak Kadrin, but Axeson knew that it required a woman of unusual strength and patience to live as wife to a Slayer, even if he was a king. That her son had also taken that vow meant that her burden, already weighty, was doubled and doubled again.

There were stories about Kemma that passed through the quiet corridors of Karak Kadrin. She had been a daughter of the Donarkhun clan, as royal as any dwarf not named Grungni or Grimnir, and proud of that, but never haughty. Some said that she had wielded a hammer and borne a warrior’s shield in battle against grobi on her journey north to meet her intended for the first time. Her chaperones slain, Kemma had continued on with a determination that made even the most stubborn of longbeards mutter into their beers with shame. She had announced herself at the great gates, a dozen grobi heads tied to her sash and a sack full of gold over one shoulder. Kemma had paid her dowry in skulls and precious metals and Ungrim had had no choice but to accept, for where would he have found a queen more fitting than she?

She had become adept, in the intervening decades, at the subtleties involved in being queen. Dwarf men practised the art of boldness, of bluff and bluster, and many of the women as well, but Kemma had ever been a woman for the quiet word and truth wielded like a blade, rather than a bludgeon. It was Kemma who greeted the envoys of the elves and men, Kemma who dealt with the wizards of the Colleges of Magic who sought rare metals and deep herbs for their spells, Kemma who had discovered the red foulness of the Lady Khemalla and led her own bodyguards in the expulsion of the zanguzaz – the blood-drinker – and her shrieking handmaidens from the human quarter of Karak Kadrin. Snorri Thungrimsson was Ungrim’s hearth-warden, but Kemma’s was the mind that directed Thungrimsson in his tasks.

She was not more intelligent than her husband, for Ungrim had a keen mind, but she saw the world through clearer eyes. Too clear sometimes, Axeson thought. Ungrim was predictable, if in an erratic fashion, and Garagrim as well. But Kemma was not.

‘There is nothing to forgive, lady.’ Axeson inclined his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he added. She looked at him, her gaze questioning. He sighed. ‘I do not know if the doom I saw is the king’s. A Slayer must die, but as to which Slayer…’ He shrugged helplessly.

‘You only know that it is not Gurnisson,’ she said. The way she said his name provoked a thread of memory, of old gossip, well-chewed by the time Axeson had heard it, of an oath given, and an oath fulfilled and a friendship forever fractured because of it.

Axeson nodded jerkily. ‘That much Grimnir made plain. Gurnisson’s doom is writ in the Book of Ages and has been since the first words were set onto the first page.’

‘But if he goes, he dies,’ Kemma said.

‘If he goes with the throng, he dies, yes,’ Axeson said.

Kemma’s round features crinkled in a sudden smile. ‘Ah.’ Axeson shifted uncomfortably. She stepped down from the dais. ‘Guard that axe well, Axeson. It yearns to be reunited with its wielder.’

‘As I’m sure he yearns to be reunited with it,’ Axeson said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

‘I want my axe,’ Gotrek rumbled, staring up at the carved face of an ancient king. Felix thought that there was a resemblance there, however faint. Perhaps it was simply the similarity of the expression on both, the one stone and the one as good as.

‘I for one am enjoying our enforced period of relaxation,’ Felix said, stirring the fire-pit with an iron prod. ‘Seems like ages since we’ve had a moment just to sit.’

‘Slayers don’t sit,’ Gotrek said.

‘What do you suggest then, Gotrek? Overpowering the guards?’

Gotrek looked at him as if he had suggested shaving his beard. Felix shrugged and made to change the subject. ‘I hope they bring us food soon.’ Guards had appeared early in the evening, bringing flint and tinder to light the fire-pit, but nothing else. Gotrek grunted. Felix heard a distant sound and rose to his feet. ‘What is it?’

The Slayer made no reply. Felix joined him at the edge of the balcony. From down below, more sound rose and Felix felt a moment of weakness as he recognized for the first time just how high up they were. Drums and horns sounded from below, and Felix saw a great army of dwarfs marching through the ruins of the outer keep; they issued from the hidden sortie gates and deep paths almost eagerly. Squares and columns of doughty clan warriors, bearing the standards of every clan of Karak Kadrin, marched in perfect unison. It was a magnificent sight, even from the heights.

‘The Grand Throng of Karak Kadrin,’ Gotrek murmured. ‘Ungrim is marching out.’ His hands rested on the balcony and the stone cracked in his grip. Felix frowned.

‘He’s moving quickly,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said. ‘I expected the clans to argue more, but…’ He shook his head.

‘The words of the gods can sway even the most stubborn of men,’ Felix said. He raised his hands before Gotrek could reply. ‘I know, I know, dwarfs aren’t men.’

Disgruntled, Gotrek looked away. ‘Never thought I’d be here again,’ he muttered, examining the balcony. ‘Ungrim has a sense of humour.’

‘What do you mean?’

Gotrek smiled bitterly. ‘This is the same place he stuck me the last time I disobeyed him.’

‘What happened?’ Felix said. He was eager to hear the story, rare as it was that Gotrek shared anything relating to his past.

‘Nothing worth speaking of,’ Gotrek said, waving a hand dismissively. He turned back to watching the throng march out.

‘Did it have to do with Queen Kemma?’

Gotrek stiffened. Felix pressed on. ‘You said you saved Ungrim’s life, that that is why he dislikes you. She asked you to do it, didn’t she?’

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said, in a quiet voice. ‘I made an oath, in the heat of the moment.’

Felix didn’t dare inquire as to the particulars of that. It couldn’t be what it sounded like. From a man, he would have happily assumed the obvious, but dwarfs, as Gotrek took every opportunity to remind him, were not men. ‘That was all.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Felix said, settling back, arms over his knees.

‘Eh?’

‘Gotrek, we have nothing but time,’ Felix said. It was a blatant attempt to get Gotrek’s mind off the marching army below, but Felix had little other way of doing so. ‘Tell me how you saved Ungrim’s life. If I’m to give a full recounting of your deeds upon your death–’

‘If I die,’ Gotrek muttered.

‘–upon your death,’ Felix continued, as if Gotrek hadn’t interrupted, ‘then I must know them all. Ipso facto, as the Tileans say.’

‘What do Tileans have to do with anything?’

‘I was accrediting the phrase to its proper source. It’s a very important skill for a Remembrancer, accreditation,’ Felix said primly.

Gotrek shook his head. ‘Don’t make things up.’

‘That’s the point of accreditation,’ Felix said. ‘So people know that I haven’t. We wouldn’t want anyone questioning the veracity of your saga, would we?’

‘Who would dare?’ Gotrek growled.

‘Plenty of people,’ Felix said. ‘You’ll be dead, remember. And let’s be fair, I’m not all that intimidating, Gotrek.’ He thrust a finger up for emphasis and continued, ‘Hence, accreditation, and footnotes, lots of footnotes.’

‘Footnotes,’ Gotrek said dubiously.

‘Lots of them,’ Felix said, rubbing his hands together in mock-glee. ‘I’ll choke every critic between here and Marienburg with footnotes.’

Gotrek eyed him for a long moment. Then he chuckled and slapped his belly with both hands. ‘It’s about time you displayed the proper enthusiasm for my death, manling! Fine, I’ll tell you. It’ll be a grand – eh – footnote.’ He leaned forwards. ‘It was years before I met you. Not long after I had taken the Slayer oath. We were clearing out a nest of grobi in the northern peaks, where the river runs beneath the last of the ancient skybridges. We were too close to Karak Ungor, but that didn’t bother old Ungrim. Nor me, come to that.’ Gotrek grinned. ‘You should have seen it, manling. The orcs boiled across that bridge like ants, most falling, being pushed off by the ones behind, and only me and Ungrim and a few other lads to bar the way.’

His eye went glassy with memory. ‘There was a red rain in the valley below, that day. We held the ancient toll road from sunset to sunrise, killing hard and taking whatever the grobi could throw at us. Old Grimscour fell at dawn, dragged from his perch by a squig with its teeth in his beard. Then young Kromsson, pulled apart like a wishbone by bad old Bashrak himself.’ Gotrek grunted. ‘The grobi called Bashrak “the Gitsnippa”. As big as any three orcs and as mean as a wyvern.’ The grin had faded now, leaving a more melancholy expression in its place. ‘He killed Falnirsson after that, and Stonechewer. Then it was just Ungrim and I, and the stones were slick beneath our feet and the clouds were the colour of deep ore and full of lightning.’

Gotrek fell silent. Felix knew that the Slayer was watching the memory unfold inside his head. When he began to speak again, his voice had lost its bluster. ‘Only one of us was needed. Reinforcements were coming – the other could have stepped back. But neither of us could give way. Neither of us was willing. So we fought, and I fought not to meet my doom, but to keep Ungrim alive.’ He looked at his hands. ‘I dragged Ungrim from beneath a pile of grobi and threw him to safety, and chopped through the ancient stone of the bridge. I sent Bashrak and all of his green-skinned court hurtling into the void and Ungrim cursed me for it.’ He closed his eye and clenched his fists. ‘I swore to keep Ungrim alive and I did, and our grudge stands.’

‘Does he know?’ Felix said softly. ‘About Kemma, I mean. Does he know that it wasn’t your idea?’

‘Of course he knows, manling. Why else would I have saved him, unless I had made an oath to do so?’ Gotrek looked at him as if he were an idiot. ‘It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.’

‘And you all just pretend that nothing happened,’ Felix said.

‘There is no pretence. She is queen and he is king and I am what I am,’ Gotrek said nastily. ‘I’ve changed my mind. This doesn’t go in my saga, manling.’

‘Perish the thought,’ Felix said.

‘I mean it, manling,’ Gotrek growled, grabbing the front of his cloak and yanking him down to eye-level. ‘Such things have no bearing on my doom, footnotes be damned.’

‘What about dreams, then? Do those have some bearing?’ Felix said, stung. He blinked, surprised at himself. He hadn’t meant to say that. Gotrek seemed surprised as well. He released Felix and stepped back. Felix straightened his cloak and said, ‘I think it’s time you told me why we came here, Gotrek. I have followed you into many dangers and never once have I felt that you have had ulterior motives. But this time…’

‘Are you accusing me of lying, manling?’ Gotrek rasped, glaring at him. His knuckles popped as his fingers curled into big fists.

‘No, no,’ Felix said, stepping back quickly, palms out. ‘But you aren’t telling me everything, are you?’

‘I owe you then? Is that what you’re saying?’ Gotrek said, taking a menacing step forwards. Felix had rarely seen the Slayer so angry, save in the heat of battle. He felt a ripple of fear, not for the first time, that the Slayer might turn his frustrations on his Remembrancer for lack of a better target.

‘No, I’m not saying that either,’ Felix said. ‘I’m merely curious as to how and why we’ve ended up in this place.’

‘Because I would not make an oath,’ Gotrek said stubbornly.

‘That is not why we came here,’ Felix said, feeling fear give way to frustration. ‘Why did we come to Karak Kadrin?’

Gotrek’s glare redoubled in its intensity. Felix felt sweat bead on his face, despite the chill of the crags. Then, Gotrek looked away. ‘I dreamt of my doom,’ he said, finally. He seemed to stagger slightly, as if his strength had left him. He leaned against the balustrade of stone. ‘I stood in the shadow of mighty mountains, and I could hear the tread of a thousand enemies,’ Gotrek intoned, looking out at nothing. ‘A dwarf, an ancient ancestor, his beard the colour of the snows of the high far peaks, came to me, cloaked and hooded, and pointed north.’

Felix didn’t know what to say. He stood silently, waiting. Gotrek shook himself. ‘I looked north and saw a great light, like the fires that burn deep and forever in some lost mines. And I knew that my death was calling to me, manling. My doom was beckoning to me at last.’

Felix cleared his throat after several minutes of long silence. ‘Gotrek, did you refuse to swear an oath to Ungrim because of your earlier oath to the queen… or because of your dream?’ he said carefully.

Gotrek’s muscles bulged abruptly. The balustrade shuddered in his grip and stone cracked. Felix spun as the door opened, admitting a trio of burly dwarfs, carrying trays of food and drink. Gotrek roared wordlessly and uprooted the section of balustrade. Hefting it over his head, he turned, red-faced, and hurled it at the rock face of the wall.

The guards dropped their trays and scrambled out, slamming the door behind them as debris rattled down from the point of impact. Gotrek stared at the door, breathing heavily. Felix, however, only had eyes for the spilled food.

‘Looks like they remembered our food after all,’ he said sadly.

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Ekaterina watched the Bone-Hammer’s followers fight over what was left of him. After several days, only a few tattered scraps remained, but they fought over them nonetheless. The former champion’s body had been rendered to rags by the Slaughter-Hound, but there was enough left that enterprising would-be warriors could find something, some token that could give luck or protection in the battles to come.

And there would be battles; not just among the dead warrior’s followers, who would fall on each other to determine the new leader, but deeper in the mountains. Everywhere, men saw to their horses and chariots. Weapons were sharpened and armour repaired. On their chains and altars, the madmen foamed and wailed out prophecies to the warriors who dared to gather close enough to hear them. A hundred thousand destinies clashed among the crags, and men prepared themselves to compete for the gods’ affections.

Once, she would have been among their number. She longed for Khorne’s gaze to grace her just once, but it would not be found in such ways. Warriors were not made in mindless battle. She hungered for war the way others needed food or drink, but the wild death-dealing of marauders would not do. Not any more.

She needed something more. Like a gourmet, her palate had evolved. There were levels to war, battles to be fought within and without. Blood could be shed without a cut being made and a skull collected without so much as tearing the skin.

Garmr had lost fifteen of his twenty remaining lesser lieutenants in the last few days. It had been a mere matter of words to ears to set off duel after duel. Warbands consolidated and of the other four left in camp, two were loyal to her, and the other two would die quickly, if they did not join her when the time came.

She did not do it for herself, no matter what others might whisper, but for the greater glory of Khorne. The weak must be weeded out, the chaff separated so that only the strong remained, so that the horde was pure and fierce and mighty. Only then could they trample the enemies of the Blood God into the dust.

She paused before the great ‘X’ where the champion of Slaanesh hung, still alive, despite casual sword-strokes and spear-thrusts. It had become a popular game among the brute element for lack of any other stimulation. It hissed at her, bloody tongue jerking from a nest of shattered fangs. It seemed to gain as much pleasure from its pain as the tribesmen did, and it crooned to itself with every blow.

It offended her with its refusal to die. Its remaining eye rolled wetly in the socket, fixing on her with undimmed predatory intent. It strained against the nails that held it fixed and hissed again.

She drew her sword and put out its good eye.

She left it screaming and moved through the crowd towards Garmr’s tent. She had avoided him since the Bone-Hammer’s death, suspecting that the Gorewolf would view any conversation as an excuse to add a new skull to the pile. But there was no putting it off now. There was a song of murder in the air, and men whispered that they would be moving soon. Garmr’s pet sorcerer had collected the teeth of a hundred dead men and cast them across the flayed hide of a horse. That which Garmr had read there had seemed to excite him, though Ekaterina couldn’t see why.

Grettir was waiting for her, chained to a post outside the tent. He sat slumped, his many eyes blinking in their secret rhythm. ‘The prodigal girl returns,’ he said. ‘Conquered our fear, have we?’ He gazed lazily up at her. ‘Can you feel it? Can you feel the tightening of Khorne’s collar about your neck? The Master Changer encourages a profusion of fates for his followers, but Khorne prunes all but the bloodiest.’

‘As it should be,’ Ekaterina said.

‘Then why do you buck so hard against yours?’ Grettir said.

‘You don’t know my fate any more than I do, sorcerer,’ she spat. ‘Bloody and short or bloody and long, it matters not. If my skull is to decorate Khorne’s throne, so be it. I will dance happily to my death.’

Grettir waggled a finger at her. ‘Then why concern yourself with him?’

‘What?’

‘If you do not care, why do you fret so?’ Grettir hissed.

She glared down at the sorcerer, wishing again that she could strike his cunning head from his neck. ‘He is weak,’ she said, finally. ‘And his weakness takes us from the Eightfold Path and from Khorne’s sight.’

‘How do you know that Khorne has not asked this of him?’ Grettir said.

‘To deny battle is not Khorne’s way. To cower in the hills is not Khorne’s way,’ Ekaterina said, gripping the hilt of her sword. She heard a murmur of sound from the tent. She tried to focus on Grettir, but–

‘But to send others to die in your place is?’ Grettir said.

Ekaterina shook herself. ‘What do you mean? Speak plainly!’

‘First, a riddle – what is a mutiny, when it is not open? A disagreement,’ Grettir said, spreading his hands. ‘It’s not very funny. But I see little humour in this situation. I have seen the threads you sew, Ekaterina. The black poison you inject into fertile minds. Your hunger for glory is a bright thing, and loud to my eyes. To other eyes as well, though you recognize them not.’

‘You talk nonsense,’ she snarled, stepping past him. He chuckled behind her as she ripped the tent flap aside, revealing the interior of the tent. It was humid and stank of rotting meat. Braziers enclosed the squatting shape of Garmr, his head bowed, hands dangling. Blood dripped from his fingers, though whether it was his or someone else’s she couldn’t say. In the weird light and the dancing trails of spiced smoke, a strange shape seemed to crouch behind Garmr and hands stroked his armour. Wide wings spread the width of the tent, and carmine eyes met Ekaterina’s. A talon rose and pressed its length against thin lips in a gesture for silence.

Then it was gone and Garmr looked up, his eyes glowing within his visor. ‘What?’ he rasped. His voice was hoarse and inhuman.

‘My outriders have seen a column of dust in the distance. They say it is Canto,’ Ekaterina said.

‘Hrolf?’

‘No sign of him. He is likely dead,’ she said, unable to resist a smirk. ‘Likely so are Kung and Yan.’ The last was not so pleasant a prospect, but she had known the Foul One might die. Garmr had lost his two strongest supporters, and that was all that mattered.

‘Then they have fulfilled their purpose,’ Garmr said, rising slowly to his feet. ‘That is all any of us can ask.’

‘Speaking of purposes,’ Ekaterina said. ‘What is ours, if not to sack that dwarf hold?’

‘Do you require a reason now to spill blood?’

‘No, but I want one regardless,’ she said. ‘Why should I not take my men and seek prey this very morning, Gorewolf?’

‘Ask the Bone-Hammer,’ Garmr said.

‘I’m asking you,’ Ekaterina said. ‘I don’t fear you, Garmr. I don’t fear your hound or your axe.’ Her hand dropped to the hilt of her blade. ‘I serve you because you promised me battle.’

‘You serve me because Khorne wishes it,’ Garmr said.

Ekaterina frowned. Garmr cocked his head, watching her. ‘Is this it, then? Have you come to it at last? You were the only one who was not forced to bend knee, Ekaterina. You are the one who came hunting the massacre wind, rather than the other way around,’ Garmr said. His voice was strangely soothing, a basso hum that vibrated in her bones.

He moved so swiftly, she barely saw it. His hands settled on her shoulders and she could smell the raw, beautiful stink of him. Scenes of battles from beyond the great gates had been engraved on his armour and they seemed to move and sway with his voice. Thousands died on his cuirass as Ekaterina watched, men and daemons and worse things writhing in eternal battle. It was the loveliest thing she had ever seen. She reached out with eager fingers, stroking the scenes of bloodshed.

Garmr’s head dipped. Half-remembered snatches of an old fairy-story rose to the surface and she said, ‘My, what big teeth you have.’

Garmr laughed. ‘The better to eat the world,’ he said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

When Felix awoke on the third day, Gotrek was standing before the broken section of the balcony, perched inches from oblivion, like a bird about to take flight. The Slayer twitched and trembled, muttering to himself. Felix’s heart stuttered in his chest and he was on his feet, hand shooting out before he was even fully awake. Was this some kind of fit? Or was captivity having a more harmful effect on the Slayer than he’d first thought?

Gotrek had become morose and silent since his earlier outburst, as if sharing his secret with Felix had drained all of his vitality from him. He brooded gargoyle-like, staring north as the sun rose and fell, barely moving. Felix had never seen the Slayer so silent and still. Gotrek was normally a bundle of nervous energy, at least for a dwarf, unless he was stone drunk. But all of that energy was gone now, leaving a scowling statue in its place. Or, at least it had been.

‘Gotrek? Gotrek,’ Felix said, grabbing one massive shoulder. Gotrek didn’t reply. His eye was closed, the lid twitching. Felix realized that he was asleep. ‘Gotrek, wake up!’ Gotrek shrugged, sending Felix tumbling. Adrenaline pumping, Felix was on his feet a moment later, grabbing again, though he knew he had no hope of stopping the dwarf if he decided to jump. At best, he’d go over with him. Was this how it ended, with imprisonment and suicide?

‘This isn’t going to make a very stirring conclusion to your saga, Gotrek!’ Felix shouted, trying to snake his arms beneath Gotrek’s in a move he’d seen a Tilean wrestler perform once at a country fair. He hadn’t gotten to see much beyond that before Gotrek came to blows with a trained bear and its Kislevite handler.

The Slayer’s eye opened, but he wasn’t awake. Felix deduced the latter a moment after Gotrek slapped aside his reaching arms and grabbed his throat in a vice-like grip. The pressure on his throat set off a storm of panic in Felix’s brain. He scrabbled at Gotrek’s immovable fingers, trying to pry them loose. ‘Gotrek,’ he gurgled. ‘Gotrek!’

Gotrek’s only reply was to tighten his grip. He spat something in Khazalid, a burst of harsh syllables that sounded as if they hurt his throat as much as they hurt Felix’s ears. Darkness began to gather at the limits of Felix’s vision as a flame of frustration burned in him. It wasn’t fair, that after all he’d been through, that this was the way he was going to die – strangled by a lunatic Slayer.

Lashing out, he drove a fist between the Slayer’s eyes. Pain exploded in his hand, but it was worth it. Gotrek released him abruptly and staggered back, shaking his head. ‘Manling, what–’

Ignoring the pain in his hand, Felix lunged, grabbing Gotrek’s beard even as the Slayer took a step too far back. His foot skidded on emptiness and then he bawled with pain and rage as Felix hauled back, falling onto his rear and pulling Gotrek atop him. Gotrek bounded up, grabbing two fistfuls of Felix’s jerkin and dragging him to his feet.

‘Never touch a dwarf’s beard,’ Gotrek snarled, shaking Felix with tooth-rattling force.

‘Then don’t sleepwalk!’ Felix replied with equal heat, meeting Gotrek’s glower with one of his own. Gotrek looked away first, which startled Felix more than the attempted throttling.

‘Who was sleepwalking? Dwarfs don’t sleepwalk,’ Gotrek snapped, releasing Felix.

‘Then what do you call it?’ Felix said, trying to straighten his cloak. ‘Were you trying to learn how to fly? Even dwarfs need machines for that.’

‘I wasn’t sleepwalking,’ Gotrek insisted. He shook his head. ‘I thought…’ He trailed off.

Rubbing his throat, Felix looked at the Slayer. ‘What?’ he said.

‘Nothing,’ Gotrek growled.

‘So you tried to strangle me for no reason then?’ Felix said acidly. ‘That makes me feel so much better! At least if you’d been dreaming, you’d have an excuse, but no, it was nothing.’ He sneered at Gotrek and the Slayer glared at him. But Felix didn’t retreat. Almost dying had a way of stiffening his spine, he’d learned. It wasn’t quite an admirable trait, but it’d do.

‘Daemons, manling,’ Gotrek said finally, staring at his hands. ‘I was drowning in a sea of daemons and lights, falling forever into the maw of an eternal battle.’ He closed his fingers into fists and knocked his knuckles together.

‘Sounds like a good dream for you,’ Felix said, hawking a wad of spit, trying to clear his bruised throat. Gotrek shot him another glare.

‘Trapped forever in an eternity without doom or death? More like a nightmare, manling,’ he rumbled, scratching at his eye-patch.

Felix shivered, trying not to think about it. He’d seen enough daemons to last him several lifetimes and the idea of forever circling the drain with them took the wind right out of his sails. Gotrek rubbed his chin. ‘Dreams or no, it’s been long enough, I think,’ he said, finally.

‘What?’ Felix said, taken aback by the sudden change of subject.

‘You didn’t think we were just going to sit here forever, did you, manling?’ Gotrek said. ‘Did you think I was just going to let them take my doom from me?’ He snorted. ‘For shame, manling, I thought you knew me better than that.’ He peered at Felix. ‘Maybe you’re not the right choice to be my Remembrancer after all…’

‘I – no – but what about the prophecy?’ Felix said, stunned, his words tripping over each other.

‘What about it?’ Gotrek said.

‘You seemed to take it seriously enough earlier!’ Felix flapped his arms. ‘I thought that was why you let them take you!’

Gotrek blinked. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘You – but I – but you–’ Felix said. ‘Then what are we doing in here?’

‘I told you,’ Gotrek said. ‘There is a grudge between Ungrim and I. I did not wish to press the matter and force his hand.’ Gotrek hesitated. Then, ‘I am many things, manling, but a kinslayer isn’t one of them.’

‘So what have you been doing all of this time? I thought you were–’

‘Brooding? Ha!’ Gotrek’s head jerked as he laughed. ‘No, manling, I was planning for our escape. It was a tricky proposition, I admit.’ Gotrek tapped the side of his head with a blunt finger. ‘Sometimes, with some problems, you just have to sit and think on them awhile.’

‘But what of the prophecy,’ Felix said again. ‘Do you not believe Axeson?’

‘I believe him,’ Gotrek said, walking to the balcony. ‘He said if I marched north, Karak Kadrin is doomed.’

‘And?’ Felix said, following him.

Gotrek gave a gap-toothed grin and shrugged. ‘Who said anything about marching?’

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
north-east of Karak Kadrin

‘I prefer beer to dust,’ Dorin spat. The sword-wielding Slayer stomped along beside his fellows, all of whom moved within the dust cloud of the throng’s march. They had been travelling for several days, and Karak Kadrin was long behind them. They marched not within the ranks, but behind and to the side, within their own unruly mob. Despite being an honoured part of Karak Kadrin’s throng, no thane worth his beard would have attempted to include the Slayers in the proper order of battle.

‘Think of it as a snack before the main meal,’ Biter said. He had a crude patch over his ruined eye and his new axe, etched with runes of wounding and battle, bounced on his shoulder. He hawked a gob of spittle and flashed metal teeth at the frowning Dorin. When the other Slayer turned away, Biter thrust his finger beneath his patch and scrubbed at the raw socket. It itched furiously.

‘Stop that,’ Koertig muttered. The Nordlander was easily keeping pace with the Slayers, despite having only a man’s stamina. ‘It’ll just start bleeding again.’

‘See, you do like me,’ Biter said, grinning. Koertig grunted and looked away. Biter kept up the grin for another moment before he let it slide off his face. In truth, he didn’t feel much like smiling. He felt tired. Every muscle ached and his head felt as if the skin were burning and peeling off at the same time. He needed a drink and a sleep and not necessarily in that order.

Instead, he was marching to war.

The rumours flew like birds through the throng as it left Karak Kadrin behind, and had grown in the repeated telling over the past few days. Dwarfs gossiped as much as any other race, though they liked to claim otherwise. And what the loose lips were letting slip was dark and unpleasant.

‘I should have let the Norscans take me,’ Koertig muttered.

‘Then you’d be dead, and not marching with the greatest army that Karak Kadrin has ever unleashed, human,’ a grim voice said. Koertig stiffened as Ungrim Ironfist approached the Slayers, the jewels set into his crown-helm gleaming in the sun. ‘Still, if it’s death you’re after, I’m sure the Chaos lovers will oblige. You, Biter, you’re in charge?’

‘No?’ Biter said. The other Slayers had put distance between them and he cursed them all silently. He sighed. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Good,’ Ungrim said. ‘March with me. I require the voice of a Slayer to counter the other, more sensible ones I’ve surrounded myself with.’

‘Surely you can provide that yourself, Lord King,’ Biter said, grinning slightly.

Ungrim chuckled. ‘Not when I’m the one tasked with the decision. Come, Biter,’ he said, slapping the Slayer on the back. ‘Aye, and bring your Remembrancer as well.’

The throng was making camp as they made their way back to where Ungrim’s circle of thanes awaited their king. Dwarfs rarely used tents on the march, but it was the storm season and the valleys and dips of the mountains could flood quicker than a dwarf could wink. Wide pavilion tents were erected, with open sides and brass scales over the tarp to keep out arrows and reflect the sun. The tents were set up quickly and efficiently, the support poles biting the hard earth with iron anchors. It took a matter of minutes to collapse the tents and pack them for travel.

Heavy pavise shields were the next to go up, around each tent, making each of the pavilions a miniature fortress. The shields were as large as the dwarfs who planted them and as wide as three, and each had a reinforced slot that the warriors could extend spears, handguns or crossbows through. They wouldn’t hold up under sustained attacks, but there wasn’t a dwarf alive who didn’t feel safer with a roof over his head and stout walls around him.

The king’s bodyguard had set up a pavilion on the slopes of one of the low peaks that rose up around the route the throng followed. They were setting up the shields when Ungrim arrived with Biter, and a heavy, round table had been placed on a smooth disc of stone to keep it level.

Biter nodded to Thungrimsson as he entered the pavilion with Ungrim. The other thanes looked at him with distaste and Biter chuckled. Koertig stooped and slouched unobtrusively, watching but not speaking. Biter sometimes envied Gurnisson. What he wouldn’t give for a more talkative companion. Talking was the only thing that kept him from hearing the screams in his head and smelling the damp of the mine as it flooded and–

‘What’s he doing here?’ one of the thanes grunted, gesturing towards Biter.

‘Tradition, Damminsson,’ Ungrim said. ‘A representative of the Slayers who accompany the throng must be included in every meeting of the thanes.’

‘Aye, but he’s no War-Mourner, nor a designated Battle-Master, like old Ogun. He has no authority,’ another thane said.

‘He has as much authority as any of you,’ Ungrim said, his tone implying that the thanes had as much authority as the king chose to give them, when they were on the march.

The thanes grumbled into their beards, but gave no further argument. Biter gave them a cheery wave as Ungrim motioned for them all to gather around the table, where a map, drawn on the inside of what could only be a scrap of dragon-hide, had been unrolled. The map was the work of a dozen centuries’ worth of information gathered by peddlers, scouts, rangers and adventuresome clansmen. Lost holds, now long vanished or otherwise rendered uninhabitable, marked it, as did those ancient routes where the savage tribes of the north travelled from the Wastes into the lands of men and dwarfs. Biter whistled softly as Ungrim traced their enemy’s route with his finger.

‘They struck the Peak Pass here,’ Ironfist said. ‘Then they split up, with one force continuing on to Karak Kadrin, and the bulk of the army retreating towards the pass.’

‘The question is, why?’ Thungrimsson said, leaning forwards on his knuckles.

‘A better question would be, was it intentional? These barbarians can barely organize a horde half the size you’re proposing. Maybe there was a rift?’ another thane offered.

‘If so, then why are the ones we’re chasing heading back that way?’ Thungrimsson said.

‘Have you heard anything from the scouts?’ Ungrim said abruptly. ‘Are they still retreating?’

‘As fast as they can,’ the thane said, lighting his pipe with a long brass taper. He puffed and waved a hand. ‘A few hundred or so have split off from the main bulk of the curs.’

‘A rear-guard,’ Thungrimsson mused.

‘No,’ Ungrim said, stroking his beard. ‘No, they’re falling apart. Just like grobi do. Infighting and losing cohesion as they move. These hills are probably swarming with detritus like that. We should–’

The eerie squall of a hunting horn echoed over the camp. Biter turned, eye narrowing. His nostrils flared as he caught a whiff of a musky animal scent. ‘What’s that?’ he said.

‘What’s what?’ the thane with the pipe said.

The hound was twice the size of a normal dog and shimmering scales showed through its matted and filthy fur. It crashed into the pavise shield behind the thane and thrust itself forwards, jaws closing with a snap on his head. The pipe tumbled from spasming fingers as the hound jerked and clawed, tearing the thane’s head off.

Ungrim roared, snatching a hand-axe out of his belt and hurling it. It crashed against the hound’s skull, splitting it. The beast slumped, its weight toppling a shield. More hounds scrambled into the gap, snapping and snarling as they each fought to be the first in. Down below in the camp, more horns sounded as men – riders – swept down the slope, howling and shrieking as if noise alone would carry the day. Biter hefted his axe and grinned. It was a worthless sort of ambush. If they had been fewer in number, or more careless, it might have done the trick. But as it stood, it was merely going to let them stretch their limbs.

The twang of crossbows and the boom of handguns sounded as the dwarfs responded to the attack. A hound, slavering jaws spread wide, lunged for Biter. It had horns curling from its brow and a tail that was like that of a scorpion. Biter side-stepped the beast and grabbed its horn as it lunged past. He jerked hard, snapping its neck and ripping the horn from its head. He jammed the latter into the throat of another beast, killing it in mid-leap.

The thanes had reacted quickly to the attack, and soon, all of the dogs were dead. But the pavilion was still open to the enemy and a horseman galloped through the opening, sword and shield swept wide as he chanted to his Dark Gods. The horse reared and screamed, hooves slamming down on hastily upraised shields. Biter moved quickly, his axe licking out, teasing the beast’s hindquarters, causing it to thrash wildly. The rider was unprepared and he fell, cursing. He just barely brought his shield up to meet Biter’s axe, but the force of the blow was enough to shatter his arm. He fell back, wailing, and Biter finished him with a negligent back-handed whack of the blade. The axe was as light as a feather in his grip. ‘Remind me to thank the priest for the loan of his blade, eh?’ he shouted to Koertig.

Without waiting for a reply, Biter spun to face his next opponent, laughing. ‘Poor Gurnisson doesn’t know what he’s missing,’ he said, grinning savagely as he waded into the fray, his single eye blazing with berserk joy.

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

Garagrim frowned at the scroll in his hand, as if it had personally offended him. Lanterns lined the high alcoves of the library, casting a watery yellow light across the rows of stone shelves and pigeonholes, each one stuffed with books, tomes, scrolls and papyri from the four corners of the world. Like everything else in Karak Kadrin, the library had been built carefully and over centuries. Maps, both ancient and more recent, lined the walls in steel frames, and if one followed them in the right order, one could trace the expansion and eventual retraction of dwarf civilization from the Golden Age until now. Garagrim had done that very thing often as a child, seeing what had once been and what now was and wondering if there was some way to make it the way it had been again.

With a growl, he twitched the scroll aside and sat back, rubbing his eyes. He was sitting in his father’s chair, in his father’s library, handling his father’s duties, instead of doing what he should have been doing.

‘And what duties might those be, my son?’ his mother’s voice inquired.

Garagrim shifted in his seat. ‘I didn’t realize that I had spoken aloud. Forgive me, mother,’ he said, rising to greet her. She waved him back to his seat. Her silent bodyguards had stayed outside. They were men of her clan, Garagrim knew, sent to ward her, even in Karak Kadrin where she was, theoretically, safe. The idea that the clans of Karak Kadrin could not protect their own queen was an insult, though not a large one, as far as Ungrim was concerned. Most of the elders of the hold had even stopped grumbling about it.

Kemma lifted a scroll, examining it. Garagrim resisted the urge to snatch it from her. In many ways, he knew that he was more conservative than either of his parents. He was more conservative than most dwarfs, in fact. He was assured of some things very strongly, and knew with iron certainty that there was a proper order to the way of things. Tradition was the shield which sheltered the dawi from the Chaos which threatened to drown the world in fire and madness. And in dwarf tradition, women did not interfere in the running of the hold, save for in the most extreme circumstances.

She saw the look on his face, despite his attempt to hide it. ‘It’s a bill, my son,’ she said. ‘It is merely a matter of accounts, nothing of import.’ She dropped it on the desk.

‘That’s not the point,’ he grunted.

‘No, I suppose not,’ she said, taking a seat. ‘You are angry.’

‘I am… frustrated,’ he said.

‘They look much the same, then,’ she said.

‘What do you want, mother?’

‘Merely to inquire after your health, my son,’ she said. ‘Your father is doing as he thinks best.’

‘What is best for the hold, or for him?’ Garagrim said, laying his fists on the table.

‘One and the same,’ she said, looking at another scroll. ‘Handle this one first. We’ll need the pork the Moot provides for the victory celebration, and the little scroungers are good at “forgetting” deliveries until they’re paid.’

‘You think he’ll win, then?’ Garagrim said.

‘Your father has the habit of cheating death, whether he wants to or not,’ Kemma said, opening a ledger. Without asking, she snatched Garagrim’s stylus and dipped it into an ink pot, and then began scratching out sums. ‘These books are a mess. Your father never shows his work.’

‘Why does he bear a grudge against Gurnisson?’ Garagrim asked.

The scratching of the stylus slowed and then stopped. Kemma didn’t look at him. ‘Why ask this? Are you no longer content to hate him because your father does?’

Garagrim’s jaw clenched. ‘It is proper–’

‘Only if one is foolish,’ Kemma said. ‘You overstep yourself, taking on the debts of others like some wastepenny from Barak Varr, without knowing the reason for those debts in the first place.’

‘You go too far, mother. Like it or not, I am War-Mourner,’ Garagrim said, rising to his feet. ‘I have a right to know.’

‘Ask him,’ Kemma said, meeting her son’s glare. ‘It was Gurnisson’s oath, and it is his to share or not, as it pleases him.’

Garagrim eyed his mother. Then, he nodded briskly. ‘I’ll do that, then. Thank you for your advice, mother.’ He turned and left the library without waiting for her reply. Behind him, he heard the stylus resume scratching.

She was hiding something, he knew. Then, his mother was always hiding something. His father was relatively straight-forward, but Kemma had a mind as crooked as a skaven burrow. Garagrim marched through the corridors, ignoring the bows and salutes of the guards. The hold was still on a war-footing, and would be until the throng returned.

He took the stairs slowly, turning the words to come over in his mind. Gurnisson had no reason to satisfy his curiosity, nor any reason to like him. Garagrim didn’t like Gurnisson either and not just because of his father, no matter what others thought.

It was because Gurnisson flaunted his freedom like an ufdi. Garagrim and his father were bound by chains of duty and honour, but Gurnisson was not, and he knew it and revelled in it, disregarding custom and law and propriety with impunity, trusting in his status as a Slayer to protect him.

His hands clenched as he walked. Some said that was the purpose of the Slayers, to show the cracks in the foundation of dwarf society. Others said that they were a safety valve, allowing the discordant elements, the grit in the ore, to be sifted out. Regardless, though they were separate, they had to maintain a proper respect for things.

That was the War-Mourner’s task, to see that the Slayers respected the few limits placed upon them. That no one had taken that office in some centuries had not caused Garagrim to hesitate at the time, though now he could see why it had remained vacant for so long. Slayers chafed at authority, even that imposed by one of their own.

Not that they truly saw him as one of their own. He had no shame of his own, no right to take the oath, as they saw it. Yet taken it he had and he would do it again in a heartbeat, to spare his clan and his father the doom that haunted them. For the good of Karak Kadrin, Garagrim had taken the Slayer’s oath and though his father sought to deny him, he would garner a noble doom and free the clan from the weight of their ancient oath.

The guards snapped to attention as they caught sight of him coming up the stairs. It had been more than a day since Gurnisson had attacked them, and they were taking no chances now. The guard had been doubled, and rather than clansmen, ironbreakers were on duty. Even without his axe, it seemed that Gurnisson was deadly, at least to hear the last guards tell it.

‘My prince,’ one of the ironbreakers rumbled.

‘Elig,’ Garagrim said, nodding perfunctorily. He knew the names of most of the warriors of the hold; a feat of memory he’d put to good use since his childhood and one of the many skills his mother had taught him. ‘Is there anything to report?’

‘Nothing, Prince Garagrim,’ Elig said. ‘Some noise earlier, an argument, I think, but they’ve been having those since we put them out there.’ He shrugged. ‘Gurnisson likes to shout, and the manling isn’t much quieter.’

Garagrim smiled. ‘Good. Open the door,’ he said, gesturing. ‘I wish to speak to them.’

‘Are you sure that’s wise, my prince?’

‘Since when have you known me to do anything wise, Elig?’ Garagrim said, feigning a heartiness he didn’t truly feel. The guards did as he bade without further argument. Garagrim stepped through the door, closing his eyes as the chill wind of the heights caressed him.

When he opened them, rage flooded him.

‘Sound the alarm! They’ve escaped!’

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Canto climbed off of his exhausted horse, and knelt in the dust before the hooves of Garmr’s own mount. ‘I return bearing gifts, my lord,’ he said. He hadn’t been surprised to see the horde marching to meet him as he entered the Peak Pass. The mighty wheeled altars and war-shrines rattled at the fore of the army, and banners swayed in time to the beat of dull drums. There was something in the air as well, not simply the stench of the army, but something else…

‘A fallen hold, perhaps,’ Garmr said. There was a dark amusement evident in his tone.

‘The remnants of a defeated army, held together and brought to you, by me,’ Canto said, still staring at the ground. ‘Hrolf is dead, as are Kung and Yan and the siege of Karak Kadrin with them. If I had not–’

Garmr raised a hand. ‘How many warriors do you bring me, Canto?’

‘A few hundred, my lord,’ Canto said quickly. ‘Others, cowardly curs that they were, preferred to take their chances with the army pursuing us rather than risking your magnanimity…’

‘Not an auspicious number, Canto.’

‘Can such a thing be said to exist, my lord, in defeat?’ Canto said. His shoulders itched, waiting for the axe to fall. He couldn’t stop thinking about the tortoise, on its slow, unceasing plod across the Wastes. Maybe it had reached the ocean by now. Would it stop, or would it keep walking?

‘Especially then, Canto Unsworn,’ Garmr said. ‘Ekaterina?’

The woman urged her horse forwards, her fingers draped lazily over the pommel of her sword. She looked at Canto hungrily. Canto longed to run, but stayed where he was. His mind spun and discarded plan after plan in a space of moment, none of them better than the one he had.

‘Kill one in nine and scatter their skulls before us. Let the air swim with screams and the smell of blood.’ Garmr gestured. Ekaterina shrieked and jabbed her horse’s flanks, causing it to leap over Canto. Chaos marauder horsemen followed, swarming their shocked fellows quickly. Garmr and Canto were in an island of tranquillity amidst the carnage. Garmr looked down at him. ‘How did Hrolf die?’

‘A dwarf killed him. A Slayer,’ Canto said, looking up for the first time. He did not know for certain that the mad dwarf had killed Hrolf, but he suspected that it was close enough to the truth to satisfy Garmr.

‘Describe him,’ Garmr said. Behind them, around them, men screamed and died.

‘A Slayer, my lord,’ Canto said. ‘Short, broad, disgusting…’

‘How many eyes did it possess?’

‘Two, no, one,’ Canto said. ‘It didn’t seem to hamper him in using that axe of his.’ Idly, he stroked the marks that same axe had left on his own armour.

‘Ahhhhh,’ Garmr said, leaning back in his saddle. ‘Yes.’ He looked down at Canto. ‘You have done well, Canto. I have need of you now, with so many of my champions lying scattered across these hills. You will serve as my left hand even as Ekaterina has become my right. You will serve me and that service will raise you high in the esteem of the Blood God. Would that please you?’

No! Canto thought. ‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And what would please you, Khorreg Hell-Worker?’ Garmr said, turning to look at the Chaos dwarf who had watched Canto’s reception without comment. Khorreg’s cracked features shifted themselves into a sneer of displeasure.

‘It would please me to get back to my remaining engines and ready them for battle against the Weak Ones who dare pursue us,’ he rumbled.

‘So be it,’ Garmr said, gesturing. ‘We will drown them in fire and blade, Daemonsmith.’

Khorreg didn’t reply. Instead, he stumped off through the army, armour wheezing and hissing. Canto watched him go and hoped that the Hell-Worker would hold to their bargain. A dozen heads, tied together by beards and scalplocks, fell to the ground and struck his knee, startling him. Ekaterina, covered from head to toe in blood, rode towards them. ‘Shall I kill him now, my lord? Or would you prefer that pleasure yourself?’

Canto stood as Garmr said, ‘Canto’s skull will remain where it is, for today at least.’ Ekaterina opened her mouth as if to protest, but then clamped it shut as Garmr went on. ‘I wish the walls of this valley to be as red as the ground we have left behind us. Soak it in blood and meat and sanctify it to Khorne. The road must be made ready to receive its final paving stones.’

‘The dwarfs,’ Canto said, all of the pieces falling into place. He had been right – it had all been a ploy from the start! He and the others had been nothing but bait, designed to lure a tiger from its den. He seethed, rage warring with prudence.

Garmr looked at him, and for a moment, Canto wondered whether the warlord could see the anger boiling beneath his skin, before the monstrous helm dipped in assent. ‘Yes. You were right, Canto. You have indeed brought me gifts…’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

‘I’ve changed my mind!’ Felix shouted, eyes closed, knuckles white. ‘I don’t want to escape! I’d prefer to stay and be executed!’

Gotrek laughed harshly. ‘They wouldn’t execute you, manling. We’re not men, after all. They might do the Trouser Leg Ritual on you, but only if they could find a pair big enough for a human.’ The Slayer whistled. ‘Look at that view.’

Felix cracked open one eye and immediately wished that he hadn’t. Gotrek was right, it was quite the view. The whole of the valley that contained Karak Kadrin spread out below them, obscured from moment to moment by soft clouds. Unable to stop himself, Felix twisted, looking up. It was as if the roof of the world curved above him, close enough to touch. There was light and then darkness above it, black and cold and empty save for chill pinpricks of light. He shuddered as his vision swam and he closed his eyes again as his fingers dug tightly into the rock.

When Gotrek said he planned to escape, Felix had assumed that the Slayer was planning on the direct route, or going via some hidden mechanism known only to the Engineers’ Guild. Instead, they were going straight up. The Slayer had turned Felix’s cloak into a connecting line, tied it around Felix and then around himself, securing them together. Humiliating as it was, Felix understood the reason for it. There was simply no way that he could have made the climb on his own, not without tools and a good deal of luck.

But Gotrek… Gotrek moved like a mountain goat, his stubby fingers and toes finding invisible cracks and crevices with unerring accuracy as he scaled the peak. He’d stood on the balustrade and led Felix to the side of the balcony, and from there, upwards. ‘I used to climb these peaks in my youth,’ he said as his breath bloomed in a frosty mist and wafted back over his shoulder. ‘Last to the summit bought the beer.’

‘Ch-ch-charming,’ Felix said as the cold dug its talons into his bones. It was far colder at this height than he’d expected and he couldn’t stop his limbs from shuddering. He blinked, trying to clear the frost from his eyes, and looked at the grimacing face of the ancient dwarf king opposite. He didn’t look happy to see them climbing up the cheek of his neighbour, for which Felix couldn’t blame him. It must be like watching a fly crawl up a dinner guest’s nose. He chuckled, and then blinked. ‘Gotrek, I think the altitude is getting to me,’ he said.

‘What, already?’ Gotrek said.

‘How much farther is it to the top, Gotrek?’

‘Who said anything about the top, manling?’

‘I thought–’

‘Only a few moments more, manling,’ Gotrek said. He turned back to the rock face and began to climb, much faster than before.

‘Easy for you to say,’ Felix muttered. The nudging pain in his shoulder was back, and growing stronger. He’d known men who’d dislocated their shoulders before, and knew that it could happen again, and easier, now that it’d done it once. He imagined the spasm of another dislocation shooting through his arm, his grip weakening. Could Gotrek catch him, if he fell? Somehow, he doubted it. ‘Best not fall,’ he breathed. He’d climbed mountains before, but none this high. He tried to concentrate on holding on, on willing his exhausted muscles to work.

‘Ha! Right where I remembered it,’ Gotrek said. Felix looked up. The bottom of another balcony, much like the one they’d left, stretched out over them. ‘Hold tight,’ he grunted. Then, before Felix could reply, he swung out from the peak, arm stretching. Felix’s gut clenched and the world spun and then Gotrek was pulling him up onto another stone balustrade. Felix grabbed the rough stonework and hauled himself over, and collapsed in a puddle on the balcony. Gotrek dropped down beside him, grinning happily.

‘That’s it?’ Felix gasped. ‘We left one balcony for another?’

‘Not a balcony, manling.’ Gotrek pointed and Felix saw a number of squat machines crouched on the flat stone beyond. ‘A landing strip,’ Gotrek said, heaving himself to his feet. ‘Karak Kadrin has a number of platforms like this at these heights. Ungrim doesn’t have much time for the Engineers’ Guild, but he’s not so foolish as to deny the use of a few of these dragon-pluckers.’

Felix rubbed his arms, trying to regain feeling in them, as he walked around the machines. He’d seen gyrocopters before, but only from a distance. They had a flimsiness to them that seemed at odds with other dwarf war machines, despite the barrel bodies and great rotors made from canvas and metal. Each had a bucket seat and a heavy rope ladder coiled on one side. On the other was a canvas roll containing a variety of tools, only some of which Felix could glean the purpose of. Gotrek fondly patted the cannon-like object that extended from the front of one of the machines. ‘Steam-gun, manling,’ he said. ‘It’ll wipe out a horde of charging grobi faster than I can spit.’

‘Did you ever fly one of these?’ Felix said.

Gotrek’s smile slipped from his face. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘a long time ago.’ His eye narrowed. ‘It’s forbidden to any but an Engineer to fly one.’

‘You intend to steal one?’

‘Steal?’ Gotrek glared at him. ‘I’m no thief,’ he spat. ‘We’re simply borrowing it.’

‘That implies that we intend to bring it back,’ Felix said. ‘Besides which, how will we both fit on this thing? It’ll barely fit you!’

‘We’ll improvise something,’ Gotrek said. He grinned unpleasantly at Felix. Felix stepped back, raising his hands, ‘Oh no, no, no,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of being carted around like a babe in a sling.’

‘It’s that, or stay here,’ Gotrek growled, shaking a meaty fist. ‘I care not, manling.’

Felix looked at the gyrocopter, his gut sinking. Then, desperate, he said, ‘What about weapons? What about your axe?’

Gotrek paused. He looked at the door to the landing strip, as if gauging the number of steps, corridors and guards between him and his axe. Then he shook himself. His hands clenched and unclenched. ‘Plenty of weapons where we’re going, manling,’ he said finally, each word escaping his lips as if dragged by hooks. ‘We’ll–’

The door shifted in its frame. Hinges squealed and it swung open. Gotrek stepped forwards, grabbing a heavy spanner from one of the canvas rolls and lifting it. Felix looked around for something to use as a weapon.

Gotrek cursed as a shape stepped out onto the balcony. ‘You,’ he snarled.

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Grettir Many-Eyes rode a war-altar, held tight by rusty chains themselves held tight by magics older and more fell than any he’d yet learned. Daemons had forged those chains, to bind other daemons, and they held him fast. He examined the palms of his clawed gauntlets, meeting the unblinking avian eyes which sprouted bulbously from his palms. ‘Is this my fate, then?’ he asked softly, knowing from experience that no answer was forthcoming. The Changer had never answered him, even as he served the god on countless battlefields, gaining more and more power, his ascent paralleling that of his cousin.

He had fought champions of the Changer, the Rot, the Lover and even the Breaker, wielding first a sword, then magics. He had broken open the Black Vaults of the dawi zharr and fended off their stone-footed sorcerer-kings in order to steal the Crystal of Crooked Ways, which he had spent a year and a day carving into the mask he now wore. He had made war on the Spellbreakers of the Shifting City and on the War-Judges of the Tahmaks, he had corrupted the monks of the White Lotus, and he had crushed the heart of Isadora Von Carstein on the steps of the Lost Cathedral in order to prevent the vampire from unravelling the Weaver’s works. All of that had been done in the service of one goal… The death of his false friend, Garmr.

And then, at the Battle of the Blistered Sun, he had gotten his chance. Garmr had been there, taking advantage of Dashak Kul’s distraction to stage a raid on his rival’s camp. Khorne-worshippers clashed in the ruins of a city that had not existed the day before. On a screaming, pulsing disc, Grettir had skimmed low over the streets, magic crackling between his crooked talons. It had been his whispers which had driven Dashak to war with the Nine Unfulfilled, and given Garmr his opening.

So close. He had been so close. He could still taste the bitter ashes of his defeat in the back of his throat. He could still see the look of recognition in Garmr’s eyes, and feel the bite of the daemon-queen’s spear as it pierced his side and killed his disc. She had followed him down into the dust like a swooping hawk, with her red eyes alight with untold purpose. The ghost of that spear-thrust still haunted him, echoing through his limbs.

The Changer had seemingly abandoned him then, right in the hands of his enemies. He had been captured, bound and forced to bind another.

Momentarily, his thoughts drifted out, touching the razor-bright hunger of Ulfrgandr, the Slaughter-Hound, the Massacre-That-Walked. He had a link to it, as the one who had bound its soul to Garmr’s own. It had been his hands which had plunged the eight mystical daggers into its flesh, each blade first dipped in Garmr’s blood. But only after it had been beaten and captured by Garmr and his warriors. The creature had been as vicious a combatant as any army of warriors and a hundred men had been butchered on that particular altar of hubris, torn to shreds by Ulfrgandr on the Plateau of Sighs in a battle that raged from the plateau to the Crater Gates, where daemon-engines had spat fire at the combatants.

Garmr had fought Ulfrgandr to a standstill, his axe carving chunks from the monster’s flesh, his armour spattered with the beast’s acidic blood, his helm dented from its fangs. Then, Garmr had almost been as monstrous as the Slaughter-Hound in his berserk desire to conquer. That need to dominate had been at the heart of the binding of the beast, for Garmr had become adrift on tides of blood, his mind slipping into brute hunger like so many of his peers, less a warlord than an engine of murder.

Privately, Grettir felt some modicum of respect for his cousin in regards to that bit of self-awareness. There weren’t many champions of the Blood God who could recognize the inherent limits of succumbing to the god’s own madness. Most dived in quite willingly. But Garmr had forced Grettir to bind Ulfrgandr, the mystic spells allowing Garmr to force his own madness into the beast’s already insane skull, thus allowing him to be fully clear-headed for the first time in a century, which, in turn, had allowed Garmr to begin his march south.

Perhaps that was his fate, he thought. Perhaps he was merely a tool, fit only to ensure that Garmr met his own destiny.

Grettir snarled. Garmr, he thought, chewing the name to shreds. Garmr Kinslayer, Garmr Childeater, Garmr Tribekiller, those were the names the great and powerful Gorewolf was known by in the north. He was not a hero there, but a monster. A devil that’d killed his own people and made a sacrifice of their guts and bones to the Blood God. And for what, Grettir wondered? He looked around, at the rolling shrines, galloping steeds and brutish riders, at the marchers with their bellicose cries. He sneered at them, though his expression was hidden behind his mask.

Garmr used them as he had used their tribe. These warriors, these proud brutes were a collection of sacrifices, waiting to be culled when the time came, all for the glory of Khorne. ‘Cattle,’ he shouted. ‘You are all sheep trusting the wolf not to shear you!’

Through the eyes of his helmet, he saw the diverse fates of everyone he looked at. In most of those, men died. The how and the why of it were different, but still they died. Every warrior within the sound of his voice was a corpse walking, a maggot-farm as yet untilled. True, some survived. Some even prospered, rising up in the esteem of gods and men, rivalling Garmr in time, but most died.

‘You’re all going to die,’ he said, quietly, his words chewed up beneath the creak of wheels and the thunder of marching feet and stomping hooves. ‘Even me,’ he continued, settling back. Like them, Grettir had a choice of deaths, ranging from the shameful to the staggering. In one future, Garmr tore his head from his shoulders once his purpose had been fulfilled. In another, Grettir died in the jaws of the Slaughter-Hound. In a third, he set his talons in his cousin’s throat and they died together. That last one warmed his heart, and it was the only reason he had not yet attempted a futile and fatal escape.

‘What is the first thing we were taught as children, cousin?’ Garmr said. Grettir turned as the warlord brought his night-black steed in line with the creaking altar, the animal’s hooves trotting in rhythm with the cloven paws of the two gorebeasts pulling the structure.

‘Well?’ Garmr said. Grettir looked away. ‘The Changer lies, cousin. That is what we were taught. What all of us, all of them, are taught,’ Garmr continued. ‘Whatever his name, the Steppe-Wolf speaks with a forked tongue, the Spider-Queen spins webs from daydreams and the Raven-Kin speaks in riddles that can trap the unwary. Only in blood is there truth. They know better than to listen to you, these brave warriors.’

‘Self-righteousness has always been the weapon you were most comfortable with, cousin,’ Grettir said, turning. In his eyes, a kaleidoscope of swirling fates spun and duelled for Garmr. ‘Blood is blood, nothing more, nothing less.’

‘Do you really expect to find fertile soil for your poison?’ Garmr asked.

‘And what poison might that be?’

‘I see it, cousin, winding its way in among the red currents of my followers,’ Garmr said. ‘Perhaps I should have cut out your tongue.’

‘Then who would have told you your fortunes?’

Garmr grunted and chuckled. ‘True, cousin,’ he said.

Grettir hated that laugh. He hated Garmr. ‘Ekaterina will betray you,’ he said.

‘And so,’ Garmr said, shrugging. His armour rustled. ‘We all strive for the gods, cousin, even you.’

‘Canto does not,’ Grettir said.

‘Canto has his uses,’ Garmr said.

‘Even as I do,’ Grettir said.

‘Our path is littered with blood and bones, cousin,’ Garmr said. ‘I have shed the blood of daemons and men from the Wastes to here. The road trembles in eagerness. It yearns for completion.’ He hesitated. Grettir knew what question was coming even before it slipped Garmr’s lips. It was always the same question. ‘Is he coming?’

‘For such a mighty warrior, you require much in the way of reassurance,’ Grettir said.

‘Tell me,’ Garmr said. He wasn’t quite pleading, not quite. Nor was he demanding. Here, at this point, at this place on the path of fate, jailer and prisoner stood equal. They were only cousins again, boys who had grown together, becoming warriors, serving their tribe together, fighting enemies back-to-back. Grettir saw the past as clearly as all of the possible futures, and saw blood on the snow as he and Garmr, lean and sun-hardened, had roved like wolves among the enemies of their tribe, swords and axes in hand. They had served no gods save ambition, sword-brothers, blood-kin, and now… What?

‘How did we come to this?’ Grettir said.

Garmr stared at him silently. With a start, Grettir realized that he hadn’t seen his cousin’s face in more than a century. Nor had he seen his own. Both of them were trapped behind their masks, locked into their cycles of destiny. He sighed, his anger fading to a dull ache as he tried to pry one future from the web of dozens. ‘He is coming. They will meet us at the Peak Pass, where we destroyed the others.’

Garmr shuddered in his armour. ‘It will be complete, then. I will have my reward,’ he said, like a child eager for a sweetmeat.

‘Yes,’ Grettir said, and bowed his head.

Karak Kadrin,
the Slayer Keep

‘Yes, me,’ Axeson said, gesturing to Gotrek with what Felix realized was the Slayer’s axe. And that wasn’t all: the priest also had Karaghul’s hilt peeking over one shoulder. ‘Take your axe, Slayer, there’s wet work to be done.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Gotrek growled, not quite lowering the spanner as Axeson shoved the door closed. ‘Have you come to try and talk me out of leaving, priest?’

‘Where would be the sense in that, Gurnisson? Would you be swayed by words, sweet or otherwise?’ Axeson said, holding out Gotrek’s axe, balanced across his palms. ‘Take it.’

Gotrek did, snatching the weapon and bringing it close. He ran his thumb along the blade and then stuffed the bleeding digit in his mouth. Axeson unstrapped Felix’s sword-belt and tossed Karaghul to its astonished owner.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Felix said, sliding Karaghul partially from its sheath. He hadn’t realized how much he missed the blade until he had been separated from it. ‘You were the one who convinced Ungrim not to let us go in the first place.’

‘Did I?’ Axeson said. ‘I merely told Ungrim that if Gurnisson marched with the throng, Karak Kadrin would fall. You are not with the throng and I don’t believe you intend to march…’ He gestured to the gyrocopters. ‘The prophecy doesn’t cover flying, swimming or falling.’

‘If you were a man, I might accuse you of sophistry,’ Felix said.

Axeson grunted. ‘If I were a man, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.’ He looked at Felix. ‘I knew Gurnisson wouldn’t be content to rest in captivity, even as I knew that he wouldn’t seek to fight his way out. Not even a Slayer would shed dwarf blood so lightly or so selfishly. That left only two options.’

‘That still doesn’t explain how you knew,’ Felix said.

‘Grimnir told me,’ Axeson said, shrugging.

‘But why help us?’ Felix said, strapping Karaghul to his waist even as he wondered what that last bit meant. When had Gotrek had to escape before? ‘Why bring us our weapons?’

‘Prophecies are funny things, human, especially when they are at cross-purposes,’ Axeson said.

‘Speak plainly,’ Gotrek grunted.

‘Your doom is not today, Gurnisson. Or even tomorrow or a year from hence,’ Axeson said, glancing at the door. Despite the wind, Felix heard a faint noise. Horns, he thought. ‘But there is a doom out there, and it is hungry for you and if it takes you, we will all die with you.’

‘But if Gotrek is fated to die elsewhere–’ Felix began.

‘Chaos makes mockery of all prophecy and portent, even its own. What is immutable becomes mutable when the Chaos winds blow,’ Axeson said. Gotrek nodded grudgingly.

‘Aye, mountains become water and the truth becomes a lie,’ Gotrek muttered. Then, ‘You play dice with the gods, boy,’ he said to Axeson.

‘Then you had best see that we win, Gurnisson,’ Axeson said. ‘Now, take to the air. Garagrim has noticed your absence and sounded the alarm.’

‘What will happen if he catches us?’ Felix asked nervously.

‘Best see that he doesn’t, eh?’ Axeson said, clapping him on the arm in a friendly manner. ‘Keep him fighting, Jaeger,’ he added, more softly.

‘Because of the prophecy,’ Felix said.

Axeson hesitated, and then nodded jerkily. The door shuddered in its frame. Someone was trying to open it. Axeson fairly flew across the distance and planted one broad shoulder against the door. ‘Time’s up. If you’re going, go!’

‘Get on, manling,’ Gotrek said, climbing into the bucket seat of the gyrocopter. He grabbed a pair of goggles and strapped them over his head before tossing a pair to Felix. ‘Wrap that cloak tight about yourself. It’s going to get cold.’

‘Concerned over my health?’

‘If you freeze to death, I’ll need to find a new Remembrancer,’ Gotrek grunted, flipping switches and pulling levers. ‘Give the rotor a push, and then get on.’

‘Where, out of curiosity?’ Felix said.

Gotrek pointed. While Felix had been talking to Axeson, Gotrek had stretched a heavy roll of canvas out beneath the landing struts of the gyrocopter, creating an improvised hammock. Felix stared at it, aghast. Gotrek growled impatiently. ‘Manling, we use these to carry rocks three times your weight. It’s secure enough! Now give the blasted rotor a shove!’

Felix did so, straining against the resistance of the rotor. Even with both hands, it took him a few tries. When he finally got it moving, it rotated slowly, in an almost desultory fashion. Gotrek pumped a lever, and the speed picked up. Felix slid beneath the gyrocopter and into the sling even as the struts left the stone, bouncing slightly and knocking the air from him. He reached out, grabbing the struts. ‘Anytime, Gotrek,’ he said.

Behind them, metal rang on metal. Felix twisted, looking back over his shoulder. Axeson had his back pressed against the door, and there was a look of strain on his face. He wouldn’t be able to hold the door shut for much longer.

The gyrocopter bounced again and then shot upwards in a plume of dust. Felix coughed and spat and pulled the goggles awkwardly over his eyes. His whole body shook as the gyrocopter took off, and he gritted his teeth as they rattled in his head. He heard Gotrek laughing as the rotors chopped the air. Then the comforting solidity of the stones of Karak Kadrin dropped away and they were in the air.

Felix thought he might have screamed, but he wasn’t sure.

‘The human screams loudly,’ one of the guards said, shading his eyes to watch the departing gyrocopter as it bounced through the air.

‘Maybe it was a war cry. Very big on the war cry, humans,’ another said.

‘Quiet, both of you,’ Garagrim growled, casting a glare at the two ironbreakers. ‘Someone get a representative of the Engineers’ Guild up here! And pilots,’ he snarled. Then he transferred the glare to the priest lying on the ground. Axeson had been knocked aside by the forcing open of the aerie door, and he sat up, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Well? What have you to say, priest?’

‘You’re welcome?’ Axeson said, heaving himself to his feet.

Garagrim raised a fist, but refrained from striking the priest. He couldn’t say what stayed his hand. Maybe it was tradition or honour perhaps, or maybe fear; traitor or not Axeson was still a priest, still beloved of the gods. Or maybe he simply couldn’t bring himself to strike a fellow dwarf.

Despite what he knew others said of him, Garagrim was not as hot-headed or as pig-blind as he acted. He had merely taken on the role of a Slayer, and played it to the best of his ability. But he could think when he needed to. ‘You let them go. No, you helped them escape,’ Garagrim said. It wasn’t a question, though Axeson answered it as if it was one.

‘Indeed I did,’ Axeson said, straightening his robes. ‘If Ungrim had simply listened to me, none of this would have been necessary.’ He met the War-Mourner’s glare. ‘But he didn’t. The question now is, will you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Garagrim said, momentarily taken aback.

‘You were intending to pursue Gurnisson, weren’t you?’

Garagrim hesitated. His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you going to tell me why I shouldn’t?’

‘Actually, I was going to tell you why you should,’ Axeson said. ‘You must muster a second throng and–’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Garagrim interjected. ‘I don’t plan on listening to you either way. You have played us false, priest, and I–’

‘Will stop bellowing,’ Queen Kemma said, sweeping out onto the balcony, flanked by her guards. The ironbreakers and the clansmen traded glares as Kemma looked around and made a ‘tut-tut’ sound. ‘I knew he went too quietly,’ she murmured.

‘You expected this?’ Garagrim said, looking at his mother in shock.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘as did you, my son.’

It was Axeson’s turn to look startled. ‘What?’

‘The sewers,’ Garagrim grunted. ‘I suspected Gurnisson would try and escape, but I thought he’d go down as he did before, not up. I’ve had warriors stationed down there for days now.’

‘Unhappy warriors, I might add,’ Kemma said. She ran her fingers across the edge of a rotor.

‘But how would you have–’ Axeson began.

Garagrim hiked a thumb at the balustrade. ‘The storm flues, priest. They lead in and out of the mountain. It is how Gurnisson escaped the last time my father tried to imprison him.’ He frowned. ‘Apparently he rode down them during a storm, like a log on a flume.’ He shook his head. ‘He was as mad then as he is now.’

‘And let us pray that he is as successful this time as he was then,’ Kemma said. ‘Regardless, you will do nothing to the priest.’ She looked at her son. ‘The priest was acting under my orders.’

‘He was?’ Garagrim said.

‘I was?’ Axeson said.

‘He was,’ Kemma said, folding her hands into her sleeves. ‘I will take full responsibility for this debacle. Let Ungrim break his fangs on my walls, if he wants, if – when – he returns.’ She pointed at Garagrim. ‘Marshal a second throng of half of those warriors who remain. You will march out at as soon as possible.’

‘Me? But father said–’ Garagrim began, even as a savage joy filled him.

‘Do not pretend to be stupid, my son,’ Kemma said harshly. ‘There is more at stake than your father’s honour or ours. Our people must be preserved.’ She swung around, her gaze capturing the huffing representative of the Engineers’ Guild as he stepped out onto the balcony, mouth open to bellow about impropriety. By long tradition, the aeries set aside for gyrocopters were forbidden to any save Guild members. ‘Master Flinthand,’ Kemma said. ‘I need these devices of yours in the air within the hour. Scour the mountains in all directions. A storm is coming and I would know when it is drawing close.’

Garagrim watched his mother bully the engineer into shocked silence and smiled. He had hoped Gurnisson would escape and give him cause to pursue. Indeed, he had been going to see Gurnisson to propose just that. Despite their mutual dislike, he’d been certain that the other Slayer would have taken him up on his offer. This way was better. This way, there was no guilt for disobeying his father, for helping Gurnisson, for any of it. The War-Mourner’s palms itched for the feel of his axes’ hafts.

A Slayer would die, that had been the prophecy. And that Slayer was going to be him, even if he had to hamstring Gurnisson to do it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
high in the air

Jostled, frozen and bruised, Felix clung to the struts with numb fingers. Every limb ached and his ears throbbed with the noise of the gyrocopter’s rotors. Even with the goggles, his eyes stung from the harsh caress of the wind. Too, he was having trouble breathing. Luckily, the gyrocopter wasn’t meant for high altitudes, and it was descending even as it drove forwards.

‘Still alive, manling?’ Gotrek called out. Felix could barely hear him, over the noise and wind. Deciding to save his breath, he merely stuck a hand out from beneath the gyrocopter and waved it stiffly. Gotrek laughed. ‘Good!’

Felix wanted to ask him how he knew where he was going. Actually, he wanted to ask him to land, or at least swoop low enough so that Felix could slide out. Likely Gotrek would simply ignore him. So, instead, Felix tried to enjoy the ride.

He dozed, despite the aches and the cold. There was little else to do, hanging suspended as he was. He tried not to move too much, despite the silent pleading of his joints for even the briefest of stretches. Felix had lost track of time soon after they’d ascended, so he had no way of telling how long they’d been in the air. How fast could a gyrocopter fly, he wondered?

The sky was growing darker, but that might simply have been the shadows cast by the craggy peaks of the Worlds Edge Mountains that flashed past, intermittent monoliths of grey and brown. Scrub trees and winding paths, the latter carved by untold centuries of travellers, passed below him. From above, the mountains looked, if not beautiful, then at least breathtaking. That was a far cry from walking through them, where every bend in the trail promised some new misadventure. That was Felix’s experience, at least.

At least here, high in the air, it was safe–

Felix blinked as an unpleasant sensation crept across the back of his neck. Then, casually, he glanced over his shoulder. His eyes widened. He gave a yell and jerked his legs back even as the griffon’s beak snapped shut on the space his foot had only moments before occupied.

The creature had drawn close enough to stretch out its neck and scrape his boot-heel. It was a malignant mixture of bird, lion and nightmare. He had seen griffons before, in the Imperial Zoo in Altdorf – of his and Gotrek’s visit to which, the less that was said the better – but this beast was no human-raised war-beast. It was feral, and infinitely more frightening for the fact that no cage separated them. More, it had the look of sickness about it. Clumps of feathers had fallen from its head and there were great scabrous patches on the once sleek flanks of its feline shape. Its claws were split and jagged and its beak cracked, as if it had been in a fight recently. In fact, its whole attitude was one of a creature driven into a berserk fury by a period of prolonged violence.

The creature’s cruel beak gaped as it stretched one vulture-like forepaw towards his legs, its eyes empty of anything save a volcanic rage. From around its neck dangled a heavy collar, burdened by a trio of still stained skulls, the browning bone etched with ruinous sigils. Felix squirmed in his hammock and as he moved, the gyrocopter, thrown off by his weight, dipped. Gotrek bellowed. ‘Stop moving, curse you!’

The griffon snarled and swooped, its beak snapping at Felix. He jerked to the side. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to run. He couldn’t even draw his sword. His fists hammered on the bottom of the gyrocopter as he tried to draw Gotrek’s attention to his plight.

The griffon fell back and rose up, eyes blazing madly as it surged towards him, like a ferret entering a rat-hole. Felix pushed himself back. If he could reach up and grab the barrel of the steam-gun, perhaps he could–

The griffon hit the sling and thrashed, its claws tearing the tough canvas. The hooked tip of its beak gashed his armoured vest, scattering rings of mail and knocking the wind out of Felix. The canvas tore and split and Felix’s stomach swam upwards into his throat as he fell. Desperately, he shot a hand out, reaching for something, anything, to halt his fall. He caught hold of a strut with a flailing hand and the gyrocopter dipped and rolled to the left.

Felix felt as if his spine were a bullwhip that had just been cracked, and he gritted his teeth against the agony. In his blind panic, he had grabbed the strut with his sore arm. His shoulder burned and he grabbed it instinctively. Legs kicking, he saw the griffon swoop beneath the gyrocopter with a screech that hammered at his ears.

‘What are you doing down there, manling?’ Gotrek shouted, leaning over the side of the cockpit.

‘Griffon!’ Felix shouted.

‘You’ll have to wait until we land,’ Gotrek shouted back.

‘No! Griffon,’ Felix bellowed.

The griffon struck the tail of the gyrocopter, its claws sinking into the wood as its tail lashed. It ducked under the rotors and shrieked again. Gotrek twisted in his seat, his face splitting in a wild grin. He turned back and grabbed the control stick. ‘Hang on, manling!’

Gotrek yanked back on the stick, and the nose of the gyrocopter bobbed upwards. Felix’s grip slipped and he was swung back against the belly of the machine. He scrabbled at the tattered scraps of the canvas and grabbed hold, praying that it would bear his weight. The griffon, meanwhile, lost its hold and tumbled through the air, screaming. Its wings gave a snap and it was propelled upwards, passing so close to Felix that he could smell the foul, animal odour that clung to it.

It belly-flopped onto the nose of the gyrocopter, pulling it down with its weight, and Felix heard Gotrek roar. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t do anything save clutch frenziedly at the scraps of canvas. The wind passed over him like soft razors, digging into his exposed flesh. The gyrocopter lurched and rolled, its rotors whining. Felix was slammed against wood and metal as the machine seemed to fall through the air. Teeth bared, lips pressed flat by the wind, Felix reached for the opposite strut. Grabbing it, he hauled himself up, every muscle howling in agony as he stretched for the base of the tail section. Boots balanced on either strut, he grabbed hold and began to pull himself along.

Of course, he had no idea what he was going to do when he got there. He looked down and immediately wished he hadn’t. The ground was a spinning blur of colours, all smashed together in a rapidly approaching morass. The ground was coming up fast, too fast, and Felix knew, though he had no experience in such matters, that there was no way they could pull out of the dive in time. Where was Gotrek? What was going on?

He got his answer a moment later. The gyrocopter shook as the griffon suddenly tumbled past him in a flurry of feathers and blood. Felix nearly lost his balance as the beast writhed in the air, its talons snatching at the struts and side of the gyrocopter with predatory determination. It caught sight of him and one bird-talon swiped out, reaching for him. He hauled himself out of its path, swinging out over the void as its claws sank into the belly of the gyrocopter. Dangling out, cloak whipping in the wind of their descent, Felix snatched Karaghul from its sheath, knowing it would do him no good, but not wanting to die a messy death on its claws.

The griffon hissed, wings flapping and its muscles bunched. Then it stiffened and screamed. An orange crest rose over the crown of its head as Gotrek climbed its back. The Slayer roared out an oath and brought his axe back over his head and then down, chopping into the massive tendons of one of its wings. It spun, the bad wing nearly buffeting Felix from his slippery perch. Gotrek was smashed back against the plummeting gyrocopter. Felix was jolted loose, his fingers slipping from the wood.

He was falling, and this time Gotrek wasn’t going to be able to save him.

There was no fanfare for the second throng. No rolling drums or groaning horns or cheers to send this force on their way. Instead, silent faces watched and murmured oaths. From the crumbling parapet of the outer wall, Queen Kemma and Axeson watched as Garagrim led his throng to war from one of the blockhouses that lined the mountain face above the main doors.

‘It’s quite small,’ Axeson said.

‘So is a dagger,’ Kemma said. She turned away and looked out over the plains before the hold. She shaded her eyes and peered towards the mountains. ‘The gyrocopters have reported that Ungrim has nearly reached the north-eastern edge of the Peak Pass. The enemy as well,’ she added, frowning. ‘It will take Garagrim several days, even travelling as lightly as he is. If he is not in time…’ She looked at Axeson. ‘What have your stones said?’

‘Nothing of note,’ Axeson said, shrugging.

Kemma’s frown deepened. ‘That is not good enough, priest. I have sent my husband and my son into the cauldron. The least you could do is stir it.’

Axeson made a face. ‘Not an entirely apt metaphor, perhaps.’

‘We are not discussing poetry,’ she said. ‘The future of Karak Kadrin perches on the sharp end.’

‘All we can do is be patient, my lady,’ Axeson said, not meeting her eyes. ‘All we can do is wait.’

‘And we dwarfs are good at waiting,’ Kemma said, with a sigh. ‘Except Slayers, obviously.’ She rubbed her brow. ‘Will Gurnisson be in time, do you think?’

‘Gurnisson will be there,’ Axeson said confidently. ‘He can do nothing else.’

‘It is a dangerous game you are playing, you know,’ Kemma said. She looked at the mountains, as if trying to pierce distance and obstacle to see her husband. ‘Dicing with fate can have nasty consequences.’

‘He said something similar,’ Axeson said. There was no need to elaborate on who ‘he’ was.

‘He would know,’ Kemma said. ‘He is a slave to fate, that one. We all are, to some degree, but him most of all.’ She glanced at Axeson. ‘It is the axe, isn’t it?’

‘I… think so, yes,’ Axeson said. He trembled slightly, recalling the grim immensity which had seemed to squat within that blade. The stones in the temple had resonated quietly with the blade, so quietly in fact that only Axeson had heard it. Grimnir, like all of the gods of the dawi, was simultaneously an ancestor and a god. Age had lent him great wisdom and great power for all that he had been lost in the north. Something of him yet remained, in Karak Kadrin and in every temple dedicated to him, and it was perhaps that shard that resonated with the blade.

The axe was wrapped tight in chains of destiny, and its wielder with it. The priest could see them, as clear as a vein of ore shining in the dark. Dooms clustered about Gurnisson like crows, and he brushed them aside as easily. But there was one waiting for him that he would not be able to avoid. That was what Axeson had seen, in dreams and thrown stones. And he was determined to see that destiny come to fruition. If only so that he could at last discover his own.

He had been a foundling, like all priests of Grimnir must be, with neither clan nor family to comfort him. Most children were given up to the temple by clans of low status or shameful reputation, while others, like he himself, were orphans. His parents were a mystery, his origins ignored. But he knew. Dwarfs were born delvers and secrets were no harder to dig through than rock. Axeson was not his name, but it was who he was.

‘The axe brought him here, in our time of need,’ Kemma said, shaking him from his reverie. Then she shook her head. ‘No, that’s not right, is it?’

‘No,’ Axeson said. ‘Gurnisson didn’t come for us. We are incidental.’ He placed bitter emphasis on the last word. He gestured to the mountains. ‘Two destinies will meet in the Peak Pass, my queen. We can only pray that Gurnisson’s is stronger than that of our enemy.’

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

‘We’ll reach where old Ranulfsson’s throng met their doom in a few days at this rate,’ Dorin said. The Slayer sat on a dead Chaos marauder and lit his pipe. Blood covered his face and bare chest, and his sword was planted blade first in the ground. ‘If this is the best that we can expect from them, I doubt any of us will find our dooms there.’ Ungrim’s throng had made good time, despite stopping to slaughter any groups of Chaos marauders they happened to run across.

‘Except those of us who already have,’ Biter said, crossing Byarnisson’s limp arms over the ruins of his staved-in chest. He sighed and stood, leaving the dead Slayer staring up sightlessly at the carrion birds already beginning to circle. They’d lost four of their number so far. Not so many, all things considered.

The Chaos marauders might have been retreating, but you wouldn’t know it to judge by the number of ambushes the throng had dealt with. If anything, they seemed in good cheer for the battered remnants of a defeated army. They sang as they hurled themselves onto dwarf axes, chanting the Blood God’s name in all of its bestial iterations. Biter grunted. As long as they died, did it matter whether they did so happily or not?

Koertig sat nearby, gnawing on a thumbnail, his eyes on nothing in particular. Biter joined his Remembrancer. ‘Wake up, human,’ he said, snapping his fingers. Koertig shuddered and looked at him. The Nordlander was tough of body, but like many men, his spirit was flimsy when compared to that of a dwarf.

‘Are we on the march again?’ he asked, his voice an exhausted rasp.

‘Not yet,’ Biter said. ‘What were you looking at?’

‘I thought I saw... nothing, I wasn’t looking at anything,’ Koertig said, leaning back and rubbing his eyes. Biter frowned and looked around. Despite what he’d told Koertig, the throng was preparing to move again. Their numbers were not much diminished, but there would still be fewer cooking fires than there had been the night before.

The sky was growing dark, but Ungrim was champing at the bit. He’d gotten a taste of blood and wouldn’t be swayed now. Biter couldn’t blame him. He rubbed at his patch, trying to sooth the itch in his eye-socket. He looked up. There were skulls in the hills. They’d been seeing more and more of them the further they got from Karak Kadrin. Piles of skulls, human, dwarf and otherwise, tucked into crevices and cracks or dangling from trees, like road signs or markers for the mad. Hundreds, maybe thousands, more than he’d thought possible. The ones above him had been nailed to an outcropping of rock, in a strange pattern that made his good eye water if he looked at it too closely.

Biter looked away from the skulls, blinking. Koertig jerked to his feet suddenly. ‘What was that?’ he barked, swinging his axe.

‘Shut up, human,’ another Slayer growled, collecting a tally of ears from the dead marauders. ‘It was probably just carrion birds.’

‘It wasn’t birds,’ Koertig said. Biter looked at him. ‘It sounded like drums, but underground or in the mountains,’ he added.

Biter listened. Then he sank to his haunches and placed one palm on the ground. He shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Your Remembrancer is going mad, Biter,’ Dorin said.

‘I heard something as well,’ another Slayer said and he pointed a finger at the skulls. ‘It’s coming from them.’

‘I know he’s mad,’ Dorin said, and spat.

‘No more than you or I,’ Biter said. ‘Something’s in the air.’ He looked up, past the skulls. He blinked, trying to focus. He shook his head in frustration. And then Biter heard it, just at the limits of his hearing, and he wondered why he hadn’t caught it before. Regardless, he recognized it.

It was the sound of marching.

‘Bugrit,’ Biter spat. ‘Dorin, Koertig, with me. Dorin, grab some of those skulls. The rest of you, stay here and stay alert.’

‘What is it?’ another Slayer, chains running from his earlobes to his nostrils, growled.

‘Maybe nothing,’ Biter said. Dorin and Koertig followed him as he led them across the impromptu battlefield towards Ungrim’s banners. The clans were already readying themselves for the march again, wounds bound and dead wrapped in the protective shrouds that would hopefully keep the birds off of them until the army could recover them en route back to Karak Kadrin. Dwarfs called out to Biter, but he ignored them, bulling his way through the press towards where King Ironfist was meeting with his surviving thanes.

A hammerer made to step into his path and Biter’s head snapped out, connecting with the front of the warrior’s helm. The dwarf staggered and Biter shoved him aside unceremoniously, ignoring the pain that radiated through his own head. Ungrim turned and nodded brusquely. ‘Slayer,’ he said.

‘Something is coming,’ Biter said.

‘What?’

‘Something is coming,’ Biter repeated. ‘There’s something coming this way and we need to know what it is.’

‘Our scouts have reported nothing,’ a thane said, leaning against the iron pole of the Ironfist clan banner that he held. The honour of carrying Ungrim’s standard was a great one, and the younger thanes engaged in a variety of trials, including an impromptu shouting contest, to win the right to carry it.

‘Then they’re wrong, because we heard it,’ Biter said, gesturing to Koertig and Dorin.

‘I heard nothing,’ Dorin said. Biter waved him to silence.

Ungrim grunted and combed his beard with his fingers. ‘Master Redbeard,’ he snapped, suddenly. A heavyset dwarf, his beard not the red his name implied, but whiter than snow, pushed forwards, through the gathered thanes.

‘Step aside, step aside,’ he growled, his voice deep and querulous. His face was squashed between a ridge of eyebrows and a beard like an avalanche. There were discs engraved with runes dangling from the staff he carried, and yet more scored into the staff itself. The Runesmith glared at Ungrim. ‘What?’

Ungrim in his turn, looked at Biter. ‘Tell Hrafn, Slayer,’ he said.

Biter frowned. ‘We’re hearing things.’ He waved Dorin forwards and the latter let the skulls tumble from his arms with unseemly haste. Hrafn grunted and peered at the skulls with distaste. Nonetheless, he sank slowly to his haunches, muttering complaints the entire way. One gnarled and scarred hand plucked up a skull and then just as quickly dropped it. The Runesmith clutched his hand to his chest as if he’d burned it. He hesitated, and then ran his hand across the lot, not quite touching any of them.

He looked at Ungrim. ‘The skulls tremble like stones beneath the tread of an army,’ he hissed.

‘How is that possible?’ a thane said in a hushed voice.

‘Anything is possible with Chaos,’ Ungrim said, his eyes searching out the hundreds of skulls scattered around the valley. ‘The road of skulls,’ he muttered. ‘Just like Axeson said.’ He shook himself. ‘The enemy is coming. We will make our stand at the Peak Pass. Thanes, muster your clansmen! We march for the centre of the pass!’

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Ekaterina could not remember when she had first heard the Blood God’s voice, only that it had torn her notions of society and her place in it from her and replaced them with something far grander. Khorne’s words had flayed her like the kiss of a lash, marking her body and soul. She had known, even as the pain faded into pleasure, that she would serve him forever and a day, and kill and laugh in his name until the stars were at last snuffed by his mighty hand.

When she had first met Garmr, she had thought that he was the same. That he too heard Khorne in his soul. But he didn’t. Garmr heard only his own voice, reflected back at him.

Grettir’s words had spun webs in her head, no matter how much she tried to ignore them. She turned in her saddle, watching the horde sweeping through the canyon like an ocean of men and animals. They had flooded these mountains, tribes coming from far and wide to partake in the grand slaughter. Many became fuel for the beast, falling to a horde that had grown impatient with Garmr’s waiting game. Others had more literally fallen to the beast. Ulfrgandr stalked the slopes above, its massive form occasionally blocking the light of the sun or the moon.

A rattle of rocks heralded an avalanche caused by the noise of their travel. Men died screaming, buried under the tumbling rocks. The army did not pause.

It should have pleased her.

It should have, but it did not. It did not please her, because she knew that it would not last.

She raised her head, spying him at the head of the march. His head hung low, swaying from side to side like that of a bull. Her fingers tapped at her sword, wondering.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Canto said, urging his horse close to hers.

She glanced at him dismissively. ‘What would you know of it?’

‘What, you mean treachery and betrayal? Quite a bit, actually,’ Canto said. He pressed a hand to his chest. ‘I’m quite the connoisseur. Always have been, actually,’ he said. ‘Did you know that I was there when Severus Tar betrayed Varl the Maw at the Siege of the Hot Mud Wall? True story, it was an accident, if you can believe it. You see, what happened was–’

‘Silence,’ Ekaterina snapped.

Canto looked at her, his features unreadable behind the curve of his helm. ‘You know as well as I do that this is not going to end well,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said. She frowned.

‘He’s using us as sacrificial hogs, woman,’ Canto said, more intently. ‘We’re nothing more than bodies to be ground up. He’ll use us up and discard us when he’s gotten what he wants.’

‘One would think you’d want me to slay him, then,’ she said.

‘What, and leave you in charge? How long would I last then, Ekaterina?’ Canto said acidly.

‘I’d have your skull before his body stopped thrashing,’ she said.

‘And there we are. Impasse,’ Canto said, throwing up his hands. ‘I can’t let you kill him, no matter how much I’d dearly love for you to.’

‘Can’t let?’ Ekaterina said, arching an eyebrow. ‘Can you stop me, then?’

Canto looked at her steadily. ‘Who can say? I’d give it a try, I’ll say that,’ he said softly.

Ekaterina met his gaze, considering. She had always thought of Canto as a jester, a trained ape who capered and quipped for Garmr’s amusement. But there was something… She took in the scars on his armour and the look in his eyes, and wondered whether his distaste for combat was not the sign of a coward, but rather the ennui of a gourmand. The thought of becoming glutted on bloodshed was a horrifying one, and for a moment, just a moment, she felt a stab of pity.

‘What are you proposing?’ she said, finally.

‘Not here,’ Canto said, pulling on his mount’s reins. ‘Follow me.’

Ekaterina hesitated long enough to issue orders to Boris and then followed, letting her mount weave through the order of battle. Men growled and cursed, but her red gaze made them fall silent quickly enough. Canto led her back towards the trundling altars and shrines. The smell of beasts and horses and human slaves washed over her, mingled with the dust thrown up by their passage. She and Canto fell into a trot beside the great altar that Grettir was chained to. The sorcerer looked at them with what Ekaterina would have sworn was amusement.

‘Ah, two prodigals, come to speak of seed-pods and dis-agreements, eh?’ the sorcerer said, his voice carrying easily over the thunder of the march. ‘Whatever would your master say?’

‘Silence, cur,’ Ekaterina snapped.

‘Yes, silence, cur; or rather, talk,’ Canto said.

Grettir cocked his head. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I wondered if it would be you, Canto. Your skeins are like a spider’s web, going in all directions. So much possibility, it’s almost intoxicating.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Canto said.

‘And you,’ Grettir said, looking at her. ‘Is a daughter of the Blood God willing to betray her chosen lord?’

‘He betrays the Blood God,’ she said stiffly.

‘Does he?’ Grettir said. ‘Are you certain that you do not wish to believe it is so, in order to make your treachery less stinging?’

Ekaterina hesitated, cursing herself. She did not hesitate. To hesitate was to fail to fail was to die and to die was to lose Khorne’s favour. She had fought far too long and too hard to do so now. As she opened her mouth to reply, she caught sight of something crouching atop the altar. Eyes like red-hot coals met hers from within a face that was at once feminine and daemonic. She felt her heart stutter in her chest. The great spear stretched towards her, as if to tap her shoulder, and she wondered whether the blade would turn and separate her head from her shoulders.

If so, it was as it would be. Take my skull if I have stepped from the Path, she thought grimly, meeting the apparition’s gaze. I have ever served Khorne, and I will serve him always, even unto death. The apparition nodded, as if satisfied. Leathery wings snapped silently, and the shape hurtled upwards, vanishing in the light of the sun.

Ekaterina met Grettir’s gaze and said, ‘I am certain.’

Grettir turned and gazed upwards. Ekaterina wondered whether he could see her as well, and then discarded the notion. Of course he couldn’t. Only those blessed by Khorne could see his Handmaiden. Grettir looked back at her and chuckled. ‘Fine, fine, if you’re certain.’

The sorcerer leaned back. ‘He knows, by the way, if that makes a difference.’

‘No,’ Ekaterina said, even as Canto said, ‘Yes.’

Grettir chuckled again and hunched forwards, his chains rattling. ‘Garmr has planned this for centuries, before either of you were born. The road is for Khorne. It is his road to war. Eternal war, battle unending, and Garmr has spent blood and souls to see it through to completion.’

Ekaterina sucked in a breath. Grettir waved his hands. ‘A thousand years ago, these mountains were soaked in the blood of daemons, blood spilled by dwarf hands and dwarf axes. Now Garmr consecrates them to Khorne by spilling the blood of men and–’

‘Dwarfs,’ Canto said. ‘This was never about Karak Kadrin, was it?’

‘What matters a fortress to one who has all of eternity to wage war?’ Grettir said, shrugging. ‘Garmr wants war eternal, to glut himself forever on slaughter. He’s a simple soul, really.’

Ekaterina shook her head, ignoring Grettir’s mockery. It was what they all aspired to, in their own way. An eternity of slaughter beneath the stars was a beautiful thing to contemplate, but only if she survived to enjoy it. Her fingers tightened on her sword-hilt.

‘The one-eyed dwarf,’ Canto said. Ekaterina looked sharply at him. ‘I met him. Why does Garmr want him?’

Grettir spread his palms. ‘Better still say, why does Khorne want him?’

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
near the Peak Pass

Felix hit the trees a few moments after he lost his grip on the gyrocopter. Branches cracked and burst beneath his weight. Karaghul went spinning from his grip and he was blind. Felix’s arms acted of their own volition, grabbing for any support they could find. His breath wheezed out of his lungs as his fingers lost their hold and he was falling again. Branches connected with his rear and legs and then he was spinning, grabbing, halting and falling again. He hit a branch and held on.

They weren’t very high up, for which he was thankful. Burdened as it had been by their weight, the gyrocopter had only been skimming the tree-line. He could see the ground. The branch he clung to gave a crack and he fell again. His fingers throbbed as he grabbed another branch and swung awkwardly, feet dangling. ‘Sigmar, please–’ he groaned.

Sigmar apparently had a sense of humour. Bark came away in his hands and he fell again, cursing all the while. This time, when he hit, it was the ground, and he fell amidst broken branches, all of the air whooping out of his lungs and all of his limbs going numb at once. He lay for a moment, vision whirling nauseatingly. Then something bright fell towards him and he cursed, rolling aside as Karaghul sank into the ground, point first, at the exact spot where his head had been only moments earlier.

Puffing, lying on his belly, Felix contemplated the sword where it quivered. Every limb felt like a lead weight and his chest hurt. He pushed himself up with a wheeze and grabbed Karaghul, jerking it out of the hard-packed soil. Then, he looked up.

A moment later, he was diving aside for a second time as the remains of the gyrocopter crashed through the branches and slammed into the ground. Felix scrambled for cover as the shattered rotor tore loose and pin-wheeled towards him, the hard wood and steel frame embedding itself in the trunk of the tree he had darted behind.

‘We should have stayed in Karak Kadrin,’ he grunted, stepping out from behind the tree.

The griffon crashed down atop the ruined gyrocopter, further flattening it and sending more broken pieces flying towards Felix. Felix swatted aside a chunk of the rotor mechanism and froze as the griffon rolled onto its feet with an ear-splitting screech. The beast looked the worse for wear, its wings shattered and dragging, its body and head bloody. Nonetheless, as it caught sight of him, it tore itself free of the wreckage and limped towards him, hissing.

‘Fine then,’ Felix said. ‘Fine! Come on!’ He was tired and aching and his mind was fogged with exhaustion and stress and he wanted nothing more than to hack the creature down and rest, just for a moment. He extended his sword and trembled, adrenaline pumping. ‘Come on, you cursed beast. Let’s finish this, shall we?’

The griffon squalled and galumphed forwards, claws digging trenches in the ground. Felix jerked aside as its beak snapped at him. Its feathered chest thumped against him with bone-jarring force, nearly taking him from his feet. He used the momentum to fall backwards and swing his sword. It crashed against the creature’s neck, cutting deeply into its flesh. Talons caught him on the shoulder and then he was skidding through the dirt. He slammed against a tree, hard, and black lights burst before his eyes. The griffon staggered, head dipping, blood spurting from the wound in its neck. Why wasn’t it dead? What was it going to take? It gurgled and stumbled towards him, eyes glazing even as its beak snapped blindly.

Something hissed. The griffon jerked and screamed in agony. Its back legs slid out from under it and it fell, only inches from Felix. He looked up and saw Gotrek, bloody, but unbowed, crouching on the broken gyrocopter, the steam-gun in his hands. The Slayer had apparently wrenched the weapon from its housing and he hefted it in two hands. He grinned and fired again, sending a whistling stream of steam-powered steel spheres punching into the writhing griffon.

The creature slumped with one final whimper. Gotrek hopped off the wreckage, tossing the steam-gun aside. He picked up his axe where it lay and strode towards the griffon. ‘Gotrek,’ Felix began.

Gotrek ignored him. He lifted his axe and brought down a bone-shattering two-handed blow on the griffon’s neck, severing its head. Its feline legs kicked once and then flopped down, still. Gotrek picked up the avian head and hurled it away. ‘Well, that was fun, eh, manling?’ he said, looking at Felix.

‘Not in the least,’ Felix gasped as Gotrek grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. ‘It... Why did it attack us? Why wouldn’t it die?’

‘Beasts like this need little reason to attack. We might have entered its territory, or maybe…’ Gotrek extended his axe and used the curve to hook the collar that had been around the beast’s neck. He pulled it up, looking at the skulls that clung to it. Felix’s skin crawled at the sight of them. Something, a weak red light, seemed to issue from the eye-sockets of one of the skulls. Gotrek threw the skulls aside with an oath. They hit a tree and shattered.

‘Daemon-work,’ Gotrek spat.

Felix looked at the griffon in horror. ‘The beast must have been in torment.’

‘Aye, and now it’s ended,’ Gotrek said.

‘Gotrek, you’re bleeding,’ Felix said, gesturing to the wounds that criss-crossed Gotrek’s arms and chest. The Slayer grunted and dipped a finger in one of the larger cuts. He sucked on the finger and spat.

‘So are you, manling,’ he said, pointing at Felix with the wet finger. Felix looked down at himself, at the tears in his shirt and trousers and the bruises and cuts beneath. Suddenly he felt very tired. Nothing would please him more than settling down to sleep for a week. Sleep seemed to be the furthest thing from Gotrek’s mind. ‘And what of it?’ he said. ‘I still live.’

And I’d like to continue living, thank you, Felix thought, but said, ‘Where are we, do you think?’

‘Not where we need to be,’ Gotrek said curtly. He licked a finger and held it up. Then he pointed. ‘That way,’ he growled.

‘How can you–’ Felix began. Then he heard them – horns, in the distance, though whether they belonged to dwarfs or men, he couldn’t say. ‘Oh,’ he finished, lamely.

Gotrek stumped towards the shattered gyrocopter and began to rummage through it. A moment later he tossed a small pack to Felix. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘There‘ll be supplies in there, dwarf bread and dried meat. Always good to have supplies, just in case you crash somewhere inhospitable.’

Felix shuddered at the mention of dwarf bread. It tasted like rock and had a similar texture. The meat was likely more edible. Gotrek stepped away from the gyrocopter with two water-skins slung over his shoulder. ‘If I were Ungrim, I’d be aiming to catch them in the Peak Pass,’ he said. ‘Best place for a battle, and the rangers know the secret ways that’ll circle around the enemy to cut them off.’

‘But they’re not only pursuing an enemy, Gotrek, they’re marching to meet one. One that is ready for them, remember?’ Felix said, hurrying after the Slayer, despite the ache in his legs. ‘What happens if the enemy is already in the pass?’

Gotrek didn’t slow. ‘Then we’ll avenge Ungrim and the rest as best we can, before I meet my doom,’ he said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
above the Peak Pass

‘They’re dead,’ Lunn said hoarsely, stepping out of the darkened outpost and sucking in a great breath of cleansing air.

‘How long?’ his brother, Steki, asked quietly.

‘Weeks,’ Lunn said, hawking and spitting, trying to clean his mouth of the taste of decay. The two Svengeln brothers were almost twins, despite the difference in their heights. The rangers they led were among the best, hardened veterans of high peak skirmishes against orcs and worse. Now they crouched in a rough semi-circle: fifteen stone-faced clansmen, armed with crossbows and short-hafted axes and shields, looking at the crude spikes planted in the ground around the outpost, each one decorated with a halo of weather-ravaged heads bound to the spikes by their beards.

‘Something has been at the bodies,’ Lunn continued, wiping his mouth.

‘Must have hit them not long after Ranulfsson’s throng was wiped out,’ another ranger said. ‘That’d explain why we got no word, why no signal fires were lit.’

‘Have to be thousands of the buggers swarming these hills,’ another said. This was the third outpost they’d found in such condition. Those closer to Karak Kadrin had been abandoned as per the sentries’ standing orders when the enemy drew too close, but only a third of the assigned sentries had returned to Karak Kadrin by the high paths. Of the others, there had been no sign, until now.

It didn’t bode well. ‘Ungrim could be walking into a trap,’ Steki said, looking at his brother. Lunn clapped him on the arm.

‘That’s why we’re here, brother. Let’s see if we can’t spring it before Ungrim gets there, eh?’

The rangers readied themselves to move out. They moved silently and steadily through the hills and gullies that spread outwards from the Peak Pass. They were all old hands at fighting the wild men who poured down out of the north every so often. The mountains were like a valve for the eastern wastes. If they didn’t pour straight down into the lands of men through Troll Country, they rode down into the mountains, looking to use the crags as a ready-made fortress for campaigns into the Empire and Kislev. When they did that, it fell to the rangers of Karak Kadrin to harry them back north. Steki and Lunn had spent many a spring season doing just that, hunting battle-hungry Kul and Dolgans.

But this was different. This wasn’t some petty war-chief or god-bothered shaman leading a few hundred warriors. This was something larger and more unpleasant. Even the mountains seemed different with the advent of the horde. Every shadowed crevice seemed to hold wolf-fanged ghosts and every peak shuddered with the drumbeat of unseen marchers.

Twice the rangers were forced to defend themselves against mutant beasts, driven into the hills by the advancing horde. Big and porcine, with great maws and gouging talons and tusks, the gorebeasts flung themselves at the dwarfs, heedless of the crossbow bolts pricking their malformed skulls.

As they drew closer to the high hills around the Peak Pass, even the very air seemed tainted with the omnipresent stench of blood and rot. More skulls littered the area, placed in culverts and tree branches like macabre decorations. ‘They must be killing each other on a regular basis to get this many of the blasted things,’ Lunn growled.

Steki spat. ‘They’re no better than wild dogs, brother, you know that. If they can’t find real enemies, they fall on one another.’

A slow, warm wind rippled around them, setting the ghastly bouquet of bones clattering amongst the branches of the scrub trees that clung tenaciously to the crags. Every ranger was alert as Lunn signalled for silence. On a large rock was etched the rune indicating that a blind was close by, created by some other group of rangers during some other conflict. It would allow them to survey the pass without revealing themselves.

‘What do we do if they’ve already reached the pass, brother?’ Steki said softly as they crept through the rocks.

‘We warn Ungrim and hope that he’ll listen,’ Lunn said. ‘They’ll attack, sure enough, but they’ll overwhelm us through sheer numbers unless we can – hsst!’ The ranger stopped. The others froze, crossbows aimed and ready.

There was a sound, hot and heavy like a great bellows, squeezing air in and out. The stink hit them next, like a bear’s den in the summer, with something else just below it, something sharper and alien. It wasn’t a natural smell.

Claws scraped on rock. Something growled and the sound of it echoed through the bones of every dwarf, shaking them down to the soles of their boots. And then a shadow was blotting out the sun and a heavy body was landing amidst them. Claws curled out and a ranger went spinning through the air, wrapped in a shroud of blood. It moved so fast that the dwarfs could barely see what it was; scarcely so much as where it was. Crossbows twanged and the thing roared, more in anger than in pain. Lunn’s crossbow was ripped from his hands and destroyed and as he reached for his axe, he brought his shield up. Fangs sank into the metal and pierced the arm beneath, eliciting a bellow of agony from the ranger. The massive head jerked and Lunn’s feet left the stone as he was whipped up and over, shaken like a rat caught by a terrier. The straps on his shield broke and he went flying.

Steki roared a challenge and slammed his shield into the monster’s skull. His axe swept down but became tangled with the hilt of a dagger – one of a dozen jammed into the creature’s back. The creature spun, jerking him from his feet. As he flew upwards, its talons punched through his chest and out his back. Steki died, choking on his own blood. Heedless, the beast used his body as a bludgeon, crushing rangers and battering them to the ground.

Lunn, lying nearby, could only watch as his brother was reduced to a red mess. The force of his fall had broken something inside him, and his legs refused to work. So he lay, shouting curses as the creature finished off the last ranger, its grotesque jaws fastening themselves on the dwarf’s head and removing it in one bite. The creature turned towards them, its eyes meeting Lunn’s.

‘Come on then,’ he groaned, trying to lift his axe. ‘Come on,’ he said, more loudly.

And then it did.

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Garmr shuddered in his saddle as the sensations of the dwarf’s death ran through him. The horde was approaching the point in the twining corridors of the pass where they’d left the slain corpses of the first dwarf throng, from so many days past. He heard Ulfrgandr’s howl a moment later. The beast’s fury was only increased by its brief taste of combat. It wanted more and Garmr gave a sigh. ‘Soon,’ he murmured.

The creature ignored him, its roars increasing in fury. He closed his eyes, watching in his mind’s eye as it vented its fury on the bodies, tearing at them. Then it loped into the crags, following their trail. The beast would fall on the dwarf army from the rear, savaging them even as his army did the same.

Shivering in pleasure, he snapped his fingers at a nearby chieftain of a band of marauder horsemen. ‘Take your men. Follow mighty Ulfrgandr’s trail above. When it strikes, so too will you.’

The chieftain blanched. No one wanted to get too close to the Slaughter-Hound, especially when it was in a killing frenzy. Garmr’s hand shot out, grabbing the man by the throat. With a jerk of his wrist, he snapped the chieftain’s neck. Dropping the body, he looked at one of the others. ‘He was your chief?’ Garmr said.

The man nodded jerkily.

‘You are chief now,’ Garmr said. ‘Take your men. Follow the trail. Strike when it strikes.’

The newly made chief obeyed instantly, jerking wildly at his horse’s reins and galloping off, followed by his companions. Garmr watched them go. The centre of the Peak Pass stood before them, a wide canyon, filled with the dead. It was the doorway to the lands beyond the Wastes, fittingly enough. And it was here that he would fulfil Khorne’s wishes.

‘Here, and no further,’ he murmured. He could feel destiny pressing close about him, enfolding him in its wings. He made a fist and looked forwards. At his command, warriors marched up, carrying stakes and skulls. The pass would be made ready for Khorne’s coming. It would stand forever blighted and stained with the blood of his sacrifices as a monument to the might of the Skull Throne. He would write his name in the very life-stuff of these mountains, farther south than any champion before him, save those who had marched forth in those first terrible, wonderful years when the gods had run riot across this fallen world. The name of the Gorewolf would echo through these rocks forever, reminding the paltry mortals of this world that he had walked and slain among them.

He lifted his axe and gazed at the runes carved into its blade. It had served him well, these thousand years. He had taken it from some chieftain or other, wresting it from his slackening grip on a battlefield of black poppies and wailing insects. It was another of Khorne’s gifts to him. It hungered, even as he himself did. It lusted for blood and Khorne’s mark was on it. It had been forged at the foot of the Blood God’s throne, and ruinous magics had been woven into its creation. It was a thing of death, of perfect doom, and the skulls it took were dedicated to the Skull Throne. Once the Road of Skulls was complete, it would take a bounty undreamed of by the chieftain he had wrested it from.

He looked up. There were clouds in the sky. Great, angry- looking masses of bruise-coloured darkness. The rain would begin soon, as the world wept at the birth of the Road of Skulls. So Grettir had foretold. Garmr sighed. He would miss his cousin, he thought. Not enough to spare him, but he would miss him nonetheless. Like an old pain, suddenly gone. Grettir would be the first to die, when the road had been completed, and his blood would be used to baptise it. It was the least he could do for the man who had once been as close to him as a brother.

The Doom-Seeker was coming. All was right with the world. When he had first seen the one-eyed Slayer in the visions Khorne had gifted him with, he had wondered at how he might find one single dwarf in the wide world. Then, he had been led to Karak Kadrin. It had been centuries earlier, when he had served another in an earlier war, that he had first seen the Slayers of Karak Kadrin and come to know of their purpose. Where else would the dwarf he had seen in his visions have come from, save the City of Slayers?

It had all led to this moment. All of his striving, every skull taken, every rival slain, had all led to this moment, when he would match axes with his one-eyed prey. He had baited the trap with bloody meat and pulled the creature from its den, like a patient hunter. Now all that remained was to close the jaws of the trap.

‘What are your commands, my lord?’ Ekaterina asked, at his elbow. Garmr turned.

‘Ready your marauder horsemen. You will be the point of the spear,’ he said. She smiled, pleased. He had known she would be. Despite her mutinous intentions, she could not resist the call of battle. Like Grettir, he would miss her, when he collected her skull at the last. Perhaps he would carry it with him into the eternity of war to come. She would like that, he thought. ‘Canto, you will see to the dregs. We will strike and you will follow,’ he said, looking at the black-armoured warrior. ‘Guard the hellcannon and its master. I would not lose that engine as you lost the others.’

Canto he would not miss. Despite the amusement he garnered from the warrior, Canto had ever been a living warning to Garmr. Frozen, like a bug in amber, Canto was a testament to the risks every man took when he sought the gods’ favours. He was not a true devotee of Khorne, resisting the gods’ call, no matter how loud. And like all false followers, he was forever trapped between life and death. But not for long, Garmr mused.

‘It will be my honour,’ Canto said smoothly, not even flinching at the mention of his failure. ‘Shall I see to Grettir?’

‘Yes. When the battle is done, bring him forth. I will require him,’ Garmr said, not looking at him. He turned, casting his gaze over his horde. A thousand banners stabbed towards the sky, marking a thousand Chaos marauder chieftains, a thousand slaves of darkness. He raised his axe, and a roar swelled from the throats of the horde, shaking the walls of the Peak Pass.

‘Remember, the one-eyed dwarf is mine,’ he said to Canto and Ekaterina as he basked in the adulation.

All was right with the world. Today would be a good day.

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

‘No sign of them?’ Ungrim said. Thungrimsson shook his head and Ungrim cursed. He tugged on his beard angrily. The rangers had not reported back yet. That in and of itself would not normally be worrying; rangers were independent sorts and not as respectful of the chain of command as many might otherwise wish.

But here, and now, it was worrisome. It meant something had happened. He looked ahead, where the centre of the Peak Pass waited like the jaws of some vast predator, eager to consume his throng as it had Ranulfsson’s not so long ago. Thungrimsson coughed into his fist, catching Ungrim’s attention. ‘If we go in now, we will be marching in blind,’ he said.

‘If we don’t, we could lose any advantage we yet retain,’ Ungrim countered. Behind him and around him, the Grand Throng was arrayed for battle. The clans marched as they fought, and there would be no need to reorganize once they had reached the place of battle. Thunderers and quarrellers marched on the flanks, their front ranks occupied by clansmen carrying the sturdy camp pavises, which would be set down in irregular lines, allowing for the retreat of the front ranks as they fired. The pavises would be lifted as they retreated, protecting them until they reached the rear of the formation, where they would begin to reload.

The centre was held by Ungrim’s own clansmen and those of his closest kin. With shield and axe, they would meet any charge and throw it back. At the back of their formations were the few grudge throwers which had been brought. Less than Ungrim would have liked, but he had thought speed more important than firepower. The catapults could fire over the heads of the throng, which was more than organ guns or flame cannons could do.

Ungrim glanced at Thungrimsson, who was frowning. ‘What is it, old friend?’

‘I wish we had more war-engines. A cannon or six,’ Thungrimsson said, scratching his nose.

‘We will make do without them,’ Ungrim said. ‘The Slayers will meet the enemy first, as is proper.’ He looked at Biter, who nodded and grinned.

‘And we’re all about proper, us,’ he said.

‘Go, gather your companions,’ Ungrim said. ‘We will enter the pass and drive the invader back north, with their tails between their legs.’ He raised his axe, and signal-horns sounded, passing his wordless command to each warrior in the throng. Dust rose as the dwarfs began to march.

Thungrimsson, his hammer over his shoulder, squinted up at the sky. Ungrim followed his gaze. The clouds looked ready to burst. It was the rainy season, and it wasn’t unusual for the lower reaches of the mountains to flood when melting snow and pouring rain caused flash floods that swept down into the lower valleys. More than one dwarf had been lost to a sudden surge of water cascading through the rocky gorges of the Worlds Edge Mountains. The centre of Peak Pass was high enough that it was unlikely such would happen here, however.

Rain wasn’t the only thing that could fall from the sky, however. Ungrim raised his axe again, and another volley of signal-horns sounded as those formations closest to the cliffs and slopes of the pass raised their shields and pavises up over their heads. It wasn’t so much arrows that he feared as rocks. The mountains were a volatile beast, and showed their displeasure with those who dared to march through them in many ways. Ungrim had been trapped in more than one avalanche in his time, and didn’t intend to repeat the experience.

He saw the first of the stakes as they came around a bend in the pass, and fury bloomed in him. Around him, clansmen muttered and growled, as well they should have. Ranulfsson’s throng, many days dead, had not been left to rot. It would have been preferable if they had been. Instead, each and every dwarf of that ill-fated throng had been impaled upon a spike of wood which had then been planted in the hard soil. A forest of the dead spread out before Ungrim, and an ocean of dwarf blood had long since dried on the ground. He spat an oath and gripped his axe so tightly that the haft creaked in protest.

He saw faces he recognized, here and there. Young thanes who had petitioned him for leave to march forth, looking to add lustre to their clan’s record of deeds, now hung stiff and silent, food for birds. Beards had been hacked from jowls and tied in crude melanges that hung like matted curtains, moving in a warm breeze. Skulls clattered softly, moved by the same breeze where they hung from high plinths and posts that had been hammered into the steep slopes.

The sheer dishonour of it struck him dumb for a moment. Everything stank of death, and dwarfs made cautious gestures, ancient superstitions reigniting as the throng moved into the wasteland. Several clans began to break ranks, the sounds of their dirges rising even as they sought to bring down the posts that held the bodies of their relatives. Ungrim growled in frustration and signalled again. Short, terse blasts from the signal-horns refused those clans leave to recover their dead. Voices were raised in protest and he stifled those closest to him with a savage glare. ‘Now is not the time,’ he barked, knowing his voice would carry. ‘We will tend to the dead once our living enemies have been seen to!’ He gestured with his axe. ‘We hold here!’ he roared out.

‘I don’t like having to look at that disgrace,’ Thungrimsson said, jerking his chin towards the stakes and their ghastly burdens.

‘It will hinder them more than us,’ Ungrim said harshly. ‘Let them ride through deadly ground of their own making. We will hold here, and drown them in shot and steel beneath the gazes of our dishonoured dead.’

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
above the Peak Pass

‘Hurry, manling,’ Gotrek said impatiently. He clambered up the steep slope, axe in hand, Felix just behind him. ‘I can hear the horns of Karak Kadrin.’

Felix could as well, but there was no reason to waste breath replying when Gotrek wasn’t listening. He staggered, exhausted and aching, but forced himself to go on. They had been moving for what felt like hours without stopping, and Felix knew he was fast approaching the outer limits of his vitality. In his time with the Slayer, he had become used to pushing his body farther and further than he had at first thought possible, but he was still only human.

He didn’t ask Gotrek to stop for a rest, however. The Slayer wasn’t in the mood to wait for Felix and had left him behind more than once since they’d left the crash site. They were on the ridges above the Peak Pass, where outcrops of rock warred with patches of scrub trees for space on the dangerous ledges. He stumbled and fell, his foot catching on something. He went face-down, scraping his palms and chin.

He twisted, looking into the mangled features of a dead dwarf. ‘Gotrek,’ he called out. Felix turned. There were more dwarfs. By the look of them, their deaths had been quick, but not painless.

Felix scrambled to his feet and stepped over another body, drawing Karaghul. There was an animal smell in the air, clinging to the corpses and the rocks.

He saw Gotrek crouched near a body, his axe across his knees. The Slayer glanced at him. ‘Lunn Svengeln,’ Gotrek said. Felix bit back a curse. He remembered the name of one of the rangers who had accompanied them on their sortie before the walls of Karak Kadrin, though how Gotrek could tell it was him given the condition of the body, Felix couldn’t say.

‘What… what did that to him?’ Felix said.

‘I don’t know,’ Gotrek grunted, staring at the body. ‘No beast I know of makes marks like these.’

Felix looked around. Something moved through the rocks, catching his eye. ‘Gotrek,’ he said.

‘I know, manling,’ Gotrek said, rising from his crouch, his eye still on Lunn’s corpse. ‘I heard them earlier.’ He turned and extended his axe. ‘Come out, jackals. My axe thirsts for your blood.’

The Chaos marauders burst from concealment in a rush. A hairy warrior swung a double-bitted axe at Felix, forcing him to suck in his stomach and leap back. Gotrek cut the legs out from under two of the others, dropping them screaming to the ground.

Felix booted his opponent in the belly, bending him double. Karaghul opened his neck to the bone and then Felix was lunging past him, driving his sword into another marauder’s stomach. Ripping the weapon free, he turned, catching a crude sword on his crosspiece and jerking it from its wielder’s hands. He brought the sharp end of his elbow around, catching the weaponless marauder in the face. Bone crunched and Felix swept his sword out, spilling the man’s guts. Panting, he looked for Gotrek and saw him driving a marauder skull-first into a rock even as he swung his axe out in a vicious arc, driving two others back.

Hooves pounded and Felix turned as a number of marauder horsemen burst up onto the crag, whipping their horses savagely. One swung a club at Felix as he galloped past, catching him a glancing blow on the head. Felix fell, his vision spinning. Through bleary eyes he watched as Gotrek shoved his axe at a horse, forcing it to rear up.

And then he saw nothing more.

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

‘Come on, lads,’ Biter shouted. ‘Do you want to live forever?’

‘Quiet,’ Dorin snapped. ‘Don’t jinx us!’ Several other Slayers shouted agreement.

Biter grinned and started forwards, the other Slayers fanning out around him.

‘How am I supposed to remember your deeds if I die here, is all I’m saying,’ Koertig said. The Nordlander was just behind Biter with his shield held up and his axe held low. His eyes darted around nervously. ‘I can see well enough from back with the catapults.’

‘And what fun would that be?’ Biter said. ‘No, you’ll thank me for this, human, you’ll see.’

‘Not likely,’ Koertig grunted.

The Slayers ranged out far ahead of the dwarf lines, heading out to meet the foe, rather than wait for the enemy to attack. It was their right, and they had been champing at the bit since they’d come in sight of the Peak Pass. And since he was in charge, it was his right to lead them in.

Gurnisson was probably gnawing his own liver in frustration right about now. Biter smiled, thinking of the other Slayer. He admired Gurnisson, he truly did, but the Jinx-Slayer was a chore to be around, especially if you had death on your mind. There was too much destiny weighing down that one’s shadow.

Biter had his own destiny, thank you very much, and he didn’t need someone else’s bigger, louder destiny overshadowing his. Not that he particularly wanted to die, but why test fate? Who wanted to wind up like that poor bastard Snorri Nosebiter? Gurnisson’s luck had rubbed off on him, right enough. Or like that boastful drunkard Drong, who’d taken to the sea out of desperation in the days following his encounter with Gurnisson?

No, better that Gurnisson stayed where he was, safely out of the way. Biter was sympathetic, but not enough to want Gurnisson around for something like this.

The Slayers moved through the forest of stakes, heedless of the dangling bodies. The Slayers were on the hunt, and not even dead kin could shake them from it. A low mist, humid and clammy, rose from the rocks and coiled about their legs as they moved. It crawled across Biter’s skin, trailing damp lines through his tattoos. Above, the clouds continued to swell and grumble.

And then something growled.

Biter looked around. The Chaos hound growled again, as it slunk from behind the post. Rags of flesh hung from its furry body and slobber dripped from its jaws. It leapt. Biter caught it in the head with his axe, caving in its skull even as he was knocked flat by its weight. Howls erupted from deeper within the forest of stakes and the monstrous forms of mutated trolls, accompanied by more Chaos hounds and marauder horsemen, exploded into view.

The woman on the lead horse was clad in half-armour and gory locks. Her sabre snicker-snacked out, taking the top of a Slayer’s head off as she galloped past, before she yanked on her reins and turned her mount. She shrilled out a hawk-like scream and rode down another dwarf. Biter grinned and shoved the dead Chaos hound off. ‘I like her, she’s a fierce one.’

‘I think she heard you,’ Koertig said, driving his axe down between the shoulder-blades of a hound as its claws scratched across his shield. The woman bore down on them, a vulpine grin on her face. Biter threw himself aside as her horse reared up over them.

‘No! She’s mine!’ Dorin screamed, his axe taking the animal’s legs out from under it. It fell with a hideous scream and the woman rolled from the saddle with inhuman smoothness. She looked first at the dying animal and then at the young Slayer. A cruel smile spread across her face. Her too-wide mouth split, revealing a throat full of fangs.

Dorin faced her across the dead horse, his face strained and wild. Biter grabbed Koertig’s arm. ‘Leave him, human. Plenty of other foes for us,’ he said. ‘He’s called dibs.’

The woman glanced at him lazily. Her eyes narrowed as she took in Biter’s axe and his maimed face. ‘You,’ she said. Around them, Slayers, riders and beasts fought and died in a savage prologue to the battle to come. Horns blew and drums thumped, twin waves of sound crashing together in the centre of the pass.

‘Me,’ Biter said.

She turned from Dorin and gestured to Biter with her sabre. ‘Garmr wants you, one-eye,’ she said.

‘Tell him he can’t have me. Who’s Garmr?’ Biter said.

‘A dead man, just like you,’ the woman said, flinging herself towards him. Her sabre cut for his head and Biter caught the blade on his axe and shoved it aside. He punched her in the belly and she stumbled back. The ground was shaking beneath his feet and he glanced aside.

The Chaos horde was on the march, or at the charge, rather. Horsemen, Chaos knights and chariots thundered forwards in a wave of death, smashing aside the stakes like a deluge of foul water. The woman began to laugh and came for him again, her eyes wide and mad and red.

Dorin cursed and hurled himself at her, tackling her to the ground with a wild cry even as the first rank of horsemen smashed into the struggling knots of dwarfs and marauders that occupied the centre of the pass. Biter laughed as hooves cracked against his shoulders and head and he lashed out blindly, wondering if being crushed by horseflesh was considered a worthy death.

The ground shivered beneath Ungrim’s feet as the enemy made their charge. Horsemen and worse things galloped into the forest of the dead, brushing aside stakes and bodies in their mad haste to reach the throng of Karak Kadrin. The Slayer King took a breath and swept back the edges of his dragon-skin cloak.

‘This is it,’ he murmured. ‘This is the day.’

‘Let’s hope not,’ Thungrimsson said, his eyes hard.

Ungrim glanced at his hearth-warden and grinned. ‘You will look after the boy, won’t you? And my queen,’ he said.

‘More like she’ll look after me,’ Thungrimsson said. ‘Besides, it’s quite likely that the both of us will fall here today, my king.’

‘There are quite a few of them, yes,’ Ungrim said mildly. He ran his thumb across the edge of his axe and admired the bead of blood that rolled down.

‘He’ll make a fine king,’ Thungrimsson said.

‘Yes,’ Ungrim said. And then there was no more time for talk. Cries of alarm rippled up and down the line. Ungrim looked and saw what might have merely been a stirring of the mist that clung to the ground. It rose up, disgorging shapes that billowed and steamed like the grotesque faces he’d fancied seeing in the forge fires as a boy. Only these weren’t the childish imaginings of a beardling but nightmares made flesh coalescing before him.

The vanguard of the enemy was, to a man, clad in heavy armour, daubed in blood. They were giants, even among the Chaos marauders, who were larger than the men of the south. These were the hardened veterans of the Chaos Wastes, men who’d fought in a thousand battles across fields that burned with witch-fire and worse. No two sets of armour were the same, and each was a work of darkly intricate artifice. The axes and swords they wielded were gruesome tools, forged only to shed blood in Khorne’s name. The Chaos warriors charged with a blood-curdling roar, packed with all the venom and hatred that such men could muster. Dwarfs muttered into their beards and more than one clansman shifted backwards unconsciously.

‘Hold your positions!’ Ungrim roared out. He turned his glare on the warriors to either side of him. ‘Hold fast, clansmen of Karak Kadrin. Hold hard and lift your axes. Let them see only death here, not fear or cowardice. There is only death for the enemies of Karak Kadrin, not victory, never victory!’

As the dwarfs raised their weapons with a ragged cheer, Ungrim began to sing, letting the deep, dark words of the death-dirge of Karak Kadrin slip from between his lips. The sound met and fought with the noise emanating from the horde. Like the crashing together of rival seas, the sounds met and mingled, shaking the sides of the valley, sending sheets of rock sliding down to patter and bounce off hastily upraised shields.

The first Chaos warrior reached them a moment later, bellowing curses or prayers or both, a flail made from chains and bronzed skulls whirling in his grip. Ungrim caught the flail on his axe and yanked it from its owner’s grasp. One scarred fist shot out, denting the Chaos warrior’s fearsome helm. The hammers of Thungrimsson’s men lashed out, killing the warrior before he could recover from Ungrim’s blow. ‘Death,’ Ungrim roared out, ‘Death to the dealers of death! Death to the forsworn! Death to the daemon-lovers! Sons of Grimnir… give them death!’

The thunderers began to fire, and smoke filled the air. Shields were lifted as the ranks changed positions, and crossbows twanged as the quarrellers covered the thunderers’ reorganization. The dwarfs of Karak Kadrin had long ago learned the art of making themselves into the perfect engine of death. Every clansman was a cog in that machinery, and bullets and bolts swept the Chaos line, shattering the front ranks and breaking the charge.

Or, they would have, had the enemy been normal men. Instead, the savages charged on, through shot and smoke, trampling their dead and dying. Banners rattled and flashed as they were passed from hand to hand and the line of clansmen stepped forwards, setting their shoulders and shields. Horsemen crashed into that stolid line a moment later. Hooves lashed out, glancing from shields and helmets, crushing dwarfs; horses were falling and screaming as axes cut men and beasts down. It was wet, crimson work and the dwarfs excelled at it, but the Chaos warriors and the marauders who followed them would not retreat. They pressed ever forwards, and dwarfs fell, dragged down by numbers and mindless ferocity.

Great stones were lobbed into the sky from the dwarf grudge throwers to crash down, flattening men by the dozens. A massive grudge-stone hit the ground on its side and it bounced and rolled through the ranks of the Chaos marauders, crushing and smashing all in its path. Still they came on, shouting the praises of the Blood God.

Ungrim swept his axe out, bisecting a bare-chested warrior. Even as the man’s legs fell, his front half crawled forwards, choking and snarling. The Slayer King stamped on his skull and drove the haft of his axe into another’s face, denting the bestial helm and crushing the skull beneath. He roared out an oath and caught another Chaos marauder in the back as the latter darted past him.

Beside him, Thungrimsson fought in grim silence, his hammer punching out and up and down like a piston. Around them, the hammerers lived up to their name, creating a bulwark of carnage around their king and commander.

Ungrim cleft a skull in twain and took a leg off at the thigh, growling out a laugh. He longed to move forwards, to push his way into the enemy lines, to leave his guardians behind. He wanted to find his opposite number, to find the warlord or high chieftain who had dared to lay siege to Karak Kadrin and see him bleeding and gasping in the dirt.

So intent was he on the thought, he almost missed the horns of alarm sounding from the rear ranks of the throng. Snarling, Ungrim tore his mind away from the red ocean of battle madness and turned. ‘What is it?’ he said.

Thungrimsson turned, face pale. ‘They’ve boxed us in,’ he grated. ‘We’re surrounded.’

Ungrim cursed. ‘Take the reserves and fall back,’ he said. Thungrimsson hesitated and Ungrim grabbed him by his beard, causing the hammerer’s eyes to widen in shock. ‘Do it, hearth-warden! We must win this day. My life means nothing, next to that. I will hold them here.’

Thungrimsson nodded jerkily and turned, shouting commands. Before he got ten paces, something massive and foul crashed down upon him, driving him to the ground. Ungrim blinked in shock. It was large, far larger than any beast he’d encountered, save a dragon or two. Was this the doom the priest had foreseen? Was this the thing that had been fated to devour Gurnisson? It was certainly impressive enough, if a bit small. Whatever it was, it had bounded through the ranks of the throng like an eager hound, killing warriors and maiming others.

Roughly anthropoid in shape, it had a thick tail that cracked like a whip, knocking dwarfs from their feet with bone-breaking force. Vast, frog-like jaws split open, revealing a thicket of crooked fangs, and eyes like the bloated orbs of the blind fish which swam in the deep mountain rivers glared out at the dwarfs around it with more than animal malevolence. Two great simian fists pounded the ground, and then spread, revealing monstrous talons which gouged the rock. It was the colour of blood drying on slate and stank of a century of butchery. The hilts of daggers and swords protruded from its broad, scarred back, clattering with every roll of its shoulders. Scars in the shape of runes and sigils branded its flesh, leaking smoke and pus. Great chains had been threaded through its flesh at several points. One foot on Thungrimsson, it stretched and reared, pounding its chest with its fists and releasing a squealing roar, like some titanic swine.

Thungrimsson gasped and the sound broke Ungrim out of his shock. With a guttural shout he launched himself at the creature. A fist slammed down, narrowly missing him. His axe licked out and the blade shuddered in his grip as it rebounded off a patch of stone-like scales. He spun, lashing out at it again and again. It lumbered after him, deceptively quick despite its build. Claws tore the crown-helm from his head, and set his brains to wobbling in his skull.

Behind the beast, dwarfs were helping the mauled Thungrimsson to his feet. The hearth-warden snatched up his fallen hammer and made to help his king, but Ungrim bellowed, ‘No! See to the rear!’ He had no time to see whether or not Thungrimsson obeyed him. The monster came for him again, herding him away from his army, jaws snapping.

Ungrim stumbled back and it caught his axe in its teeth, breaking a number of the latter even as it ripped the ancient, rune-engraved weapon from his grip. It loomed over him, its foul breath washing over him, and he drove a hard fist into one bulging eye, eliciting a shriek of rage. It caught him in its tusks and flung him into the air.

He landed hard, all of the breath escaping him all at once. Wheezing, he tried to push himself to his feet. The creature stalked towards him, thick ropes of drool dangling from its fangs as it opened its maw in promise.

‘No,’ Garmr said, and the Slaughter-Hound stopped.

He towered in his saddle, his axe at his side as he rode towards the greatest sacrifice ever brought before the dark gods short of Asavar Kul’s sacrifice of the city of Praag. He smashed aside a stake with a swing of his axe and brained a dwarf as his Chaos knights rode through their lines. The stunted ones were fighting well, but not well enough. His warriors had momentum and numbers on their side, and that would be enough to carry the day.

Even the mightiest mountains could be worn down by the blood-dimmed tide. Garmr looked down at the fallen dwarf. Someone important, he knew. He recognized authority in another, possessing a surplus of it himself. He had commanded Ulfrgandr to seek out the leaders of the army and bring them to heel. A dwarf noble would make a fine sacrifice, once the general blood-letting was done.

‘Hold him, but do not kill him,’ he said. Ulfrgandr snarled and the heat of it seeped into Garmr’s armour. Part of him, a small, withered bundle of ancient and long ignored humanity, prickled in primitive fear. He looked up at the Slaughter-Hound and saw in its dull eyes the same look he’d seen in those of his reflection more than once, back when he’d possessed a reflection.

The joy of destruction, of mindless violence, was addictive. The beast had long ago surrendered whatever cunning it might have once possessed to that joy, sacrificing wit for eternal war. Garmr felt a stab of contempt and the monster growled hatefully, feeling his disdain through the link they shared. Garmr’s eyes were drawn to the up-thrust hilts of the mystical daggers that sprouted from its back, the tips of their blades wedged into the iron bone of its spine. He knew this because he had planted them there himself, stabbing each one in the order that Grettir had assured him would bring the beast to heel.

He could still remember the crimson tide that had threatened to engulf him during that battle, the madness that begged for release, pushing him further and farther and faster, burning him from inside out. The harder he fought, the harder it was not to fight, the madder he grew the stronger the madness was. By the end, he had been little more than a beast himself, foaming and baying at the seven moons that hung over the cerulean sea.

Garmr the Gorewolf had come by his war-name honestly. The Slaughter-Hound and the Gorewolf had each waded through seas of the dead to meet in thunderous, glorious war and at the time, in that place, Garmr had not wanted it to end, their claws and fangs and axe and dagger meeting in a rhythm as old as the world, and he had sung the praises of Khorne until in his frenzy, he had forgotten the art of language.

‘That is why I bound you,’ he said, reaching out. Ulfrgandr jerked back, showing its fangs. Garmr made a fist and dropped his hand. Why was he seeking to explain himself? The beast had no mind to understand him, and even if it had, it would not have forgiven him. He had taken its freedom. He had broken it and bound it, preventing it from crushing, killing and destroying as its instinct demanded. In its place, he would not have rested until he had succeeded in freeing himself.

Then, he was not in its place. He was not it, and thanks to the spell which bound them together, he would never suffer to become as it was. Garmr was a prince of murder, not a slave to fury.

The monster snarled again, glaring at him across from the dwarf. Garmr looked at the latter. ‘We sit on the threshold of destiny, stunted one. How does it feel?’ he said.

The dwarf’s face flushed and Garmr could smell his rage. The dwarf lunged to his feet and leapt, far more quickly than Garmr had expected, but not quick enough. One of Ulfrgandr’s paws snapped out and flattened the dwarf, pinning him to the bloody ground. Garmr looked down at the flushed, berserk face and then away.

The battle was not over, but that did not matter. He had accomplished what he wished. Let Ekaterina and Canto fight until they could fight no more, let them harry the dwarfs, let the dwarfs strike back, none of it mattered now. The one-eyed dwarf was here, somewhere nearby, and Garmr could smell him; he could smell the stench of fate, and he looked out over the half-shattered forest of stakes, searching.

He moved into the field of carnage, stepping across bodies, hunting his quarry. Behind him, Ulfrgandr growled low, longing to rejoin the slaughter. Only Garmr’s iron will kept the beast in place. Overhead, the clouds finally burst, spilling a red rain.

It was a sign. There were signs and portents everywhere, all coalescing into meaning and method, showing him the way to the end. His heart thudded in his chest, and anticipation made his turgid blood writhe in a frenzy. He was so close now.

A trill caught his attention, a low whisper of joyful noise, like the cry of a hunting falcon. He turned and saw her, standing there, leaning upon her great spear, her eyes for him alone. One delicate talon gestured and he saw movement among the corpses. Of course! Of course he had been in the vanguard! Where else would such a creature have been?

‘My queen,’ Garmr said, moving towards her, his steps loud. Khorne’s Consort laughed silently and stepped back, gesturing for him to approach. As he drew closer, she moved further away, her shape coming apart in the rain, like smoke. He felt a moment’s disappointment that she would not be there to see him collect this last, most important skull.

It did not matter. She had shown him what he needed.

The rain started slowly at first, and then grew stronger, hammering the hard-packed soil into mud. Biter shoved the dead marauder aside and staggered to his feet, the rain washing blood off his broad frame, but leaving it stained red nonetheless. A gash marked his head, shaving a bald patch through his hair and sticking much of the rest to his scalp with blood. Biter shook his head, clearing it.

‘Not quite,’ he chuckled. ‘Not… quite.’ He turned. ‘Up, Remembrancer, no lying down on this job,’ he said. He reached out and grabbed Koertig’s shoulder. The Nordlander rolled limply. Empty eyes and a slack mouth were the first things Biter saw and he sighed. He looked up, letting the rain wash across his face. ‘Outlived another one, curse me,’ he said.

‘Not for long,’ a deep voice said. Rock, bone and meat crunched underfoot as the armoured giant approached, great axe dangling loosely in his grip. ‘Turn, Slayer. Show me your face.’

Biter laughed and turned. ‘Pretty enough for you?’

‘The loveliest sight I have beheld,’ Garmr said. He stopped. They stood in a bubble of calm. Biter stepped away from the bodies, his axe over his shoulder. He could see something monstrous looming nearby, a struggling form held fast to the ground.

‘Good. It’ll be your last.’

Garmr trembled. Biter realized that he was laughing. The sound was strange and wheezing, as if it were squeezing between the joints of his armour rather than from any human mouth. Biter felt a bit insulted. Then Garmr was moving and his axe was licking out, shearing through the soft curtain of rain. Biter threw himself to the side and bounded to his feet, his own axe snapping out and carving a crease across Garmr’s thigh. ‘Are we done talking then? Should have said,’ Biter rasped.

Garmr turned, seemingly unconcerned by the brackish fluid leaking from the gash in his leg. ‘I thought it was obvious enough,’ he said. His axe chopped down, narrowly missing Biter, who stumbled aside. They traded blows for a moment, man and dwarf, their axes ringing off one another. A hard blow shoved Biter back and the Slayer crouched, breathing heavily. The wound on his head had reopened, and blood covered one side of his face and ran beneath his patch.

‘I have waited for you for a thousand years,’ Garmr said.

‘I’m never on time,’ Biter said, coughing.

‘I have dreamed of you for a century, Slayer,’ Garmr continued, his voice growing angry.

‘I’m flattered,’ Biter coughed. ‘Many a lass has dreamed of me.’

‘I have carved a scar in the heart of the world, just for you.’ Garmr snarled and pointed at the Slayer with his axe. ‘I have butchered millions and I have spilled an ocean of blood, just to ride the waves to this point, to you.’

‘Walking would have been simpler,’ Biter said and chuckled.

‘This is not a joke!’ Garmr’s axe came down. Biter caught the blade with his and forced it aside. He drove his free hand into Garmr’s midsection, his knuckles ringing on the baroque armour. Garmr’s hand dropped like a weight on Biter’s head and the Slayer was hurled backwards, against an outcropping of rock.

Biter’s vision blurred and spun as he crawled to his feet. ‘Woo, that was a bit of a bok,’ he said blearily. ‘My father used to hit me just the same, when I was a beardling. Of course, he only had the one hand and the two fingers. What’s your excuse?’ he continued, grinning through bloody teeth at Garmr.

‘Stop laughing, dwarf, this is a solemn occasion, a moment of holy truth,’ Garmr growled.

‘Really? I thought it was just a runk, you great wazzok,’ Biter spat. He smiled widely. ‘Come on, hit me.’ He barely brought his axe up in time and the weapon was wrenched from his hands by the force of Garmr’s blow. Pain radiated up his wrists and forearms and with a grim laugh, Biter realized that the last blow had not only rendered him weaponless but the force of it had almost shattered his wrists as well. He rocked back, chuckling. ‘Well, I did say hit me,’ he gasped. ‘This is right funny, this is.’

The axe looped around and caught Biter below the sternum, lifting him up off his knees and into the air. He folded over the blade and his weight tore it from Garmr’s grip. Axe and Slayer fell to the ground. Biter coughed and his ruined hands flailed helplessly at the haft of the axe. ‘Funny,’ he wheezed. ‘I knew I was fated to die. Just didn’t think it’d be like this. Figured a troll would sit on me. Heh.’ Glassy-eyed, he looked up at Garmr and cackled thinly.

‘Stop laughing,’ Garmr said again as he stooped to pluck the axe free.

‘Come closer, manling, I want to tell you a joke,’ Biter said and twisted like a snake, his gromril teeth snapping tight on Garmr’s hand. Ancient metal buckled beneath the dwarf’s spasmodic jaw-clench and Garmr bellowed and tried to jerk his hand free to no avail. Garmr grabbed his axe and he tore it free and brought it down, separating the Slayer’s head from his shoulders.

Nonetheless, Biter’s teeth remained clamped. Garmr resisted the urge to batter the head against the nearby rocks and the ground. Instead he dropped his axe and pried at the hideously grinning head. He finally broke the dwarf’s jaw and ripped that terrible mouth from his crushed hand. The broken jaw sagged and the tongue waggled and Garmr roared in fury and triumph, raising the head to the weeping sky.

The Road of Skulls would soon be complete.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
above the Peak Pass

Felix awoke with a start as rain struck his face. He touched his cheek and his fingers came away red. He gasped and sat up. They were still on the ridge among the dwarf – and now, Chaos – dead. Only a few moments must have passed.

‘It’s not blood, manling. Well, not yours at any rate,’ Gotrek said, standing over him. ‘Have a good rest?’

The Slayer’s axe hand was red to the elbow and dripping and there was a grim look on his face. ‘We were too late,’ he said, reaching down to haul Felix to his feet. ‘The battle has begun.’

‘You could still join it,’ Felix said, clutching his head. The bodies of a dozen marauders, perhaps slightly fewer, lay scattered about. Gotrek had been busy.

‘Begun and done,’ Gotrek spat. ‘They were attacked from behind!’ The Slayer gestured sharply with his axe, splattering Felix with blood. He sounded outraged.

‘Then Ungrim–’

‘I don’t know,’ Gotrek said. He shook his head. He looked around at the dead dwarfs and the dead Chaos marauders and grimaced. ‘Too late,’ he muttered.

Felix sat down on a rock. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘If you’re smart, you’ll sit very, very still, manling,’ a rough voice snarled.

Felix froze, red rain running down his face in rivulets. Gotrek did not, but instead started forwards, both hands on the haft of his axe, his one eye gleaming. ‘Come out and face my axe,’ he said.

‘I’ll thank you to stay at a distance, Slayer,’ the dwarf said, stepping out of the rocks, crossbow in his hands. More dwarfs, clad in battered travel-leathers and carrying crossbows, joined him. Rangers, Felix realised with a start. The one who’d spoken eyed them both and then took in the scene. His eyes lingered on the bodies of the dead dwarfs and he cursed softly in Khazalid and looked at Gotrek. ‘Come with us, Gurnisson. The War-Mourner wants to see you.’ He cocked an eye upwards and spat. ‘And I want to get out of this cursed rain.’

‘Should have known the whelp would pursue us,’ Gotrek muttered sourly. ‘There are dwarfs dying down there.’ He gestured in the direction of the Peak Pass. ‘And there’ll be dwarfs dying up here, if you try and stop me.’ He pointed his axe at the ranger. Red rain collected in the runes engraved on the blade and dripped off, forming strange patterns on the ground.

‘What’s left of the Grand Throng has fallen back from the pass, Gurnisson,’ the ranger said, more politely than he had a moment earlier. Gotrek’s axe had that effect on people, Felix reflected wryly. ‘Right now, the War-Mourner is the only thing standing between Karak Kadrin and the Chaos filth that smashed Ungrim’s throng,’ the ranger continued, his voice growing harsh. ‘And Garagrim ordered us to find you, if you could be found, and bring you to him, in chains if we had to.’

Felix groaned as he heaved himself to his feet. He fell silent as he heard strange horns wailing on the wind, piercing the veil of rain like sharp claws. The rangers tensed and Gotrek turned. He cast a glance back at the pass and then looked at the ranger. ‘If the throng has retreated, they’ll be coming into these hills soon enough,’ he said. He looked back at the ranger. ‘If you would have us go, now is the time. Take me to the whelp.’

The journey was neither a quick one, nor a comfortable one, from Felix’s perspective. Climbing down into the canyons of the Peak Pass was somehow even more arduous than climbing up had been.

They saw more dwarfs as the sun began to set and the rain began to drum down hard enough to sting. Pickets had been set, for all the good it would do them. Tough-looking clan warriors, hunched behind heavy pavises or rocks piled into small barricades, hefted crossbows or axes in greeting as the rangers trotted past, Gotrek and Felix with them.

‘Why hasn’t the horde come charging towards us like ants?’ Felix muttered. ‘What are they waiting for?’

‘Who knows why Chaos-lovers do anything, manling?’ Gotrek said. He glanced up at Felix. ‘Good question, though,’ he added grudgingly.

The dwarfs had not created a camp so much as a small fortress. Heavy pavise shields created a long wall and dwarfs laboured before that wall by lantern-light, erecting wooden stakes to prevent a charge by the enemy’s horsemen. Other dwarfs piled stones in square formations, creating miniature redoubts within the greater redoubt made by the free-standing shields. Heavy canvas and metal pavilion tents had been erected as well, to protect those dwarfs not working from the incessant, hissing rain. It was under one such that Garagrim met them.

Felix winced as he caught sight of Snorri Thungrimsson lying senseless on a pallet. The old hammerer was in rough shape. Blood pooled beneath him, even as dwarf physicians fussed about him. His skin had the waxy look of one halfway past dead, though Felix had seen dwarfs recover from worse wounds. Then, those dwarfs had all been Slayers, who were renowned for their inhuman vitality.

‘Will he live?’ he asked.

Garagrim glanced at him. ‘It is up to him,’ he said gruffly. He looked at Gotrek. ‘I expected you to use the drains, as you did before,’ he said, almost accusingly.

‘That’s why I used the heights,’ Gotrek said, grinning mirthlessly.

Garagrim nodded. He looked at the leader of the rangers. ‘What news?’

The ranger shook his head. ‘If there are any survivors who didn’t make it out, they’re as good as dead, Prince Garagrim.’

‘Prince still, is it?’ Gotrek murmured, his axe resting in the crook of his arm. ‘Not king, then?’

‘Until we know whether my father has met his long-sought doom or not, yes,’ Garagrim said. He met Gotrek’s eye. ‘You have something to say about it?’

Gotrek grunted and looked away. Felix felt that he might have been safer staying in the hills. Garagrim was no friend of theirs, that much had been made clear to him. How would he react to Gotrek’s prodding now that he was de-facto ruler of Karak Kadrin?

On his pallet, Thungrimsson coughed. Garagrim looked at him, and then at Gotrek. ‘I have a hundred clansmen, plus the remnants of my father’s – of the Grand Throng. There are five times that number of Northmen in the pass, and more every hour, according to my scouts. They’re growing, gathering strength like pus in a wound.’

Gotrek looked out at the encampment. ‘You can’t hold them,’ he said bluntly.

Felix tensed, expecting Garagrim to explode. Instead, the War-Mourner merely grunted. ‘No. If we had a day, or a week, yes, but there’s no telling when they’ll come howling down towards us.’

‘You could retreat,’ Felix said half-heartedly. Both Slayers looked at him dismissively and then away. Felix shrugged and shook his head. ‘Never mind,’ he muttered.

‘The queen will have sent messengers to Zhufbar and Karaz-a-Karak,’ Garagrim said, stroking his beard. ‘Though I doubt reinforcement will be forthcoming.’

Gotrek laughed nastily. ‘They will shore up their defences as Karak Kadrin occupies the enemy.’

‘It has always been thus,’ Garagrim said, somewhat proudly. ‘We are the gate to the world, Gurnisson. That is no small responsibility.’ He looked at Gotrek steadily. ‘By rights, I should send you back to the hold under guard.’

‘You can’t afford to spare the number of warriors it will take to chain me, beardling,’ Gotrek said. Garagrim flushed, but held his temper with what Felix considered remarkable will.

‘I don’t have enough warriors to do anything,’ he said bitterly. ‘If we defend this place, we will be overwhelmed within hours. If we retreat to a better position, they will catch us.’

‘So attack,’ Gotrek said.

‘Our numbers are too few,’ another thane protested, speaking up for the first time from among a small group of his fellows. Felix looked at them. They were young, as dwarfs judged things, he thought; save for a few, who wore bloody bandages and had a haunted look in their eyes. The survivors of Ungrim’s circle of commanders, he assumed.

‘What do you expect me to say?’ Gotrek glared fiercely at the young thane. ‘I intend to march into the pass and find this beast that supposedly did for Ungrim. Do what you wish, decide for yourselves, I care nothing for your worries or your army,’ he growled.

‘You never have,’ Garagrim said.

Gotrek spun. His eye was wide and blazing. His mouth opened, but he closed it with a snap. Felix felt a rush of anger on the Slayer’s behalf. ‘If he hadn’t cared, your father might not have lived this long!’ Felix said before he could stop himself. Every dwarf under the tent looked at him and he shrank back instinctively.

‘What was that, human?’ Garagrim said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It was nothing. The manling speaks out of turn,’ Gotrek said, stepping between them. ‘You are right that I care nothing for any dwarf, War-Mourner. I am an outlaw for good reason. Leave it at that.’

‘No, tell me, Gurnisson,’ Garagrim said.

Gotrek grunted. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Tell him,’ Felix said, ignoring Gotrek’s gesture to be silent. ‘Gotrek, better to part with peace between you than anger,’ he continued.

Gotrek shrugged. ‘What does it matter?’ he said again. ‘We part just the same.’

Garagrim’s hands were clenched into fists. ‘Tell me what he meant, Gurnisson. As War-Mourner, as prince, I demand it!’

Gotrek shivered slightly. Then he sighed and looked at Garagrim. ‘Your mother asked me to swear an oath, boy. She asked me to swear to her that I would not allow your father – or any of his line – to meet their doom, if I could prevent it. And for reasons which are my own, I did so. I saved your father from his doom, and he has borne me a grudge ever since. And because you are prince, it is your grudge as well, but my oath stands all the same.’

Garagrim stared at him. Every dwarf stared at him. Felix stared at him. Gotrek met every look with a stony glare and turned away. Looking out at the rain, he said, ‘An attack is the only hope Karak Kadrin has. But to do so successfully will require time you do not have.’

‘What do you suggest?’ Garagrim said.

‘These worshippers of the Blood God thrive on challenge,’ Gotrek said lifting his axe. ‘They’re like wolves… Always looking for weakness, the strong preying on the weak and the weak looking to pull down the strong. When they defeat an opponent, they immediately look for another.’

‘You think they’ll fall on one another, as they did at Karak Kadrin,’ Garagrim said.

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said. ‘They’ll rip each other apart, with a bit of help. If they’ve no leader to hold the reins, they’ll fall to fighting, sure enough…’

Felix’s heart sank. ‘Oh no,’ he muttered. Gotrek glanced at him, his eye twinkling.

‘Aye, manling,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll kill their blasted warlord and they’ll turn on each other to pick a new one. And while they’re fighting, the beardling can unleash the vengeance of Karak Kadrin on them.’

‘It might work,’ Garagrim said, after a moment of stunned silence at the sheer audacity of the Slayer’s plan had passed. His face hardened. ‘But why should that honour fall to you?’

Gotrek looked at him, eyebrow arched. ‘Who better, beardling? Axeson’s prophecy, if it was true, has come and gone. I am free to seek my doom.’

‘I am War-Mourner, Gurnisson,’ Garagrim said, as if relishing every word. ‘That means it is my duty to determine who meets what doom when. And I say thee nay.’ He clashed his axes together. ‘My father has fallen, and it comes to me to do what he could not. I will meet my doom here and free my clan from our shame! And I will have no doom-thief steal absolution from me!’ he bellowed, gesturing at Gotrek.

So intent on was he on elaborating on this theme, that Garagrim did not notice Gotrek stalking towards him until the older Slayer was right up on him. Felix flinched as Gotrek’s forehead snapped forwards and connected with Garagrim’s with a sound like stones crashing together. Every dwarf in the tent sucked in a breath as Garagrim staggered back, his eyes going cross. ‘I–’ he began. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he toppled backwards to lie still.

Gotrek wiped a bead of blood from his forehead and looked around. ‘Is there anyone else who wants to argue with me?’ he growled. ‘No? Good. When he wakes, tell him the grudge stands. Attack at dawn,’ he continued, stabbing a finger at the closest thane, who pointed at himself nervously. ‘The deed will be done by then, one way or another.’

‘Gotrek, was that entirely wise?’ Felix said as he followed Gotrek out of the tent. He glanced back and saw the thanes gathering around Garagrim’s unconscious body and muttering among themselves. ‘They might arrest us for assaulting the king!’

‘That beardling is no king,’ Gotrek spat, not slowing his pace. ‘Not yet. But Kemma is queen, and she’d flay me down to my gruntaz if I ignored my oath now.’ His voice softened. ‘I couldn’t save Ungrim. I’ll save his son though, even if they must record my name in the Book of Grudges for it.’

Felix said nothing. It was a courageous thing Gotrek was doing. Any dwarf could die. But not many could live with the shame of having prevented another from fulfilling a sacred vow. Maybe the other Slayers had been right, he reflected with grim humour. Gotrek truly was a doom-thief, albeit not in the way they had meant.

‘You do not have to follow me, manling,’ Gotrek said as they headed for the line of pavise shields. ‘Garagrim will not harm you, if you choose to stay.’

Felix shivered a little. Red rain ran down the collar of his shirt, sending chills down his back. ‘Maybe not, but if I stay, how will I accurately record your death?’

‘Are you certain this is my doom?’ Gotrek said, not looking at him.

‘You’re walking into the heart of the largest Chaos horde to spill out of the north since the time of Magnus the Pious,’ Felix said. ‘I’m honestly considering just having that be the last line. The outcome is, as the playwright Detlef Sierck was fond of saying, foregone.’

‘I met him once,’ Gotrek said idly, ‘him and his witchy woman.’ He tapped his bulbous, oft-broken nose. ‘She was a blood-sucker, though they seemed happy enough.’

Felix looked at Gotrek. ‘He was one of the greatest playwrights the Empire ever produced.’

‘Couldn’t hold his liquor,’ Gotrek grunted. ‘He always acted like he was on a blasted stage.’ He shook his head, scattering rain from his crest. ‘He loved that woman though, even though she was as cold as fish dragged from a mountain river.’ A muscle in his jaw jumped. ‘Aye, love is a fine thing…’

‘You’d know all about that, of course,’ Felix said mildly.

‘What was that, manling?’

‘As long as I’ve known you, Gotrek, I’ve never seen you swear an oath without good reason, regardless of who was asking.’ Felix glanced down at the Slayer. ‘So why did you swear such an oath to the queen?’

‘She wasn’t queen then,’ Gotrek muttered.

‘What was that? I couldn’t quite hear you over the rain,’ Felix said, cupping a hand around his ear. Gotrek glared at him.

‘None of that goes in my saga,’ he snapped, shaking a finger at Felix. ‘I’ll not have a queen embarrassed by your loose words.’

Felix allowed himself a small smile. ‘There’s always a woman,’ he said. He looked at Gotrek. ‘That’s another thing that Detlef Sierck used to say.’

Gotrek grunted. Then he cocked his eye at Felix. ‘Last chance, manling.’

Felix looked around. They had arrived at the shields. Dwarfs watched them silently. Somewhere behind them, someone barked an order and two of the shields were moved aside. Felix looked back at the warm glow of the dwarf lanterns, and then at the hungry darkness of the Peak Pass. He swallowed and let his palm drop to Karaghul’s hilt.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Gotrek gave a flat bark of laughter and slapped him on the back. ‘That’s the spirit, manling. Your stories will live longer than anything from old Detlef’s pen, that much I can promise you.’

‘I’d settle for doing that myself,’ Felix said gloomily, as the waiting darkness swallowed them up.

The centre of the Peak Pass had been filled with war-shrines and altars, arrayed in eight concentric circles, radiating outwards from a central point. The spot had been picked years before the horde had even mustered, chosen by Grettir’s signs and portents. It had been the first thing Garmr had forced his cousin to do. For a hundred years or more, this spot, this wet patch of bloody stone, had been his goal. Every step Garmr had taken on Khorne’s road had led him here, to this seemingly innocuous section of mountain pass.

Or not so innocuous, as Grettir assured him; in the facets of his cousin’s mask, Garmr had seen the history of this place. Armies had lived and died on this spot and a hundred thousand souls were chained to these stones by death and by slaughter. It was on this spot that the dwarfs had first thrown back the forces of Chaos, so many millennia ago. Here, the one who had gone north, who had carved his skull road into the heart of the Wastes, had battled the champions of those first raw, red years – the first men to be touched by Chaos, the first to pledge skulls to Khorne and flesh to Slaanesh. Those ancient, mighty warriors had died in heaps and droves, slaughtered to a man by the dwarf. Here was where it had truly begun; it was through here that Khorne’s Road of Skulls would run. And it was here that the dawi of Karak Kadrin inevitably chose to make their stand when the northern hordes swept south, though they no longer knew why.

It was nothing to him. Just stone, a little higher than some and lower than others. But Khorne’s Eye was here, and that made it the most important place in the world at this moment. The Dark Gods watched and waited and Garmr was determined that they would have the entertainment that they craved.

He growled in satisfaction as the last shrine was shoved into place and the beasts and slaves were freed from their chains and traces and slaughtered, their bodies added to the heaps of flyblown meat that lay cooling in the red rain, their spilled blood gleaming in the flickering torchlight. The smell of blood was heavy on the air as Garmr climbed the eight steps of the war-shrine and looked out at what remained of his horde. It had been purged of weakness, sharpened to a killing point by all that he had done. And here, that point would be sanctified in the name of Khorne.

Visions of what was to come danced in his head. For so long, he had striven to reach this moment. Everything after was a reward. Every moment of murder, every second of the slaughter-to-come was Khorne’s gift to his most faithful of servants. The world would drown in fire and blood over and over again as Khorne’s legions marched on the Road of Skulls and into the lands of men, dwarfs and elves even as they had millennia past. ‘Bring the prisoners forwards!’ he thundered.

Ulfrgandr snarled softly, from behind the shrine. The beast lay crouched before it, its eyes sweeping hungrily over the gathered horde. For a moment, Garmr wondered if perhaps he would free it, at the end, and let it roam these mountains ever more, a living testament to his might and Khorne’s will, a harbinger of what would soon stalk down the Road of Skulls. He looked as the prisoners were dragged forward.

There were a dozen prisoners, more than he’d thought, and somewhere among them, the bloody and battered king of Karak Kadrin himself, Ungrim Ironfist. Grettir had assured him of such, though all dwarfs looked the same to Garmr. Ekaterina stalked down the line, driving a boot into each dwarf’s back in turn, knocking them to their knees. Garmr gazed at them in satisfaction and then roared, ‘Bring me Grettir!’

Canto dragged the stumbling sorcerer through the ranks. Howls and jeers accompanied him, and stones struck him as he followed the black-armoured warrior. Canto shoved him down onto the steps of the war-shrine and stepped back. Grettir cast a glare at him and then turned it on Garmr, who crouched above him and held up a head by its matted crimson hair.

‘I found him, cousin,’ he said. He flipped the head of the one-eyed Slayer into Grettir’s lap.

Grettir gestured to Garmr’s hand. ‘It looks like he found you as well.’

Garmr shrugged and rumbled, ‘It is of no matter.’

‘There are rites that I must perform,’ Grettir said. ‘Placing this last skull is a delicate business. It is not just a matter of setting up your altars and temples.’

‘Then do so, cousin,’ Garmr growled. He lifted his axe. Overhead, the clouds were the colour of clotted blood and a fat crimson moon rolled idiotically out from behind them, beaming its empty grin down at them. ‘This ground has been sanctified twice over, and Khorne’s Eye is upon us! Our time is at hand! Khorne’s will be made manifest! Let these mountains echo with the screams of the dead and the soon-to-die! Here is the doom of all mankind! Here is where the world drowns in blood!’ His army roared assent, the noise of it causing the night-scavengers to flee in terror. He strode up the steps of the altar and roared, ‘Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!’ and his army shouted with him.

‘Why do we not attack the dwarf hold?’ Ekaterina barked suddenly. She squatted behind Ungrim, and had jerked his head back. ‘Let us tear their walls down, and let their petty king watch!’ Warriors all around her broke into bays of approval, and champions as well, including Vasa and those who had replaced Bolgatz and the others who had died. ‘Khorne wills it,’ she shouted. ‘He wills that we march, Garmr. To sit and stay is not the way of Khorne,’ she snarled, and her supporters snarled with her. The canyon seemed to echo for a moment with the thunder of leather pinions beating.

Before he could reply to Ekaterina’s impertinence, the squat shape of the Chaos dwarf Khorreg shoved his way through the press, his remaining assistants behind him. The Chaos dwarf’s eyes lingered almost longingly over the captives, but then they turned to Garmr.

‘Our bargain is fulfilled, Gorewolf,’ Khorreg rasped, crossing his arms. ‘We will take our engine and we will go.’

Garmr cocked his head ‘I did not give you leave to go,’ he said, staring down at the squat figure.

‘And I did not ask it,’ Khorreg said. ‘We have fulfilled the terms of our bargain, Gorewolf. Our engines have brought you victory. We return now to Zharr Naggrund.’

‘I said that I did not give you leave to go,’ Garmr snarled, incensed by this second challenge, and from an unexpected quarter. ‘I will require your engines–’

‘We have done all that we agreed and we have lost valuable resources in the doing,’ Khorreg grated, meeting Garmr’s fury with haughty disdain. ‘The Daemonsmiths of Zharr Naggrund always honour their bargains, chieftain. No more, no less.’ He swiped the air in an imperious gesture. ‘We take our remaining cannon and go.’

Men began to mutter and murmur. The hellcannon, even by itself, had done the work of a hundred men, battering down walls and enemy phalanxes alike. But even worse was the challenge. If Garmr could not keep the dawi zharr from leaving, perhaps there was a reason? Garmr hesitated again, and cursed himself for doing so even as he did it. ‘You will not leave,’ he said, striding down the stairs of the altar, axe in hand.

Khorreg cocked his head, his piggy eyes glowing balefully. ‘Will I not, Northman?’

Garmr paused, considering. He was confident that he could kill the Chaos dwarf, but what purpose would that serve? No, better to save his chastisement for later, when he could bring the full might of a strong horde upon the black walls of Zharr Naggrund. He looked around, realizing that every eye was upon him now. Vasa the Lion and Ekaterina watched him, their faces eager and expectant, though he couldn’t see Canto anywhere. His men watched him, Chaos champions and warriors and marauders alike, and every expression was the same, like that of animals sniffing for weakness.

Ulfrgandr growled warningly and Garmr chuckled. In another time, he would not have noticed the trap closing about him. He would have simply attacked the Chaos dwarf for defying him and likely died in the attempt, one way or another. ‘Is that Khorne’s will, then?’ he said, spreading his arms. He looked at Khorreg. ‘Go then, Khorreg Hell-Worker, Daemonsmith of Zharr Naggrund, your services have been rendered and our bargain is done.’

Khorreg’s eyes narrowed, and the murmur grew. The Chaos dwarf had not been expecting that. Nonetheless, he nodded and turned, his armour hissing and wheezing as he strode away, his assistant following. Garmr looked around.

‘You should not have let them go,’ Ekaterina said, and her supporters growled with her.

‘We do not need them any longer,’ Garmr said loudly. ‘Khorne’s fist will crack the holds of our enemies! We walk the Road of Skulls, warriors, and our victory is certain!’

‘What hold, Garmr? We see no hold, no enemy! Only bloody stones! If you will not lead, you are not fit to command this horde,’ Ekaterina said.

‘Who else will lead it, if not me?’ Garmr said, turning his back on her. ‘I am the strongest, and so I lead. When you think to change that, challenge me.’

Ekaterina raised her sabre and said, ‘Garmr!’

Garmr stopped.

‘You do not deserve Khorne’s blessings,’ she said. The horde fell silent. ‘You do not deserve to lead. You are a false servant of the Skull Throne,’ she continued, stepping closer.

‘And you are more worthy?’ Garmr said. He still hadn’t turned around.

Incensed, she stepped closer. She said, ‘Than you? Yes. Khorne led me to you to take from you your undeserved title, Gorewolf. Valkia herself watches over me, and I will shed oceans of blood and take mountains of skulls for the Blood God, not for myself. Not for some road, but for the glory of the god!’ She raised her sabre and extended it towards him. ‘Face me, Gorewolf!’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Felix followed Gotrek through the forest of stakes as they picked their way towards the small city of shrines and wheeled altars that had been set up in the centre of the pass. ‘There must be hundreds of those things,’ he muttered. It had taken several hours to reach this place, and he wondered what could maintain the attentions of the horde for so long. What had prevented them from simply plunging through the pass and sweeping aside Garagrim’s throng as they had Ungrim’s? He put the question to Gotrek as they crept through the abattoir leavings of the earlier battle.

‘What of it?’ Gotrek said, far more loudly than Felix would have liked. The Slayer’s shoulders bunched as he took a two-handed swing, shattering a jutting stake and causing it to topple with a crash. ‘Let them come!’

Snarls echoed through the night as monstrous shapes scrambled towards them, alerted by the Slayer’s bellow. Gotrek met their snarls with one of his own. Felix drew his blade, but before the scrambling shapes reached them, a heavily armoured form, black and imposing, stepped between them, sword in hand.

‘Hold,’ the Chaos warrior rumbled in rusty, archaically accented Reikspiel.

‘You,’ Gotrek growled. ‘Going to run away again?’ he continued nastily. As they drew closer, Felix recognized the armoured warrior as the one they’d fought upon first coming to Karak Kadrin, in the Engineers’ Entrance and later, during the final battle of the siege. He even still had the marks of Gotrek’s axe on his cuirass.

‘Not quite, no,’ the warrior said, a hint of dark amusement in his words. He leaned closer. ‘You are… expected, dwarf.’

‘Of course I am,’ Gotrek snapped.

‘Who’s expecting us?’ Felix said, keeping a wary eye on the crouching shapes. Men moved among the beasts, their features obscured by the rain.

‘Not who you’re thinking of,’ the warrior said. He snapped an order at one of his followers, and a curling ram’s horn was lifted to alert the horde. ‘Best hurry up, dwarf. The eye of the storm is over us, and destiny is gnashing its yellowed fangs.’

‘Very poetic,’ Felix muttered, trying to find courage in sarcasm. Both Slayer and Chaos warrior ignored him.

The latter led them deeper into the belly of the beast. Several times, the warrior leading them was forced to strike out at over-eager Chaos marauders or worse things. He seemingly had no problem killing his own troops, which turned Felix’s stomach. There were no bonds of loyalty here, or even shared purpose. The enemy was held together by the slenderest of threads – a shared love of slaughter. This, he knew with a sickening sense of realization, was what the gods of Chaos wanted for mankind, regardless of whether they were gods of murder or pleasure. Each man sunk into personal depravity and madness, caring nothing for his fellow man or even something greater than the next kill, the next massacre. The Chaos marauders weren’t even beasts, but puppets, acting out the sickening fantasies of an impersonal and alien intelligence.

Felix shuddered and pulled his cloak tight, wishing he had taken Gotrek’s advice and stayed in the dubious safety of Garagrim’s camp. Even if this scheme worked, even if this army ripped itself apart as Gotrek predicted, there was no reason to doubt he’d be ripped apart along with it. He cast a quick look at the sky. Less than an hour until dawn, he wagered, and plenty of time to die a horrible death.

The light of the torches grew eye-achingly bright as they were led into an open circle within the rings of shrines and altars and stakes. He grabbed Gotrek’s shoulder and said, ‘Gotrek!’ as he saw the prisoners. Ungrim was among them, Felix was glad to see.

‘I see them, manling,’ Gotrek said, but his eye wasn’t on Ungrim and the others, but on the scene playing out before them. Felix saw a woman – no, not a woman, something that might have once been a woman – challenge the armoured giant he took to be the warlord. She cried out a challenge and her voice was like the scratch of razors across his ears.

‘Just in time,’ the black-armoured Chaos warrior murmured.

The giant turned and he rumbled something in reply, his voice echoing oddly from within his helm. The sound of his voice threatened to turn Felix’s legs to jelly. This creature – he wasn’t a man – was caught between one world and the next, Felix thought, as was the creature in robes and battered armour chained to the altar near him. Thunder rumbled in the ugly clouds overhead and the rain began to pound down once more as Gotrek shoved past their escort and stumped forwards, heedless of the army that surrounded them.

‘Aye, why would you do that when you could face me instead?’ he bellowed, apparently understanding their dark tongue well enough to interrupt. ‘Gorewolf, are you? Well, Gorewolf, turn and face Gotrek!’

All eyes found Gotrek in the silence that followed. Every Chaos follower, from marauder to warrior to champion, stared at the Slayer as he stalked forwards. ‘Do you hear me, you butcher’s leavings?’ Gotrek continued. ‘Face me!’ He gestured with his axe, and Felix thought the warlord watched the blade as if it were a snake about to strike.

He knew, with an instinct born of experience, that they had walked into the middle of something. They hadn’t been waiting for Gotrek, no matter how much it might look that way. He looked for their escort, but the Chaos warrior was gone.

‘Face me!’ Gotrek bellowed again, loud enough to bring a groan of sympathy from the slopes above. ‘Give me a doom the gods will boast of! Come and take my skull, if you dare!’

As if Gotrek’s words had snapped him out of whatever reverie he had been lost in, the Gorewolf gestured with his axe. ‘I will face you,’ he rasped in broken Reikspiel as he stepped down from the altar. ‘I will take your skull. And the road will be complete, no matter who stands in my way.’

‘No!’ the woman snapped, lifting her sabre. ‘One challenge at a time, Gorewolf,’ she went on, gesturing with the curved blade. Like the Gorewolf, she spoke in Reikspiel, and Felix wondered if it were for their benefit. ‘I have waited too long for this. Khorne demands your head, and it will be my blade that takes it, aye, and the dwarf’s as well, come to that.’ She gave a hideous, too-wide grin. ‘The road will be complete, but it will be your skull that completes it, Garmr.’

Warlord and champion glared at one another for a hard moment. There was lightning in the air and Felix felt as if he were back in the Underway, with the spark hissing towards the explosives.

‘Is that the way it is to be then? Fine,’ the Gorewolf snarled, brandishing his axe. ‘Have your challenge, Ekaterina and for you, dwarf, a doom!’ As the Gorewolf’s words echoed, a massive shape, heretofore hidden behind the altar, rose and snarled eagerly as it scrambled to its feet and flung itself through the crowd, killing tribesmen as it thrashed towards the Slayer.

‘Gotrek–’ Felix began as the monster charged towards them.

‘He’s mine, manling!’ Gotrek said, shoving him aside. ‘I’ll take care of this overgrown salamander.’ He raised his axe and let loose a tooth-rattling roar as he charged to meet the monster.

Gotrek was moving quicker than Felix had ever seen him move before, tumbling, running, twisting to avoid the creature’s berserk, ground-shaking initial attack. As he watched, Gotrek leapt over a stabbing tail and spun, swinging a two-handed blow that drew a spray of ichor from the creature’s back. It screamed and launched a backhanded swipe at Gotrek, catching the Slayer a glancing blow on the skull and sending him sprawling.

Blood pouring down his scalp, Gotrek rolled aside as the creature pounced like a cat, landing with all four feet where the Slayer had been lying only moments earlier. Gotrek was on his feet in an instant, his axe chopping into the creature’s shoulder like a woodman’s into a tree. It surged up, jerking Gotrek off his feet, and rolled, as if seeking to crush him beneath its weight. Gotrek released his axe and instead grabbed for one of the dagger hilts that rose from the thing’s back.

As his hands seized the hilt, the creature arched its back and bellowed in agony. Gotrek jerked on the hilt, trying to drag whatever it was attached to free. The creature reared up and reached blindly for Gotrek, trying to pluck him from its back. Gotrek hung on, cursing.

Felix hesitated, caught by indecision. If he aided Gotrek, the Slayer would never forgive him. But if he didn’t, and the Slayer died here, Felix knew he wouldn’t last much longer. Felix cursed as well as he charged towards the combatants. Gotrek might want the beast all to himself, but whatever Felix could do to keep him fighting and on his feet, he would, even if it meant incurring the Slayer’s displeasure. Karaghul was light in his hand as he swept it across the thing’s exposed belly.

The monster screamed and staggered. It reached for Felix with one paw, shredding the edge of his cloak as he whirled aside. Karaghul slid across its arm and it snarled. Felix avoided another blow and saw that Gotrek was using the daggers as handholds. The Slayer was steadily pulling himself towards his axe. But every time he touched a hilt, the beast thrashed as if in agony.

Could it be–? Could those blades be connected to something vital in the creature’s grotesque body? Who knew what sorcery the warlord had worked to gain control of such a monster?

Felix ducked another blow and spun about, seeking a way clear of the monster. His eyes locked with those of the strange robed figure he’d seen standing near the warlord when he and Gotrek arrived. Time seemed to slow around him and the world went vague and soft. A thousand eyes blinked at him from the thousand facets of the crystalline helm it wore, and in them, he saw glimpses of things – dreams of past moments, perhaps, or memories not yet formed. He saw Gotrek battling the undead beneath Wurtbad; he saw the war-engines of the skaven rupture the streets of Nuln and saw a vast, impossible airship duel with a monstrous serpentine shape in the skies above the mountains. All of this he saw and more, hundreds of memories and yet-to-be and never-were moments cascading across his consciousness like water.

And then the images were gone. Felix was left blinking, but not for long. Snapping from his reverie, he only just managed to avoid a flailing claw and he threw himself forwards as the beast whirled about. Rolling to his feet, he shouted, ‘The daggers, Gotrek! Pull out one of the daggers!’

As Ulfrgandr loped towards its prey, Garmr’s axe purred in his hands and he swept it out in a loose, looping blow, driving Ekaterina back. ‘I have already fought this fight in my head, woman. You lost,’ he said.

‘Dreams are treacherous things,’ Ekaterina said, lunging. The tip of her blade scored his armour. His axe twisted in his hands, fully awake now, for the first time in a long time. It sensed that the road was almost complete, that Khorne’s time was almost come, and its hunger grew in proportion. Ekaterina’s skull would make a fine gift to put at the Blood God’s feet. Garmr bulled into her, forcing her back, putting his greater mass to use.

‘So are many things, it seems,’ Garmr said. His axe was light in his hands as he hewed at her. It chewed flinders from her blade, knocking her back. He had always been stronger than her. He was stronger than all of them. He was Khorne’s will made manifest.

Ekaterina leapt aside and bounded to her feet, her blade slashing out across his back, drawing sparks from his cuirass. He whipped around, grabbing her matted hair before she could jerk back, and yanked her from her feet, hurling her to the ground. ‘Did you think it would frighten me, Ekaterina? Did you think I would be paralyzed, frozen by indecision when the Doom-Seeker appeared, alive and whole and demanding my attentions, just when I thought victory had been gained?’

She barely scrambled aside as his foot slammed down, nearly crushing her head. ‘Do you think so little of me?’ he roared, his cry echoing the Slaughter-Hound’s as it battled the Slayer. ‘I have slaughtered nations, woman. I have butchered races undreamed of, and gouged my name into a billion skulls!’ His axe sank into the ground, narrowly missing her leg as she rolled aside, trying to gain her feet. Garmr could tell that his speed shocked her.

‘But I am not angry,’ he said, stepping back, letting her get to her feet. ‘Without challenge, how can I prove worthy?’ He glanced at the others, at Vasa and Canto. ‘When will you challenge me? When will you prove your worth in Khorne’s eyes?’ He gestured. ‘Come to me, Lion. Come, Unsworn. Join us in our dance. Come join us on the road. Let us baptise Khorne’s path with the blood of heroes…’

Vasa twitched and bared his fangs. His eyes were alight with battle-lust and with a snarl he ripped his heavy sword from its sheath and lunged to the attack. He had been waiting for this moment, Garmr knew. All of them had, except for Canto, who stepped back. They had joined him only to challenge him, only to take what was his in glorious combat. And what better moment than this, what better time than now to do it, as the gods themselves watched? Vasa’s blade emitted a growl, like a beast hungry for flesh, as it chopped towards Garmr. He stepped back, easily avoiding the blow. His axe scraped Vasa’s side, drawing blood and staggering the champion. Ekaterina shrieked and used the crouching champion as a springboard, diving towards Garmr. He swatted her from the air easily, and then Vasa was driving him back, his great rending blade hacking wildly.

As he fought them both, Garmr felt the old red joy rising in him, the thunderous longing for the Eternal Battle. It had all come down to this moment. Here, in this place, in this moment, he was victorious. Surrounded by enemies, locked in combat, he was victorious.

‘Prepare, cousin,’ he howled, catching Vasa by the throat and hurling him into Ekaterina and knocking them both sprawling. ‘Ready yourself for War Unending!’

‘I have been ready for a long, long time, cousin,’ Grettir said. Garmr turned as the sorcerer stood and shrugged off his chains.

‘What–?’ Garmr said.

‘War, cousin,’ Grettir said. ‘War and death.’ He extended his golden talons and spat baleful words, and the world directly in front of Garmr was ripped apart by a whirlpool of coruscating destruction.

The monster roared and shuddered as it reared up, clawing for Gotrek. He crouched on the monster’s back, heaving at the hilt of one of the larger daggers. As Felix watched, Gotrek sank to his haunches and his muscles swelled like those of a dock-worker preparing to heave a barrel over his shoulder.

The dagger tore loose from the creature’s spine with a wet cracking noise. The monster’s subsequent scream seemed to hold as much triumph as it did torment. It thrashed and Gotrek stood up on its back, still holding the blade, and grabbed his axe. It shrieked and grabbed him, plucking him free and smashing him against the ground. Felix leapt over its lashing tail and hacked at its legs, forcing it to turn and spin away from the Slayer. Its long arms tore into the onlookers, gutting Chaos marauders and flinging an armoured Chaos warrior into the air. Felix ducked beneath another sweeping blow, leading the creature to vent its fury on the crowd, which began to pull back at last, the awesomeness of the spectacle giving way to the very real danger of becoming an unwilling part of the proceedings.

The tree-trunk-like tail snapped out, carving a red arc through a close-packed group of Chaos marauders, pulping their bodies and the altars and war-shrines behind them. Spears and swords bounced off its hide as it bellowed and tore at the sea of enemies that surrounded it. Overhead, the dark clouds were retreating from a glow on the horizon.

Then, as if the capricious gods had decided to add to the confusion, a sorcerous inferno suddenly sprang to life, sweeping over the ranks of Chaos marauders. ‘Down, manling,’ Gotrek growled, grabbing his cloak and jerking him back as the flames, all colours and none, washed across the warriors nearest Felix. The men screamed as their bodies were wracked by sickening and uncontrollable mutations. Felix scrambled back, his gut churning as the flames faded, leaving ruin in their wake. ‘What was that?’

‘Whatever it is, we’ll sort it out later,’ Gotrek rumbled through bloody lips. His face was swollen and bruised, and blood dripped from dozens of wounds on his frame, but his savage vitality was undimmed. Like his monstrous opponent, agony only seemed to spur him on. He lifted his axe and gestured towards the captive dwarfs, who were doing their best to take advantage of the chaos around them. Between the beast’s rampage and the strange, terrible fire, the Chaos army was in upheaval. As Felix watched, Ungrim snagged a Chaos warrior’s throat with his chains and dragged the man down. The King of Karak Kadrin planted his knee in the Chaos warrior’s back and hauled on the chains, snapping his captive’s spine with an audible crack.

The other dwarfs followed suit, lashing out with their chains, to trip, strangle or batter their enemies. Given the situation, Felix couldn’t blame the enemy for simply giving the captives a wide berth, rather than striking them down out of hand. Even as he thought it, however, a few moved to do just that. A Chaos marauder lunged out of the pressing, heaving, confused crush of the horde as if to stop the dwarfs and Gotrek cracked the man’s skull like an egg.

Felix gutted another as Gotrek turned his attentions to the prisoners. His axe dropped, shattering a dwarf’s chains. It was dawn, Felix realized. The sound of distant dwarf horns shook the pass. Garagrim must have recovered from Gotrek’s head-butt. ‘Gotrek, did you hear the horns?’ Felix said. ‘Garagrim is coming! We’ve done it!’

‘Garagrim,’ Ungrim said, confused. ‘My son–’

‘We’ve done nothing, manling,’ Gotrek said, as he freed the other dwarfs. ‘Not yet.’ As the last chain broke, he turned towards Ungrim, but did not move to cut the king’s chains. ‘The War-Mourner does you proud, King of Karak Kadrin,’ Gotrek said. ‘Were I you, I would make your way towards him. Let him know what he marches into.’ He gestured towards the path through the canyon that had brought him and Felix to the enemy. The stones echoed with the sounds of Garagrim’s throng at the march. The dwarfs of Karak Kadrin were bringing the fight to the enemy once more, even as the War-Mourner had promised.

‘And you, Gurnisson?’ Ungrim said, still holding out his chains to be cut.

‘Someone must see that you have time to reach him,’ Gotrek said and looked at Ungrim. ‘If this day be my doom, tell the queen I have fulfilled my oath yet again.’

‘Not your doom alone, Gurnisson,’ Ungrim growled, shaking his chains. ‘Free me! We shall wade through them and take the Gorewolf’s head, or meet our doom together!’

‘Like we would have, at Karak Ungor, against old Bashrak?’ Gotrek said.

Ungrim’s eyes widened. ‘Gurnisson–’ he began.

‘I made an oath,’ Gotrek said, grinning.

‘Let me loose! I command you – free me!’ Ungrim roared.

‘I made an oath,’ Gotrek said again. ‘Our grudge is not settled, Ungrim Ironfist. It will never be settled, not while there is still strength in my arm. Go, King of Karak Kadrin! Go, Ungrim! Let me find my doom unhindered!’ He looked past the red-faced and cursing king to the other dwarfs. ‘Take him to his son. You swore an oath to defend Karak Kadrin and its king, and you will take him from this place, even if you have to knock him over the head to do it!’

‘Gurnisson, no,’ Ungrim snarled. ‘Let me have my doom! This is not right! This is not the way!’

‘I have never done things the proper way,’ Gotrek said. ‘Take him!’ He thrust the ends of Ungrim’s chains into the chests of the other dwarfs. ‘Take him and return and put the enemy to flight!’

The dwarfs looked as if they might argue, but Gotrek’s glare put paid to any resistance. The set off quickly, dragging their frothing, struggling king behind them. Ungrim cursed virulently, hurling oaths at Gotrek as if they were stones. Gotrek remained unmoved, finally turning away. ‘Now, where did that beast get to? And its master. My axe is thirsty,’ he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Worlds Edge Mountains,
the Peak Pass

Garmr planted his feet as the coruscating magics of the Changer washed over him. He held his axe up, blade outthrust against the multi-coloured flames. Khorne had protected him from worse, and did so now. Vasa was not so lucky.

The lion-headed champion howled as Grettir’s mutating magics bowled him over and his brawny, bestial form became even more so. Armoured plates and snake scales and diseased feathers burst from his flesh as his shape became something other than humanoid. His screams degenerated into squalls of mindless pain as he was twisted from Chaos champion to gibbering Chaos spawn. Ekaterina, shielded from the flames by Vasa’s bulk, took the opportunity to ram her blade into Garmr’s back, even as Grettir’s flame faded.

However, it wasn’t her sword which caused him the pain that suddenly shot through him. Instead, he felt as if something vital had been torn from his spine and he sagged, the weight of his axe pulling him down as a howl of pain erupted from his throat. Ekaterina stepped back in surprise, and Garmr turned and rose in one berserk motion, his axe striking out with brutal speed. Ekaterina stared in shock at the weapon as it sank into her chest. She fell back, and Garmr ripped it loose, turning towards Grettir, who faced him with open hands.

‘What has been done can be undone oh so easily, cousin; this road of yours, for instance, or the spells which bound Ulfrgandr to you. Does it hurt?’ Grettir sneered.

Garmr, mind filled with red, uttered an inarticulate snarl and lunged. Grettir avoided the blow with malign ease. ‘Would it be more palatable, if I told you that this was not, in the end, about you, or us? It is about the gods, cousin. It always has been. They move in opposition, like heavenly bodies caught in the cosmic tide, and this was never going to succeed. We are pawns, cousin. Even in our hatred, we are but the playthings of the Dark Gods.’

Garmr barely heard his cousin’s taunts. In truth, he could hear nothing, see nothing, but the carnage that Ulfrgandr wreaked. It overwhelmed him, blinding him with the raw frenzy of a murder-lust too long bound by mystic chains. Now the Slaughter-Hound was venting its centuries of frustrations on his horde as it made its way towards him, eager to resume their former contest. He could feel it drawing nearer, killing its way towards him.

And in his own way, he welcomed it. He welcomed that battle, and hungered for it. As the calming effects of Grettir’s binding faded and the Slaughter-Hound was unleashed once more, so too was Garmr; he was free. Free of plans, free of waiting and striving. Free at last to kill and burn and maim with nothing more asked of him. All thoughts of the road were washed aside and beneath his helm, he smiled.

‘If we are playthings, cousin, then let us play,’ Garmr rasped. He charged, ploughing through the magics that Grettir unleashed against him. Multi-hued flames caressed him, and shrieking winds plucked at him, and ethereal talons gouged him. Grettir’s magics shattered war-altars and shrines, and flung marauders and nearby Chaos warriors into the air, broken and splay-limbed. But Garmr barely hesitated. Khorne had made him strong, and not even the Winds of Chaos could stagger him.

Grettir backed away, cursing. Garmr followed him doggedly. But before he could crush his cousin once and for all, a wave of bloodlust reverberated through him and a crawling shadow swept over him. He paused and then turned.

Ulfrgandr glared down at him, jaws sagging in what might have been an expression of joyousness. Its claws tore the ground as it rose to its full height. Images of torn bodies filled his head and the tang of blood blossomed on Garmr’s tongue. It was everything he could have wished.

The Gorewolf roared and leapt to meet the Slaughter-Hound.

‘Gotrek, Ungrim didn’t look happy.’ Felix shouted to be heard over the cacophony erupting in the pass. Garagrim’s throng was drawing close and those Chaos forces that were closest to the approaching dwarfs were already streaming to the attack. Whatever ceremony or undertaking they had been preparing for in the centre of the pass was forgotten as the prospect of battle loomed. Screams and battle-cries filled the air. Those who weren’t on the march were dead or, amazingly, fighting amongst themselves. Gotrek had been right: the Chaos army had come unglued.

Felix danced back to avoid two brawling Chaos champions, both clad in heavy armour, much battered. They struck out at one another with heavy blades as around them, their followers did the same. A dozen such minor skirmishes were taking place around them, as if the horde had been a pot too long on the fire that had at last boiled over.

Gotrek hacked his way through them regardless of who they seemed intent on fighting. If they got in his way, they died. Felix did his best to guard the Slayer’s blind spot, but it was like following in the wake of a typhoon. Every time he stopped to fight off an attacker, Gotrek outpaced him, leaving screaming wreckage in his wake.

‘He’ll get loose soon enough and be back here, aye and Garagrim behind him. But not quickly enough to take what’s rightfully mine,’ Gotrek growled, shaking blood off his axe.

‘For a moment, I thought you were doing it for the queen,’ Felix said.

Gotrek glared at him. ‘And what if I am?’

‘Maybe there’s some poetry in you yet, Gotrek,’ Felix said.

‘Keep your poetry, manling, all I want is that beast,’ Gotrek said and picked up his pace.

‘And if you die here, in the middle of this horde, what happens to me? Have you thought about that?’ Felix snapped, hurrying after him.

‘You’ll be fine. If you haven’t died yet, you aren’t likely to do so,’ Gotrek said without stopping.

‘Your confidence is heart-warming,’ Felix said.

Something with too many limbs and mouths suddenly rose up before them. A hairy tendril struck Felix and sent him sprawling. The Chaos spawn screeched and clawed at Gotrek, who barely slowed as he grabbed a jutting tusk, hauled himself up onto one undulating shoulder and brought his axe crashing down on the centre of its bloated skull. It fell heavily and Gotrek jerked his axe free with a disdainful grunt. ‘Not the right monster,’ he grunted. His eye widened in glee as he stepped off the creature’s twitching carcass. ‘There it is!’

Felix climbed to his feet and saw the monster. It had risen up over the Gorewolf and as he watched, it brought its fists down on the armoured shape of the warlord. The Gorewolf staggered and chopped at the creature. Felix looked at Gotrek. ‘I think it’s going to do our job for us,’ he said.

‘No beast is taking my doom from me,’ Gotrek growled. After knocking the warlord down again, the monster reared back on its hind legs and drove its great fists into its chest, issuing a thunderous bellow of challenge. Before Felix could stop him, Gotrek’s axe flashed out, catching it in one bulbous eye, and the orb burst in a rush of foul liquid. Half-blind, the monster turned as Gotrek charged towards it and it caught him up and slammed him down again and again, as if trying to reduce the Slayer to dust.

Felix raced forwards and leapt for the monster’s back before he fully realized what he was doing. His skin burned as he grasped the hilts of the many blades sunk into the beast’s back. What had worked once, might work again, or so he hoped. He found a likely looking hilt, covered in sharp edges and rust and worse substances than blood, and, choking down a wave of bile, grabbed it in both hands. Feet planted, he hauled on the blade with every ounce of strength he possessed.

He ripped it free with a sickening pop and tumbled to the ground in a heap. The monster stiffened and screamed, clawing at its back. Felix flung the blade aside with a cry. His gloves were torn through by the hilt’s sharp edges and his palms were blistered and weeping from gripping it. He staggered to his feet, his hands clutched to his chest.

Even as it had before, the removal of one of the blades had caused the monster intense pain and distracted it as it writhed and screamed. Gotrek, dazed, shook his head and shoved himself up out of the miniature crater his repeated impact had created. As the monster staggered above him, he looked up and his good eye gleamed. He lunged upwards and caught the handle of his axe where it jutted from the beast’s skull, and ripped it loose in one gory gesture. The monster reeled back and Gotrek bounced to his feet and drove the blade upwards, into its belly.

It roared and clutched the Slayer with its hooked talons, tearing open his back as it pressed his face to the scales on its chest. Felix drew Karaghul, despite the pain in his hands, but even as he made to aid Gotrek, the monster spasmed and then toppled over, carrying Gotrek with it, remaining eye closed, jaws sagging as it slumped atop the Slayer, burying him beneath its bulk.

‘Gotrek,’ Felix shouted, rushing towards the monster. If he could hack an opening, free him–

An armoured fist shot out, catching him on the jaw. Felix tumbled to the ground, head ringing. The Gorewolf loomed over him, bloody axe in hand. The sheer malevolence that radiated from the warrior struck Felix like a blow. This was no man, no mere general, but was, in his own way, as much an engine of destruction as the monster Gotrek had just dispatched. This thing – not a man – could wade through an ocean of blood and not drown; it could level cities and not tire. ‘The Doom-Seeker has gotten his wish,’ the warlord growled. ‘Will you join him?’ he said, lifting his axe.

Felix could only stare upwards as his doom raced towards him. Then, at the last moment, the axe missed his head, embedding itself in the ground mere inches from his cheek. The Gorewolf staggered, clawing at his back where the spiked blade Felix had extracted from the monster’s back had suddenly sprouted.

The robed figure, crystalline helm cracked and flickering, stepped back with an air of satisfaction. The Gorewolf sank to one knee and painful shudders wracked his frame. Felix could tell that whatever fell magics were contained in that blade were causing the warlord pain.

‘What about you, cousin?’ the latter said in a cracked and hissing voice. ‘Will you join them in death? Do you recall that blade, cousin? It was the one I gave you, to plant in the Slaughter-Hound’s back. The blade that bound its life to yours, and ensured that while it lived so too would you. Now I give you your life back. Have you no words of thanks?’

The Gorewolf ripped the blade from his back and wheeled about awkwardly. ‘My thanks, cousin,’ the Gorewolf snarled as he leapt forwards clumsily and drove the blade into his cousin’s gut hard enough to lift the sorcerer from his feet. ‘You have done all I asked,’ the Gorewolf went on as the robed body fell backwards. ‘I release you from your shackles.’ The crystalline mask shattered as it fell, and Felix scooted back as several of the fragments slid towards him.

The Gorewolf turned back towards Felix and strode in his direction. Felix scrambled to his feet as the warlord jerked his axe free and raised it again. He could tell that the warlord was in pain. Though, in the end, he didn’t think it would alter the outcome of any fight. ‘Now it’s your turn,’ the warlord said. Felix swallowed and lifted Karaghul, wondering how he’d be remembered.

‘Not quite.’ At the words, both Felix and the Gorewolf turned.

Gotrek shoved his way out from under the monster’s body, and snarled, ‘Is that it?’ The Slayer staggered away from the still-thrashing body of the monster, his broad frame streaked with cuts and bruises. Nonetheless his eye blazed with a single-minded intensity. ‘Gorewolf – your beast is dead and I am not. If you can’t do better, I’ll be very disappointed.’ He glanced at Felix. ‘Stand back, manling. He’s mine and mine alone. Not you, nor Ungrim, nor Garagrim, nor Grimnir himself will take this battle from me!’

‘You,’ the Gorewolf croaked, hefting his axe. The weapon was as formidable looking as Gotrek’s own, though it dripped with brutal malice rather than grim ferocity.

‘I heard you were waiting for me, Gorewolf,’ Gotrek said nastily. ‘You are my doom, I’m told.’

‘And you are mine,’ the Gorewolf rasped. ‘The Blood God promised you to me, and here, at the last, despite everything, he has sent you to me.’ He extended his axe and raised it. ‘The others were weak… false. They do not understand. They sought to bar my path, to trick me. No matter who stands in my way, I will have my victory. Let the legions of Khorne himself bar my path and I will cut them down! Do you hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ Gotrek rumbled. ‘If you’re finished, my axe waits.’

The Gorewolf laughed. ‘Then let it drink deep, Doom-Seeker!’ Then he roared and charged. Gotrek came in with a roar of his own. They traded blows that sparked and snapped like sparks in a forge. The two weapons chewed into one another and sawed wide, the edges crashing against one another with tooth-shivering intensity. Again, time seemed to slow even as it had when they’d arrived, and Felix thought that the world was holding its breath. It was as if they were in an arena and the Dark Gods crouched high on the ridges above, looking down and waiting for the outcome of this conflict between two competing fates.

The two axes had become twin blurs. One weapon, forged by dwarf hands in a time of woe and filled with the stubborn ferocity of a dwindling elder race, met another, forged by daemons and hungry for the doom of all things. Every time the blades connected, the world seemed to shudder. Gotrek moved as if he weighed no more than a feather, as if he were fresh to the fight. He fought in silence, determined to meet his end, but not alone.

The Gorewolf fought silently as well, and with equal enthusiasm. Felix had never witnessed such terrible lust for combat before this moment. The axe spun in Gotrek’s hands, spinning lightly between his fingers as he deflected a blow and countered with dizzying speed even as Garmr attacked again with a forceful chop, shaving bristles from Gotrek’s beard.

Blood welled as the warlord’s axe took the Slayer on the chest and then on the thigh. Gotrek staggered but didn’t slow, ramming a shoulder into the Gorewolf’s midriff and knocking him back. He brought his axe up and the Gorewolf’s drove down and the two weapons met with a hateful screech. The two warriors strained against one another. Gotrek’s muscles bulged and swelled with reserves of strength that Felix had not even suspected to exist. Nonetheless, the Gorewolf pressed his weapon inexorably down, less a man than a murderous device, intent on its function.

The rain pounded down and for a moment, Felix wanted to drop to his face, to grovel and hide from the malign weight of it all. Instead, he swept the red rain from his face and prayed that now was not the time that the Slayer’s luck – ill or otherwise – chose to desert him. More than just Gotrek’s honour rested on the outcome of this battle. Gotrek fought quietly, trading bone-rattling blows with the Gorewolf as the rain swept down and turned his flesh as red as his crest. All around them, thousands of skulls chattered and clattered in an infernal wind.

Then, abruptly, they stopped. The red rain slackened. The axes sheared apart with tooth-shivering speed. Gotrek’s axe took his enemy in the chest, sinking deep into the baroque cuirass. The warlord’s own snapped down and gashed the Slayer’s shoulder, but Gotrek didn’t break away. Instead he bit down on the pain and grabbed his opponent’s helm and jerked his axe free, staggering the Gorewolf.

With a guttural cry, Gotrek hacked the warlord’s hand off at the wrist, sending both hand and axe twirling away. Then he chopped into the giant’s knee, dropping him down. Armoured fingers fastened tight about Gotrek’s windpipe and the Slayer’s face began to go purple as he shoved the warlord’s head back, trying to snap the man’s spine.

There was a sound like logs being split and then the fingers digging into Gotrek’s throat released their hold and the warlord flopped back, dead. Gotrek stepped back awkwardly, rubbing his throat, staring at the corpse. The body twitched and thrashed, like a broken-backed snake, and he saw that there was still fire in the eyes within the helm.

‘Gotrek, he’s still alive,’ Felix whispered.

‘Not for long,’ Gotrek rasped, lifting his axe. ‘Join your beast, Gorewolf.’ The axe fell with cruel finality and Garmr’s head rolled free. Gotrek hefted it by the mane of hair attached to the helm and stared into the flickering eyes, holding the head’s gaze as the fire in its eyes dimmed and at last went out. Gotrek hawked and spat into the snarling muzzle and then tossed the head aside.

The rain stopped. The last skull fell silent. Felix turned, letting out a breath. Then, with a sickening realization, he saw that they were surrounded. The Gorewolf’s demise had not passed unnoticed. Though most of the vastly reduced and disorganized Chaos force was already engaged with Garagrim’s throng in what would likely be the former’s last battle, some had remained behind – cagey champions and chieftains, waiting for their warlord to fall in order to swoop in and claim the spoils. Now, they urged their warriors on and Chaos marauders surrounded the Slayer and Felix.

‘Well,’ Gotrek said, noticing them. ‘Who’s next?’

They approached slowly, confident in their ability to overcome their prey despite all evidence to the contrary. Given the sheer number of them, Felix thought that their confidence wasn’t entirely misplaced. He glanced down and saw one of the fragments from the sorcerer’s shattered helm. In it, a ghostly image of he and Gotrek, lying dead, swam to the surface and he felt a chill.

The first marauder lunged, driving a crude sword towards Gotrek’s head. The Slayer grunted and his axe chopped through blade and the belly behind. ‘Is that it? I kill your warlord and his pet and this is what you send me?’ He looked up and shook his axe at the sky. ‘Is that it?’ he howled. There might have been laughter hidden in the distant rumble of thunder that answered, but Felix didn’t want to think about it.

Felix blocked a spear thrust and opened the man’s throat with Karaghul’s tip. As the Chaos marauder fell, legs kicking, Felix looked around at the marauders that now surrounded them on all sides. Weapons pressed close to them as Gotrek and Felix came back-to-back, facing their enemies. The Slayer looked tired. The days of constant fighting had begun to sap even his inhuman constitution.

‘I guess we’re both meeting your doom here,’ he said shakily.

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said, hefting his axe. ‘It’s time to finish this.’

‘You don’t sound happy about that,’ Felix said.

‘The moment has passed,’ Gotrek spat. ‘The Gorewolf or his beast… Those would have been dooms. But this… This is just death.’

‘Seems fairly similar to me,’ Felix muttered. Spears and swords ringed them on all sides. Preferences or not, they were likely to die here. He felt a moment of bitterness, but before he could vocalize it, a man screamed. Then another and another, as a great, foul shape rose with a choking scream from amidst the gathered marauders.

The monster lurched suddenly to its feet, burst eye weeping, jaws sagging, the cleft in its skull oozing. It gurgled and lunged and men went down in a red rush, broken and dying. A champion, too slow, tried to avoid a titanic backhand and was sent hurtling through a war-shrine, scattering brass sigils and bloody skulls.

The monster lunged, driving into the middle of the gathered marauders, scattering them with its bestial momentum. Men flew in all directions and bodies thudded to the stone as the beast drove north-east, its agonized roars trailing behind it. As it ran, it carved a path of carnage through the forces that remained in the pass.

‘It’s not dead,’ Gotrek said wonderingly. A smile spread across his craggy face and he turned to look at Felix, beaming as happily as a child. ‘It’s not dead!’ Gotrek shook his axe and called out, ‘Come, manling! It’s getting away!’

‘It’s heading north,’ Felix said. Behind him, he could hear the sound of the throng of Karak Kadrin drawing closer. Felix did not look back, but he could hear the thunder of handguns and the war-dirges of the dwarf clansmen as they approached the now confused ranks of the Gorewolf’s leaderless and unprepared horde. If he stayed, they would welcome him. There was safety there.

‘So?’ Gotrek roared back. ‘I’ll track it all the way to the Chaos Wastes if I have to! Now come on, it’s getting away!’

‘But… but–’ Felix began, watching the Slayer stump swiftly north, in pursuit of the beast, heedless of the crippled Chaos army that reeled around him. Gotrek knew as well as he that the Gorewolf’s horde was done, and the Slayer didn’t concern himself with beaten foes. Ungrim and Garagrim would smash what was left and send them running north on the heels of the beast. Gotrek had bigger prey.

Felix looked down and saw more shards of the shattered sorcerer’s helm. They were growing dull, the images they held fading at last. He saw death in them, and other things, moments of joy and renown; victories and happiness.

But always, Gotrek was there. For good or ill, he and the Slayer were bound together by bonds stronger than simply friendship or obligation. Something that might have been the laughter of dark, distant gods whispered at the back of his head.

‘Come, manling!’ Gotrek shouted, whooping happily. ‘We go north!’

‘Of course we do,’ Felix said with a heavy sigh, as he followed the Slayer into the heart of the Chaos horde, in pursuit of an unkillable monster. ‘Of course we do…’

THE SERPENT QUEEN

Josh Reynolds

‘The Southlands – the name conjures up images of sweltering jungles, miasmic mangrove swamps and scaly beasts the likes of which most had only seen in the controlled confines of the Imperial zoo. A place of screaming death, in a thousand and one forms, each of them worse than the one previous.

Or such was Gotrek’s hope.

Normally, the Slayer settled into taciturnity as naturally as a boulder sank into a tarn, but the thought of plunging into that green hell had him salivating as we set sail from Sartosa. It might have been the prospect of looting one of the hundreds of lost cities said to dot the Southlands like rocks scattered amongst the tall grass, or the almost-certain opportunity to match his axe against the scales of one of the monstrous saurians said to roam the jungles. For myself, I was not so enthusiastic.

Our sojourn in Tilea had been only intermittently marked by the sort of terrors that had become depressingly commonplace during my long association with Gotrek – the hunting of the Daemon-Swine of Catrazza, for instance, or our foray into the stinking warrens of the skaven far beneath the ruins of the temple of Myrmidia in Miragliano on behalf of the Order of the Blazing Sun, or even the strange circumstances of Gotrek’s duel atop the undulating battlements of the Stalking Tower with the being calling himself Mordrek the Damned – and I had become attached to those sun-kissed lands, and their various and sundry delights.

Gotrek, as ever, could not be swayed by my pleading. Indeed, ever since the existential horrors of our experiences in Albion, the Slayer had become more determined than ever to drown his thoughts in the red grapes of slaughter…’

– From My Travels with Gotrek, Vol. VI
By Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2525

CHAPTER ONE

‘Cheat!’ Gotrek’s bellow, redolent with outraged incredulity, thundered across the deck of the Orfeo. Startled by the outburst, the gulls that had been perched on the main mast of the merchantman hurled themselves into the salt-tinged air of the early evening. The birds winged their way upwards through the gathering mists, leaving behind only a scatter of feathers and the echoes of their raucous cries. The crew of the vessel, a motley assortment of scurvy rogues from a dozen ports, paused in their labours, but only for a moment. In the weeks since they’d left port at Sartosa, they’d grown used to the Slayer’s occasional outbursts.

Felix Jaeger looked up. ‘What now?’ he muttered. His eyes narrowed, and his thin, sun-browned features tightened in momentary concern. His gaze flickered to the sheathed sword lying against the rail within arm’s reach. The gilt dragon-headed pommel of the blade called Karaghul caught the light of the setting sun, and Felix turned his attentions back to the confrontation brewing across the deck, satisfied that should it be required, he could have the blade in his hand and free of its plain leather sheath in mere moments. It wouldn’t be the first time that the Slayer’s incandescent temper had seen them fighting for their lives, and experience had taught Felix to be ready for the inevitable firestorm.

‘I am no cheat!’ Gotrek roared. The Slayer jabbed his accuser in the nose with a stubby finger. The force of the gesture sent the unfortunate sailor toppling onto his backside. The dwarf was a squat lump of scar tissue and muscle, and Felix had seen him kill with a casual backhand more than once. The sailors who’d made up the rest of the semi-circle began to edge back, giving Gotrek and his new playmate plenty of room. ‘Dwarfs do not cheat,’ Gotrek snarled. ‘Only men and elves and filthy Moot-scum cheat!’

‘I didn’t say you cheated!’ the sailor growled. ‘I said you made a lucky roll!’ His hand edged towards the dirk thrust through the brightly coloured sash he wore about his waist. Don’t do it, Felix pleaded silently, it would only aggravate him. He let loose the breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding when the sailor, obviously thinking better of it, spread his hands well away from the hilt of the blade.

‘Same thing,’ Gotrek rumbled. He flashed a gap-toothed grin and flexed his scarred hands. It reminded Felix of a tiger unsheathing its claws. At least the Slayer had left his axe where it sat leaning against a water barrel. Felix relaxed. Gotrek wasn’t really angry. He was bored, which was, in some ways, worse. ‘Now, apologise. Or I’ll have your scalp for a coin purse,’ Gotrek said, gesturing crudely for emphasis.

Felix rolled his eyes and turned his attentions back to the pitiful state of his red Sudenland travelling cloak, which lay across his knees. The cloak had so many holes in it that it resembled a Wissenland cheese, and it was about as much use at keeping out the rain at the moment. He carefully threaded a needle and began to patch the largest of the holes. He’d had to pay a pretty penny for scraps of the right colour and material. It was getting harder and harder to find Sudenland wool that was dyed the right shade. He was tempted to simply buy a new cloak, rather than patching the old, but it didn’t seem right, somehow.

The old cloak had seen him through fire, famine and flood. It had kept the rain off him in the dark forests of the Empire, and in the misty bogs of Albion. It had kept the snow off him in the Worlds Edge Mountains, and the sun, in the deserts of Araby and the hills of Tilea.

His lean fingers traced the rents in the fabric and glided across faded stains. Each was a memory to be cherished, and a story to be told. Or so his mother had said, the day she’d bought the cloak for him. It had been old, even then. He’d taken it with him when he’d gone to university, as a way of remembering her. He caught a fold between his fingers and rubbed the coarse weave. ‘Every mark a story,’ he murmured. He examined his hand, and the fine web of scars that criss-crossed it. If every mark told a tale, he was a collection of stories. And Gotrek was a multivolume epic, at least.

Without losing his train of thought, Felix lifted his feet as a sailor slid across the wet deck and struck the barrel he was sitting on. He used the toe of his boot to nudge the groaning man aside and set his feet back down.

Gotrek laughed nastily and stumped towards the downed man. The Slayer’s broad, craggy face was creased in amusement, and his single eye gleamed with humour. It was a rare expression for Gotrek, who tended towards the sour when he wasn’t up to his elbows in blood, and Felix paused in his mending to study it. Like all poets, inspiration often took him unawares. There was a hint of the dwarf that Gotrek Gurnisson had been in that expression – before he’d shorn his scalp, dyed and greased his remaining hair into a towering crimson crest and taken the oath of the Slayer, setting his feet on the path of glorious, redeeming death. Even after so many years together, Felix knew very little about Gotrek’s past, and the workings of the Slayer’s mind were as mysterious now as they had been the day he’d sworn a drunken oath to follow Gotrek and record his doom.

‘I think you’ve made your point, Gotrek,’ Felix said, turning his eyes back to his cloak.

‘I’m just getting warmed up, manling,’ Gotrek said, knuckling his eye-patch. ‘We’ve been cooped up on this scow for weeks. Weeks, manling! Weeks without as much as a bruised knuckle or the taste of blood in my mouth.’

‘Need I remind you that this was your idea?’ Felix said carefully. Gotrek’s temper was as volatile as it was legendary. It could turn on a guilder, and Felix didn’t want the Slayer’s ire to fall on him.

Gotrek frowned and spat. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said darkly.

‘Then I won’t,’ Felix said. The sailor, blood streaming from a nose that had gone purple and misshapen, had got to his feet, but Gotrek, glaring angrily at Felix as he was, seemed to have forgotten him. ‘You spent the last of our coin on purchasing this passage. I’m simply suggesting that you might not want to cripple the crew before we get where we’re going.’

The Orfeo was sailing for the Mangrove Port, on the eastern coast of the Southlands. The Port was an outpost and a beacon for adventurers, criminals, pirates and treasure hunters of all stripes and backgrounds. Its foundations had been sunk centuries before by explorers from Cathay, and it had changed hands numerous times since, from Araby to Tilea to Estalia. These days, it was nominally under the jurisdiction of the Empire. Or it had been, when they’d left port. Felix knew enough about such places to know that it mattered little what flag flew over the palisade. ‘After all, we still have a few days of travel left,’ he added.

Before Gotrek could reply, the sailor, clutching his broken nose, struck the Slayer on the back of his tattooed skull with a belaying pin. The pin shattered, and the sailor stumbled back, gawping at the broken chunk of wood in his hand. Gotrek’s mouth closed with a snap and he turned a baleful gaze on his attacker. ‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ he said. He reached out and grabbed the sailor by the front of his shirt, hefted him with ease, and sent him flying back into his fellows with an almost gentle shove. ‘So wait your turn,’ Gotrek called after him.

Felix sighed. Gotrek’s glare swivelled towards him. Felix kept his eyes on his cloak. Gotrek made to say something, but his words were lost beneath the shout of ‘Get him!’ and the sudden avalanche of angry sailors that buried him. Felix eased his barrel back, out of range. Gotrek bellowed happily and drove a meaty fist into a man’s belly. The latter folded up around the Slayer’s arm like a deflated wineskin, and slumped to the deck. Men went flying to land in heaps about the deck, as Gotrek waded through them with brutal élan. His initial opponent yelped in fear as Gotrek grabbed him. The Slayer cocked a fist, ready to add to the damage he’d already done to the man’s face, when a pistol shot rang out, splitting the air.

Felix glanced over his shoulder. The hunched, bleary-eyed shape of the ship’s captain, a smoking pistol in one hand, and a half-empty bottle of Catrazza Red in the other, swayed on the upper deck. Captain Bolinas claimed to be from Nordland, but Felix had never known a Nordlander to speak with an Tilean accent.

Bolinas took a swig from the bottle and glared down at them blearily. ‘I’ll thank you not to break my crew, Gurnisson,’ he belched. ‘We’re entering dangerous waters, and we’ll need every mother’s son of them, or I’m a Tilean.’

‘You are a Tilean, Bolinas,’ Gotrek said, letting his opponent fall to the deck.

‘Lies, by Ulric,’ the captain said, saluting the dwarf with his pistol. ‘I was born on the frosty coasts of Nordland. Stop punching my crew, thank you, Gurnisson.’

He swayed as the ship caught a swelling wave, and for a moment, Felix feared that he would topple from the deck. Bolinas righted himself with the elaborate care of a thoroughgoing professional sot. He’d had his doubts about the man and his leaky, creaky barge of a merchantman, but Gotrek had sworn by him. There was a story there, though it was one neither the Slayer nor the captain had volunteered. It was clear that Bolinas had known Gotrek for some time, however. Gotrek grinned and extended a hand. ‘Give me that bottle, and we‘ll call it a done deal.’

‘What bottle?’ Bolinas said, taking another swig. He emptied the bottle and pitched it overboard. Gotrek goggled at him for a moment and then grinned broadly.

‘Ha! I knew there was a reason I liked you, Bolinas,’ he said, laughing.

Felix shook his head and finished his stitch. He knotted the thread and bit the end off. Then he held the cloak up to examine it. Shaking his head, he resolved to find a qualified seamstress at the very next civilised port of call they came to.

He looked out over the rail. In the distance, the black ribbon of the coast crawled across the horizon. He frowned. He’d heard stories about the Southlands as a boy, and he’d seen the massive, colourful saurians in their enclosure at the Imperial zoo, while he was at university. But he’d never thought he’d actually wind up trudging through the jungles, on the heels of a suicidal Slayer. Gotrek clapped him on the back and nearly knocked him to the deck. ‘There’s death there, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘I can smell it.’

Felix slung his cloak about his shoulders and said, ‘Your death or someone else’s?’

Gotrek continued, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘They say there are lizards in those jungles that are the size of mountains, manling. With teeth like spears, and claws like swords,’ Gotrek sighed happily. ‘Not as good a doom as a dragon, but, well, how many of those do you get to see in this life?’ He glanced at Felix. ‘And I’ve seen mine.’

‘We almost died fighting that thing,’ Felix said, shivering slightly. His hand instinctively sought the grip of his blade. Karaghul had a doom of its own. The blade hungered for the blood of the ancient beasts, and he had felt that dreadful, fiery hunger first-hand when he and the Slayer had made the acquaintance of the monstrous Skjalandir. It had been quiescent ever since, but sometimes, in quiet moments, he recalled how the sword’s inhuman will had bolstered, or perhaps supplanted, his own, driving him to what he’d thought at the time was certain death. He hoped never to experience that again. He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, I thought we were looking for treasure, not giant lizards.’

Gotrek’s expression brightened. ‘Aye,’ he said softly. ‘They say the dawi of Karak Zorn lined the avenues of their hold with precious gems, carved and faceted by the greatest jewellers of all dwarf kind, and placed so that a single torch could be used to light the entirety of the hold. The shields of their clans were plated in gold, and their axes were edged in silver. Their thanes wore cloaks of saurian hide and armour made from the strange red iron found in the deep quarries of the jungles. It was said that they had even tamed the great beasts, and built mighty citadels upon the backs of the largest of the saurians, in order to ride them to war. Aye, they were wealthy and mighty, in their time.’ Gotrek set his hands on the ship’s rail as he spoke. ‘We lost contact with them long before the War of Vengeance, and many claimed that the stinking elgi had used their vile magic to destroy the hold and all who dwelt within it.’ Gotrek spat the words. He had all of his race’s prejudices against their ancient rivals, the elves, though Felix thought that the Slayer had mellowed somewhat, after their adventures on the mist-haunted isle of Albion. Gotrek grunted and spat over the side. ‘But no one knows for sure. No one knows where Karak Zorn is, or was.’

‘I would have thought it would have been on a map, at least,’ Felix said. He’d wanted to bring up the absence of such since they’d left port, but Gotrek had never afforded him the opportunity until now. Even so, Felix hesitated.

Gotrek craned his head to fix Felix with his good eye. ‘A map,’ he said. His tone was withering. ‘Why did I not think of that?’ The rail creaked in his grip. ‘My people are the greatest mapmakers in the world, manling. If there were a map to Karak Zorn, if there had ever been a map to the Great Southern Hold, do you not think that I would know of it?’ Wood splintered as his grip tightened.

Felix looked away. ‘So how do you intend to find it, then?’ he said.

Gotrek sucked on his teeth and stared out over the waves at the distant coastline. ‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ he said finally, grudgingly.

‘You’ll know it when you see it?’ Felix said. ‘What does that mean?’

‘The jungle isn’t that big,’ Gotrek said simply.

‘Gotrek, the Southlands are not just “a jungle”. We’re not talking the Drakwald here,’ Felix protested. Gotrek didn’t look at him. He stared at the Slayer, and comprehension settled on him like an evening chill. ‘Gotrek, we can’t search every inch of the Southlands! It’d take us decades!’

‘We don’t have to search every inch of it, manling. Just the interior, close to where the Worlds Edge Mountains cut through the jungles,’ Gotrek said. ‘It’ll only take a few years, at most.’ He hesitated. ‘Or maybe ten.’ Then added, somewhat defensively, ‘It’s not my fault you humans have such short years.’

Felix stared at the dwarf. Then he looked back at the coastline, now mostly obscured by the thick mist rising from the dark waters as evening drew on, with a sinking sensation in his gut. Ten years of sweltering jungle and insect-infested swamp. Ten years of dodging hungry not-quite dragons and whatever other horrors lurked in that deadly land. He dropped his face into his hands and groaned softly.

‘I should have just let the Emperor’s cavalry run me down,’ he muttered.

Gotrek grunted. ‘This cursed mist is getting thicker,’ he said, ‘I’d swear it was elf trickery, if we weren’t already well past that blasted fortress of theirs.’

Felix twitched. They’d only seen the Island of the Sun at a distance, through a curtain of fog and enchantments, but the sleek shapes of elven warships had been all too close, cutting across the mist-topped waves with a speed and grace that made even the greatest galleons of Marienburg look like bobbing corks. They had passed through elven waters unmolested, however. ‘If it weren’t for that blasted fortress, we’d likely have already been attacked by dark elf corsairs or pirates of some description,’ Felix said.

‘I know,’ Gotrek groused. ‘Damned elves ruin everything.’ He swiped his hand through the curling mist, and it reformed swiftly.

‘Cursed mist,’ he barked again. The mist put Felix in mind of the mists they’d encountered in Albion, and he frowned, waving a hand in front of his face.

‘I hope Bolinas is sober enough to guide us through it,’ Felix said. He turned from the rail. The mist was creeping across the deck, and curling about the masts. The crew had become subdued, and quiet. Some, those closest to the rails, cast nervous glances over the side. What is it they know that we don’t, Felix wondered.

‘Bolinas sails better when he’s drunk,’ Gotrek said. He pushed away from the rail and stumped back towards where he’d left his axe.

Felix snatched up his sword and belted the sheath about his waist. He saw one of Bolinas’s mates handing out cutlasses and boarding pikes to the crew. There was definitely something going on. Felix looked about and spotted Bolinas at the wheel, a new bottle in his hand, and his eyes fixed on the mounting fog ahead of them. Felix climbed to join him on the upper deck. ‘I can’t help but notice that your crew is preparing for trouble, captain,’ he said quietly.

Bolinas squinted at him. ‘Aye, as I said, dangerous waters,’ he said, grinning.

‘Pirates,’ Felix guessed.

‘Pirates, aye, there’re pirates, and worse than pirates,’ Bolinas said. He took a swig from his bottle. ‘Pirates would be a blessing from Ulric, frankly. The dead don’t rest easily in these waters, Jaeger.’ He pressed his bottle to his cheek and continued, ‘We’re not far from the Bitter Sea, here, and the fleets of bone and brass that ride those dark waves.’

It only took Felix a moment to grasp the import of Bolinas’s words. ‘The Land of the Dead,’ he said softly. Suddenly cold, he pulled his cloak tighter about himself. He’d heard the stories of the Land of the Dead as a boy, and more recently in Tilea.

A land where nothing lived, but things still moved. Of great tomb-cities, guarded by skeletal legions, and ruled by undying kings, still swaddled in their grave-wrappings. A once-mighty empire, made over into a thing of dust and rattling bones by some long ago cataclysm. ‘I thought we were far from Zandri,’ he said, naming the great coastal necropolis that Sartosian sailors so feared. ‘Isn’t that where the war-fleets of the dead are said to issue from?’

‘Aye, but we’re close to the Gulf of Fear, and it’s from there that the fleets of the tomb-cities that border the Southlands sail. Or so I hear, for I’ve never seen one,’ Bolinas said, taking another swig. ‘And I’m in no hurry to do so.’

‘That makes two of us,’ Felix said. He dropped his hand to Karaghul’s pommel. He’d fought the risen dead more than once, and lost friends and more than friends to them. He closed his eyes as a pale, aristocratic face swam to the surface of his mind, and he shoved the memory of his lost Kislevite lover aside. Ulrika was gone into the darkness, and though their path had been thorny, it had been no fault of hers. Where she was now, he couldn’t say, nor did he like to think of it, or of the red-eyed thing she’d become.

‘I’ve seen them,’ Gotrek growled. Startled, Felix turned. The Slayer had crept up on them unawares, the mist muffling his approach. ‘I‘ve fought them, too.’ The Slayer reached up and snatched the bottle from Bolinas, who made a sound of mild protest. Gotrek upended the bottle and drained it. He pitched it over the side with a gentle toss and said, ‘They die like any other uzkular. Smash the skull or the spine and they’re no threat.’ He hefted his axe meaningfully. In the light of the lanterns hung from the mast, the ancient runes etched into the blade glimmered strangely. ‘The dry dead are lost in dim ages, manling. They are buried in the stuff of the past, and they do not know they are dead.’

‘That doesn’t make me feel any better about encountering them,’ Felix said.

While it was somewhat amusing to hear a dwarf accuse someone else of being lost in the past, he was careful not to let it show on his face. There was no telling how Gotrek would take it.

‘Skull and spine, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘Just aim for the skull and spine.’

‘Wonderful,’ Felix said sourly. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

They stood in silence after that, for what felt like hours. Bolinas guided the Orfeo through the mist-laden waters seemingly as much by instinct as by the directions shouted down to him by the crew perched on the top of the masts. Watch-lanterns had been lit and hung from every available protrusion, but the swelling mist swallowed the light. Braziers and torches provided no aid, and soon, it was hard to discern even as far as the prow of the ship.

Bored, Gotrek had broken open a keg of ale and sat on the poop deck, guzzling alcohol. Felix, for his part, felt too keyed up to drink or lounge. He eyed the mists and idly played with his sword hilt, thinking of sun-baked deserts and antediluvian tombs. Part of him, the sensible part, cringed from the thought, even as it cringed from the idea of trudging through the muck of the Southlands for months on end. But another part of him, the same part that had compelled him to swear a blood-oath to a mad, one-eyed dwarf, was intrigued. His father had funded one of the early attempts by the Altdorf explorers’ guild to map Nehekhara, and Felix could still recall the ancient, crumbling papyrus that his father had mounted on his office wall, preserved in its thick wooden frame.

As a boy, he’d stared at that papyrus with its strange pictographic writing for hours on end. It seemed to promise entrance to a world beyond the dull confines of Jaeger & Sons, a world of danger and excitement. He sighed. He’d got both of those, in spades, these past few years. Felix fancied that he’d had enough adventures to last him for several lifetimes. He’d written barely a third of them down, since time to write was ever in short supply. Sometimes he wondered if he’d ever find that time, or whether he’d perish before then.

From out of the mist came a sound. It wavered through the air and faded, before Felix could focus on it. He tensed, all thoughts of writing washed from his mind by a sudden spurt of adrenaline. ‘Gotrek, did you hear that?’ he said, turning to look for the Slayer. Gotrek was on his feet, axe in hand and his good eye narrowed.

‘Quiet, manling,’ he growled. The dwarf stalked towards the rail, his head cocked.

‘What do you hear, Gurnisson?’ Bolinas said.

‘Hsst,’ Gotrek hissed, flinging up a hand. Bolinas fell silent. Felix heard it a moment later. It was a dull, rhythmic thud – boom-boom-boom – that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. It seemed to pierce the mist from all directions, and for a moment, Felix fancied that it was the crash of waves, or even cannon-fire but it was too regular to be either of those. He squinted, trying to see through the mist, but whatever was causing the sound was undoubtedly too far away.

‘Gotrek,’ he said, ‘what is that?’

Gotrek didn’t reply. The Slayer glared out at the mist, his mouth set in a grim frown, and his axe held across his chest. The thudding grew louder. The crew, who’d fallen silent as the mist enveloped them, began to mutter amongst themselves, until a sharp bark of command from Bolinas’s mate, a heavy-set Bretonnian with a face like the underside of a river-barge and muscles almost as swollen as Gotrek’s, set them scurrying back to their appointed tasks. The thudding continued unabated, and just beneath it, like an afterthought, Felix thought he caught the sound of a splash.

All at once, those gulls that had not taken flight earlier during Gotrek’s outburst did so, in a cacophony of wailing cries and frantically beating wings. The birds heaved themselves upwards with an amount of avian desperation that Felix had only previously observed in pigeons trying to escape an alley cat. He watched them spiral upwards until he lost sight of them in the ever-thickening mist. As the gulls vanished, so too did their shrieks cease, as surely as if the birds had never been. And the thudding continued, unceasing and growing ever louder.

In contrast to the noise, the wind grew weaker and weaker until the sails drooped like empty wineskins and the Orfeo slowed to a crawl. The mist thickened about the sluggish vessel, and soon it was rolling over the rails and curling around the mast, bringing with it a muggy heat. Felix used the hem of his cloak to daub sweat from his face. ‘What’s happened to the wind?’ he said. His voice sounded tinny and muffled to his ears.

‘It fled, like the gulls,’ Bolinas said softly. The slur had vanished from his voice, and he had straightened from his usual reeling slouch. Fear had sobered him up. ‘We’ve entered a sour patch of water and no mistake.’

Felix was about to ask him what he meant, but then thought better of it. Hand wrapped around his sword’s hilt, he made to join Gotrek at the rail when the ship’s compass caught his eye. The compass was a large instrument, composed of equal parts brass and glass, and set into an ornately carved wooden housing that was shaped like an Imperial griffon, rampant. The griffon crouched beneath the weight of the compass, its talons holding the instrument steady, within line of sight of the helmsman. Felix glanced at the compass as he strode to the rail, looked away, and then, as what he‘d seen registered, stopped and looked at it again. His eyes widened slightly and he cursed as he watched the needle spin around and around in an aimless circle.

‘The compass, Gotrek, look at the compass,’ Felix hissed, motioning to catch the Slayer’s attention. Gotrek ignored him.

‘Leave it, manling. Only elves and humans trust such devices. A dwarf always knows what direction he’s facing,’ the Slayer rumbled. His eye narrowed as he peered into the mist. Felix knew that a dwarf could see further and clearer than a man, but he doubted that even Gotrek could see through the obscuring mist. The thudding was growing still louder, as if whatever was causing it were growing steadily closer. It seemed to burrow through the mist towards them, and the throbbing pitch set Felix’s back teeth to itching.

‘And what direction is that, just now, out of curiosity?’ Bolinas interjected.

‘North,’ Gotrek said, and then amended, ‘North-ish.’ He spat and looked at Bolinas. ‘We’re off course, and we have been since we entered this damnable mist.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ Bolinas grunted. ‘Can‘t see, can’t navigate. All we can do is hope that we don’t strike a reef or run aground.’ He glared at the Slayer morosely. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have let you on board, Gurnisson. You’re a damned jinx and no mistake.’

‘I’ll not be denied a chance at my doom by some stinking mist,’ Gotrek snapped pugnaciously. He hefted his axe, and for a moment, Felix thought he was going to lash out at the mist in a show of futile rage. Instead, the Slayer‘s expression grew calculating.

‘What is it?’ Felix said.

‘I think I’ve figured out what that blasted noise is,’ Gotrek said. There was a cheerful note in his voice that Felix had come to know and fear. If Gotrek was happy, it meant that others, Felix included, were soon to become very, very unhappy. The Slayer glanced back at Bolinas and said, ‘I’d advise you to break out the battle-rum and get your crew ready for a fight, Bolinas, because we’re not alone out here.’

Bolinas stared at the Slayer for a moment, and then realisation dawned in his eyes. ‘Ulric’s Teeth,’ he snarled. ‘To arms, lads!’

‘What? What is it?’ Felix said, raising his voice to be heard. The rhythmic thudding was now loud enough to cause his eardrums to twinge in pain, and it rolled across the deck like thunder. And he could hear something else as well. It sounded like oars.

‘Weren’t you listening earlier, manling? The living aren’t the only ones with an interest in these waters – look!’ Gotrek pointed. Felix did, and a moment later felt his heart sink. The galleys that swooped out of the mist were long, lean things that rode low in the water, but even so were larger and heavier than the Orfeo. Indeed, Bolinas’s ship looked like a child’s toy compared to the massive hulks that were even now slicing through the water towards them.

There were a dozen of them, and they moved far more quickly than any ocean-going vessel Felix had ever seen. Each had three great banks of oars on either side, which tore foamy furrows in the water as they thrust the galleys inexorably forwards. Each galley had a single square sail, emblazoned with what he thought might be a stylised asp or viper, mounted on a thick mast set just a little forward of the centre of the vessel, and a smaller, triangular sail mounted on a smaller forward mast.

On the high aft deck of each, emaciated figures pounded wide-bellied drums, and weird, skeletal forms clustered at the rails. Felix felt his skin crawl as he took in the yellowing, bare bones of those warriors. He’d seen the undead before, but they never failed to horrify him. Bones should rest in graves or caskets, not be animated and armed. The closest galley had drawn so near that Felix could make out the strange hieroglyphs that had been painstakingly engraved on the bronze-plated, knife-edged bow that was aimed steadfastly at the midpoint of the Orfeo. Bolinas was screaming orders even as he spun the wheel, trying vainly to turn the ship and avoid the unavoidable.

Felix stared at the approaching vessel, momentarily frozen by his own helplessness in the face of onrushing destruction. Gotrek cursed and gesticulated, frustrated by the situation, rather than afraid. Crewmen called out warnings from the other side of the merchantman. Felix whirled about and his eyes widened as he caught sight of the second flotilla of galleys sweeping towards the Orfeo from the opposite side. These had what he took to be a hawk or other bird of prey in place of the serpent on their sails, but were otherwise identical to his untrained eye. They were massive and bearing down on him, and that was enough.

‘Looks like we’re caught between a troll and a hard place, manling,’ Gotrek whooped. He shook his axe in a ‘come-hither’ manner at the nearest galley. ‘Come on, you dusty buzzard’s leavings! Come to Gotrek!’

For a moment, Felix thought that Bolinas had, impossibly, manoeuvred his ship out of the path of the galley, and his heart leapt in exultation. Then came the crunch of a bronze ram biting into the aft deck, and the Orfeo was punched aside in an explosion of wood and rigging. Men screamed as they were hurled into the air. The force of the impact tore the ship in two, breaking it at the mast.

Felix was flung high into the air. As if in slow motion, as he turned end over end, he saw Bolinas, still clinging to the wheel, go flying forwards in a cloud of splinters. The burly mate vanished in a cloud of red as the mast toppled sideways and a heavy pulley, broken loose from the rigging, struck his skull and pitched him head over heels into the waiting water. And Gotrek, axe in hand and death-song on his lips, seemed to climb the cloud of debris towards the hull of the galley that had bisected the Orfeo.

Felix’s last glimpse of the Slayer was of the moment when Gotrek’s axe thudded home into the side of the galley. The Slayer had not noticed Felix’s absence. Or perhaps he simply didn’t care. Felix plummeted down into the water.

He struck the water hard, and the air was slapped from his lungs by the force of the impact. The water greedily clutched at him, dragging him down into its depths. His cloak billowed and then shrank around him as he sank, smothering him in its sodden folds even as his lungs threatened to burst from lack of air. The weight of his chainshirt squeezed his aching chest, and he thrashed wildly, trying to free himself of the invisible clutches of the sea. Bodies plunged past him, wheeling about into the darkness in a broken gavotte.

Chunks of splintered wood, broken rigging, rope and barrels pierced the gloom of the water, arcing down, riding the current of the ship’s destruction into the depths. Felix tore the grasping edge of his cloak from his face even as a length of broken spar corkscrewed towards him. It caught him a glancing blow and he was sent spinning through the depths, darkness tugging at his mind even as pain ricocheted through his battered body.

His abused body had reached its limit. Impact after impact had drained the strength from his muscles, and his thrashing grew weaker and weaker as the water enfolded him in its embrace. Salt water burned in his nose and mouth and ears, and he could hear the slowing hammer-beat of his own heart. He could see nothing but motley colours, which swirled and billowed across his mind’s eye. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and rest, just for a moment, until his strength returned.

His last thought before blackness claimed him was to wonder who Gotrek would find to write about his doom now.

CHAPTER TWO

The jungles of the Southlands were never silent for the woman called Nitocris.

The trees vibrated with the music of death, from the highest branches to the lowest roots. The air was perfumed with the heady musk of slaughter, and the wind carried the roars of hungry beasts to serenade her as she drowsed.

She lay unmoving on a stone bier, her dusky flesh soaking up the moonlight that streamed down through the gaping hole in the roof of the ziggurat that she had claimed a hundred years before, in a single night of blood and fire.

Her bier occupied the topmost chamber of the ziggurat. The chamber reeked of blood and fear, even now, a century or more since she had claimed it as her citadel. Men and women had gone screaming to their deaths on the bier on which she slumbered, their ribcages burst and their hearts plucked, still pulsing, from their gaping chests. The ghosts of a thousand sacrifices still clung to the vine-strangled stones of the chamber, and they crept through the shadows, hollow-eyed and mutely screaming still as they stalked the quivering phantoms of their slayers in a never-ending chase that provided Nitocris with unceasing amusement.

Veins the hue of ash streaked her flesh. Her hair was the colour of pitch, and so dark that it was almost blue in the moonlight. Her eyes flickered as she dreamt of soft silks and the salt-tinged air of the City of the Dawn. It was a false dream, for she had never been to Lahmia. She had never seen its ivory pillars, engraved with the names of its kings and queens, or the soft-hued marble of its palaces, which mimicked the clouds at dawn. But she wished to. And she would. Such was the command of the Queen of Mysteries.

It was the queen who had shared the dream with Nitocris, long, long ago. She had placed the idea of Lahmia, with all of its wonders and majesty, all that it was and all that it could be, in Nitocris’s mind as gently as she had pierced her flesh with her fangs. As sweetly as she had imparted some of her divine strength to her sister-monarch, and raised Nitocris from the mistress of few, to a queen of many.

And all she asked in return was that Nitocris do as she had always done. All she asked was that the Serpent Queen strike, with fire, fang and ferocity, again and again until the Southlands bowed to the whim of the Queen of Mysteries. It was a small thing, and one Nitocris would have done regardless, and had been doing before she had been inducted into the sisterhood of the Handmaidens of the Moon.

In her sleep, she could hear them, though only faintly. Their voices stretched across trackless deserts, and towering snow-capped mountains such as Nitocris had never seen, but dearly wished to. There was so much to see and experience beyond the swamps and shadows of the Southlands. Her sisters whispered to her of those things, and she caught glimpses of the sun-dappled vineyards of Tilea and the harsh hills of Estalia. She smelt the strange spices that lingered in the air of the Street of Booksellers in Copher, and heard the rattle of drums and the thunder of hooves as the armoured knights of the far distant Empire broke into a gallop. All of these sights and sounds and smells filled her mind almost to bursting, and she groaned in longing. The images spun away like a morning fog, and behind them, her purpose rose up again.

Lahmia, her sisters whispered.

Lahmia, the Queen of Mysteries promised.

‘Lahmia,’ Nitocris murmured. The dream passed, and her eyes flickered and widened. A hiss of disappointment echoed through the chamber, and she sat up. As she did so, her handmaidens rose smoothly from where they’d knelt about her in a great circle. They made no sound, save the rustle of their clothing or the clink of golden jewellery. Nitocris spread her arms and allowed those most favoured in her esteem to raise her from the bier and set her down on the moss-encrusted stone floor.

‘Lahmia, my sisters,’ she said, her voice carrying easily throughout the chamber. She kept her arms extended to either side, and those women who had lifted her began to dress her in her war-panoply, as was the custom.

‘The City of the Dawn, from whence our mother, the Queen of Moonlight and Shadow, the Lady of Air and Darkness, set forth her sandaled foot upon the jewelled thrones of this world and said to them, “Obey”,’ she intoned. As she spoke, her handmaidens slid heavy bracers, wrought from the red iron that lurked in the valleys deep in the interior, over her hands and onto her forearms. ‘She made them whimper like whipped curs, my sisters. Have we not done the same, in her name? Have we not brought low the crude chieftains of our lands, and broken the backs of our enemies, like so?’

She raised her legs, one at a time, allowing her handmaidens to place sandals made from the sinews of a great river crocodile upon her feet. Greaves made from the same strange ore as her bracers were strapped to her shins. ‘Have we not beaten back the two-legged lizards which sought to deny us passage to this frontier?’ she said as her handmaidens slid a cuirass made from the thick, mottled scales of one of the aforementioned creatures about her torso, and cinched tight the rawhide thongs that held it shut. ‘Have we not lined the jungle road with the skulls of our myriad foes, to mark our passage and progress? Have we not left a scar across these lands, a sign that we were here, and that we were strong?’ A robe made from the hides, both false and flesh, of the leopard-worshippers who had once claimed this place as their own, was settled about her shoulders and pinned with a clasp of bone. ‘Have we come far enough, my sisters?’

Many pairs of red eyes met hers, and her handmaidens snarled, as one, ‘No.’

‘No,’ Nitocris purred. ‘No, we have not. Our sisters call to us, my fair ones.’ She flung out a hand. ‘They call to us, and urge us on, for there is much yet to do.’ She pressed her hands to her chest. ‘The dry dead of the treacherous sands still stand between us and that which is ours by right, my sisters. The false dead, the slave dead, who know not the caress of the moon or the pulse of blood – the broken dead, who would dare deny us all that our Queen of Mysteries has promised us. The lands beyond the wastes, the kingdoms beyond the moon and the great water – these are ours,’ she said, digging her claws into her cuirass. She flung out her hands again. ‘This she has promised me, promised us, and by her token, we know it to be true!’

A handmaiden hurried forwards to kneel before Nitocris and raise the heavy, ancient Nehekharan sword, in its sheath of crumbling saurian leather. Nitocris drew the blade and it seemed to sing as it caught the moonlight. It was stained still with the blood of the last person to feel its sting, though that had been centuries ago, and in another land. ‘This,’ Nitocris said softly, clutching the hilt in both hands and pressing the flat of the blade to her face, ‘This blade, which shed the sour blood of our lady’s false friend, the false serpent of decadent Lybaras, is our banner.’ She raised the blade over her head. ‘This blade, this fang, is our decree of war against the usurpers of the empire that is ours by right. For are we not the daughters of Lahmia? Are we not the Handmaidens of the Moon, and the Children of the Dawn? And by this blade, we shall show our queen that we are her true sisters. By this blade, which pierced the breast of the false serpent, the true Serpent Queen shall right the course of things!’

As she shouted those words, her handmaidens raised a cry that echoed throughout the chamber. It was a savage noise, and joyous in its savagery, and Nitocris luxuriated in it. She threw back her head and gave vent to her own pealing cry, like the shriek of some great hunting cat. This was what Nitocris had been built for, from her first breath to her last as a mortal woman. She had been made for battle, the way a sword was made, or a spear.

She had been born in battle. Her mother had given birth to her even as she defended the crude palisades of her tiny kingdom against invaders from the lands of the mangrove coast. Her people had been the people of the serpent even then, worshipping at the altar of the great stone snake that had been carved originally by the two-legged lizards that haunted the ancient cities to the south.

Her mother had raised her to be chieftain, as was her right, and in her youth, Nitocris had proved herself by leading raids deep into the mangrove coast, to harry and break the tribes there and drive them into the shadows.

She had led sorties across the slopes of the fire-mountains, to claim the mineral wealth of the tribes who dwelt there. She had wielded spear and sword against the worshippers of leopards, lizards and bats. She had led a coalition of tribes to repulse invaders from the east and the lands she now knew were called Ind.

Her mother had died at the hands of an armoured raider from some hellish shore, come to take slaves and souls for his skull-hungry god. She had drawn the raider and his followers into the jungles and left them to sink in the mud and marsh, dragged down by their heavy armour while her warriors killed those who made it to solid ground with spear thrust and arrow.

She still had his great helm, with its beast snout and crooked horns and the bloodstains that marked the visor from where she’d pierced his eyes with two quick thrusts of her blade, as a reminder of her mother. She shook off the memories. Such moments were long past and no longer concerned her. Only Lahmia mattered now.

As the echoes of her cry faded, she passed through the ranks of her handmaidens, who fell in behind her. They followed her from the chamber, murmuring to each other. They had been drawn from a dozen tribes over the centuries, offered as tribute initially, and then, when her fame had spread from coast to coast, they had fought for the right to join her. Their tribes were long gone now, dispersed or exterminated in the course of her conquests, but as with their mistress, such mundane matters no longer concerned them. They were daughters of Lahmia now, as much as she was, and it was to Lahmia that their thoughts were turned.

She left the chamber and swept out onto the top of the ziggurat, passing beneath the crude stone arch, shaped like the mouth of a giant skull. The night welcomed her. Bats passed across the surface of the moon above and hundreds of torches lit the grounds below.

From the flat, broken expanse of the roof behind her, the beat of drums throbbed through the steamy air. The thump of those drums pulsed through her, and she knew that it did the same, though to a greater extent, to all the dead. The sound of the drums had wrenched the dead from their holes, and brought them to her. They still did so, in fact. Zombies, human and otherwise, stumbled into the city in groups and singly, following the drums, and her army swelled with every new arrival. She looked down the slope of the ziggurat, towards the rest of the ruin.

The ziggurat occupied the aleph of what had once been a temple city, known by the local tribes as the Temple of Skulls. Crumbled buildings and shattered avenues spread out around it, and all were visible from where she stood. Who the city had belonged to and what fate had befallen them was a mystery she had been unable to solve, more through lack of interest than difficulty. It had been empty of life even in the days of Settra the Imperishable.

When she and her army had arrived, it had been occupied by a tribe with similar aims of conquest to herself. They worshipped a foul deity and waged war to acquire slaves to sacrifice to him. Their priests and champions had worn leopard skins and employed iron talons to shed the blood of their slaves in the name of their murder-god. Nitocris had toppled their altars and butchered their priests and champions, and she had torn the head from the snarling, beast-headed god-thing that had overseen their rites, with its brass collar and blood-dappled fur. The leopard-folk now served her, though in a reduced capacity.

The temple city bustled with activity. Stumbling corpses, animated by the dark will of her handmaidens, carried felled trees to the wharves that lined the sluggish, mosquito-shrouded river running through the northern quarter of the city; there, gangs of emaciated slaves constructed crude dhows and barges. Others forged weapons and armour from scrap iron and bronze to arm the silent legions she had raised from the steaming muck of the jungles. The Southlands were built upon bones; hundreds of generations had risen and fallen, and not just those of men, but of orcs as well, and beasts. As she watched, one such, a massive horn-headed quadruped with an armour-plated tail and a gaping death-wound in its side staggered forwards, dragging a load of lumber towards the shipyards. The dead were her servants, no matter what they had been in life.

‘It is beautiful, in its way, my queen,’ a soft voice said. Nitocris turned. How the newcomer had got so close, without alerting either her or her handmaidens, she could not say. It was one of her more impressive tricks. The woman was pale, paler than Nitocris or any of her handmaidens, and had hair the colour of fresh blood. It hung in sweat-soaked knots and rat-tails from her scalp, and her features were obscured by the tattoo that made it appear as if her face were naught but a grinning skull. Rings of gold, silver and iron decorated her slender fingers, and beneath a thin cloak of feathers, scales and fur, she wore a filthy burnoose, taken from some unfortunate and ill-fated Arabayan. His blood still stained it, in places. She had shed that blood with his sword, which she had also taken, and now wore belted about her waist. She rested a palm on the pommel and inclined her head. ‘The dead are so much more pleasant than the living. Don’t you agree?’

‘That depends entirely on the nature of the dead, Octavia,’ Nitocris said. ‘Some are less pleasant than others.’

‘True,’ Octavia said. ‘As ever, my queen, you speak a mighty truth.’ She hesitated. Nitocris examined her, surreptitiously. Octavia was a native of those far-off lands that so haunted her, crimson haired and milky fleshed, her accent strange and harsh, like the caw of a scavenger bird. She had a peculiar grace, though. Nitocris had noticed it the very first moment she had seen her, staggering along in a slave caravan, bound for an Arabayan outpost near the Gulf of Medes. Nitocris and her warriors, in need of repast, had descended upon that caravan in a fury of fang and claw, and amidst the carnage, Octavia had seized her moment with an alacrity that was at once endearing and worrisome. Endearing, because Nitocris valued ferocity in her servants, but worrisome, for Octavia’s mind moved as quickly as Nitocris’s own.

She had almost killed Octavia then and there, but something about her, some darkling pulse just beneath her flesh, had warned Nitocris that to do so would be a mistake. And when Octavia had dragged her enslaver to his feet and set him to freeing her, with his fumbling dead hands, Nitocris had smiled then, even as she smiled now, her lip curling to expose one long, delicate fang. ‘What do you wish to say, woman?’

‘My brothers,’ Octavia said, bluntly. ‘Where are they?’

Nitocris made a careless gesture. ‘Out there, somewhere,’ she said. Her handmaidens giggled. Octavia did not deign to notice their tittering. Her eyes were only for Nitocris.

‘You should not have sent them away,’ Octavia said, softly, respectfully.

‘I do what I wish with what is mine, necromancer,’ Nitocris purred. ‘You gave them to me, and I must find use for them, eh?’

‘I did not give them to you,’ Octavia protested. There was a hint of anger in her words, and Nitocris smiled again. It was rare that the necromancer showed any emotion. Her brothers were her weak spot, unworthy beasts though they were. ‘You took them.’

‘Either way, they are mine, as you are mine, Octavia of Ostermark.’

‘Altdorf,’ Octavia said.

‘What?’

‘I’m from Altdorf, my queen. Not Ostermark,’ Octavia said.

Nitocris blinked, momentarily nonplussed. There was no insult in Octavia’s words, no hidden jibe. It was merely a statement of correction, said without thought or agenda. That made it worse. She frowned. ‘That is what I said,’ she growled.

Her handmaidens had ceased their giggling, and they watched, ready to leap upon Octavia at her command. Indeed, she knew that many among them would take any opportunity to do so, even as they had taken the necromancer’s brothers for their playthings. She had punished her sisters for that – men were not worthy of her kiss. They were not worthy of eternity, and not necessary. Octavia, however, was.

Nitocris raised a hand, and her sisters relaxed, though their red gazes did not waver from Octavia, who, for her part, didn’t seem in the least concerned. And perhaps she wasn’t. This close, Nitocris could feel the chill of the cold fire that burned in the necromancer. There was power in that pale frame, at once lesser and greater than her own.

Nitocris had learned the arts of death at the feet of her queen, who had tutored her in the ways of their kind, even as she shaped the course of Nitocris’s coming centuries. But while Nitocris’s will was strong enough to control armies of the dead and even raise small numbers of them, her skill with the formulas of the Corpse Geometries was lacking. The bloated zombies of marsh and river could not resist her call, but the phantoms of ruin and jungle slipped through her fingers like sand. Octavia, however, had a gift for ghosts. They swarmed about her like loyal pets, and she plucked them from the bodies of the slain with the same ease that Nitocris could pluck out a man’s heart.

It was Octavia who had raised the fleet of Cathayan war-junks, Arabayan dhows and Imperial merchantmen from the greedy waters, and drawn their waterlogged crews upriver to the Temple of Skulls, where they now sat in hastily constructed quays, waiting to take her legions on board. And it was Octavia who would enable her to tumble the stones of Lybaras.

‘Of course, my queen,’ Octavia said. She inclined her head. It wasn’t quite a bow, but it was as close as the red-headed woman got. ‘I merely misheard.’

Nitocris growled softly. Then, she sniffed and looked away. ‘I sent your brothers away. They cannot control themselves. They are rapacious, and we cannot afford to spare any more slaves to feed their gluttony.’

‘If you would let them stay by my side, I could control them,’ Octavia said.

‘Yes, I know,’ Nitocris said. She looked at Octavia and added, ‘Another reason I sent them away.’

Octavia frowned. She made as if to protest, but then visibly thought better of it. Instead, she said, ‘My scouts report that the Serpent Queen’s fleet has engaged that of Mahrak in the Bitter Sea.’

‘Do not call her that,’ Nitocris snapped, whirling to face the necromancer. Octavia frowned and stepped back. ‘I am the Serpent Queen. That false creature is nothing but a memory long overdue for forgetting,’ Nitocris snarled, snapping her fangs. The words were not hers, but those of her mistress. She had learned them by rote, and they sprang unbidden to her lips. The way her queen had spoken of the warrior-queen of Lybaras had always disturbed her. Fondness for an enemy was an alien emotion to Nitocris. Enemies were for killing, not for sighing over.

And the false serpent of Lybaras was her enemy now, even as she was the enemy of all the children of the City of the Dawn. Nitocris would break her. She would sweep aside her city and rebuild it over into a gateway to Lahmia.

‘As you say, my queen,’ Octavia said. She raised her hands in a placating gesture. ‘I merely wished to inform you of the success of your plan.’

Nitocris nodded, mollified. She turned and raised the sheathed Nehekharan blade over her head. ‘Do you hear, my sisters? Our enemies fall upon each other like squabbling apes. Their eyes turn from us, and we shall use their distraction to strike. First, we pull Lybaras to pieces stone by stone, and then – Lahmia!’

As the vampires shrieked in jubilation, Octavia, forgotten, began to make her way carefully down the steep stairs of the ziggurat. Her fingers tapped out an idle, cheerful rhythm on the pommel of her blade, though she felt anything but.

As she descended, she cast a wary eye at the jungle, which crouched just outside the rapidly expanding line of felled trees that ringed the ruined city. She had never liked forests, and a jungle was just a very hot, very wet forest. She watched a gang of zombies topple an ancient tree and smiled. The smile faded a moment later.

It had all gone so wrong, so very quickly. It had been life at its worst: chaotic, dangerous, and confusing. That was why she preferred death and the dead. Change was her enemy, even as much as the idiot living who sought to free her of her fleshy bonds. She had never been good with change. New things had confused her, even as a girl. Routine was her salvation and shield, a bulwark against an overwhelming world. Repetition, pattern and precision were her tools in dealing with happenstance.

When her parents had perished in one of the many, many minor plagues that periodically swept through the poorer quarters of Altdorf, she had sat in her room, on her bed, staring out the window for days on end as her mind tried to process the sudden absence of the two people whose presence she thought inviolate.

Never before had life struck at her so directly. It had gone rampaging on, sweeping all remnants of her parents away, and bringing upheaval in its wake. It had been in that period of paralysis that the scales had fallen from her eyes. To live was to be trapped in the chains of change, to grow, to wither and to vanish. Entropy feeding entropy, life spreading life even as it devoured the living. Madness, it was all madness. Only in death was there true stability, for the dead did not, could not, change. She longed for death, in those early days, before she’d realised the selfishness of such longings.

Death was a gift. That most folk were too ignorant to see it as such was no matter.

She had started small, with scraps of lore gleaned from the hedge-witches and alleyway wizards who promised miracles for a guilder, and scattered at the sight of a witch hunter. New things those, but she had assembled them into a routine that had gradually expanded. By the time she’d made the acquaintance of the little Tilean with the black teeth, change no longer frightened her, though it still frustrated her to no end.

He had been her last teacher and her best – Franco Fiducci, with his strange spectacles and his funny way of speaking. Her brothers had not liked him. They had not liked her studies either, but they were determined to protect her, her faithful, unwavering brothers. Fiducci had taught her much, before he’d run afoul of the templars of Morr and been forced to flee Altdorf in a night of fire and screams.

She’d liked the little man, his funny accent and clownish ways. He had tattooed her face for her, upon her request. And he had taught her the beautiful formulas of the Corpse Geometries, and set her feet on the path that had brought her to her current situation.

‘In Araby,’ he had assured her, ‘there is knowledge that was old when Sigmar was puking up his mother’s milk.’ So to Araby she had gone, and across Araby she had travelled, following secrets and scraps, learning more and more; and as she learned, her plan had grown from the merest whim to a desire, and then, to a strategy.

It was a strategy that hinged upon one factor: the lost libraries of Lahmia. It was, according to respectable sources, the greatest necromantic library in the world. It was the source of all modern writings on death and the arts associated with it. As the black legends that had led her into the desert told it, it was in Lahmia where the arts of necromancy had flourished in the wake of their discovery by the Great Necromancer. It was on Lahmia she had set her sights.

And it was thanks to Lahmia that she had tumbled into her current circumstances.

Her fingers snapped tight about the pommel of her blade. She paused, memories of that night a lifetime away, for all that it had only been a few months, seeping to the surface of her consciousness. The nomads had taken her by surprise, and her brothers had been left bleeding and dying after an attempt to rescue her some days later. When Nitocris had torn through the nomads not long after, she had begged the vampire to let them die. Instead, Nitocris had handed them over to her handmaidens, who had done as vampires invariably did. They were profligate creatures. Fiducci had said that the only reason the vampire counts of Sylvania had failed in their bid to take the Empire was due to their excessive numbers. One vampire was a persuasive argument. A hundred vampires was merely an extended squabble.

She much preferred the company of the quiet dead to those who insisted on having a conversation. She paused on a wide, flat landing, and looked out over the ruin, and the silent legions that laboured under the lash of her will. She had dredged the dead from every rain-swollen river and root-choked battlefield for a hundred miles. Man, animal and otherwise, they had come stumbling through the jungle and still came at her call. They loved her, and she loved them.

Octavia cocked her head and listened to the pounding of the drums, echoing down from the top of the ziggurat. She had crafted them herself, from the flayed flesh of the nomads who had captured her, and she had set their fleshless bones to pounding out the night-black rhythm that stirred the dead in their holes and bowers. Their spirits had thanked her for it. Their lives had been short, chaotic and brutal. But now, in death, they had purpose. The drums were a simple enough conjuring and more efficient than Nitocris’s own necromantic fumbling. While the drums beat, the dead would come. When the drums stopped, those corpses that had not already arrived would sink back into oblivion, returning to the long night of the grave.

Octavia sighed softly and looked up. Phantoms, spectres and ghosts wafted through the air like leaves on the wind. They choked the night sky, lured to the ruin by the drums even as the more solid of their kind were. They swirled about one another, seemingly heedless and unheeding, unless you knew what to look for. Idly, she raised a hand over her head and spread her fingers. The ghosts hovering directly overhead began to circle her like a flock of trained crows as her magics touched what was left of their minds. Ghosts and their sort were personalities bereft of body, even as zombies were bodies without personality. It was what made the former so decidedly unpleasant and difficult to control. Unless you know how to talk to them, she mused.

She gestured gently, and they drifted down towards her, clustering about her in a clammy fog. She reached out, stroking ethereal faces and brushing wispy hairs from agonized faces. The ghosts pushed towards her like eager pets, drinking up her warmth, and she shivered in pleasure. ‘Gently now, gently,’ she murmured, as they clutched at her, billowing past one another in their hunger. ‘There is enough for all.’ She closed her eyes, and let the chill clutch of the dead soothe her anxieties.

Soothing as it was, it was dangerous to allow them to suckle at her soul, for there was always the chance that they would take too much. If that ever happened, if she were too weak to pull away from them, she would join their motley throng. She felt the siren call of that twilight existence more strongly now than ever before. She did not long for death, for there was still much work to be done, but she hungered for it nonetheless. It ate at her soul, though she knew that should her heart cease to beat she would be unable to indulge in sweet oblivion. She would rise again, to complete her task. She clutched at one of the amulets she wore. It was a small, innocuous thing, in the shape of a woman’s mouth, and she brought it to her lips and kissed it.

Something growled, and she looked up. A pair of leopards climbed the ziggurat towards her, their eyes shining faintly in the moonlight.

She gestured and the ghosts departed, though reluctantly. She watched them rise to join the others and then she extended a hand to the newcomers. Their rough, dry tongues kissed her fingers. Like everything else in the city, save for the slaves, the big cats were dead. Bone showed through their fur in places, and their skin hung from them in wasted folds. Nonetheless, they were still mighty beasts.

Octavia sank to one knee and they came forward, their heavy skulls settling gently on her shoulders as she hugged them tight. She closed her eyes, breathing in their sickly sweet stink. She plucked a maggot from the ear of one and popped it into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment, considering. Then she dragged their heads close to her own and said, ‘Find my brothers.’

She released them and stood. The big cats sprang away with hoarse growls and bounded down the ziggurat. They pelted through the crowds of zombies, streaking towards the jungle. Octavia watched them go. Then she looked back towards the apex of the ziggurat, where Nitocris still stood. The vampire was arrogant, conceited and single-minded; a dead woman with all the worst qualities of the living.

But she would take Octavia to Lahmia. And that was all that mattered.

CHAPTER THREE

Felix awoke to the shrieking of dead men.

Or so his jumbled thoughts insisted. His mind was filled with the shapes of drowning sailors, sinking past him into the depths of the Bitter Sea, clawing vainly for the surface. As he jolted awake, he fancied that they had grabbed him, to pull him down into the depths as well. His head jerked up, and a hoarse, whooping scream escaped his raw throat.

Brightly coloured birds rose from the tangled ceiling of branches above him, crying out shrilly in reply. It was their cries that had awakened him, and that he had mistaken for the screams of the Orfeo’s unfortunate crew.

Felix let his head fall back, against the rough bark of a tree. The air stank of swamp and rot, and he was soaked through with muddy seawater. Weak drizzles of sunlight dripped through the mass of branches overhead. It was day, though what day, and what time of day, he had no clue. He lay waist-deep in sludgy, shifting water, his arms and legs tangled in the fat roots of the looming mangrove trees. Insects spattered against his muddy features, seeking bare flesh, and he extricated a hand to fend them off. He gave a cry of disgust as he saw the fat leeches that clung to his palm and wrist, and he clawed at them, his heart hammering in his chest.

‘Gotrek,’ he rasped, then, after mustering more volume, ‘Gotrek!’ It was instinct that made him cry out for the Slayer. A moment later, he recalled his last sight of Gotrek, as he had hurled himself at the galley that had smashed Bolinas’s vessel to flinders. He fell silent. In any event, the only reply he received was the screams of startled birds, and the splash of something sliding into the water. The latter provoked images of the giant snakes and reptiles that he’d been assured lurked in the Southlands, and he flailed at the roots and fought against the soft, sucking eddy of the tide that had carried him into the depths of what surely must be the Shifting Mangrove Coastline.

What he knew of the eastern coast of the Southlands could be written on a scrap of paper. A very small scrap, with room left over for a map and a few personal anecdotes.

It was supposedly nothing but an immense, extended mangrove swamp for miles on end, resting on a sargasso of roots and decay. He’d spoken to men in Sartosa who’d seen it, or explored portions of it, for the coast was as far as most got. The mangroves were less inhospitable than the steaming jungles of the interior, but they were still more dangerous than most were comfortable with. Poisonous snakes, hungry saurians, stinging insects and savage tribes were but some of the dangers that lurked amongst the close-set greenery. Even the elves didn’t come into the mangroves, if they could help it.

The water wasn’t deep, but it had a strong grip. Felix finally pushed himself to his feet and clambered awkwardly up onto the roots of a mangrove tree, Karaghul flopping unhelpfully against his leg. He was relieved that the blade had somehow remained by his side, all odds to the contrary. His cloak was stiff and heavy with mud and grime, and his boots were filled with silt. Luckily his journal was wrapped in oilskin, or it would have been ruined as well. He pawed ineffectually at the filth on his face and searched intently for any more leeches. Finding none, he breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled his gloves from his belt and slipped them on. Despite the heat, he thought it best to be as covered as possible.

Resting from his exertions, he looked about him. Everywhere he looked were hulking mangrove trees that clogged the water with their coiling roots and blocked the sky with their thick, intertwining branches. The trees were so tightly packed here that he could use the roots as a makeshift boardwalk. But he could hear the soft susurrus of the tide somewhere close by.

Felix sank into a crouch and rested his back against the trunk of the tree he’d been tangled in. He had no idea where he was, in relation to where the Orfeo had gone down. The current could have carried him for miles, as strong as it had been. It was only luck that had carried him into the shallows.

That or it was the whim of the gods. Felix cocked his head, peered up at the green roof over his head and muttered, ‘Many thanks, Sigmar, Ulric, Myrmidia, Manann, Taal, Rhya, Shallya, Ranald, Grimnir and whoever else watches out for fools, adventurers and dwarf-friends.’ If the gods heard, they gave no sign. Felix sighed and rested his wrists on his knees.

He would take a moment to regain his strength, and then decide what to do. He’d lived rough before, and there was likely no shortage of game in the mangroves, though potable water was going to be a problem. He scratched his chin, trying to not to think about how thirsty he was. He’d gone without before, he could do so again.

As he sat, he wondered whether Gotrek had met his doom. It seemed less glorious than the Slayer might wish, but then, being picky had kept Gotrek alive far longer than most doom-seekers. Of course, Felix would never say that to the Slayer’s face. At best, he’d get a scowling, and at worst, a thrashing.

That Gotrek had never struck him, in the entirety of their association, did not preclude the possibility of it ever happening. Gotrek would never be accused of being sensitive, but the subject of his persistence on this side of the veil was a sore one.

Gotrek had cleaned out entire alehouses after an innocent prodding from mouthy fools the worse for drink. Once or twice, those fools had even been dwarfs, who really ought to have known better.

Felix closed his eyes, imagining it. Gotrek would have made the rail, of course. The Slayer had scaled mountains, ridden across rivers of magma, hacked through glaciers and fought his way through armies just to reach whatever that moment’s worthy doom was. Gravity and arrows would be little hindrance. No, he would have made the rail and the deck, and then what? Most assuredly a cloud of bone-chips if any of the dead men who were on the galley tried to get in his way. He frowned. It would have been arrows, in the end. Even Gotrek couldn’t fight arrows, though he’d given it a try more than once. Felix could see it, in his mind’s eye. He could see the arrows, loosed by skeletal hands, flashing through the moonlight to pierce scarred flesh and finally, at long last, bring down Gotrek Gurnisson as dead men looked on in emotionless satisfaction.

A sense of melancholy swept through him as the image flashed and faded. That was no fitting doom for Gotrek. Gotrek had battled daemons and dragons. He had traded axe-blows with Garmr the Gorehound, torn the head from Arek Daemonclaw and saved Nuln. He had fought Mannfred Von Carstein, for Sigmar’s sake!

But there was no other outcome. Hundreds of enemies would have been waiting for him on that galley, armed to the teeth, and unafraid of a lone, albeit utterly mad, dwarf. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that he could almost hear Gotrek’s bellicose death-song, bulling its way through the muggy air. A moment later he blinked. He sat upright with a suddenness that almost sent him toppling from his perch. He had heard something!

Not Gotrek, but something else. Felix rose to his feet, his head cocked. Sound moved oddly in the trees. Was that a scream, or perhaps a cry for help?

Felix began to move towards the noise, scrabbling across the latticework of tree roots. His boots slipped and slid on the wet bark, and more than once he was nearly pitched headfirst into the dark, muddy water that swirled below. But he kept his balance, and gradually increased his pace, until he was pelting across the roots, his aching muscles and growing thirst forgotten.

The strands of sunlight that punctuated the dim interior of the mangroves faded, and grew strained even as he spotted the first bit of debris – a broken section of spar, lodged in the roots of several trees, as he himself had been. He saw more and more of it, and he began to follow the debris, rather than the noise, which was growing intermittent and faded. Sections of mast, tatters of rigging and broken pulleys clogged the waterways between the root systems of the mangroves. Here and there he saw bodies as well, bloated from their drowning, and broken by the current. Once or twice, he almost stepped on one, and his stomach protested sternly as he forced himself to hop over the bedraggled carcass. He recognized none of them, for which he was thankful.

The Orfeo had been split in two; there was no reason to think that some of the crew hadn’t managed to survive, clinging to the prow section. If the current had carried him into the shallows beneath the mangroves, it could have done the same for them. His heart leapt at the thought.

It sank a moment later. He had been correct in his reasoning. But others had got to it first. Felix slowed as the thick knot of trees that rose ahead of him like a green curtain suddenly echoed with growls and snarls. Interspersed were pathetic screams, weak and thready and then, abruptly silenced. Felix crept through the trees, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Every instinct he possessed screamed for him to run back the way he‘d come, that the gods had seen fit to spare him whatever fate had befallen the poor soul beyond the curtain of trees just ahead. But he pressed on. Fear hadn’t quite been burned out of him by his association with Gotrek, but it had been tempered by curiosity. Also, Felix had never been one to stand around and let other men suffer, when he might be able to prevent it. And the sounds slithering about him from just ahead were definitely those of suffering.

But his time with Gotrek had also taught him caution. The Slayer might have gone charging in, but Felix was far less durable. He cast about him quickly, and then, with a grimace, he slid slowly from the boardwalk of roots into the water. The current was strong, even here, and it clutched at him. He forced himself down into the muck and mud, and pulled the filth-encrusted hood of his cloak up over his head. He’d learned the trick from a forester in the Drakwald, who covered himself in dirt, leaves and dung to obscure his scent and shape from the beastmen he hunted for bounty. Felix hadn’t believed that such a tactic would work, until he’d seen the man slither across the forest floor like an ambulatory patch of night soil and cut the legs right out from under a goat-headed sentry.

Covered in his damp, muddy cloak, and up to his armpits in the water, he began to pull himself hand over hand through the network of roots, careful to make no more noise than necessary. Luckily, the current was loud enough to hide the sound of his passage.

The water was dark and shadows obscured the tangled roots, and though he could see weak sunlight filtering through the cracks between branches above, beneath the trees it was as dark as dusk.

His fingers tightened about Karaghul’s hilt as he caught sight of a shattered section of the hull of the Orfeo. It had slid through the trees, uprooting several, and had come to rest on its side on a hummock of semi-solid earth, with most of it extended out over the water. Several bodies had accompanied it, carried in its wake, most likely. Debris lay scattered about, floating in the shallow water or hanging from the trees, and a section of mast had fallen athwart a large mangrove, creating an improvised gibbet, from which a single, bloodied form dangled. He had been caught beneath his armpits by the coils of rope, and his feet dangled limply as he twisted slowly. His face, blackened by bruises and slow, ongoing asphyxiation, hung slack on a head that lolled loosely. Every so often, a wheezing whimper escaped his slack lips. With a chill, Felix realised that it had been the cries of this poor soul that he’d heard. And, below him, gathered like jackals, were the entities responsible for those other, more horrible noises.

Felix had faced the gaunt, grey shapes that leapt and clawed for the dying man’s feet before, and more than once. Ghouls, though somewhat different from those he’d faced before, were covered in barbaric tattoos, and their swollen flesh was punctured in places by bone needles and animal claws. Felix felt a rush of bile as he caught a whiff of their pungent stink. They smelt of sour milk and rotten meat, and they provoked disgust in him greater even than did the skaven. Ghouls were a cracked reflection of men, debased and brought low by the taste of human flesh and necromancy, not necessarily willingly. Though they were no longer men, they had once been so, and he hated them, even as he pitied them.

Some of the ghouls yelped and barked and hissed as they fought and shoved and leapt to swipe at the soles of the dangling man’s feet. Others squatted silently, watching him with the patience of scavengers everywhere. There were a dozen of the cannibals, far more than Felix was comfortable dealing with alone. He hesitated. They hadn’t noticed him yet. He could simply slip back into the mangroves, and retreat to safety.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something long and darkly colourful sliding towards him across the surface of the water. Felix froze as the snake drew across his line of sight, within easy striking distance of his eyes. He didn’t recognise the species, but it hardly mattered. Its bite was likely lethal, unless it was one of the ones that killed by spraying poison. Either way, he was as good as dead if he riled it up. The snake turned slowly towards him, its bright, flat gaze examining him with all the curiosity of a kitten.

Slowly, slowly, it began to wriggle towards him across the water, its tongue flickering. Felix’s heart began to hammer so loudly that he feared the ghouls might hear him. The snake inched closer, studying him intently. Desperate, mouth dry, blood pulsing in his ears and his heart twitching in his chest, Felix raised his hand to just below the waterline, palm first, so that the snake slid over it. Then, before it could escape, he snapped his fingers closed, pinning its head. With a convulsive jerk, he sent the snake sailing through the air and as far away from him as he could manage. It hit the water with a short, sharp splash.

One of the ghouls, closer to him than the others, crouched on a chunk of mast that extended at an angle from the water and gnawing on an arm wrenched from the corpse of one of the bodies scattered about nearby, whirled like a startled cat, its yellow gaze alert. Its jaw worked unconsciously as it eyed the trees warily, chewing a stringy lump of muscle and fat. The ghoul swallowed its morsel and relaxed, turning back to watch its pack-mates caper and quarrel. Felix realised that he’d half-drawn Karaghul, and slowly eased the blade back into its sheath.

The dangling crewman moaned and the ghouls beneath him set up a raucous howl, as if encouraging the former to die swiftly. Felix closed his eyes and whispered a quiet prayer to Sigmar. There was nothing for it. He couldn’t leave – not if there was any chance he could save the crewman. He released Karaghul’s hilt and instead drew his dagger. It was a long, thin, pointed blade of Tilean design, elegant and lethal. It was not a cutting blade, but a stabbing one, meant for sliding into the sides of throats or between ribs, and Felix had, much to his shame, used it so more than once. His mind shied away from the thought. He had never killed, save in necessity, but that didn’t make the red in his ledger any easier to contemplate.

Slowly, Felix eased forward, sinking down so that only his nose and eyes remained above water, and those were hidden by the dip of his hood. He pushed himself towards the closest ghoul. He would have to be quick, and merciless, otherwise he’d join the unfortunate crewman on the feast-table. As he drew close to the ghoul he made sure that the beast was between him and its fellows. When the other ghouls set up another loud caterwauling, Felix struck, rising swiftly and snaking one gloved palm across the creature’s mouth even as he drove his dagger up into its back. The blade was sharp, and he knew where to put it. The ghoul spasmed as Felix drew it backwards into the water as swiftly and as silently as possible.

It kicked once, as he shoved it down beneath the wreckage. After sawing his knife about inside it to ensure its death, he withdrew the blade and swung himself around the wreckage it had been crouching on. The others had not yet noticed their comrade’s absence from its perch. That gave him the advantage, if his luck held. Grimly, Felix began to swim towards the shattered section of hull, where several more ghouls crouched and gnawed on the pasty remnants of dead sailors. His plan, such as it was, wasn’t the best, but it was all he could come up with. Too intent on their meals or the entertainment provided by the dying man, none of the brutes noticed Felix as he slithered into the wreckage beneath them. He peered up through the web of shattered timber and stretched rigging at the closest of the cannibals, and used the hilt of his dagger to rap on a dangling pulley.

At the sudden, sharp clatter, the ghoul peered down with a puzzled grunt. Still clutching the lump of gnawed gristle in its malformed jaws, it began to descend through the web of debris towards the water, its head angled down and its body contorted like that of a lizard climbing down a wall. Felix, hidden by his cloak and the wreckage, waited with his dagger ready. As the ghoul passed through the shadows of the hull, its eyes glowed with a feral phosphorescence that put Felix in mind of an alley cat hunting for mice.

The ghoul paused in its descent and sniffed the air. It was less than an arm’s length above Felix, and it looked everywhere save straight down. Felix tensed and then uncoiled like a spring, the point of his dagger piercing the soft flesh beneath the creature’s jaw and plunging upwards into its brain. Felix caught the body as it fell and dragged it beneath the water even as he had the first, though with a great deal more noise.

It couldn’t be helped, but he knew the element of surprise was gone. He shoved the twitching ghoul down, lodging it beneath the wreckage, and crawled away, keeping his head below water. By the time he surfaced a few feet away, from under a layer of rope, his lungs were burning and he greedily sucked in a lungful of air. Ghouls clustered on the top of the wreckage, peering down and making soft questioning sounds. Four of them, Felix saw. That left half a dozen outside the wreckage. Slowly, the beasts began to descend, calling out in barbarous grunts for their missing companion.

Felix knew that he would only have a moment to deal with them before the others came to investigate. He would have to be quick. Quietly, moving no more than necessary, he pushed himself up out of the water and waited. The ghouls began to squirm through the wreckage, sniffing and growling to one another. Perhaps they thought their pack-mate had found a hidden treat, or maybe their capacity for concern was not lessened by their bestial nature. Felix doubted the latter; in other encounters, he’d seen the creatures turn on their weaker pack-mates readily enough when they were peckish. As they turned away from him, he began to climb. Not far, and not fast, but just enough to get above the four ghouls who now prowled through the water like ambulatory crocodiles.

Dagger in hand, he waited until one drew below him and then let himself fall onto its broad, bony back. His cloak flared about him and covered his prey, even as he used both hands to ram his dagger through the back of the ghoul’s neck. His weight drove it beneath the water, but his strike hadn’t been as true as his previous two blows. The ghoul was dying, but it was not dead. Gargling on its own blood, his dagger lodged in its neck, it writhed beneath him. A flailing backhand caught Felix and sent him crashing back into the water.

The dying ghoul rose with a strangled shriek, and clawed at its neck. Felix, desperate, lashed out with his foot and caught it in its bloated belly. The ghoul made a choking sound and bent double. Felix threw himself forward, planted his palms against its back, and slid over the retching ghoul. As he splashed down behind it, he twisted swiftly about and snatched his dagger free. The ghoul reared up, and Felix drove the blade into its back again and again in a flurry of blows. The ghoul sagged with a sigh, and as it fell, Felix saw that its fellows were clambering towards him with simian agility.

With a curse, he sent the dagger hurtling towards the closest of the creatures. Without waiting to see whether it had struck, he ripped Karaghul from its sheath and lunged to meet the beasts. He held the sword like a spear and thrust it forwards with both hands, catching one of the ghouls in the chest as it flung itself at him. The ancient templar blade pierced the ghoul’s rubbery flesh with ease, and it vomited blood. Its scabrous talons plucked at his wrists, and its jaws champed in mindless agony. Felix jerked back. He’d felt Karaghul bite bone, and the blade was lodged in the thing’s chest. He lost his grip on the sword as the third ghoul sprang onto him, bowling him over. He splashed back into the water, the ghoul’s taloned fingers scrabbling at his throat. Felix smashed his forearm into the brute’s twisted features, forcing it to pull back. He drove a punch into its jaw, and it rolled away from him with a snarl.

Felix flailed, searching for something, anything, to use as a weapon. His hand found a jagged strip of wood and as the ghoul threw itself on him again, jaws wide, Felix shoved the long splinter down its throat. It flopped off him, twitching and fumbling at its mouth. Felix pushed himself up, grabbed the creature by its scalp and forced its head beneath the water. It clawed at him, tearing gouges in his sleeves and its claws became tangled in his chainshirt, but he didn’t release it until it had stopped thrashing.

When it had gone limp, he released it and rose, turning to look for the remaining ghoul. His heart rattled against his ribcage, and his breath came in harsh, rasping gasps. Adrenaline surged through him, and his limbs trembled with exertion. He swiped sweat and blood out of his face and saw the ghoul, dead, his dagger jutting from its eye. He swallowed and made his way towards it, to pluck his dagger free. Then he turned towards the one he’d pinned with Karaghul.

It was still alive and it whined as it saw him start towards it. It fumbled at the blade with nerveless fingers and tried to squirm away as he approached. Felix hesitated. He felt slightly sick as he contemplated the raw fear in the ghoul’s eyes. Then he remembered the dangling crewman, and the screams he’d heard. There had been other survivors, before the ghouls had got to them. His expression hardened. He reached out and took the hilt of his sword and gave it a twist and a shove. The ghoul gave a rattling groan and died. Felix tore the sword free and hefted it.

A noise from above caught his attention. He looked up. The remaining six ghouls stared down at him, their expressions unreadable. Felix met their gazes and said, ‘Well? What are you waiting for?’

The ghouls shrieked as one and began to spring down towards him. They clambered and swung and pounced, wailing and howling. Felix felt no fear, only resignation. It had only been the sheerest luck that he had survived fighting four of the beasts. Six was at least two too many, and he readied himself to meet them as best he could, hip-deep in brackish water, his limbs leaden with exhaustion. He tightened his grip on his sword and dagger.

The first ghoul came at him in a wild lunge, with a bestial yell. Felix swept Karaghul up and across in a sloppy example of an Altdorf mittelhau. The ghoul, caught in midair, flipped head over heels, trailing brackish blood. Felix met the second, which dived under the tumbling body of its fellow, with his dagger. He drove the blade into the ghoul’s belly, even as its teeth slammed down on his shoulder, snagging in the sleeve of his chainshirt. Hauled off balance, Felix staggered. He was forced to release his dagger, and the ghoul clutched bonelessly at him, pulling him off balance.

With a strangled yell, he shoved the dying cannibal away, but not quickly enough. A ghoul snaked its arm around his throat, hauling him back. Another latched on to his sword-arm, dragging it down. He pounded futilely at the arm around his throat with his free hand.

The remaining two beasts charged towards him, eyes alight with a hideous hunger.

Felix kicked out at them. He caught one in the face and felt its jaw crunch at the point of impact. The other crashed into him and its fingers snagged his hair. It yanked his head aside, and hissed in obvious delight.

Felix continued to struggle, but he was pinned. The ghouls tittered in delight, and he could smell their foul breath as it washed over him. He closed his eyes, awaiting the fatal bite.

And as crooked, yellowing fangs grazed his throat he gave vent to a final yell.

CHAPTER FOUR

The ghoul grunted. Felix cracked an eyelid. The ghoul that had been preparing to bite out his throat stepped back, a confused look on its face. It reached up with a trembling claw to gingerly touch the tip of the arrow that had suddenly sprouted from between its open jaws. It grunted again, and then toppled backwards into the water with a splash. The remaining ghouls released Felix and scuttled off, splashing away from the wreckage and their intended prey.

Felix slumped, leaning on his sword. He looked up. A man stood perched on the curve of the ruptured hull, a second arrow notched and ready to let fly. ‘You don’t speak Reikspiel, by chance?’ the newcomer shouted down.

‘I’m from Altdorf,’ Felix coughed.

‘Small world, so am I,’ the archer laughed. He lowered his bow. ‘Can’t be too sure, though. We get all kinds on this coast – Estalians, Tileans, Norscans, and all of them rattling on in their own languages, rather than learning a proper tongue.’ He paused. ‘Another few moments, and you’d have been meat for the beast, neighbour.’ He was a lean man, almost cadaverous, and pale despite the climate. He wore a battered breastplate, its markings long since scoured off by the elements. A long sword was sheathed on his hip, and beneath his piecemeal armour he wore the grimy leathers of a seasoned traveller.

‘I thank you for your timely intervention,’ Felix said. He grabbed his dagger and jerked it from the dead ghoul’s belly. He wiped it clean on his trousers and sheathed it. He looked up at his saviour and said, ‘Out of curiosity, where in the name of Sigmar did you come from?’

The archer frowned. ‘Mangrove Port,’ he said, ‘Where else?’

Felix almost sagged in relief. ‘Thank Sigmar.’ If his rescuer was from the port that meant that they hadn‘t been driven as far off course as he’d feared. For a moment, he was paralysed by the possibilities filling his head, now that he knew he wasn’t going to die out here. He could catch a ship for, well, anywhere. Relief warred with sadness. If Gotrek was dead, then he was free. He was free of his obligations, free to go where he wanted, without regard to a taciturn travelling companion. He could go home, or to Marienburg, or back to Tilea. Felix twitched, sending the thoughts fluttering away. It was best to stay in the here and now, until his feet were on familiar ground. He’d known Gotrek long enough to know that until he saw the body, there was every reason to believe the Slayer had survived, regardless of the odds. His thoughts of Tilea, and Altdorf, faded.

‘I’m happy to accept your gratitude, neighbour, but no need to deify me,’ the archer said as he slung his bow. ‘My name’s Sigmund, Sigmund Steyr, late of Altdorf and currently of this fine garden of rapturous delight. Come, let me give you a hand up, herr…?’

‘Jaeger,’ Felix said, climbing towards Steyr’s extended hand. ‘Felix Jaeger.’ He caught Steyr’s hand and found himself hauled up onto the hull. Steyr was strong, and surprisingly so, for being so thin. He looked up at the roof of branches and squinted.

Felix saw that the shafts of sunlight had turned a dull grey, and guessed that the sun was hidden by clouds. From overhead came the rumble of thunder. It rattled down, causing the tree branches to clatter in sympathy.

‘Well, Felix, we ought to get under cover. It’s the rainy season, and the sky will soon be weeping fit to drown a man where he stands.’ Steyr raised his hands to his mouth and shouted, ‘Ho! Greedy-guts! Patty-cake! I found one!’

Felix blinked. ‘Greedy-guts?’ he asked.

‘Gregory, my brother,’ Steyr said, ‘and Pieter, my other brother.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Be glad my sister Octopus isn’t here, or you’d be getting the whole Steyr family in one go, and I’ve been told that’s a heady experience.’

‘Octopus,’ Felix said, and then hazarded, ‘Ottilia?’

‘Close, neighbour – ah, there they are,’ Steyr said as he clambered off the hull. Felix saw two shapes emerge from the shadows beneath the trees. One was big, the other small. The former was a blond, hulking brute of a man, with enough muscle and fat to slab the bones of three smaller men. He was clad in rattletrap gear much like Steyr, and Felix wagered that was the only way he could find anything to fit him.

‘Don’t call me Greedy-guts, Soggy,’ Gregory rumbled, swinging the heavy, exquisitely engraved khopesh he carried from one round shoulder and stabbing it point first into the ground, so that he could lean on the hilt. ‘I’m not greedy, am I, Pieter?’

‘No?’ Pieter said. He was smaller than either of his brothers, and patently younger. He was leaner than Steyr, with a wasted, hollow look to him. He wore no armour, but had a slim Arabayan blade belted about his waist. Nonetheless, he moved quickly, with an odd, hopping motion. Felix was reminded of a weasel he had once watched dancing about a rabbit moments before it struck. ‘Where’s he from?’

‘Altdorf,’ Felix interjected, dropping to the ground beside Steyr. Pieter hopped back, as if startled, but his lips twisted in a smile.

‘Altdorf? How’s that for luck, eh?’ The boat was from Altdorf?’ He padded past Felix and began to examine the hull. ‘These are Sartosian barnacles, aren’t they?’

‘You’ll have to forgive our Pieter, he’s a man of many questions,’ Steyr said. He smiled fondly at his brother. He glanced at Gregory and added, ‘Even as our Gregory is a man of singular hunger.’

Gregory snorted. ‘You’re not as funny as you think you are, Soggy.’

‘Don’t call me Soggy, Greedy-guts,’ Steyr said, with genial malice.

‘Don’t call me Greedy-guts,’ Gregory retorted.

‘Do you have a nickname?’ Pieter said, appearing suddenly at Felix’s elbow. ‘Only you’ll need one, if you want to fit in, won’t you?’

‘I’ve been called a lot of things,’ Felix said, ‘most of them less than pleasant.’

Steyr laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We can sympathise,’ he said. He looked at Gregory. ‘Are there any other survivors?’

Gregory shook his head. ‘Fish-bait, the lot of them,’ he said. He gestured to Felix. ‘He’s it.’ Felix frowned, and looked up at the man hanging from the prow. He’d forgotten about him in the rush to save himself. The man hung silently, swaying in the breeze. Something had torn out his throat. Felix wondered when the ghouls had done that. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer to Morr, to see to the man’s care and keeping.

He thought about mentioning Gotrek, and then decided against it. If the Slayer was dead, it was no business of theirs, and if he wasn’t, there was no point in saying anything until and if they ran across him. Gotrek could take care of himself. Also, though he was careful not to let it show, Felix felt an instinctive wariness of his rescuers. Not enough to turn down their help, but enough so that he didn’t feel like spilling his life story to men he’d just met.

‘Well, no reason to tarry then,’ Steyr said. Thunder rumbled overhead, and the soft patter of rain on the leaves punctuated his words. ‘If we hurry, we can make the Mangrove Port by sunup.’ Steyr started for the trees, followed by his brothers.

‘We’re walking?’ Felix said, hurrying after them. The adrenaline that had sustained him through the fight with the ghouls was swiftly draining away, and before they had gone too far, he stumbled on a root. He was only stopped from falling into the water by a quick snatch from Gregory, who caught a handful of his cloak. The big man steadied him.

‘Well, we are. If you can fly, feel free,’ Steyr said. He looked back at Felix. ‘Horses don’t do so well here, and boats are in short supply.’ He peered at Felix. ‘Are you all right?’

Felix leaned against a tree and used the edge of his cloak to mop at his face. He felt weak, and his throat was as dry as the desert. ‘It’s been a trying morning,’ Felix rasped. Steyr reached him as he began to sink down.

‘Whoa, easy there, neighbour,’ he said. He frowned and looked at his brothers and snapped his fingers. ‘Pieter, your waterskin,’ he said. Pieter hurried forwards, uncorking a waterskin as he approached.

‘Is he going to die?’ he said. He seemed curious, rather than concerned. Steyr waved him back, after taking the waterskin from him.

‘I’m not dying,’ Felix croaked, ‘though I’d kill for a drink.’ He felt wrung out and weak at the knees. He’d been running on fear and necessity, and all he wanted now was to sleep for a week. The prospect of tramping through the mangroves for a night was as intimidating as the confrontation with the ghouls.

‘I know the feeling,’ Steyr chuckled, handing him the waterskin. ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop fit to drink. You’ll get used to it, if you stay here. I should have thought of that, I’m sorry. I was a little surprised to see a survivor, honestly.’

‘You sound as if you’ve done this before,’ Felix said. The water wasn’t cool, and it tasted brackish, but it refreshed him nonetheless. He gulped at it greedily, until Steyr pulled it away slowly.

‘Easy,’ he said. Then, ‘It’s a chore, mostly. Men scour the coasts in either direction from the port, checking the usual spots. The currents tend to carry wreckage to the same locations. Wrecks are common enough along these coasts, and there are rarely survivors. Between the sharks, the lizards and the ghouls, not to mention the occasional greenskin war-party, it’s not often we’re in time to do anything but scavenge.’ He smiled. ‘This time, we had a bit of luck.’ He gestured back towards the wreck. ‘We’ve marked it, and we’ll come back with more men to collect the wreckage. Plenty of use yet in that wood, if we get to it before the heat and damp does. There are probably some supplies fit to scavenge as well.’

‘Maybe even a cask of wine,’ Gregory said, looking out at the mangroves. At the thought of wine, Felix unconsciously licked his lips.

Steyr rummaged beneath his cuirass and pulled out a flat leather pack. ‘Here, some pemmican. We travel light, or I’d feed you something more substantial.’ Felix hadn’t realised how hungry he was until Steyr unwrapped the stiff strips of dried meat. He grabbed one and began to gnaw on it, until the taste registered. It had a strange taste, almost like pork, but not quite, and decidedly unpleasant. He spat it out. Steyr chuckled. ‘Not to your liking then?’

Felix pawed at his tongue. ‘What is this?’

‘The local cuisine,’ Steyr said, smiling. He plucked a strip free and popped it whole into his mouth. ‘Quite nice, once you get used to it. Though I do miss more civilised fare.’

‘Chops,’ Gregory rumbled.

‘What about mushy peas?’ Pieter said. Felix could sympathise with the longing he heard in their voices. It had been years since he and Gotrek had been in the lands of the Empire, and he sometimes woke up with the taste of that thin stew his landlady in the Luitpolsstrasse had made in his mouth. It had been full of wharf rats, he suspected, but sometimes he still longed for it. He even found himself occasionally wishing for a horse-piss apple, from Hamhock Shivers’s stall on Pinchpenny Street. Not to actually eat, mind. Just to look at.

Steyr helped him to his feet. ‘Why stay, then?’ Felix said.

Steyr didn’t answer immediately. Then, ‘Where else would we go?’ Before Felix could ask what he meant, he continued, ‘The rain is getting heavier. If you’re feeling strong enough, we should go.’

Felix peered up, and rain splashed against his face. It was warm and not refreshing at all. Steyr continued, ‘Keep the talking to a minimum from here on out. A lot of the beasties in these swamps hunt by sound, more so than sight.’ He smiled again, though the expression didn’t reach his eyes. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for talking later, once we’re somewhere more convivial, eh?’

The air had taken on a muggy quality by the time they got under way again, and as they moved across the roots and hummocks, Felix thought it felt like walking through soup.

The increasing strength of the downpour didn’t help matters. The rain was a solid wall, obscuring his vision past a certain point, and his hood barely kept it out of his face. His boots squelched with every step, and the combined weight of the mud, water and mail threatened to send him to his knees more than once. Keeping in mind Steyr’s admonition to keep quiet, Felix asked no questions and for no help. They moved quickly, and Felix was soon puffing to keep up. The brothers Steyr moved with the speed and surety of natural-born foresters. They were quiet as well, and more than once he lost sight of one or two of them. Steyr stayed close to him, and Felix was grateful. He couldn’t even tell what direction they were moving in, and without his guides, he knew he’d be totally lost in the mangroves.

Between the rain and the shadows, there was no real light to speak of. When the sun had at last set, it was as if someone had doused a torch. There was no gradual slip into darkness. Instead, he went from being able to see, however dimly, to being surrounded by darkness on all sides.

The only available light was the weak drizzle of moonlight that dripped through the leaves overhead with the water. The rain pounded down, making the roots beneath his feet slippery and the bark of the trees unpleasant to the touch. It was all he could do to keep the faint gleam of Steyr’s cuirass in sight. The moonlight caught on the wet metal, and to Felix, it was a welcome sight.

He wondered whether it was merely the rain that kept his newfound companions from using torches or lanterns, or whether they feared something spotting the light and mistaking them for a meal. He thought of the ghouls, and shivered. How many more such creatures lurked in these swamps, or worse things besides?

Out in the darkness, something roared. The sound reverberated through the trees, piercing the dull veil of the rain. Felix froze at the sound, and he cast about for Steyr, or his brothers. He saw nothing but rain, sheeting down. While he’d been lost in his thoughts, they’d vanished. He heard nothing but the rustling of leaves beneath the downpour and the gurgle of the current beneath the roots. ‘Steyr,’ he called out.

There was no answer. Where had they gone? They had been right there, right beside him and now gone. Panic began to build in him. The roar sounded again. Beneath his feet, the roots seemed to twist and tremble, and water splashed. Something was coming towards him, something heavy. He made to call out again.

A wet hand clamped over his mouth, startling him. His hand flashed towards his sword, but another hand interposed itself. Pinned, Felix heard Steyr whisper, ‘Quiet, neighbour. We’re not the only pilgrims abroad in the night.’

Felix fell silent. He saw Gregory and Pieter slide out of the shadows, and he wondered if they’d been so close the entire time. Steyr’s hand rose and pointed. ‘Look,’ he hissed.

Something vast and monstrous passed through the water close by them. It was taller than a ship’s mast and it moved smoothly, despite the current. It was too dark for Felix to discern its features, save for its broad, wedge-shaped head and thick torso. A tail undulated behind it as it stalked through the mangroves, and its breath sounded like a bellows being squeezed. A plume of foul air, stinking of carrion and blood, washed over him and he pressed a hand to his mouth to silence his instinctive gagging.

It stank of the heat and the damp. As it moved past, he thought he saw something else, something large and blocky upon its back, almost like a howdah, with smaller forms moving on it and within it. Before he could get a clearer look, it stalked past them in the direction they‘d come from, and it left one last roar in its wake.

‘Wh-what in the name of the Magnus was that?’ Felix breathed.

Steyr jerked away from him and said, ‘A lizard.’

‘It was a big lizard, wasn’t it,’ Pieter whispered.

‘And some little lizards,’ Gregory said, clutching his khopesh more tightly.

‘Lizardmen,’ Felix said, in sudden understanding. Steyr looked at him. Felix smiled weakly. ‘I’ve travelled. And I’ve heard things. I’ve seen things, though never a lizardman. I’ve seen some of the jewellery, though, those flat golden plaques with the frog faces and strange symbols.’ Gotrek had faced the creatures once or twice, and he’d said that there were smaller ones and larger ones, and that they sometimes rode beasts. At the thought of the Slayer, Felix’s smile faded. He wondered where Gotrek was, if he wasn’t dead. Was Gotrek hunting for him, even now? Or would the Slayer assume that he’d died, and continue on without him?

The thought of the latter was at once heartening and annoying. For the first time in years, freedom from the dwarf’s mad quest was in his grasp, but he felt himself shying from it, like a horse too long in a paddock. The thought of Gotrek continuing on, as if Felix were nothing more than a footnote in his epic, was somehow an intolerable one.

Steyr chuckled, and the sound shook Felix from his annoyed reverie. ‘Depths unplumbed, Felix.’ He peered up at the rain and said, ‘If they’re out and about, I’d rather not dawdle. The Mangrove Port is near, a few more hours at most.

‘Let’s go.’

Out in the darkness, the great saurian roared again. Felix hurried after his newfound companions.

They paused to rest when the rain was at its heaviest, much to Felix’s relief. Sheltering beneath the arthritic trunk of a bent tree, the four huddled together, damp and cold. More than once as they sat, Felix caught sight of great grim shapes moving through the obscuring sheets of rain. More of the large saurians, Felix knew. The brothers did not seem concerned, but Felix couldn’t help but feel nervous. He flinched whenever a guttural roar pierced the rain and noise of the storm.

His cloak was sopping wet, and it felt as if it held more water than the ocean, but he pulled it about himself regardless. The brothers sat in the rain with no more concern than if it were a light summer shower. The tree kept the worst of the weather off them, but water steadily slopped down onto their shoulders and the napes of their necks.

Steyr shared out more of his peculiar jerky, and Felix gnawed on it gratefully. They spoke in low tones, about Altdorf, and the places they’d been. The brothers were not so well travelled as Felix, but their journeys had been nearly as fraught with danger. Felix found himself warming to them, or rather Steyr, at least. Gregory was a scar-faced lump whose taciturnity seemed to rival even Gotrek’s at his most morose, and Pieter was simply odd. Given those facts, he wasn’t surprised by Steyr’s need to talk to someone.

‘You’re a poet?’ Steyr said, after Felix had shared his occupation.

‘I wished to be, yes,’ Felix said, taking a swig from Pieter’s waterskin. ‘I’m not much of anything now, I’m afraid.’

‘Poetry cannot be discarded like a cloak,’ Steyr said.

‘Detlef Sierck, Reminiscences and Regrets,’ Felix said, recognising the quote.

‘Ha! Yes,’ Steyr said, clapping his hands softly. ‘You know Sierck?’

‘Who doesn’t know Sierck?’ Felix said, leaning forwards. He drew himself up. ‘The dramatist tells the truth. It is the historian who lies,’ he said, gesturing for emphasis.

Steyr laughed and said, ‘Upon My Genius – a brilliant work, made all the more brilliant by its unflinching honesty.’ He shook his head. ‘It took me forever to scrounge up a copy of The Tragedy of Oswald. Brilliant play,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Sierck truly had an eye for the grim and the dark, don’t you agree?’

‘Oh yes,’ Felix said. ‘It was as if he were living with some poisonous flower nestled to his heart. Have you read To My Unchanging Lady?’

‘Ah, such sonnets as to make a man weep,’ Steyr said. ‘Frankly, and I say this as a man who has memorised whole stanzas of Jacopo Tarradasch’s Immortal Love, that particular sonnet cycle is as close to perfect as something of man’s creation can be.’

Felix made a dismissive gesture. ‘Tarradasch – don’t even get me started. The Desolate Prisoner of Karak Kadrin is one of the most blatantly libellous works I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.’

‘Really,’ Steyr said. ‘I thought it had some interesting insight into the dwarf psyche. Their greed, their lack of human morals…’

‘While I have the greatest respect for Tarradasch’s ability to wring rhyme from thin air, what that man knew of dwarfs couldn’t fill this waterskin,’ Felix said, holding up the water-skin. ‘They’re a peculiar people, this is true, but Tarradasch emphasises their less salubrious qualities in favour of cheap drama.’

‘Oh, a dagger, a dagger to my heart – cheap drama, he says,’ Steyr said, chuckling.

‘I meant no disrespect,’ Felix said, ‘but I’ve had the honour of visiting Karak Kadrin, and of knowing a number of that race, and they are…’ He paused, seeking the right words. ‘They are like a precious jewel, still encrusted in rock and soil. They have facets within facets, just waiting to be discovered. They are a people of contradiction, but at the same time of utter and coherent logic. They are not men, and cannot be judged as men.’

‘They are not men,’ Steyr repeated. ‘That’s a wonderful phrase, Felix.’ He slapped his knees. ‘Ah, it is so good to have someone to talk to, you know?’

‘I’m sitting right here,’ Gregory said, somewhat petulantly.

‘And doing an admirable job of it, Gregory, yes, but I was speaking to Felix,’ Steyr said. ‘I hope you’ll stay with us for a while. It’s rare that I can discuss the literary merits of my favourite scriveners.’

He was about to say something else, when a rattling bellow shook them all down to their bones. Felix was half on his feet, his hand on his sword hilt before the echoes of the cry had faded. The brothers had had the same idea. Gregory lifted his khopesh and Steyr had an arrow ready. Pieter met a glance from his brother and nodded. He slid out from under the tree weasel-quick and vanished into the darkness.

‘Can he see where he’s going?’ Felix hissed.

‘We’re used to operating in the darkness,’ Steyr said. ‘You learn how out here, or you die. Each drop of rainwater carries a bit of moonlight, and the rain sounds different when it’s striking a moving body than when it’s striking a tree.’ He fell silent as Pieter rejoined them, soaked through and muddy.

‘Something is fighting, isn’t it?’ he whispered. ‘Something tried to eat something else, and it didn’t want to be eaten, maybe?’

Felix strained to hear. He could hear distant splashes and bellows, and something that might have been a tree falling. ‘Maybe we should move on,’ he said.

Steyr nodded. ‘Sound thinking,’ he muttered. ‘Time to go.’

The night wore on as they moved, and the rain finally slackened, after what felt like an eternity of its unceasing rhythm. Felix’s legs throbbed with a dull ache, and his body was slick with rain, sweat and grime. He was exhausted. Steyr and his brothers, in contrast, appeared to be as well rested as they had been when they’d chased off the ghouls.

They had an unflagging reservoir of energy that Felix envied, even as he cursed it. He wanted to rest for longer than a few minutes, but knew of no way of conveying that need that wouldn’t make him seem weak. And the last thing he wanted to do was appear weak in front of Steyr and the others.

He didn’t feel the need to impress them, for he barely knew them, though they seemed amiable enough, and he found in Steyr a kindred spirit. No, it was wariness that prevented him from admitting that he’d passed his limit at a gallop some time back. He’d learned to be careful in his years of travel. Men were rarely the face they presented at first meeting. Steyr and his brothers could be from the port, as they claimed, or they could be bandits or pirates, though if they were the latter, he couldn’t understand why they’d bothered to save him.

Despite these thoughts, Felix couldn’t help but utter a grunt of relief when Pieter, in the lead, paused and held up a hand. Felix was about to ask what such a signal meant when Steyr pressed him back against a tree and leaned close. ‘We’re being followed,’ he muttered.

‘By what?’ Felix asked as he gripped Karaghul’s hilt. His head swam with fatigue and his belly clenched in on itself, despite the jerky Steyr had given him earlier. The sun had risen, or as close as it came in these wet lands, some time earlier, and a weak grey light drifted down through the few gaps in the canopy overhead.

‘No idea. It could be a war-party of greenskins, or those lizards we saw.’

‘Or ghouls,’ Felix spat. Disgust was replaced by a twinge of fear. ‘Or whatever it was we heard, bellowing out in the rain.’

Steyr grunted and nodded. ‘I doubt that anything would follow us that far, but it could be.’ He smiled. ‘Luckily, we’re not far from home. Look,’ he said, pointing.

Felix followed the gesture and saw the outline of what must have been palisades, groaning beneath the weight of vegetation. He squinted, trying to make out guards or blockhouses, but saw nothing save the wooden stakes that made up the barrier.

He wondered why he heard none of the noises he associated with a port; even a backwater like this must be bustling with activity. He blinked sweat out of his eyes and nodded. ‘Should we make a run for it, to draw out whatever it is?’ At Steyr’s look of incomprehension, Felix clarified, ‘If it’s a war-party, whoever you have guarding those walls might want to sound an alarm.’

‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Steyr said, peering over his shoulder and into the trees. ‘We’re a quiet community. We’re a live and let live sort of place, no trouble with the neighbours, that sort of thing. Once we get behind the walls, we’ll be fine.’ He slapped Felix on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

Felix had no energy left to muster a reply, so he simply nodded again and struggled after them as they moved towards the palisades. As they drew closer, the trees began to thin, and Felix could tell that the area had been swept free by the hands of men, rather than nature. He’d seen similar bald areas in the Drakwald and the Border Princes, places kept free of vegetation and trees in order to provide a killing ground for the men on the walls. But the folk of the Mangrove Port had grown slack in that regard – vines and thick plants now stretched from the distant trees, creating a flimsy covering from the tree line to the walls. Perhaps it was too damp to burn it back, he thought, or perhaps they thought being hidden was a better deterrent than a defensive clearing.

Felled trees had been shaved flat on top and laid across the root networks and hummocks of damp ground to create an improvised boardwalk system. Some enterprising soul had hammered iron stakes into each tree on either side, and strung a rusty chain around the top of each stake, making a sort of guard-rail.

The current was stronger here, which was no surprise given how close they were to the coast. From what Gotrek had told him before they’d left Sartosa, the Mangrove Port rested at the mouth of an eddy in one of the rivers that cut through the mangroves, where it pooled and grew deep enough to sail ships. He couldn’t see it, thanks to the palisade, but he could hear the water.

The port itself sat on a vast hummock that was likely one of the few true patches of dry ground anywhere along this coast. The palisade was smaller than he’d expected, and he guessed that it contained something the size of a fishing village, at most. It wasn’t quite the gateway to the Southlands that he’d been promised, he reflected sourly.

As they drew closer, he could hear birds squawking and the rustling of leaves and the cracking of branches. Whatever was following them was making almost as much noise as the great lizard the night before.

He increased his pace. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to meet it in the open. No alarm was raised as they reached the palisade. There was no sound save that coming from the mangroves. He could hear the cry of birds, the hum of insects, and the splash of heavy bodies through the roots as well as the gentle tap-tap of the slowing rain on the canopy overhead. But no voices, no bells, no sounds of movement. There wasn’t even any smoke. Felix was too tired to question it, but it nonetheless nagged at him. It was as if some, small, far-off voice was trying to warn him, but he was too exhausted, too thirsty, too hungry to care. He wanted sleep and food and to rest, just for once, without having to worry about assassins in the eaves or ratmen in the privy. He blinked and forced himself into a stumbling trot so as not to fall behind. The noises continued behind them, and he fancied he heard something bellowing in frustration.

There was no gate, as such, in the palisade. Instead, a heavy door had been built into the wall where it curved over a chunk of ossified wood and rock, creating a natural incline. The door was as wide as three men, but not tall. It reminded Felix of the blocking board of a kennel, less entrance than handy aperture. Steyr noticed his quizzical expression as they climbed towards the door and said, ‘Gates get attacked, but doors, not as much.’

Gregory pressed his shoulder to the door and gave a grunt of effort as he pushed it back and slid it aside. As Steyr led Felix through, he saw that there had likely been another door there, some time ago, but that it had been burst from its hinges by some great impact.

Once inside, he realised why there had been no smoke or sound rising from within the palisade. Just below the edge of the walkways that lined the interior of the wall, someone had attached great swathes of sailcloth and tarpaulin and stretched them drum-tight from the palisades to the ramshackle buildings that stretched towards the water. There weren’t many of the latter, and they were all in various states of disrepair, dripping with mould and rot and opportunistic vegetation. To Felix’s tired eyes, there was just as much swamp inside the palisade as out.

Nonetheless, there were a number of ships in the natural sandy harbour that the port had grown up around. As with the buildings, however, the ships had a destitute look about them, as if their crews had had better things to do than look after them.

‘Home sweet home,’ Steyr said as he stripped off his quiver of arrows and tossed it aside with his bow. ‘Forgive the state of things. We’ve had so little help, keeping it up.’

‘No inclination either,’ Gregory said, setting the door back in place. From the way his muscles strained, Felix knew that the door likely weighed more than he himself could move easily, if at all.

‘Does it rain that much here?’ Felix asked, even as he tried to ignore how much the quiet and the state of things disturbed him. Had there been an attack? Had the port fallen to some tropical disease, or had it simply been abandoned en masse?

‘No, that’s for the sun, weak as it is,’ Steyr said. ‘It took us several nights, but, it was worth it.’ He smiled at Felix. ‘We’re well protected from all the nasty elements, now, rain or shine.’

‘What happened here?’ Felix said. He’d lost sight of Pieter as soon as they’d entered. The youngest brother had seemingly vanished. Gregory hadn’t moved from the door, where he stood, leaning on his khopesh.

‘A sickness,’ Steyr said. ‘It was quite a nasty one too, and over all too quickly, unfortunately. A hundred or more souls perished in a single night.’ He clucked his tongue. ‘And now, only we few, we happy few, remain to welcome travellers to this bustling community.’

‘Just you three,’ Felix asked, looking around. He could smell something, just beneath the rot. It was a thick, clotted stink, like that of ripe carcass or newly hung man. Steyr’s lips split in a wide grin. For the first time, Felix saw his teeth, and an atavistic shudder rippled through him at the sight. Steyr’s mouth was full of razor slivers, and his smile uncurled, revealing more teeth than Felix thought belonged in a man’s mouth.

‘Oh no,’ Steyr said. ‘Not even Gregory could eat that many.’ He tilted his head back and spread his arms, and a thunderous scream burst from his throat. The noise sprang from one building to the next, and the sound of it caught Felix’s spine in a fearsome grip and squeezed it into water. He made to step back, but froze, riveted in place as the cry was answered, not by Gregory or even Pieter, but from within the buildings.

Pale shapes, clad in rags and outfits from every nationality, spilled from the darkened doorways and windows, and loped towards him. A dozen pairs of red eyes, blazing with wild, inhuman hunger were fixed on him and Felix wished he’d let the ghouls eat him, for that would have been a more merciful fate than what he now faced. Steyr stepped towards him, still grinning. ‘Welcome to the Mangrove Port, Felix Jaeger. Sit. Stay awhile.’ He licked his lips. ‘Stay forever.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Felix drew Karaghul with a speed born of pure, unadulterated terror and had the tip to Steyr’s throat before the latter could say anything more. Steyr blinked, startled. ‘You’re quite fast, for a breathing man,’ he said genially. ‘You’ll be faster still, I wager, if there’s enough left of you afterwards. Oh, Pieter, be a good lad, would you?’

Felix jerked forwards as Pieter dropped down atop him, one hand clamping down on his sword arm. Cold fingers squeezed and Felix’s hand spasmed. Karaghul fell from his nerveless fingers and Steyr kicked it aside. He stepped forwards and plucked Felix’s dagger from his belt as well, and spun it before the latter’s eyes. ‘It’s not so bad, after all is said and done. And then, well, you’ll be a member of a new brotherhood. We’re not much to look at, but we’re quite good in a fight. You’ll have to get used to the taste of blood and flesh, but you didn’t have a problem with the jerky, so we’re halfway there, hey?’

Felix struggled ineffectually in Pieter’s grip. As Steyr’s words sank in, he felt sick. ‘Vampires,’ he said. ‘You’re vampires.’ He’d faced vampires before. Several times, in fact, and he cursed himself for not recognising them for what they were. He could only blame his exhaustion, and the addled state of his wits. He wasn’t tired now, however. Fear had added fire to his blood.

Steyr leaned forwards and tapped the tip of Felix’s nose with the flat of the dagger. ‘I can tell you were a university lad. Yes, we are. What gave it away? Was it the fangs, perchance?’

‘The smell,’ Felix said.

Steyr made a face. ‘Ah. Yes, well, we can’t help that, believe me. It’s the blood. Spill enough of it and it takes over, like mould. Also, hygiene is the first thing to go with many of the lads.’

He gestured to the approaching knot of vampires, and Felix saw that they were a far cry from the courtly devils he’d faced before. They were less human looking than the brothers Steyr. They were almost as bestial as the ghouls; they were rampant hunger, given human shape, and he cringed as they drew close. They stank of dark places and bad deaths, and their mouths were full of too-sharp teeth and their fingers were clawed. Before they could reach him, however, Steyr drew his sword and extended it like a barrier between them. ‘Not so fast, lads,’ he said. ‘This one has to last us.’

‘They look hungry, don’t they?’ Pieter murmured, nuzzling Felix’s ear in a disturbing fashion. ‘We’re always hungry, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, but some of us know better than to inhale the first bit of blood to stumble into our waiting arms,’ Steyr said without looking at his brother. ‘Back off, I said!’ he roared, lunging at the other vampires. He stamped forward, whirling his blade over his head. The vampires shied back, hissing and snarling. Steyr glanced at Felix and smirked apologetically. ‘Forgive their eagerness, but it’s been a few months since our bellies were full. There isn’t much eating in lizards and orcs, though Gregory swears by the latter, greedy pig that he is.’

‘Almost as good as Miss Miggins’s rat pies, back in Altdorf,’ Gregory said. He smacked his lips nastily. Steyr grimaced.

‘I prefer the real thing, myself, but then I’m a bit of a gourmet, to borrow a Bretonnian term, as my brothers would likely attest,’ he said. ‘Only the finest foreign rats for me back in Altdorf, eh, Pieter?’

‘Are there foreign rats? Aren’t all rats, rats?’ Pieter said.

‘So speaks a gourmand,’ Steyr said, using the flat of his sword to turn Felix’s head to the side. ‘Do you know what the difference between a gourmet and a gourmand is, neighbour?’

‘Quality and quantity,’ Felix said.

‘Bravo,’ Steyr said. He licked his lips as he examined Felix’s jugular. ‘I can see that we have years of scintillating conversation ahead of us, Felix. I love my brothers, but Gregory is only conversant in the contents of his stomach, and Pieter is a bit touched. And this lot – well, if I want to know which port has the best whores, they’re my men. But if, say, I’d like to discuss Sierck’s The Tragedy of Oswald, all I’m going to get are blank stares.’ He used the point of his sword to knick Felix’s neck. ‘You know what I mean, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Felix grunted, wincing. Blood dribbled down his neck. Pieter’s grip tightened, and painfully so. The vampire whimpered. The others moved closer, grunting and muttering. Steyr nodded cheerfully.

‘Good, good. Conversation is a more valuable commodity out here than blood.’

‘Only to you,’ Gregory said. ‘I’m hungry, Soggy.’

‘Don’t call me Soggy, Greedy-guts,’ Steyr snapped. ‘And I told you, we have to make him last. Who knows when the next ship will come by, and be convivial enough to dash itself to flinders within easy reach, eh?’

He snorted and met Felix’s gaze. ‘The ghoul-tribes get to them first, mostly, or the lizards. We’re too few to do more than scavenge the scraps. But you, neighbour, you’ll last for weeks, if we’re careful. My sister is something of an expert on grave matters, and she has assured me that a single sip of blood every few days is all that is necessary to keep individuals in our condition in fighting trim.’ He sniffed. ‘Of course, some of us lack the self-control… Gregory.’

‘I was hungry,’ Gregory said, petulantly.

‘A hundred people, in a single bloody night,’ Steyr said, throwing up a hand. He looked at Felix. ‘A hundred, Felix. Can you believe that? This place could have been a larder for months, years even, but no, and now we’re left with this motley crew to feed as well as ourselves.’ He placed a hand to his chest. ‘The responsibility they have placed upon me is terribly stressful to a man of my humble origins. But the cream rises to the top, they say. I’ve always fancied myself a “von”. Sigmund von Steyr, it has a nice ring to it, eh?’

A vampire abruptly lunged from the knot of gathered blood-drinkers. Fangs agape and claws extended, he bounded towards Felix, panther-smooth. Steyr, however, was quicker. His blade flashed out, separating the vampire’s head from his shoulders in one quicksilver blow. He whirled with a roar, his face becoming something out of a nightmare. ‘I said no!’ he shrieked. ‘No, no, no!’

He stooped, grabbed the ankle of the decapitated vampire, and, in a display of inhuman strength, sent the body whirling over the heads of the others. ‘If you can’t wait like civilised men, fight over that,’ he snarled.

He turned and kicked the head towards Gregory. ‘And you can shut up and eat that.’

Felix’s stomach churned as Gregory grudgingly scooped up the head and the vampires fell on the thrashing, headless body with eager growls. The head’s eyes bulged and the lips writhed soundlessly, still somehow possessed of some measure of abominable life as Gregory hefted it. He cracked the top of the skull like an egg and upended it, his jaws unhinging like those of a snake. Felix closed his eyes and gave a soft groan of disgust as a loose mush of brain matter plopped into Gregory’s gullet with a sound like a stone dropping into a well. When he opened his eyes, Steyr was looking at him. As he watched, the vampire raised his bloody sword and licked it clean with a thick, leech-like tongue that contorted itself about the blade in an unnatural way. ‘Waste not, want not,’ he said, chuckling.

Felix knew his only chance lay in keeping Steyr talking. Though he saw no way out of his situation, he was determined to put it off for as long as possible. ‘I thought you said that you had a sister,’ he said quickly. ‘I don‘t see her here.’

Steyr’s smile disappeared. ‘No, she is not. She is otherwise occupied at present.’

Pieter growled softly. ‘She betrayed us, didn’t she?’ He tensed and Felix winced as the vampire’s grip tightened. His arms were growing numb.

‘No, she didn’t,’ Steyr said forcefully. ‘She had no choice in the matter, and we all know that. Even as we all knew what sort of fate likely awaited us when we came to these bloody jungles.’ He cut his eyes back to Felix. ‘One does what one must, for those one loves, regardless of the consequences. The Loves of Ottokar and Myrmidia, act II, scene six.’

‘Yes,’ Felix said. He felt a flush of guilt. He hadn’t seen his family in years, and there was no love lost there. He’d never been the son his father had wanted, and after his mother’s death, he had only had as much contact with the old man as was required, and even less with his brothers.

‘I’m glad you understand,’ Steyr said. ‘It will make this whole process much easier, in the long run. And afterwards, well, you’ll join our merry band, and you and I will speak of literature and the great places that await us in the years to come, Felix. I shall yet convince you of Tarradasch’s worth, my friend.’

‘So squatting in the jungle isn’t your endgame, then?’ Felix said.

Steyr laughed and said, ‘Of course not.’ He tapped two fingers to his temple. ‘I’ve got big plans, me. The whole of eternity spreads out before us. Who’d waste it in this green hell?’ He swept a hand out to indicate the ships. ‘We were lucky, despite Gregory’s impatience. There were a number of ships in the quay, the night we killed the port. And they sit there still, awaiting my command to set forth and wreak a red storm along these cursed coasts.’

Before Felix could reply, he heard a crash. The door behind Gregory shuddered. The vampire tossed aside what was left of the head and turned with a perplexed grunt. Outside, something bellowed loudly and the door shuddered. ‘Secure that door!’ Steyr snapped.

‘It is secure,’ Gregory snarled. ‘It’d take an ogre to move it.’

The door bulged and shook. The wood cracked and splintered, and the palisade trembled. Gregory backed away, his khopesh raised. Pieter’s grip on Felix had slackened as the vampire‘s attention was on the door. ‘What is it? What is it?’

‘Maybe another lizard is trying to get in,’ Steyr muttered. ‘The brutes are far too fond of the taste of carrion for my liking.’ He reached for Felix. Felix seized his chance, when he saw it, tearing himself free of Pieter’s grip. He flung himself past Steyr, who snarled and stabbed at him, pinning his cloak to the ground even as Felix rolled towards his sword. He snatched up his blade just in time to meet Steyr’s next slash. The vampire’s blow sent him staggering back, and his arms and wrists felt numb. ‘This won’t do you any good,’ Steyr growled, lashing out. Again Felix parried the blow, and again the force of it threatened to shatter his wrists. Steyr was as strong as any blood-sucker Felix had yet encountered, if lacking in others’ gravitas.

He stepped back. When he felt a hand snag his jerkin, he realised that Steyr had manoeuvred him back towards the knot of slavering vampires. Worm-pale hands shot towards him and jaws gaped in animal glee as they lunged for him.

Felix dipped his head, raised his shoulder, and thrust himself into them. There was no use trying to get away, so it was best to go through. His sudden movement surprised them, and the vampires scattered for a moment. Felix stumbled but was on his feet and past them a moment later, interposing Karaghul between them. He heard Steyr howl, ‘Pieter!’

Something flashed towards him, serpent-swift, and he barely jerked aside as Pieter’s blade darted for his face. Felix slapped the lighter blade aside and stumbled back as Steyr’s brother circled him like a blood-mad stoat. The other vampires joined in the game, lunging at him and leaping away as Karaghul chopped out at them.

Felix could hear wood cracking, and he hoped that whatever was trying to get in did so and fast. If he could dart past it, while the vampires were occupied, he might be able to make the mangroves. He had no idea where he’d go from there, but anywhere was better than here.

A vampire rushed him, arms spread. Felix danced aside. The creatures were quick, but lacked the sinister grace he’d come to associate with their kind. Another bounded at him, and he nearly fell avoiding it. Pieter chuckled as he circled Felix. ‘This is fun, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Not in the least,’ Felix said. He was shaking and bathed in sweat. He was running on adrenaline and fear, and while the latter wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, the former could only keep him upright for so long. Pieter came at him in a rush, quicker than Felix’s eye could follow. With more instinct than skill, Felix parried a thrust that would have perforated him. He staggered away, his sword arm aching and his shoulder throbbing. Pieter giggled and bounded towards him.

At that moment, the door burst inwards in a spray of splinters. Through the cloud of wood pulp and dust, a broad, squat shape stalked, death clutched in its hand. ‘Where are you, manling?’ a familiar voice bellowed. The words reverberated through the town.

‘Gotrek,’ Felix said, and then more loudly, ‘Gotrek! You’re alive!’ Relief thundered through him, lending new strength to his flagging limbs. The Slayer was a welcome sight for all that his survival meant that Felix’s dreams of freedom were now so much ash on the wind.

‘Yes, curse you,’ Gotrek roared. ‘Alive and abandoned by my Rememberer. I would have words with you, manling! What did you mean, running away from me like that, eh?’ He pointed a stubby finger at Felix accusingly. ‘If that overgrown lizard hadn‘t tried to eat me last night, I’d have caught up with your cowardly hide sooner!’

Gregory snarled and slashed down at Gotrek’s shaved skull with his khopesh. Gotrek casually blocked the blow with his axe and the khopesh shivered to fragments in the vampire’s hands. Gregory stepped back, eyes bulging in shock.

Gotrek ignored the vampire and stomped past him. Felix could see that Gotrek had had as tough a day of it as he himself. The Slayer’s muscular frame was streaked with mud and drying blood, and arrows of odd fletching jutted from his chest and back. There were marks on his flesh that had quite clearly been made by teeth, and bruises and welts that had come from strong blows. But his one eye glittered with resolve. ‘Found some new friends, eh? They’re all zanguzaz, you know,’ he rumbled. ‘I can smell the blood-stink coming out of their pores. Decided to join that witch of yours in the thirsty dark, eh?’ he said nastily.

Felix flinched. A woman’s face, topped by hair so pale as to be almost white, floated to the surface of his mind. Angrily, he forced it aside. ‘Not in the least. And I wasn’t running from you! I was kidnapped.’ It was a lie, but one he hoped the Slayer wouldn’t question. After all, he hadn’t known that Gotrek was alive, had he?

‘A likely story, manling,’ Gotrek sneered. He looked around and spat. ‘Is it true? Did you kidnap my poet?’

‘What?’ Steyr said, staring at the dwarf. All of the vampires were seemingly frozen in shock, uncertain as to how to react to the invader. Gotrek had that effect on people, Felix knew. He’d seen the Slayer send daemons packing through sheer force of his unremittingly hostile personality. Meeting Gotrek’s eye was like staring into the eye of a building storm, or watching the fuse of an explosive burn down to its inevitable conclusion. Even creatures as steeped in violence as vampires hesitated before the fury of a Slayer, who was violence personified.

‘Did. You. Kidnap. My. Poet?’ Gotrek said, enunciating each word with the same precision he‘d have used to throw a punch. ‘Even a blood-drinking bat-fondler should be able to understand a question as simple as that.’

‘Somebody get him!’ Steyr roared, gesturing wildly.

Gregory bellowed and flung himself on the Slayer. Gotrek cackled happily and pivoted far more swiftly than his bulk implied he could to drive a scar-knotted fist into the vampire’s face. Gregory’s nose exploded with a sound like a cannon going off, and the vampire went head over heels. Gotrek whirled back around, his axe spinning in his grip. ‘It’s been too long since I collected a necklace of dead men’s fangs. Come on then. Come to Gotrek, leeches!’

With a roar, vampires spilled towards the Slayer. Gotrek peered up at the wave of cold, dead flesh that threatened to engulf him and gave a tiger’s grin. Then his rune-axe licked out and black blood stained the wet air. The Slayer laughed wildly as his axe tore the guts out of one vampire and then snapped back to behead a second. Individually the creatures might have stood a chance, but in a group they were more of a hindrance to each other than Gotrek. The Slayer waded into them with an enthusiasm that was as terrifying in its own way as the vampires’ savagery.

Gotrek’s arrival had bought Felix a few moments to breathe, but not much more than that. Pieter was not one to be easily distracted, and the slim vampire stalked towards him. ‘Who is he, then? A dwarf, is he? How do you know a dwarf?’ Pieter hissed, with eerie sincerity, even as he probed Felix’s defences. The vampire reminded him of an overly curious child. Pieter sprang at him, and his blade skidded off Felix’s own, the point tracing a gouge across Felix’s cheek. Felix yelped and beat aside Pieter’s blade, and then, with a lunge that was more desperate than skilful, he rammed his sword into the vampire’s side. Pieter screeched and the pommel of his sword crashed down on Felix’s head, flattening him. He tore Karaghul loose as he fell. Dazed and bleary-eyed, he rolled aside as Pieter attempted to stamp on his head. His skull felt like a cracked egg and he felt sick. Pieter chased after him as he scrambled away, still on the ground.

Pieter’s hand snapped out and he caught a handful of Felix’s chainshirt and jerked him from the ground. The vampire’s face had become a mask of feral fury. The human façade that hid the monster within had melted away, revealing a cadaverous beast-face. His mouth opened wide, exposing the thicket of fangs that clustered about his piebald gums. Felix smashed Karaghul’s pommel into Pieter’s maw, shattering fangs. The vampire dropped him and staggered back, clutching at his wounded mouth. Felix reacted swiftly and his sword swung out, catching the vampire in the shins. Pieter screamed and fell as Felix cut his legs out from under him.

‘Bad form, neighbour,’ Steyr said, as Felix got to his feet. He leapt over his wounded brother and forced Felix back. ‘I’m perfectly willing to forgive and forget, but you’re making it quite difficult to remain civilised about all of this.’

‘Funny words coming from a night-crawling corpse,’ Gotrek said, from behind Steyr. The Slayer had bulled through the other vampires, and he stomped towards Steyr, picking up speed as he came. Gotrek launched himself at the vampire, rising from the ground as if shot out of a cannon. Steel screeched as Steyr’s sword met Gotrek’s axe. The former splintered into glittering shards and the axe continued down unhindered, chopping into the vampire’s breastbone with a sound that made Felix wince in involuntary sympathy. Steyr dropped without a sound. Gotrek jerked his axe free and spun, just in time to meet another vampire’s shrieking charge. His axe carved a red path through the vampire‘s face, removing its bottom jaw and shattering its neck. The body tumbled aside to crash down in a heap.

‘Is that it, then?’ Gotrek said, shaking the sour blood from his axe. He eyed the remaining vampires with disdain. ‘Pah, these southern vampires are soft indeed. It’s like fighting melons.’

‘Yes, blood-drinking melons,’ Felix wheezed, ‘with teeth and claws.’

Gotrek laughed harshly and hefted his axe. ‘Come on then, who wants to be next?’ he shouted, making a ‘come-hither’ gesture to the remaining vampires.

Gregory, who’d regained his feet, pushed his way through the others. His eyes bulged from the sockets and were the colour of fresh blood. Felix wondered whether that was from the force of Gotrek’s punch, or whether it was simply a physical embodiment of the vampire’s state of mind. The big vampire threw back his head, bent his arms and expelled a bone-rattling howl into the air.

‘Yap all you like, blood-drinker!’ Gotrek said. ‘I care not.’ Felix heard a sound from the buildings behind them. He turned and saw white faces creeping from the shadows.

Of course, he thought in resignation. How many shipwrecked crews had they preyed on, how many travellers had they lured to their side since Mangrove Port had perished in fire and blood? How else had Steyr planned to sail those ships, except with a crew of blood-hungry vampires? How many slumbering creatures lurked on those ships in the shallow waters of the quay? ‘Gotrek,’ he said.

‘Don’t bother me, manling, I’ve got vampires to kill.’

‘Yes, yes we do,’ Felix said. ‘Gotrek, we’re surrounded.’

‘Eh?’ Gotrek glanced over his shoulder and his eye narrowed. ‘Hunh,’ he grunted. ‘That’s more blood-drinkers than I’ve ever seen in one place. I’ve never known them to congregate in groups this size.’

A rattling laugh greeted Gotrek’s comment. Steyr, one hand clutched to the wound in his chest, had shoved himself to his feet. The vampire spat blood and laughed again. ‘It’s a bit like herding particularly smelly, stupid cats, I admit, but I’m nothing if not persistent, master dwarf.’ He grinned through the mask of blood that marred his face. ‘My brothers and I grew up in the gutters of Altdorf. We struggled with dogs for food and waged wars for a bit of bread. We fought our way across the world to get to this point.’

‘Must be disappointing for you,’ Gotrek spat.

Steyr hissed. So too did Gregory, who loped towards them, and Pieter, who squirmed across the ground like a snake, hauling himself along as his legs healed. ‘Mockery from a one-eyed ape is no sort of mockery,’ Steyr said. His eyes flickered to Felix. ‘One last chance, Felix – submit, and I will give you eternity. Or die, and be meat for my beasts. I hope you’ll choose the former, neighbour. I truly wish to discuss Sierck’s To My Unchanging Lady with someone who can fully appreciate his grasp of sonnet construction.’

‘Go to hell,’ Felix said.

‘Eloquent, if disappointing,’ Steyr said. He straightened and pulled his hand away from his wound. ‘Quite a nasty bite your axe has, master dwarf. I’ll enjoy sinking it in a mudhole somewhere.’

‘I want it,’ Gregory growled, his fingers opening and closing. ‘He destroyed my blade. I’ll have his axe, it’s only fair.’

‘We’ll discuss who gets what after the fact,’ Steyr said. ‘Dibs on Felix’s sword, though.’ Steyr’s eyes glittered nastily. He raised a clawed hand. ‘Goodbye, Felix.’

Gotrek readied himself. Felix looked about wildly. ‘Gotrek, if we head for the water, we might be able to get to a boat.’

‘No,’ Gotrek grumbled.

‘Gotrek, this isn’t exactly the sort of death I had in mind for either of us!’

‘But it’s the death that’s available, manling,’ Gotrek said. The Slayer licked his lips. ‘It’s the death I came looking for. It’s a good death.’

Desperate, Felix said, ‘Is it? And even so, who’ll write of it for you?’

Gotrek blinked. ‘Eh?’

‘If I’m gutted and sucked dry by these beasts, who is going to write of your glorious death?’ Felix said quickly. He slashed at an overeager vampire, driving the creature back. ‘Because it won’t be me,’ he added.

‘I’d be happy to do it,’ Steyr said amiably as he approached, arms spread. ‘I’ve always fancied trying my hand at a bit of verse.’

Gotrek’s eye narrowed. Felix felt a spurt of panic. ‘You can’t actually be considering that, can you?’ he yelped.

After a long moment, Gotrek said, ‘Of course not, manling. I was merely considering the best way to take his head off.’

‘Quickly, would be my suggestion,’ Felix said.

The vampires were closing in all around them. Felix turned, trying to keep the ones approaching from the ships and the quay in sight. He and Gotrek stood back to back as the ring of dead faces closed in.

I’m going to die here, he thought. Death, in the abstract, didn’t hold as much terror for him as it once had. It was just the bloody unfairness of it all. To die here, like this, after all he’d seen and done. It was like the cruel punch line to a dark, cosmic joke. ‘Ha,’ Gotrek grunted, lifting his axe. ‘Come on, then. What are you waiting for, maggots? My axe is thirsty, and I have been alive too long. Hurry up and gather your courage.’ Then, more loudly, ‘Hurry!’

The vampires struck as one. To Felix, it was as if they were in the eye of a hurricane, composed of claws and teeth and snarling curses. He slashed wildly, and spat the vilest oaths he could muster into the rows of champing, snapping fangs that sought his flesh.

Claws tore at his clothing and snagged in his mail. He heard Gotrek roaring out a dwarf war-hymn, and felt the hot rain of blood that the Slayer was spreading with abandon. Bodies fell only to rise, staggering, and fall again. Vampires took more killing than most of their opponents had, and Gotrek was forced to chop and hew at the same ones again and again. Felix stabbed and slashed and thrust, but to no avail. The dead kept coming, their eyes gleaming with blood-greed and the air hot with their panting.

They would eventually pull the Slayer down, Felix knew, no matter his skill or deadliness. They would bury Gotrek in a tomb of their own carcasses if that was what it took to bring him down.

Felix stepped on a squirming body and slipped, falling backwards. The vampires pounced, and he flailed. He had no breath to call for help, and no leverage to get to his feet. Fangs sought his throat and he clawed vainly at a wet scalp, trying to halt the inevitable.

A shadow fell over him. Not that of a vampire. Detached, rendered numb by the nearness of death, he looked up, expecting to see the cowled and cloaked shape of Morr, the god of death, come to collect him at last. Instead, he saw a different sort of death.

Arrows, hundreds of them, fell in a graceful arc, descending with a communal whistle that split the air more effectively than any rumble of thunder. Felix closed his eyes. The vampires crouched over him screamed and thrashed as they were perforated by multiple arrows. Felix’s eyes sprang open as he realised that death had, for the moment, passed him by yet again.

He sat up, and saw that most of the vampires were down, arrows sticking from them. Some had been struck so many times that they resembled overlarge hedgehogs rather than blood-drinking monsters. He twisted, and saw Gotrek standing nearby, panting. The Slayer was paying no attention to the surviving vampires. Instead, his eye was riveted on the water. Felix turned and felt his heart sink.

A galley of bronze and bone nosed its way to shore, pulled aground by a number of skeletons clad in archaic bronze armour, with large shields strapped to their backs. The skeletons hauled the galley to the shore by use of great lengths of chain that extended from runnels set along the curve of the prow. The galley, big as it was, brushed aside the boats and ships in its path, gouging holes in their hulls or simply crashing through them in a nigh-continuous cataclysm of shattering wood. On the high deck of the galley, a number of skeletons armed with bows readied themselves to unleash another volley of arrows.

Vampires, it seemed, were not the only dead men on the Shifting Mangrove Coast. ‘Gotrek,’ Felix began, as the skeletal warriors on the shore dropped their chains and retrieved their shields and the khopesh each had sheathed on one bony hip. They drew their curved sickle-swords with a communal hiss of bronze escaping leather and presented their shields as one. Then, with a rattle of bones, they began to march forwards together.

‘Aye, manling,’ Gotrek said, happily. ‘Now it’s a fight.’

CHAPTER SIX

The dry dead, their bones bleached or brown, marched forwards, their steps so smooth and precise that Felix thought their discipline, even while alive, would have been the envy of the armies of Karl Franz. They came to a halt some distance from the galley and spread out in a line, locking their shields rim-to-rim.

They wore helms topped by open-mouthed asps, and more snakes decorated the front of their shields. Felix’s eyes strayed past them to the galley they had hauled ashore. Its bronze-plated prow was engraved with Nehekharan hieroglyphs, depicting great battles, or perhaps the conflicts of the gods themselves. The sails sagged and billowed in the damp air, causing the asp depicted on them to undulate in sinister fashion. The oars had been raised, though he could see no sign of the rowers. He wondered, in a detached fashion, if this was the same galley that had torn Bolinas’s ship in half, and if so, whether it had come back to finish the job.

From the galley, a heavy drumbeat began to echo. Felix could feel the rhythm of each strike in his chest. He could see the same withered shapes as he’d glimpsed during the wrecking of the Orfeo pounding on the drums, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in fear. The archers on the high deck had raised their bows, and now, bones gleaming in the weak light that dappled the waters, held arrows ready to be unleashed. The warriors on the shore waited as well, their sword arms cocked as if to deliver a chopping blow.

For long moments, the only sound was the boom-boom-boom of the drum. Then the tap of bone on wood echoed beneath the drumbeat. A lone figure appeared at the front of the galley having exited some unseen cabin, Felix guessed. Ancient, crackling linen bandages, yellow and stiff with the grime of unguessed ages, clung to a form that had, in life, been that of a voluptuous woman. She was tall, and wide of shoulder and hip. Thin robes of aged muslin draped long limbs, and golden bracers and greaves hid her forearms and shins. She wore an ornately wrought and elegantly engraved cuirass, edged in gold and set with turquoise.

A golden deathmask hid her ravaged features, and a headdress made from the spotted hide of some great desert cat obscured the back of her head and neck. The features of the mask were beautiful, but chilling: at once lifelike and yet empty of life.

The dead woman carried a wide-bladed stabbing spear in one hand, and a long-hafted, single-bladed bronze axe in the other. She raised her spear. ‘You have been judged,’ a voice like shifting sands said. Felix started. It was her voice, he realised. It seemed to echo from everywhere and nowhere as she spoke, and her words pulsed in time to the drumbeat. ‘You have been found wanting. By the command of the Beloved of Asaph, Daughter of the Asp-Goddess and High Queen of Lybaras and Mistress of the Bitter Seas, this place is to be scoured from the bosom of Ptra, and you are condemned to the dark of Usirian’s wastes, there to howl and lament for all eternity.’

Then, in a crackle of linen, the great spear was slicing through the air. Felix flinched as it whistled past him, narrowly missing him. A scream snapped at his ears. He spun and saw Pieter fly backwards. The vampire had been caught in mid-leap. The spear had pierced his chest and ripped his black heart from its housing. Even as he hurtled back and struck the inside wall of the palisade, his slim form was shrivelling and rotting on the bone.

‘Pieter,’ Steyr howled. Gregory and the other vampires pelted forwards, roaring and shrieking like wild beasts. The dry dead met them, shield to fang and sword to claw. Gotrek whirled as a vampire leapt past him, and planted his axe firmly in the creature’s gut, chopping it nearly in two with a single blow.

Through the rain of gore, Gotrek met Felix’s eyes and said, ‘Well? Get stuck in, manling, before those blasted bone-bags kill them all!’

‘Yes, do get stuck in,’ Steyr snarled, nearly bowling Gotrek over as he rushed towards Felix. ‘You did this! Pieter is dead because of you!’ The vampire deftly avoided Gotrek’s blow and pounced on Felix, bearing him to the ground. Felix caught Steyr’s gut with his boots and sent him tumbling away. The vampire was on his feet in a moment, Pieter’s sword in his hand. Felix grunted as he narrowly parried a savage thrust.

Nearby, Gotrek bellowed and hacked at the few vampires not occupied fighting the new arrivals. Felix knew the Slayer would be no help. Luckily, Steyr was obviously a better archer than he was a swordsman. He was stronger, and faster, but not as skilful. Felix stepped back, extending his blade in a langort or ‘long point’ stance. Steyr hesitated.

Behind them, Gregory howled as he crashed into the armoured dead. Over Steyr’s shoulder, Felix could see the big vampire smash aside a skeleton with a sweep of his arm and wrench the blade from the grip of another. He cursed and stamped on a skull, shattering it to powder. Arrows sprouted from him, and he wailed. Steyr jerked around, concern for his remaining brother momentarily distracting him. Felix lunged, executing a perfect stechen thrust, straight from the manuals of the Altdorf school of fencing. Only Steyr’s speed saved him from being spitted, and he jumped back like a startled cat.

The vampire hissed and slapped aside Felix’s next blow hard enough to make Karaghul quiver in his grip. Felix staggered and Steyr darted forwards. He grabbed Felix by the throat and flung him down. As Felix tried to scramble upright, Steyr kicked him in the chest, flattening him. He stamped on Felix’s sword hand, and then placed a boot on Felix’s chest. ‘Time to bring this ridiculous farce to an end, I think,’ Steyr said. He raised his weapon in both hands over Felix.

‘Says the man who likes Tarradasch,’ Felix said, snatching his dagger from its sheath and driving it through the ankle of the foot that held him pinned. Steyr yelped and fell back. Before he could recover himself, Gotrek’s axe sprouted from his side, crunching through the metal of the vampire’s cuirass and the body beneath. Steyr whirled, but his flailing blow passed completely over the dwarf’s head.

Gotrek tore his axe free in a welter of dark gore, and sent it smashing home into Steyr’s belly, lifting the vampire off of his feet. Steyr staggered away, his arms pressed tight to his gut. The vampire sank to his knees and toppled over. Gotrek stalked towards him, clearly intent on taking his head.

But the Slayer was sent flying as Gregory smashed into him. The vampire struck the Slayer so hard that Felix’s teeth twitched in sympathy, and Gotrek hit the ground some distance away, digging furrows in the soft soil, cursing the entire while. A man’s weight in arrows jutted from the big vampire’s frame, but it hadn’t slowed him down. Felix snatched up his sword as Gregory made to snatch up his wounded brother, but an ear-splitting caterwaul caused them both to turn.

Felix saw the golden-masked woman spring from the deck of the galley, her axe in her hand. The long-hafted weapon slid through her grip as her feet touched solid ground, and she spun, catching a vampire beneath his chin with the curve of the axe and sending him flying, his head cleft from teeth to pate.

She danced through the blood-drinkers, moving more swiftly and gracefully than a corpse ought, her axe flashing and spinning in her grip to weave a tapestry of sour blood and foul innards about her. Not a drop of the ichors touched her as she sped towards Gregory, who spun to meet her, his stolen khopesh in his hand.

‘You have been judged and found wanting, cursed one. The black blood of Lahmia the Damned seeps from your pores and you stink of pauper’s earth,’ the woman hissed as she approached. ‘You cannot flee. Wherever you go, whatever hiding place you creep into, be it city, swamp or oasis, Zabbai of Lybaras shall drag you forth in chains of blood and fire to face the judgement of Asaph. Run and be damned, or face me and be destroyed.’

Gregory let loose a blistering torrent of oaths and charged towards her. Whatever else he was, Felix supposed, no one could call him a coward. As the big vampire moved, his flesh rippled and split, disgorging stiff, wiry hair, and his skull cracked and shifted beneath the flesh of his face, becoming something long and lean. His jaws thrust forward in a lupine fashion, his gums exceeding the edges of his mouth and stretching out, even as a briar patch of cruelly curved fangs sprouted from their piebald surface. He knuckled the ground like an ape from Ind, propelling himself along with a surge of his swelling shoulder muscles.

The beast-thing that flung itself at the golden-masked woman resembled a hideous amalgamation of simian and lupine characteristics, with something of the stoat and the bat and rat thrown in. Gregory shrieked as she leapt to meet him in midair. Her axe flashed. But it did not meet flesh. Instead, it carved through the canvas ‘roof’ that the vampires had stretched across the port. Deftly, Zabbai avoided Gregory’s lunge and instead tore an entire section of the canvas down. She landed in a crouch as the vampire crashed to earth, writhing in the sudden glare of the Southlands sun.

She raised her axe. ‘Fire arrows,’ she said. She did not shout; nonetheless, the archers on the galley heard her and fired, not at the brawling vampires, but instead at the buildings and the protective sheeting that kept the glare of the sun from their pale flesh.

As Felix watched, flaming arrows struck the sails and sheets, setting them alight. More burning arrows found the ruined and rotting hulks in the quay, or the buildings closest to shore. Still more sizzled past him to bite into the hard wood of the palisade. Despite the damp and rot, the fires caught somehow. The Mangrove Port was burning.

Gregory, caught full by the sunlight, shrieked in agony. The vampire clawed at his blistering, blackening flesh and rolled about, as if trying to snuff the flames. Wreathed in fire, he lunged to his feet and staggered blindly towards Felix. Gregory shrieked and gibbered as his flesh sloughed from his bones in sizzling dollops.

His eyes boiled in his sockets, and steam and greasy trails of smoke rose from him as he swiped at Felix. He snapped his jaws mindlessly as he threw himself forwards. Felix stumbled back, barely getting his sword between them in time. Gregory spitted himself on the blade.

Clawed hands grasped the sword, and the vampire began to pull himself along the blade, twitching and moaning, his jaws clicking as he bit blindly at the air. Felix tried to jerk Karaghul free, but the sword was lodged in bone. Heat washed over him as Gregory’s talons clasped the crosspiece of the sword.

Then, an axe flashed and the vampire’s head went spinning from his shoulders. It struck the ground and exploded into fragments of charred bone and ash. Zabbai used the curve of her axe to hook the already disintegrating body and drag it away from Felix. He stared at his reflection in the polished surface of her mask, unsure of what to say. Close as she was he could see that the face the mask had been carved to represent was beautiful, and that she was taller than he. In life, she would have been imposing. In death, she was terrifying. ‘He lives, then,’ she said. Her voice was at once hoarse, yet smooth, like sand pouring through an hourglass.

Behind her, he could see that the battle was over. Without the Steyr brothers to lead them, the vampires had retreated, or died. Some would likely escape, and continue to plague these shores, but not many. The thought gave him no pleasure. He had come too close to joining their ranks to feel anything but relief.

‘As I said he would,’ Gotrek said. He tore his axe free from a squirming vampire and let it drop onto the creature’s neck, severing its head. He spat and kicked the body aside. He frowned and looked at the dead woman. ‘You have my thanks,’ he said grudgingly.

‘It is not for your gratitude that we have spared you, stunted one,’ Zabbai said, resting her axe across her shoulder. It was a peculiar sort of gesture, Felix thought, for a dead woman. Then, these were a peculiar sort of undead, from all that he had seen. They were as different from the vampires and ghouls as day from night.

Anger flared in Gotrek’s single eye, and his lip curled. ‘You didn’t “spare” anyone, crow-bait. I choose when it is time for me to die and no one else!’

‘Then you chose wisely,’ Zabbai said, looking down at Gotrek. She turned and started back towards the galley. ‘Come. It is time for you to uphold your part of our bargain.’

‘Bargain,’ Felix said. He looked down at Gotrek. ‘What bargain?’

‘Come on, manling. I’m tired of all these trees.’ Gotrek stomped after Zabbai.

‘What bargain is she talking about?’ Felix said, hurrying after the Slayer. Behind him, he heard a roar as flames began to consume the palisade.

‘None of your concern,’ Gotrek snapped. He didn’t look at Felix.

‘I’d say it is,’ Felix insisted. ‘What’s going on, Gotrek?’

Gotrek paused. He didn’t turn around. ‘I thought you were dead, manling.’

‘What?’

‘I expected you to follow me, when I leapt aboard the galley. It would have been a glorious death.’ Gotrek shifted slightly, glaring at Felix over his shoulder. ‘But you weren’t there. At the moment of glory, my Rememberer was nowhere to be seen.’

‘I was knocked overboard,’ Felix said. Realisation struck him. ‘Did you call a truce with them, just to find me?’ Gotrek glared at him silently. ‘How was that even possible? What benefit was it to them?’ Gotrek turned and stalked away. Felix began to press the point, but he stopped short when he saw the way the veins in Gotrek’s neck were bulging. That was a sure sign that the Slayer was growing angry. He sighed and followed Gotrek towards the galley. His head was full of questions.

He had never truly considered himself to be that important to Gotrek’s quest for self-immolation. He had thought that the dwarf merely regarded him as an appendage, or a tool to be replaced, when necessary. He had met other Slayers, and they had, without fail, regarded their Rememberers as interchangeable. Then, over the course of their years together, Felix had come to learn that Gotrek was anything but a normal Slayer, if such a thing could even be said to exist. The fire that burned within him seemed to feed less on shame than ego, and it burned twice as hot because of that.

The warriors formed up around them with a clatter. They swung their shields onto their backs and sheathed their blades as they trooped into the water. Felix realised that they were going to shove the galley back into the water, and he hesitated. ‘Are we really going with them?’

‘Unless you’d rather stay here,’ Gotrek said, without stopping.

‘Frankly, yes,’ Felix said. Nonetheless, he followed Gotrek up the boarding plank that had been lowered from the galley. Zabbai led them to the high deck.

As he stepped aboard, Felix could see down to the lower decks, where the rowers sat. Like the warriors, they too were bone, bleached by the sun. They wore rags and tatters left over from life, and waited silently for the order to begin rowing. No wonder these galleys move so fast, he thought. Dead men never grew tired, and they had magic in place of muscle.

The galley shuddered, and Felix stumbled against one of the crew. He jerked back hastily as the skeleton turned to examine him with an empty gaze. ‘I – ah – sorry,’ Felix said with his hands raised in a placatory gesture. The skeleton seemed to shrug as it turned back to its duties. Felix turned. Everywhere he looked, dead men went about their business as briskly as their living counterparts might have.

Zabbai stood on the high deck, surrounded by her archers. Gotrek stood beside her, his axe cradled in the crook of his arm. Felix joined them. He was surprised but gratified that they had been allowed to keep their weapons. Then, it wasn’t as if they would do them much good, should events take a turn for the worse. He kept his palm on Karaghul’s pommel. The galley began to move forwards, and behind him, the drums began to sound again as the rowers set to. The warriors who had pushed them out of the shallows climbed back onto the boat in a display of agility that Felix found somewhat off-putting. He was used to dead men who stumbled and staggered. Shuffling zombies and jerky skeletons, pried from filthy, root-encrusted barrows. But these moved cleanly, and smoothly, as if in death they had been shorn of all physical weakness.

‘You are bleeding,’ Zabbai said. Felix blinked, startled. He touched his arm, and hissed in pain. All of a sudden, he felt every ache and pain acquired in his recent travails.

‘Are you in pain?’ she continued, head cocked in apparent curiosity.

He wondered how long it had been since she had seen a living man, with a living man’s hurts. He knew the stories of the Land of the Dead, how the war-fleets of Cursed Zandri had scoured the coasts of Araby and Tilea, and how skeletal legions had marched east and north, killing all who stood against them. In Copher, they still spoke of the Wars of Death in hushed whispers, despite the oceans of time that stretched between those battles and the present day.

‘Pain doesn’t hurt,’ Gotrek rumbled. Idly, he fingered one of the broken arrows still jutting from his shoulder. Felix wasn’t surprised by Gotrek’s seeming disregard for his wounds. He’d once seen the Slayer walk around with a knife stuck in his back for three days. He’d even taken wagers on when Gotrek would notice, and won a handy sum.

‘I don’t suppose you have any water or bandages?’ Felix asked hesitantly.

Zabbai thumped the deck with the haft of her axe. On the lower deck, a gong was sounded. In moments, several mummified women appeared, carrying golden bowls filled with sweet-smelling liquid and bandages. Felix eyed the women nervously. Like Zabbai, they were clad in spotted animal skins and thin robes, and they wore golden jewellery and death-masks of pale, oven-fired clay. ‘Do not be afraid. They are my handmaidens, and they will see to your hurts,’ Zabbai said. She looked at Gotrek. ‘And yours as well.’

‘I need no help,’ Gotrek said.

‘It is not for your benefit. You are bleeding on my deck, and that offends me.’

Gotrek grunted, but didn’t reply. Felix inclined his head. ‘I thank you, great lady.’

Zabbai looked at him. Felix couldn’t repress a shiver. ‘I am no lady,’ she said. ‘I am the Queen’s Champion, the Spear of Asaph, and the Swift, Sudden Judgement. But I am certainly no lady.’ Though he could detect no emotion in those words, Felix couldn’t help but feel that Zabbai smiled beneath her mask. He hesitated, but decided to throw caution to the wind.

‘While I am grateful, I can’t help but wonder what’s going on,’ he said, carefully not looking at Gotrek. As he spoke, Zabbai’s handmaidens began to dress his wounds with delicate fingers.

Despite the gentleness of their touch, Felix shuddered as the dry, dead fingers glided over his wounds. Another handmaiden gently eased the arrows from Gotrek’s flesh, dropping each into a bowl filled with water and incense. Gotrek kept his gaze fixed on the horizon. The dwarf seemed determined to ignore them all.

‘What is going on is not your concern,’ a voice interjected. Felix turned, and saw a wizened shape climb the stairs to the high deck with the aid of a staff. The new arrival was a shrivelled thing, empty of fluid, if not vitality. Dead flesh the colour of dried leather was shrunk tight against yellowing bones beneath a frayed and tattered robe, which had once been fine. Decorations of gold and turquoise dangled against a shrunken chest and armlets meant for living limbs sagged and rattled on bony arms.

The dead man wore no mask, and his shrivelled features contorted as he took in Gotrek and Felix. ‘The concerns of the dead are not those of the living. Thus spoke Settra the Imperishable in the first golden hour of the Reign of Millions of Years,’ the liche intoned. Air wheezed eerily through his cracked and fleshless jaws. Eyes like twin embers fixed first on Felix, and then on Gotrek. ‘Then, you are not truly alive are you, Child of the Mountains?’

Gotrek frowned and he fixed the dead man with a sullen look. ‘What would you know of it, liche?’

‘Djubti knows much. So he claims at every available opportunity, at length,’ Zabbai said. Yes, that’s definitely humour, Felix thought, obscurely pleased. If the dead had humour, then perhaps they weren’t that different from the living.

Djubti shot a look at Zabbai, and then said, ‘You are as dead as we, for you do not live. You merely persist, in search of a proper place to lay your bones, Son of Stone.’ Djubti’s gaze flickered towards Felix. ‘You, however, burn with life. Offensively so,’ he said.

‘Thank you?’ Felix said.

Djubti ignored him. He looked back at Gotrek. ‘Your search is at an end, Doom-Seeker.’

Gotrek blinked. Then he grinned. ‘Is it now? Well, things are looking up aren’t they?’ He looked at Felix. ‘Hear that, manling? The bag of bones says I’m going to find my doom.’

‘Yes, wonderful. If I can’t ask what’s going on, can I at least ask where we’re going?’ Felix said, looking from one dead face to the next.

‘Lybaras,’ Zabbai said. She thumped the deck with her axe again. ‘Lybaras, City of the Asp, Lybaras the Magnificent, Lybaras Which Guards the Sea.’ She looked at him, the sunlight glinting off her. ‘The Serpent Queen wishes to speak with you.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

In her chamber at the top of the ziggurat, Nitocris stirred the blood in the clay bowl with one long finger. In its murky depths she could see portents and happenings, possibilities and potentialities. The strands of webs yet to be woven, as her mistress had taught her. She had been taught more besides; strategy was like a recipe, requiring all of the ingredients to be in place, lest what came of it be inedible. Nitocris had never cooked in her life. She’d had slaves for that. But she understood the concept.

She lay on her bier, the bowl on the floor within easy reach. With her chin resting on one forearm, she dipped a finger into the blood and raised it up, sending glistening droplets plop-plop-plopping back into the bowl. In the ripples, worlds were born and died.

The blood had come from the body of one of the lizards who haunted the interior. It had been a small thing, to hold so much blood, with soft, wet scales and a colourful crest atop its triangular head. It was no taller than her knee, and had been clad in golden ornaments, feathers and bronze armour. The latter had been stripped from it, and left in the mud outside the temple complex, where it had been caught spying. They had been watching her since her army had occupied the Temple of Skulls, though she couldn’t say why. She didn’t particularly care, at that. Her prey was an asp, after all, not a lizard.

In the swirling ripples of dark liquid, she saw victory and defeat, smashed skulls and sunlit doom. She saw the sands stained red and the jungles blacken in fire. But she did not see Lahmia, and she growled softly. A whisper of sound made her look up. One of her handmaidens swept into the chamber.

She wore not robes, but leather armour and a cloak of feathers and scales. She sank to her knees before the bier and waited, head bowed. ‘Speak, Andraste,’ Nitocris purred.

‘The Mangrove Port is gone, my queen,’ the vampire said, her eyes still on the floor. In life, Andraste had been the concubine of a nomad chieftain, before Nitocris had taken her and raised her up as a captain in her armies. She had battled lizards, greenskins and tribes of the interior with equal vigour, and brought herself esteem with her viciousness and cunning. ‘The servants of the Asp burned it to the roots.’

‘Ah,’ Nitocris said. She hesitated, and then asked, ‘Survivors?’

‘Some, but they are singularly useless creatures,’ Andraste said.

Nitocris laughed and propped herself up. ‘Is that opinion or fact?’

‘They are wild, hungry and stupid,’ Andraste said. ‘It would be best to dispose of them, before they become a problem.’

‘No,’ Nitocris said, lying down on her back. She examined the moon and the black sky above and stretched slowly, enjoying the feel of her muscles’ pull. ‘They have some use yet, now that they’ve provided a handy distraction. The brothers – are they dead?’

‘Two are.’

‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that it was the big, stupid one who survived,’ Nitocris said. She held up her hand. In the moonlight it was almost translucent, and she watched the play of veins and muscles beneath her skin. The necromancer was right when she claimed that there was a sort of beauty in the dead, or some of them, at any rate. Nitocris had been frozen at the height of her beauty and power. She was the epitome of might made eternal. She was the immortal Serpent Queen, who would wrap the rebellious dead of the sandy wastes in her coils and squeeze them into servitude, and then she would slither into the world beyond, to see and do as she wished. The thought of it held her for a moment, and she could smell the wet stones of Altdorf and the harsh fire-powders of Nuln. An eternity of experiences awaited her, and to taste them, all she had to do was do what she did best. Nitocris would conquer and destroy, and then be free to do something, anything else.

‘It was Sigmund,’ Octavia said, from the shadows of the chamber. Nitocris frowned as her daydreams blew apart like sand on the breeze. Andraste whirled about, one hand flying to the wide, Cathayan blade sheathed on her hip, even as her lips peeled back from her fangs. Octavia held up a hand, and a flare of cold flame suddenly wreathed her fingers. Andraste shied back, hissing.

‘Enough,’ Nitocris said.

Octavia closed her fingers and snuffed the flame. She looked at Nitocris. ‘It was Sigmund who survived,’ she repeated, ‘and only barely, at that.’

‘Which one was Sigmund? Was he the small one?’ Nitocris said. She smiled crookedly and rolled over to face Octavia. ‘I liked him. He was funny.’

‘No, he was not the small one. Or the big one, my queen,’ Octavia said, her voice calm.

‘Oh,’ Nitocris said. She rose into a sitting position and swung her legs off the bier. ‘He’s the smart one, then.’ She slid to her feet and swayed towards Octavia. ‘I should have known.’ She circled the necromancer slowly. ‘Smart men can’t be trusted, you know.’

‘You are most puissant, my queen,’ Octavia said, not looking at her.

Nitocris hesitated. She didn’t know what that word meant. The necromancer used so many foreign words, and new words for old things, that Nitocris found it hard to understand her sometimes. Rage flared in her as she caught sight of a twitch in Octavia’s cheek. The necromancer was laughing at her. Her claws extended from her fingers, but she resisted the urge to part the soft flesh of Octavia’s cheek. It would be satisfying, but only for a moment, and it would be a defeat, of sorts. And the latter she could not countenance. Nitocris had never been defeated, and she never would be – certainly not by a creature like Octavia. Instead, she stepped back and smiled. ‘Is that what they say in Altdorf?’

Octavia blinked and looked at her. ‘Among other things,’ she said.

Nitocris reached out and caught Octavia’s chin between her thumb and forefinger. ‘You will take me to Altdorf, when this is over. When the false queen kneels before us, when my mistress once again sits upon the throne of Lahmia, you will take me to Altdorf and show me the lands of the dry forests and cold mountains, won‘t you?’

‘If you wish it, my queen,’ Octavia said softly.

‘I do,’ Nitocris said, pulling Octavia close. When they were only a few breaths apart, she murmured, ‘You will show me everything I wish to see, Octavia of Altdorf.’ This close, she could taste the dark magics that constantly crackled and sparked invisibly about the necromancer. She could trace the old scars that lined Octavia’s cheeks and chin beneath the skull-face tattoo that hid her features from the world. Scars were stories, her mother had said, of victories won and battles lost. A person without scars was not a person, empty and devoid of meaning or purpose. What is your purpose, necromancer, she thought. What drives you?

She could smell it, like lightning on the air in the wake of a storm. It was sharp and hot and consuming, and familiar. Whatever passion drove the necromancer, it did so as hard as her own. She leaned close, and her lips brushed Octavia’s ear as she said, ‘For now, show me your brother.’

She released the necromancer and allowed her to step back. She could hear the reedy, nervous thrum of the living woman’s heartbeat and smell her sudden confusion. You are smart but stupid, Nitocris thought. Is it any wonder one such as you prefers the silent dead?

Octavia turned without a word and left the chamber. Nitocris padded in her wake, Andraste following protectively behind her. She could sense the other vampire’s displeasure. Andraste was one of those who had little use for the living woman, and viewed her less as an asset than a rival. Nitocris could have assuaged her concerns, but it suited her to keep her sisters wrong-footed. It was in their nature to plot and scheme, for such was the power in their blood. To see all possibilities, and to attempt to act on the best, was as natural for the Sisterhood of the Silver Pinnacle as breathing had once been. Loyalty only lasted so long, beneath the relentless tides of ambition and cunning. Thus, she played their desires one against the next in a quiet symphony of confusion. She chose her favourites at random, and let them slip from favour just as randomly.

Andraste was on top at the moment, and though she played the loyal executioner, she was anything but. But her relentless scheming kept the rest of them occupied and, if nothing else, it kept them alert.

The smell of the jungle wafted over her as she stepped out onto the plateau of the ziggurat. The hot miasma was punctuated by the tang of fires, and the complex echoed with the sounds of industry. There were ships to be made seaworthy and the waiting corpse-legions to be armed and armoured. Her army would be ready to march within days, and a shiver of anticipation coursed through her. The pleasure of that thought faded as she caught sight of the slumped form, on its knees between two of her handmaidens. She could smell the sour taint of vampire-blood on the air, and the bedraggled figure of Sigmund Steyr oozed exhaustion. It took a lot to weaken their kind, but then, he hadn’t been feeding regularly. Broken arrows jutted from him, and barely healed wounds showed through the great rents in his ruined armour. Where his skin wasn’t streaked with blood, it was burned black, and he was missing most of his hair. Despite this, he met her gaze challengingly when she stretched out one sandaled foot to hook his chin and lift his head. ‘So, you yet live,’ she mused.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ he croaked.

She retracted her foot and nodded to one of the handmaidens who stood to either side of him. The vampire smiled and grabbed what was left of his scalp and jerked his head back. She then drew her blade and pressed its edge against his throat. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have your head removed, and your body tossed to the ghouls.’

‘It seems a bit of a waste,’ he said, licking his blistered lips.

Nitocris looked down at him silently. In truth, he had done exactly as she’d hoped. Otherwise she’d have simply put him and his brothers down the minute they rose from the pile of drained corpses they’d been tossed on after her sisters had had their way with them. Instead, she‘d sent them away, to wreak havoc along the coasts and draw any eyes that might be watching after them. She knew the dry dead of old, and knew that they had eyes everywhere possible. It wouldn’t have been long before they’d noticed the drifting, dead-crewed hulks sliding up river. So she’d given them something else to look at, something obvious and vicious and within tempting reach.

It had worked, and even better than she’d hoped. For when the fleet of Lybaras had set sail to hunt down her distraction, so too had the fleet of Mahrak. The dry dead of the sands were ever at war with one another, renewing in death the rivalries that they had had in life. The Mangrove Port had been in waters claimed by Mahrak, for all that no soldier of the City of Decay had ever set foot anywhere on the Shifting Mangrove Coast, in life or in death. The tensions between the two cities, never far from the surface, had been stirred once more.

The eyes of her enemies would be upon one another, now, rather than her jungles. And that meant that she could strike, without fear of obstacles. ‘A waste,’ she repeated, looking down at Steyr. He had been a handsome enough man, in life, though he was looking distinctly the worse for wear now. Hard used, but not used up. Not quite. ‘Yes, perhaps it would be, at that.’ She glanced at Octavia, who met her gaze without flinching. As ever, there was no challenge there, no resistance to her will. The necromancer’s mind might as well have been a placid jungle pool. But Nitocris knew that there were monsters beneath those still waters. And they were waiting to strike. She smiled at the thought, relishing it. She had fought monsters before, and broken them to her will. The necromancer would be no different.

Octavia fought to control her expression as Nitocris turned away and said, ‘I may yet have use for you, man. Lick your wounds and stay out of my sight, until I call for you.’ She turned to level a hot gaze upon Octavia. ‘I am sure your sister will see to your needs.’

Octavia bowed, but said nothing. What was there to say? This was the beginning of a new game, and they both knew it.

When Fiducci had taught her about vampires, that had been his first lesson. Vampires lied. They always lied. Or if they did not lie, they bent the truth into new and creative shapes. And they never, ever did anything save that it benefit them in some fashion. The question was, how did leaving her brother alive benefit them? Was his continued existence a reward or a warning?

Nitocris examined her, as if reading her thoughts. Octavia bowed again, and the slightest hint of a cruel smile tugged at the corners of the vampire’s mouth. Seemingly satisfied, Nitocris swept back to her bier, followed by her handmaidens, leaving Octavia and her brother alone on the ziggurat. She looked down at him. ‘I sent warning,’ she said softly. The cats she’d sent had returned not long before Nitocris’s warriors had escorted her brother back to the temple, and brought with them images of what had occurred. It was a difficult trick, seeing through the eyes of the dead, but one she had mastered early.

If she willed it, she could see through the eyes of everything she had called to her with the drums, which even now still pounded, be they flesh, bone or spirit. She could see all that they saw and all at once, though she was hesitant to try it. Her mind could carry a heavy load, but that was pushing her limits.

‘It seems that it did not reach us in time,’ Steyr coughed. He placed a hand on his knee and pushed himself to his feet. She went to him. He stank of the swamp and unmarked graves, and she closed her eyes and pressed her face tight to his chest. He stroked her hair with a gentleness that belied his strength. ‘I was so close. Our fleet was coming along nicely,’ he murmured. ‘In a few more months, we would have sailed around the coast and up that blasted river, and torn this foul edifice down around her ears.’

Octavia stiffened and stepped back. She looked at him, and saw that he was acting the vampire now, arrogant and brutal and thirsty. It was like a shroud over his personality, and she could sense it vibrating darkly. There was a predatory quiver to vampires, a subtle and sinister formula that rose through the Corpse Geometries to dominate and twist the pattern.

Fiducci had warned her about that as well. Vampires strove to dominate in all facets of existence. It was in their nature, and in their blood. A drop of the latter in a wound conquered even the strongest warrior, and made them over into what they fought. The iron will of the Mother of All Vampires was recreated in all who were descended from her. ‘And then all three of you would have died, rather than just two,’ she said. ‘And then where would I be?’

‘Unencumbered,’ he said. A trace of old hurts was evident in the way he said it. He turned from her and looked out over the ruin, his hands clasped behind his back.

She placed a hand against his back. Her eyes were drawn to the largest of the healing wounds he bore. Idly, she poked it, and he hissed and spun, grabbing her hand. ‘That still hurts,’ he snapped.

‘The pain is in your mind. You can’t actually feel it,’ she said, extracting her hand from his grip. ‘No Nehekharan weapon made that wound.’

‘That’s not surprising. It wasn’t a dead man who nearly killed me, now was it?’ he said.

‘You lied to her,’ Octavia murmured, somewhat surprised. Vampires always lie, she thought. Even when the vampire in question was your brother, it seemed. ‘The Nehekharans weren’t the ones who attacked you?’

‘Oh they did, and quite thoroughly mauled us too, but they had some help,’ he said. He began to pluck out the arrows that still jutted from him. ‘It was a dwarf.’

‘Dwarfs,’ she said, surprised. There were rumours of a dwarf hold, somewhere in the talon of mountains that hooked the western edge of the jungle, but she knew of no one, alive or dead, who’d seen it.

‘Clean the grave mould out of your ears, Octavia. I said dwarf, singular, and a man.’ He sniffed. ‘A fine fellow, you’d have liked him. I so hoped that we were going to be friends.’

She touched the wound again, despite his protestations. Every wound bore the signature of the blade that made it, and every blade left something of itself behind, whether fragments or shavings – and sometimes, just sometimes, something even finer. She could feel the raw, ugly power of the blade that had bitten into her brother. It was a thing of discomfiting solidity, and it had left its mark on her brother’s essence. Octavia knew little of the dwarfs, but what she did know was that the weapons they crafted were heavy things, heavier than the world around them, and somehow more real than reality. They ate at magic the way acid ate at flesh.

The magics within her recoiled at the hint of such a thing, and she lowered her hand. It was no wonder it was taking so long for her brother to heal. ‘What happened to them,’ she said, ‘the dwarf and your fine fellow?’

‘You’ll forgive me if I wasn’t in the mood to be observant. For all I know, the bone-bags killed them after they finished with us,’ he said. He looked at her. ‘Why did she spare me?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. She smiled at the sight of the expression on his face. She reached up and stroked his cheek. ‘I’m glad she did.’ Her smile faded. ‘How did they die?’ she asked, quietly. Their faces swam before her eyes – laughing Pieter and frowning Gregory. She felt a stirring, down deep in the ashes of her soul. She still loved her brothers, but part of her was glad that their souls were free of meat now, and away from this harsh realm.

‘As well as can be expected,’ Steyr said, taking her hand. He kissed her knuckles. ‘We knew when we followed you to this cursed place that it would likely mean our deaths, sister. And it did. It’s simply taking a bit longer than normal for us to lie down.’

She took his hand and led him down the ziggurat. ‘You need blood, to speed your healing,’ she said, as they descended. ‘I think our beloved queen can spare a few slaves, don’t you?’ She raised her free hand, catching the attention of the spectres and ghosts that floated above them. They began to drift down towards her, and their moans filled her ears like friendly greetings.

‘I don’t know, they all look exceedingly busy,’ he said, allowing her to lead him. ‘I’m beginning to think you were right, sister. This place looks as ready for war as any place I’ve ever seen. What is she up to?’

‘Much the same as you were planning, I imagine,’ she said, glancing at him. He smirked and shrugged, and for a moment he was the brother she recalled from her childhood, all bravado and instinct. It was Sigmund who kept them fed, and Sigmund who kept her safe from the watch and the assorted predators of the slums, until she had grown strong enough to protect herself. Sigmund the sneak thief, Sigmund who’d been named for a hero, and who’d lived up to that name, at least in her eyes.

Then his smirk became a hard, cruel smile, and she knew that he was already scheming and plotting to take advantage of his current situation. She felt a weight settle on her heart. Vampires were not truly dead. They lacked the grace of the grave, instead clinging to the rags and tatters of life. Only the living sought to rule. What use had the dead for kingdoms? For a second, she wished her brother had been killed.

The thought of his death, and hers, warmed her. They would be together in damnation then. She pushed the thought aside as the chill fingers of ghosts brushed across her scalp. Her hand caught up the amulet in the shape of a woman’s mouth, and again she kissed it. Steyr saw the gesture and grimaced.

‘You still have that detestable phylactery, I see. I’ll never forgive that blasted Tilean for teaching you about that.’ He reached for her. ‘There are better ways to anchor your spirit to this world, sister. That… thing is not one of them.’

‘What it is, or is not, is no concern of yours, brother. Come,’ she said, and stepped off the ziggurat and onto the buoyant cloud of spirits that rose beneath her. Their ethereal fingers plucked at her legs and they coiled about her like a morning mist. They whispered to her, speaking of secrets, curses and pleas, but she ignored them. They wouldn’t acknowledge her, should she reply. She’d learned as much as a child. There wasn’t enough left of their personalities for them to do anything more than repeat their dying thoughts incessantly.

Steyr hesitated. ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

‘Don’t you think we’re a little past the point of worrying about safety?’ she said teasingly. She held out her hand, and he took it. She pulled him onto the roiling host of spirits and they descended, walking across the backs and palms of the ghosts until they reached the ground. Steyr watched the spirits return to their slow orbit of the ziggurat and frowned.

‘Damn things are worse than those bloated corpses she made you fish from the sea,’ he muttered. She laughed.

‘You have never been able to see what I see, have you, Sigmund?’

‘No one sees what you see, Octavia,’ Steyr grunted. They made their way through the ruins, past stumbling lines of newly arrived zombies and filth-encrusted skeletons. Entire armies had died in the jungles for thousands of years – Arabayan, Cathayan, and Nehekharan, to name but three. Expeditions from Tilea, the Empire and Estalia had also been swallowed by the foetid shadows of the Southlands, and their remains now staggered and slouched into the moonlight, shoving through the gaping holes in the ancient and crumbling walls of the temple city.

‘They are beautiful,’ she said, stretching out a hand to caress the rusted and dangling pauldron of a lurching corpse. It was clad in the filthy remnants of the uniform of an Averland militiaman, and dragged a broken halberd behind it. A snake slithered up from within its uniform and into its sagging mouth, before poking its wedge-shaped head through an empty eye socket. Octavia held up her hand, and the snake slithered across her palm and coiled about her forearm. She pulled the serpent close to her and stroked its skull as they walked. ‘There are colours unknown to poets and artists alike visible upon their tattered flesh, and smells more intricate than can be conceived of by even the greatest perfumers of Bretonnia waft from them.’

‘I will admit, they have quite the heady bouquet,’ Steyr grunted, waving a hand in front of his face. ‘But beautiful? There we agree to disagree, my sister.’

He made a face. ‘She’s had you rouse every corpse in the jungle.’

‘We’ll need them,’ she said.

‘I take it she’s still intent on tearing Lybaras apart stone by stone?’ he said.

‘And more besides – Mahrak, as well, at least, and Rasetra – everything south of the Charnel Valley,’ she said. She smiled and added, ‘And Lahmia, of course.’

‘Of course,’ he said sourly. He hopped over a crawling corpse, missing its lower half. He watched it follow after the others for a moment, before continuing after her. ‘You still think she’ll let you get within a hundred yards of that library you dream of?’

‘If she’s as smart as I think, she’ll know she has no choice. In Lahmia lie the secrets of controlling the dead of Nehekhara – the great tomes and papyri of the masters of the art, which contain everything I’ll need to bring the tomb-kingdoms to heel, and free them from the tyranny of their dreams of lives once lived.’ She petted the snake and it slithered up her arm and coiled about her neck, its tongue flickering in and out of its mouth. ‘She needs me to make use of those secrets, for her sake if for no other reason. Otherwise, all the dead in these jungles won’t be enough to hold back the tomb-legions that will come pouring through the Charnel Valley, once they realise what she’s done to Khalida and Lybaras.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Lybaran galley sped across the heaving sea with preternatural speed. Or so it seemed to Felix, who sat on the rail of the high deck, one hand on the hilt of his sword. He examined his hand. It had been bandaged so expertly that he would not have known he was wearing it, had he not seen it put on. Zabbai’s handmaidens were better surgeons than any he had had the misfortune to encounter in his own lands.

He’d been somewhat worried about infection, and not just from the muck and filth that had crusted his wounds. It was common enough knowledge that ghouls carried a hundred and one vile diseases on their fangs and talons, scraped from the bones of dead men. It was a ghoul who had carried the Blue Pox into Stirland, and a ghoul who had inflicted the first case of the Red Rot in Bretonnia. Or so folk had it. Then, folk also had it that the dead of the deserts were as foul as any corpse that had ever clawed its way out of the sour ground of Sylvania.

Felix lowered his hand and watched the crew of the galley. They acted much as they had in life, he suspected. He wondered if Gotrek was correct – did they even know that they no longer possessed flesh, or were they lost in dreams and heedless of the salty sea winds that scratched at their bones?

‘They do not see the world as it is, but as it was,’ Zabbai said, from beside him. Startled, he nearly slipped from his perch. Her hand shot out, steadying him. She was far stronger, he knew, than himself. Idly, he wondered if that had been the case when she’d been alive, as well. Judging by her size, he thought it likely. He’d never met a woman, alive or otherwise, who was both taller and stronger than himself.

‘And how do you see it?’ he said, steadying himself on the rail.

‘I am speaking to you, am I not?’ She tilted her head. She leaned on the haft of her war-axe, at ease. Up close, the Herald of Lybaras smelt of strange spices and preservative oils. It wasn’t a foul smell, he decided. But it was different.

‘I’m surprised you speak our language,’ he said, ‘but gratified. My own facility with languages is diverse, but limited.’

‘I speak all of the languages of the empire,’ she said, looking out over the deck. It took him a moment to realise that she wasn’t referring to the Empire of Karl Franz, but some other, more ancient kingdom. He hesitated, wondering how to respond. She looked at him, and made a soft, rattling sound he thought might be a chuckle. ‘Though it has been some time since I’ve spoken to a barbarian from the northern wilds, I will admit.’

‘Barbarian?’ Felix asked, stung.

‘Do you prefer savage?’ Zabbai cocked her head. ‘You’re an Unberogen, no? You look like them, though you are quite skinny.’

‘You’re one to talk,’ Felix muttered.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Felix said, looking at his reflection in her golden mask. ‘Have you met many barbarians, then?’

‘I took their heads. Does that count as meeting them?’ She patted the haft of her axe. ‘They fought well, those mountain-folk, but I rode with Nekaph, and even the gods would hesitate to meet the Herald of Settra in battle. We harried them to their brute palisades, and put their hovels to the torch. We mounted the heads of their petty kings upon stone pillars, where the carrion birds could strip them clean.’ She spoke proudly, and Felix felt slightly ill. She stretched out a hand towards the sun and spread her fingers, as if to clutch at it. ‘Our empire stretched from sunrise to sunset, and the earth trembled beneath the wheels of our war-chariots.’

‘And now it is dust and ashes,’ Gotrek rumbled.

Both Zabbai and Felix turned. The Slayer wasn’t looking at them. Gotrek had been staring at the wake of the galley since the liche-priest, Djubti, had intimated that he would find his doom, as if the waters held some secret in that regard. The dwarf ran his thumb over the edge of his axe and stuffed the bloody digit into his mouth. He turned and fixed them with a gimlet stare. ‘Everything ends, manling. Empires rise and fall, and the world keeps turning, whether we wish it, or not. And those of us who remain are forced to wade through the ashes of that which we once knew.’ He spat over the rail. ‘That or we wallow in them. It seems that the dead are no different to the living, in that regard.’

‘Our empire still exists,’ Zabbai said. ‘It has existed, and will exist again. It is imperishable and eternal. We are imperishable and eternal.’

Gotrek grinned. ‘Like the markings on a tomb,’ he said.

Zabbai half raised her axe. If she’d been alive, Felix might have thought that she was contemplating burying her axe in Gotrek’s head. As it was, he had no idea what was going on behind her mask. Could the dead be insulted? He decided to play peacemaker. They were guests – or prisoners, a traitorous part of his mind murmured – though Gotrek seemed to have forgotten that, as usual. ‘Tell me of Lybaras,’ he interjected, quickly.

Zabbai looked at him. Then she lowered her axe and said, ‘Lybaras is vengeance given form. It is the wrath, the wrack and the ruin of all those who would dare challenge the Great Land. The shadows of its white towers stretch from the Devil’s Backbone to the west, to the Cursed Jungle in the south, and to the Gulf of Fear in the east. Only from the north may Lybaras be safely approached, and it is the north that Lybaras guards, for in the north lies cursed Lahmia and twice-cursed Nagashizzar.’ Zabbai settled her axe in the crook of her arm. ‘The Serpent Queen, High Queen Khalida, has set herself the task of barring the way, should there be any attempt to rouse the damned spirits which lurk in Lahmia’s ruins, or to once again light the hell-forges of Nagashizzar. While the other kings, queens, princes and princesses of the Great Land are lost to the memory of flesh, or content to wage war upon one another for boredom or spite, Khalida alone sees the greater purpose of our curse.’

‘Greater purpose,’ Felix repeated.

‘We failed,’ Zabbai said softly. ‘We failed our land, our people and our gods, and thus we are stripped of eternity and condemned to watch as the world moves on without us, without our wisdom. We are not rulers now but gaolers, set to guard the Usurper’s foul treasures so that none might make use of them as he did.’

‘Who is “the Usurper”?’ Felix asked.

He never got his answer. The drumbeat changed rhythm and Zabbai snapped around, staring towards the horizon. Felix followed her gaze and saw the shapes of several approaching galleys. They were cutting through the water, against the current, but approaching speedily for all that. They bore a hawk or some other bird of prey on their sails and he recalled the second flotilla he’d seen from the deck of the Orfeo. Had they fallen afoul of some internecine squabble between tomb-cities? The thought wasn’t a pleasant one.

Zabbai said something in her own tongue. He thought it might have been a curse. ‘What is it?’ he asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

‘Mahrak,’ she said. ‘We are in waters that the City of Decay claims.’

‘I take it that you don’t agree with them,’ Felix said.

‘Their fleet is a third the size of ours, and they claim a third more of the sea,’ Zabbai said. ‘King Tharruk has ever overestimated Mahrak’s reach.’

Felix shaded his eyes against the glare of the sun and peered at the approaching ships. ‘Just now, I’d say they outnumber you, whatever the size of their fleet. We’re one to their three.’ He nervously fingered the hilt of his sword. He’d never been a fan of boarding actions.

‘We have already met them in battle once. We broke them then,’ Zabbai said.

‘Aye, and our ship as well,’ Gotrek said. He peered at the approaching ships with interest. ‘Then, your folk have never given much thought to anyone else, have they?’

‘And yours have?’ Zabbai said. Like Gotrek, she stared at the galleys, which were swiftly closing the distance. Felix wondered if they were using some fell magic to do so, and then looked about the deck, at the skeletal crew that surrounded him, and shook his head. He caught Gotrek’s eye and the Slayer chuckled.

‘Don’t look so worried, manling. Remember our time with Long Drong? It’ll be just like that,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose.

‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ Felix said. They’d spent a month aboard the ironclad warship of the infamous Slayer-pirate. He and Gotrek had got along like… Well, like Slayers. Felix had experienced the worst seasickness of his life aboard the cramped and foul-smelling vessel, and things hadn’t got any better when Drong and Gotrek had bullied him aboard Malakai Makaisson’s experimental undersea exploration vessel. Things hadn’t got any better once they’d hit the ocean floor, either. He pushed that particular memory aside.

‘No fish-men, though,’ Gotrek added.

‘Thank the gods for small favours,’ Felix muttered. He looked at Zabbai. ‘Can’t we outrun them?’

The dead woman looked at him. ‘We are warriors of Lybaras, barbarian. We don’t run.’

‘Ha! I’m starting to like you, crow-bait,’ Gotrek said. He nudged Felix with his elbow. ‘You like dead women, don’t you, manling? I approve of this one, if it matters.’

‘It doesn’t,’ Felix said through gritted teeth. The only thing worse than a Slayer in a sour mood was one who was looking forward to a fight; a cheerful Gotrek was like an overly excited bear, given to playful bites and bone-rattling swipes.

Zabbai lifted her axe and shouted something in her own tongue. Archers began to troop up onto the deck, their gear rattling on their yellowing bones. Djubti followed them, seemingly in no hurry. The liche-priest leaned on his staff, and his withered features twisted into an expression of frustration. ‘We have no time for this, woman,’ he rasped. ‘I will conjure the breath of Khsar and we shall leave them in our wake.’

Zabbai’s axe swept out, and the tip of the blade poked the liche-priest in the nose. ‘We do not run, old bones. They must know that we do not fear them. They must know that we can go where we wish, whether they will it or not. The open seas are ours, and the coasts and everything in between.’

‘Are you so eager for open war?’ Djubti said. He used his staff to shove aside her axe.

‘War has already been declared,’ Zabbai said. ‘They attacked us.’

‘And we beat them. Let that be an end to it,’ he hissed. ‘Black clouds and carrion birds gather about us, woman. We have no time for such petty concerns. Greater things are at stake than your warrior’s pride.’

Felix watched the exchange, curious as to what it was about, and not a little concerned. Despite his attempts to ferret it out, Zabbai had not revealed why this ‘Serpent Queen’ wanted to see them, or what it had to do with whatever was going on. And something was going on. He could feel it in his gut. He moved to Gotrek’s side. ‘We are in deep waters here, Gotrek,’ he said.

The Slayer peered over the rail and grunted, ‘Fairly deep, aye. What’s your point, manling?’

‘Metaphorical waters, Gotrek,’ Felix said. ‘We are bobbing on an ocean of plots and schemes, I think.’

‘Really,’ Gotrek said. ‘Observant of you, manling.’

‘Something is going on,’ Felix tried, growing frustrated.

Gotrek cocked his eye at Felix. ‘Something is always going on, manling. Living humans are full of plots and schemes. Why should dead ones be any different?’ he said dismissively.

He waved a hand at the approaching galleys. ‘I came here to find either gold, doom or both. Those will do me as well as anything.’

‘You think that old liche was telling the truth, then?’ Felix asked, softly. ‘About your search being over, I mean.’ He cast a quick glance towards the oncoming galleys and then looked back at Gotrek.

The Slayer frowned thoughtfully. ‘I’ve heard that before,’ he muttered. He looked at Felix. ‘I’ve heard it too often.’ He fell silent. His grip on his axe tightened perceptibly, and the haft creaked beneath his fingers.

Felix knew better than to try and get any more out of him. Gotrek was never the most communicative of companions, especially when it came to the subject of his doom. Felix looked back at the galleys swooping towards them, and felt a stab of pity for the dead men.

Behind them, a hoarse voice began to chant. Felix turned and saw Djubti standing in the centre of the deck, his shrivelled arms extended over his head, with his staff held horizontally in both hands. The sea breeze began to grow in strength as the liche-priest croaked out his incantation. He’d obviously won his argument with Zabbai. Felix felt somewhat relieved.

The sails of their vessel snapped and billowed, filling with an unnatural wind.

However, despite this, the enemy galleys had drawn far too close for comfort. Felix could see that they had their own archers. Zabbai barked an order. Her soldiers raised their bows, arrows ready. A moment later, the sky momentarily darkened as opposing volleys of arrows met and passed through one another. Felix yelped as arrows rained down on them. Gotrek grunted and grabbed Felix, slinging him to the deck. The Slayer interposed himself, and as Felix watched in mounting horror, arrows struck Gotrek, piercing his thick flesh.

The dwarf remained standing despite this, and held tight to his axe. Felix closed his eyes. As the last arrow punched through the wood of the deck, Felix opened one eye. Gotrek looked down at him. ‘Still in one piece then, manling?’ he asked. Arrows jutted from his chest, shoulders and arms like the quills of a porcupine. As if they were no more bother than bee stings, Gotrek lifted his axe and chopped through the hafts, shearing them to nubs. Blood oozed around the barbed heads, but the Slayer didn’t seem to care. Idly, he twisted an arrowhead free and bounced it on his palm.

‘Gotrek, are-are you all right?’ Felix said, rising to his feet.

‘Bah,’ Gotrek spat. ‘Elven archers are more dangerous than that lot.’

‘The warriors of Mahrak favour the blade to the bow,’ Zabbai said, from where she stood near the rail. Felix saw that she, like Gotrek, had been struck several times, though she hadn’t bothered to break or remove the arrows. He felt a moment of queasy fascination as he considered the company he found himself in. He felt terribly fragile, all of a sudden.

On the enemy galleys, dead men were gathering in the prows. On the closest, Felix saw a skeletal figure, clad in ornate, archaic armour and flowing ruby robes, raise a heavy, square shield and a gilded khopesh as if in salute. The warrior shouted something that Felix couldn’t make out. He looked at Zabbai, who hissed. ‘Otep,’ she said. ‘I should have known.’

‘An old friend,’ he said.

‘An old suitor,’ Zabbai said.

The archers were abandoning the deck, moving down to the lower sections of the galley as spear-armed warriors replaced them. Zabbai swung her axe and buried it in the rail. She gestured imperiously, and one of her warriors handed her a large, broad-bladed spear, much like the one she’d used to kill Pieter. She brought the blade up and touched its tip to her brow. Then, with a hiss of bronze splitting the air, she sent the spear flying towards the closest galley, and the gesticulating figure of Otep.

Felix winced as the spear tore the warrior’s head clean off. Otep’s body staggered back, hands flung out. It stumbled and abruptly vanished. Felix thought he might have fallen. ‘He never did know when not to call attention to himself,’ Zabbai said. She tore her axe free of the rail.

‘Old suitor, you said?’ Felix said, hesitantly.

‘Would-be suitor,’ Zabbai amended. ‘They’re slowing,’ she added.

‘Are we going to get a fight, or not?’ Gotrek said impatiently. ‘My axe grows thirsty.’

‘We’ll get a fight. Otep’s galley is peeling off, but the others are still coming,’ Zabbai said. ‘We won’t be able to outrun them, even with Djubti’s sorcerous wind filling our sails and aiding our rowers.’

She gestured, and the drumbeat began to change. Her warriors approached the rail, raising their shields and hefting spears to ward off boarders. Zabbai waved Felix back. ‘Behind me, barbarian,’ she said, almost gently, shooing him back. She looked at Gotrek and added, ‘You can stand wherever you want, dwarf.’

Gotrek gave a grunt of satisfaction and stumped towards the rail. Felix looked at Djubti. The liche-priest stood near the mast, hunched and sour looking. Felix turned back, and saw that the first galley was almost upon them. He could make out the eerie, fleshless grins of the warriors gathered in the prow, crouched behind shields, their bony fingers waiting to draw their swords. He swallowed. What was it Gotrek had said? ‘Spines and skulls,’ Felix muttered. ‘Spines and skulls.’

The galleys crashed together in a cacophony of crunching metal and splintering wood. Felix was nearly thrown from his feet. As he regained his balance, there was a hiss of voices, and the enemy leapt to the attack. Dead men clad in bronze armour crashed against one another in the small space between aft rail and prow. Khopesh met khopesh and shields smashed together as ancient rivalries were renewed.

Gotrek gave a roar and struck the enemy line like a cannonball. His axe swung out in wide arcs and shards of bone and bronze flew in its wake. Felix drew Karaghul and parried a spear as it dug for his belly. His shoulder crashed into his opponent’s shield and he rolled across it, reversing Karaghul as he did so. He stabbed the sword behind him, catching the skeleton in the back, severing its spine.

Zabbai was at the forefront, wielding axe and shield. She strode across the deck like a goddess of war, her axe removing heads and limbs, and her shield smashing her enemies from their feet. In life, she would have been magnificent. In death, she was terrifying. Felix goggled as she caught a warrior with her shield and flung the struggling skeleton into the air, and then caught it with her axe as it fell. The warriors of Lybaras held their ground as those of Mahrak pressed against them. Those who weren’t involved in the defence of the deck had moved towards the side of the galley where the second enemy vessel had drawn alongside. Boarding planks slammed down on the rail, and more enemy warriors clattered across. Djubti gave a hoarse curse and raised his staff. A string of croaking syllables slipped from his desiccated lips, and as Felix watched in horrified fascination, the skulls of those warriors already fallen rose into the air with a communal shriek. The skulls were drawn towards the liche-priest and they swirled about him, as if he were the eye of a maelstrom.

With a sharp gesture, Djubti sent the whirling storm of skulls spinning towards the enemy galley. The warriors crossing the boarding planks were caught and torn to shreds by the chattering cloud of skulls, and their own skulls joined the storm as it swept across the galley. The galley heaved as the skulls tore through wood and metal and bone. Djubti clenched his hand and the storm rose up, the skulls swirling faster and faster. They shattered the masts of the galley and tore the sails to shreds. Bodies were caught in their wake and drawn up into the swirling vortex. Then, with a cutting gesture, Djubti let the spell fade. A rain of cracked and broken skulls thudded to the deck of the enemy galley, and nothing moved upon it.

A khopesh slashed out, narrowly missing Felix’s head. It snagged a thread of his hair before burying itself in the mast. Shaken from his reverie, Felix cursed and stabbed out with Karaghul, but the templar blade was batted aside by a rattling flail. The warrior who faced him was no skeletal spearman. Clad in gold and obsidian armour and flowing black raiment, he was bigger than his warriors, and he wielded a saw-toothed khopesh and a flail composed of cruel barbs, wrought in the shape of scorpions’ stings. His face was hidden behind a mask of fraying silk and thin, filigreed gold.

‘Ho, living man! Would you face Antar of Mahrak, Prince of the Obsidian Divide, Lion of the Valley, Mighty Son of Heaven?’ his opponent rasped. ‘Would you meet the Second King of the Fourth Dynasty in honourable combat? Come, O fleshy one! Come, so that he might shuck thee of thy untidy and off-putting seeming!’ Antar swept out his arms, and the enemy soldiers, and those of Lybaras as well, drew back. ‘Back, you dogs! Back, sons of Mahrak and curs of Lybaras! Antar is a prince of Mahrak, scion of Tharruk, and he issues a challenge to thee, worm of seven hundred graves!’

Felix raised his blade in rough salute. He didn’t intend to waste breath answering such a long-winded challenge. Antar clashed his weapons and stalked forwards, much quicker than Felix expected. The flail snapped out, entangling Karaghul as he sought to block the blow, and the sword was ripped from his grasp and sent clattering across the deck. Felix didn’t hesitate. He dived after the blade. The khopesh sliced out, barely missing his head as he stretched his hands out towards his sword. ‘Dog of the north,’ Antar hissed. ‘Jackal with ten thousand fathers! Face the Spiteful Son of Imanotep!’ Felix caught up Karaghul and rolled to his feet.

Antar lunged, smashing his blade aside and his flail tore across Felix’s face and chest. Felix staggered back. The wounds weren’t as bad as some he’d taken, but they burned strangely. He stumbled backwards, and his back struck the rail. The world swam before his eyes. Antar shook his flail. ‘Do you feel the scorpion’s sting, fleshy one? Do you feel it eat into your primitive muscle, draining your strength? Ha! Woe betide any who would pit themselves against the Dutiful Scorpion of Mahrak, for his sting shall send them to Djaf’s embrace!’

Felix slumped against the rail. His veins felt as if they were swollen with fire and his tongue felt bloated and heavy in his mouth. Karaghul slipped from his nerveless fingers and he slipped down. Antar approached. ‘I shall make a codpiece of thy skull, northman. I shall weave thy flaxen locks into a braid for my concubines, and I shall have thy sword shattered and cast into the sea.’

‘Touch the manling again, you withered bag of dog’s leavings, and I’ll pick my teeth with your finger-bones,’ Gotrek said. The Slayer slapped aside a skeletal warrior with casual brutality and stomped towards Antar. ‘He’s oathsworn to me, you moveable feast for maggots, and I’ll not have you help him escape it. He’s already tried once this week,’ Gotrek growled. Felix tried to protest, but his face felt numb, and he was having trouble breathing. Gotrek gestured with his axe. ‘You want to fight? Let’s fight.’

Antar cocked his head, and then gave a raspy laugh. ‘Fight, you say? Antar, Hawk of the Rising Moon, does not fight stumpy monkeys. He kills them and plucks their eyes for sweetmeats. Do not come between the Son of the Third Queen, Lady of the Eighth Sun, Mightiest of All and his chosen–’

Gotrek didn’t give Antar a chance to finish. He charged forwards. His rune-axe thundered down, splintering Antar’s wrist, and the hand that held the flail fell to the deck. Antar reeled back, cursing. Khopesh met axe in a flurry of squeals and sparks as the fight reeled across the deck. Antar’s speed did him little good against the Slayer, who blocked every blow with ease.

The khopesh cut towards Gotrek’s skull, and the Slayer interposed his axe. Such was the force of Antar’s blow that the blade cracked and the rune-axe bit deep into it. The two weapons became locked. Gotrek’s free hand snapped out, catching hold of Antar’s exposed spinal column, beneath its breastplate of gold and onyx. Gotrek gave a grunt, and the muscles in his arm and shoulder bulged and flexed as he crushed the aged bones. Antar gave a squawk and toppled backwards. Or rather, the top half of him did. His legs stayed where they were.

‘Cheat!’ he hissed, flailing helplessly. ‘This is not honourable! Antar makes protest! There was no formal challenge! The Mighty Lion Cub was struck from behind by treacherous donkeys!’

‘This is a fight,’ Gotrek snarled, reaching down to grab the dead man’s skull. ‘You don’t get to protest. Now shut up so I can finish killing you.’ Felix wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. The thought didn’t bother him as much as it should have. His head felt muddy and his thoughts felt as if they were muffled in cotton. He could hear his heart struggling in his chest, and he couldn’t feel his fingers or toes.

‘No,’ Zabbai said, tapping Gotrek’s shoulder with the flat of her axe. ‘It is not meet that you should kill a prince of Nehekhara this way. It is also not meet that we should throw him over the side, so that he would have to crawl back to Nehekhara across the ocean floor, like the worm he is, no matter how much he might deserve it. He is our prisoner, and will be treated as such.’

‘Ha! You heard her. Release this Glorious Child of Mahrak, ape of Ind! Release Antar, He Who Has Come to Deliver Justice,’ Antar said, battering at Gotrek’s unyielding fist with his bony hand. ‘You heard the Serpent’s doxy!’

‘Quiet, Antar,’ Zabbai said, easily hefting the top of him. ‘Or I’ll string you from the prow for the gulls to play with.’ She looked at Gotrek. ‘See to your friend. Antar was ever fond of dipping his weapons in poisons.’

Felix’s eyelids felt unbearably heavy as Gotrek sank down into a crouch beside him. ‘Gotrek, I think I’m dying,’ he croaked. Black spots crowded at the edges of his vision, and he felt as if he were looking up at the Slayer from the bottom of a deep well. Gotrek’s craggy face was unreadable. A rough palm was pressed to his forehead, and the dwarf traced the wounds in his face. Gotrek’s eye narrowed.

‘You might be at that, manling,’ he said grimly. Faces swam before Felix’s vision – Ulrika, Max, Snorri, others – enemies as well as friends. Flashes of memory, pieces of his past swirled across the surface of his mind. He saw each of them as clear as day and as vibrantly as if he were experiencing them for the first time. And then he saw nothing at all.

CHAPTER NINE

Felix felt warm. His eyes fluttered open.

A brightly hued bird stared down at him. It squawked as he came awake and flapped its wings. The bird flew away, out through a stone doorway that led onto a wide balcony. Felix pushed himself up and looked down at himself, and then at the room around him. It was not large, but it was tidy. Age-dulled mosaics covered the pale stone walls, depicting scenes from a history utterly unfamiliar to him.

He saw men in chariots firing bows at great, ill-formed beasts, and ranks of spearmen marching against a horde of bipedal lizards. Sunlight streamed in through the doorway that the bird had flown out through, and through the oval windows that lined the walls. There was no glass in the windows, only thin curtains of muslin that stirred ever so slightly in the salt-tinged breeze coursing through the room. He shivered and climbed out of bed. The world spun for a moment, and a queasy ripple of vertigo swept through him. He felt wrung-out and weak. He wasn’t dead, however.

His clothes lay across a stool nearby, as did his chain shirt, his cloak and his boots. All had been cleaned and repaired, seemingly as good as new. Karaghul, in its sheath, hung from a bedpost, as did his dagger. Both sheaths had been scoured of muck and grime, and he unsheathed the sword, marvelling at the polish it now possessed. The sword maintained an edge and a gleam better than any blade he’d ever carried, but it was positively radiant now. He dressed quickly, and stepped out onto the balcony. The balcony was a plain stone extension, with a curving balustrade, and strange serpentine designs marked every fourth block of stone that made it up.

Below him, a silent city stretched out. The buildings were made from stone and marble, and of a variety of sizes, but all of a similar mausoleum-like shape. The windows were squares of black set into flat walls, and he saw no faces or movement in any of them. Long shadows slithered through the streets, and ancient structures, topped with gold, stood silent sentinel over what he hoped was Lybaras. He leaned over the balustrade. The streets were empty, with no sign of anyone, living or dead. In truth, he hadn’t expected to see anyone, but it was odd and more than a little disquieting to experience.

The city was as quiet as any tomb, and the eerie silence caused a chill to pass through him, despite the heat of the day. It was a vision of decayed splendour, with wide, paved streets lined with great statues carved in the shapes of cobras, asps and serpents of all sorts. Funeral monuments lined the plazas and vast, free-standing archways marked the entrances to those plazas and intersections. And beyond it all, the glitter of the sea.

The salty wind caressed the stones and hissed through the streets. He closed his eyes. He had been certain that he was going to die. Then, that wasn’t anything new. Felix fancied that Morr probably had a berth with his name on it held open on a more or less permanent basis on his grim vessel.

The last thing he recalled was Gotrek’s face, glaring down at him in either concern or consternation. Felix flexed his bandaged hand and tilted his head. A bitter wind caressed his face. There was a good reason that the Bitter Sea was named such, he knew. He stepped back into the room. What had happened after he’d passed out? And where was Gotrek?

There was a bowl of fruit on a table near the bed, and a stone jug of water. The fruit was quite unlike anything he’d ever seen, and he thought that it must come from the Southlands. It wasn’t quite rotten, but it was soft enough to provoke a queasy reaction in his grumbling belly. The water had a slightly sour taste that was mostly hidden by the slices of fruit that had been dropped into it. He wondered why the dead had a supply of such things, and whether they had procured the fruit, at least, just for him, or if they had a supply of it on hand, just in case visitors stopped by. The thought made him smile.

As he struggled into his chain shirt, he saw that the broken links had been repaired with bronze and iron, and like Karaghul, it too had been polished. He was swinging the cloak about his shoulders when the door opened and a shape stepped into the room.

Felix snatched up Karaghul and had the sword half drawn before he saw that it was Zabbai. The Herald of Lybaras cocked her head. ‘I see that you are awake, barbarian. Good.’

‘Felix,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘My name is Felix,’ he said, belting his sword about his waist.

‘I did not ask,’ Zabbai said.

‘No, you didn’t,’ Felix said. He stuffed his gloves through his belt and stretched his bandaged hands. They ached somewhat, but he’d take soreness over numbness any day. ‘I owe you my thanks. For saving my life, I mean.’

‘Again,’ Zabbai said, ‘saving your life again. That is two you owe me.’

‘I seem to have a bad habit of finding myself in debt to others,’ he said. She laughed. The croaking rattle was not nearly as surprising as before. In life, he suspected that it had been loud and boisterous. ‘I assume that we made it to Lybaras, then,’ he said.

‘Where else would we be?’ Zabbai said. She gestured towards the door. ‘The Beloved of Asaph, the Lioness of the Sands, wishes to speak with you.’

‘Where is Gotrek?’ Felix said, as they stepped out into the corridor beyond. Silent, skeletal servants waited there, clad in frayed robes and tarnished golden jewellery. As one, they formed up around them.

‘Here, manling,’ Gotrek said. The Slayer was sitting on a stool a little way up the corridor, a jug of sour-smelling wine dangling from one meaty paw and a skeleton kneeling nearby, with a platter of something dead and roasted balanced on its upraised palms. He grinned and stood. ‘Feel better after your nap?’ He gestured with the jug of wine. ‘Like a bit of liquid fortification? We can’t have you fainting again, can we?’

‘I was poisoned,’ Felix protested, waving away the jug.

‘Aye, and?’ Gotrek said. He tilted his head back and emptied the jug.

He gave a thunderous belch and peered into the jug, as if to detect whether there was any of whatever it was hiding from him.

‘Some of us don’t have your resilience, Gotrek,’ Felix said.

‘Bah, men are lazy and fragile,’ Gotrek said, with a dismissive wave. ‘You are an anchor about my neck, manling. I should have left you here, and gone on alone to seek this doom these bone-bags have promised me.’

‘Then why didn’t you?’ Felix snapped.

Gotrek tossed the empty jug to one of the silent servants and stomped ahead of them without replying. Felix watched him go and restrained the urge to fire curses at the dwarf’s broad back. Zabbai gave a raspy chuckle. ‘He has been sitting on that stool since you were brought here,’ she said. The curses died in his throat and he shook his head.

Zabbai led Gotrek, Felix and the crowd of servants through the pale, sunlit corridors of what Felix learned was called the White Tower, though, she confided, it was less a tower than a palace and not so much white as simply pale. Gotrek punctuated this revelation with loud, uninvited remarks as to the various and sundry weak points of human architecture, and all of the ways in which dwarf craftsmanship was superior. The servants made no comment.

For his part, Felix was content to drink in his surroundings. It was everything he’d ever dreamed of as a boy. Carvings of asps marked every stone not occupied by intricate and colourful mosaics or hieroglyphic engravings. The corridors were a kaleidoscope of colour and imagery that seemed to shift and writhe as the sun speared through the round windows lining the tops of the walls. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured. He stooped to peer more closely at an engraved asp. The stone shape of the snake seemed to writhe as he drew close. The triangular head moved, and amethyst eyes fixed him with a chilling stare. The stone snake hissed. All thoughts of beauty faded as he shot upright and stumbled back. The corridor walls were alive with squirming stone shapes, and all of them looking directly at him. He hurried after the others, and tried to ignore the way the stone asps slithered in his wake.

‘Keep up, manling,’ Gotrek said, as Felix rejoined the group. ‘If you get lost in this blasted necropolis, I’m not going to bother looking for you.’

‘Lybaras is the smallest of the great cities of Nehekhara,’ Zabbai said. ‘It would be difficult for him to become lost.’

‘The manling once got lost in a small tomb with a single entrance,’ Gotrek said.

‘That small tomb with a single entrance was almost forty miles in diameter and occupied by a skaven warren,’ Felix said. ‘Also, you promised me you wouldn’t bring it up again.’ He grimaced and straightened his cloak. ‘It wasn’t pleasant the first time around, and I have no wish to relive it.’

They exited the corridor, stepping out onto an open-air stairway composed of flat, wide stone steps, which led up in a coiling curve to a high plateau where a gold-capped white dome sat. As they ascended, Felix looked down and saw a courtyard below, marked by an immense mosaic, which depicted a massive serpent. ‘Got a thing for snakes, this queen,’ Gotrek said.

‘She is the Beloved of Asaph, the goddess of vengeance, whose symbol is the asp. Lybaras, and all who yet dwell within it, have been dedicated to the goddess’s cause,’ Zabbai said. ‘Our arrows are her fangs, our shields, her scales, our legions, her body, and our Queen is her voice. Lybaras is Asaph, and Asaph is Lybaras.’

She waved a hand, and the flock of servants dispersed, scattering across the plaza, about other tasks, though Felix couldn’t imagine that there was much to do. When you lived in a tomb, who was there to serve? What was there to do, even? He wondered whether they would simply retreat to some darkened building to sit and wait to be summoned again.

As they reached the top of the steps, Felix saw that the way into the dome was a set of massive, bronze doors, guarded by a phalanx of statues, each bearing a head fashioned in the likeness of a serpent’s skull. The statues wore armour and carried huge halberds. Felix was startled, but not surprised, when the statues moved, crossing their halberds to block the group’s path to the doors with a loud clang.

He had heard stories of the war-statuary of the Land of the Dead, and the great stone sphinxes that were said to prowl in the vanguard of the silent tomb-legions when they went to war with the living. After everything else he’d seen in his career as Gotrek’s Rememberer to date, moving statues came as no shock. He kept his hands well away from his weapons, and hoped Gotrek would have the good sense to do the same. The Slayer was eyeing the closest statue the way a starving man might eye a rabbit.

‘Keep your axe to yourself, dwarf,’ Zabbai said warningly. ‘The Chosen of the Gods, the ushabti, will brook no threat to the queen. They are filled with the stuff of heroes, and given strength by Asaph’s will, and will strike suddenly and without mercy if you show any hint of a threat.’ Gotrek’s face twisted into a pugnacious expression, but he merely grunted and spat.

Satisfied, Zabbai stepped out in front of the group and thumped the ground with the haft of her axe. One of the statues looked down, and dull sparks flared in its eye sockets. The snaky jaws opened and a voice like sand caught in a strong wind intoned, ‘Who comes?’ Felix twitched. He could feel the echo of the ushabti’s voice in his belly and bones. It made his teeth itch and his ears throb. It was a voice as deep and heavy as the crash of rock falling from the highest peak to the lowest valley.

‘Zabbai of the Southlands, Herald of Lybaras, Judgement of Asaph, Bride of the Axe and Queen of Her Folk,’ Zabbai said, thumping the stone with her axe for emphasis.

‘Who requests thy presence, daughter of Asaph?’

‘My sister, cousin and mistress, the Voice of Asaph, High Queen Khalida of Lybaras, Lady of the Sixth Geas, Mistress of the Marshes and Protector of the North,’ Zabbai said. Her axe went thump-thump-thump.

‘And these?’ the ushabti said. Its eyes fixed on Felix, who felt a sudden urge to flee. Preferably while screaming loudly and with much flailing of his arms, just to make the point. Gotrek shoved past him.

‘Gotrek Gurnisson, son of Gurni, and Slayer,’ he spat. He slapped Felix in the chest with a casual backhand. ‘And this is my Rememberer, Felix Jaeger, of Altdorf, and the manling Empire.’ The ushabti, responding perhaps to the hostility dripping from the Slayer’s voice, stirred and the edge of its halberd caught the sunlight. Gotrek tensed, ready to explode into violence at any moment. Felix had suspected that, despite Zabbai’s admonition, the Slayer wouldn’t be able to resist goading the inhuman sentinel into a fight.

He clenched his hand. If it came to it, there’d be nothing he could do, save draw his sword and hope for the best. ‘High Queen Khalida has requested their presence, O Kharnak, Mighty Sentinel of the White Tower, Beloved of the Gods and Sentry of the Just and Sudden Reach,’ Zabbai said, extending her axe between Gotrek and the ushabti. ‘They are her guests.’

‘You vouchsafe them, Daughter of the Spear?’

‘I do,’ Zabbai said.

‘Then pass, you pilgrims, into the throne room of the beloved of Asaph, to wonder and glory in her beneficence,’ the ushabti intoned. The halberds were raised, and the doors swung open with the grinding squeal of rarely used hinges. Felix followed Gotrek and the others through, the nape of his neck prickling beneath the steady gazes of the gathered ushabti.

The doors crashed shut behind them. He expected darkness, or torchlight. Instead, the chamber beyond was bathed in the brightest sunlight. Dazzled by the intensity of the light, Felix blinked and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Mirrors,’ Gotrek grunted. ‘Another bit of artifice stolen from my people.’

The dwarf wasn’t bothered by the blinding shafts of light that played across them, or, if he was, he wasn’t letting it show. Felix shook his head and thrust the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to clear them. As he blinked away tears, he saw that the floor was composed of an intricately pieced together network of polished golden tiles, each of which depicted a scene from what he assumed was the history of Lybaras. He looked up. The rounded roof of the chamber was similarly decorated, though it was punctuated by large, circular openings that appeared to be lined with polished bronze discs of varying sizes and placements.

Gotrek saw him staring and said, ‘You’ve been to Karak Kadrin, manling. You know how we light our halls. As the sunlight strikes each disc, it is reflected to the next, all the way down the shaft, and when it strikes the floor, the gold reflects it across the walls.’

Gotrek gestured, drawing Felix’s attention to the immense golden discs that lined the curved walls. Each was shaped like a sun, surrounded by a halo of sharp flanges, and each blazed with reflected light.

It was as if they stood within the belly of a vast kaleidoscope, with beams and shafts of light crossing and criss-crossing about them, creating a sea of light and colour. Felix saw heavy columns of pale stone rising from the floor to the ceiling. Each of them had been carved to resemble a rearing serpent, and was as wide as five men. From top to bottom, each column had been chiselled with Nehekharan hieroglyphs, all the way around.

‘The history of our people, of the City of Asaph,’ Djubti said. The liche-priest was waiting for them, swaddled in sunlight, with a scowl on his face. In the concentrated glare of the light, Felix could see the puffs of dust and incense that flew from his withered form with every twitch and gesture. ‘Here is writ the story of us, by artifice and puissant concern,’ Djubti continued with a grandiloquent croak. He threw up his hands and smote the floor with the butt of his staff of office. ‘Here is the pinnacle of our craftsmanship.’

‘A beardling could have designed it,’ Gotrek said disdainfully.

Djubti lowered his arms and glared at the dwarf. He thumped the floor again and turned away in a flare of aged cloth, pulling his cloak about himself. ‘She awaits you. Follow me,’ he rasped. They moved through the corridor of columns. Felix felt a warm breeze, and saw large openings marked sections of the wall, each blocked by a curtain of thin material that rippled in the arid wind. Strange, large forms moved behind the curtains. With a start, he realised that they were immense snake-shaped monstrosities, each with a massive human-like skull within the folds of its cobra-hood. The soft scrape of their bellies across stone caused his teeth to itch, and his hand sought the hilt of his sword instinctively. One of the creatures dipped low, and Felix saw a skeletal shape perched upon it, with a heavy spear in its hand. As he watched, the weird creature and its eerie rider slithered out of sight.

‘The necropolis knights have been awakened,’ Zabbai murmured. ‘That does not bode well.’ Insomuch as he could determine, she sounded worried. And that worried him.

‘What are they?’ Felix whispered.

‘Guardians of the temples and demesnes of the Mortuary Cult,’ she said. He noticed that she clutched her axe at the ready. ‘Mighty warriors who ride constructs which bear the stamp of Qu’aph, god of Cobras, He Who Hunted Dragons When the World Was Young. They are rarely awoken, for their love of battle is so strong that even in death, they hunger for the stuff of carnage and the red, wet hymn of slaughter.’

Felix shuddered. ‘Why would they have awoken them, then? Unless…’ He looked at her. ‘Who are you at war with? Is it Mahrak?’

Zabbai said nothing. Felix waited for her to speak, but when he realised that no answer was forthcoming, he fell silent. Something was going on. His earlier suspicions had been correct. He and Gotrek had stumbled into a situation not of their making. But whatever was going on, they were involved now, whether they liked it or not. Worry gnawed at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of movement behind one of the great pillars. It was gone before he could focus on it, and he wondered what other sorts of guardian lurked in this brightly lit tomb.

As they neared the rear of the chamber, Felix saw a crowd of skeletal shapes, standing silent and attentive. They wore a diverse array of costumes, and bore tight scrolls of parchment, or thin blocks of stone, marked by chiselled hieroglyphs. ‘Messengers from the other cities, and the other kings and queens,’ Zabbai whispered, ‘You have come at a time of much upheaval. Lords and ladies of Lybaras, Mahrak and Rasetra, who should be slumbering in their tombs, are awake and ready for war.’ She gestured to one of the scroll-bearing skeletons. ‘Representatives from the smaller dynasties, who come bearing tentative offers of alliance against mutual enemies, within their own kingdom or another,’ she said.

‘Do your people really war against each other so much, even now?’ he hissed in reply. It wasn’t unusual for war to break out amongst the diverse provinces or personalities that made up the Empire, but it was somewhat disheartening to consider that death, which the Cult of Morr claimed was the great unifier, was no end to such petty internecine conflicts.

‘There are more kings now,’ Zabbai murmured, as if that explained everything. Djubti led them to a high, wide dais that occupied a vast niche set into the back wall of the chamber. A quartet of armed, gauze-shrouded skeletons stood on the steps of the dais, wearing what Felix now knew to be the Nehekharan equivalent of heavy armour: cuirasses of bronze scale and treated leather, gilded and inlaid with turquoise. Their bodies were covered by golden jewellery, bracelets, headdresses and scarab-shaped brooches that clutched thin, dangling parchments in their claws. On each parchment was a litany of inked images.

Each of the guards held a heavy shield in one hand, marked with the universal symbols of death – skulls, bones and other grim sigils. In their other hand, each held the hilt of a wide-bladed khopesh, its point pressed to the step.

The floor before the dais was covered by the hide of some great reptile, and the rounded steps that led to its top were draped with brown and decaying palm fronds and moth-eaten animal pelts. The niche in which the dais sat was carved in the shape of an asp’s gaping mouth, with stone fangs rising from the bottom step of the dais and jutting down over the slim, stone throne that occupied its plateau.

The throne was obscured by wide palm fronds, yellowing and ragged with age, held by two mummified women, who were clad in thin robes and gilded death masks, and who wore headdresses of saurian hide and torcs in the shape of coiled serpents.

Djubti led them into the queue that had formed before the dais, where representatives from other powers and principalities waited, with demands and requests for the Serpent Queen. Though whether she was listening or not was up for debate, as the palm fronds never moved and the queen had yet to reveal herself.

A gaudily dressed skeleton stepped forwards at a curt gesture from one of the guards. He was clad in silks and furs, with a headdress made from faded and drooping feathers, and wore more gold than the pirate Red Hand was said to have buried. It hissed, ‘King Ushtep, Mighty Falcon of Rasetra, Settra’s Strong Hand in the South, Master of the Fortress of Vengeful Souls, High King of the Sweltering Jungles, Champion of the Charnel Valley, Prince of All Princes and King Among Kings does request that High Queen Khalida, Queen of Lybaras, set low her standards and move forth her legions from the foothills of Mount Arachnos and enter into battle with his enemy, Imanotep of Mahrak.’ He extended a ragged scroll, which had turned brown and fragile with age, to the guard, who took it and passed it up to the handmaidens. The latter passed it behind the fronds.

‘She who is Lybaras, Mistress of the Serpent Legion and Sentinel of the Bitter Sea, recognises and will consider the proposal of her brother-king,’ the guard said, jawbone clicking. ‘Next!’

As they approached, Djubti struck the floor with his staff and said, ‘Bow, pilgrims, bow before the Wisdom of Asaph made flesh, the Voice of the Vengeful, the Lioness of the Hills, She Whose Legions Blot Out the Sun With Their Arrows, High Queen Khalida, Guardian of Damned Lahmia, the Watchful Soul and the Serpent Queen.’ Every title recitation was punctuated by a thud of the staff and the ring of the metal cap on the butt striking the golden tile.

‘Let her be revealed.’ He turned towards them. ‘Kneel, so that you might bask in her radiance.’ Zabbai sank to one knee, as did every other Nehekharan. Only Gotrek and Felix remained standing.

Seeing Djubti glaring at them, Felix hurriedly dropped down. ‘Gotrek,’ he hissed, ‘kneel!’ As he bent forwards, he again caught a flicker of movement, like a shadow slashed loose of its host. It darted behind the crowd of representatives and hugged the wall, sliding and slithering around and beneath the beams of sunlight. A bird, he thought, a gull perhaps.

He thought of the colourful bird he’d seen on the balcony earlier. Perhaps it was roosting in one of the sunlight shafts, and its shadow was being cast down by the reflecting plates.

‘Dwarfs do not kneel, manling,’ Gotrek said, ‘especially Slayers.’

Felix forgot about the bird as the Slayer spoke. The guards on the dais shifted as the Slayer’s words echoed through the chamber. Gotrek eyed them without concern. The crowd of representatives began to rattle and whisper, perturbed by the dwarf’s lack of respect.

Djubti quivered with rage, his fleshless jaws snapping as he thumped the floor repeatedly. ‘Kneel, Son of Stone! Kneel, Stubborn Bastion of the Ancient Days!’

Gotrek frowned and crossed his arms. ‘When I kneel, you withered stick, it’ll only be because I’m missing a leg.’ Felix rested his face in his palm. He heard the rasp of bone on gauze, and knew that the guards were likely moving towards the Slayer.

Zabbai made to stand, but before she could, a voice, at once soft and insistent, said, ‘Be calm, Djubti. If he does not wish to bow, no invective will change his mind.’ The palm fronds were pulled aside, revealing the throne. It was not the sort of kingly seat that Felix was familiar with, rather it was a simple bench with smooth armrests. The skin of a giant serpent covered it, and over that the hide of some great cat, and upon the latter reclined a lithe, elegant form. She had a long staff across her knees, and an ornate headdress covered her head. Her face was hidden behind a smooth mask, lightly engraved with shallow, serpentine designs.

High Queen Khalida’s linen-wrapped limbs were encased in bejewelled bands, and she wore a cuirass of beaten gold. In life she had been beautiful, but in death her beauty had been transformed into something at once greater and more horrifying. Felix fancied that her form was not as wasted as those of her servants, as if some higher power had preserved her flesh and muscle from the ravages of time. She gestured towards Gotrek in languid fashion. ‘Yes, you are even as Asaph whispered to me in my slumber. Your thorny hide bristles with broken ghosts, dwarf. You have sent armies to Usirian’s bower, by your axe and action alike. You are beloved and despised by your gods, even as we are, and you persist, though the sands of history would bury you. I bid thee welcome, Doom-Seeker, to Lybaras, and may you find that which you seek in our service.’

Gotrek stiffened. He opened his mouth to reply. Then, with a growl, he lifted his axe and, before Felix could even attempt to stop him, the Slayer sprang for Khalida’s throat. The guards moved to block the Slayer’s path, but they were too slow to stop him. Gotrek brushed the swiftest aside with the sheer force of his charge. As he bounded up the dais, he flung his axe with a guttural roar. Khalida jerked aside as the axe hurtled past and struck its target.

The dark shape that had been falling towards the High Queen gave a wild scream as the axe caught it full in the centre of its mass. It crashed heavily to the dais and rolled down the steps, spitting and hissing as foul-smelling steam billowed from where the axe had chopped into it. The dark shape uncoiled and tore Gotrek’s axe from its midsection. With a roar, it sent the weapon spinning back towards the Slayer. Gotrek caught the weapon easily and ran his finger across the blade. He popped the bloody digit into his mouth and then spat. ‘Vampire,’ he snarled.

Felix stared in shock at the would-be assassin. It was clearly a woman, wrapped in dark robes and wearing leather armour that had been dyed a dull black hue. Gotrek’s axe had bitten into her belly, and the robes had been torn away, exposing pallid flesh. The raw edges of the wound were already knitting together, despite the steam that rose from them and the turgid splatter of blood that marked her stomach and the steps at her feet.

The vampire drew a scimitar from a sheath on her back and a saw-edged dagger from her hip as the guards closed in on her. She flipped over the first to reach her, using his back as a springboard to launch herself at the next. Her scimitar flashed out in a quicksilver blur, removing the guard’s skull from his neck in a spray of bone-chips and dust. The assassin was as different from the ragged horrors Felix and Gotrek had faced in the Mangrove Port as a panther from an alley cat. She moved too fast for Felix’s eye to follow, avoiding the guards’ blows with ease and doling out disabling hammer-strikes in return.

‘Herald, do your duty – protect the queen,’ Djubti shrieked. Zabbai was already moving, and Felix, without thinking, joined her rush towards the dais. But even as he ran his thoughts were an ocean away, and filled with a pale face and hair so blonde as to be almost white – Ulrika Magdova. It was not she who slid, parried and slashed before him; this creature, whoever she had been in life, had been no Kislevite, dark as she was, but the similarity was there. He could not help but wonder where Ulrika was now, and whether the Countess had kept her promise.

Then, there was no more time for thinking.

Some instinct, trained to utmost sensitivity by the constant flow of danger that surrounded Gotrek, blared a warning, and as he ran, he jerked to the side, fell and rolled painfully across the steps of the dais. An odd, wavy-bladed spear slammed down, piercing the stone with a crunch. A second black-clad shape balanced on the quivering length of the spear, like a Tilean acrobat he’d seen once at a carnival. The shape unfolded and swung off the spear, jerking it free of the step in the process.

Behind her, he saw a third assassin, bearing a sword that might once have belonged to a knight from one of the many orders that dotted the Empire, charge up the stairs towards Khalida, who had not moved. Felix sucked in a breath and bellowed, ‘Gotrek, Zabbai – there are more of them!’ A moment later, the spear slid past his head, nicking his ear and drawing blood. He grabbed the haft and shoved it away. He drew his dagger and sent it spinning towards his attacker. The vampire easily avoided it and drew back her spear with a peculiar circular motion, striking his shoulder with the flat and knocking him sprawling. He scurried up the stairs on all fours, hoping to put some distance between himself and his opponent.

The vampire followed, her dark robes billowing as she moved. She stabbed the spear down between his legs and used the momentum to vault over his head, landing directly in his path. Her foot streaked out, catching him in the chest, and Felix was sent flying. He hit the floor hard and skidded away from the dais. As he tried to sit up, he saw her twirl the spear in a wide arc, knocking aside those representatives of the other tomb-cities who moved to intercept her. Zabbai lunged towards her from behind, and the vampire spun. Axe met spear and they began to trade blows furiously. The scimitar-armed vampire duelled Gotrek on the other side of the dais. As far as Felix could tell, she was doing an admirable job of not dying when Gotrek wanted her to. His axe hummed as it swept out, and she back-flipped away from the blow with predatory grace. That left the third of the assassins, who, Felix saw, had reached the top of the dais and the throne where Khalida still reclined, as if watching a play performed for her amusement.

The vampire held her blade in both hands, point extended out before her for a piercing thrust. Like the others, she wore a hood and a scarf that covered everything but her face, and her thick robes protected her from the web of sunbeams that spread throughout the chamber. ‘The Serpent Queen bids you greetings, Khalida Neferher,’ the vampire snarled as she approached the throne. ‘She comes for you and this city of carrion and dried marrow, and she shall cast both you and it down and grind you beneath her heel, before taking back that which was stolen from us.’ With that, the vampire gave a savage thrust of her blade.

Khalida, with an almost gentle gesture, swatted the blow aside with the staff that had been lying across her lap. Such was the force of the blow that the sword was torn from the vampire’s grip and was sent sailing across the chamber to embed itself in one of the pillars. The vampire backed away, resolve fading into fear as Khalida stood.

‘Serpent Queen, is it?’ Khalida said, softly. ‘Is that what she calls herself now?’

She cocked her head. ‘No, no, she would never send assassins. It is too bold, and too crude. Your mistress is no true queen. She is but a servant, a dagger, thrust from within a concealing veil to draw my eye.’ The vampire stumbled back as Khalida pursued her. ‘But even a feint must be blocked, lest it draw blood.’ She paused, as if considering; then, with all the speed of a snake, she spun her staff about and rammed the end through the vampire’s chest, piercing her heart and lifting her into the air. The vampire squalled in agony and clawed at the staff. Khalida reached up and tore the vampire’s hood and scarf away, exposing the creature’s head and shoulders to the bright sunlight.

‘Burn,’ she said, simply. Then with no sign of effort, she thrust her staff, and the writhing vampire impaled upon it, into the sunlight. The vampire’s squalls became shrieks as her dusky flesh turned black and began to smoke and curl from her bones. The other two assassins broke away from their opponents and raced towards Khalida, though whether they intended to rescue their companion or simply complete her mission, Felix couldn’t say. Nor did he intend to wait and find out. Felix pelted towards the dais, and drew Karaghul as he ran.

Khalida swept her staff out, scattering the charred remains of the dead assassin through the air as she blocked a scimitar blow. The staff spun in her hands as she drove its head into the belly of the spear-wielding vampire, sending her staggering back. With a roar, Gotrek hurled himself on his unheeding opponent, one meaty paw clamping tight around the vampire’s throat. He bore her down. His axe rose, and fell with finality. Her head bounced down the stairs, a look of incredulity stamped on her features.

The remaining assassin barely had time to recognise her predicament when Zabbai lunged for her, axe singing through the air. The vampire hopped back with a hiss right onto Felix‘s out-thrust blade, which took her in the back. Felix forced the blade deeper, and the vampire shrieked and dropped her spear. Zabbai’s axe looped out and took her head, sending it spinning towards a pillar, where it rebounded into a shaft of sunlight and began to smoulder. Felix jerked Karaghul free and stepped aside as the body rolled down the steps. Zabbai nodded brusquely to him.

‘I thought those statues outside or those snake-things were supposed to keep people from getting in,’ he said, cleaning his sword with the edge of his cloak.

‘Only if the queen wishes it,’ Zabbai said. Felix caught on quickly.

‘She let them in?’

‘She always does,’ Zabbai said. From her tone, it was clear she disapproved.

‘Is this a common occurrence?’

‘Yes,’ Zabbai said, ‘especially of late. Our queen guards places of infamy, and there are many who wish to lay claim to the secrets within those places. Vampires, ratmen and black-armoured northmen have all tried to kill her, or destroy Lybaras to get at what we protect. None have succeeded.’

‘None will ever succeed,’ Khalida said. Felix looked up and saw that the queen had returned to her throne, where she sat at ease. She looked down at Gotrek. ‘My thanks, Doom-Seeker,’ she said. He met her gaze and nodded gruffly.

‘What did you mean before, about Gotrek finding what he sought,’ Felix asked, adding, ‘ah – your majesty?’

‘There have been portents and signs,’ Djubti said. The liche-priest still stood where he’d been when the assassins attacked. He’d made no move to defend Khalida, and Felix wondered how often he’d seen such a scene play out in these chambers. ‘A twin-tailed scorpion struggled with a skeletal python upon a pile of bone. The wind carries the scent of purification from the south, and the bound dead dance in the moonlight. Your coming was whispered by the gods of the underworld and Asaph herself, who spoke of a force whose tread would shake the Great Land, and shatter the empire of the Serpent Queen.’

Felix felt a chill slither the length of his spine, as Djubti spoke. He clutched Karaghul more tightly and glanced around, looking for the closest exit. He paused when he realized that Khalida was gazing directly at him.

‘Be at ease, barbarian. Though I am a queen of serpents, I have no empire. Nor would I want one.’ She gestured to the remains of one of the would-be assassins. ‘But there is another who lays claim to the title of “Serpent Queen”. And she does have an empire, though it is a small one, and petty by any civilized standard. An empire which stretches from coast to coast, from sunrise to sunset and which even now mobilizes for war.’

‘Speak plainly,’ Gotrek said, suddenly. He motioned around him with his axe. ‘You had us brought here, woman. You say your portents demanded it? Fine, I care not.’ He pointed his axe at Khalida. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to perform a service for me,’ Khalida said. Felix couldn’t tell whether she was amused or insulted by Gotrek’s boorish behaviour. ‘There is an item I wish you to reclaim.’

‘Item,’ Gotrek repeated.

‘A sword,’ Khalida said. ‘A simple sword.’

‘That’s all? Why is it important, this sword?’ Gotrek said.

‘That is none of your concern, Child of the Mountains,’ Djubti said. He struck the floor with his staff. ‘It is enough that you have been commanded.’

‘No one commands me,’ Gotrek snarled, as he whirled to glare at the priest.

‘Nor would I attempt it,’ Khalida interjected. Gotrek glanced at her warily. ‘I offer you a bargain instead, Doom-Seeker. What I require lies in the heart of my enemy’s lands. It is surrounded by an army the size of which dwarfs even that of Settra the Imperishable. To get to that sword, you will have to fight every dead thing in the Southlands. Thus, I say to you, in performing this service, you may find what you seek above all else – death and doom.’

Gotrek stared at her for a moment, before suddenly relaxing. He gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Well now, why didn’t you just say so?’

CHAPTER TEN

‘Death and doom, you say?’ Gotrek said. He inclined his head and swept out an arm. It was as close to a bow as Felix had ever seen him come. ‘Speak on, O queen,’ Gotrek said, his good eye glittering with interest.

At the foot of the dais, skeletal servants cleaned up the mess left behind by the dead vampires. The crowd of representatives and messengers had not dispersed, or even moved during the fight. They waited patiently, still holding their scrolls and offerings, as if such assassination attempts were a daily occurrence, and to be politely ignored. Then, if what Zabbai had said was true, it was all part of the routine. Felix watched as more guards trooped in to replace those who had fallen. Cloaked and cowled figures that Zabbai identified as members of the Mortuary Cult swept in silently and claimed the bodies of the fallen. Felix wondered whether they could bring the fallen guards back to something approximating life, or whether they were simply being disposed of, like the vampires.

Khalida tapped her cheek and examined the Slayer for a moment before speaking. ‘In the jungles to the east and south of here, there is a temple. An edifice stained in the blood of a thousand generations and haunted by the spirits of those who died screaming on its black altars,’ she said. ‘The Temple of Skulls.’

Felix spoke up. ‘This sword you mentioned – I gather that it’s ensconced in this temple?’ He didn’t like the sound of the skulls bit. In his experience, any structure with an appellation that grisly wasn’t exactly the sort of place a sensible sort ought to go. Gotrek, on the other hand, looked to be practically salivating at the thought.

Khalida didn’t look at him. ‘It is,’ she said. ‘And it belongs here. It is mine, by right and by blood, and I would have it returned to me.’ She made a fist, and Felix winced as linen tore and dried flesh popped. He’d heard stories of the Tomb Kings marching halfway around the world to reclaim a single golden trinket that some unlucky explorer had stolen from them. He’d always put such wild claims down to idle fancy, but now it seemed to be nothing but the bare truth. What sort of sword, no matter how finely wrought, was worth that sort of effort?

‘Then go and get it,’ Gotrek said.

Khalida fell silent. If she’d been alive, Felix would have guessed that Gotrek’s words had stung her. Instead of replying, she gestured to Djubti, who glowered at Gotrek. The Slayer ignored him. ‘The queen cannot simply go and get it. She is needed here. Mahrak bristles at imagined slights and Rasetra crouches, waiting and watching like the jackals that they are. Lybaras is adrift in a sea of enemies, and Great Settra, the Hawk of the Desert, the Great Wind Which Smashes Kingdoms, whose edicts might calm them, sleeps in his necropolis.’

‘Not to mention that whoever sent those assassins is still out there, and likely trying to goad the queen into just that sort of rash action,’ Felix said.

Djubti turned his glare on Felix. After a moment, the liche-priest nodded. ‘My spies have heard drums in the jungles, and they say that the dead of the mud and marsh walk where they should sleep. They tread the ancient roads to the Temple of Skulls, where they mass.’

‘Do the dead fear the dead, then?’ Gotrek said.

‘The High Queen fears nothing,’ Djubti snapped. ‘But she knows her responsibilities, her duties, and so we must turn to other avenues to retrieve that which is ours.’

He gestured to Gotrek. ‘That would be you, Doom-Seeker. The gods brought me word of you. They heard your tread upon the road of fate, and saw that your skein intersects with ours. Your fate is tied to the fate of Lybaras, and thus I commanded Zabbai to spare you the fate she had planned.’

Gotrek’s eye narrowed, and he looked at Zabbai. ‘We had a bargain,’ he spat.

‘So we did, dwarf. But did you not wonder why I should agree, when I could have simply pierced you with a thousand arrows and dropped you over the side to sink like the stone you resemble?’ Zabbai asked. Felix had wondered the same thing. Apparently Gotrek hadn’t. The Slayer snorted and turned back to the queen. ‘Well, is that it, then?’ he said. ‘You want me to get your toy back for you, is that it?’

‘Unless you think it is beyond your abilities,’ Khalida said.

Gotrek hawked up a wad of spittle and sent it plopping to the steps with a rude sound. ‘Dead men pose little challenge to my axe. Or dead women, for that matter,’ he added, glancing at Zabbai.

Before the Slayer could say anything else, Felix interjected. ‘Supposing that we agree – not that I’m saying that we won’t, because Gotrek for one clearly seems to have his heart set on it – how will we find it? There’s a lot of jungle to cover, and we’re not what you’d call familiar with the terrain.’ He knew, even as he said it, that he was verging on the disrespectful. He couldn’t say that he cared, particularly. It had been bad enough when it looked as if they’d be wandering around the jungle, looking for a lost dwarf hold. This sounded, on the whole, as if it would be much worse. There was no question that they’d do it, for all Gotrek’s bluster. The Slayer was being aimed in the direction he wanted to go, and all Felix could do was join him for the ride and hope that he survived the inevitable bloody conclusion.

In reply, Khalida raised her hand. Djubti thumped the floor and a handmaiden stepped forward, bearing a golden platter, draped with a fraying cloth. At another gesture from Khalida, the cloth was removed to reveal a familiar, and unwelcome, visage. ‘Release Antar, Beloved of All the Gods, and Especially the Goddesses, or his wrath shall shake the pillars of creation!’ the skull rasped as it rattled and hopped on its platter like a dollop of oil in a hot pan.

Felix stepped back. ‘Is that–’ he began.

‘So! You survived the poison of the Dutiful Scorpion, fleshy one! You shall not survive it twice, this swears Antar, King of Mahrak, Prince among Princes, Lover of Lionesses!’ Antar snarled. ‘And you, cheating boulder! Antar sees you, ape of Ind, with your stupid hair! Antar demands satisfaction,’ the skull continued, rolling in Gotrek’s general direction.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to mount this wastrel’s skull on the Standard of Asaph, my queen?’ Zabbai asked, gesturing to Antar. ‘He has long been an annoyance unto thee, and it would please me to display him for all to see and mock at their leisure.’

‘Antar is the Second King of the Fourth Dynasty, Doxy with Four Hundred Suitors!’ Antar spat, his skull wobbling with anger.

‘You were king for three days, two of which you spent coming up with new names for yourself,’ Zabbai said. ‘Even Ramsus of Numas, He Who Ruled an Epoch of Scattered Moments, did more actual ruling than you.’

‘Lies, lies and calumnies,’ Antar rattled. ‘Woe betide thee who shall deny Antar’s divinity! He is the Son of the Falcon and the Desert Wind, Greatest King of the Greatest City, He of the Glory Which Makes the Sun Weep!’ His skull bobbled on its platter, rolling about in a frustrated frenzy. ‘A knife, Antar demands a knife!’

‘He doesn’t have any hands,’ Felix murmured to Gotrek.

‘Antar heard that! Antar, He of the Iron Jaws, has teeth, does he not! Antar shall sever your tendons with one bite of His Beautiful Jaws Which Can Pierce Bronze!’

Khalida gestured sharply and the muffling cloth was dropped over the prince’s skull by the attendant. Antar continued to make threats and imprecations, but no one paid him any attention. ‘No, his skull shall be placed anew upon his body and he shall give his parole,’ Khalida said, leaning back in her throne. ‘He is a prince of the Great Land, and courageous, if foolish. He has given me his oath of service, which he will not break, lest the jackal-ghosts that hunt Usirian’s wastes come and pluck his soul from his bones.’

‘Not to mention that the preening cockerel swears he’s been to the Temple of Skulls before, on a sortie against the creatures who dwelt there at the time,’ Djubti said. ‘In return for not being turned into the topper for a standard pole, he’s sworn to lead you there.’

‘I know where it is,’ Zabbai said.

‘Yes, but as long as Antar is with you, and has sworn an oath to guide you, he is not attempting to escape, or to otherwise jostle King Tharruk into open war. It is a shame that Otep got away, but Antar is the more dangerous of the two, if only from sheer volume,’ Djubti said.

‘He is an idiot,’ Zabbai said.

‘Yes, but an influential one. The princelings and petty kings of Mahrak have ever begrudged Lybaras its isolation from Settra’s influence, and Antar’s voice has been the loudest in reminding them of that fact. They grow restless and our encounter with their fleet has only stoked the flames of their desire for war. Tharruk will march. But the longer we keep that chattering jackal from influencing him, the more time we have between now and then. So he will be your guide, oath-bound to serve you.’

‘I see even dead humans lack the stomach for war,’ Gotrek said.

‘A war on two fronts, yes,’ Khalida said. She leaned forwards in a rustle of linen and silks. ‘The dead stir in the jungles. The cursed spawn of Lahmia make ready for war and we must stand between them and the Great Land, as we have always done.’ She fixed her burning gaze on Gotrek and said, ‘Not every war is equal, Son of the Mountains. Not every war demands immediate prosecution. Your folk know this, else why would they gnaw over old slights for centuries and hoard insults done them, the way a man might hoard bread?’

Gotrek flushed. ‘Careful, corpse-woman,’ he growled.

‘Care is for the weak,’ Khalida rasped. She pushed herself up from her throne with a languid grace. There was no hurry in the Beloved of Asaph. As he watched her descend the dais, Felix was reminded of the undulations of a venomous serpent. Her movements were fluid and inexorable, and he felt a chill as her gaze passed over him. She was regal and terrifying and beautiful, despite the fact that she was dead. ‘Care is for the living. We are dead, and we have our duty. We hold tight to our oaths, though the world turns and seasons pass. Surely you understand that much, dwarf. I have sworn to let no child of blighted Lahmia return to that ruin. I have sworn to hold fast against the unbound dead, and that oath supersedes all others.’ She looked down at Gotrek. ‘But you know all about that, don’t you?’

Gotrek said nothing. He glared up at her, but beneath the obfuscating veil of hostility, his expression was unreadable. Felix knew the dwarf well enough to know that Khalida had scored a point. ‘I want my sword, Doom-Seeker. And you will claim it for me, and bring it to me. And then, perhaps, the gods will let you have your reward,’ Khalida said. ‘You will help me fulfil my oath, Gotrek, son of Gurni.’

‘Why should your oath outweigh mine, woman?’ Gotrek asked, finally.

‘Because of him,’ she said, extending her hand. Felix blinked, and realised that she was pointing at him. He stepped back, and suddenly, guards surrounded him. He hadn’t even heard them approach. The mummified warriors grabbed him before he could so much as utter a word of protest, and Djubti approached him, holding a small bejewelled and gilded casket in his hands.

Gotrek made to stop them, but Zabbai moved into his path. Gotrek growled and lifted his axe, intending to slap the Herald aside. Khalida thumped the steps with her staff and the dust and sand that had collected in the crevices and cracks suddenly twisted up and rose, as if caught by a strong wind. The sand swirled and thickened, rising and splitting into a number of individual columns. The columns shed their skin of dust and sand, revealing the thick, sinuous forms of a number of large serpents, which struck as one. Gotrek roared and swung his axe, but it passed harmlessly through the snakes, scattering only sand in its wake. The snakes coiled about Gotrek, pinning him in place. The Slayer struggled and cursed, but was held fast.

Felix was forced to extend his arm. His sleeve was jerked back, exposing his forearm. Djubti flipped open the casket, revealing what looked like a coiled asp made from gold, with jaws that were wide enough to encompass the circumference of a man’s wrist. Khalida lowered her staff and said, ‘In the Golden Age, before the Usurper’s curse burned all life from the Great Land, we had traitors and criminals aplenty. There were dangers then, too, and upheaval, war and politics. And sometimes, a man would be made known to the rulers of Lybaras through some great crime and his skills would be put to use, though he was bound for the scorpion pit. He would be given a number of days, allotted by the whim of Asaph, to complete a task. If he survived, and completed his task, he would shed his sin, as a snake sheds its skin. If he failed, Asaph would strike him down.’

Djubti grabbed Felix’s arm in a grip that was at once cold and unyielding. ‘Stop squirming,’ he said. A guard took the casket from him, and he removed the golden asp. Before Felix could mount a protest, he slid it onto his arm. The snake’s jaws settled tightly over his wrist. It didn’t prevent movement, but every twitch caused his skin to rub against the asp’s mouth. Its body coiled tightly about his forearm like a gaudy bracer.

‘It’s heavy,’ Felix said, as he was released.

‘It should be,’ Djubti said. ‘It’s full of poison.’

Felix blanched. ‘What?’

‘Poison squeezed from the finest temple asps,’ Djubti said. ‘You should feel honoured, barbarian. This is a royal poison, fit only for the veins of the worthy.’

‘Then find someone worthy to put it on,’ Felix said, clawing at the bracelet. ‘Get this thing off me!’

‘Should the allotted time run out before you have returned to Lybaras to receive judgement, the asp’s fangs shall slide into your flesh, and pump your veins full of death. You will die in agony in seven days, unless you return to Lybaras within that time,’ Khalida said. She gestured sharply, and the serpents that still held Gotrek’s struggling shape dissolved back into sand and blew away. The Slayer staggered forwards, off balance, and then stumped towards Felix. Roughly, he took the latter’s arm and examined it.

‘I’ve seen this sort of artifice before. The Arabayans have a device that they call the Riddle of Scorpions. This is something akin to that. It’s cunning, if primitive.’ Gotrek glowered at Khalida and snapped, ‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘It is simply to ensure that you do as we have asked,’ Khalida said. ‘Your own life means nothing to you, Doom-Seeker, else why would you seek to throw it away so heedlessly in battle? But his life – ah – that is a different story, isn’t it?’ She turned away and ascended back towards her throne. ‘Is his life worth your oath that you will return my sword to me?’ She sat down, and reclined, waiting for Gotrek’s answer.

Gotrek snorted, ‘I was planning to do it anyway. I will return your toy to you, Serpent Queen, and then I will have the doom you’ve promised me, even if I have to take it out of your withered hide, one stripe at a time.’

As statements of acquiescence went, Felix had heard better, but it seemed to satisfy Khalida, who tilted her head back and made a rasping sound that he had come to associate with laughter. Gotrek turned back to Felix and said, ‘Worry not, manling. You won’t die from this trinket’s sting.’

Felix released a breath he hadn’t realised that he’d been holding. ‘Gotrek, I–’ he began.

‘Shut up,’ Gotrek said. ‘You’re lucky I need you. Otherwise, I’d leave you to your fate.’

Felix took the hint and swallowed his thanks. He thought – he hoped – Gotrek was lying. After all, if the dwarf didn’t care, he wouldn’t have made the bargain that had brought them here in the first place. He’d saved Felix more than once, on this journey and others besides. Still, it stung somewhat, and he felt a pulse of the old, familiar anger. It was more trying than not, to be Gotrek’s companion.

He prodded at the asp. He could see no sign of the artifice Gotrek had mentioned. To his eyes, it appeared to be all one piece. ‘Don’t fiddle with it,’ Zabbai said. ‘We wouldn’t want it to strike early, would we?’

‘We don’t want it to strike at all,’ Felix snapped. ‘You didn’t have to do this.’

‘No? And would the Slayer have agreed, otherwise?’ Zabbai said.

‘You don’t know Gotrek,’ Felix said.

‘No, we do not. Hence, the asp,’ she said, taking his wrist gently and tapping the golden bracelet. Felix pulled his hand away.

‘Is some sword really so important that you’d condemn an innocent man to death to get it back,’ he said. He almost choked on the word ‘innocent’, but it was true, as far as it went. He was no criminal, no matter what those wanted posters said.

Neither was Gotrek, come to that, despite having Reckoners from at least three major dwarf holds, including Karak Kadrin, on his trail. It was one of life’s little jokes that though they had accomplished more good than bad, at least in Felix’s estimation, they were still regarded as outlaws.

‘Yes,’ Zabbai said.

Felix heard something in her voice. He was coming to learn how to parse the faint fluctuations in the rasping monotone that all of the inhabitants of the Land of the Dead seemed to possess. Zabbai was worried, he thought, or concerned, at the very least. Before he could pry further, Djubti thumped the floor with his staff and croaked, ‘Your audience is at an end.’

‘Come, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘I dislike the smell of these walking carcasses.’ The Slayer stumped towards the exit, shoving messengers and representatives out of his path with careless swings of his arms. Felix followed more slowly. Zabbai walked beside him.

‘We must make ready to leave,’ she said.

‘You’re going with us?’ Felix said.

‘Of course,’ Zabbai said. ‘Someone needs to ensure that you do as the queen commands.’ She sounded amused.

‘Then what in the name of Shallya’s sweet voice is this thing for?’ Felix nearly shrieked, shaking his forearm at her.

‘The queen is content to trust Djubti’s auguries,’ Zabbai said. She took his hand in a gentle grip and pushed it aside. ‘I am not. And as impressive as you and the Doom-Seeker are, you will need more shields at your sides than just that fool Antar, if you are to make it to the Temple of Skulls. Antar once led an army into a canyon with only a single entrance and became lost.’

‘So, you doubt the Lover of Lionesses’ ability to guide us?’ Felix said, amused despite himself. He felt his anger slowly ebbing, to be replaced by resignation. As situations went, he’d been in worse. At least it wasn’t a siege this time.

‘I doubt every third word that comes out of Antar’s mouth.’

‘You hold too many grudges, woman,’ Djubti said, creaking past them. ‘He would have made a fine husband, when flesh still cloaked his bones. And Lybaras would have been strengthened by that marriage.’ The liche-priest didn‘t look at them, but Felix could tell that his withered face was twisted in a frown.

‘So you say, old bones,’ Zabbai said, ‘So you said of Otep and Pashtar and all the others. But I am and was the Herald of Lybaras, and my duties do not include a marriage bed.’

Djubti gestured dismissively, but didn’t turn around. Felix got the impression that it was an argument-by-rote, rather than a true disagreement. He cleared his throat.

‘Do the dead get married then?’

‘Do the living?’ Zabbai said.

‘Of course,’ Felix said. He flushed. ‘I’m sorry, that was inelegantly phrased, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Zabbai said, ‘and yes, they do, on occasion. Not all of us are so aware of our current state, and some find comfort in such rituals. Dynastic marriages seem to be even more important now than they were when the Great Land still breathed. There are too many princes and princesses who refuse to slumber, as Settra and the High Kings of the tomb-cities have decreed, and they rage across the sands, waging empty war over useless dunes.’

‘Is that the case here?’

‘No. Khalida bound those who would not bend knee to her in their sarcophagi and sealed them in their tombs, to await release at her pleasure.’ Zabbai shook her head. ‘I would have smashed them to dust and flinders, myself, but I am not queen. I am but her spear.’

‘Will she ever awaken them?’ Felix asked. He wondered whether they were still conscious, those trapped princes and kings, or whether they had found refuge in dreams or even madness. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

‘If the city is in danger,’ Zabbai said. ‘Their rage is our weapon, and their legions, our secret. Not even Settra knows how many legions Lybaras’s necropolis holds in its bowels. And nor will he ever, if Khalida has her way.’ She looked at him. ‘That is another reason for this trip. We must smash our enemies, before war forces us to reveal that which we would rather remained hidden.’

‘I find it hard to believe that a sword, no matter how valuable, can prevent an army from marching. Especially an army of dead men,’ Felix said.

Zabbai was silent for a moment. Then, she said, ‘It will not. But it may deliver victory to Lybaras, and that is all that matters, Felix.’

It was the first time she’d used his name.

He hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nitocris watched Octavia examine the sword. It wasn’t the first time that she’d allowed the necromancer to do so, and it likely wouldn’t be the last. Nitocris wished to wring free the secrets that were hidden within the pitted length of the ancient blade. It had shed a queen’s blood, by the hand of a queen, and that blood still stained it. It had never been cleaned.

They stood at the top of the temple, on the roof of Nitocris’s chamber, where the drums had been placed. Bloated, mossy corpses beat ceaselessly at the stretched skin drums with gnawed femurs, the dark rhythm echoing out over the temple complex. Drums and drummers both shone with faint phosphorescence, even in the watery light of day. At night, they glowed, like sinister beacons, calling all of the dead of the Southlands home.

Octavia had wanted to examine the blade in the daylight, which Nitocris had grudgingly allowed. She and Andraste stood in the protective shadow of the stretched hide of a great lizard, held aloft by a quartet of dead men, who had pierced the hide with spears and stretched it as wide as it could go. Even with the shade provided by the stretched skin and the thick, dark clouds, which swallowed the sun and spat out thin, weak streams of light, her flesh itched, and the sensation made her irritable. Andraste was even more uncomfortable, and she squirmed in her armour, picking at it and rubbing her arms.

Her queen, the Queen of Mysteries, could walk freely in the light of day. The sun had no more power over her than the moon or the tides. She was separate from the world, and mighty in her isolation. Nitocris longed for such strength. She longed to walk under the sun through the stone plazas of faraway cities, and take her refreshment from the throats of unknown folk. Impatient, she shifted her weight and said, ‘Well?’

‘It can be done,’ Octavia said, without turning to face her. ‘It will not be easy. It will require time, and preparation.’ Her hands passed over the blade without touching it. It was held flat across the palms of a zombie, which twitched slightly as flies crawled in and out of its eye sockets, and maggots ate its body hollow from the inside.

‘How much time?’ Nitocris asked.

‘A few days,’ Octavia said. She turned and added, ‘A week at most.’ When she saw Nitocris’s expression she said, ‘I must fast first, and there are unguents and other assorted tools to be gathered or made. You are asking me to usurp old magic. The dead of Lybaras, of all the tomb-cities, are already bound to a spell. I must find one thread in a wide weave and pluck it loose to pull it tight.’

‘The sword,’ Nitocris said.

‘Will help, yes. The blood on the blade, aged as it is, will help me find the thread, but I must still pluck it and pull it, and that will require great effort.’

‘But you can do it,’ Nitocris said.

‘As I said, it can be done.’

Nitocris heard the unspoken challenge in her words. She tilted her head and studied the necromancer. Even in the weak light of day, ghosts clung to her like children to their mother’s skirts. ‘That is not what I asked,’ she said softly. Beside her, Andraste tensed. If she asked it, her handmaiden would leap into the sun to behead the necromancer, though she might burn in doing so. ‘I asked whether you could do it.’

‘I can,’ Octavia said. Her hand rested on the pommel of her own blade, and her eyes were on Andraste. Nitocris smiled thinly.

‘Will you?’ she said.

Octavia’s eyes slid towards her. ‘I will. I live but to serve you, most magnanimous one,’ she said, bowing shallowly. ‘I live at your behest, and I die at your command.’

Andraste snarled. The sound ripped across the rooftop. Octavia did not flinch, Nitocris was pleased to see. ‘It is wise of you to remember this, Octavia,’ Nitocris said as she waved Andraste to silence. ‘We march tomorrow.’

‘That is not enough time,’ Octavia said. ‘I will not be able to perform the proper rites on the march.’

‘That is why you will stay here,’ Nitocris purred.

‘What?’ Octavia’s face hardened. ‘You promised me.’

In one swift movement, Nitocris was across the roof, and her hand was about Octavia’s throat. Ghosts clawed uselessly at her, and she batted at them in annoyance as she hefted the necromancer and propelled her backwards, towards the edge of the roof.

Her flesh squirmed where the sun touched it, but she had been prepared for the discomfort, and ignored it. The sun no longer had much of a hold on her, though it could destroy her handmaidens. Octavia clawed at her wrist, even as she groped for her blade. Nitocris let her draw it, and then casually swatted it from her hand. It struck the steps below and slid down, well out of reach. ‘I promised you nothing,’ Nitocris growled.

She shook the necromancer slightly, causing the woman’s jaw to click. Her feet dangled over the edge of the roof, and she kicked uselessly. ‘I swore nothing, and offered nothing. You serve me, woman. We are not equals, we are not partners.’ Octavia’s face flushed as Nitocris tightened her grip ever so slightly. She pulled her close, and leaned forwards. ‘You are my dog, woman of Altdorf. You are my pet, to live at my discretion and hunt as I command. Otherwise, I will make you wish I had left you to the tender mercies of the slavers.’

As she spoke, she could feel the necromancer’s will pulsing out to the dead men on the roof, trying to command them. But Nitocris’s will was stronger. She closed off Octavia’s panicked attempts to suborn the zombies, and pressed the woman’s chin to her shoulder. Still holding her by the throat, she stroked her hair and whispered, ‘I am kind to my pets, Octavia. I let you keep your brother, after all, though I have no use for a wretch like him. I let you keep your will, and your legs and your voice, though you need them not to do as I wish. Why must you growl at me so?’

Sudden pain stabbed at her, startling her. A moment of vertigo followed, as images of some other place fluttered across the surface of her mind – blades stabbing down, a red weal of agony, a grimacing one-eyed face and the wet thunk of an axe biting into flesh. She felt the burning caress of the sun, and the crisping of her flesh and hair – no, not hers, but her handmaidens’. They were dying.

Nitocris shrieked and tossed Octavia aside as she clutched at her head. She staggered back towards Andraste and the shade. Andraste reached out to her, and supported her as she fell forwards. ‘My queen, what is it, what has she done to you?’ Andraste said. She drew her sword and made to spring towards Octavia, who clambered to her feet. The necromancer’s eyes widened as Andraste stalked towards her. The weak sunlight drew thin contrails of smoke from the vampire’s flesh, but Andraste paid no heed, intent as she was on taking the necromancer’s head.

But before the first blow could land, a cloaked and cowled figure crashed into her and knocked her sprawling. Through the haze of pain, Nitocris saw Steyr rise to his feet, his body protected from the sun by his hood and cloak. He had no blade, but flexed clawed fingers and emitted a hiss as Andraste got to her feet. She returned the hiss with interest, and swung her blade at him. Steyr dodged back from the blow, his cloak flaring about him. Andraste lunged after him. Her flesh was pockmarked with burns and she snarled in pain as she cut at the other vampire. ‘I will kill you, if you’ve harmed her,’ Andraste shrieked. ‘I will crack your bones and mount your head on our standard pole.’

Steyr met Andraste’s lunge. He tried to overpower her, but she was more than his equal. Andraste had had centuries to learn her own strength, and Steyr had only the barest drip of years. Her knee caught him in the belly, doubling him over. Her elbow slammed down on his neck, and he dropped flat to the roof. Andraste kicked him onto his back and crouched over him. She raised her blade in both hands and prepared to drive it through his heart.

‘Sheathe your blade, Andraste, it was not her – it was not them. Sheathe your blade,’ Nitocris hissed. Bloody tears ran down her round cheeks. She forced herself erect. ‘Your sisters are dead,’ she said. Andraste sheathed her blade, and bowed her head. Nitocris roughly brushed the blood from her face, smearing it in the process. She had expected to feel the pain of their passing, sooner or later. It was a blessing and a curse of her blood that she could sense the passing of her handmaidens, who all had some small part of her in them.

She had sent three of her best warriors, chosen for their speed and stealth, to Lybaras, to deliver her message of war to the false Serpent Queen. She had allowed them to taste of her blood before they set out for Lybaras, so that she might know when they fell. For their fate had been assured the moment they were chosen – and they had welcomed it, for it was an honour not bestowed lightly. Such had ever been the way among her people, the opening thrust, to spill a bit of blood to season the dust.

Nitocris knew that such a tradition was, in many ways, antithetical to the ways of the Sisterhood of the Silver Pinnacle. To alert the enemy before the battle was considered a grievous error by her sisters, whom she had never met. Her queen had sought to school her in their ways, but while Nitocris had absorbed many of those lessons, others seemed nonsensical. To skulk and strike from the shadows was all well and good, but if the enemy did not know who had made the fatal blow, then what was the point?

She licked blood from her face and said, ‘War has been declared in the proper manner. We march tomorrow, at first dark.’ She waved Andraste away from Steyr. The latter flopped over onto his belly and drew his cloak about himself as he slithered to his sister’s side. She was impressed, despite herself. Steyr’s willingness to place himself in harm’s way for his sister bespoke great loyalty. She had thought him a coward, a beast; perhaps there was a man there, after all.

Andraste eyed him warily. He’d been no match for her, but that he’d got so close, without Andraste noticing him meant he was more dangerous than either she or her handmaiden had thought.

‘And what about me,’ Octavia croaked, rubbing her throat. ‘Are you leaving me here?’

‘Yes,’ Nitocris growled. She gestured to Andraste. ‘Andraste will stay with you, to ensure that you have everything you need. And your brother – your brother will come with me, and serve as my captain.’

‘Captain,’ Steyr said. Octavia felt him stiffen as he said, ‘Captain or hostage?’

‘Both,’ Nitocris said. She had regained her composure quickly. ‘Or neither, if you aggravate me, wretch,’ she added. She examined them with hooded eyes. ‘Think of it as an opportunity to prove your worth to me. At the moment, you only live thanks to your sister, but I grow tired of her incessant demands. I considered taking your head to punish her, but I think I will find more use for you in war. You will lead my vanguard, Sigmund Steyr. You and your loathsome creations shall lead the ghoul-tribes into war, ahead of my legions. If you survive, perhaps there will be a place for you in the world to come. And if you do not – well, at least you died in battle, rather than being slaughtered like a beast.’

Steyr made to retort. Octavia grabbed her brother’s wrist. ‘Quiet,’ she murmured. He looked at her, and then nodded. Satisfied that he would keep his mouth shut, Octavia looked at Nitocris. ‘You will need me, when you reach Lahmia,’ she said. It wasn’t quite a protest, more in the nature of a warning. Her throat ached where Nitocris had gripped it. She hadn’t expected the vampire to react so violently. ‘I will be of no use to you here.’

‘As you will be of no use to me in the battle to come,’ Nitocris said. ‘You will cast your spell, Octavia. You will break the half-soul of the false queen of Lybaras, and shackle her bones to my will. You will cage the spirits of her people and bring them to heel. And then, and only then, you will be allowed to join me in Lahmia.’

Octavia allowed her brother to help her to her feet. She eyed Nitocris speculatively. ‘And what if I cannot get the spell to work?’ she said.

‘Then your brother dies,’ Nitocris said. ‘And I die as well, most likely.’ She smiled. ‘And then you die, because if our gambit fails, Andraste will take your worthless head.’

Andraste smirked and her fingers tapped the pommel of her sword.

Octavia had expected that answer. In a way, she had been hoping for it. Nitocris’s subtlety had its limits, as did her patience, and it was clear to the necromancer that both had been reached. ‘I will get the spell to work. And then I will join you,’ she said slowly. Nitocris’s smile grew and her eyes glittered in the shadow of the lizard-hide canopy. Octavia bowed low and turned away, pulling Steyr after her. He paused only to trade snarls with Andraste, and then he followed her off the roof of the pyramid.

His muttered curses filled the air as they descended. She let him vent and then said, ‘Thank you.’ His curses stuttered to a halt.

‘What?’

‘For saving me,’ Octavia said. She stopped as she reached the spot where her sword had fallen and stooped to reclaim it. She eyed it critically, checking to see whether its fall had damaged it, and then, satisfied, sheathed it.

‘Why break the habit of a lifetime,’ Steyr said sourly. He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘She intends to kill me, you know. You’ll be on your own. You’ll need to be wary, Octavia.’

Octavia turned to face him. ‘No, she wants to kill you. But she won’t. She has her own code of honour, barbaric as it is. Fight Sigmund,’ she said as she grabbed his hand. ‘Fight as you fought when you tried to rescue me from the slavers. Fight as you intended to fight, with your vampire fleet. Show her how useful you can be.’

He gave a crooked smile, from within his hood. ‘When have you ever known me to be useful, sister?’ He patted her hand. ‘But I take your meaning. You’ll still need to be careful. Andraste has her own plans, though she appears as loyal as a hound. I can smell the schemes that boil in her blood. She yearns for Nitocris’s throne, and you’re in her way.’

The idea that Andraste might seize the opportunity to kill her didn’t come as a shock to Octavia. She knew the vampire hated her – most of them hated her. They despised her for her magics and for the attention Nitocris paid her. Life among vampires was akin to the stories she’d heard of life in the Imperial court: constant backbiting and underhanded scheming to garner an extra bit of height on a ladder of importance. Andraste was at the top of the heap for the moment, and she couldn’t countenance someone like Octavia, who existed outside of the predatory pecking order that Nitocris had established.

But she had assumed that Andraste would make her move after she had cast her great working over the dead of Lybaras. The thought that Andraste might sacrifice her mistress in order to gain control of what was left of Nitocris’s empire after a failed assault on the tomb-city was an unsettling one.

‘Is she that bloody-minded?’ she said.

‘She’s a vampire. Take it from one who knows, sister, you must strike first, and hardest, or she will have her fangs in your throat before you finish that spell.’ Steyr looked out over the temple complex. ‘You must kill her as soon as possible. And take control of the fleet, if you can.’

‘The fleet,’ Octavia muttered. She peered at her brother. He didn’t meet her gaze.

‘We will need it, for the inevitable retreat. Nitocris is a savage and her concept of war is no different from that of a greenskin. She will hurl her forces full tilt at the enemy, until one side or the other breaks. I for one do not intend to be caught in the middle of that, if I can help it.’

He looked at her. ‘This spell of yours, what is it?’

‘The Chains of Usirian,’ Octavia said. She made a fist. ‘That’s what those old Arabayan tomes I found in Copher called it. It will bind an unbound soul, and free the dead from the tyranny of will.’ She smiled. ‘All I need is a bit of blood, shed at the moment of death. Nitocris swears that the blood on that ancient blade is that of Khalida, High Queen of Lybaras. With it, I can bring her and the legions that follow her, to heel.’

‘Really,’ Steyr murmured.

Octavia heard the amusement in his voice. She fixed her brother with a glare. ‘What are you thinking, brother?’

She could practically hear the gears turning in his head. He was cunning, and brave and resourceful, but subtlety was not one of his virtues.

‘Nothing much,’ he said. He paused. Then, ‘If you control Khalida and the forces at her disposal, would we need that blood-swilling leopardess and her stringy-haired vassals?’ He leaned close to her. ‘To get to Lahmia, I mean. That is still your goal, sister, is it not? To plunder the secrets of that dead kingdom, and bring this empire of bones to heel, eh?’

He enfolded her in his cloak, as he had done so often when they were children. But now, rather than warming her with the heat of his body, she felt only the cold radiating from him.

He leaned his chin on her shoulder and murmured, ‘Kill Andraste, sweet sister-mine, and then cast your spell. And once that has been done, destroy the Serpent Queen once and for all.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

Felix cursed as the soft soil crumbled under his foot, and his leg sank to the knee in it. He flailed helplessly for a moment, before Gotrek knotted a hand in his cloak and hauled him up and out of the sinkhole. ‘Careful, manling,’ the Slayer growled. ‘These tunnels are as soft as an elf-man’s hair. One wrong step and you’ll be swallowed whole.’

‘I know, I know,’ Felix said testily.

The tunnels, or as the Nehekharans called them ‘qanats’, had, Felix had been told, carried water in the time when Nehekhara still lived. The well-like shafts, and the gently sloping tunnels that they were connected to, had provided a reliable supply of water for irrigation and drinking in the more arid regions of the Great Land. Now, most were as dry and crumbling as everything else in the Land of the Dead.

Felix was somewhat grateful for that fact. It was bad enough tramping through the damp confines of a qanat without having to worry about the poisonous and rotten-smelling waters of the stagnant rivers that crossed the desert like the collapsed veins of a corpse. The tunnels were big enough that he could stand upright, and here and there, the roof above his head was pierced by shafts of sunlight, which dropped through what he assumed were collapsed wells. There were enough of these that the tunnels were, while not well-lit, not dark either. If Felix squinted, and was careful, he could see well enough.

Dry as it was, though, the tunnel still stank. The smell grew worse whenever they passed what remained of the entrances to the collapsed sections of the tunnel network. Sometimes he fancied he could hear water sloshing on the other side of the tunnel wall, and other times he swore that he heard what could only be movement. When he made mention of the latter, Zabbai said, ‘The dead are not alone in Nehekhara, especially this close to the jungles and the mountains. Keep close, my little barbarian. I would not like for some hungry sand-devil to gobble you up.’

The tunnels ran beneath the entire stretch of land from the Devil’s Backbone to the jungles, and they provided a quick, safe route to the edge of the latter. It had, much to Felix’s relief, only taken them a day to get to this point from Lybaras, and he was feeling confident that in the six days left to him, they could complete the journey.

Taking the tunnels would allow them to avoid the patrols from Mahrak and Rasetra as well, neither of whom would take kindly to a group of armed warriors trespassing on territory they considered theirs. Zabbai was with them, as was a group of twelve warriors, each one armed with shield, khopesh and bow. They also carried supplies for Felix and Gotrek, though where they’d found food and water fit for living consumption, Felix was afraid to ask.

Djubti had conferred extensively with Zabbai before they left, and Felix had noted the strange amulet that the liche-priest had pressed upon the herald. If it was anything like the bracelet they’d forced upon him, Felix considered her welcome to it. Antar led the way, complaining loudly and at length the entire time. Felix wondered if that was the prince’s default state, when he wasn’t boasting about his battle prowess or, more disturbingly, the size, shape and comeliness of the bones of his concubines. Death, Felix fancied, had likely not changed Antar a bit. His ego was too strong to succumb to the morose numbness that accompanied undeath. In a way, it was heartening. In another, altogether more apparent way, it was annoying.

‘I’m going to rip his jawbone off and crack his skull with it, if he keeps blathering,’ Gotrek said, eyeing the prince with a calculating gaze. They had come to an intersection in the sloping tunnels, and had stopped to allow Felix to rest. They had moved quickly, and between Gotrek’s steady, downhill boulder pace and the swiftness of the dead, Felix’s legs felt like lead weights. He was used to keeping up with Gotrek, however, and after a few minutes, he’d regained his breath. ‘I doubt that would shut him up,’ Felix said, fiddling with the bracelet.

Gotrek eyed the bracelet. ‘Worse comes to worst, manling, I can just have your arm off at the elbow,’ he said. ‘That’s not your scribbling hand, is it? No matter, we’ll get you a replacement. My folk have the art of such things.’ He patted Felix companionably on the shoulder.

‘Wonderful,’ Felix said morosely. He shoved himself to his feet. ‘Let’s call that Plan B, shall we?’ They continued on, moving through ever-more cramped and twisting tunnels. Felix was reminded more than once of the ratruns of the skaven, and the crude tunnels of the goblins.

The walls of the qanat had been worn smooth by water long ago, but he could imagine greenskins or the vile ratkin moving through them now, in their numberless hordes. He didn’t comment on it. Gotrek would only get distracted, and that was the last thing he wanted at the moment. He glanced down at his wrist again and then resolutely looked away, examining the warriors that Zabbai had brought with her.

They were not the linen-shrouded honour guard from the throne room, nor were they the bare-boned skeleton archers he’d seen on the galley. Instead, they wore the remains of what looked like cuirasses made from reptile hide, and bone and feather decorations dangling from their arms and around their necks. The shields they carried were made from the armoured plates of what he could only assume was some great insect, and the khopesh each had sheathed on its bony hip had a pommel in the shape of a scorpion’s sting. The bows they carried were stout things, intricately carved and maintained, despite the general air of decay that clung to their owners, and the arrows in their quivers were fletched with black feathers. Upon the skull of each warrior was carved a coiling pattern, which stretched from crown to jaw. They moved in loose formation, maintaining a swift, ground-eating trot, until an abrupt command from Zabbai brought them to a halt.

He’d tried to make their acquaintance more than once since they’d departed, more out of curiosity than any real desire to speak to the dead, but none seemed capable of speech. They stared at him blankly, or turned away when he spoke to them, and after a few hours of feeling insulted, Felix had come to wonder whether they even knew that he was there. So engrossed was he in studying the silent warriors, that Felix nearly collided with Gotrek. The Slayer planted a palm on his chest and said, ‘Stand still, manling.’

‘What is it,’ Felix said. He grasped his sword’s hilt and looked around warily, his ears open. As he listened, he could hear the same scrabbling noises as before, but louder this time, and closer.

A crack suddenly formed in the closest wall. The crack spread upwards and outwards in a radiating spider-web of crumbling sand and soft rock. The surface of the wall bulged at the edges of the crack. The wall exploded outwards. Felix staggered back as chunks of hardened sand and old mud struck him. As dust filled the tunnel, he heard the click of bones. The dust cleared and Felix saw a wave of tiny bodies flood into the tunnel. The dried husks of thousands of scorpions, scarabs and countless other insects and small creatures swept against the opposite wall, and splashed back towards Felix and the others in a dusty, clattering wave.

Gotrek grabbed him and shoved him away. ‘Go, manling! Run!’ Felix began to run, joining Zabbai and the others, who were moving swiftly away from the encroaching swarm.

‘Run where?’ Felix shouted. ‘They’re filling the tunnel.’ And they were. The horde of clicking, scrabbling bodies pulsed forwards like some hideous tide, crawling across the floor, the walls and the ceiling, as well as each other. They filled the tunnel from top to bottom as they crashed forwards, like sausage being squeezed through a grinder.

‘There,’ Zabbai said, pointing towards a shaft of light ahead of them. ‘We’ll go up.’

She reached the light first and sprang up, catching the edge of the hole and scrambling up with the peculiar agility of the animated dead.

Even as Felix reached the light, Zabbai’s warriors followed her up, Antar not far behind. Felix didn’t pause. As he hit the light, he leapt straight up, flailing wildly for something to hold on to. Bony hands seized his wrists and he was hauled upwards by the skeletal warriors, passed hand over hand until Zabbai grabbed the neck of his chain shirt. She dragged him up and out into the open air without effort. ‘Where is the dwarf?’ she said, looking down as she deposited Felix on the ground. He looked around. The top of the well was a crumbling circle of awkwardly balanced stones, which shifted alarmingly beneath even Zabbai’s slight weight.

‘He’s too short to make the jump,’ Antar said, peering into the well. He sounded amused. ‘The messengers of Usirian shall claim him, as is obviously the god’s will. Goodbye, ape,’ he shouted down into the well.

‘Out of the way,’ Felix snapped, elbowing Antar aside as he stripped off his cloak. ‘We’ve done this before,’ he said, whirling his cloak into a tight length and knotting it loosely. Without hesitation, he dropped it into the waiting hands of Zabbai’s warriors, who grasped his intent immediately, and lowered it down to Gotrek. ‘Gotrek,’ he shouted, ‘grab my cloak!’

‘About time, manling,’ Gotrek bellowed, as he was hauled up. ‘I was wondering whether you would remember that some of us are not built for leaping about like prancing elves.’

‘After Miragliano, I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon,’ Felix said. Gotrek tossed his cloak back to him as he scrambled out of the well and onto solid ground. ‘What in the name of Sigmar’s hammer was that?’

‘A tomb swarm,’ Zabbai said. She and her warriors quickly collapsed the well, filling the aperture. ‘They are drawn to the sorcery that animates us. They flock to it in great numbers. If Djubti were here, he could easily control them, but we lack the skill, or will, to do so,’ she added, tossing a glance at Antar as she said the last part.

Antar made a dismissive gesture. ‘Antar, the King of the Beautiful Moment, has no need of mindless insects. Besides which, the bugs are also drawn to the smell of living flesh and blood. It is not Antar’s fault that the fleshy ones are draped in useless meat and filled with unnecessary juices.’

‘You were once human yourself,’ Felix said, insulted.

‘Vile slander,’ Antar said sharply. ‘Antar was divinity made flesh! His body was composed of the air, the soil, and the sweetest waters of the River of Life! His intelligence, that of the great stones which form the bedrock of our world. Antar, Mightiest of Mortal Immortals, Antar Who Once Rode His Chariot across the Sea, was never as you, puny meatling!’

Felix looked past the gesticulating tomb-prince to Zabbai. ‘Where are we?’ He saw slumped obelisks and weather-worn Nehekharan mausoleums all around, arranged along lines that he suspected had once been marked by streets, but were now simply rubble-strewn paths. There were broken statues as well, giant legs that extended up from square daises to non-existent bodies.

It was far from the well-tended necropolis of Lybaras. ‘The Great Southern Necropolis,’ she said, and gestured. ‘These ancient vaults were shattered and pillaged during the Usurper’s invasion. The spells and rites that clung to the stones were overthrown or twisted into new, more deadly shapes,’ Zabbai murmured. Felix looked around. The stone obelisks and mausoleums rose out of the patch of muddy, weed-choked ground that marked the place where the mountains and desert they had bypassed through the qanats gave way to the swamp. They stretched as far as his eye could see.

So too did the swamp. Crooked trees, with leprous boles and mossy limbs, had invaded the necropolis’s southern edge, and Felix could see where a number of tombs had been inundated by thick tangles of roots, where they weren’t completely swallowed. Sand had become mud and the flat stretches of barren ground were separated by runnels of bitter-looking water. The Land of the Dead wasn’t all desert, though none of it – sand-strewn or otherwise – was particularly pleasant looking.

‘The vaults and tombs stretch from the Gulf of Fear to the Devil’s Backbone,’ Antar said. His normal boisterousness had become subdued. ‘They say these stones and what lies beneath once protected the borders of Lybaras from the encroachment of the Doom Glade Swamp, which grows and creeps like a thing alive.’ As he spoke, birds burst from the tree line that marked the swamp, croaking loudly. Felix hoped they were birds, at least. ‘The swamp is cursed,’ Antar added. ‘In case you were wondering.’

‘I wasn’t,’ Felix said. He rubbed at his wrist beneath the bracelet, trying to ease the soreness of the latter’s clutch. It was loose enough to allow sand and grit to get between the gold and his flesh, but tight enough that his forearm felt as if it were caught in an engineer’s vice. He’d tried threading a length of cloth between his skin and the metal soon after they’d put it on, but there was simply no room. The bracelet seemed to swell or shrink as necessary, for maximum annoyance.

‘Cursed or not, it’s the most direct route,’ Zabbai said. ‘We should go.’

‘No,’ Gotrek said.

‘What,’ Felix said, turning to look at him.

‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Gotrek rumbled. The Slayer sank into a crouch and pressed one big hand to the damp earth. He dug his fingers in and his eye flickered about, as if searching for something.

‘Gotrek, what are you talking about?’ Felix said, hurrying towards him. ‘Is that swarm returning?’ The thought of a cloud of stinging, biting, clawing undead insects bursting through the ground to envelop them wasn’t a happy one.

‘Stay back, manling!’ Gotrek roared, rising to his feet. Felix froze where he was.

Antar drew his khopesh and crowed, ‘So Antar’s silent foreseeing of which he chose not to make you aware has been proven truthful! The stunted monkey cannot be trusted! He is a jug of lies and his smell is that of deceitful pony!’

‘Quiet!’ Zabbai said. She raised her axe. Her warriors grew still, arrows notched. She turned her head slowly. ‘The dwarf is right. No one move.’

‘What is it?’ Felix said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’re being stalked,’ Gotrek said, grimly. ‘Now be silent, while those of us without puny human ears try to listen.’

Felix swallowed thickly and tried to remain as still as possible. His hand inched towards the hilt of his sword as he scanned the empty tombs and fallen obelisks. Something nagged at him, something Antar had said, only moments ago – These stones and what lies beneath… Even as Felix thought it, he felt the ground beneath his feet tremble, as if something massive were moving below him. ‘Gotrek,’ he hissed.

‘I hear it, manling,’ the Slayer said, raising a hand to silence him. ‘They’re circling us.’

They, Felix thought, with a sinking sensation, as in, more than one. ‘Wonderful,’ he muttered. He looked around. The crooked length of a toppled obelisk rested nearby. It wasn’t much, but it would get him off the ground. He’d learned much in his time at Gotrek’s side, and one of the more important lessons had been the higher the ground, the more work your enemy had to do to get to you. He tensed, preparing to make a run for it.

As if reading his thoughts, Gotrek said, ‘Don’t move, manling. Not until I give the word.’ The Slayer raised his head to look at the others. ‘That goes for all of you.’

‘It is cowardice you speak of! Antar, Mighty Lion Cub, Raised by Falcons, runs from nothing!’ Antar blustered, swiping at the air with his saw-toothed khopesh. He stamped on the ground and struck a fallen stone with his blade. ‘Come out, cowardly skulkers! Face the Will of Heaven Made Glorious Manifest!’

The damp, soft soil exploded upwards in a spray of browns and greys as several horrifying serpentine forms burst from the ground around Antar. A trio of ancient and ornate blade-topped staves hissed out from three different directions, and Antar was forced to drop down beneath them and leap aside, spluttering and cursing. Felix caught a hint of snakelike bodies and manlike torsos before their attackers had vanished beneath the ground as quickly as they’d come.

‘Sepulchral Stalkers,’ Zabbai said, gesturing for her warriors to seek higher ground. ‘Head for the stones, and stay off the ground.’

She backed towards a bisected tomb, her axe spinning slowly between her hands. Felix hurried towards the toppled obelisk he’d spotted earlier. He drew Karaghul as he moved. He felt the ground shift beneath him, and as he drew his sword, he caught the reflection of a dark shape heaving into sight behind him. He didn’t turn, or stop, but instead sprang for the obelisk with every ounce of lift his legs could muster. He hit the tumbled stone hard and rolled off the other side, Karaghul quivering in his hands as the blade struck rock. The dark, serpentine shape of the Sepulchral Stalker lunged after him, raising its staff for a slicing blow.

Felix twisted away and brought his sword up, chopping through the staff just below the blade. Slivers of what might have been fossilised wood or bone stung his unshaven cheek. He dived out of the way of the creature’s frenzied slashing with the shattered staff. It slithered swiftly over the obelisk after him. It flung its broken weapon aside and reached for him with long arms. He dodged aside and leapt onto a shattered wall, scrambling up. The Stalker vanished, burrowing into the ground at the base of the wall. Felix panted. His heart hammered in his chest and he looked around wildly. ‘What are these things?’ he called out. ‘And why in Sigmar’s name are they after us?’

‘They’re guards, manling,’ Gotrek replied, his voice carrying easily through the ruined necropolis. ‘Sentries, standing watch for an enemy who came and went millennia ago. My people have encountered these constructs before, to our cost. Many a clan has sung dirges for proud sons slain by such as these.’ Felix searched in vain for the Slayer, but he couldn’t spot him from where he crouched. He hoped Gotrek would have the good sense to get off the ground, though he knew that it was a wasted effort. Gotrek was hunting.

A moment later, he heard the scrape of Gotrek’s axe as its edge slid across stone. ‘They’re not so bad, if you watch out for the eyes,’ the Slayer said. Felix tensed as the rune-axe struck stone again, more loudly this time. ‘That’s how they kill, isn’t it crow-bait? The eyes,’ Gotrek called out. Felix caught a flash of crimson. The Slayer was prowling nearby. At the base of the wall, the ground roiled for a moment, before becoming still.

‘Yes,’ Zabbai said. She leapt from the top of a crumbling tomb to a broken pillar. As she landed, she dropped into a wary crouch and looked around. ‘Anyone who looks into their eyes will become as a pillar of sand, to be blown away on the wind.’

Felix swallowed. He’d come too close to meeting the creature’s gaze as it attacked him. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, and scanned the ground. ‘How do we fight something we can’t even look at?’ he shouted. As far as he was concerned, they weren’t showing the proper amount of worry. ‘Gotrek,’ he yelled. ‘Gotrek, where are you?’

‘Right behind you, manling – don’t move!’ the Slayer thundered. Felix froze. A shadow fell over him, blotting out the sun. Sand and dirt dribbled into his hair and across his shoulders from above. He heard Gotrek say something, and then he heard the hiss of a blade descending at all speed. Felix threw himself from the top of the wall and hit the ground, hard. The air whooshed out of his lungs. Behind him, bronze struck stone, and then something much, much harder than bronze smashed down on the strange, fleshy stone of which the Stalkers were seemingly composed. ‘Ha!’ Gotrek roared. Felix risked a quick glance and saw that the Slayer had split the Stalker’s inhuman skull in two with a single blow. Holding tight to the Stalker’s shoulder, Gotrek rode its body to the ground as it crumpled in on itself, its tail lashing in its death throes. The thick muscles in the dwarf’s arm bunched as Gotrek tore his axe free of its head and stepped off the writhing body. ‘One down,’ he said. ‘From the sound of them, there are only two, maybe three, to go.’ He grinned at Felix.

‘Don’t sound so happy,’ Felix said, as he picked himself up. ‘Not all of us find this as entertaining as you do. In fact, I can think of a hundred other places I’d rather be than right here, right now, facing deadly eyed burrowing snake statues.’

‘Bah! Antar, Scion of the Greatest Dynasty, has no fear of wide-eyed statuary,’ Antar said. Unlike the others, he hadn’t sought higher ground. Like Gotrek, he seemed intent on confrontation, though he hadn’t yet had the Slayer’s success. ‘They fear Heaven’s Favoured Son, and slither from him like serpents before the crocodile!’

A Stalker exploded out of the ground behind the tomb-prince. Antar whirled, hurling his flail. The Stalker’s eyes pulsed with a terrible energy and Antar’s arm dissolved into sand moments before the flail struck home. The Stalker reared back, and lashed out with its staff. Antar leapt over the blow and his khopesh hissed out, removing both of the Stalker’s arms. Before it could recover, arrows sprouted from its eyes. Zabbai’s warriors fired smoothly, striking the Stalker again and again. Zabbai herself lunged over its lashing tail and brought her axe up and around, tearing the top of the construct’s head off with a single powerful blow. ‘That’s two,’ she said, as the thing’s body crashed down behind her.’

As soon as the Stalker had appeared, Gotrek had sprung into motion. Felix looked for him, and saw the Slayer pelting away in pursuit of a swiftly moving furrow in the soft ground, his axe held tightly across his body, and his mouth open to expel a nigh-constant litany of curses. It would be a waste of breath to call after the Slayer; best to save his wind for running.

He heard a shout from behind him, and the telltale explosion that marked the appearance of one of the creatures. He turned in time to see a thrashing tail sink into the sand, but not before its tip caught Antar beneath the chin and sent the tomb-prince hurtling into the air. Antar crashed down behind a fallen statue. The burrowing Stalker circled its fallen fellows and shot towards Zabbai and her warriors as fast as a bolt from a ballista. Sand was spewed from the furrow its passage dug. Zabbai’s warriors fired arrows at the approaching trench, but either the thing was too deep or the sand was too thick, and it exploded out of the ground at an angle that sent it hurtling over a pair of warriors. One it beheaded with a sweep of its stave as it passed, and the other was caught by its deadly gaze. Bone, tack and harness all became as sand. It remained standing for a moment, and then a contemptuous flick of the Stalker’s tail burst the newly made statue into nothing more than a cloud of drifting particles.

Zabbai darted for the high ground, and the Stalker, having now plunged back beneath the ground, burrowed in pursuit. Felix ran after them. He wasn’t sure what he could do to help, but anything was better than standing around doing nothing. He propelled himself over fallen stones and vaulted broken columns, running along a parallel course to Zabbai and her pursuer. He stumbled on a loose stone and crashed into a mostly intact, if weather-worn, statue of a hawk-headed god. As he righted himself, he saw the Stalker lunge partially from the ground long enough to swat Zabbai from her feet. Then it plunged back down into the dirt and swiftly circled her. It rose behind her as she tried to regain her feet.

Felix scaled the statue as quickly as he could. His limbs were aching and his muscles were burning, but he knew that to stop was to condemn Zabbai to oblivion. Whatever else she was, the dead woman was a comrade, and had saved his life at least once. The least he could do was return the favour. He tore his cloak from about his neck and snapped it tight between his hands. Then, with a wild yell, he ran down the length of the statue’s prominent beak and leapt off, even as the Stalker raised its staff over Zabbai’s unheeding skull. As he slammed down on the Stalker’s crooked back, he flapped his cloak over its skull and twisted the ends tight, completely enveloping its head.

‘Now, Zabbai,’ he shouted, hauling back. His weight pulled the Stalker off balance, forcing it to rear. Zabbai bounded to her feet and sprang up, turning. Her axe flashed in the red light of the setting sun, and the blade tore a gaping crevasse in the Stalker’s skull, destroying its eyes and most of its face. The construct collapsed. Felix was thrown off, and only narrowly avoided its thrashing coils as he scrambled to his feet. He drew his blade and hewed at its tail, chopping through the joins where some long-dead artisan had connected the segments of its tail.

Karaghul’s hilt vibrated in his grasp as he struck the stone and gilded rings that marked each squirming segment. Zabbai swung her axe in short, fierce arcs, chopping through its joints and finally hacking its head free of its neck. As the head rolled free, the Stalker settled into motionlessness.

Breathing heavily, Felix met Zabbai’s gaze. She nodded tersely, and Felix returned the gesture before moving to carefully extract his cloak from about the Stalker’s head. It had a wide rent in it, from Zabbai’s initial blow, but the wool cloak had suffered worse in its time. He flapped it out and swung it back about his shoulders before hurrying after Zabbai as she ran towards the site of Gotrek’s duel with the lone Stalker remaining.

The Stalker had coiled about Gotrek like a python, but the dwarf had taken hold of its lower jaw and forced its deadly gaze skywards. It had lost its weapon, and Gotrek’s axe was pinned within the Stalker’s coils. As Felix and Zabbai drew close, Gotrek jerked his other hand free, albeit without his axe, and clamped his fingers on the side of the Stalker’s skull. Dwarf muscle swelled with pent-up power, and stone and metal buckled, cracked and began to give way. The Stalker writhed and squeezed Gotrek more tightly. The Slayer’s face was going red, and veins bulged on his neck as he twisted the Stalker’s head around with a loud crack-crack-crack. With a loud roar, Gotrek ripped the Stalker’s head from its shoulders and sent it flying. All at once, its body slumped.

Gotrek shoved his way free of the limp coils and retrieved his axe. He glared at the headless shape and spat on it. Then he looked at Felix and grinned. ‘I told you, manling. Just watch the eyes,’ he said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Felix lit the fire carefully. There wasn’t much in the way of combustible material, but he’d scrounged a few bits of wood, dried grass and what he hoped wasn’t a bone belonging to anyone important. He blew on the tiny flame until it caught. Then he sat back, and huddled in his cloak and wondered how any place as hot as the Land of the Dead could grow so cold, come nightfall. Zabbai’s warriors stood sentry, and though they didn’t require it, Zabbai and Antar sat near the fire. Only ten of Zabbai’s warriors remained. Felix wondered how the dead viewed death, or whatever passed for it among their kind. Was it a simple cessation, or something more poignant? Maybe for some of them it was a kind of relief.

They had reached the Doom Glade Swamp not long after nightfall. Like the coast, it was mostly water, albeit water the colour of strongly brewed Cathayan tea or the dark, bitter kahve favoured by the Arabayans.

Thin, serpentine trees rose in close-knit groups from thick nests of sword blade-shaped foliage, punctuating the dark water. Hummocks of earth and compacted, decaying vegetation slumped and crouched in out-of-the-way places. Larger trees, heavy trunked and with a profusion of thick roots, occupied these, sitting silent sentry. Felix fancied that he could see faces in their bark, and when the thick branches rattled in the night breeze, just at the edge of his vision, they gave the impression of voices.

The group had made camp on one such hummock, where the ground was more or less solid. ‘This arm is lacking in divinity,’ Antar grumbled. He flexed the stone fingers of the forearm he’d filched from one of the fallen Sepulchral Stalkers. Somehow, he’d managed to attach it to his elbow joint, as if whatever residual magics lurked within the severed limb had interwoven themselves with the magics that kept the prince of Mahrak ambulatory.

It was slightly larger than his original, and Felix suspected that it was a good deal heavier. ‘It has no grace, no skill. Antar, the Swift Edge of Justice, is displeased. Also, he believes that it smells of damp.’ He shoved the arm under Felix’s nose. ‘Judge, fleshy one. Judge and answer the question of the Most Beneficent Prince.’

‘It smells like stone,’ Felix said, pushing the offending limb aside with distaste. Antar retracted his arm and glowered at Felix as if he were at fault. Felix ignored him and looked at Zabbai. ‘Is that something all of your folk can do?’ Felix asked, gesturing to Antar.

Zabbai shook her head. ‘The liche-priests of Mahrak have ever been masters of joinery. After the Great Awakening, it was discovered that many of their princes and kings had been badly damaged by the Usurper’s bone-gnawing acolytes. They had cut into the sacred mummies and scattered them across their tombs with all the care of jackals at the feast. Thus the priests were forced to repair them with what they had to hand. Stone, bronze and turquoise were used to replace missing limbs or repair broken spines and skulls. The rites and magics they used have enabled the scions of the Mahrak dynasties to repair themselves quickly, and without the need for a liche-priest. It is not a trait they have been able to pass on to their legions, thankfully.’ She gazed at Antar for a moment and then shook her head. ‘Antar and his ilk will outlast the rest of us.’

Felix looked at her. He didn’t think she was simply referring to Antar’s new limb, or what it represented. ‘Are there many, then? Like him, I mean?’

‘Antar is right here,’ Antar said. ‘Do not ignore the Son of Heaven!’

‘More awaken every season, and they stay awake longer,’ Zabbai continued, ignoring Antar. ‘They are as glory hungry now as they were in life, and while Settra’s edicts hold sway over them now, it will not be long before even the Imperishable Son of Heaven cannot control such creatures. They yearn for war and slaughter with all the longing of a youth for his first concubine. They wish to extend the borders of the Great Land and to reclaim our ancient demesnes, though Settra has forbidden it. They see no reason why the dead cannot rule the living, if they even bother to think that far ahead. Most of them, Antar included, would have no idea what to do with a conquered city, if they ever managed to acquire one.’

She looked at Felix, still steadfastly ignoring Antar, who visibly fumed, his bones trembling with annoyance. ‘Your people are lucky that we confine ourselves here. If the kings sent their chariots thundering through your lands, no two stones would stand atop one another in their wake. Your Empire would be as a morning dream, and your treasures would adorn our palaces and necropolises, rather than the reverse.’

‘We would crush all beneath our wheels – barbarians, greenskins and stunted monkeys alike!’ Antar said, clapping his hands together. ‘It would be glorious!’

‘My people do not crush easily,’ Gotrek rumbled. It was the first thing he’d said since their encounter with the Sepulchral Stalkers. He stared moodily at the fire, his axe across his knees. Gently, he ran a finger across the runes that stretched across the flat of the blade, tracing them again and again. ‘We have weathered cataclysms and invasions, and will do so unto the last hold, and the last dwarf.’ He lifted his axe, and turned it so that the firelight played across it. ‘When the last days come, the dwarfs will stand and weather the storm, as we have always done. Though the world dies, we shall not be broken.’

Felix could sense the black mood that had its claws in Gotrek’s mind. The Slayer had a face like a lump of stone, but he radiated his moods like a lantern. Felix could tell how the dwarf was feeling just from the way he hunched forwards. He cleared his throat and said, ‘You mentioned earlier that you’d faced those creatures before.’

‘Aye,’ Gotrek grunted. ‘What of it?’

‘I was thinking it might make for an interesting aside, in your death-poem,’ Felix said. Nothing cheered Gotrek up like talking about his perennially imminent death. ‘It’d be just a line or three, about your previous adventures. A bit of colour, you might say.’

‘Colour,’ Gotrek said suspiciously. ‘The only proper colours are gold, grey and brown. Or possibly blue and red. And all the permutations of gold, of course… Red-gold, brown-gold, blue-gold, gold-gold…’

‘Not that sort of colour,’ Felix said. He blew into his cupped hands. ‘Narrative colour, I mean. A bit of descriptive allusion to adventures unseen, in order to show the audience that you existed outside of the story of your death. I want to show them that you lived, before you died.’

Gotrek frowned. ‘None of that matters, manling.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘My death is the only important story.’

‘To you, maybe, but to me and to those who will read about you – about us – it’s just the end. There’s more to a story than just the climax,’ Felix said. He extended his palms towards the fire. He tried to rub some life back into his fingers. ‘Detlef Sierck had a saying – “context is the mortar of legend” .’

Gotrek snorted. He thrust a finger beneath his eye-patch and rubbed at the empty socket. Then he said, ‘It was the Seventh War of the Hammer. The throng of Karak Azul was marching for the fourth time upon Mahrak, and I was new to my oath.’ He ran his fingers along the edge of his crest. If he didn’t know better, Felix would have said that the Slayer was self-conscious. ‘We had blindfolded ourselves, of course, as was tradition, since the First War, and the Unworthy Doom of Drong Sternbeater.’

‘Wait, Seventh War? As in, there were six wars before that?’ Felix said.

Gotrek looked at him as if he were an idiot. ‘Obviously, manling, otherwise we wouldn’t have recorded it as such.’

‘And you were marching for the fourth time, which implies that in the Sixth War, Mahrak marched on Karak Azul?’ Felix said, wonderingly.

‘Yes, and the Second and Fourth Wars as well,’ Gotrek said. ‘Keep up, manling.’ He sniffed. ‘As ever, the treacherous dead unleashed their slithering basilisk-eyed guardians on us, as we exited the hills around the Charnel Valley. Blindfolded as we were, the Stalkers were little challenge, though many Slayers fell.’

‘Due to being blindfolded, perchance?’ Felix said.

‘Stop interrupting, manling, you wanted to hear this,’ Gotrek said.

‘Antar remembers that battle,’ Antar said, suddenly. He was sharpening his khopesh and as he slid the stone along the blade’s inner curve, he said, ‘King Alkharad had reclaimed his property.’

‘Our property, you mean,’ Gotrek snapped.

‘Antar, Brilliant Master of a Thousand Stratagems, means what he says,’ Antar said, thrusting his bony jaw pugnaciously at Gotrek. ‘Just because thieving monkeys claim a thing does not mean it is theirs.’

‘What property was that,’ Felix said, trying desperately to bring the conversation back on track. Gotrek glanced at him.

‘It was a holy relic of the Iron Peak, the Hammer of Algrim, first king of that hold, which he used to crush the skull of the dragon Falandraugr, the Death-in-Jade,’ Gotrek said, somewhat wistfully. He stroked his axe. His face hardened. ‘It was stolen, by the greedy dead.’

‘Stolen? Stolen,’ Antar barked. ‘We are not thieves! The hammer was borne to our walls by a greenskin rabble! King Alkharad took it as spoils of war, as was his right!’

‘Just because the greenskins stole it first doesn’t make you not thieves,’ Gotrek said. Felix tried to parse the logic of that statement, but as usual with dwarfs, and Gotrek in particular, it seemed to only make sense to them.

‘Perhaps it was a simple misunderstanding,’ Felix said.

‘Perhaps the monkey should apologise to Antar, who is affronted,’ Antar said.

‘The Hammer of Algrim was a relic of my people before your rat-warren of a city built its first wall out of mud and dung,’ Gotrek said. He got to his feet, gripping his axe tightly, his good eye blazing. ‘If any should apologise, it should be you.’

Antar rose, and swept out his khopesh in a practice swing. ‘And the disc of bronze which now decorates its head to commemorate his victory belongs to King Alkharad, He who is Antar’s Beloved Cousin. When you took it, you stole from us.’

‘Are you accusing my folk of thievery now?’ Gotrek snarled.

Before Antar could reply, and the situation could escalate further, Felix said, ‘Why didn’t you simply ask for it back? The bronze disc, I mean.’

Both Gotrek and Antar looked at him. ‘What do you mean, manling?’ Gotrek said.

‘Well, if the disc of bronze belongs to them, why not just give it back?’ Felix said. He began to wish he’d kept his mouth shut.

‘Give it back?’ Gotrek said incredulously. ‘It’s no fault of ours if they attached some worthless gee-gaw to our relic.’

‘Then maybe you could take the disc off and give the hammer back?’ Felix said desperately, looking at Antar.

‘It was a spoil of war,’ Antar rasped, as if that explained everything. He looked at Gotrek. ‘Is he slow-witted?’

‘Aye, his folk have no true understanding of honour, or grudges,’ Gotrek said, looking at Felix in apparent disappointment. ‘They think such matters can be resolved so simply. It is like talking to beardlings.’

‘Madness,’ Antar said as he shook his head in disbelief.

Felix looked at Zabbai. ‘Help,’ he said.

‘Oh no, you started this, barbarian,’ Zabbai said, holding up her hands in a warding gesture. ‘I want no part of it. If I’d wanted to debate such things, I’d have become a priestess.’

From out of the darkness, a roar brought an abrupt end to the conversation. Trees cracked and burst beneath the tread of something heavy in the distance. Felix pulled his cloak tighter about himself. Gotrek, still standing, stared out at the night. He hefted his axe. ‘Big beastie,’ he muttered.

‘We’re not hunting beasts, Gotrek,’ Felix said.

‘They’re hunting us,’ Gotrek said. He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Fresh meat, manling, that’s all we are for the beasts that roam these lands.’ Gotrek smiled widely as he said it.

‘In Antar’s youth, he would accompany his glorious cousins, the princes of Rasetra, into the jungles to hunt the scale-backs,’ Antar said. He tapped his cheek with the tip of his khopesh. ‘It was great fun.’ He glanced at Zabbai, who made a sharp gesture.

‘No,’ she said.

Antar turned away. If bones could sulk, then Antar’s were doing a fairly good job of it, Felix thought. Zabbai looked at the fire. ‘I was born not far from here,’ she said, after a time. She extended her linen-wrapped hand over the fire, and Felix shivered slightly as the light shone through the wrappings and thin flesh alike and illuminated the bones.

‘How did you find yourself in Lybaras?’ Felix said.

‘She was a slave,’ Antar said dismissively.

Zabbai ignored him. ‘My tribe was destroyed in a conflict with Rasetra, as were many tribes. I survived, and was taken in the great wheeled cages to the grand market in Lahmia, to be sold to the highest bidder. The men of Rasetra, you see, did not trust slaves taken from the jungle, being so close to it. That was sensible, for we would have cut our overseers’ throats and fled at the first opportunity. Thus, they sold us on, to proud Lahmia, who would sell us to the other cities, or men of Cathay, for whom my people were a novelty.’ She fell silent.

Felix hesitated. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why? It was not your folk who shattered mine. Nor was it your folk who sold mine into slavery for a tidy sum. I was large, you see, and strong, as all the women of my tribe were, and many men bid on me. Some, I’m told, wanted me for a bodyguard and concubine all in one, while others wanted me to guard their wives, seeing in me no threat to their fidelity.’ She pulled her hand back from the fire and examined it. Felix had the impression that she was smiling, beneath her mask. ‘I was purchased by the then-king of Lybaras, and, when I had been trained to his satisfaction in all of the arts of war, I was made the protector of his newborn daughter.’

‘And that is why you serve Khalida now?’ Felix said, after another protracted silence. ‘You protected her in life, and now, you serve her in death?’

‘No. Khalida was born long after my own death. As was the Usurper, come to that. I saw Settra ride his chariot to war with living eyes,’ she said, touching her mask. ‘He was glorious, then. A god among men, and his enemies fell before him like wheat before the scythe.’

‘And when was Settra king?’ Felix asked, curiously. He’d heard the name mentioned several times, but his knowledge of Nehekharan history was limited to dribs and drabs of second- and third-hand stories, gleaned from explorers and drunks in various ports. He fought to hide a yawn. The exertions of the day had worn him out.

Gotrek laughed harshly. ‘Around two thousand years before your Sigmar,’ he said.

Felix stared at the dwarf for a moment, before turning to look at Zabbai. He was suddenly, consciously aware, for the first time, of the vast gulfs of time that separated him from the dead woman sitting beside him. He had met beings whose years outstripped his own before – Gotrek for one, and others: Teclis, the elf-mage, and Mannfred Von Carstein – but never by so much. A century, two, even five hundred years was graspable, but two thousand was inconceivable. It was a time before even the rudiments of his own civilisation had been a glimmer in someone’s eye. Felix blinked and shook himself. ‘That’s quite a long time,’ he said finally.

Gotrek chuckled. Zabbai did as well. She reached out and slapped Felix on the shoulder. The force of the blow nearly sent him sliding into the fire. ‘You should sleep, barbarian,’ she said. ‘We have miles to go yet, and the jungle is unforgiving.’

Felix, whose eyelids felt as if they were made from stone, nodded and lay back against the trunk of the tree. He looked up at the stars overhead, spinning through the gaps in the canopy of trees and thought, five days left. He closed his eyes.

In the court of the High Queen of Lybaras, long-dead musicians plucked at non-existent strings or blew breathlessly into cracked flutes. Once, the throne room would have echoed with the sound of the queen’s favourite tunes, played by the greatest musicians of Lybaras. Now there was only the scratch of fleshless fingers manipulating long-silent instruments. On the dais, Khalida’s handmaidens fanned her linen-wrapped bones with frayed feathers, and courtiers waited silently to be noticed, scrolls and papyri clutched in their arms. Some had been waiting for so long that sand had collected in the nooks and crannies of their bony frames. Still others had been waiting since Khalida had first risen from her tomb. They had died, waiting to pass on their messages to the rulers of Lybaras, and now, having been revived, they continued to wait, and would likely do so for an eternity.

Djubti stirred the shifting column of sand that rose from the clay jar set on the floor before him. He stood before the throne, and the eyes of those who were aware of the world beyond their own memories were on him as he worked his far-seeing. Scenes played across the rippling surface of the sand, like shadows across a curtain. The scenes changed as Djubti dipped his fingers into the sand. ‘They’ve reached the swamp, my queen,’ he rasped. ‘I thought for sure that the Sepulchral Stalkers would kill the Doom-Seeker, but the wyrd which binds him is strong indeed. Certain death for any other is but a momentary hindrance to one such as him.’

‘As your auguries foretold,’ Khalida said. She leaned back in her throne, her pose relaxed, her fingers draped across her staff of office. Her head was bowed, and one less familiar with the High Queen of Lybaras and her moods might have suspected that she was weary. The dead could not grow weary, however, though many slept nonetheless. Djubti knew that such periods of hibernation had more to do with boredom than anything else. The younger princes and kings thought nothing of waging eternal war, for they’d known little of it in life. For them, it was but a game, played with toys that could never be permanently broken.

For Khalida it was not a game. It had never been such, as far as Djubti was aware. He had only met the Serpent Queen after Settra’s awakening. He and his brother-priests in the Mortuary Cult had been ordered by the Grand Hierophant Khatep, before his exile by Settra, to scatter themselves among the great cities, and serve and watch and guide as best they might. At their first meeting, Khalida had struck Djubti as less a queen than the will of a goddess made flesh. She spoke of Asaph as one might speak of a beloved mother, and he could sense the power that flowed through her age-shrivelled form. It was akin to his power, but it far outstripped it in some ways. If Khalida could call forth the wrath of the gods, he had never seen it, but then at times she seemed nothing so much as that wrath made manifest.

But now, she seemed merely pensive. He stirred the sands again. ‘Another day, perhaps two, depending on the frailty of the living man’s flesh, and they will reach the Temple of Skulls,’ he said.

‘And then,’ Khalida said. Her voice was no louder than the hiss of the sands.

‘It is up to the gods,’ Djubti said. He swept his hand through the sand, and it fell back into its jar. His assistants scrambled forwards to replace the lid on the jar and remove it. Djubti spared them only the barest glance. They had been apprentices when they’d died, and they would remain apprentices forever, though they knew it not. Their minds, like the minds of so many of their people, were lost in the now.

‘And in whose favour do the gods seem inclined, Djubti?’ Khalida said. She was amused, he knew. She was one of the few still capable of such emotions. Most kings rode surging waves of melancholy that occasionally crested into wrath or madness, before calming and falling into a taciturnity that might last centuries.

But Khalida still had a sense of humour. It was unpredictable, and often at odds with the proper order of things, and Djubti had ground his remaining teeth to nubs because of it.

‘As ever, they keep their true inclinations hidden behind a veil of mystery, O most blessed of Asaph,’ Djubti said carefully, trying to avoid giving Khalida any opening to debate the philosophical implications of the gods’ reticence in adjudicating the affairs of men.

Her fingers tapped her staff, and Djubti bit back a curse. As ever, his mind was too slow. Asaph’s Will Made Manifest had a mind like quicksilver, even now, even after all these centuries. ‘If you cannot predict the will of the gods, Djubti, then how can you say your auguries were correct?’ she asked. If she had been any other ruler, Djubti would have feared for his head. As it was, execution might be preferable to mockery.

‘Have I ever failed you, my queen?’ he said.

‘Sophistry, my faithful advisor,’ Khalida said.

Djubti inclined his head. ‘I have many skills, O beneficent one.’

‘What does my enemy plan then, O skilful counsellor?’

Djubti hesitated. There were layers to that question, and he did not care to peel them back. He leaned against his staff, searching his mind for an answer that might bring the questioning to an end. In truth, he had no idea. The presence of the bound dead in the jungles to the south had been as much a surprise to him as the arrival of the Doom-Seeker. The gods had not warned him of either, though they rarely warned him of anything. If he did not ask the right question, he was not given the correct answer.

The gods grew more remote by the year too, drifting into memory as their servants became lost in routine. What need had the dead of gods, after all?

‘Distraction, obfuscation, confusion,’ he said. ‘She seeks to disrupt the harmony of things, and to shake the foundations of the heavens.’

‘Cryptic, but correct,’ Khalida said.

Djubti felt anger war with pride. When he had first arrived in Lybaras, he had thought to guide a lioness to her rightful prey. Instead, he’d found a serpent queen, coiled and observant. There was a terrible purpose burning within Khalida, a command that outweighed any edict of Settra’s. It was that purpose which had led Lybaras into war again and again, against opponents both foreign and familiar. At times, Djubti felt the weight of that purpose himself, and it nearly shattered his brittle, browning bones. How Khalida stood it, he could not say, and did not dare to guess. He bowed. ‘As you say, my queen,’ he said.

‘I have long wondered what happened to that sword. Did she take it as a keepsake, and mount it in some place of honour? Or did she hide it away in shame at what she had done?’ Khalida said. She raised her head, and stared up at nothing in particular. ‘More importantly, how did her agents find it, and get it into the hands of she who now threatens my sovereignty?’

‘Her ways are as the shadows, O Guiding Star of Lybaras,’ Djubti said. In truth, he had wondered that himself. His eyes and ears, in the shape of beetles, serpents and sand-devils, watched every ruin, port and cove from one end of the Great Land to the other. He searched ceaselessly for any sign of those bearing the blood of the Usurper, the foul curse of Lahmia, in their sour veins. Vampires were drawn to the Great Land like maggots to a corpse. They couldn’t resist and only the barest years would pass between attempted infiltrations or invasions.

Djubti had long theorised that something in the black ruin of Lahmia drew them like a lodestone. ‘Ha,’ Khalida said. It wasn’t quite a laugh, more a rustle of amusement. She had thought of something, though she did not seem inclined to share it. Instead, she said, ‘They will march soon, these leeches on our doorstep. They are impatient, and overeager, as all those who bear her curse are. We must muster pickets to tease them, and taunt them into fields of our choosing. I would have this done, and swiftly. Mahrak and her petty kings eye us like starving jackals.’

She rose to her feet. The butt of her staff struck the dais with a sound like a gong. ‘Make my legions ready for war. Lybaras marches and our enemies shall become as the dust beneath our feet.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The dull blue light of the creeping dawn was spreading across the black sky when something woke Felix from his fitful slumber. He’d been dreaming of the squalling boneless things that he and Gotrek had faced in Blutdorf. The creatures, warped and twisted by foul magics, had been children, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Not until it was too late.

The dream hadn’t been pleasant. Then, they rarely were. They hadn’t been since he’d joined Gotrek. He had tried, for a time, to drown himself in ale or beer, to drink himself into a stupor that the bad dreams couldn’t permeate. He didn’t want to see the faces of the dead, or be revisited by the horrors he and Gotrek had already faced and sent packing. Once was enough, thank you very much.

He shook off the clinging fog of the dream and raised his head, curious as to what had woken him. He saw something pale, purplish and rubbery slither over his boots. The pale thing – a tongue, he realised, with mounting horror – retracted into the mouth of the large reptilian horror that reared up over him, looking down at him with tiny eyes. It was a snake, but larger than any snake he’d ever seen. It was dripping with water, and a sharp fin jutted from the wedge-shaped skull that weaved to and fro above him.

Its head was the size of a ballista bolt and the fin could have been used as a sail by a small boat. Eyes like nictitating lamps examined him, and the tongue flickered out again, brushing across his legs and up towards his face. Felix cut his eyes towards Karaghul, where it lay beside him. One quick movement would see the sword in his hand. The question was, was he quicker than a giant snake?

The serpent had come up onto the hummock from out of the water and had coiled about the tree. Most of it was still in the water, and as he watched its flickering tongue draw closer, a small, eternally inquisitive part of Felix’s mind wondered how big it was.

Its head dipped towards him, and the fluttering tongue passed over his chest and face. Then, its jaws abruptly widened and Felix knew that it intended to swallow him whole. He rolled towards Karaghul as it readied itself, startling it, and had just managed to snatch up the sword as it recovered and lunged, jaws spread.

Gotrek’s axe spun through the air and caught the snake on the side of its neck, between jaw and throat. The axe had been hurled with such force that it decapitated the beast and went on to bury itself in the tree. The head fell at Felix’s feet, and the thrashing coils sank down and slid off the hummock and into the water, nearly uprooting the tree in the process.

‘You took your bloody time,’ Felix said. Gotrek stumped past him, climbed the now-bent tree, and extracted his axe. The Slayer grinned at him.

‘Had to wait for it to get close, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘And I didn’t want to wake you from your beauty sleep.’

Felix squatted and jabbed the snake’s head with his sword. The massive jaws slammed together, nearly catching Karaghul in their grip. Felix yelped and fell back. Gotrek kicked the head off the hummock and into the water, where it sank without a trace. ‘It’s dead, manling. Don’t fret so,’ the Slayer said, reaching out and hauling Felix to his feet by the front of his chain shirt.

‘And where were you lot?’ Felix demanded, looking at Zabbai and the others. She and her warriors were making ready to move, as if there hadn’t been a giant snake slithering through the camp.

‘Antar, Most Inquisitive of Princes, was wondering how long it would take for you to wake up once the snake started to swallow you,’ Antar said. ‘The dwarf insisted you’d wake up before your boots were in its mouth. Antar thought it would be longer, due to your laziness and general air of weakness.’

‘You bet on how long it would take for the snake to eat me,’ Felix said, in disbelief.

‘No, manling, just on how far it’d get before you woke up,’ Gotrek said. ‘I wouldn’t have let it finish.’

‘Oh well, that’s all right then,’ Felix said acidly.

Gotrek nodded agreeably. He either hadn’t noticed Felix’s tone or he didn’t care. ‘I told them you’d be fine with it. Poets have a great sense of humour.’

Felix looked about him helplessly. ‘I knew you’d wake up before it got done tasting you,’ Zabbai said. ‘Here.’ She shoved a pair of fat, hairy carcasses into his arms. Felix gagged and looked down into the twin fixed rictus of two dead animals very much like wharf rats, albeit more muscular and unpleasant looking, despite the puncture wound each had in its head. ‘I procured you a fine, fat pair of swamp rats for your breakfast, barbarian. You need to keep your strength up.’

Felix grimaced as he shifted the muddy, bloody bodies in his grip. ‘I think I’d rather eat the snake.’

‘And she cooks as well,’ Gotrek said, snatching one of the rats from Felix’s unresisting grip. He eyed the carcass hungrily for a moment before leering at Felix. ‘Pledge your troth, manling, before someone else does.’

‘Quiet, Doom-Seeker,’ Zabbai said. She nudged Gotrek’s shoulder with her axe. ‘Or I’ll be forced to remind you that I won our bet.’

Gotrek gave her a sour glare, and slapped the rat back into Felix’s arms. ‘Stir the fire, manling. My belly believes my throat has been cut,’ he growled.

After they’d breakfasted, they moved on. Their pace wasn’t quite as quick as before, given the dangers and terrain of the swamp. Felix saw more huge snakes, sliding through the water, and even larger shapes crashing through the trees. The latter were invariably obscured by the mists that rose from the waters and the close-packed nature of the swamp, for which Felix was quietly grateful. If he couldn’t see the creatures that were stalking the swamp, then they likely couldn’t see him, which suited Felix.

Gotrek complained, of course, until Felix reminded him that he’d already fought and killed one of the great lizards, plus a giant snake and Sigmar alone knew what other beasts between the wreck of the Orfeo and the battle with the vampires at the Mangrove Port. The Slayer had been mollified, somewhat.

Felix had scavenged a compass from the wreck of the Orfeo, and whenever they paused, he took careful notes as to their position in his journal. The latter was looking exceedingly worse for wear, despite being nestled in its usual spot between his armour and his chest, and wrapped in oilskin. The leather cover he used to protect the pages was covered in stains, and the pages themselves had been dunked into the water once too often. Nonetheless, he dutifully made his notations with the flat bit of charcoal he’d retrieved from the campfire.

There were a dozen such notebooks stashed in various cities and towns, left with friends, allies and, in one case, a sworn enemy of Gotrek’s, who had nonetheless seemed quite pleasant when he’d invited Felix to lunch while he and the Slayer were in Magritta. Each one was dated and numbered, as best he could manage. Some, he knew, had found their way into his brother Otto’s hands. Others were resting undisturbed in strongboxes and safes, or hidden at the bottom of desk drawers. While Gotrek had been busy littering the world with bodies, Felix had been littering it with hastily bound sheaves of crudely squared paper.

He knew that he’d never compile an official history of his travels with Gotrek. Too many things had happened, too much blood had been spilled; some of his notebooks had likely gone missing, or he and Gotrek were unable or unlikely to return to where a particular journal had been stashed. He could only hope that someone would eventually read them. Most of them, at any rate; some of them he’d be just as happy if they never resurfaced – the incident at the Imperial zoo, for one, or Gotrek’s aborted attempt to wrest the secret of the Jade Monkey from its cadaverous owner.

Felix closed his notebook with a snap. It was late afternoon. The sun was a weak haze of light splashed across the cloud-laden sky. The air was murky and humid and smelt of a coming rain, and the waters of the swamp were beginning to give way to more solid terrain. He could still smell water on the air, however; they were following a river, he thought. It made sense, at least to him. Most cities were built on or near a water source of some description, unless the inhabitants were dwarfs. Zabbai had mentioned that the river ran through the Temple of Skulls, and that it had something approaching a primitive natural quay, though to her knowledge it had never been used as such.

The jungles of the Southlands were even as he had imagined them – thick, tree-choked and filled with noise and life, most of the latter of the insect variety. Idly, he scratched at the welts he’d accrued and hoped he wouldn’t get some form of swamp-fever on top of everything else.

The Southlands were a striking contrast to the Land of the Dead. Everything was green and vibrant, rather than brown, sun-scorched and dead. Birds filled the trees, and the noise of them marked the day even as the roar of carnosaurs and other predators marked the night. Felix mopped at his face with the hem of his cloak. The close-packed trees and the thickly clustered branches overhead seemed to hold in the heat. Sometimes it was like sitting in a boiling pot. He shook the hand with the bracelet, trying to get some small thread of air to circulate between the golden asp and the sweat-slick skin of his forearm. Between the sand and the grime of the jungle, he was getting a rash, and his skin was turning red and itchy.

He was perched on an upright stone that greatly resembled one of the boundary markers indicating when one province gave way to another in the Empire. The surface of the stone had seen the touch of tools, but whatever had been carved upon it had been long since worn away by the weather, or covered by the thick, tangled vines that clung to everything.

More stones dotted the clearing they’d stopped in to give him a moment to catch his breath, and beneath the vines, roots and moss that covered the ground, Felix could make out what might have once been flat paving stones. There were even oblong lengths of stone that resembled the remains of walls. Antar had claimed that the spot had been a ruin even when he’d been a living man, and Zabbai tacitly agreed.

The jungle had covered it, even then, according to the Nehekharans. Just who had built it, and what it had been, neither could say. Gotrek, for his part, had his own theories.

‘Definitely the work of my people, manling,’ the Slayer said. He’d pried one of the paving stones up and was examining it intensely. ‘You can tell, because your folk are incapable of producing stones this smooth without our help.’ He weighed it on his palm. ‘It’s so smooth you could use it as a pillow.’

‘Maybe you could,’ Felix muttered.

‘What was that, manling?’

‘I said maybe it was made by elves. It is said that their outposts once dotted the world. Maybe this was one of them,’ Felix said.

‘Elves – bah,’ Gotrek spat. ‘This isn’t elven work.’ He sneered. ‘Elves don’t use good stone like this. They choose their building materials based on looks, rather than strength. I could kill a charging knight with a good chunk of rock like this.’ His sneer twisted into a sharp smile. ‘And I have. Or don’t you remember, manling?’

Felix looked away. ‘Then you think this is some dwarf outpost,’ he said, hurriedly changing the subject. ‘Some lost watch-post of Karak Zorn’s?’ He gestured to the ruins around them.

Gotrek frowned. ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘Far from the mountains, though. My folk aren’t forest-dwellers.’

‘This is a jungle,’ Felix said helpfully.

‘If it has trees and beasts, it’s a forest,’ Gotrek said dismissively. He eyed the rock suspiciously. ‘Close to a river, though, and the coast, which means it could have been a trading outpost.’ He tossed the rock over his shoulder. Something gave a yelp of surprise. The sound was loud, and Felix had the impression of something large moving very swiftly away from them. Gotrek’s casually tossed missile had obviously startled something. Felix tensed, waiting for the creature to make an appearance, or worse, to attack. Instead, the sounds of clumsy flight faded. Felix let out the breath he had been holding.

‘Finally,’ he said, ‘something that doesn’t want to eat us.’

A roar split the air. Birds sprang upwards in desperate flight, screaming. Zabbai whirled, her axe raised. ‘The Death-that-Stalks,’ she said.

‘What,’ Felix said, dropping from his perch and drawing Karaghul. He stuffed his journal beneath his chain shirt. ‘What was that?’ The trees creaked, as if something that was even larger than the last something was prowling about. Felix smelt a metallic musk that reminded him of a snake’s den.

‘It’s a big lizard, manling,’ Gotrek said, peering about lazily. ‘It walks on two legs, and eats everything that crosses its path. The scale-folk sometimes use them as mounts, I’ve heard tell.’

Felix froze. ‘Lizardmen,’ he said. He recalled the shapes he’d seen in the fog when he’d been with the brothers Steyr. He’d spent enough evenings in filthy taverns, sharing drinks with the more disreputable sort of mercenary to know a little about that mysterious race said to haunt the far shores of Lustria. ‘Then there are lizard-folk here.’ The thought filled him with wonder. A part of him, the same part that had stared at the Nehekharan papyrus in his father’s study, had long held the desire to visit the mysterious cities of that far land, where golden walls rose from the green jungle. The wonder faded, drowned beneath a sudden rush of fear. Lizardmen were said to be as dangerous in their way as the Nehekharans. They were jungle-shadows, striking hard without warning, and fading away into the night.

Gotrek spat and said, ‘I doubt that, manling.’

‘He’s right,’ Zabbai said. ‘More likely the Doom-Seeker scared off whatever the carnosaur was hunting, and now it’s trying to decide whether we’re a suitable replacement.’ She looked at Gotrek. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you did that on purpose, dwarf.’

Gotrek ignored her, his good eye riveted on the wall. ‘Maybe it won’t attack,’ Felix said. ‘Maybe it’ll just leave.’

The carnosaur sprang to the top of the ancient stone wall and roared out a challenge. It wasn’t as big as Felix had feared, but it was big enough to give him pause.

Black and emerald scales covered a heavy, low-slung form. It had a wedge-shaped head, covered in bony encrustations, and its wide, powerful looking jaws sagged in anticipation of snapping tight on flesh. Clawed not-quite hands clenched and relaxed spasmodically at the ends of muscular forelegs as it eyed them hungrily.

The carnosaur roared again and Gotrek answered its challenge with a roar of his own. He said, ‘It’s smaller than the one that tried to eat me earlier, but that won‘t save it.’ He shook his axe at the beast. ‘Come on then, you overgrown newt! I’ve long wanted a cloak of scales like the King of Karak Kadrin wears, and I find your hue appealing. Come to Gotrek and get skinned!’

Felix glanced at the asp bracelet on his arm. The gold scales caught the setting sun and he blinked. For a moment, it looked as if the asp were coiling more tightly about his arm, though he felt nothing but the incessant itching. Four days, he thought. Once the sun set, he’d only have four days left. ‘Gotrek, I don’t think we have time to fight a giant carnivorous lizard, let alone skin it.’

‘Plenty of time, manling,’ Gotrek said.

‘Gotrek, I only have four days left!’

‘Five,’ Gotrek said flatly, ‘the sun hasn’t set yet. Put on your gruntaz and stiffen your spine. Here he comes.’ The carnosaur dropped from the wall and loped forwards, its heavy body held low to the ground and its tail undulating behind it. It shrieked like the boiler of a steam tank as it came, and its ape-like arms propelled it along. Teeth like spear blades clashed together, and its yellow eyes rolled beneath their shelves of bone and scale.

Felix and Gotrek dived aside as it charged past them. The beast turned far more quickly than Felix had estimated, and he only just avoided its snapping jaws. Gotrek charged between its legs and swung up at its throat with his axe. The blade sank into its tough hide, and the carnosaur shrieked. It reared up, hauling Gotrek into the air.

As it jerked to the side, Gotrek lost his grip on his axe and was flung up over its head. Its jaws gaped and Gotrek fell obligingly into its mouth. The jaws slammed shut, cutting off the Slayer in mid-curse. Felix cursed and charged towards the beast, whipping Karaghul around and slashing at its leg. It stumbled aside and clawed at him. He ducked aside and brought his blade in a wide arc, slicing at its knee. The carnosaur grumbled and curled around, catching him between its body and its tail. Then Zabbai was there, climbing its broad back, using her axe as a makeshift piton.

Arrows hissed through the air as her warriors fired at the creature. The carnosaur thrashed about, trying to fling her off its back as arrows sprouted from its muzzle and shoulders. Antar leapt over its wildly twisting tail and chopped at its other leg with his khopesh. ‘Return Antar’s foul-smelling and argumentative companion, overlarge reptile, or the Most Beloved Son of the Hawk and the Serpent shall condemn thy bestial soul to roam the lonely wastes of Usirian!’ he bellowed.

Felix saved his breath for hewing at the twisting and stomping limb before him. The carnosaur hadn’t opened its mouth since swallowing Gotrek, and between that and its seeming distraction Felix felt a faint glimmer of hope. That hope was rewarded when the carnosaur reared back and gave a querulous grunt. Slowly, its jaws parted. Gotrek’s face appeared, flushed with effort. Veins stood out on his neck and skull, and he spat rapid-fire curses in Khazalid. He’d got a grip on the carnosaur’s top and bottom jaw and was slowly but surely pushing them apart. As Felix watched, Gotrek set his feet on the creature’s bottom jaw and slammed both palms against its upper and, with a grunt of effort, began to force the beast’s jaws wider. He realised that Gotrek wasn’t attempting to escape.

Gotrek’s eye bulged and his lips had peeled back from his teeth. Sweat popped and rolled down his face. Bands of thick muscle bunched at the corners of the carnosaur’s jaw as it fought against Gotrek’s efforts. Gotrek slumped and his knees bent. The carnosaur hunched forwards.

Gotrek’s swollen musculature seemed to vibrate with effort, and slowly the jaw began to rise again. Then, Gotrek’s shoulders bunched and there was a loud crack as the carnosaur’s jaw snapped.

The creature toppled over with a rattling sigh. Zabbai leapt clear and Felix and Antar scrambled aside as the body crashed to the ground in a twitching heap. Gotrek shoved his way out of now-loose jaws and tore his axe free from its chest. He was covered in blood, bile and spittle, and his barrel chest rose and fell with exertion.

He scraped blood out of his beard and looked at Felix. ‘See, manling? Plenty of time,’ he said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Nitocris extended her arms out from her body and allowed her handmaidens to dress her. Quick, strong fingers slid her armour on and tied it in place. She had awoken in a good mood. There was a charnel wind blowing through the jungle. Everything had come down to a single moment. There were no more decisions to be made or questions to ponder, only the work to be done. She looked around the chamber. Her senior handmaidens were arrayed about her, awaiting their final orders before the die was cast.

‘Talia, you will take command of our fleet,’ she said to a broad, muscular woman with a shorn scalp and a scar that exposed the fangs on one side of her face. Talia had had that scar before Nitocris had claimed her, and wore it even now as a badge of honour – a sign that she had been blooded in battle. It was the scar that had convinced Nitocris of her worthiness to join her sisterhood. ‘Make straight for the coast, and avoid open battle, where possible. If the servants of the false serpent wish to control the empty seas, let them. You will take three others with you – you may choose who – to help control the fleet. It will be no easy task, but it must be done. We will need those troops when we reach Lybaras.’

Talia, whose people had done their share of raiding along the Arabayan coast, nodded silently. Nitocris turned to a short woman, smaller than the rest of the handmaidens, and slight. She wore no armour, save for animal hides and a chest-piece of rattling bone. Golden trinkets, lifted from the cities of the two-legged lizards, dangled from her hair, arms and neck. There was an air of the feral about her, more so than her sisters, as if her flesh were but a mask for the beast within. ‘Yamina, you will take your pack and support the cannibal tribes that have flocked to our banner. Harry them, and keep them moving towards Lybaras. They will be our shock-troops, and I would have them full of fear and fury when they reach the enemy.’ Yamina exposed her fangs in a grin.

Nitocris gave the rest of them their orders. She had enough sisters that they could control the unruly horde at her disposal, but she needed to ensure that they all moved as one. Otherwise the legions of Lybaras would carve them to pieces. She let her gaze pass over the eager faces of her sisters and wondered how many of them would survive to see the glor-ies of lost Lahmia. How many would join her, in the lands beyond the desert? How many wanted to? Her eyes flickered to her lieutenant.

Andraste watched the others with a sour expression. She was visibly annoyed, though whether because of envy or impatience, Nitocris couldn’t say. ‘As soon as we’ve marched, bring the sword to Octavia,’ she said, catching Andraste’s attention. ‘We should be outside of Lybaras’s walls by the time she’s finished the ritual. When she’s done, you will bring her and march what remains of our forces from this place to join us.’ She saw the unspoken question in Andraste’s face and added, ‘Kill the slaves. Have Octavia raise them up. We shall use them to the last drop.’

‘I can do that easily enough,’ Andraste said dismissively. Her fingers plucked at the strand of rotten silk that fluttered from the curious ring-shaped pommel of her blade. ‘We should kill her, when she has completed the ritual.’ A murmur of agreement swept through the others. None of them cared for the necromancer, though most were wise enough not to give voice to that distaste so openly.

‘No,’ Nitocris said. ‘She has uses yet.’

‘We cannot trust her,’ Andraste said. ‘Or him, for that matter.’ She flung out a hand to indicate the kneeling figure of Steyr nearby. He’d been on his knees for a day and a night, as punishment for his attack on Andraste. Seeping burns, already healing, marked his face and hands, but he’d uttered no sound of pain. Nitocris was pleased, though she hadn’t shown it. Her handmaidens had ignored him, and he them.

‘Necessity and trust are often mutually exclusive,’ Nitocris said. She clapped her hands, and those dressing her stepped back. ‘You will safeguard her, Andraste, or I will have your fangs for my standard pole. Do you understand?’

‘As my queen wishes,’ Andraste said, bowing low.

‘Yes,’ Nitocris said. ‘You would all do well to remember that.’ She let her gaze meet that of each of her handmaidens, daring them to challenge her. One by one, they all looked away. She was content to let them scheme in the chambers of their own minds and hearts, as long as they acknowledged her superiority at the end of the day. ‘Now come, I have a gift for you.’

She moved through the crowd and they fell in behind her, following her from her chambers and down the steps of the ziggurat. Her bodyguards, ancient wights raised from the graves of kings and heroes of old, kept pace with the group, moving as smoothly as they had in life. They were hardy creatures, and wore the best armour and carried the best weapons she had to hand. The wights were an army unto themselves, and more than one enemy had broken themselves on the shields of the dead men.

The temple complex resounded with activity. No longer were her forces preparing for war. Now they were readying themselves to march. The rotting dead culled from the swamps and jungles were organised into shambling legions, a third of which would be carried to Lybaras aboard the makeshift fleet now docked in the river quay. As they reached the bottom of the ziggurat, grey-fleshed shapes loped to meet them.

These were the chieftains or pack-leaders of the more organised ghoul-tribes. There were a hundred such tribes on the coast, the degenerate descendants of those that Nitocris, or her ancestors, had broken and driven from the jungles and hills. The largest and most organised now paid her fealty, and their chieftains scampered forwards to receive her blessing. The ghouls were large for their kind, heavy with muscle and covered in scars earned in their rise to control of their monstrous tribes. They wore armour and rags scavenged from shipwrecks, and their rough flesh had been daubed with crude war paint. They set up a caterwaul of greeting as Nitocris approached them, and she held out her hands. They slunk towards her like contrite leopards. With her thumbnails, she sliced the flesh of her palms. She held out her bloody hands to them, and the ghouls nuzzled her skin, licking and nipping. They growled and shoved one another for the chance to taste a single drop of her blood.

When she had judged that they had had enough, she jerked her hands away and snarled. The ghouls stiffened and cringed back from her, licking their chops. ‘Steyr,’ she said.

‘My queen,’ Steyr said.

‘These will be your captains. Allow them to taste of you, so that they might know your scent, and serve your command as they would mine.’

Steyr made a face, but did as she asked. He stretched out his arms and she grabbed his wrists, forced his hands around, palms up, and bent over them. She sank her fangs into his flesh and tore it open with a jerk of her head. Steyr yelped in shock. She forced him forwards, and gave a snarl. The ghouls sprang towards him greedily and fastened their mouths on Steyr’s wounds. He hissed in disgust at their touch. Behind her, Nitocris heard Andraste and the others tittering in amusement. Finally, she yanked Steyr away from his new followers and hurled him aside. She gave a final snarl, and the ghouls loped away, to rouse their packs and ready themselves for war. Steyr cradled his wounded hands to his chest and glared daggers at her.

Nitocris ignored him and led the group away from the ziggurat and into the city. The dead clustered thickly along the ancient streets and avenues. If they had been living men, they might have cheered to see her. But the silence was a cheer of sorts, to Nitocris’s way of thinking. It was proof of her power. She led her handmaidens through the silent masses and to where the slaves were kept.

As with the ghouls, she had broken the human tribes of the Southlands to her will. Those who had not fallen in battle and been bound to her service had been taken captive and were forced to serve her in other ways. They worked to arm her warriors and patch the vessels hauled from the sea and shallows. They were a source of nourishment for her and her handmaidens too, when they required it. And when they were not at work, the slaves were kept in the pits, where they could cause no mischief.

A number of ancient wells dotted the temple complex. Great circular apertures that stank of mould and centuries of damp, the wells went deeper than Nitocris had bothered to explore, and were wide enough to swallow one of the smaller ziggurats that lined the edges of the complex. Strange carvings covered their interiors, stretching all the way down past where the sun or torchlight would reach. With a bit of work, they had been made fit for purpose.

Heavy stakes had been hammered around the circumference of each well, and to each stake, a thick rope composed of interwoven jungle vines had been tied. The ropes stretched from the stake down into the wells, and at the other end of each was a large, heavy globe comprised of bent branches, flotsam and more vines. And inside each globe were a number of slaves. More than a dozen, in some cases, packed into their pen elbows to knees, barely able to breathe or move. Then, given how weak most of them were, they didn’t move all that much.

When the slaves were not at work – and there was always work to be done – they were here. Once a day, slop made from crushed plants, animal leavings and the smashed remains of those corpses not fit to serve as soldiers was rained down on the globes to feed those inside, and the rainwater which collected in the cracked and leaking buckets that dangled from the sides and bottom of each globe assuaged their thirst.

At the top of each well, a group of corpses, in various states of decay, waited silently for orders. When the slaves died, Nitocris had them dragged back to their feet. Work did not end with death. She set their mindless corpses to hauling up their fellows, when required.

Each well had its own overseer, in the form of one of the temple’s previous inhabitants – wights, clad in crude armour and ragged leopard skins. The wights were armed as they had been in life, with their clawed gauntlets, and their war-clubs and blocky shields.

At the sight of Nitocris and her entourage, the wight in charge of this particular well stepped forward, as if to challenge them. Nitocris gestured sharply and the wight stepped aside, lowering its club. She felt the featherlight scrape of its mind against hers, a feeble flicker of will that pulsed once, like a fading heartbeat. She had broken the leopard-cult in war, and she had broken them beyond the veil, tearing their foul souls from the bosom of their murder-god. She had not done so because she needed them, particularly. She had wights aplenty, raised from burial places of chieftains and heroes. No, she had done it for spite, and for the humour of it. They had fought savagely to defend the temple from her in life, and now, in death, they would guard it for her with equal vigour.

Nitocris stalked forwards and motioned to the closest rope. ‘That one,’ she said. ‘Bring it up.’ The wight turned and raised its club. At its signal, the zombies that squatted near the rope lurched to their feet and grasped the rope in their flabby, rotten hands. The zombies staggered forwards, hauling the spherical pen out of the well. The slaves inside the sphere moaned and screamed as they were hauled out of the dankness and into the moonlight, the wood of their cage scraping as it struck stone. They had been slaves long enough to recognise the meaning behind a moonlight retrieval. It was rare that slaves were rousted between dusk and dawn, and when they were, it was inevitably because their mistresses had decided that their usefulness had ended.

Then, that depended entirely on how one defined use, Nitocris supposed. She extended a hand, and her handmaidens leapt forwards with a communal snarl. They tore the cage apart with commendable speed, and snatched out those mewling slaves who were too slow, or too weak to avoid their clutches. Nitocris watched with maternal pride as her sisters glutted themselves. It was rare that she allowed them to do so, outside of battle, and they made the most of it, shrieking and hissing at one another as blood splashed black across the moonstruck stones. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. She inhaled the smells of sudden death and violently spilled blood, savouring the hunger it awoke within her. Hunger had ever been her ally. Hunger fired her ambition, her drive to conquer.

Hunger drove her to heights undreamt of by her mother, or her mother’s mother. Hunger had made her a queen, and hunger would make her an empress, in time. She had thought it often, in her most private moments – an idle whim, a daydream. When she sat upon Lahmia’s ivory throne, when she had done as her queen had asked, would she be content to stop there? Would she accept her reward, and shed the scales of the conqueror and move on to loftier battlefields? That was what she wanted. But would she be able to do it? Or would the song of hunger compel her to make use of the empire she had built?

Nitocris shivered at the thought, and her tongue ran gently across her fangs. She loved her queen, and feared her, but at the same time, some small part of her longed to challenge the Sisterhood of the Silver Pinnacle. That part rarely stirred, save as now on the eve of battle. A frisson of hunger, not for blood, but for the challenge of the thing, pulsed through her black veins. If her mother had lived, and had not fallen beneath an enemy’s axe, Nitocris would have been expected to challenge her for leadership of the tribe, when she came of age. Could she do the same to the woman who had raised her up from a mortal, and made her a demigod?

Maybe the Queen of Mysteries expected it of her. Maybe all of this was a test of Nitocris’s worthiness. The thought warmed her. She thought she was worthy. After humbling the dry dead of the desert, would the rest of the world prove any more challenging? The living were more fragile than the dead. She frowned as she thought of burning cities. Cities she dreamed of seeing, of experiencing, torn down by bony hands. Her eyes opened. Her arm flashed out, knocking Steyr from his feet.

He had not lunged forwards with the others, justifiably wary of the ferocity of her handmaidens. No, he had waited and slunk about the edges of the feeding frenzy, like the snivelling jackal he was. Seeing an opportunity, he had begun to inch forwards.

Nitocris whirled and pinned him to the ground with her foot. She glared down at him. ‘You will wait,’ she hissed.

Steyr writhed beneath her, and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Of course, of course, patience personified, that’s me,’ he said. He tried for an ingratiating smile, but it came out a fearful snarl.

Nitocris glanced over her shoulder at her handmaidens, watching them feed for a moment. Then she looked back down at Steyr. She sank to her haunches, her feet planted on either side of his chest, and her hands dangling between her knees. She ran her fingers across his chest and throat, tracing the faded double-headed eagle on the battered breastplate he now wore. He’d filched from the dead, assembling something approaching a full set of armour, though each piece had a different place of origin. It was scavenger’s armour, fit for a ghoul or a grave-robber, and Nitocris thought it suited him perfectly. He had a sword on his hip, a western blade. She tapped the pommel, and then drew the sword and placed the tip beneath his chin. ‘Do you know why I spared you, jackal?’

‘Sigmund,’ he said.

She cocked her head. She pressed the blade gently against his throat. ‘Jackal suits you better, I think,’ she murmured.

‘Now that you mention it, I’ve always thought so myself,’ he said. ‘Jackal it is. Delightful, I’ve wanted a new name for ages now.’

‘You are a coward,’ she said.

‘I prefer to think I’m strategically self-aware,’ Steyr said, licking his lips.

‘Answer my question,’ she said. Behind her, she could hear the sound of cracking bones and tearing flesh. Her sisters were ensuring that none of their blood had got into the slaves by opening them up and emptying them of everything that might pump or carry a stray bit of blood. Zombies didn’t need working organs. They had learned from the incident that created Steyr and his brothers. They needed no more accidental vampires dogging their tracks. ‘Why did I spare you?’

‘I’m a hostage to fortune,’ Steyr said. He met her gaze steadily, which surprised her.

‘Yes,’ she said. She traced his cheek with the tip of his blade. ‘And because I require a herald. Do you know what a herald is?’

‘A champion,’ he said hesitantly.

‘Of sorts,’ she said, leaning close to him. ‘A sacrifice would be a more appropriate definition. A sacrifice to the gods, the whim of fortune made flesh. A victorious herald shows that the gods approve. A fallen herald shows that the gods have turned their eyes from you. That is what the Nehekharans believed. But I prefer my heralds to be messengers, to carry word of my coming to my enemies. You will be my herald, jackal. You will lead forth the speediest elements of my army, the cannibals and four-legged dead, and strike my enemy with speed.’

Steyr swallowed. ‘I’ve never been fond of suicide,’ he said.

‘Not suicide,’ she said. She took hold of his jaw. ‘Opportunity. I will need a man of the lands beyond the mountains to be my herald to those vibrant lands, to Ostland and Reikland and the Moot.’

‘No one wants to go to the Moot. People travel through Sylvania to avoid the Moot,’ Steyr said. ‘People lash themselves to logs and float down the river just to avoid the barest edge of the Moot.’

‘I want to go to the Moot. I want to go to Marienburg and Middenheim. I want to see the white snows of Kislev, and the mountains of the far north. I want to see it all, jackal.’ She squeezed his jaw and leaned forwards to lick a bit of blood from the shallow cut she’d made on his cheek with the sword. ‘You will be my guide.’

‘And what about my sister?’ he asked.

Nitocris sat up. She released him and pushed herself to her feet with his sword. ‘Your sister will be by my side. She will be my companion, in our travels. I must have someone to teach me how a woman of your lands comports herself, after all.’

‘And will she be alive, while she is serving you in this capacity?’ he asked, looking up at her. She swung the sword and tapped his breastplate with the flat of the blade.

‘Do you not wish for her to be as you – as we – are?’

He hesitated. ‘I wish for her to be safe.’

‘Safety is no longer an option, jackal. There are only varying degrees of danger.’ She smiled. ‘She will join us, she will join my sisterhood, and we shall see all that there is to see – if you survive, and do as I command.’ She reversed the sword and drove it down into the stones beside his head with a single, forceful thrust. ‘Disappoint me, and she will have to do without you.’

Without waiting for him to reply, she gestured. One of her bodyguards stepped forwards, carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle. It was a heavy standard pole, looted from a previous encounter with the legions of the Land of the Dead. The standard was crudely stitched from sailcloth and animal skin, and had been splashed with blood in the shape of a great serpent. From its crosspiece dangled trophies of battles past: hundreds of rattling greenskin tusks tied together with twine and hair, golden plaques taken from the cities of the lizards, the skulls of men and ratkin, and strips of hide taken from the great lizards of the jungle. The standard was topped by the beast-helm of the warrior who had taken her mother’s life.

‘As my herald, you will carry my standard into war,’ Nitocris said, as the wight handed the standard to Steyr, who had scrambled to his feet. He held it gingerly.

‘You will plant my flag before the walls of Lybaras and make claim of the lands which I will own in due course.’ Steyr hesitated. Then he nodded. Nitocris stroked his cheek. ‘Good. I knew you would make your sister proud, my jackal.’

She turned away from him and raised her hand. Her handmaidens slunk away from the wreckage of the spherical cage, dragging aside the dead or dying bodies of those they’d fed on. There were several survivors, huddled back against the bars of the cage. Nitocris approached the trembling, blank-eyed slaves with the grace of a tiger circling a tethered goat.

‘I thirst,’ she said, softly.

Then, with a shriek worthy of the carnosaurs of the deep jungle, she leapt upon them, her jaw opening inhumanly wide and her claws extended. She tore through them without hesitation, snapping bones and ripping flesh with savage exultation. She drank greedily from geysering stumps and was soon covered head to foot in blood. It pulsed through her cold, crooked veins, and it caused red explosions behind her eyelids as she glutted herself on stolen lives. Power such as she had rarely felt flooded her limbs, and the night seemed alive with infinite sights, sounds and smells.

When she had finished, she stepped daintily from the wreckage of her repast, and she allowed her handmaidens to clean her with their rough tongues. She stroked their heads and closed her eyes, imagining the glories to come.

Whatever the challenge to come, I will be victorious, she thought. No matter who, or what, seeks to stop me, I shall see Lahmia. I shall see Altdorf and all the far places. I shall see them and I shall rule them.

Octavia watched Nitocris indulge herself through the eyes of the dead. An old witch in Bretonnia had taught her how to see through the eyes of those she pulled from their graves. She had started small, watching the world through the eyes of birds and beasts, but she could do it with men now, as well. It was how she spied on the doings in Lybaras, and how she kept tabs on Nitocris’s schemes. Those she didn’t boast openly about, at any rate.

Then, Octavia had schemes of her own. She had seen her brother’s lost poet, and his dwarf companion in Lybaras through the eyes of one of her pets. The man was handsome enough, though she thought Sigmund might have overestimated his cleverness. He didn’t look especially clever – but neither did her brother. He had managed to stay vertical this long so perhaps looks weren’t everything. She stroked one tattooed cheek, and down in the plaza, dead eyes swivelled to fix on her brother where he stood, looking forlorn. A flush of affection swept through her. Part of her hoped he would die, soon, the true death and not the temporary vampire equivalent. She could hear the screams of the slaves, and the zombie whose eyes she’d borrowed turned, letting her watch the slaughter.

Though she knew the slaves welcomed death – for who would not in a place like this, in a situation like the one they found themselves in – such slaughter sat heavy on her stomach. Better the quick death than the painful one. Nitocris could have hypnotized her prey into feeling no pain, no fear, but she never did so, save when she was forced to feed on beasts.

She enjoyed the spice fear gave to the blood. All vampires did. They liked to hear the hearts of their prey begin to beat faster, the tensing of the muscles, the whine that bubbled at the back of the throat. Pain and fear were as meat and drink to them. Octavia closed her eyes and severed the link as a thrill of disgust ran through her.

She stood on top of the pyramid, with the drums. It had become the place she was most comfortable, surrounded by a whirlwind of spirits and dark magic. As the day of war drew closer, the vampires became less bearable. Nitocris’s handmaidens had grown excitable and even more vicious than normal, like carnosaurs scenting blood. Even her brother was agitated. Agitation was the enemy of peace.

Behind her, the drums thudded. The rivers of corpses flowing in from the jungles had begun to slacken, at last. But there were other legions than just those of the charnel house. Nitocris had summoned the ghoul-tribes to war. Octavia hated the ghouls, as one who raised chickens hated foxes.

They were parasites, but useful in battle. They would crack the bones of their enemies and sup on the marrow, and, even better, they would die in droves and thus find their purpose.

She looked up. The sun had set. It was time to call the others. She had felt the flickers of their consciousness, so fierce even with the weight of millennia of death pressing them down. They yearned even now to fly and hunt. Animals did not understand death. They took no solace in it, for which she pitied them. But they would come when she called, and like faithful hounds, they would follow her commands. ‘I am sorry,’ she murmured, ‘but I need you, my lovelies. You must rise and fly and darken the sky with your wings.’

She reached out with her mind and voice, and stoked the tiny embers of consciousness into roaring flames. Down in the darkness beneath the temple complex, they stirred. Big and small, their size dwindling with the rising strata beneath the ruin, they were all dead and they all responded to her call with an alacrity that might have startled another necromancer. They came not grudgingly, or because of promises of hunting and blood, but due to love. They loved her, even as the spirits and ghosts loved her, for she had spent months whispering to them in their cavernous tombs, stroking their tiny minds with her own, letting them know that they were not alone. They were, as all the true dead were, her friends.

Across the temple complex, in the wells, the slaves began to wail and scream as typhoons of withered flesh and dry, brittle hair spun upwards from the dark, unexplored depths below. Thousands of bats came at Octavia’s plea, and they exploded into the air, blotting out the moon. Great-winged shapes hurtled through the crowd of their smaller cousins, and even larger shapes came behind them. Fell-bats and the great terrorgheists from which they were descended hurtled upwards to stretch long-stilled wings once more. Tattered lungs inflated and stretched as the great bats shrieked their return to the world above.

A terrorgheist crashed down onto the top of the ziggurat, nearly sweeping aside the drummers in its haste. Octavia held up her hand, unafraid, and the massive corpse-beast nuzzled her palm and made whistling whines of greeting. She scratched its chin and murmured pleasantries to it. It was the same basic shape as a bat, but it was larger than a wyvern. Its flesh had the consistency of forest loam, and its bones rose like tombstones from its sagging skin. The echoes of its hunger were almost overpowering.

‘Magnificent,’ Nitocris said.

Octavia did not flinch, or otherwise react. Fear and pain, she thought. The terrorgheist shifted and grumbled, its toothy maw flexing as it eyed the vampire greedily. Unlike many dead things, the giant bats did not become subservient around vampires. To them, the smaller blood-suckers were just as much prey as anything else.

Nitocris, covered in gore as she was, likely looked especially delicious. The thought amused Octavia, and she fought to keep a smile from cracking her facade of indifference.

‘Would it devour me, if you commanded it?’ Nitocris said, as she drew closer to Octavia. Her fingers combed through Octavia’s red hair. It was a habit of the vampire’s that never failed to annoy Octavia. Oh yes, it would gobble you up in an instant. And if I thought that’d kill you, I’d be tempted to let it try, she thought. She needed the vampire, but plans could be adapted. Especially if what her brother believed about Andraste were true.

‘I do not command them. They are not slaves,’ Octavia said, pushing the thought aside. Nitocris stepped away from her. She reached towards the terrorgheist. It twitched away from her with a bone-rattling hiss. Nitocris frowned. ‘I want it,’ she said. ‘Make it bow to me.’

‘I told you, I do not command them,’ Octavia said.

‘But I command you,’ Nitocris said, not looking at her.

‘I wish for it to be my mount in the coming war. I wish to descend upon my enemies from above, and strike with speed.’ Octavia felt Nitocris’s mind and will uncoil, like an adder readying itself to strike. The terrorgheist reared up and extended its wings. It gave a thunderous shriek, and Nitocris gestured sharply. The dark magics that seeped invisibly from her pores swept forwards, wrenching the beast’s mind from Octavia’s grasp with ridiculous ease. Octavia staggered as a dagger of pain cut into her thoughts. Nitocris laughed and sprang onto the terrorgheist, slithering up onto its neck. She plunged her clawed fingers into what remained of its flesh and muscle.

‘You see, it is not so difficult, to make things do as you wish,’ Nitocris cackled as she forced the beast to bend low. It balanced on its wings and gave a wail of frustration and anger. ‘I could even force it to eat you, if I so desired,’ she added. She leaned forwards, the slim, corded muscles in her arms swelling as she dug her claws more tightly into the neck of the terrorgheist. Its jaws sagged, and a foul odour washed over Octavia.

She felt no fear. Only anger; and she allowed it to flash, briefly, in her eyes. Nitocris looked down at her and smiled. ‘Can it be?’ she asked. ‘Can you have finally learned the lesson which I have been trying to impart to you since I plucked you from an ignominious fate?’ Nitocris’s smile became a silvery slash. ‘What you have is mine. I have given it to you and I may take it back, should I wish. Even your dreams are mine, Octavia of Altdorf.’

‘As my queen wishes,’ Octavia said. She met Nitocris’s eyes, but only for a moment. When she looked away, the terrorgheist snapped its wings and lunged upwards into the bat-filled night sky. The force of its passage nearly knocked Octavia from her feet. She looked up, as Nitocris’s scream of joy rang out. The vampire-queen was never happier, save when battle was on the horizon.

Her brother was right. Nitocris’s usefulness was rapidly coming to an end. Like a spoiled child, she would be taught the error of her ways, in the moments before she was condemned to oblivion. She had no purpose, and things without purpose must be discarded.

‘Savour your joy, my queen,’ she said softly. ‘Savour the illusion of control, for your empire totters towards its final resting place.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Felix awoke as Gotrek’s rough palm clamped itself around his mouth. ‘Hsst. Quiet, manling,’ the Slayer growled, as Felix thrashed. They had made camp in the branches of one of the larger, thick-rooted trees. The branch Felix had chosen was as wide as a bridge and about as comfortable, but he’d managed to fall into a fitful slumber despite the noise of the night-jungle. Carnosaurs screeched hungrily as they prowled below, hunting the tri-horns and the shell-backed quadrupeds that seemed to infest the region. Leopards, snakes and other, unknown, predators stalked the jungle’s shadows. The tree was no real protection from the former, but it kept them from attracting the notice of anything bigger, and Zabbai and her warriors could see off the occasional, curious big cat.

Now, however, the tree shuddered down to its roots, and Felix could hear the steady thud of marching feet. It was still night, but the stars and the moon were only barely visible through the cloud of darting bats that flowed continuously overhead.

Gotrek allowed him to sit up, and gestured. Felix’s query died unspoken in his mouth as he caught sight of the stumbling, staggering shapes moving through the trees. The zombies moved steadily, crawling if they could not walk. Amongst the horde, he caught sight of bog-blackened bones and rusty weapons and armour, and, even worse, the lumbering shapes of giant reptiles, their scales sloughing from them as they plodded mindlessly forwards. There were more animals besides the great beasts – leopards, serpents and, above them, large bats, whose leather wings caused the trees to shake and shudder.

The big bats ploughed through their smaller cousins like sharks dispersing schools of fish, their wings beating loudly, and their shrieks grating on Felix’s ears.

One of the latter swooped low over the tree they had taken refuge in, its hairy body a black blot in the night sky. In the branches, Zabbai’s warriors raised their bows. She made a sharp gesture, and they lowered their weapons. The bat was enormous. Felix suddenly remembered the giant bats that had laired in the caverns beneath Wurtbad, and those he had seen from a distance, swooping across the plains of the east, hunting the herds of wild horses that galloped there. The one that circled overhead wasn’t quite that size, but it was big enough to have given the carnosaur they’d encountered earlier a moment’s pause. He glanced nervously at Gotrek, hoping the Slayer wouldn’t attempt to get the creature’s attention. Gotrek looked at him and muttered, ‘It’s a scout, manling. If it lands, we’ll have to kill it, and quickly, because there’s no way we can sneak past it. Damn beasts have a better sense of smell than a wolf.’

Felix nodded tersely. He watched the bat circle overhead, its immense leathery wings snapping and curling as it drew closer and closer to the ground. Whether it was a living beast, bound to serve dead masters, or an undead construct wrenched from some hidden grave, he couldn’t say, nor did he wish to get close enough to find out. ‘Maybe we should get down,’ he hissed, doubtfully.

‘Too late for that, I think,’ Zabbai said. The bat suddenly plummeted like a rock from a catapult, its wings folding back as it dropped towards them. Branches snapped and splintered as the bat descended onto the branch Felix and Gotrek stood on, bracing itself on its folded wings and its rear legs.

It hissed and its snout wrinkled back, exposing a mouthful of thin fangs. It was long dead by the look of it, but, quicker than Felix could react, it began to hop forwards. Gotrek darted past Felix to meet it, but the arrows of Zabbai’s warriors beat him to the kill, piercing the bat’s eyes, brain and mouth, and silencing it instantly. It began to slide off the branch and Gotrek lunged forwards to catch it by one limp wing. He hauled it back up onto the branch and shot a glare at Zabbai. ‘I could have done that,’ he growled.

‘You have done entirely too much of that on this trip, Doom-Seeker,’ Zabbai said. She placed a hand on Felix’s shoulder. ‘Your companion will only have three days come the sunrise. Every needless brawl you engage in reduces that time.’

‘It’s not my fault,’ Gotrek said petulantly. ‘I didn’t stick that thing on him.’

‘But it will be your fault if he dies,’ Zabbai said.

Gotrek glowered and made ready to reply, when one of Zabbai’s warriors knocked gently on the tree trunk. Zabbai turned and immediately sank into a crouch. She motioned for the others to do the same. ‘Corpse-eaters,’ she murmured.

Felix looked down. Ghouls padded through the jungle below, in ones and twos. Some wore primitive armour, but all carried weapons. Their worm-pale flesh was daubed with ash and war paint, and they barked and growled softly to one another as they moved. More ghouls followed the first lot, and still more after that. He counted a hundred of the degenerate cannibals before he gave up. Gotrek poked him. Felix looked at the Slayer, who pointed down towards a tall figure striding through the ghouls, a heavy battle standard held horizontally across his shoulders. He wore armour, had a bow slung across his back and a sword on one hip. As he stepped into a beam of moonlight, Felix caught sight of his face. It was Steyr. He looked at Gotrek, who shrugged, and then at Zabbai, who shook her head.

Felix had assumed that the vampire had died with his brothers, and he wasn’t certain what his apparent survival implied, save that it wasn’t good. Steyr paused beneath the tree. In the moonlight, Felix saw the vampire’s nose wrinkle. He looked around. Felix tensed. His hand sought Karaghul’s hilt. If the vampire looked up, they were finished. Ghouls could climb as well as the apes they resembled, and almost as quickly.

Steyr raised his head. An indefinable expression passed across his face, followed by a thin smile. Felix knew that the vampire had seen them. He felt Gotrek uncoil. The Slayer was ready to fall from his perch onto the vampire. But, instead of the expected command to attack, Steyr merely twitched his head, as if in a nod, and then kicked a ghoul in the rear to propel it along. The vampire strode on, and vanished into the shadows of the jungle, the ghouls swarming in his wake. When the last ghoul had vanished, Zabbai rose. ‘We must go,’ she said. They descended quickly, and moved into the jungle, in the opposite direction from the army. Felix hurried to catch up with her.

‘That army,’ he said. ‘It is moving north, towards Lybaras, isn’t it?’

‘Our enemies move swiftly,’ Zabbai said.

‘More swiftly than Khalida anticipated?’ Felix asked.

Zabbai said nothing. Felix shook his head. He met Gotrek’s eye. ‘I don’t think you’re the only one running out of time, manling,’ the Slayer said. Felix lifted his wrist and stared at the deadly bracelet in the moonlight. He fell silent, and stayed that way until the moon had set and the night sky had begun to lighten.

He tried to distract himself from thoughts of asps and poison with more immediate worries about what they might find when they reached the Temple of Skulls. If he’d still been an optimist, he might have hoped that they’d find the ruin abandoned and the sword just sitting somewhere, unguarded. Instead, he feared they’d find the ruin abandoned and the sword gone. Instead of being able to sneak in and sneak out, they’d have to pursue an army of the dead.

As the sun began to rise, Felix found himself marching beside Antar. It wasn’t the spot he’d have chosen, but Gotrek had lapsed into surliness and Zabbai was ranging ahead with her warriors, checking that the trail they followed was clear of dangers.

‘War is a thing of beauty,’ Antar said as he chopped through a vine. ‘It is the crucible in which kings are forged. Antar, Son of Dhekesh, is of a superior forging, if you were wondering, fleshy one.’

‘I wasn’t,’ Felix said, as the vine that Antar had chopped in two swung wildly towards him. He ducked and glared at the tomb-prince. He hadn’t initiated the conversation, and had done his best to discourage it. Antar didn’t seem to notice.

‘Of course you were,’ Antar said. ‘Antar is magnificent and mysterious – all men wish to know him and all women wish to bed him.’ He paused. ‘Sometimes it is the reverse. Antar does not allow such occasions to discommode him, for he is comfortable with adulation in all of its forms.’

‘I’m very happy for you,’ Felix muttered.

‘As you should be,’ Antar cried portentously. ‘Antar, Hawk of the Crimson Winds, inspires joy in his servants and enemies alike!’ He sliced at more vines with enthusiasm. ‘And once this minor task is done, Antar shall enter the crucible of war once again. He shall stride across the ruins of Lybaras like a colossus, and carrion birds shall follow in his wake!’

‘Do you have some particular grievance against Lybaras? Is that why you’re so eager for war?’ Felix said. He wasn’t actually curious. He was simply trying to keep Antar from bellowing. For a creature entirely lacking in lungs, the tomb-prince could muster an impressive amount of volume. He’d stunned one of the colourful birds that seemed to infest the upper reaches of the trees just by yelling in its general direction. And while they’d encountered no dangers or obstacles on their trek – the passing army had apparently frightened most of the larger jungle beasts into seeking more accommodating climes, for which Felix was grateful – there was no sense in tempting fate.

‘Grievance, no,’ Antar said. ‘Antar bears no grudges! He is as magnanimous in defeat as victory, elsewise he would have slain thee and thy stunted monkey for shaming him!’

‘Then why agitate for war with them?’ Felix asked, recalling what Zabbai had told him about Antar and his fellow princes. The tomb-prince reminded him of any number of arrogant aristocrats he and Gotrek had run across in their travels – so convinced of his own rectitude that he couldn’t see the very real harm his actions might cause.

‘Agitate? Agitate! Who claims that Antar agitates? Name him and Antar shall challenge him to the Test of Seven Scorpions!’ Antar stopped and whirled, so quickly that Felix almost ran into him. ‘Antar is no agitator, he is a hero!’

Felix pointed past him, at Zabbai, as she stepped into view. ‘Her,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ Antar said. ‘Yes, well, say, rather, that Antar urges his kingly forebears to consider the merits of war.’ He looked at Felix. ‘War is the only entertainment available in the Great Land. Antar cannot taste grapes or wine, he cannot touch a woman and his paints are all dust. The ink has dried, and Antar’s poetry goes unwritten.’

‘You were a poet?’

‘Antar was the greatest poet! His verses made Asaph herself weep for the beauty of them,’ he said. ‘Alas, truth and beauty fled with flesh, and now Antar is but a shadow of his former glory – though he is still more glorious than any who would compare themselves to him.’

‘Not that anyone would do so willingly,’ Zabbai said as she drew near. ‘We’re almost there.’ Her warriors followed her, their skulls creaking as they surveyed their surroundings watchfully.

‘How can you tell?’ Felix said.

‘Offhand, manling, I’d say because we’ve been walking through it for some time now,’ Gotrek growled. It was the first thing the dwarf had said since the sky had begun to lighten. Gotrek swept his axe out, chopping through a curtain of vines and rotting leaves to reveal the ancient stonework hidden beneath.

Felix looked around in surprise. Now that he’d been made aware of it, he could see that what he’d taken for trees or stones were in fact the remains of walls and wide shapes that might be statues beneath their coverings of vegetation. ‘What is this place? Is it another outpost?’

‘No,’ Gotrek said. He ripped aside a handful of vines and revealed the surface of a strangely carved square column. Felix realised that there were other columns, all equally massive and connected by flat, vine-encrusted archways. They were in some sort of overgrown plaza. Gotrek glared at the markings on the column and then spat.

Felix knew better than to question the dwarf further. He moved around the columns, examining them. Unlike the outpost, the stones were not so much carved as shaped. When he cleared aside the vines to touch the flat surface of the column, he felt a tingle in his fingertips and a bitter taste at the back of his tongue. ‘Magic,’ he murmured.

‘The Temple of Skulls was a ruin before Settra had made himself king of kings,’ Zabbai said, from close behind him. Felix turned and nearly ran into her. She grabbed his wrist and held it up to examine it. ‘Your skin is raw,’ she said.

‘Old metal and harsh conditions,’ Felix said, gently removing his wrist from her grip. ‘I’ll be fine as soon I get it off, I assure you.’

She reached up and touched his face. Then, with a quick jerk, she dragged him forwards. Felix stumbled into her, a protest dying on his lips as he heard the vines rip and tear behind him. Something thrust its way out of a heretofore hidden alcove set in the centre of the column, and clawed for him with rotting fingers.

Felix whirled around as the moss-encrusted mockery of a man lurched towards him. Soggy hands groped for him, and he ducked aside. Karaghul was in his hands a moment later and he chopped into the zombie’s midsection like a woodcutter hewing at a tree. The corpse wheezed as a stinking cloud of air was shoved out of its lungs. Even as Felix jerked his blade free of the collapsing body, more zombies burst from hidden alcoves or rose from beneath the ground and thrashed through the vegetation towards them. ‘They were waiting for us,’ he shouted. Zabbai and her warriors were accosted as well, as bodies covered in tangled roots and slime rose and clutched at them. Felix saw one of the skeletal warriors dragged down by a trio of zombies and its skull smashed.

‘They were waiting for anyone, manling. We’re just the ones they caught,’ Gotrek growled. His axe glittered as it carved a black path through two of the zombies at once, beheading one and shattering the spine of another. ‘My father claimed that the cursed Von Carsteins used to do the same thing, to guard their camps and lairs, during their wars with your people. They’d line the roads out of Sylvania with mass graves, so that they would always have troops ready to do as they needed. ‘He grunted and spun his axe, slicing first through a groping arm and then cutting the legs out from under the arm’s owner. ‘They’d use the dead as watchdogs, and their moans would draw the others like moths to candlelight.’

‘At least these are silent,’ Felix said, burying Karaghul to the hilt in a slack face. He jerked the blade free as clammy fingers clutched at his hair and face. As he made to drive his blade through the flailing zombie, an explosive groan burst from its sagging lips. One by one, the others joined in, until a communal rumble of dead voices began to fill the muggy air.

Gotrek paused in his efforts to glare at Felix. ‘You just had to say something, didn’t you?’ he said.

‘I thought you’d be overjoyed,’ Felix snarled, redoubling his efforts. ‘More zombies on the way mean more chances for you to die!’

Gotrek brightened. ‘It does, doesn’t it? My thanks, manling – maybe this won’t be a wasted trip after all!’

‘I was joking,’ Felix protested.

‘I wasn’t,’ Gotrek said. He grinned and spun his axe between his hands, scattering rotting flesh from the blade. ‘Come on, you overripe sacks of meat! Come on!’ he roared, momentarily drowning out the groans of the dead. ‘Bring all of the dead of these jungles to me! Come at me until I can no longer lift my axe, until my breath sears my lungs, until the shadows of death enfold me.’

‘Be silent,’ Zabbai hissed. Her axe looped out to split a zombie’s head from crown to jaw, and she easily wrenched it free. ‘There is more at stake here than your selfish desires, dwarf.’

Gotrek laughed wildly. ‘My desires are all that concern me, crow-bait.’ He backhanded a corpse carelessly, sending it staggering onto Felix’s sword.

Felix cursed and kicked the thrashing zombie off of his blade. ‘And is my life so meaningless? If you bring every zombie down on us here, we won’t reach the temple in time, and this damned bracelet will kill me!’

Gotrek ignored him, and his laughter lashed Felix like a whip. Anger surged through him. He’d always known Gotrek was selfish and self-absorbed, but after the Slayer had made his bargain to rescue Felix, he’d thought that the Slayer had, at last, come to see him as something other than a companion of convenience. Obviously, he’d been wrong. ‘Is this how you want to die?’ he shouted. ‘Is this how the great Gotrek Gurnisson goes to the halls of his ancestors? Pulled down by reeking corpses? Do you think Grimnir will smile on you for dying this way? Or will he turn his face from you, for choosing an easy death?’ He fairly screamed the last two words.

Gotrek’s laughter ceased. His jaw tensed pugnaciously and he began to hew grimly at the staggering, empty-eyed dead men. The Slayer rapidly made headway, sending bodies and pieces of bodies flying as he pushed through the ranks of the dead. With Gotrek’s ire thus concentrated, Felix and the others were free to strike down the dead as the latter turned the bulk of their attentions on the dwarf shoving his way into their midst.

‘He is mad,’ Antar said wonderingly. ‘Even Antar, Touched by Ptra and Scion of the Third House, is not so heedless. And Antar is fairly heedless.’ The prince of Mahrak took the head off of a zombie with his khopesh and backhanded another with his flail.

He paused and added, ‘Or so he has been assured by his many and multifarious cousins, doctors, priests and concubines.’

The dead fell on Gotrek like a tidal wave. They struck him with flabby, heat-bloated fists and bit at him with wobbling jaws. The dwarf hunched forwards, waiting until ten and then twenty or more of the corpses were clawing and biting at him. He vanished beneath them, and for a moment, Felix thought that Gotrek had decided to let the dead kill him out of spite. Then, with a roar that seemed to rumble from out of the depths of the earth, Gotrek surfaced from the charnel wave. His rune-axe shone with water and rotten blood as it carved a single canyon through every corpse in its path. Such was the force of the blow that dead men were sent jackknifing backwards and upwards and away from the seething mass of dwarfish muscle.

Felix was reminded of misfiring cannons he’d seen, and the havoc they had wreaked on their unlucky crew. Bodies tumbled into the water or struck the bent trees. Gotrek stood in the midst of once-human wreckage and shook himself with a gusty sigh.

He watched dully as Zabbai and her warriors finished off those zombies still capable of movement. ‘You’re right, manling. That would have been a stupid death,’ the Slayer said, looking up at the lightening sky. The way he said it, however, convinced Felix that he didn’t mean it. Gotrek shook himself again and hefted his axe. ‘Let’s go before any more corpses arrive,’ he muttered. ‘My doom waits, and I would not have it do so for long.’

‘For one who seeks doom, he is curiously easy to dissuade,’ Zabbai said, as they watched Gotrek hack his way through the muck and murk of the overgrown ruin. Felix ripped down a dangling vine and flung it aside as they followed him.

‘Gotrek isn’t looking for a doom. He’s looking for the doom. The one that will elevate him from what he is to someone his folk – all folk, really – remember for all time,’ he said.

‘Hubris,’ Zabbai said.

‘Desperation,’ Felix corrected, softly. ‘I have learned much, in my time with Gotrek. I have learned things about him that he would never allow me to speak of, were he aware that I knew them.’

He gestured towards the Slayer’s broad, scarred back. ‘That is all that remains of a brave, clever, energetic dwarf. He is the ghost of a damning oath, echoing down through the ages, moving inexorably towards some unrevealed fulfilment.’ Felix looked up at the sky, where it appeared in the gaps between trees. ‘I think, maybe, that Gotrek once could have been the hope of his people.’ He looked at her, and smiled sadly. ‘It’s just a fancy, and likely Gotrek was no one, and nothing more than what he was before he took up that axe and began his march towards his appointed hour. But there are moments where he seems to me to represent the best and worst of his folk, like no other dwarf I’ve met. We were told once, not long after we’d met, that when Gotrek fell, so too would his people. I’ve had that thought in the back of my head for longer than I care to think about.’

‘And do you believe it?’ Zabbai said.

Felix shook his head. ‘I hope that was an exaggeration, but there are times when I think… I think that when he finally dies, something great and mighty will go out of the world, and never pass this way again.’ He looked at Gotrek. ‘I don’t think I’ll outlive him, by much. And if I did, I’m not sure I’d want to.’ He shook his head again. ‘Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’ll find his doom here, and I’ll survive, and go back to Tilea – perhaps lie on the beach and drink something that tastes of fruit, rather than wheat.’

Zabbai looked at him for a moment. Then her dry, cool hand fell on his shoulder. ‘If I were a living woman, I would take you as my own, for however long you lasted. It would not be long, for you are thin and fragile, but it would be memorable,’ she rasped.

Felix blinked. He tried to formulate a reply, but all he could come up with was, ‘Thank you?’

‘I’d take her up on it, manling,’ Gotrek said without turning around. ‘Among my folk, a woman who can crush a grobi skull between her hands is considered quite a catch.’

Felix didn’t reply. He swallowed, wondering how much Gotrek had heard. He shook his head and looked at Zabbai. ‘Thank you for saving me, back there.’

‘It is my duty to keep you alive, Felix,’ Zabbai said.

‘A bit contradictory,’ he said, tapping the bracelet.

‘That is not for you,’ Zabbai said. ‘It is for him.’ She gestured to Gotrek.

‘So you’ve said,’ Felix said, flexing his hand. ‘What I want to know is why?’ He looked at her. ‘You’re obviously capable of going to get this sword yourself. Why bother with Gotrek and me? Is it just because Djubti said so?’

‘Hardly,’ Zabbai said. She made the rasping noise that Felix had come to associate with laughter.

‘Then why?’

She fell silent. Felix looked at her. ‘You may as well tell me. We’re here. And we may not make it out. And I, for one, would hate to die in ignorance.’

Zabbai expelled a rattling sigh. ‘This is not the first time that the thirsty dead have gathered here.’ She looked at him. ‘Like the plagues they are, they have their seasons. It is this so-called Serpent Queen’s season now, but before her were the Empress of All Bats and the Jackal-Lord, the Adder-King and the Bride of Ten Scorpions – others, dozens, hundreds. The dead have been culled from these jungles before, and they will be again. This place calls to them, and more besides – greenskins and daemon-worshippers gather in these ruins as well, when the war-season is upon them. We have learned to our cost that there are places here where we cannot go.’

She noticed his look of confusion and said, ‘Spells of protection and binding, some old and some new, mark the great ziggurats for which the ruin is named. The very old folk who built this place laid spells with the first capstone. Many princes and warriors were lost storming those high places in centuries past. Their bones became as powder and their souls were snared and lost, never to return. Death is never the end for us, Felix. It is but a respite. Were I to fall, I would rise again in a day, a year or a century hence and return to my duties, for such is our curse. But to enter the ziggurats at the heart of this ruin is to be unmade utterly and completely.’

‘Why didn’t Khalida simply tell us this?’

‘She is the High Queen,’ Zabbai said. ‘She does not have to explain. She has but to command, and that is enough.’ Felix had no reply.

‘If you two are done chattering,’ Gotrek said, ‘I’d advise you to turn your eyes forward.’ The Slayer had stopped. His axe slashed out, hacking aside a tangled mat of vines and leaves to expose another archway. And beyond it, a vast pyramidal shape that bore a strong and unpleasant resemblance to a malformed human skull, albeit grossly magnified, stretched above the jungle mist. It loomed higher than the smaller ziggurats and the thick walls that rose up in the distance over the trees and ruins about them.

‘Behold,’ Antar said, ‘the Temple of Skulls!’

‘Really,’ Felix said. ‘And here I was thinking it was some other ruined temple. Thank you for clearing that up, mighty prince.’

‘No thanks are necessary, peasant,’ Antar said as he swept past Felix and Zabbai. ‘Antar is aware of your ignorance, and he is magnanimous with knowledge!’

The ruin was less overgrown once past the archway. There were strange trails in the vegetation that covered the flagstones, as if many bodies had been dragged slowly over them over a long period of time. Felix shied away from the thought and tried to concentrate on their surroundings. Something seemed strange about the shape of the avenues and pathways. When he mentioned it, Gotrek grunted and said, ‘This place is sitting in a natural river basin. Everything leads down to that big ziggurat in the centre, in a roundabout fashion.’ He gestured about them with his axe. ‘These avenues and archways are simply the overgrowth of the main temple complex, spreading out from the aleph, like spokes from a wheel. They get narrower as they draw closer to the inner walls.’ He motioned to the distant walls. ‘This was a bastion, once.’ He spat. ‘Now it is the haunt of monsters.’

‘It wasn’t a dwarf bastion, though, was it?’ Felix said.

‘No,’ Gotrek said. ‘It belonged to another folk, older even than my own.’ He looked around. ‘But they fell. Even as our holds fell, and the outposts of the elves, so too did their cities fall in the time of the Ancestor Gods, when Grimnir, Grungni and Valaya walked among us. Their cities burned and crumbled, and their empire was shattered, even as ours flourished in the Golden Age that followed.’ He looked at Felix. ‘That is the nature of empires, manling. They all fall, in the end.’

‘Even that of the dwarfs?’ Felix said, expecting Gotrek to bluster a denial. Instead the Slayer fell silent and pressed one hand to the great wall, as if to commune with the ancient stones that made it up. Unnerved, Felix cleared his throat and said, ‘What now?’

‘Now, manling, we go get the dead woman’s play-pretty,’ Gotrek said.

Khalida Neferher stood in the Avenue of Kings, before the entrance to the pyramid of Rhupesh the Seventh, of the Third Dynasty of Asaph’s Wrath, Devoted Husband of the Asp and Tiger of the High Wall. His pyramid was one of the largest in the avenue, and built like a fortress. Rhupesh had been a mighty builder in his day, Khalida recalled. It was he who had overseen the construction of Lybaras’s fortified harbour, and the massive, high walls of pale stone that guarded the city still, millennia after his death in the War of Two Thousand Arrows.

Djubti stood beside her, his staff extended before him and his voice raised in the Incantation of Awakening. Arrayed about the liche-priest and his queen were those princes and kings who had already been awakened from their imposed slumber at Khalida’s command. Quiet arguments, centuries in the brewing, rippled through their ranks, as old rivals became reacquainted. Any moment now, Khalida knew, challenges would be issued and swords would rattle, and she would be forced to intervene. Such annoyances were a large part of why she had issued the Edict of Asaph’s Chosen, and sent the fractious nobility of Lybaras into enforced slumber during the Wars of the Kings.

Rhupesh had been one of the more troublesome kings, after the Usurper’s Curse had awoken them all. It was said that as an infant he had been found floating in a basket of reeds by the then queen of Lybaras. The strange runes that had been carved into the stone tablets that had accompanied him in his basket had never been deciphered. The queen, who had been barren, had hastily adopted the orphaned babe. Whatever his origins, Rhupesh had taken to the life of a king as naturally as if it had been his birthright, and had warred and built with the energy of a man possessed. In death, that energy had not dimmed. He had never marched against her, as some of the others had, but he had been a vociferous and voluble opponent to her plans for Lybaras. If there was anything that Rhupesh liked more than war, it was a good argument, especially one that went on for years on end.

But she needed him now. Argumentative as he was, he was also a mighty warrior, and a strategist second to none. All of the kings she had commanded Djubti to awaken had their own specialities – tactics, horsemanship, infiltration amongst others. They were each the master of their own chosen method of warfare, their skills honed in life and perfected in death. Rhupesh, the Tiger of the High Walls, was a cunning defender, a warrior born to conduct and resist sieges. With him awake and standing on the walls of Lybaras, no enemy would enter the city.

Djubti finished the incantation and smashed the butt of his staff against the stones of the avenue. ‘Awaken, O King,’ he rasped. ‘Awaken, in this, thy city’s hour of war. Come forth, Mighty Tiger of the High Wall. Come forth, Deadly Viper Assassin of Asaph’s Enemies! Come forth, Adopted Child of the Asp Goddess!’ He thumped his staff again. ‘Awaken! You are called forth, O Bearded Scion of Serpent and Ox!’

The entrance to the pyramid opened ponderously. A group of slaves, their flesh long since flensed from them by the knives of the Mortuary Cult, and their bones inscribed with the fifty-seven verses of the Immortal Rhupesh’s Ode to the Bejewelled Scales of the Goddess of Vengeance, forced the stone block aside, so that their lord might stride forth, colossus like, to unleash his light and glory upon the world.

That Rhupesh was about the size of a dwarf did not lessen his colossus-like stride, or the majesty of his tightly curled and splayed beard – or, rather the golden facsimile of said beard, which spread out from the bottom of the golden death mask that encompassed his round skull. Thick, short bones swung in pugnacious rhythm as he left his mighty pyramid. A round shield of bronze was strapped to one arm, and he clutched a heavy mace in his other hand. He smashed the mace against his shield and croaked, ‘Rhupesh comes! Who calls for Asaph’s adopted son?’

‘I do,’ Khalida said, stepping forwards before Djubti could reply.

‘Khalida,’ Rhupesh grunted. He turned around. ‘The slumber of ages calls to me, woman. Do not bother me.’

‘Happily would I allow thee to slumber, diminutive one, but I require thy strong arm and stubborn heart,’ Khalida said.

Rhupesh paused. He looked at her over his shoulder. ‘Compliments and insults in the same caw, carrion-queen. What do you require of the Ox of the Mountains?’

‘I require thy legions, armoured in bronze and courage, O Hound of Justice,’ Khalida said. She gestured to the gathered kings and princes. ‘I require thy artisanry, to see to the defences of the White City. I require thy wisdom, and thy steadfastness.’

‘War comes?’ Rhupesh said, turning around. He sounded eager. ‘Who are thy enemies? Is it those puling maggots of Mahrak, or the savages of Rasetra? Or has that mewling whelp Settra finally grown spine enough to bring thee to heel, O prodigal daughter?’ With every question, he pounded his shield-face with his mace. ‘Or greenskins, perhaps? Do the urk march on Lybaras, woman?’ he roared. Rhupesh had warred extensively with the greenskin tribes that had poured out of the Southlands in his time. It was said that he had looked forward to their war-migrations with all the eagerness of a child upon naming day. ‘Bah, do not answer! It does not matter to the Tiger of the High Wall whom he strikes with his claws. He shall strike them true, whoever they are.’

‘Then you will join me, Majestic Son of the Third Dynasty?’ Khalida said.

‘If I did not, you would surely fail,’ Rhupesh said. ‘Am I not the keystone upon which Lybaras’s might stands? Ha! War! War again, after so long in slumber.’ He stumped towards Khalida and peered up at her. ‘How are you, by the way? Regretting that edict yet, are you?’ he asked, conversationally.

Khalida gave a rustling chuckle. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, as Rhupesh took her hand and patted it affectionately. ‘Do you regret going into the slumber of ages?’

‘What – you mean letting you handle the bothersome bits while I lie and dream of the mighty structures I will build when you inevitably realise the blunder you made in shouldering the responsibilities you have?’ He snorted. ‘Not a bit.’ He cocked his head and glanced at Djubti. ‘Hello, old snake. Still as sour as a pickled marsh viper, I see.’

Djubti ignored him. ‘We have awakened fully twenty of the kings of old, my queen,’ he said. ‘I would respectfully advise that we leave the others to their dreams, unless the tide should turn against us.’

‘So many,’ Rhupesh said. He looked up at Khalida. ‘What comes, daughter of my daughters?’

Khalida met his steady gaze. ‘Old enemies, father of my mothers. The oldest of enemies, and once again, Lybaras must stand between the Great Land and the horrors of cursed Lahmia.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Felix pulled his hood up over his head and moved slowly through the rupture in the wall, alert for any sight or sound of a sentry, living or dead. Rotting vegetation and loose stones shifted unpleasantly beneath his feet as he slid down the inner escarpment of the great wall. The sky had grown dark overhead, and the moon had risen early, and it bathed the Temple of Skulls in a silvery radiance.

It had taken he and the others most of the day to reach the wall that marked the inner aleph of the temple. Upon doing so, they had found that it wasn’t as sturdy or as well preserved as they’d first thought. Enormous cracks marked its length, and heavy swathes of vegetation clung tenaciously to the stones. Into the smaller cracks, human skulls had been wedged in great numbers. More skulls hung from the trees, suspended by cords of vine and hair and leather. Indeed, the closer they had got to the wall, the more skulls they’d seen, until Felix began to wonder just how many untold thousands had perished within the dreadful ruin. He steadfastly avoided contemplating just who had hung up or wedged tight all of the victims’ skulls, however. He had a feeling he’d find out soon enough as it was.

Everything was overgrown to such an extent that Felix suspected that the wall was more plant than stone. Zabbai had counselled caution, while Gotrek had been all for hacking his way through and charging into the complex, axe raised and bellowing at the top of his voice. And while Felix was forced to admit that such a tactic had, on more than one occasion, proven successful – or unsuccessful, given the Slayer’s inclinations – he’d argued against it this time, offering to scout ahead to make sure that they weren’t walking into a trap. He had no doubt that the Slayer could chop his way through an entire city of zombies, but they didn’t have the time.

Gotrek had glowered and growled, but had at last subsided, much to Felix’s relief. Said relief had only lasted for a few moments before it was replaced by the familiar pulse of anxiety. Once again, he was willingly entering a situation that a wiser man would rightly avoid. That his life would be in danger if he didn’t do so didn‘t make the situation any more palatable. He could hear Zabbai’s warriors taking up position behind him, covering his progress with their bows. The thought didn’t comfort him as much as he’d thought it would. The dead were notoriously hard to bring down with arrows unless they were on fire, and sometimes even that was not enough.

The incline was steep, and it was only when he was halfway down that Felix realised that it was in actuality an immense stone buttress that had been swamped by rubble fallen from the wall and more than a century’s worth of accumulated jungle grime. He glanced back and saw immense, frog-like faces peering down at him from the massive plaques that lined the upper reaches of the walls. He shivered and continued down, trying to ignore the feeling that the eyes of those faces were tracking his every move.

Zabbai or one of her warriors could easily have accomplished the task, he knew. Indeed, it had been her plan in the first place. And on the face of it, that would have been the wiser course – what did the dead have to fear, after all? But he’d shied away from such pragmatism. In the days since they’d left Lybaras, he’d got to know Zabbai and Antar well, or as well as a living man could know the dead at any rate, and had seen them endure dangers on his behalf often enough. Now it was his turn.

Rocks clattered down past him as he reached the bottom. He paused, and turned slightly, to peer up over his shoulder. His palm was sweaty where it pressed to Karaghul’s hilt and his fingers twitched, ready to draw the sword at a moment’s notice. He squinted, trying to pick out any movement in the moonlight. He suddenly wished there was a way he could signal the others without moving.

He turned back and examined the scattered ruins that waited for him below. There was more to the Temple of Skulls than simply walls and ziggurats, it seemed. There were signs of industry everywhere: old buildings repurposed and repaired, and manifold piles of newly felled timber or haphazardly heaped stones.

Between the ziggurats, which towered over everything else, he could see what might have been the masts of ships, still draped with tattered sails. It wasn’t inconceivable that the basin had its own natural harbour, somewhere on the other side of the ziggurats. The thought sent a chill down his spine. He recalled the creaking wrecks harboured at the Mangrove Port and what had lurked within them. Could these be more of the same? And if so, why hadn’t they left with the army that had passed them in the early morning hours? Why march overland if you had boats?

Unless… He closed his eyes and fought to control the sudden hammering of his heart. Was the army they faced really that large? It seemed impossible. Then, what need had the dead of supply lines or logistics? If any army other than the brawling hordes of the greenskins could achieve such a size, it would be an army of the risen dead.

More rocks slid down. He saw nothing, but he knew something was moving above him. He could feel eyes on him. He stared at the incline, trying to spot whatever it was. There was a flash of darkness in the moonlight, a low, slithering shape that skidded out of his line of sight as quickly as it had entered. Felix whipped around, trying to follow it.

It bounded towards him from an angle, moving swiftly and smoothly on all fours despite the loose rubble, its eyes blazing as brightly as the moon that watched it all unfold above. With a screech, it flung itself on him.

Claws raked through his sleeve as he pivoted and drew Karaghul. His blade struck bone and skidded away, and his attacker rolled with the blow. It sprang to its paws, tail lashing. It was a leopard, he saw, dead and rotting, but no less fierce for all that; he could, quite literally, count its ribs. It sprang for him again, jaws wide. Felix thrust Karaghul at it, point first, and caught it between its open fangs. His sword slid down its throat, cracking bone and slicing through putrefied meat.

The leopard fell, yanking his sword from his grip as it did so, and it made a sound like it was choking. It squirmed on the ground, pawing at the blade that jutted from its throat. Felix drew his dagger and leapt on it, avoiding its claws as best he could. Quickly, he slashed where he hoped its tendons were, rendering its limbs useless. It continued to struggle regardless, writhing beneath him like an enormous serpent. Felix sheathed his knife, clambered off it, set his foot on its throat, and ripped Karaghul free. Then, before it could do more than snap at him, he took off its head with one blow.

Breathing heavily, Felix leaned forwards. His gasps caught in his throat, as some instinct made him spin about, Karaghul slashing up. A second leopard tumbled to the ground, just short of him, an axe buried in its spine. It twitched and snapped its jaws, but it had been rendered helpless. Felix positioned the tip of his blade over the centre of its skull and then leaned on it, splitting its skull, and sending it on to whatever afterlife awaited such tormented creatures.

‘Good fight, manling,’ Gotrek said, stomping down to join him. He tore his axe free of the twice-dead leopard and shook the rot off it. ‘There might be hope for you yet.’

‘Thank you,’ Felix said. He looked around and signalled for Zabbai and the others to follow them down. ‘How much further can you go?’ he asked the former, as she reached them. ‘All the way to the foot of the ziggurats,’ she said. ‘We are not as fragile as all that. The ancient spells have shrunk in the intervening millennia.’

‘Don’t worry, crow-bait. Gotrek will get your queen’s toy for her,’ Gotrek rumbled cheerily. He ran his thumb along the blade of his axe and stuffed the bloody digit in his mouth. Sucking on it, he mumbled, ‘Let’s get moving. The manling only has a few days left and he’s slower than a goatherd with two false legs and the krutz.’

‘Thank you, Gotrek. I appreciate your concern,’ Felix said. The Slayer sniffed, snorted and spat something onto the head of one of the leopards that glistened unpleasantly. Taking that as an acknowledgement of his gratitude, Felix followed the Slayer as he began to stump towards the ziggurats.

Gotrek led the group through side plazas and narrow avenues. The innate spatial awareness all dwarfs, but especially Gotrek, seemed to possess never failed to impress Felix. Gotrek had, to all appearances, mapped the temple complex during his descent from the inner wall and now he swiftly led them along the quickest route to the centre. As they moved, Felix saw that Gotrek’s assertion had been correct – every processional avenue and causeway in the ruin led in a roundabout fashion to an immense central plaza. The inner ring of the temple was as overgrown as the outer barrios, though the ruin was broken up by culverts and canals of stone and tarnished gold that bisected the streets, allowing the stagnant, dark water that pulled through algae-choked stone irrigation runnels from the river to burble nastily throughout the temple complex.

Here and there, Felix saw signs of habitation of sorts. Not just the piled materials, but places where the ruined outbuildings had been converted to hovels and crude halls. These had mostly fallen into disrepair, and he felt slightly ill as he considered what must have happened to their former inhabitants. That they hadn’t seen them didn’t mean that they weren’t still around in some fashion that didn’t bear thinking about.

Occasionally, as if to prove the truth of his suspicions, he would catch glimpses between the buildings of the shuffling shapes of dead men or the awkwardly loping corpses of animals. They were moving slowly back the way that he and the others had come, and Felix wondered if they were belatedly responding to the alarm raised by the other zombies they had encountered.

The air was heavy with the constant rumble of drums. The sound was so prevalent that Felix had, at first, mistaken it for the sound of thunder, before they had drawn close enough to the source to discern the individual drum beats. The drumming grated on him, seeping into his head, like the whine of some unseen, but ever-present mosquito. And given the prevalence of actual mosquitoes, it was annoying indeed. Felix slapped at his neck, catching one of the latter. He examined the twitching corpse. Then he cursed as the squashed insect twitched, struggled upright and wobbled into the air.

‘The drums,’ Zabbai said.

‘What?’

Zabbai tapped her head. ‘The drums are a spell, waking and calling all of the dead in these lands.’ She noticed the nervous look that flickered over Felix’s face and added, ‘All save us, Felix. The spells which bind us to the dust of our creation are far stronger than that needed to draw in these wretched remains.’

‘Quiet,’ Gotrek said. The Slayer had sunk into a crouch beside a wall that had half sunk into the ground, as if the street beneath it had collapsed. The others crept towards him. The Slayer was staring out through a crack in the wall. He moved aside at the touch of Felix’s hand on his shoulder. Felix took his place and immediately cursed.

‘Zombies,’ he muttered. ‘Thousands of them.’ He stared through the crack in the wall at the corpse-choked plaza beyond. It looked to him as if every zombie left in the immediate area had shown up for some indefinable purpose and now stood between them and the ziggurats beyond, which made a certain amount of grim sense, given that it was the central plaza of the ruin and the largest they’d yet seen. The dead stood in a tightly packed mob, occupying every square of space in the plaza. Some swayed softly, as if listening to a song only they could hear, while others were as rigid as stone. But all of them had their heads turned towards the largest of the ziggurats that occupied the outer edge of the plaza.

It was the ziggurat they’d seen earlier, towering over the others. Its uppermost level was shaped like a titanic skull made from crude slabs of stone, with steps running down below it on all sides. The ziggurat was like some grisly wheel hub from which the spokes of the city spread outwards. It rose up over the others and its shadow engulfed the dead. From the crown of the skull, the sound of drums throbbed out across the plaza.

All in all, it was an eerie sight, and one he hoped not to have to experience for longer than necessary. He turned around, sank to his haunches and looked at the others. ‘I didn’t think that there could be that many dead men in one place.’

‘Not just men, manling,’ Gotrek muttered, his good eye pressed to the crack. ‘Women too, and beasts and other things. It looks like whoever is in charge woke up every dead thing between here and Cathay.’

‘Yes, it’s almost as if they have something valuable to protect,’ Felix said. He rubbed the asp bracelet and looked at Zabbai. ‘I don’t suppose your warriors have enough arrows to clear that mess out there?’

‘Not even if we could get them all to stand single file in several densely packed lines,’ Zabbai said. She crouched amongst her remaining warriors, her axe across her knees. Antar stood nearby, impatiently swinging his flail.

‘Antar, Hero of a Hundred and One Epics, does not fear the cold clutch of the bound dead.’ He looked at Felix. ‘Let us carve a mighty corridor through these maggot-stuffed flesh-sacks and take the High Queen’s prize. Antar the Most High and Glorious grows impatient.’

‘The bag of bones has the right idea,’ Gotrek said, still staring through the crack. ‘The direct route is the quickest.’

‘Gotrek, I really think we should–’ Felix began, not looking at the dwarf.

‘Too late,’ Zabbai said. Felix heard the clatter of metal on stone and turned in time to see Gotrek’s feet disappear over the top of the wall.

He shot to his feet, all of the blood draining from his face. ‘Oh, by the gods,’ he snarled, and followed suit. He was swinging himself over the top of the wall before he had a chance to consider that it was, as ideas went, a fairly terrible one. He dropped down on the other side even as Gotrek gave a triumphant cry and bounded across the vine-covered plaza with a speed and buoyancy that Felix would have found funny had the situation not been so desperate. The Slayer’s axe licked out and a zombie’s head went flying. More limbs followed suit as the dwarf waded into the dead men.

Felix hurried after the Slayer. He parried an awkward slash from an axe-wielding corpse and sent it staggering into its fellows with his shoulder. ‘Gotrek, where are you going? You don’t have the least idea where that blade is!’

‘It’s at the top of the pyramid, manling, obviously,’ Gotrek shouted, over his shoulder. He grabbed a zombie’s entrails in his free hand, knotted them about his knuckles and jerked the dead man’s head down to crack against his own. The zombie went down as if it had been struck with an axe.

Felix looked around. They were surrounded by the strange, jagged ziggurats.

Each was composed of flat platforms of stone that grew smaller as they ascended and had a stepped appearance, with steep staircases on each side. ‘Those are ziggurats, Gotrek. And there are dozens of them,’ Felix protested. A zombie slumped against him, gnawing toothlessly at his shoulder. Felix kicked its legs out from under it and ducked under a wild swipe from one of its fellows. He drove his arm and shoulder into the latter’s gut, and as he rose, he flipped the soggy corpse over his back.

‘Aye, and it’ll be in the biggest one, manling. It’s always the biggest one,’ Gotrek said as he backhanded a zombie and sent its bottom jaw bouncing across the plaza. ‘Haven’t you been paying attention?’

‘I’ve been a bit busy, what with the trying not to die and all,’ Felix muttered. Rotting hands snagged his cape and he was jerked off balance. Zombies crashed into him from all sides. Gotrek’s attack had opened a momentary island in the sea of bodies, but the dead were closing ranks around them now. A zombie lurched towards Felix when an arrow popped its skull as if it were a particularly noxious boil.

More arrows struck the dead men closest to him, picking them up off their feet or dropping them where they stood, depending on how much was left of the corpse in question. With a rattling whoop, Antar and Zabbai joined Felix. Antar, much like Gotrek, fought with determined abandon, and Felix wondered whether he had been as reckless when he was alive. Zabbai, as ever, fought without wasted motion. Her axe spun and bit, scattering the dead before her like broken branches.

A vampire appeared on the steps of one of the ziggurats. She tilted her head and uttered a shriek, before bounding towards the fight, her sword at the ready. ‘That’s torn it,’ Felix muttered. The vampire crashed into Antar, who spun about and flung the creature to the ground with his stone hand. She was up a moment later, and her sword smashed against Antar’s khopesh. The two of them whirled about, knocking aside zombies heedlessly in their duel. Antar bellowed imprecations at the vampire, who shrieked and cursed in reply.

Felix stumbled away from a lurching zombie and nearly slipped into a yawning pit that he hadn’t noticed before, thanks to the press of bodies. He looked down, and froze. ‘Sigmar,’ he hissed. He saw the dangling cages, and their human contents, and suddenly, an unasked question was answered. Anger roiled through him, burning away fear and worry in a single white-hot moment. Eyes empty of hope, of fear, of anything save grim resignation to a fate worse than death met his own through the wooden slats of the closest of the spherical cages, and he hacked at a zombie, shoving it back into its fellows in frustration. His eyes followed the rope that connected the cages to the stakes thrust into the stones. ‘Gotrek,’ he shouted, ‘help me!’ All thought of urgency or the poison bracelet that threatened his life had faded the moment the eyes of the slaves had met his own. All he could think of now was freeing them as quickly as possible. He shouted again for Gotrek.

‘What are you on about, manling?’ Gotrek snarled, bulling towards Felix.

‘Help me pull up these cages!’

‘What – why?’ Gotrek said. He peered down into the pit and his eye narrowed. He cursed in Khazalid and buried his axe in the stones. No further explanation or urging was required. ‘One side, manling, this requires more muscle than you’ve got in those weak arms of yours.’ Gotrek spat into his palms and rubbed them together before grabbing the closest rope. Felix stepped back and sent a zombie tumbling into the pit with his elbow.

Arrows hissed past, catching a wight in mid-leap, its clawed gauntlets mere inches from Felix’s neck. As the dead man fell, Felix drove an overhand blow down on top of its head. Karaghul struck stone and the wight’s skull collapsed in on itself. He jerked the blade free and turned as a flash of bone caught his eye. He halted his instinctive lunge as he recognised Zabbai. She had cleared the area around the edge of the pit and was staring in evident confusion at Gotrek. ‘What is he doing?’

‘There are people down there. Living ones,’ Felix said, taking a moment to recover his strength. The stench of the dead was nearly unbearable, and he coughed as he sucked in a lungful of air. ‘Slaves, maybe – or livestock,’ he said.

‘Yes, but why are you bothering with them? They’re just slaves, and time is of the essence,’ Zabbai said.

Felix looked at her. ‘You were just a slave, once,’ he said.

Zabbai twitched. Then she nodded, just once, and briskly. ‘Make it fast. We cannot hold the bound dead back for long.’

Felix sheathed his sword and moved to help Gotrek roll the cage over the lip of the pit. The Slayer had hauled it all the way up with little sign of effort. He grabbed his axe and moved towards the next rope as Felix set to cutting the cords and ropes that held the cage together. The prisoners had been stirred by the sight of their rescuers, and now they spoke in a variety of languages and dialects, few of which Felix recognised. Hands grabbed at him as he cut them free, and when the cage came apart, they spilled out into the plaza. Some ran immediately, staggering for freedom through the crowd of zombies. Others snatched up weapons and set to, chopping and hacking at the dead in a seeming frenzy. They were weak and near death themselves, but the chance for freedom seemed to lend them strength.

A man grabbed Felix and tugged on his arm, pointing across the plaza. Felix could see what looked like similar pits, and more ropes in them. The man said something in a tongue Felix didn’t understand. He was emaciated and clad in rags, his bare flesh covered in badly healed cuts and crooked scars. Though he couldn’t understand him, Felix knew what he was saying easily enough. There were more to be freed, perhaps hundreds. Felix turned to see Gotrek hauling up the second cage. The dwarf left it, as newly freed prisoners began tearing the cage open and extricating their fellows. Others were busily hauling up the remaining cages. ‘Gotrek, there are more pits,’ Felix shouted. ‘We have to get to them.’

‘We’ll take care of them,’ Zabbai said, before Gotrek could reply. She shoved Felix forwards. ‘We will free who we can, while we can. You two go and do as you must. Get our queen’s sword back, as she commanded.’

Felix hesitated. Gotrek grabbed his arm. ‘Come on, manling, leave her to it. We’ve done what we could, and now we must do what we came here for.’ Reluctantly, Felix allowed Gotrek to pull him away from the fight and towards the immense skull-topped ziggurat. As they began to climb, Felix saw that the spaces between steps were stuffed with skulls and other bones, most of them human.

Gotrek took the steps more slowly than Felix, but given his head start, Felix was forced to run up them two at a time in order to catch up. There were no corpses on the ziggurat, but they didn’t make it more than halfway up before Felix caught sight of several women racing down the stairs to meet them. That they were vampires was obvious, given the mouthful of fangs each had on display, and the stark black veins that stretched across their pallid flesh. They moved as swiftly as the assassins in Khalida’s throne room had, growing closer with every eye blink.

The Slayer neither slowed his ascent nor hesitated as the first vampire reached him. The woman wore a leather hauberk with rusty steel rings, and her hair was in thick, worm-like plaits. She leapt from the steps and fell towards Gotrek, her blade held in two hands and angled downwards. Gotrek casually smashed the sword aside. The power of his blow sent the vampire sprawling. Felix hurdled her tumbling form as two more closed in on the Slayer.

He intercepted one, interposing his blade between Gotrek’s head and her axe. She hissed and forced him aside. Felix snatched his dagger free of its sheath and stabbed at her heart. She caught his wrist and they turned in an awkward pirouette, before Gotrek’s axe removed her head from her shoulders. Felix blinked blood out of his eyes as the body slumped.

‘Stop playing around, manling. I thought you said we were in a hurry,’ Gotrek rumbled. Felix wiped blood out of his face. Gotrek had dispatched the other vampire in a similar fashion. The one he’d swatted aside had got to her feet, and she started up towards them, only hesitating when she realised that both of her companions were dead. Gotrek, thick frame covered in blood and grime, smiled widely at her and held out a hand in a beckoning gesture. ‘Come on, lass. If you hurry, you can catch your friends before they get wherever cursed souls go,’ he said, mock-gently.

The vampire wavered, hissed and turned, sprinting down the steps towards the battle below. Gotrek grunted in disappointment. ‘I hate it when they run away,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Felix said, wilting slightly in relief. He turned and peered up at the top of the ziggurat. He could see the source of the steady, throbbing drums above – a number of bloated corpses, pounding away at heavy skin-drums with the yellowed bones in their flabby hands from atop the square structure that occupied the pinnacle of the ziggurat. ‘Let’s get up there before she changes her mind, shall we?’

Below them, the battle was spreading across the plaza. The freed slaves who weren’t hacking at the zombies with stolen weapons or pulping their skulls with loose stones were doing their best to pass the favour along to those who were still trapped in the pits. With the wights and zombies occupied by Antar and Zabbai’s warriors, more and more starving, abused wretches joined the fray to vent gods alone knew how much frustration on their unloving captors. Felix knew that many of them wouldn’t survive the melee, especially given their state of deprivation, but better a death in battle than a slow tumble into oblivion in captivity. Or so he told himself as he followed Gotrek to the top of the ziggurat. Nonetheless, he felt ill, using them so. He hadn’t intended it, but the slaves were proving to be just the sort of distraction they needed.

He pushed the guilt aside as they reached the top. There were no more guards, but he could hear chanting from within. A smell like a lion’s den wafted out of the opening – the abattoir stench of old blood and savaged flesh. He exchanged glances with Gotrek. ‘Well, manling?’ the Slayer said.

‘After you, I insist,’ Felix said.

Gotrek guffawed and stepped through the archway. After a moment of hesitation, Felix followed him into the darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Nitocris sat upon her monstrous steed and considered the army marching slowly beneath her. The wind whipped through her hair and caressed her flesh, and she could feel the terrorgheist’s dead muscles pulsing as it flapped its ragged wings and cut through the sky, riding the air currents. Even from her present height, she could tell that the army below was a hodgepodge, without cohesion, formation or organization. Such things didn’t bother her, though she had learned their value early in life. When your army could simply be reconstituted or revived with but a careful thought, there was little reason to waste time on battle lines or grand strategy.

The army was encountering its first signs of resistance below, but she paid it little heed. If her new herald and the ghoul-tribes couldn’t deal with a few constructs then it was better that they died here, and were raised up as something more useful.

She narrowed her eyes and peered at the horizon. The sun was coming up. Bats clustered thickly above and around her, blocking out the harmful rays. If the bats proved not to be enough, a sandstorm could be summoned to cover their advance. The terrorgheist shifted beneath her and it gave a grunt of warning.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw the other giant bats that were following the terrorgheist in loose formation. They weren’t as large as her mount, but they were large enough to carry a number of her handmaidens. They were the bravest of her sisters, those who sought to emulate her in her abandon and battle-lust: the ones who had been the champions of their tribes, or the mistresses of their harems, and in whom subtlety was yoked by the hunger for glory – just like poor Andraste, she thought. The thought of her lieutenant brought a wan smile to her face. So much ambition but so little wit to use it properly.

Most of those she had chosen for her handmaidens were as loyal as any warrior staggering beneath her banner. They served her as she served her mistress. If they contemplated treachery, they kept it to themselves. But there were some who schemed far too openly, or served too faithfully, with an obsequiousness that was as suspicious as resentment. Andraste was of the latter camp. She was as stolid and as brusque as a good lieutenant ought to be, but in her heart lurked a savage ambition.

Like Nitocris, she had been the child of nobility, and though she had pledged to serve her new queen, she had ever thought that Nitocris’s title was hers by right. Nitocris had kept her close for centuries, never giving her an opportunity to exercise that ambition. Andraste made for a wonderful lightning rod, attracting those of her handmaidens who whispered of coups. She had gathered together the like-minded and weak-willed. A few of them had even tentatively struck out at Nitocris, emboldened by Andraste. Those she had dealt with accordingly, and had made an object lesson of them.

And Nitocris had duly shucked them all. She had left all of them behind, where they could not threaten this final advance, save by destroying themselves in the process. Andraste knew as well as she that to disrupt Octavia’s spell was to call down the wrath of the Tomb Kings upon them. Nitocris would be destroyed, but there would be no place Andraste could hide from the stalking bones of the desert.

She wondered when Andraste would make her move. It would not come once Octavia had completed her spell, she thought. Andraste would not risk that. No, she would strike at the final moment, and claim that Octavia had expired from her sorceries. Unless Octavia proved as capable as Nitocris suspected. The necromancer served two purposes – the spell, and dealing with those of Nitocris’s followers who had outlived their usefulness. If Octavia survived, then she deserved to receive the same gift that had been erroneously given to her jackal of a brother, whether she wanted to accept it or not.

Contemplating her loyal lieutenant’s inevitable betrayal was a pleasant way to pass the time as they coursed through the air towards Lybaras. Treachery was as inherent in her kind as the thirst for blood. It had been a part of them since the beginning. Or so she had been told.

Her queen had tutored her in the history of their sisterhood personally. She had crouched with Nitocris on rough stools before the fire in her war-camp, speaking to her of her travels and travails, painting her a picture of the world that lay beyond the jungles, mountains and deserts that Nitocris had known. Of wars fought not with spears and muscle, but with gold and words, of cities not of mud and wood, but of grey stone, of white snows and cool forests. The Mistress of the Silver Pinnacle had seduced Nitocris with stories. She had seduced her and set her on her path.

In a way, Nitocris was nothing more than a weapon. It was a belated realisation, but not an unpleasant one. Nitocris thought of her enemy, of the false serpent, Khalida, who had tried to strangle the sisterhood in its infancy, and then hounded them from the cradle of their birth and into the wild lands. Khalida, who stood sentry over Lahmia, and who had thwarted many of her mistress’s schemes and plans. She was an obstacle that had to be removed for the good of the future of the sisterhood, even as her queen had done all those centuries ago when she’d sheathed her blade in Khalida’s belly.

That was what Nitocris had been told, and that was what she knew, after all these long years of building her forces and bringing the Southlands to heel. The jungles and swamps ran red with blood, and she controlled the whole of it, but it was worth nothing if it did not gain her this victory. All that she had achieved hinged on this war. Her future, her ambitions, her dreams – all of them would be dust on the wind if she failed to do as she had been tasked. She would right the wrongs of the past. The dead would bow to their rightful queen, even if she had to topple their tomb-cities one by one.

Steyr’s boot struck the giant scorpion’s carapace, and he vaulted over its striking tail. The creatures had risen from the desert amidst the vanguard of Nitocris’s army. There were four of them, and they were as large as any carnosaur, with snapping claws and stinging tails. They weren’t true scorpions, he knew, but rather intricately devised sarcophagi. Each contained the mummified body of a Nehekharan priest, or so his sister had claimed. The creatures had attacked as the army had left behind the necropolis that marked the boundary between the swamp and the desert, and entered the sandy dunes of the Land of the Dead.

He landed behind the scorpion in a crouch, as the creature spun about, snatched up a screaming ghoul and scissored the unfortunate cannibal in half in a spray of gore. Its tail struck another, pinning the ghoul to the ground. The ghoul’s screams were choked off as its scrawny body abruptly ballooned with poison. Black venom gushed from the ghoul’s eyes, nose and mouth and its struggles ceased. The scorpion tore its tail free and whirled about, hunting for Steyr.

The vampire snarled and avoided a second blow from its tail. He leapt aside and scooped up Nitocris’s standard from where he’d dropped it. He rolled to his feet, the standard held like a spear. He swatted aside the scorpion’s sting and stabbed at its carapace. It reared, as he’d hoped, and he lunged forwards smoothly, using every ounce of inhuman strength he could muster to drive the end of the standard through the creature’s underbelly and out through its back. The scorpion shuddered as he forced it back on its hind legs. Black incense and tomb-dusts spilled out of the wound and coursed over his hands as he set the other end of the standard against the ground, trapping the scorpion in place.

Steyr grabbed the edges of the wound and wrenched them apart, revealing the squirming form of the mummified liche-priest. The mummy had been spitted and its bandaged hands clawed helplessly at the standard pole. It hissed at him with a lipless mouth. He hissed back, grabbed its skull in his hands and, with one foot braced against the writhing underbelly of the scorpion, he tore the dead thing’s head off. He tossed the skull over his shoulder and sat down in the shadow of the now-still creature. It provided a lovely bit of shade, better even than the chittering shroud of bats that swarmed through the skies overhead.

He sat and hummed tunelessly, patting his knee to keep time, as he watched the ghouls overwhelm and tear apart the remaining scorpions. It took them quite a long time, and many died from poison or snapping claws. If he’d bothered to aid them, he knew that fewer of them would have perished, but since he had no particular interest in keeping any of them alive, he was content to sit and enjoy the show.

They were within spitting distance of Lybaras, as far as he could tell. The scorpions told him that much. He had little doubt that they’d been unleashed simply to slow Nitocris down somewhat – something he was all for. It was all about time now. Octavia would have begun preparing to cast her spell not long after they’d left, and when she began casting it, he would have to act quickly. He patted the sword sheathed on his hip affectionately. He would take Nitocris’s head personally, of course. Octavia wouldn’t mind.

Nitocris’s handmaidens would be easy prey, after that. With the dead of Lybaras broken to his sister’s will, for despite what she claimed, that was the case, Nitocris’s pestilent followers could be captured, bound and left out to cook in the desert sun. The thought gave him no small amount of pleasure.

Another thought, albeit not quite so pleasurable, was of the pale face he’d seen crouched above him in the jungle trees. Felix Jaeger had survived, it seemed. Steyr wasn’t entirely happy with Felix. It hadn’t been the poet’s fault that the Herald of Lybaras had attacked – no, that had been all Nitocris’s doing. But he and his pet dwarf had been an unfortunate distraction at an inconvenient time.

Jaeger and the dwarf had been taken by Lybaras, and now, they were apparently heading towards the Temple of Skulls. That smacked of some gambit by the bone-bags. If his sister was smart, she could use said gambit as a distraction. She’d kill Jaeger, of course, more was the pity, but needs must. He leaned back, musing on what might have been.

His musing was interrupted before it’d even got properly under way. Steyr peered out from under his makeshift sun-screen as he heard the jangling shriek of one of the great bats that flew amongst their smaller brethren. He sighed as the bat landed in a plume of sand and its rider dropped from its back. She stalked towards him, the cloak and cowl of animal skins she wore swirling about her. ‘Why are you sitting?’ she snapped.

‘Hello, Yamina. Yes I’m fine, thank you, and yourself?’ Steyr said, turning away from her. She ducked beneath the scorpion, and glared at him.

‘The bone-eaters require your aid,’ she spat.

Steyr made a show of looking towards the closest knot of ghouls. They’d managed to tear the legs from the scorpion they were battling, and were now attempting to crack it open with stone axes. ‘Do they? I think they’re doing quite well without me, in my opinion.’ He reached beneath his cuirass and pulled out a small pouch, proffered it to her and said, ‘Jerky?’

She made as if to retort, and then grunted and pulled a slice of the dried and salted human meat from the pouch. She sank down beside him and chewed noisily.

‘Where’s the fleet?’ he said, watching the ghouls as they tore a writhing mummy from its scorpion-sarcophagus and began to devour it, even as it mewled in protest. ‘Haven’t gotten lost have they? Talia was a pirate’s daughter, but she hasn’t been on a boat in three hundred years.’

‘The fleet draws close. Talia drew forth a salt-wind and the souls of the drowned to speed them to Lybaras,’ Yamina said. ‘Worried that they won’t be there, jackal?’

‘Oh, are we all using that nickname now? Wonderful,’ he said. ‘And no, merely inquiring as a good captain ought. The military mind, Yamina, must have all the facts to plan accordingly.’

‘Military mind,’ she said and laughed. ‘You are no better than the bone-eaters.’

‘Then why am I carrying this?’ he said, and patted the standard.

‘Because Nitocris is besotted with that ragged red crow you call a sister,’ Yamina said. She smiled and licked her lips. ‘And she will have her. She will have us all, in the end. Nitocris cannot be denied. She will triumph and we will triumph with her, and sweep over the desert and mountains.’ She tore off a chunk of jerky and swallowed.

‘And then what? A grand tour of the provinces of the Empire, or perhaps Bretonnia?’ he asked. He didn’t try and hide the mocking tone to his words. Beneath the mockery, however, was a faint sense of longing. In truth, he’d almost be willing to forego treachery if he thought Nitocris actually meant to keep her word. To return to Altdorf at the head of a conquering army of the dead would be a fine thing indeed for a fellow who’d been run out one step ahead of the Sigmarites. But he knew Nitocris too well to believe any of what she said. ‘Will you all shuck your hides and armour for ladies’ dresses and expensive carriages?’

‘I don’t see why we can’t wear both,’ Yamina said. Her fangs sawed off another chunk of jerky. ‘We’re being followed, you know,’ she added, as she chewed.

‘I saw them, yes,’ Steyr said. A group of skeletal horsemen had been shadowing them most of the day. He assumed they were scouts, sent to keep an eye on them. ‘Given our queen’s fondness for announcing herself and her intentions, I didn’t think it was worth hunting them down. They already know that we’re coming and that our numbers are as the sands themselves.’

Yamina grunted and finished off the jerky. ‘You think too much,’ she said.

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘Best stop then, and start moving. Nitocris will not be pleased if you tarry,’ Yamina said. She stroked his cheek gently, and then, without warning, clawed his face. Steyr hissed in pain and slapped her hand away. She giggled and brought her fingers to her mouth. ‘She’ll do worse, if you don’t get moving,’ she said as she rose to her feet and started back towards her waiting bat. Steyr watched her go, his hand pressed to his torn cheek. He wanted nothing more than to draw his sword and take her head. But that would tip his hand too soon. No, it was best to savour the pain and wait for Octavia to do her part.

‘Be careful, sister, and be quick, for both our sakes,’ he muttered.

In the uppermost chamber at the top of the great ziggurat, Andraste made a peremptory gesture, and the dead men set the heavy sarcophagi down. There were three of them, and they were bound with heavy chains and dripping with muck. Octavia raised an eyebrow. She stood in front of Nitocris’s bier. Sunlight streamed down through the hole set in the roof above. The vampires stayed well away from it, which suited her just fine. ‘And what, pray tell, are you doing with those?’ she said, looking away from her preparations. She had completed the ritual purifications for the casting of the spell, and now all that remained was the spell itself. Andraste, however, didn’t seem in as much of a hurry as she was.

Andraste smiled. She patted the nearest of the sarcophagi and said, ‘You know what they are?’ The other vampires in the chamber murmured amongst themselves. They were all Andraste’s creatures, Octavia knew. She wondered whether Nitocris had left them all here intentionally or whether Andraste had subtly manipulated her queen into doing so.

‘I saw our queen sink them in the river, yes. They are traitors to her glorious cause,’ Octavia said. ‘She bound them and sunk them, so that they might suffer for their temerity. My question wasn’t who but why.’ Not that I require an answer, she thought. It had become obvious that Andraste had been waiting for such an opportunity for some time. Octavia had known what she intended the moment the vampire had organised a retrieval party of zombies and wights to recover the three prisoners from their confinement.

She did not know their names or what they were supposed to have done. Whatever treachery they had attempted had occurred during the expedition that had seen her and her brothers become entangled in Nitocris’s madness. They had been forced screaming into the sarcophagi and sealed away. It had been her first object lesson in what she could expect should she disappoint her new mistress. She gazed at the containers and wondered what sort of shape they’d be in now. Vampires were tenacious. They could survive even the harshest deprivation, but there would be… changes.

Andraste’s smile slipped. ‘Perhaps I missed them. They are my sisters.’ Her lips curled away from her fangs. ‘And who are you to question me?’

Octavia ducked her head and turned away. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ She heard the sarcophagi rattle as if something within them had suddenly awakened. A muted moan rose from one, followed by a hoarse screech from another. Andraste crouched beside them and murmured softly to them. ‘I was merely pointing out that she sealed them away for good reason. And that their confinement may have driven them past madness and into something worse,’ Octavia continued, not looking at either Andraste or the now-rattling sarcophagi.

‘That is my concern. Not yours!’ Andraste growled.

‘Then why bring them up here, where I am engaged in a delicate and dangerous ritual?’ Octavia asked. It had taken hours to prepare the chamber for the ritual. She had had eight slaves butchered on the altar, as painfully as possible, to awaken the necromantic pulse of the ancient stones, and then had the bodies flayed and sacks made from the dripping skin. The sacks hung about the room, and the ghosts of the slaves were anchored to them, so that they might catch the breeze and lend their wails to her chanting when the time came. She had used their blood to daub sigils on the walls, so that the magics she invoked would be trapped in the chamber and thus properly concentrated. The slaves’ meat and muscle she had shucked from their bones and arranged in the required glistening, stinking patterns on the floor. The bones she had used to bolster the altar, after she had carved the proper symbols into them and removed the teeth. Those teeth now occupied a clay bowl on the altar, and would act as the fulcrum upon which she balanced the lever of her sorcery.

‘They require a stronger sustenance than the thin blood of slaves, sustenance which your magics will provide,’ Andraste said. Octavia nodded. That made sense. Vampires could draw strength from the winds of death as easily as they could blood, though they needed both to prosper. Being near a ritual such as the one she was about to cast would reinvigorate whatever sad remnants shuddered in those sarcophagi. But sensible as it was, she knew it wasn’t the whole reason. It was a show of power, a reminder that it was Andraste, not Nitocris, who was now in command here, and that Octavia continued to breathe only at her sufferance. Or so Andraste believed.

‘As you say,’ Octavia said. She let her hand fall to the pommel of her blade. After Nitocris’s departure she had spent a few precious hours ringing her sword about with dark enchantments, so that if she was forced to defend herself, she could. Besides the ghosts that clung to her like a cloak of fog, it was the only weapon she could count on. ‘What is my concern is the spell – it is time to cast it, Andraste. If Nitocris is to have any hope of opening the way to Lahmia, we must chain the souls of Lybaras and now.’

Andraste eyed her for a moment. Octavia wondered if she would be so foolish as to refuse. Then, Andraste barked an order to one of the other vampires, who stepped forwards, bearing a cloth-wrapped bundle.

Octavia gestured for the vampire to set the sword down on the bier, atop the rag of flayed flesh. The flesh, which Octavia had excised from the body of a bandit dangling from an Estalian gallows, had been tattooed with certain signs and symbols by a necromancer of her acquaintance. He had shown her the proper ritual preparations for the spell she was preparing to cast, in return for her aid in summoning the spectre of a long-dead king.

The vampire hesitated, and looked at Andraste. Octavia glanced at the latter. Andraste motioned sharply and the vampire placed the sword where Octavia had indicated. ‘This would go more swiftly if you weren’t lurking over my shoulder,’ she said as she placed a severed hand at each corner of the bier. The fingers of each hand had been made into candles, with wicks made from human hair stuffed into the deep cuts she had made on each fingertip. Each hand had belonged to a traitor, whether personal or political. It had taken her months to gather them from the corpses of executed men. Luckily, the Tileans had a broad interpretation of what constituted treachery.

‘If you were trustworthy, my presence would not be required,’ Andraste hissed. And if you were trustworthy, you would be by your mistress’s side and not stuck guarding me, Octavia thought as she drew the sword from its crumbling sheath and ran a thumbnail across the age-pitted surface of the blade. The blood of its last victim had never been cleaned from it, and dark splotches stained the metal. She could practically taste the power there, though there was nothing unusual or inherently mystical about either the blade or the long-since dried blood. Once, those stains had been no more than what they appeared to be. Now, however, they were something more potent. So potent, in fact, that she could sense nothing from them.

Then, what if that was the case? It was a small doubt – a creeping maggot of uncertainty that refused to be squashed. What if the blade was exactly what it appeared to be, and was nothing more than a rusty old relic? What if Nitocris was wrong?

Then the spell will not work, and she will be destroyed regardless, she thought. ‘Have you ever stopped to consider that it is not I whose loyalty is in question?’ she said. She didn’t look at Andraste. She didn’t have to. She could feel the vampire’s rage through the threads of dark magic that invisibly pierced the air between them. The sarcophagi shuddered and something within one of them gave a croaking shriek. She set a trio of canopic jars on the bier, and opened each one. She reached into the first and withdrew a pinch of dust made from the powdered bones of a jackal.

‘You are only loyal to yourself,’ Andraste growled. ‘You know no higher cause.’

‘If you think that, then you are stupid as well as treacherous,’ Octavia said breezily. She scattered the powdered bone across the sword’s blade. The granules sizzled where they struck the metal. Behind her, Andraste snarled and took a step forwards. Octavia tensed.

Her brother was right. She could smell the ambition bleeding off Andraste like sweat. The vampire had a hundred different plans brewing away in her brain, and ambition dripped from her every word. Nitocris had been wise in choosing who would remain behind. Only a dozen vampires had been left, including Andraste. Of those dozen, five were loyal to her. The other six were, if not loyal to Andraste, certainly not entirely loyal to Nitocris. They were the waverers and plotters, and likely the reason Andraste had decided to dig up those who’d been buried. In the days that had followed the army’s departure, the vampires had begun to plot and scheme against one another in an almost playful fashion. Discipline, fairly tenuous when Nitocris was present, had vanished entirely. Andraste maintained order through savagery and cunning, but she lacked her mistress’s ability to inspire.

They’d be easy to pick off, one by one, for that reason. They didn’t dare touch her, thanks to the cloud of spirits that accompanied her wherever she went now. She wasn’t entirely certain how effective the ghosts would be against vampires, but as long as the latter shared her uncertainty, they had a stalemate.

Her ghosts hovered protectively about her, bound to her by chains of love and devotion. Andraste curled her nose at them and backed away. Octavia knew she wouldn’t make her move until the spell had been cast. Then the vampire would strike, seeking to claim the blade and mastery of Lybaras, for herself.

And then I will burn you to ash and your sisters with you, and take what remains of the dead here and go to meet my brother, if he survives, she thought. Or, conversely, she would die, and horribly, beneath the vampire’s fangs. Her hand found the amulet shaped like a woman’s mouth.

Fiducci had taught her that the souls of those who dabbled in the dark arts were stronger than those of ordinary folk. They were like strange moths, trapped in a chrysalis shell of meat and bone, awaiting the cessation of breath to be free. Some were not strong enough to survive the transformation, while others became mad souls, and dangerous to everything around them, living or dead. She clutched the amulet so tightly that it bit into her palm. She wondered what she would become. Whatever it was, it would be glorious – a thing of death, and beauty, if and when it happened.

From somewhere outside, a vampire screamed, interrupting her reverie. It was not a cry of pain, but one of warning. Andraste whipped around, her lips skinning back from her fangs. She gestured to the others. ‘See what’s going on.’

She looked at Octavia as the others raced from the chamber. ‘And you – finish what you’ve started, witch. I’ll see to it that we’re not disturbed.’

‘Of course,’ Octavia said. She opened the second jar, and retrieved a pinch of dust, culled from a certain barrow in the Worlds Edge Mountains. She scattered it across the blade. Thin plumes of foul-smelling smoke rose from the sword. She felt Andraste draw close. The vampire circled her and the bier, not quite drawing close to the circle of sunlight that marked the bier. From outside, she could hear the clangour of weapons. It sounded as if they were under attack. How convenient, she thought, forcing herself not to smile. How unexpected.

She had seen the intruders through the eyes of the dead stationed in the outer plazas, and later, through the eyes of her cats, who’d been patrolling the ruins of the outer walls. The cats had attacked, and she’d made no effort to stop them, or to alert Andraste, not realising what was going on until it was too late. If she’d been quicker of mind, she’d have had her beasts retreat and merely watch. The intruders, whether they were treasure hunters, adventurers or luckless wanderers, were no threat to her, and she had hoped they might provide her with a necessary distraction. Which, it seemed, they were doing.

With a thumbnail, she cut open her palm and squeezed her blood into the bowl of teeth. They immediately began to hop and rattle against one another. She took them out and scattered them about her. They continued to twitch and move wherever they landed. Each tooth was like a tent spike, drawing the skin of her power tight over the room.

Necromancy, more so than any other magic, had a tendency to leak away from its caster. The dead were hungry in more ways than one, and they required more and more energy to bolster them up, the longer they were active. They were sumps of dark power, absorbing it and basking in it, and demanding more. That was why most necromancers raised the newly dead at every available opportunity, such fresh corpses requiring less in the way of effort. After a time, it grew exhausting, unless you had a way of strengthening yourself.

Some necromancers ate ghosts, swallowing the souls of their victims to strengthen their own. Others drew strength like a leech from the dead, though they became less human in the doing so. For herself, she’d found the best way was not to take from the dead, but to give. Every dead thing she had summoned had some part of her in it, nestled like a seed. A bit of life force, that grew in the dark soil of every rotting husk or whimpering spirit.

It had weakened her and dangerously so, but she did not fear death, the way many of her peers did. Out in the plaza, the dead waited, and she could feel the seeds she had planted in them flowering. With a single gesture, she awoke that which she had given, now grown fat on the stuff of death. Energy flooded her, and she swayed on her feet, momentarily drunk with the delicious darkling essence of it all. She was connected to every corpse, skeleton and spirit left in the ruin, each one feeding from her and returning what they took in a pulsing loop of power. For a moment, all were one.

The moment passed. Preparations complete, she laid her hands flat on the blade and began to speak the words of the spell. Around her, the forms of the ghosts wavered, like mist caught in a morning breeze. The invocation thundered in her mind, though her voice was soft. The sword blade grew warm beneath her palms, and then deadly cold.

It was the single greatest feat of necromancy she had ever attempted. Once it was done, every dead thing in Lybaras would bend knee to her, and the path to cursed Lahmia and the knowledge she sought would be open.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Felix followed Gotrek through the archway, and into the chamber. It was mostly dark, but a column of weak sunlight issued down through a hole set in the centre of the roof. His eyes were drawn immediately to the red-headed woman standing beneath the hole, before a stone bier. She was dressed in filthy clothes, and as she turned, he started. Her face had been tattooed to resemble a skull. She smiled as she saw them, but did not cease chanting.

The words thrummed on the air, like the peal of a hammer-stroke. Three large sarcophagi rattled and shook nearby, and Felix hoped not to see what was trapped screaming within them. The sunlight was already fading, and the chamber grew darker with every passing moment.

‘Necromancy,’ Gotrek spat. Felix didn’t bother asking how the Slayer knew that. He recognised it easily enough himself. Only death-magic resonated on the air so sourly. It made his bones throb and his teeth ache. Past the woman, Felix saw a sword on the bier. It was a small thing, but he knew what it must be. Why else would it be where it was, after all?

‘Gotrek, there – the sword,’ Felix said.

‘Aye, manling, I see it,’ Gotrek growled. ‘One side, woman,’ the Slayer continued, starting forwards, murder glinting in his good eye.

The necromancer gestured, as if in welcome. Overhead, the steady thud-thud-thud of the drumbeat abruptly ceased. Gotrek bounded forwards, axe raised. A number of heavy bodies tumbled through the hole in the roof. Felix realised why the zombie drummers had ceased their rhythm. They fell onto the Slayer, eliciting a bellow of anger from Gotrek. Flabby hands grabbed the dwarf and tossed him across the chamber. The bloated corpses slipped and slumped towards Gotrek as he bounced to his feet.

Felix started towards the woman, Karaghul in his hands. The templar blade had, in the past, provided some amount of protection against sorcery. He hoped that still held true. The necromancer, however, seemed unconcerned by his approach. She stood relaxed, fingers tapping the pommel of her sheathed blade. Abruptly, Felix realised his mistake. Instincts screaming a warning, he spun on his heel, blade licking up to block the blow that would have split his skull otherwise. He was nearly knocked from his feet by the force of the blow. ‘Oh, very nearly, Andraste,’ the necromancer said, her tone mocking.

‘Silence, witch,’ Felix’s attacker snarled. The vampire was tall, and clad in leather armour and a cloak of feathers and scales that flared around her as she moved. He lashed out at her, driving her back. She rocked back on her heels and began to circle him. ‘Finish killing that creature, Octavia, while I dispose of the man,’ Andraste hissed, motioning towards Gotrek. She sprinted towards Felix and slashed at him with vicious speed. He blocked the slash, and his wrists and arms ached from the force of the blow. His heels skidded on the floor as he blocked her second blow. The necromancer turned towards the battle between her zombies and Gotrek.

She pursued him, giving him no chance to recover or counter her. She wasn’t as good with a blade as he was, but like Steyr, she was stronger and faster, and that more than made up for her lack of skill. She hammered him back towards the entrance, her blade drawing sparks from Karaghul. Felix caught a blow and stepped towards her, trying to drive her back. His shoulder thumped her chest, and she stumbled and lashed out at him, unhurt but angry. Felix leapt back, and Andraste followed. But then she paused and stepped back. ‘Enough of this,’ she spat. She turned towards the three sarcophagi. ‘I shall free my sisters, and let you be their first taste of blood.’

As she turned her back, Octavia spun away from Gotrek, and a wave of crackling, ebony energy leapt from her extended hand. It struck Andraste in the centre of the back, and black, wailing flames enveloped the vampire. Andraste shrieked and staggered. The black flames swirled about her, reducing her to a vaguely human-shaped torch as she crawled towards the sarcophagi. Felix backed away in shock as the vampire sank to her knees and crumbled, burning and shedding clumps of ash.

The necromancer smiled and nodded to Felix. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘What?’ Felix said. Confusion made him hesitate. He’d thought for a moment that she’d been aiming for him, and hit the vampire by mistake.

‘She had outlived her usefulness. As have you, I fear,’ Octavia said. The hovering spirits started towards Felix at her gesture. He struck at them, and they recoiled from Karaghul’s bite. The blade was enchanted, after a fashion, and a holy weapon besides, having belonged to a templar order. The spectres wanted no part of it. They swirled about him, like circling sharks and Felix backed away. Gotrek was still battling the drummers, and was in no position to come to his aid. ‘You’re the one Sigmund mentioned, aren’t you?’ Octavia said. She drew her sword and padded after him. The spirit host whirled about her, as if she were the eye of a storm. ‘The red cloak,’ she said. ‘You don’t see cloaks like that, much. He said you were a poet.’

Felix didn’t waste his breath on a reply. The ghosts boiled through one another like bubbling water as they swarmed about him, herding him out of the chamber. He cut and thrust, carving wisps of chill mist from their ethereal forms as he muttered out a stream of prayers to any gods he thought might be listening. The ghosts moaned and screamed and chattered, pounding his ears with black noise. He was forced back out into the open air and the ghostly shapes spilled after him. More swept down from above, and he felt the chill clutch of spectral fingers on his hair and hands. He whirled, trying to drive them off. Octavia pierced the phantasmal fog, her sword held extended before her. Felix jerked back at the last moment, and the blade glided across his shoulder, the metal shrieking as it gnawed at his chain shirt.

The force of the unexpected blow knocked him from his feet, and he fell. He struck the stairs and rolled down them. Karaghul slid out of reach as he came to a stop on the next level down, his body aching. He shoved himself to his hands and knees. Octavia descended. ‘You have a few moments left – would you like to serve me? My brother would not have asked, but I do not force the dead to do my bidding,’ she said as she approached him.

‘Would you like to be my troubadour, poet? I will leave you enough of yourself to write such works as you can only dream of. You will sing a song of death for me, so that the living will know not to fear my coming, but instead welcome me as they should.’

Felix coughed and tried to get to his feet. Octavia set her foot against his head and gave a gentle shove. Off balance, Felix slid off the plateau and tumbled down the next level of stairs. She followed at a leisurely pace, then paused just out of reach as he lay sprawled on the stairs, trying to pull air into his abused lungs. ‘You’re mad,’ he wheezed.

‘No more than anyone else,’ she said. ‘Look at them.’ She indicated the slaves, who were fighting against their former captors. ‘They fight without hope. Death is the only safe harbour left to them, but they refuse to enter it.’ She shook her head. ‘I offer them safety, purpose, love, and they struggle like beasts in a trap. The meat makes beasts of us all, poet,’ she said, looking at him. ‘Life makes monsters of us. Only in death can we find freedom from the tyranny of pain.’

Felix stared up at her. He had faced madmen and women before – the world was full of madness. But there was an earnest appeal in the necromancer’s quiet voice that was more disturbing than the cries of any frothing lunatic. In her eyes burned the light of true belief, of hope, and he felt a stab of pity for her. Then pity was washed aside by necessity and he scrambled to his feet. She stepped back and raised her blade. The ghosts crowded closer, so thickly he could see nothing else but the silently screaming faces that clustered about him. ‘You dropped your sword,’ she said, stepping through them as if they were no more substantial than a morning mist. The tip of her sword touched his neck. ‘Let them take you, poet. It will be kinder than the sword. There will be no pain, only a slight chill. Join them, and I will give you an eternity upon which to inscribe your words.’ She smiled gently, and on her tattooed face the expression was ghastly. ‘I will love you as my brother,’ she said. ‘Please – death is my gift. Let me give it to you.’

‘Manling,’ Gotrek bellowed, from somewhere above. Octavia turned, her eyes widening, and Felix saw the Slayer charging down towards them, his axe in one hand and Khalida’s sword in the other. Gotrek leapt, springing straight up into the air, his axe raised. As his feet left the stone, he sent the sword spinning through the air towards Felix and the necromancer. Octavia whirled aside and Felix stretched out a hand and caught the hilt of the sword as it spun past her. She rose up over him as he turned, her blade slashing towards his head. He blocked the blow, and then Gotrek’s axe flashed down, chopping through her extended wrists as the Slayer landed.

Octavia stepped back, a curious expression on her face. She held up her wrists, and her eyes widened as they took in the ragged stumps and the blood that bubbled from them. Then she crumpled and fell back into the swirling cloud of spirits. The ghosts howled in seeming agony as they spun about the necromancer’s form and bore her aloft. Every ghost flew to join the growing cloud, and soon the necromancer’s form was completely obscured by the sheer number of phantoms curled about her, like hounds comforting their dying master. Then, with a vast, communal sigh, the ghosts retreated, allowing her body to tumble down the stairs. Her hair had become wispy and white, and her body was shrunken, as if all of the life had been drained from it. Something very much like black smoke boiled from her eyes and mouth and wrist stumps, and rose into the air, where the ghosts clustered together about this new dark core. The smoke billowed and pulsed as the spirit host spun about it, as if in celebration. Felix tore his eyes away from the sight and looked down into the plaza below.

Even as the necromancer was swallowed up in the cloud of spirits a number of zombies stumbled and fell like puppets with their strings cut. Wights staggered, the hell-light in their eye sockets flickering and dimming. The remaining vampires looked about in shock as the slaves redoubled their efforts.

It was only a temporary reprieve, for several of the vampires gestured and spat black words in an effort to keep the dead from crumbling back into oblivion. There were only a few of the creatures left, but even one was too many. But more slaves had been freed from their pits, and now there were almost a hundred men and women fighting the dead in the plaza. As Felix watched, one of the remaining vampires was tackled by a group of emaciated slaves, and had a length of broken wood shoved through her heart.

‘Let’s get down there, manling,’ Gotrek said. He eyed the cloud of ghosts warily.

‘And then what?’ Felix asked, as he recovered Karaghul. Ghosts streaked across the sky, joining the host. The blackness within them had assumed an almost humanoid shape, and he felt the water in his body turn to ice as he gazed at it. Something was happening there, and whatever it was, it was terrifying.

Gotrek turned to glare at Felix. ‘Did you forget that army, manling? Allow me to refresh your memory – it’s between us and Lybaras,’ he said. ‘And you’re still under a death sentence.’

‘What about them?’ Felix said, gesturing at the nearest knot of slaves.

‘What about them,’ Gotrek said, starting down the ziggurat’s steps. ‘They are fighting for their freedom. We gave them what aid we could. The rest is up to them. We have an army to catch, and a bracelet to remove.’

‘Barbarian, do you have it?’ Zabbai called out, as they descended. Felix held up the Nehekharan blade in reply. Zabbai was alone, her armour rent and torn, and her axe nicked and notched from much use. Felix couldn’t see any sign of her warriors. It appeared that Antar was the only other member of their group on his feet. Antar was across the plaza from Zabbai and Felix, and as he watched, the tomb-prince smashed a wight to the ground, and exhorted a group of slaves to destroy another undead warrior.

‘It is time to depart,’ Zabbai said. She cast a glance up at the phantasmal cloud growing above the ziggurat as she pulled out the feathered amulet that Djubti had given her, just before they’d left Lybaras, and, with a great, rattling cry, she smashed it down on the ground. The amulet exploded, and what looked like sand spilled out across the ground. The sand stirred and rose, as if caught in a strong breeze. It spiralled up, and expanded, until a whirlwind of sand was spinning in the spot where the amulet had fallen.

Then, with a hoarse, croaking cry, a huge shape exploded from the sand and shot upwards with a snap of colossal pinions. It curved through the air with ill grace, and every wingbeat assaulted Felix’s nostrils with the stink of rotting meat and battlefield leavings. Zabbai raised her axe and cried out, ‘Come, O child of Ualatp! Come and bear your servants into the sky, so that we might strike our enemies!’

At her cry, the massive, rotting hulk of the creature dropped down into the plaza accompanied by a thunderous gust of wind from its broad wings. Zombies tumbled from their feet, and a vampire screeched as it was flattened beneath one of the beast’s talons. The creature’s head dipped, swiftly and suddenly, and the vampire’s cries ceased. Zabbai grabbed Felix, who stared at the sorcerously summoned beast, awestruck.

The bird resembled one of the black desert vultures that prowled the skies of the Great Desert, albeit far, far larger. Putrefied ropes of muscle and meat hung from its bloated frame, and it shed feathers with every twitch. A razor-sharp beak stripped the pale flesh from the vampire’s bones, and the long, bald neck bulged and rippled as the bird swallowed its meal. Bits of vampire flopped pathetically from the bird’s gaping belly, to drop sizzling to the sun-washed stones.

‘Time to go,’ Zabbai said. ‘The beast won’t remain docile for long, and we’d best be on its back before it decides to leave.’ She hurried towards the bird, Felix in tow.

‘You call that docile?’ Felix said as the bird’s hooked beak pierced the vampire’s skull and its thick, worm-like tongue probed the crack. He turned and shouted, ‘Gotrek, come on!’ Above, he saw that the attentions of the ghosts were beginning to drift away from the blackness in their midst, and instead fall upon the struggle below. There was a terrible hunger writ on those spectral faces, and Felix felt his stomach knot in fear. He suddenly wanted to leave as quickly as possible.

Gotrek decapitated a wight and looked at the avian abomination with disgust. ‘I’ll not get on that hunk of rotten meat,’ the Slayer said. Zombies staggered towards him, moaning. The Slayer bobbed around a flailing hand and split the offending corpse pate to groin. ‘I’ll walk out of here under my own power or not at all.’

‘Fine,’ Zabbai said, ‘Stay here and miss all of the actual fighting.’

Bile rose in Felix’s throat as he clawed his way up behind Zabbai. He could feel maggots and scarabs moving beneath the bird’s flesh. The bird shifted and gave a petulant squawk. He looked towards the ziggurat. The cloud of ghosts was dispersing, like the shell of a chrysalis peeling back, and the air had the odour he associated with a plague-pit. Felix’s skin crawled, and he blinked as the air seemed to squirm with half-seen shapes.

‘What?’ Gotrek snapped.

‘The army, remember?’ Felix said before Zabbai could, and was rewarded with the glint of comprehension in the Slayer’s good eye. Satisfied that Gotrek was coming, Felix looked for Antar. He saw the tomb-prince across the plaza, standing surrounded by heaps of the newly re-dead. Antar’s skills hadn’t been all bluster apparently, and Felix wondered whether he and Gotrek hadn’t got lucky the first time they’d fought the tomb-prince.

Antar had snatched up a bow and quiver from the shattered remnants of Zabbai’s warriors. A moment later, he sent an arrow smashing into a charging vampire’s chest. The creature shrieked as the force of the blow sent her flying backwards into one of the pits. The tomb-prince fired again and again, emptying the quiver with inhuman rapidity and felling wights and zombies with every shot.

He tossed the bow and quiver aside once he’d emptied the latter, and drew his khopesh and flail. Then, without hesitation, the tomb-prince of Mahrak charged the closest of his enemies, bellowing at the top of his nonexistent lungs. Two vampires closed in on him, and soon all three were engaged in a battle of lightning-quick lunges and thrusts. Beyond him, Felix saw a knot of slaves struggling to hurl a wight into one of the pits.

‘We can’t just leave them,’ Felix said. He felt sick. His previous urgency was undercut by a stab of guilt. He knew with all certainty that there was nothing to be done, unless he was tired of living. He looked at the bracelet on his arm. It was a convenient excuse for cowardice. The thought roiled in his gut like a slug of sour ale. He knew he was no hero, and that his courage could be called faltering at best. But there were certain things he had never done, and would never do.

The carrion began to rise into the air, scattering zombies and slaves alike. The latter were already beginning to retreat, taking advantage of the distraction provided by the carrion. Those who could had fled the plaza, scattering into the ruin. But there were too many left behind, and too many still in the pits. They needed time, to free those who remained and to break away from their captors. Time that Felix and the others could give them, but only at cost to themselves and their mission.

‘If you want to live to fulfil your oath to me, manling, we must,’ Gotrek said as he clambered up behind him. Felix looked at him, and then at the slaves still fighting. As he watched, a clump of zombies mobbed a man and brought him down, biting and tearing at him. The man’s screams tore at his heart, as did the pleading cries of those people still caged in their pits, and in that moment Felix knew that he had no choice. He had never had a choice, in fact, not since he had first joined the Mock-Beggars while at the University in Altdorf and penned his first political tract. Gotrek saw the look on his face and grabbed his arm. ‘There’s nothing to be done, manling. We have given them a chance. That is all Grimnir allows any of us – a chance, and an axe to use in making the most of it.’

Felix hesitated. It had been one thing when it was just his life in danger. But this was something else. He would not – could not – leave these people behind. Even if it cost him his own life, he couldn’t do it. All thoughts of flight, of Lybaras, of survival vanished, replaced by determination. ‘I don’t worship Grimnir. Here,’ he snapped, shoving the sword into Gotrek’s hands. Then, before he could stop himself, and before the Slayer could grab him again, he’d dropped from the carrion’s back. It rose above him, the shadow of its wings blotting out the sun, and, for a moment, blocking his view of the spirit host gathering over the ziggurat. He had his blade out of its sheath the moment his boots touched the ground, and a zombie’s head went flying. From above him, he heard Gotrek’s sulphurous cursing.

He kicked aside a corpse and hauled a wounded man to his feet. Felix flailed towards the jungle. ‘Go,’ he shouted. He doubted the man understood Reikspiel, but he hoped his intent was clear. He hurled himself into the melee, his blade rising and falling. ‘Retreat, fall back – run, you bastards! Go!’ he screamed. His sword slashed out, spilling a corpse’s rotting guts across the stones of the plaza.

He fought his way through the press towards the closest of the pits, where a gang of slaves was trying to pull up a final cage. Felix intercepted a wight who was moving to stop them. He bowled the dead man over and set his heel on the latter’s head to hold him pinned. Overhead, more spirits were beginning to drift down, away from the great roiling mass of ghosts that clustered about the black kernel. The air throbbed like a sore tooth, and Felix felt an itch on his skin that could only be explained by the presence of necromancy. The wight clawed at his leg, and Felix sank Karaghul through the dead man’s skull. A ghost swept down and enveloped a number of freed slaves in its tattered arms, its shape billowing and expanding to engulf them. Their already withered forms shrunk even further as they collapsed and died, their lives snuffed out by the spectre. More ghosts joined the first, like crows flocking to a carrion feast.

Felix became more frantic in his attempts to get the slaves to retreat. There was no way that they could defend themselves against the spirits. He shouted, cajoled and pleaded. Some listened, but not many. They fought on, grimly determined to pay back their enslavers or to free those of their fellows who were still imprisoned. Felix cursed their bravery, even as admiration for their efforts filled him. Admiration curdled into fear as a flood of howling spirits crashed down from above, something black and terrible leading them.

Felix’s eyes widened as he recognised the necromancer, or what was left of her. Her vaporous form was swathed in flimsy shrouds of shadow, and lit by a corona of flickering ghost-lights that danced and spun about her. Her tattooed visage had become shrunken and even more skull-like, and her crimson hair framed her head like a nest of writhing serpents. She held her scimitar in one pale, luminous-fleshed hand. Eyes as black as the deepest caverns met his and Felix froze, unable to move. He knew what she had become, even if he couldn’t say how, or why.

He’d faced such creatures before, when he and Gotrek had travelled across the Grey Mountains to Bretonnia, and the Slayer had insisted on hunting for the monster known as the Red Duke. They’d found the Red Duke readily enough, but the vampire had escaped the bite of Gotrek’s axe, and Felix and the Slayer had been trapped in a grail shrine for a week by a legion of the undead, including the screaming spectres that the Bretonnians called wailing hags, but Felix knew as tomb banshees. Octavia’s mouth sagged open, and a scream burst forth.

All around Felix, slaves toppled over, eyes bulging with fright, and blood trickling from their ears and noses. Zombies, immune to the mind-wrenching shriek of the newborn tomb banshee, tore at those who survived. Felix staggered as the scream washed over him. The sound was one of mingled sadness and fury, a lifetime’s thwarted ambition and obsession that smashed into him like a hammer blow. His heart stuttered in his chest, but he remained standing. Memories, tattered rags of past failures, fluttered around his mind’s eye as a pall of melancholy settled over him.

As the banshee swept towards him, followed by her ghostly retainers, Felix raised Karaghul. Her scimitar snapped out, and he parried the blow. The banshee hurtled past him, and the spirit host enveloped him, tearing at him with impossibly cold hands. Felix lashed out wildly, driving them away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the battle was turning against the freed slaves. The ghosts rolled over them like a malevolent fog bank, and those not struck dead by the banshee’s wail died in the chill clutches of the spirits. The cries from the pits were silenced, and the remaining vampires began to pad towards Felix.

Felix looked around. He was the sole living man left in the plaza. Despite his best efforts, he had failed. The thought was like a knife in his heart, and he wanted to scream curses at the dead things that circled him like predators in the twilight. The banshee screamed again, and barbs of futility hooked themselves into his courage, and began to strip hope from him, one agonising inch at a time. In that moment, he was back in Blutdorf, with the bodies of twisted and tortured children at his feet, and the laughter of the self-styled Mutant-Master ringing in his ears; he was in Praag, watching as the servants of Chaos rampaged through the city; he was in Sylvania, watching as Ulrika, red-eyed and fanged, left with her new mistress. Every dragon slain, every warlord dead, by his hand or Gotrek’s could not outweigh the losses that came with every victory.

He had once thought that some force guided him and Gotrek, some great intelligence, acting in opposition to Chaos. He knew now, after so many years, so many losses, that such imaginings had been nothing more than a young man’s fancy. They were alone in the dark with the beasts beyond the firelight. And the beasts were hungry. The banshee wailed and the zombies moaned, and the ghosts howled and the vampires hissed, and the dead closed in on the last living man, offering up the final gift. He recalled Octavia’s words, her offer of death – kinder than the sword, she’d said. ‘You call this kind?’ he snarled up at the hovering banshee. ‘This isn’t a gift, it’s theft!’ he shouted, chopping through a ghost that drew too close.

The banshee screamed again, and in that scream were not the failures of the past, but those of the future. He saw Gotrek dead, his body trampled beneath the feet of a victorious enemy. He saw a looming snarl, studded with fangs, and felt the blow that would prevent him from recording the Slayer’s final fate. He saw mountains fall and cities burn, and knew that there was no epic battle waiting for them at the climax of their tale, for he and Gotrek were not heroes out of an epic from the days of Sigmar. They would die amidst death, lost in a tide of fate, and all that they had accomplished, all that they had done, would be forgotten. There was no victory, no glorious doom. Just a doom, a cessation, a death – one amongst many – and his words, his scribbling, would be so much ash. He staggered, head swimming. ‘No,’ he groaned.

The banshee drifted around him. She wailed again. ‘No,’ Felix said. He blinked bloody tears out of his eyes. He knew he’d made mistakes, he knew that all he’d written would be forgotten – all stories were – but he’d come too far, done too much to give up. He’d fight until his last breath left him, until he saw the Slayer fall, and if he followed him to whatever hell awaited Slayers and their Rememberers, then that was the way of it. The banshee flew past him, her screams clawing at his ears and her ghost-lights stinging his eyes.

‘Fine then,’ Felix hissed, turning. ‘Fine!’ He chopped into a zombie that was reaching for him, felling the corpse with one blow. ‘You want death? I’ll give you death!’ He jerked the blade free and sent it hammering into another dead man, splitting his skull lips to spine. ‘Form an orderly queue and wait your turn.’ He struck a zombie with his shoulder and sent the corpse stumbling. He beheaded it with a two-handed blow. ‘One sword, no waiting!’ he snarled. He drove his fist into a cadaver’s ruined face, and as it reeled, he swept off the top of its head with his sword. ‘If you want it so badly, come and take it,’ he shouted.

The banshee rose and turned, angling back towards him with all of the lethal grace of a shark. Her mouth sagged open, impossibly wide, and she raised her scimitar. Felix raised his blade to meet her, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to fend her off for much longer. Hands seized him. He struggled, until he heard Antar’s voice. ‘You are brave, fleshy one, and Antar commends you your dedication. But this is not your place.’

Felix looked over his shoulder at the tomb-prince. Antar’s finery and armour was torn and ragged from battle, and his khopesh was broken. His face mask had been lost and the bare, grinning skull beneath exposed, its eye sockets glowing. The tomb-prince had fought his way across the plaza to reach Felix’s side. ‘Some of them made it out,’ Antar said, hefting Felix by his chain shirt. ‘You bought them time, and now Antar shall return the favour in his own inimitable fashion, for the death of an honourable man is not pleasing to the Favoured Son of Heaven.’

‘What are you–’ Felix began, as Antar hoisted him up one-handed and then flung him into the air like a rock from a catapult. Felix screamed in surprise as he tumbled upwards. His ascent was halted by the talons of the carrion, which closed about him as it swooped past, and arced upwards over the city.

‘Ha, there you are, manling! Who told you that you could get out of your oath that easily, eh?’ Gotrek’s voice echoed down from above.

‘Are you coming, O Yapping Dog of Mahrak?’ Zabbai called out, from the bird’s back.

‘What? Leave? When there are enemies yet standing?’ Antar shouted up at her, slapping aside a zombie with his broken khopesh. ‘Go! Antar, Majestic Warrior of the Eternal Court, has met his obligation to the queen of Lybaras, and it is his pleasure to hold back the enemy until his mighty heart beats its last or he becomes otherwise bored!’ Antar jabbed his blade up at them in a gesture of farewell. Then, with a croak of laughter, he spun to face his enemies as they encircled him.

Felix’s last glimpse of the tomb-prince was of the banshee and the remaining vampires closing in on him, and Antar awaiting them with regal disdain, his broken sword extended. Then the carrion was winging its way over the city, back towards Lybaras. As Felix hung in the undead bird’s talons, he caught sight of men and women hurrying through the outer tangle of the ruin, making their way to freedom. Antar had been right. Some of them had escaped. Felix sagged, the tension draining from him.

Maybe it wasn’t all for nothing after all. Despite this thought, the images the banshee had forced into his mind clung to the underside of his thoughts tenaciously. Death and damnation – was that really what awaited him and Gotrek?

From overhead, he heard Gotrek’s voice. ‘Get this buzzard moving, woman – I have a doom to claim!’

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘Your buzzard is coming apart at the pinfeathers, woman,’ Gotrek said, some time later. He lifted up a hand to let the loose sand and rotting feathers be caught by the wind. ‘Typical shoddy human craftsmanship,’ the dwarf grunted.

‘It’s a magic zombie bird, Gotrek,’ Felix said. The Slayer had been even more curt than usual since he’d hauled Felix up onto the bird’s back out of its talons. Whether he was angry because Felix had nearly got himself killed, or because Zabbai had prevented him from joining Felix in his suicidal attempt to save the slaves, Felix couldn’t tell.

‘Typical shoddy human sorcery, then,’ Gotrek said.

‘The spell only lasts so long – enough to get us close, but not to the city itself. When Ptra’s sun-barge sets sail the spell will unravel, and we had best have landed by then,’ Zabbai said. The carrion’s powerful wings beat against the air, and the undead vulture squawked in what Felix suspected was either agreement or frustration, perhaps both. The night was fast fading, and the bird was losing altitude. He could feel its bones grind and shift beneath him, and a trail of dust and sand marked the air behind it. It was coming apart, and he felt a queasy tingle in the pit of his stomach as he considered what might happen should it continue before they could land.

They’d ridden the bird for almost a day and a night, and covered more ground than Felix thought possible. The dead truly did travel fast. They’d left the jungle behind swiftly enough, but there was a trackless expanse of desert between them and Lybaras. The thought was a gloomy one, especially given how their numbers had shrunk since they’d set out. Felix thought of Antar, wielding his khopesh against the numberless dead. Antar had made a rapid transition from enemy to ally over their short journey. Then, for a being that regarded war as a game, perhaps it wasn’t as strange as all that. He almost missed the bellicose tomb-prince.

‘These birds used to descend in flocks of such size that they would blot out the sun, and provide us shade to fight beneath,’ Zabbai said. ‘It was said that they served Ualatp, god of scavengers, and took the souls of newly slain warriors into the sky to fight endless battles against the daemons that prowled there.’

‘This Ualatp sounds quite practical, for a human god,’ Gotrek said.

‘That’s not quite the word I’d use,’ Felix said. He felt slightly sick, and not just from the bird’s charnel stink. He’d never been the best with heights, though he found himself forced to deal with them often enough. But riding on the back of an overgrown zombie buzzard was a far cry from a dwarf gyrocopter or an airship.

He flexed his hand. The serpent bracelet felt heavy on his wrist and forearm. He hoped it was only his imagination, but he thought he felt the golden coils drawing tight about his wrist. There was only a day left before its fangs sank into his flesh. He rubbed it, and wondered what it would feel like, if worse came to worst. He’d been poisoned before. More than once, in fact; one of the hazards of being Gotrek’s constant companion was that the inevitable attempts to murder the Slayer sometimes spilled over onto him. The incident in Tobaro with the swarm of blow-gun wielding, black-clad skaven came to mind. Felix shuddered. That night had been unpleasant all round. He pushed aside his most persistent memory of that night – Gotrek battling that lanky skaven that had called itself ‘Deathmaster’ on the roof of the temple of Handrich in the pouring rain – and tried to concentrate on more immediate matters.

Felix looked down at the sword he held. It wasn’t very big, compared to Karaghul, but it was deadly enough looking, in its way. It was short and slim, leaf-shaped and still sharp, despite the centuries that had passed since it had last seen use. It was not well-balanced, and he had the impression that it was more a ceremonial blade than one intended for use in battle. There was a dark stain on the blade that looked wet when the sword was angled just right. He wondered whose blood it was, and why it was important to Khalida. What use could a dead woman have for such an old blade? For that matter, what spell had the necromancer been attempting to cast using it?

‘It’s a child’s toy,’ Gotrek rumbled, interrupting his train of thought. He examined the blade over Felix’s shoulder. ‘All that effort for something even the youngest beardling would turn their nose up at.’

‘Child’s toy or not, I’d say they want it back,’ Felix said. ‘Look!’ He pointed with the blade. He’d noticed their pursuers only when they’d pierced the clouds and come into the open. Gotrek twisted around, his good eye widening slightly. Then a grin split his face and he chortled like a child offered a sweet.

Behind them, a trio of vampires streaked after them, wings pumping. They were a horrible amalgamation of woman, bat and beast, their undead flesh rippling with constant change. Felix knew that some vampires, though thankfully not many, could alter their forms for brief periods, and that some devolved into bestial shapes from lack of nourishment or simple blood-lust. Which these were, he couldn’t say, nor did it matter; what mattered was that they were closing in, and rapidly, despite the rising sun.

‘Brave, blood-suckers, brave,’ Gotrek bellowed, pushing himself upright on the carrion’s back. He gesticulated with his axe. ‘Come on, then! Hurry to Gotrek! Better my axe than the sun, eh? Come on!’

As the shrieking vampires drew closer, Felix saw that one had a black, shrunken shape clinging to her back. The shape lifted its head. A single eye, blazing crimson, glared at them. Felix started as he recognised the vampire that the necromancer had set ablaze – or, rather, what was left of her. ‘Gotrek,’ he began, ‘is that–’

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said. ‘They’re tough, these witches. You can have her if you like, manling. Not much left of her anyway.’

Felix ignored Gotrek and bent towards Zabbai. ‘Can we outrun them?’

‘No,’ Zabbai said. A moment later, Felix saw that she was right. Two of the bat-winged vampires swooped past the carrion, darting around it. The third swept over the carrion, outpacing it. As she passed over them, the burned vampire leapt from her back and onto Felix. The carrion jerked and dipped as the additional weight caused its flight to become erratic. Felix nearly fell as the undead bird flapped its wings, fighting to stay aloft. The vampire’s weight drove him down against the bird’s rotting back. Fangs snapped in a lipless mouth, and her single remaining eye blazed hungrily. She had been burned down to the bone, but somehow, she still lived. Her scorched talons grabbed for the sword. ‘Give it to me,’ Andraste gurgled.

Gotrek’s hand clamped on to the back of her charred skull. ‘That’s the problem with you blood-suckers, you don’t know when to lie down and die,’ the Slayer growled. He tore her off Felix as the carrion was struck from above and below simultaneously by two of the other vampires. The bird shrieked and lost more of itself to the wind. The sun was rising now. The bird spun. Its talons snared one of the vampires. Felix slid from its back, a yell bursting from his lips as the world spun about him. He saw Gotrek and the burned vampire fall past, locked in a death-grip. The Slayer was laughing wildly.

One of the vampires tore through the carrion’s wing in an explosion of dust and rot, her talons spread and her bestial jaws wide. There was nothing human in her features, only an animal hunger too long denied. Felix swept the sword out, raking her across her eyes as she smashed into him. She shrieked, and leathery wings, already smoking from the touch of the rising sun, enfolded him.

Twisting in her grip, Felix interposed his bracelet-wrapped forearm between his throat and her blindly snapping jaws. Fangs broke on the scales of the golden serpent, and Felix snarled a curse as he rammed the ceremonial blade through her heart. The vampire plummeted away from him as they turned in the air. He’d lost sight of Gotrek, and everything else, save for the revolving blur of sky and rapidly approaching ground.

‘Felix, grab my hand!’ Zabbai’s shout pierced his confusion, and he looked around. He saw her swimming through the air towards him, her hand stretched out. He flailed for it instinctively. She hauled him into an embrace. ‘Duck your head, barbarian. Sand isn’t as soft as it looks.’

‘What?’ Felix said, eyes wide.

‘Head down, little man,’ Zabbai said, planting her hand on the crown of his head and pressing his face to her hauberk. ‘And maybe say a little prayer to your primitive gods.’

They struck the ground before Felix could compose so much as a brief prayer. Sand geysered about them, and Zabbai’s bones dug into his flesh as they bounced and rolled and slid to a halt. Zabbai had been right – they hadn’t been far from the ground. Far enough to hurt, though, he thought as her arms flopped away from him and he rolled free. Every muscle ached and his bones felt as if they’d been shaken loose of their joints. A scream made him look up.

The last vampire dived down towards Zabbai, who was pushing herself to her feet. Fire and smoke streamed out from the swiftly moving, loudly howling creature, but whatever pain it was feeling from its ongoing immolation seemed only to add to its determination to tear the head from the Herald of Lybaras. Zabbai, wrappings askew and body shuddering, was in no state to defend herself.

Felix lunged forward, elbowing her aside as he drew Karaghul. He swept the blade from its sheath as the vampire drew close enough that the heat of the flames that now enveloped it singed his hair. The sword passed through the vampire’s neck as it completed its arc, and Felix staggered aside as the headless body smashed into the sands and exploded into burning gobbets of ash.

The carrion had crashed down nearby. The bird had completely come apart, but it had succeeded in taking its prey with it. Even as the carrion returned to the sands it had sprung from, its claws had pierced the heart and skull of the vampire it had caught in its talons. Felix looked for Gotrek. The Slayer had survived worse falls – his drunken attempt to climb the Tower of the Grail in Mousilion came to mind – but he hadn’t been locked in combat with a vampire at the time.

He heard a roar from just over the closest sand dune. Felix scrambled up the slope, and saw Andraste and Gotrek straining against one another. The vampire’s blackened fingers were sunk into Gotrek’s bull-neck, blood welling about them. Gotrek had his hands locked around her head, and ash and char slipped between his fingers. Smoke rose from the vampire as the eye of the sun swept over the desert. Andraste snarled and squirmed in Gotrek’s grip. Flames blossomed on her already burned flesh as the sun rose. One more day, Felix thought, as the vampire became a wailing torch. Her wails were cut short as her head came apart in Gotrek’s hands. The Slayer stepped back as his opponent crumbled to dust and ash. Slapping his palms together to rid them of the greasy char, Gotrek glanced up at Felix. ‘Survived, then, manling? What about the crow-bait?’

‘I still live,’ Zabbai said, placing her hand on Felix’s shoulder. He looked at her. She looked as bad as he felt.

‘That’s debatable,’ Gotrek said, touching the already clotting wounds on his neck.

‘Where are we?’ Felix said, rubbing his wrist. ‘Are we near Lybaras? If the answer’s not yes, I’m going to be unhappy.’

‘We are near Lybaras,’ Zabbai said. ‘Unfortunately, we have landed on the wrong side of that.’ She motioned with her axe. Felix followed the gesture and his eyes widened.

Across the shifting sand dunes rose a line of vast statues, each one almost as large as the ziggurats of the Temple of Skulls, and Felix wondered why he hadn’t noticed them from the air, even occupied by the vampires as he had been. They stretched across the horizon, as far as Felix could see in either direction, and he counted almost thirty of them before he gave up. The towering effigies were covered in gold and gems, and each carried a long, elaborately carved staff in one hand and a pair of huge scales in the other.

The line of gigantic statues stood on the edge of what looked to be an immense crater. A column of dust, which seemed to stretch for miles, rose above the crater, and Felix could dimly make out the creak of bones and the clash of weapons. ‘What is that? Did we land near a battle?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Zabbai said, starting forwards. ‘Ushtep’s Folly, the Crater of the Waking Dead. King Ushtep of Rasetra and King Imanotep of Mahrak met in battle in that crater several centuries ago. They were too evenly matched and in their frustration, they blamed the gods for prolonging their duel. The gods grew angry and cursed them to wage eternal war for their amusement. It is said that they watch the battle through the eyes of the Hierotitans they summoned from the sands, and which now line the crater. This is but the smallest edge. It stretches for miles, and separates Mahrak and Rasetra. We’ll have to cross the rim of the crater if we wish to continue on to Lybaras.’

Gotrek scrubbed at his eye socket with his thumb. ‘We’re still at least two days from your blasted city, on foot and moving fast. The manling won’t make it.’

‘What?’ Felix said.

‘I know.’ Zabbai looked at him. ‘I am sorry, Felix. Djubti’s bird was supposed to carry us to within a day’s march of the city. But the gods have willed otherwise.’

‘What do your gods have against me?’ Felix asked plaintively.

‘Let’s go ask them,’ Gotrek said, starting towards the crater and the statues that loomed above it. Felix watched him go, and then looked at Zabbai, whose head was cocked, as if in thought.

‘He’s right,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘There will be chariots down there, and horses. We will take one.’ She looked at him and clasped his shoulder. ‘We will get to Lybaras before the next sunrise, barbarian. You shall not die, save perhaps in battle – but better battle than the asp’s sting, eh?’ She sprinted after Gotrek. Felix gaped after her for a moment, and then hurried in pursuit, hope lending strength to his flagging limbs.

He was more exhausted than he had been in some time. Aches and pains radiated through his leaden limbs. He was thirsty, but there was no time to take a sip from the depressingly light waterskin slapping against his side. There was no time to fish a bit of pemmican or dried fruit from the pouch on his belt. Not if he wanted to keep up with his companions.

When they reached the line of Hierotitans, they paused. Even Gotrek was somewhat taken aback by the scene taking place in the crater below. Countless thousands of skeletal warriors were locked in combat. The battle-lines swayed across the vast crater, as hundreds of chariots smashed into one another, and ushabti duelled with each other. As they watched, a chariot ploughed through a unit of skeletal spearmen, crushing them beneath its heavy wheels. The broken warriors lay still for a moment. Then a creeping haze of purple light enveloped them. Broken bones mended and bent or shattered weapons repaired themselves, and the skeletons staggered upright, ready to resume battle. The same scene was repeated across the expanse of the crater. Warriors fought, fell, and rose to fight again with barely a moment inbetween.

‘This battle will never end,’ Zabbai said. She raised a hand to indicate the statues. ‘So long as the gods watch, and remain entertained, the battles continue. Both Ushtep and Imanotep have sent messengers to every city in Nehekhara, demanding the intervention of the other kings and queens, as if that would bring things to an end.’

‘Wouldn’t it?’ Felix said. He cast a wary glance up at the statues that loomed over them. The head of each had been carved in what he took to be the shape of the face of a given god. The eyes of each glowed faintly, and he felt a chill as he wondered what inhuman intelligences might be gazing out at the battle taking place below.

Gotrek shook himself and muttered a curse under his breath. Felix wondered what the Slayer thought of such a fate – to be damned to fight, but never die, for an eternity. It probably struck a personal chord with the dwarf. Gotrek hawked and spat. ‘Well?’ he said harshly. ‘Let’s get down there, borrow a chariot and get to Lybaras.’

They slid down the wall of the crater, trailing clouds of dust behind them. Felix didn’t bother asking how they were going to acquire transportation. It was fairly evident from the pugnacious set to Gotrek’s jaw, and the way Zabbai swung her axe. They reached the bottom of the crater quickly. They were at the far edge of the battle, but even so, this close, it was startlingly loud, albeit in a different way from any other battle Felix had had the bad fortune to find himself in. There were no voices shouting battle-cries, no screams of the dying, only the scrape of bone on bone and the rattle of metal.

‘There,’ Zabbai said. She indicated a chariot being pulled by a quartet of skeleton horses as it slewed through a line of archers. Its rider smashed the skulls of his enemies with a massive, two-handed blade as the chariot drifted through their ranks.

Gotrek hurried towards the chariot, and, without hesitation, leapt onto the side of it, momentarily overbalancing it. His axe took the head off the driver. The rider, a magnificently accoutred prince, whirled, mummified features tightening in surprise. Zabbai sent her axe spinning towards him, removing his arm at the elbow. The axe buried itself in the front of the chariot. The tomb-prince reeled in shock, and Gotrek grabbed the front of his robes before he could recover. With a grunt of effort, Gotrek jerked the warrior out of the chariot as it slewed in a wide circle, and hurled him to the ground. The tomb-prince made to rise, but was crushed beneath the wheels of his own chariot a moment later.

Zabbai leapt onto the chariot and grabbed the reins. ‘Come on, manling, pick up your feet,’ Gotrek shouted, holding out a hand. Felix’s lungs burned with effort as he chased after the vehicle. All around him, the shattered ranks of skeletons began to pick themselves up. Taking a breath, he leapt. His hand slapped into Gotrek’s, and then he found himself falling into the back of the chariot. He got to his feet as Zabbai snapped the reins and sent the chariot hurtling towards the edge of the crater.

‘Are you certain this is going to work?’ he shouted, fighting to be heard over the noise of battle. The team of fleshless horses that pulled the chariot didn’t seem bothered by their new passengers. They galloped where they were directed, regardless of who was holding the reins.

‘No,’ Zabbai said, without looking at him. ‘Hold on.’

Felix hunkered down as the chariot rattled up the slope of the crater. As they cleared the rim, he thought he saw the statues begin to move, their heads turning, their hands reaching down. Rock ground against rock, and Gotrek hefted his axe and shouted curses at the top of his voice. Sand rose into the air around them as the statues stabbed the ground with their staves, narrowly missing them. Felix covered his eyes and whispered every prayer he could think of.

Then they were shooting past the line of Hierotitans and galloping north, towards Lybaras. ‘Ha ha!’ Gotrek bellowed. ‘Open your eyes, manling. We’re on our way, and my doom waits!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Eyes closed, Nitocris spread her arms and relaxed on her perch on the terrorgheist’s neck. The wind coursed over her, tearing at her like a hungry jackal. The day was wearing on, and she could still feel its deadly heat, even through the sandstorm her handmaidens had conjured and the fluttering hurricane of bats that flocked around her. Her skin crawled at the thought of burning. Though she had braved the sun before, and likely would again, it was never a pleasurable experience.

Somewhere far below her, drums thudded. Not her drums, but old ones, made from cracked leather and covered in the dust of ages. The drums of Lybaras were sounding the song of war. Nitocris’s eyes opened and she hissed in satisfaction. Finally, after centuries of struggle and labour, she was on the cusp of claiming all that had been promised to her. And all she had to do was fight her way through the dead legions of her mistress’s greatest enemy. Nitocris threw back her head and laughed.

All of her doubts and questions regarding her purpose were burned away by the burgeoning tide of blood-lust that rose within her. What did it matter why she had been chosen, or what might await her over the mountains? Nothing mattered now save the fight. She would conquer her queen’s enemies and maybe die in the process, but it would be done. She had built an empire solely to turn it into a spear to lance the belly of Nehekhara, and she was now guiding that spear into position for the killing thrust.

She had hoped to use them, but such was not to be. It was better this way – the magic had not sat well with her, though it had been her plan. But that plan was ash now.

She had felt the pain of her sisters dying like a blade in her gut. It had quivered through her limbs and blinded her for long, agonising moments. As with her assassins, she had shared blood with some of those left behind. Something had gone wrong. Some unseen enemy had cut the tail of her army off. Some opponent had killed her followers and rendered her best laid plans to so much wreckage. She had suspects aplenty – Andraste, Octavia, and the Nehekharans among them. The identity of her enemy made no difference. The deed was done, and retreat was not an option.

After the pain of her sisters’ deaths had faded, and the anger, she had felt a moment of pure joy; there was no strategy now, no scheme, only war. In war, Nitocris was supreme. She had cunning enough, and could plan, but it was only in the red moment that she could truly show her worth to the Sisterhood of the Silver Pinnacle.

She would smash Lybaras. She would smash Rasetra and Mahrak, claim Lahmia and weather the wrath of the other tomb-cities, as she had weathered the wrath of the lizards and the jungle tribes. She would deliver an empire to her queen, as she had sworn. She would earn her future, in her own way. She would not return to the Temple of Skulls. If any of her handmaidens had survived, they would join her, or not, as they wished. All that mattered was the war ahead, the struggle to come.

She would need to find a new necromancer, however. That thought gave her pause. She felt a flicker of something that might have been sadness, or disappointment. She had not felt the necromancer’s death, but she had assumed that the woman had met her end nonetheless. To think otherwise was inconceivable. If Andraste was behind it, then Octavia was certainly dead. And if it had been Octavia… Well, she would need another necromancer regardless.

She had not spoken to Steyr yet. She looked forwards to telling him, if he survived the coming battle. If she could not enjoy Octavia’s company, she would enjoy the pain her absence caused her brother. She giggled, and looked around. Below, the battle was being joined. The numberless dead of the Southlands were stumbling towards the great walls of Lybaras, and the army that was arrayed before it. Awakened kings bedecked in their finest war-panoply stood aloof on the backs of chariots, surrounded by their tomb-guard. Legions of archers waited, arrows nocked and pointed upwards. Skeletal warriors crouched behind a line of locked shields, spears levelled at the approaching horde. And in the centre of the line was a mound of skulls and bone that had burst from the earth the moment the first zombie had come into sight of the walls.

A dais of bone surmounted the mound, and upon the dais sat a heavy casket, inscribed with eye-searing hieroglyphs. Behind the casket stood the liche-priest her spies had named as Djubti, and his harsh, croaking voice thundered across the field of battle, impossibly loud. He gesticulated with a staff and a curved knife, and even from as high above as she was, she could feel the power building in the air about him.

As armies went, Nitocris had seen few that were more impressive. As the horde drew near, the drumbeat started up and the front ranks began to march to meet the coming enemy. Chariots rumbled forward, flanked by knots of skeletal horsemen and swiftly trotting ushabti. The latter easily kept pace with the cavalry and chariots.

Nitocris saw no sign of any larger constructs – no great war-sphinxes or titan statuary. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t there. She looked away from the walls, towards the harbour. The galleys of Lybaras were still at anchor. A heavy fog rolled in towards the city, and within that fog was her fleet. Whether Lybaras would launch their galleys before her fleet reached the shore, she couldn’t say. If not, Talia had orders to lead the dead aboard her vessels into Lybaras and fight her way towards the gates.

Nitocris jerked on the terrorgheist’s exposed neck muscles, forcing the beast to pull in its expansive wings and drop from the sky towards the walls of Lybaras. It shrieked as it plummeted, and she screamed with it. She enjoyed the rush of wind past her face and the hiss of the arrows slicing up to meet her. There was a joy to be found in battle that outstripped even the taste of fear-seasoned blood, and she intended to indulge herself to the fullest, now that there was no reason not to.

As the terrorgheist plunged down through the cloud of arrows and catapult-fire that had rushed up to envelop them, she reached across herself and drew her blade. She spun the sword in her hand, eager to smash bone and chop through withered, mummified muscle. A fusillade of fiery, screaming skulls, trailing eerie tails of green fire, arced past her.

She could hear the thin shrieks and ululating howls of those of her handmaidens who had acquired winged mounts for themselves as they joined her in the attack. She smiled, pleased at their display of courage. A screaming skull struck one of her handmaidens, and the sky was filled with a blaze of green for a moment, then the vampire and her mount plummeted past, wreathed in flame. She leaned forwards over her mount’s neck as they smashed through another volley of arrows. She slashed out, chopping a number of them into splinters. Others punched into her arms, legs and shoulders, but she gave them no more than a cursory glance. Pain was an old friend, and she welcomed the stings of the arrows.

The terrorgheist bellowed as arrows tore through its tattered wings and hairy body, and screaming skulls struck its bony snout and bounced away. The cry was as instinctual as the beast’s impulse to flap its wings. It felt no pain, and flew now through magical means rather than by its own muscle. The screams of the sorcerous catapult ammunition bothered it no more than flea bites.

The walls seemed to expand as they drew ever closer, and she could easily discern the individual skeleton archers who sought to bring her down. In life, it was said that the gods of Nehekhara never took the forms of flying beasts near Lybaras, for the archers of Asaph’s city could fell any target, large or small, flying, running or swimming, divine or daemonic. An arrow gouged a red canyon from the corner of her mouth to her ear, and a whistling hiss escaped from between her clenched fangs. She felt the wound rip and spread as she opened her mouth and howled.

The terrorgheist pulled up at the last moment, the stiff, filthy hairs on its belly scraping the stone parapet. Its wings snapped out, catching an updraught and smashing aside skeletons in the process. Nitocris leapt from its back with a roar, decapitating an archer as her feet touched the stone. As the gigantic bat hurtled skywards, Nitocris was moving. Her dusky form slithered through the packed ranks of skeletal archers quicker even than their sorcerous sight could follow, her blade licking out to smash through spines and send skulls spinning from neck bones. She kicked a skeleton from its feet and raised her blade, ready to shatter the dead man as she had his fellows, but a hastily interposed shield caught her blow and deflected it. Before she could recover, a heavy war-mace smashed into her belly. The force of the blow nearly sent her flying from the parapet.

‘Are you the queen of witches, or merely an acolyte?’ a rough voice croaked. Nitocris scrambled backwards as the small statured tomb-king stepped in front of his fallen warrior and smashed his mace into his shield. ‘Bah, do not answer. I would not sully my ears with your words. I am Rhupesh, the Tiger of the High Wall, and I welcome you to my jungle,’ he said, gesturing to the parapet.

He was a thing of heavy bones and bronze armour, with a golden death mask. He motioned for the gathering skeletons to retreat, which they did with all haste. Nitocris saw the terrorgheist crash into the parapet behind Rhupesh, and the giant bat tore a catapult apart, as she had planned. While she kept the troops on the wall occupied, her mount would destroy the enemy artillery.

‘Tiger,’ Nitocris hissed. ‘More like toad.’ She lunged. Rhupesh was swifter than she’d given him credit for and her blade skidded across the curve of his shield. His mace looped out, and she ducked aside. The mace smashed down, cracking the parapet.

‘Insults are for dockside trollops,’ Rhupesh said as he sliced at her with the edge of his shield. She flipped backwards as the razor-sharp rim of bronze hissed through the space she’d been occupying. ‘I’m told you call yourself a queen.’

‘More queen than you are king, bag of bones,’ Nitocris snarled, springing to the top of the parapet and sprinting past Rhupesh. As he turned, she vaulted over him. Her blade hummed down, scoring the back of his hauberk, and sending scales of bronze and leather flying. Rhupesh roared and whirled. His mace caught her in the hip and she was sent sliding the length of the parapet.

‘Ha,’ Rhupesh said. He stalked after her. ‘And which of us is on their knees,’ he growled, as she dragged herself upright. Her hip had been shattered by his blow, but the bone was already knitting itself back together within the torn flesh. She extended her sword to keep him from getting too close.

‘Not me,’ she hissed, ‘never me. Queens do not kneel, not even to kings.’ She shoved herself to her feet and came at him so quickly her form was nothing more than a blur. Even hampered by a still-lame leg, she was faster than Rhupesh. Her sword shivered in her grip as it hammered at his shield, denting and gouging the ancient metal. She drove him back, step by step. The tomb-king retreated before her, hunkering behind his shield. Even so, her blade struck his death mask and bare bones more than once.

Behind her, she heard the scrape of her handmaidens at last joining the fray. They had engaged the remainder of the skeletons on the parapet. ‘Do you hear them? Do you hear my sisters?’ she said. ‘We shall throw down your walls ourselves, if this is all that you can muster against us.’ She struck him again and again. ‘Where are your mighty champions, Lybaras? Where are your heroes? Must I dig their mouldering bones out of their tombs myself?’

Her sword smashed down on the rim of Rhupesh’s shield, nearly splitting it in half. He twisted it, trapping her sword, and with a wrench, sent shield and sword both flying. Weaponless, she dived on him, her talons scratching at his armour. Rhupesh caught her in mid-leap, his mace rising to meet her. She flipped head over heels, her jaw blazing with agony. She crashed down heavily and he stumped towards her. ‘I built these walls, woman. I built the defences which have kept Lybaras safe for thousands of years. I will not let some mewling jungle cat stomp her paws and send the work of ages tumbling down. The Son of Ox and Serpent says nay to thee, and he will add your bones to the mortar of his great works.’

Nitocris rolled aside as his mace came down. She bobbed to her feet with serpentine grace and drove her fists into his chest. Rhupesh, caught by surprise, was lifted off his feet and sent tumbling backwards. ‘My bones are mine, as is this city and everything in it,’ Nitocris snarled, ‘even if I must tear it apart, stone by stone, with my bare hands to claim it.’

She crouched, readying herself to spring on the prone tomb-king, but a shouted command caused her to hesitate.

A moment later, the air was filled with arrows. Nitocris bent and whirled, evading the majority of the missiles with inhuman agility, but some struck home and she was sent staggering back, rivulets of black blood running down her flesh from where the arrows had pierced her. She swept the shafts from her with a growl, but did not lunge forward again.

The false queen had come forth at last. Nitocris examined the regal figure who stood amongst the archers.

Khalida was relaxed, as if she were strolling in a garden, rather than leading a counterattack. Nevertheless, she gazed at Nitocris with interest. She extended her staff and used it to gently push aside the arrows that her warriors had nocked, ready to fire. ‘You are the one who claims the title of Serpent Queen,’ she said, in a sepulchral voice.

‘Yes,’ Nitocris said as she rose to her feet. She flexed her claws. ‘It is meet we should know one another, Khalida.’

‘You speak as if we are equals, blood-drinker. You speak as if you were something other than a mad pawn on a game board.’ Khalida drew her khopesh with her free hand. ‘We are not equals. I am a queen and you are but a puppet, a shadow cast upon a wall by familiar hands.’ She extended her staff and blade to either side of her, and waited. ‘Come, puppet. Come and show me how you dance.’

Nitocris tensed. Her rage had built to a fevered peak as Khalida spoke, and for a white-hot instant, she considered throwing herself at her enemy. Then, abruptly, she calmed. She smiled and took a step back. ‘I am a puppet. And so are you, queen of bones and sand. Our battle is but a game of destiny, mine against yours. Let us see who triumphs, come the dawn!’

She whirled about and sprang from the wall. Her terrorgheist swooped beneath her, and as she settled into her seat, it rose skywards, leaving behind a cry to mark its passing. Her handmaidens had followed suit, climbing back onto their mounts and retreating back into the sky, pursued by arrows and catapult-fire. The terrorgheist had managed to destroy a number of the catapults, but not all of them, more was the pity. She wondered if Steyr had had more luck. She hoped he’d survive the battle to come. With his sister dead, she would need another to guide her in the kingdoms of the north.

Steyr wept tears of blood as he led his ghouls behind the concealing ranks of zombies. He’d felt Octavia’s death, though he knew not how, or why. The connection of blood, perhaps, or maybe simply the closeness of siblings; regardless, he knew that she was dead. He was the last. And if he wasn’t careful, he’d follow her and his brothers into the dark. He paused, letting his ghouls shuffle past, and peered through a gap in the line, towards the enemy.

Drums thudded heavily, and the air tasted of sorcery. His eyes sought the strange formation of bone that occupied the centre of the enemy line, and the sarcophagus that now rested upon it. The air congealed about it, and he fancied he could see writhing, hazy shapes that put him in mind of the ghosts that had followed Octavia around like dogs. Whatever it was, he intended to destroy it. Octavia had taught him enough about sorcery to know that whatever that thing was, its presence wasn’t going to be beneficial to Nitocris’s forces. He would have to destroy it, and swiftly.

He swiped blood out of his eyes. It had been Felix. He’d hoped – no, assumed – that Octavia would be able to deal with Jaeger and his stunted companion, but he’d been wrong. He’d underestimated the poet in the Mangrove Port, and apparently Octavia had as well, unless Andraste had simply taken advantage of the situation, and made her move while his sister was otherwise distracted. He snarled softly. You had best be dead, Jaeger, or I’ll make you wish you were, he thought.

He would make the man pay for Octavia’s death, whether he was personally responsible or not. He cursed the day he’d saved Felix from the ghouls, and he cursed himself for not setting his corpse-eaters on them when he’d seen them in the jungle. Octavia had been right – he wasn’t half as smart as he thought he was, and she’d paid the price for his foolish attempt at cunning. He closed his eyes, and ground his fangs together. He’d spent his life trying to keep them all alive and together. That had been in vain, it seemed. Now all that was left was to avenge his siblings. Lybaras first, Jaeger second and then… Then, Nitocris. I’ll take your head and mount it on a post in your precious Lahmia. He snapped his fangs together, startling a ghoul.

He heard a thunderous shriek and looked up. Nitocris was beginning her attack on the walls. It was time to move. Throughout the semi-organised horde of corpses, wights clashed axes and swords against crude shields, and zombie drummers began to beat out a slow rhythm. Dead saurians roared hollowly as they trudged forwards, and dead animals growled, barked, moaned and hissed as they slithered through the feet of the bipedal dead.

The vast majority of the dead were unarmoured, but amongst them were mouldy skeletons clad in bronze and rusty iron. These formed the core of the horde, and maintained mindless discipline amidst the chaotic sea of rotting flesh that flowed about them. Horsemen, culled from the nomad tribes of the Great Desert as well as from the sunken fleets of Cathayans and Bretonnians, trotted on the flanks, waiting for the signal to engage the enemy cavalry. Rotting banners flapped and curled in a sour breeze.

Steyr hefted Nitocris’s standard, and, with a snarl to summon his ghouls, led the flesh-eaters out in front of the zombies. He unfurled the banner and held it aloft, so that the enemy could see it clearly. Then he sank the standard into the ground, and faced the enemy army. He drew his sword, threw back his head, and shrieked. The army surged into motion around him. Dead horses galloped forward, zombies lurched and skeletons marched.

The battle for Lybaras had begun.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

‘The crow-bait queen promised me a doom, and by Grimnir, she’s delivered,’ Gotrek roared, slapping the side of the chariot as if to urge the skeletal horses to greater speed. While Felix saw no reason to be so enthusiastic, he couldn’t disagree with Gotrek’s assessment. The chariot had carried them across the desert to Lybaras in a single day, the undead horses never flagging or slowing. Now the pale walls of the City of Asaph rose before them, and the army that laid siege to it as well.

The latter hadn’t been a surprise, but that didn’t make the prospect of crashing through the numberless hordes of walking corpses any more tolerable. But the sun was beginning to dip, and there was only a single brief night between him and an untimely and altogether unfair death. ‘Any chance of putting on a bit of speed?’ Felix asked. He fought to keep his voice calm. They’d heard the sounds of the battle from miles away, and seen the cloud of dust thrown up by the two opposing armies.

The battle had, to all appearances, been going on for several hours, and bodies littered the wide expanse of sandy ground before the city walls, or lay in twitching heaps. Broken skeletons pulled themselves across the ground towards crippled zombies. Undead horsemen clashed in whirling duels and scaly monsters, their hides sloughing from them as they moved, tore at unmoving phalanxes of tomb-guard and were peppered with arrows from the walls.

‘They’re going as fast as they can,’ Zabbai said. ‘They’re already losing their vigour. We’re too far from the crater, and those who pulled them from death.’ Snapping the reins, Zabbai urged the skeletal horses on. Felix could see that their bones were trembling in their traces, and starting to pull away from one another.

The army of the undead spread out ahead of them, moving towards the pale walls of Lybaras with single-minded intent. The sun overhead was blotted out by a swirling cloud of bats, which seemed to stretch from the mountains to the coast. He could also see the fleet that approached the city from the Bitter Sea, the tattered sails of the shattered ships rippling in a sorcerous breeze. Lybaras was under siege from all points – the land, the air and the water.

Gotrek hunched in the back of the chariot, his good eye blazing fiercely. ‘Slow down, blast you,’ he snarled. ‘Let me off here! My axe grows thirsty.’

‘No, don’t slow down,’ Felix said. If they did, the horses might fall apart, and then where would they be?

‘Don’t be so cowardly, manling. You have a full night before you die,’ Gotrek blustered, glaring at Felix. ‘The enemy is right there, and I’m getting itchy to crack some skulls.’

Zabbai leaned forward and cracked the reins again. The horses were swaying and skidding. ‘You will have all of the battle you can stomach soon enough, Doom-Seeker,’ she said. ‘The only way to reach the gates of Lybaras is through the ranks of the enemy.’

‘Of course it is,’ Felix said, holding tight to the side of the chariot. They were moving so fast that he’d nearly been slung from it more than once as it rattled over the rocky terrain. He looked at his wrist. The eyes of the asp bracelet seemed to glare up at him. He looked up at the bat-choked sky, wondering how much time he had left. Only hours, at most, he suspected, and likely not even that. When did the day begin, for Nehekharans? Sun-up, or dawn’s first light, or even earlier?

The chariot struck the rearmost lines of the undead horde like a thunderbolt. The skeletal horses trampled and smashed the zombies heedlessly, and they shed pieces of themselves in the process. Felix whispered a prayer to any god who might be listening that they’d hold together a bit longer. Corpses were sent flying. Dead men spun over their heads, to crash down in the dust of their passage. Gotrek bellowed cheerfully and shook his axe. Felix gritted his teeth and hunched forward, trying to avoid the bits of dead flesh and broken bone that pelted them.

The chariot carved a swathe through the close-packed ranks of the dead, careening towards the front lines of the host. A horse lost most of its leg and fell, shattering into pieces. The chariot slewed wildly as the remaining horses took up the slack. ‘There,’ Zabbai said, pointing. The massive gates of the tomb-city rose up before them. They were huge edifices of bronze and iron, and covered in the shapes of thousands of serpents, all of which seemed to be moving and squirming in the dust and clamour of war.

Felix’s heart leapt at the sight. They were almost clear of the horde. A roar caught his attention. A carnosaur, long dead and with its bones shot through with broken roots and dried moss, loped alongside them. A vampire crouched on its back, a javelin in one hand and a shield in the other. She screamed and the carnosaur leaned towards the chariot, its fleshless jaws snapping shut on the head of one of the horses.

The carnosaur jerked its head and tore the horse from its traces. The chariot was upended and wrenched into the air, but only for a moment. The magic that held the remaining horses together finally gave out and they crumbled in mid-flight. Felix hit the ground before the chariot. He rolled aside as it smashed down. He’d avoided being crushed only by a hair’s-breadth. He looked up and saw the carnosaur’s foot dropping towards him, and he rolled back the other way. The taloned foot thudded down. Felix leapt to his feet, sword in hand. He slashed out instinctively, ripping a gouge in the dead beast’s leg. It snapped at him, catching his cloak and tearing a strip from it as he ducked aside.

‘Ho, beast,’ Gotrek shouted, hefting a broken chunk of chariot. As the carnosaur turned towards the Slayer, Gotrek leapt, and pierced the beast’s shrivelled eye, and the rotten brain behind it, with the makeshift spear. Such was the force of his blow that the carnosaur was knocked sideways, and it fell onto its side. The vampire sprang from her perch as her mount fell, and as she dropped to the ground she sent her javelin flying towards Gotrek.

Felix lashed out, chopping the missile in half. Gotrek paused only to give him a nod of either acknowledgement or reproach, before bounding past, his axe held aloft. The vampire hastily interposed her shield as Gotrek’s axe dropped towards her. The shield buckled and split, and the vampire was sent sprawling. She was on her feet a moment later, a sword in her hand. But before she could move to meet Gotrek, Zabbai’s axe looped out and sent her head spinning into the depths of the zombie horde clustered about them. Gotrek cursed as the headless body toppled at his feet. ‘That one was mine,’ he said.

‘There are plenty more to choose from,’ Zabbai said. Felix looked around. Zombies closed in around them. Gotrek raised his axe. He glanced at Felix.

‘Get to the gates, manling. I’ll buy you what time I can.’

‘Gotrek, I–’ Felix began. Zabbai grabbed his shoulder.

‘There is no time, Felix. Go!’

Together, the two of them raced towards the gates, which were closed. He had no breath to waste on asking how they were planning on getting in. On top of the gatehouse and walls, skeleton archers and spearmen waited to repel attackers with silent discipline. As Felix ran, he saw zombies bearing scaling ladders, made from the twitching bones of animals and men, approaching the walls. There were siege towers as well, mounted on the slumped, staggering carcasses of great lizards, and battering rams made from the skeletons of immense serpents, entwined about the trunks of trees. For a moment, Felix feared they’d be caught between the advancing army and the wall, but pushed the thought aside as catapults and archers fired from the walls, and the front rank of the besiegers was scythed away.

Behind them, Gotrek had clambered on top of the now twice-dead carnosaur, and was busy spewing profanities and invitations to the zombies lurching towards him. Without the vampire to direct them, the corpses homed in on the loudest, nearest target. Gotrek waited for them with a wide, gap-toothed grin on his ugly face. The dead began to swarm up the carcass of the great lizard and Gotrek tore the head from the first of them to get close.

But before the rest could reach Gotrek, the sands about the carnosaur’s carcass ruptured as two heavy shapes rose from concealing trenches, amidst the zombie horde. Their sudden appearance sent sand and corpses flying in all directions. Their gigantic forms were covered in bones and mortuary ornamentation, and their heads had been carved to resemble large skulls. They were hewn from emerald and stone, and wore great crested helmets, breastplates, vambraces and ornamental greaves, all lavishly decorated and engraved with intricate scenes and scrawling blocks of Nehekharan script. Each bore a mighty two-handed sword, fully the height of a man, and as thick across as Gotrek himself.

Those swords took a dreadful toll on the ranks of zombies, including those scrambling towards Gotrek. The Slayer gave vent to a howl of frustration as his opponents were scythed away, like chaff on the wind. ‘Behold,’ Zabbai said, ‘the Emerald Sentinels of Lybaras, greatest of the war statuary of Nehekhara, and mightiest of the necrolith colossi!’

Felix could only watch in awe as the two gigantic constructs launched an unstoppable assault into the heart of the enemy army. Dozens of zombies were crushed, chopped or hurled into the air by every sweep of the massive blades. Undead saurians hurled themselves at this new foe, seeking to grapple with them. Gotrek dropped from the carnosaur’s carcass and trotted towards Felix, kicking severed heads and limbs out of his way petulantly. ‘They’re killing all my zombies,’ he snarled, gesturing at the stone warriors.

‘There’ll be more, I’m certain,’ Felix said.

Gotrek spat and gestured to the sword in Felix’s hands. ‘Let’s get that toy back to its owner. The sooner we do that, the sooner I can find the doom she promised me,’ he said, glaring longingly at the path of destruction left behind by the two constructs.

‘And the sooner I can get this blasted thing off my arm,’ Felix said. ‘Of course, there’s still the question of how we get in.’

‘There is no question. If the Emerald Sentinels have emerged, then a sortie is imminent. All we have to do is reach the gates as they open,’ Zabbai said.

As they hurried towards the gates, the ground began to tremble beneath their feet. Ahead of them, the ancient portal began to open and Felix saw that Zabbai had been correct. Massive hinges screamed in protest as the heavy bronze doors spread apart. Felix stumbled to a halt as he caught sight of the two enormous ushabti that were responsible for the movement of the gates.

As the giant statues pushed the gates open to their fullest, a legion of skeletal horsemen galloped through. Gotrek pulled Felix aside as the riders thundered past in a loose column, to join the necrolith colossi in their battle. ‘Careful, manling, you have a bad habit of almost getting run over by horses,’ Gotrek said.

The column split into two lines, which travelled in opposite directions, racing the length of the approaching horde. The horsemen carried bows rather than spears, and as Felix and Zabbai watched, the horse-archers began to fire as they galloped down the line of zombies, peppering the horde with arrows. The approaching mass of zombies hesitated as the front ranks disintegrated and those behind were forced to clamber over their fellows, or be crushed by the colossi. Felix knew it wouldn’t stop them, but it had slowed them considerably.

Zabbai hurried Felix through the gates. ‘Come, we must find the High Queen,’ she said. Skeletons marched past them out of the gates, shields held aloft, and spears levelled. To Felix, it looked as if the might of Lybaras had been mobilised in its entirety. The avenue beyond the gate was packed with rank upon rank of skeletons, most armed with shields and spears, but some archers as well. He realised that the horse-archers had been merely to ensure that the legions arrayed before him had room to take up position before the walls.

Behind the infantry, row upon row of chariots rolled forward, accompanied by more skeletal horseman, and loping ushabti, as well as the sinister shapes of the necropolis knights. Khalida, it seemed, had no intention of weathering a siege. In the lead chariot, Felix caught sight of Khalida. She stood straight-backed, her staff by her side and a khopesh in her hand. Her tomb-guard swarmed around her. Felix saw no sign of Djubti, and he hoped that Khalida could remove the asp without the liche-priest’s help.

‘You have returned,’ Khalida said when she caught sight of them. She ordered her chariot to a halt, and the others followed suit. ‘As Asaph foretold,’ she continued.

Zabbai pushed Felix forwards. ‘My queen, we have travelled far, and braved many dangers, and we have reclaimed that which was stolen from you,’ she intoned.

Khalida’s glowing gaze settled on Felix. ‘Give me the sword.’

He handed it over quickly, eager to be rid of it. ‘What about this?’ he said, gesturing to the asp bracelet. Khalida did not look at him.

‘What about it?’ She looked at Gotrek. ‘I require your service for one day more, Doom-Seeker. The death I promised you encircles us. I would pit the weight of your wyrd against the ambition of my enemy.’

Gotrek’s jaw thrust out stubbornly. ‘And the manling?’ he asked.

‘Fight and he shall live,’ Khalida said. ‘Or die, as the gods will.’

‘But – but, we brought you the sword!’ Felix protested.

‘As the gods willed, and now they will that you fight,’ Khalida said.

‘I’ll fight without the poison!’ Felix protested. He clawed at the bracelet. ‘Get this thing off me!’ He looked around helplessly, and then slumped when he saw no help forthcoming.

Khalida looked at him. ‘You still have a night yet, man of the wild lands. And come the morning, we shall either be victorious or enfolded in oblivion’s bower. Fight hard, and live. Or run and die. Either way, the will of Asaph shall be done.’

‘The manling has never run,’ Gotrek snapped. ‘And aye, I’ll fight for you. You promised me a doom, and I’ll collect it from you, Serpent Queen.’

‘So I did, Doom-Seeker,’ Khalida said softly. ‘Before this battle is done, you may yet find it, if Asaph so wills.’

‘Asaph means nothing to me,’ Gotrek growled. ‘If she would deny me a doom, she’ll have to take it up with Grimnir.’

‘This is the Doom-Seeker, then?’ Rhupesh said, looking down at Gotrek. ‘He is quite tiny.’

‘Come down here and say that,’ Gotrek snapped, flicking blood out of his beard.

Rhupesh leapt down from the chariot and stalked towards Gotrek. They were of a similar size, though Felix judged that, were Rhupesh alive, Gotrek would have proven the heavier. The tomb-king bumped his ribcage against Gotrek’s barrel chest and said, ‘Tiny I called thee, and tiny thou art.’

Gotrek leaned forward. ‘You speak hard words, for a dead man.’

‘I am no man. I am a king,’ Rhupesh barked. The two were almost nose to nose.

‘And I am a Slayer,’ Gotrek growled.

Felix looked back and forth between them. He leaned towards Zabbai. ‘He’s – ah – he’s quite short, for a king. And broad,’ he said hesitantly.

‘He is the Son of the Ox and Asp,’ Zabbai said. ‘He was found in a basket of rushes, delivered to Lybaras as a gift of the gods.’

‘Right, right, but his general shape is…’ Felix trailed off.

‘The weight of his divine strength has but reduced his stature.’

‘Are you sure?’ Felix asked, wondering how to phrase the question he dearly wanted to ask. Before he could, however, Khalida thumped the floor of her chariot with her staff.

‘Cease, Rhupesh,’ she said. ‘We ride to war already. There is no need to start a second here.’ She looked at Zabbai. ‘Take the Adder Legion and Harkhaty’s regiment,’ she gestured to one of the nearby tomb-guard, who saluted stiffly, ‘to the Gate of Salt and Trade. The enemy has entered the harbour. They seek to enter the city from the seaward side, likely so that they might throw open the gates to Nitocris’s host. Throw them back into the sea, my herald.’ She gestured and her chariot-driver snapped the reins. The chariot rumbled past. Felix was forced to scramble aside. Rhupesh’s chariot followed suit, and the column marched on, out of the gates to meet the enemy.

‘I’m going to die, aren’t I?’ Felix said, to no one in particular. He reached into his belt pouch and filched out a bit of dried meat. It was all that remained of the supplies they’d taken on their journey into the jungle. He gnawed on it hungrily.

‘Probably,’ Gotrek said, slapping him on the back and nearly causing him to choke on the food. ‘Look at it this way, manling – at least you’re in the right place for it.’

‘That’s not comforting, Gotrek,’ Felix said.

‘I wasn’t trying to comfort you,’ Gotrek said. He spat on the hem of Felix’s cloak and used it to wipe rotting flesh from the blade of his axe. ‘Still got your notebook with you, then?’ he continued, as they fell in beside Zabbai.

Felix touched his chest, and felt the square of leather and pages beneath his chainmail. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘why?’

‘No reason,’ Gotrek said, letting his axe rest on his shoulder. ‘If you die, I’ll need to retrieve it. For your replacement, I mean.’

‘My replacement,’ Felix said dully.

‘Well you can’t expect me to go on without a Rememberer, manling,’ Gotrek said with a sniff. ‘That isn’t how it works.’

‘No, no I suppose not,’ Felix said.

Gotrek was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘It’d be a shame, mind.’

‘Would it?’

‘Be a waste, really,’ Gotrek said, not looking at him, ‘all those scribbles you’ve left scattered across the world. Be a shame to have to leave those out of my death-saga.’

‘Yes, it would,’ Felix said, smiling slightly.

‘If you die, my story won’t have as much – what’d you call it – colour? If my doom is to be worthy of a saga, it must have the proper context.’

‘Oh yes, certainly,’ Felix said.

‘Context, manling, is the mortar of legend,’ Gotrek said piously.

‘So I’ve heard,’ Felix said.

‘Dwarf saying, that, very old, very traditional,’ Gotrek added.

‘I’m sure.’

‘Are you laughing at me, manling?’

‘No, Gotrek. I’m merely enthused by the prospect of the coming battle,’ Felix said, not looking at the Slayer. Gotrek eyed him suspiciously for a moment, and then made to slap him on the shoulder. However, the expected blow did not fall. Instead, he gently patted Felix’s arm.

‘Aye, manling, me too,’ Gotrek said. ‘Try not to die, will you?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Felix said.

Zabbai led them through the city, along the bottom of the wall, until they reached the edge of the city closest to the sea. A group of ushabti were waiting for them. Felix could hear the crash of waves on the other side of the wall.

‘Hail and well met, Daughter of the Spear, Son of the Stone and Man of the Uncivilised Tribes,’ one of the ushabti boomed. It struck the ground with the haft of its weapon. Its fellows followed suit. ‘Have you come to shed blood and share glory with the proud Sons of Asaph?’

‘Hail and well met, O Kharnak, Mighty Sentinel of the White Tower,’ Zabbai said. She raised her axe in greeting. ‘We have come to see off those who would threaten the Gate of Salt and Trade.’ Felix realised that the immense construct was the same one that had been guarding Khalida’s palace when he and Gotrek had first arrived. Zabbai gestured to the warriors that Khalida had sent with them. ‘We bring men.’

‘And a Slayer,’ Gotrek growled.

‘A plan would be preferable, Child of the High Peaks,’ Kharnak said, jaws sagging in what Felix hoped was a smile. ‘We are mighty, but few. Our enemy shall slip past us, like the vermin they are.’

‘None shall get past us, Hero of Ancient Days,’ Zabbai said. ‘We must meet them before they reach the gates, however.’

‘Thy cunning is renowned, Bride of the Axe,’ Kharnak said. He gestured, and the great seaward gates began to open, hauled inwards by gangs of skeletons, who held the massive chains attached to the heavy circular plates set into the centre of each door.

Corroded hinges squealed, and Felix grimaced. As the gate opened, the smell of the Bitter Sea billowed through and across them. Felix held his cloak up to his face to hide his nose and mouth. The sea had acquired its name honestly. It smelt faintly of sulphur. Gotrek slapped the sides of his barrel chest and inhaled loudly.

‘Smell that, manling? It smells like the forges of Barak Varr.’ Gotrek gestured, as if to pull more of the stench into his flared nostrils.

‘Yes, just like that,’ Felix gagged. The Bitter Sea was a dark expanse, stretching across the horizon and back as far as the eye could see. Felix could see the dark ridges of distant shores, obscured by the bitter mist that rolled across the waters.

‘The enemy approaches, Child of the South. Assemble thy forces. We stand ready for your command,’ Kharnak rumbled. Zabbai ordered the archers forward into the archway of the gate. Felix looked out at a scene of destruction.

Out in the harbour, the rotting hulks had smashed through the galleys that had mobilised to block the mouth of the harbour, and, carried forwards by stinking winds conjured by the vampires standing on the decks of the lead ships, they plunged aground. The ancient docks and quays of Lybaras, which had once played host to vessels from a thousand and one ports, were shattered and broken by the heaving, zombie-infested vessels. Ambulatory corpses tumbled from the decks or plunged through the holes in the hulls, and waded ashore, clutching rusty weapons, or reaching out with empty, rotting hands. Undead sea-beasts came with them, things with scales, fins and too many legs, dredged from the mud and silt of the ocean’s bottom and brought to the surface by the dark magics of the besiegers.

Felix watched in horror as the harbour-guard were pulled down by the sheer mass of corpses. The skeletal warriors fought, but they were as rocks in a rushing stream, and were overwhelmed with rapidity. Vampires leapt across the heads and shoulders of the stumbling dead, using the zombies as an undulating walkway right to the harbour gates of the city. Felix’s horror crystallised as he realised that the vampires, led by one clad in a ratty and outsize Sartosian captain’s coat, headed right for him. He glanced at Zabbai, who motioned the archers to ready themselves to fire. A servant scuttled down the line with a lit taper clutched in one fleshless hand, touching it to each arrowhead.

‘Those corpses look too damp to set fire to,’ he said doubtfully.

‘The arrows aren’t for the corpses,’ Zabbai said. She roared out a command. The fire-arrows were loosed, and the archers immediately retreated back through the gates, replaced by a line of a hundred tomb-guards wielding heavy shields and halberds, and marching in lock-step. The armoured skeletons filled the harbour gates from hinge to post. Zabbai gently pushed Felix back behind the line of shields. The burning volley struck the beached vessels. The hulks caught quickly, despite their state. In moments, an inferno blazed behind the approaching horde. Zabbai raised her axe again, and brought it down. The tomb-guard began to march. They formed a moving shield-wall, and crashed into the front rank of zombies. Instead of fighting them, however, they locked shields and crossed halberds, creating an unbreakable bulwark.

‘Ha! That’s the way,’ Gotrek roared. ‘That’s the dwarf way. Maybe you humans did learn some of what we taught you.’ Slowly but steadily, the tomb-guard began to push the clawing, groaning dead back. The vampires, however, were a different matter. They used the tomb-guard as they had the zombies, springing onto their shoulders and heads and leaping off. The one in the coat gave a screech and she and her companions loped forwards.

Zabbai stepped forward. ‘We must keep them from getting into the city,’ she said.

‘Agreed,’ Felix said. ‘How about we step back inside and close the gates?’

‘That’s no fun,’ Zabbai said, and sprinted to meet the vampires. Felix sighed and looked at Gotrek.

The Slayer grinned. ‘I like her, manling. If she were several centuries younger and still breathing, I’d pledge your troth for you myself.’ He gestured and they started after Zabbai. Behind them, Felix could hear the ushabti beginning to move as well, with a sound like stone grinding on stone.

‘Oh no, you remember what happened last time you arranged a marriage for me?’

Gotrek frowned. ‘I didn’t know they were filthy Moot-scum. They lied to me.’

‘You didn’t ask.’ Felix said. Zabbai had already engaged the lead vampire. The ushabti had engaged the others, driving the vampires back with powerful sweeps from their halberds. The constructs fought with an unearthly grace, almost equal to that of their undead opponents, and the unliving and the undead whirled about in a dance of blades that Felix found almost impossible to follow.

‘They hoodwinked me. Deceitful little beasts,’ Gotrek said, and spat. ‘I hate halflings.’ He lifted his axe and smashed aside a blow that would’ve split his skull, crown to teeth. The vampire staggered, off balance, and Felix smoothly spitted her with Karaghul. As she fell, Gotrek’s axe severed her head. The dwarf kicked it aside and said, ‘I hate blood-suckers more, though.’

‘Well, feel free to work out your frustrations,’ Felix said.

‘Thank you, manling, I think I will,’ Gotrek said. He raised his axe and bellowed a war-cry in Khazalid. Then he charged towards the closest vampire. A moment later, the battle was joined. Zombies stumbled past the shield-wall, and things devolved into a confused melee of bone against dead flesh.

Felix sliced the head from a zombie, and looked for Gotrek. The battle heaved back and forth. The burning ships in the harbour continued to disgorge dead men, who splashed to shore and joined the battle. While the Nehekharans had the advantage of skill, their enemy was seemingly numberless.

He caught sight of the Slayer wrenching his axe out of the chest of a vampire. The woman screeched and clawed at Gotrek’s arm as he let the axe fall again, removing her head. He turned and punched a fist through a zombie, shattering its spine. Felix was about to join the Slayer, when he saw Zabbai. The Herald of Lybaras was surrounded by several vampires, and she was isolated from any aid her warriors of the ushabti might have given. As Felix watched, blades chopped into her torso and shoulders. Zabbai was fast, but her opponents were equally swift, and the Herald had taken more than her share of knocks recently. Zabbai staggered. Her axe snapped out, beheading one of the vampires, but the others were on her in an instant, like jackals pulling down a wounded lioness.

Felix raced towards them. Zabbai had been hurt time and again protecting him. He couldn’t let her fall now. Felix drove Karaghul through the back of one of the vampires, eliciting a shriek of agony. ‘Gotrek,’ he shouted, ‘help me!’

He didn’t wait to see whether or not the Slayer had heard him. He dragged his blade free and brought it around to block a blow from another vampire. The creature snarled and shoved him back. Before she could attack, Gotrek’s axe sank into her belly, lifting her off her feet. Felix whirled to see Zabbai fall beneath the lightning-quick blows of the vampire in the coat. She collapsed and the vampire’s sword flashed, chopping through the haft of her axe and rendering her weapon useless.

Felix raced towards them, knowing even as he did so that he wouldn’t reach them in time. He could hear Gotrek roaring and cursing in his wake. Then the ushabti called Kharnak was there. A stone fist shot forward, catching the vampire a blow on the back of the head, hurling her towards the open gates. The vampire hit the ground, rolled to her feet and then vanished into the city.

Felix sank to his knees beside Zabbai, as did Kharnak. ‘Do you yet persist, Daughter of the Spear?’ the statue rumbled. From what Felix could see, there was no reason she should. Zabbai’s mummified form was covered in bloodless wounds and where her bones were visible through her funerary wrappings, they were notched and splintered.

‘Zabbai,’ he said, lifting her head. She grabbed his hand.

‘I still live,’ she wheezed. ‘But my fight is over. I am broken inside. One of them got into the city. She will attempt to open the gates to the enemy. I cannot pursue her. You must do so, Felix. You must catch her, and you must take my place at my queen’s side.’

Gotrek came up behind Felix. ‘Aye, we’ll catch her, crow-bait. You rest easy,’ the Slayer said. ‘Come on, manling,’ he continued, stumping towards the open gate. Felix looked up at Kharnak.

‘Take care of her,’ he said, as he rose to his feet. Then, without a backward glance, he ran after Gotrek.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Gotrek and Felix pursued the vampire through the empty, moonlit streets of Lybaras in silence. The Slayer, despite the wounds that covered his tattooed frame, seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of energy. Felix felt exhaustion gnawing at the edges of his consciousness, but he shook it off with grim determination. There would be time to sleep later, if he wasn’t dead.

He couldn’t say what the vampire hoped to accomplish. Opening the gates was all well and good, but it wasn’t as if the enemy could occupy the city. Not with Khalida’s forces ahead of them. Then, given the sheer number of rotting corpses pressing against the defenders outside the walls, it wasn’t inconceivable that they could simply force their way in. Unless, of course, there was already a group waiting outside, ready to take advantage of the open gate. Felix imagined the catapults on the walls being turned on the city, or, worse, on Khalida’s forces outside its walls.

They followed the same route back that Zabbai had taken to lead them to the seaward gate. The city was as silent as ever, and as they ran, Felix wondered how many more generations of warriors waited for Khalida’s silent command to rise from their slumber and march into battle. He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out. They moved along the base of the wall, and Felix’s ears throbbed with the clamour of battle. The walls occasionally shuddered with impacts from the enemy’s siege weapons.

Overhead, bats and worse things – undead flying reptiles, birds and shrieking conglomerations of bat and beast – attacked the walls. Occasionally, one would plummet down inside the walls, riddled with arrows. More often, a skeleton warrior would be plucked from the wall and sent hurtling to the ground. Some would begin to repair themselves almost immediately, while others would lie in a heap, shattered beyond their own ability to pull themselves together.

When they reached the gate, its guardians were already lying in broken piles, and the vampire stood before the gates, her hands pressed to the ancient metal portcullis. The skeleton warriors on the walls were occupied fighting off the zombies clambering up scaling ladders and the swirling swarms of bats, and had no attention to spare for one lone vampire. He shared a look with Gotrek, and the Slayer nodded and put on a burst of speed.

As they raced towards the vampire, she spat a stream of guttural syllables and the air around her became charged with a bitter energy. As Felix drew closer, he saw the metal of the gates grow rusty and begin to flake away, as if millennia of neglect had passed in mere moments. Even as the vampire whirled to face them, the gates began to collapse with a bone-rattling roar of cracking stone and tearing metal. A wave of dust washed over them, momentarily hiding the vampire from sight.

Felix blinked, trying to clear his eyes. When he could see again, the first thing he saw was the tip of a sword darting towards his face. Gotrek shoved him aside and met the blow with his axe. The bit of his axe split the sword blade in two and continued on into the shoulder of its wielder. The vampire screeched and fell. Gotrek tore the blade loose and ended her cries a moment later.

‘We were too late,’ Felix coughed.

‘Then we’ll just have to make up for it. On your feet, manling,’ Gotrek growled. Dozens of grey shapes loped through the remains of the gate, howling and snarling. Felix scrambled to his feet as the first of the ghouls reached them. It was these creatures that the vampire had been intending to let in. Gotrek struck the corpse-eaters like a bolt from the blue, his axe wreaking red havoc amongst them. Felix followed suit, and soon, most of the ghouls were scrambling away from them, wailing in fear. Some had made it into the city, but he and Gotrek had blunted the attack.

‘After them,’ Gotrek said. He bounded in pursuit of the fleeing ghouls, and his axe left several of the corpse-eaters lolling dead in his wake. Felix followed more slowly. Gotrek had caught up with the ghouls, who’d crashed into others of their kind still intent on entering the city, in the centre of the arch of the gate, and he tore through the lot of them with gleeful abandon. Felix looked past the slaughter towards the battle, which showed no signs of ending anytime soon.

Chariots rumbled past the gate, and the tomb-kings mounted in them sent arrows or javelins hurtling into the mass of enemy dead that staggered forward stubbornly. Neither army could be broken in the conventional way. It was a slugging match, with two fighters who would neither retreat nor give up pounding away at one another beneath the silver glare of the moon. At any other time, Felix might have felt some small measure of fear, but now he simply felt numb. Like the battle they’d witnessed in the crater, the scene before him seemed as if it could continue for an eternity.

The head of a ghoul, a surprised expression on its face, bounced past him. He looked over to see Gotrek kicking bodies aside. Those ghouls he hadn’t managed to butcher were fleeing quickly, their lanky shapes vanishing into the fog of war. ‘We should get out there,’ Felix said. Gotrek looked at him in something that might have been shock. Before the Slayer could say anything, Felix said, ‘We promised Zabbai we’d protect Khalida.’ He pointed with his sword. ‘I can see her standard.’

Gotrek nodded brusquely, and he and Felix stepped through the open gate. The battle heaved back and forth on all sides. Zombies staggered towards the open gate on awkward limbs, and skeletal horsemen, clad in the ragged remnants of armour and silk robes, swept after them. Felix hesitated, but he knew there was nothing they could do to stop them. Holding the gate would serve no purpose, and wouldn’t be possible – not with only the two of them. He could only hope that Khalida had foreseen and planned for such an eventuality. The sky was thick with bats and the decayed hulks of carrion, and dead men battled all around them. They were forced to defend themselves more than once as they fought their way towards the centre of the battlefield, where Khalida’s standard swayed above the battle.

For a moment, the tide of battle ebbed, and Felix saw past the struggling corpses, to where Khalida’s chariot raced through the enemy ranks, crushing zombies beneath its wheels. Then, from above them, a monstrous cry echoed down. Felix felt his blood turn to water in his veins and he looked up. A monstrous bat, the size of a dragon, dropped towards the battlefield from the sky, and on its back was an armoured figure he knew could only be the enemy leader, the creature who claimed the title of Serpent Queen for herself.

‘Terrorgheist,’ Gotrek spat. ‘Trust a blood-sucker to pick one of those for a mount.’

The terrorgheist landed with a crash atop Khalida’s chariot, smashing the bone-horses to flinders. The massive beast’s jaws closed around the head and shoulders of Khalida’s driver with a crunch as it snapped the skeleton up and flung it aside. Khalida rolled free of the wreckage and drove her staff into the monster’s snout, causing it to rear back. A vast, tattered wing snapped out, forcing Khalida to leap back. The edges of the wing tore across her belly, ripping ancient wrappings and scattering incense and dried flesh across the sands. Khalida retreated, clutching her stomach.

‘Gotrek, we have to help her,’ Felix said.

‘Help her if you wish, manling,’ Gotrek said, his eye fixed on the terrorgheist. ‘But that oversized cave-squealer is mine.’ He charged, his axe held in both hands. But before the Slayer could get far, a shape slammed into him, staggering him. Felix stopped as he recognized Steyr – the vampire was attacking Gotrek so quickly that he appeared to be coming at the dwarf from every direction at once. Gotrek roared and spun in place, his axe licking out and just missing the vampire, who skidded back in a cloud of dust, before lunging forward again. Before his blade could reach Gotrek, Felix managed to interpose Karaghul. Steyr snarled and his head shot forward to connect with Felix’s, staggering him. With his ears ringing and his vision blurred by the pain ricocheting through his skull, Felix stumbled back. Steyr followed him.

‘You killed my sister,’ he hissed, ‘you and that damned dwarf.’

‘Aye, and I’ll send you to join her directly, blood-sucker,’ Gotrek roared. His axe nearly took off Steyr’s sword arm, but the vampire hopped back with lightning alacrity. Steyr retreated before them.

‘Maybe so,’ the vampire hissed, ‘but not before Queen Nitocris kills the corpse-woman.’ He lunged, too quickly for the eye to follow, and his blade licked across Gotrek’s bicep and shoulder, eliciting a growl from the Slayer. Steyr leapt over the Slayer and his blade sang out, connecting with Karaghul. Felix reeled from the power of the blow. Steyr seemed fully capable of occupying him and Gotrek, which was disconcerting, to say the least.

‘He’s right, Gotrek,’ Felix said.

‘No he’s not,’ Gotrek spat. ‘I’ll kill him directly, manling. I’m just taking my time.’

‘Take as much time as you need, master dwarf,’ Steyr said mockingly. He shot forwards, dust and sand curling away from him as his blade skidded off Gotrek’s axe and drew blood from the side of the dwarf’s head. Gotrek’s hand shot out and grabbed a handful of Steyr’s jerkin, and with a grunt he sent the vampire flying.

Felix took advantage of Steyr’s predicament, lunging to meet the vampire as he rose to his feet. Their blades met, and Felix twisted Karaghul so that the hilts locked. ‘Gotrek, go! Help Khalida! I’ll see to this varlet,’ he shouted. Gotrek hesitated, but only for a moment. The Slayer resumed his charge towards Nitocris and Khalida.

‘Varlet,’ Steyr said. ‘I find thy speech offensive and off-putting, Jaeger.’

‘Not as much as I find thy stench,’ Felix said, straining to hold Steyr’s blade pinned.

‘For a man who dislikes Tarradasch so much, you do like quoting him – The Loves of Ottokar and Myrmidia?’ Steyr said. He ripped his blade free of Felix’s, and nearly took off the latter’s leg in the process.

‘Barbenoire, the Bastard of Bretonnia, actually,’ Felix huffed, parrying a blow.

‘Ah, never liked that one,’ Steyr said. ‘Too simple, too linear… Where was the complexity?’ He launched a blow at Felix’s head. Felix jerked back, but not quickly enough, as the tip of the blade tore through his chain shirt, ripping it and scattering links. Felix staggered and instinctively pressed his hand to the bloody gouge in his chest. Steyr closed in. He knocked Felix from his feet with a casual, backhanded blow from his fist. ‘You killed my sister, Felix. You got my brothers killed. But I quite like you… Complexity, you see?’ He kicked Karaghul aside and planted his foot on Felix’s chest. ‘You’ve proved a villain, Jaeger, but a pitiable one, like Baron Trister, or poor Oswald. But we’re in the last act of this drama now, and the curtain is descending. Time to take your bow,’ he said, swinging his blade up.

‘Who told you that your sister was dead?’ Felix said hurriedly.

‘No one had to tell me.’ Steyr paused. ‘Why?’

Felix looked up at Steyr, his mind racing. His hand was hidden by the fold of his cloak. If he could reach the dagger on his belt, he might have a chance. He’d have to be quick, though. ‘She’s dead – but not,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t kill her!’ It was a lie, but he preferred to think of it as acting. Octavia hadn’t seemed particularly well-disposed to her vampiric allies, and neither had Steyr. Felix had seen it played out time and again – sides in a conflict were never as clear-cut as historians and playwrights liked to imply.

Steyr stared at him for a moment, and then an expression of understanding spread across his face. ‘Oh… Oh no,’ he said, stepping back. His eyes flickered from Felix to Nitocris. His lips peeled back from his teeth. ‘Damn her,’ he snarled. He forgot about Felix, and stepped towards the battle. Felix rolled to his feet, and his dagger sprang into his hand. He crashed into Steyr’s back, and rammed the point of the dagger up through a gap in the clasps of Steyr’s cuirass in search of his heart. Steyr screamed in shock, and bent forwards. Felix snaked an arm around his throat, and drove a knee into the small of his back, hauling him backwards, so that the blade pierced further. It skinned off bone and then, suddenly, black, cold blood gushed over his hand.

Steyr sank down, coughing. Felix twisted the blade, and, with a grunt, snapped off the hilt, leaving nothing save a sliver of steel extruding from the wound. He didn’t want Steyr extracting it. He tossed the hilt aside and staggered back, fumbling for Karaghul.

‘That damn knife. I keep forgetting you – ah – have it.’ Steyr stayed on his knees, clawing uselessly at his side. Blood welled up and poured down his cheeks as he tried to rise. ‘Right in the bloody heart as well. This is terribly embarrassing. Octavia was right – I make a piss-poor vampire.’ Felix recovered the templar blade and raised it up, for an executioner’s blow.

‘No,’ Felix said, breathing heavily, ‘Just your bad luck to run into someone who’s fought Mannfred von Carstein.’

‘Ha,’ Steyr hissed. ‘I would’ve liked to have heard that story.’ He looked up at Felix. ‘I wasn’t Barbenoire, was I?’

‘Ottokar, almost certainly,’ Felix said. Steyr gave a gurgling chuckle and bowed his head.

‘Lower the curtain,’ he said.

Karaghul fell, and Steyr’s head rolled free. Felix didn’t look at it as he stepped past the crumpled body. Gotrek had left a trail of hacked and pulverised zombies in his wake as he fought his way towards Nitocris and Khalida. The former had descended from her monstrous mount and had engaged Khalida blade to blade. Felix was puzzled to see that Khalida had dispensed with her khopesh and staff, and instead fought with the ancient ceremonial blade. Gotrek had engaged the terrorgheist, which snapped at him with its rancid, gore-encrusted maw. The Slayer avoided its snapping jaws and hacked at its neck with his axe. The giant bat-like creature shrieked and hopped awkwardly after Gotrek, stumping along on its folded wings and hind legs. Felix hesitated, torn between the two duels. He’d promised Zabbai that he and Gotrek would protect Khalida, but how to best do that?

His choice was made for him when he saw the terrorgheist swat Gotrek aside and turn its baleful gaze towards its mistress and her opponent. Felix raced to intercept the beast, hurdling a shattered chariot, and crushing the soft skull of a crippled zombie in his haste. Nitocris had manoeuvred Khalida so that the High Queen’s back was to the monster, which scrambled forward, bulling aside skeletons and zombies alike in its eagerness.

Felix sprang at the creature’s head, his sword piercing one of the gaping cavities in its flesh-denuded skull. The beast jerked to the side, and Felix held on for dear life as the creature’s sudden movement lifted him off his feet. ‘Good shot, manling!’ Gotrek roared. ‘Herd it towards me.’ Past the terrorgheist’s writhing limbs, he saw the Slayer charging forward, his body streaked with blood, dust and sand, but his enthusiasm undimmed. Gotrek laughed as he ran, his thick legs covering the distance between himself and the beast more quickly than Felix had thought possible. The terrorgheist saw the Slayer and its jaws opened. Felix felt the hairs on his neck and arms prickle, and he smelt something like the stink of a mass grave. Then a black sound tore from the beast and he saw something like a wave of molten frost wash over Gotrek. The runes on Gotrek’s axe blazed brighter than the sun for a moment, and then its edge was smashing down through the front of the terrorgheist’s skull.

Gotrek planted one boot on the terrorgheist’s head and his muscles bulged as he tore the axe free in a spray of rotten blood and slime. ‘Want to scream, do you? I’ll give you something to scream about!’ Gotrek frothed. His eyes were wide and his teeth were bared in a grimace of effort. He slammed the axe down again and again until the terrorgheist’s bloated body sagged, and its head had been reduced to a pulpy ruin. Gotrek wiped a splash of gore out of his eyes. He looked at Felix and spat, ‘Where’s the witch? I have a doom to collect.’

Before Felix could answer, the clash of blades drew their attention. Khalida and Nitocris spun and danced about one another, moving with the speed of the dead. Their blades connected and skidded away in a flash of sparks and a shriek of metal. Nitocris chopped down at Khalida’s head, and the High Queen threw up a hand to deflect the blow. Nitocris’s blade sent her hand spinning away. Nitocris leapt away from a slash that would have disembowelled her. She threw back her head and gave a shriek reminiscent of her mount. Felix turned and saw a number of her handmaidens speeding forward, racing through the battle, eyes fixed on the queen of Lybaras. ‘Gotrek,’ he said.

‘I see them,’ Gotrek said, ‘but I want the hag, not her servants.’ He moved towards Nitocris, eye glittering. ‘You hear me, hag? Gotrek is coming to collect his debt!’ He raised his axe and broke into a headlong charge. Felix followed suit, hoping to reach Khalida’s side before the other vampires reached them.

A vampire sped past Felix and lunged for Khalida, a spear digging for the High Queen’s head. Felix tackled Khalida and the spear missed her by inches. He rolled aside as the spear jabbed down between them. Khalida grabbed the haft, and her sword took the vampire’s hand off at the wrist. The woman reeled with a scream, and Felix caught her in the side. She fell, still screaming. One of her feet caught him in the hip, and he felt the bone grind. He staggered out of the way as Khalida finished what she had started, pinning the vampire’s head to the ground with the spear.

Gotrek, meanwhile, had got Nitocris’s notice. She didn’t seem puzzled by the presence of a dwarf on the battlefield, and she laughed as she writhed aside from Gotrek’s blows. She crashed into Gotrek and rolled across his shoulders, using the force of his blow against him. She dropped to her feet behind him and her sword kissed his back, drawing blood. Gotrek stumbled forwards, his eye wide in shock. He whirled. ‘You’re fast, hag,’ he growled, reaching over his shoulder and drawing back fingers red with his own blood.

‘And you’re strong,’ Nitocris said, licking a dollop of his blood from her blade.

Gotrek laughed and twirled his axe. ‘The question is, are you fast enough to kill me, woman?’ He spat blood and licked his lips. ‘Haven’t met one of you blood-suckers yet that is.’ He exposed his teeth and made a ‘come-hither’ gesture.

‘Are you strong enough to make it worth my while?’ Nitocris said, as they began to circle one another. ‘I haven’t yet met an opponent who is.’ She shot forwards. Sword scraped against axe. Gotrek laughed again and forced her back. They traded blows back and forth. Nitocris was the swifter, but Gotrek’s strength, incredible even by dwarf standards, was almost a match for hers.

Nearby, Felix ducked aside as a vampire pounced. Khalida smoothly spitted the creature, excising her heart with a flick of her wrist. Even one-handed the High Queen of Lybaras was deadly. ‘Your companion should hurry up and die, if that is what he craves,’ Khalida said, ‘for the Serpent Queen is coming to the end of her reign.’ She caught a second vampire’s wrist and gave the creature a boot to the belly. Felix quickly beheaded the vampire, as she bent double.

The High Queen didn’t appear concerned about the squalling blood-drinkers closing in on them from all sides. Every surviving vampire had been drawn to Nitocris’s cry, and they circled Khalida and Felix like jackals trying to bring down a wounded lioness. ‘I don’t think he’s in any particular hurry,’ Felix said, whipping his sword around to drive the vampires back. ‘He seems to be enjoying himself.’

And he did. Gotrek roared and cursed, but he smiled widely as he fought. The smile vanished when Nitocris leapt over a wild swing of his axe and landed on his shoulders. She reversed her blade, grabbed it in both hands, and plunged it down into Gotrek’s shoulder. A howl burst from the Slayer’s lips and his axe fell from his hand. Nitocris tore her blade loose and dropped off Gotrek as he sagged. The Slayer clamped one hand to the spurting wound, and sank to one knee. He drove his unwounded arm backwards in an attempt to knock Nitocris aside as she came for him again. She danced back out of reach and laughed.

‘Not fast enough,’ she said. She held up her blade and opened her mouth to catch the opalescent pearls of dwarf blood that rained down from the edge of the blade. She swept the blade out, spattering the ground with Gotrek’s blood. Gotrek growled wordlessly. Blood squeezed from between his clamped fingers. Felix stared in shock at the steadily pumping wound. He’d seen Gotrek hurt before. The Slayer accrued wounds like other men accrued debts. But this was, by far, the worst he’d seen in more years than he could recall. Not since the injuries Gotrek had suffered in Karak Dum had Felix seen him so pale.

He made to go to the Slayer, but Khalida stopped him. ‘Your part in this is done,’ she rasped. ‘Stand and watch.’

‘But–’

‘Stay where you are, manling,’ Gotrek croaked. He grabbed his axe and used it to lever himself to his feet. The Slayer looked at the High Queen, who inclined her head regally. Nitocris watched the exchange and clapped her hands together in glee. She spread her arms and looked around. All around them, the dead still fought in grim silence. How much of Nitocris’s army remained, Felix couldn’t say, but what was left was doing its single-minded best to continue the battle.

‘Is that it, queen of nothing?’ Nitocris said. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ She looked around. ‘This is what I have been waiting for?’ She extended her sword towards Khalida. ‘I have spent centuries preparing for this. Centuries scheming and wondering if victory was possible. Centuries yearning for the chance to match blades and fangs with the false serpent of Lybaras. Centuries not knowing if I would be worthy of travelling beyond the desert, to the lands of spice and honey.’ She swiped the air with her blade. ‘I could have beaten you by myself, with my handmaidens for an audience. I could have broken you across my knee the minute my queen charged me with the task!’ Her smile faded. ‘I lost so much time. Can you not even give me a challenge worthy of me? Can you not make this all mean something?’

‘What should it mean?’ Khalida asked. Her voice carried easily across the battlefield. She held up her sword. ‘Everything she told you is a lie, you know. Every whisper, every purr, every grand dream… All lies. She whispered the same things to me, as a girl. As she whispered them to others down through the millennia. Games within games, and she and I are the only players.’ She looked down the length of her blade at Nitocris, who was staring at her with an expression of incomprehension. ‘How many times has your mistress tried to take Lahmia from me, do you think?’

Nitocris said nothing.

‘One hundred and thirty-six times,’ Khalida said. Her voice was as remorseless as sand scraping stone. ‘One hundred and thirty-six of her followers have raised armies, fleets and beasts to hurl themselves against my walls. Sometimes they come north, sometimes east, or south. They come from the sea, and the sky and Great Desert, from the jungles and the mountains. They pour forth in a limitless tide and they are broken on my walls.’

She turned the blade, so that the thin ribbon of light now stretching across the horizon caught it. ‘And every time, she sends with them a token of her affection, one cousin to another. A lock of her hair, a book of poems by a philosopher of our acquaintance, the crown of Lahmia taken from her husband’s head, the amulet of Asaph stolen from my crypt, or… a sword she used to shed my blood. There is no magic in this thing. It is merely old steel, and badly cared for – still sharp, however. She stole it in order to let me know we had begun the old game again.’

The sky was still thick with bats, though the sun was beginning to rise. Felix grabbed his wrist. When the sun rose, the poison would enter his veins. But somehow, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was what was going on in front of him. ‘This is not my undoing,’ Khalida said, holding the sword up. ‘It is a gift from one player to another. A sign that she has not forgotten me, and to ensure that I do not forget her. In all the world, down through the long corridor of centuries, there has only been this game. And she has been my only opponent. You were right, before, on the walls, when you said you were a puppet. But not of fate… You are her puppet, her pawn, and this is her gambit.’ Khalida spun the blade with a swordswoman’s grace and planted it blade-first into the ground.

‘Worthy, you say,’ Khalida said, stepping back. ‘You are not worthy to fight me. Queens do not duel pawns.’ She gestured to Gotrek. ‘They let their servants deal with such things. Gotrek Gurnisson?’

‘Aye, High Queen?’ Gotrek said formally. He stood straight and with no sign of weakness from his still dripping wound. He took his bloody hand away and let it fall by his side.

‘Will you serve as my herald in this duel?’

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said, bowing shallowly.

Khalida folded her arms. ‘Dispose of this creature. The game is done, and her presence offends me.’

‘My pleasure,’ Gotrek said, turning towards Nitocris. He raised his axe. He tapped the haft against his wound. ‘You got lucky, hag. Let’s see if you can actually cut my throat this time, instead of just giving me a bit of a pinch.’

Nitocris had been silent as Khalida spoke. Now, her face twisted into an expression of bestial rage and she leapt towards Gotrek with a feral scream. Mockery was gone from her movements and her voice, leaving only a savage fury in its wake. As her sword connected with his axe, the world seemed to shudder to a halt. The sounds of battle faded around them, as if the eye of every dead thing were drawn towards the duel between Slayer and Serpent Queen.

Nitocris moved as swiftly as ever, but Gotrek’s speed had somehow increased. He moved faster than a being of his bulk ought to have been able to do. His rune-axe stopped every blow and laid light kisses on Nitocris’s limbs and torso in reply, drawing blood with every touch. The vampire did not slacken her pace. She spun about the Slayer like a dervish, striking at him from every direction, but Gotrek intercepted her again and again.

Finally, Nitocris leapt up over him, her sword swinging up to cave in his skull. Gotrek swung his axe out, and the vampire’s blade shattered into a hundred shining fragments. Nitocris hit the ground and rolled to her feet. She tossed aside the ruined blade and lunged for Gotrek, jaws wide in a mindless shriek.

Gotrek waited for her, face set in an expressionless mask. Then, when she was only inches away, he spun his axe to meet her rush. Blood stained the air, and Nitocris crashed down. Gotrek closed his eye and stood for a moment, axe extended, limbs trembling with exertion. Sweat covered him, and blood still pumped down from the wound in his shoulder. Then he lowered his arm and turned.

Nitocris had crawled to her knees, and she gripped her throat with both hands. Blood spurted between her fingers, and her eyes bulged, red, as she glared hatefully at Khalida. She rose awkwardly to her feet, took a step forwards, and then another. Blood sluiced down her hands and chest. Her mouth worked silently. Khalida let her come.

‘Herald,’ she said, simply, when Nitocris had come within arm’s-reach of her.

Gotrek reached up and grabbed Nitocris’s scalp. With a single, powerful jerk of his arm, he tore her head from her ruptured neck. Nitocris’s body refused to fall. Her bloody hands reached out, and knotted themselves in Khalida’s robes. In Gotrek’s grip, her jaws snapped soundlessly, as her eyes rolled in their sockets, blazing with fury. Then, the fire dimmed, and the eyelids sank down. The champing jaw slackened, and her body tottered and fell backwards. As it hit the ground, something very much like a vast sigh rippled through her army, and one by one, every dead thing that was not of Lybaras fell, bereft of life and will.

Gotrek extended Nitocris’s head to Khalida. She took it, brought its lips to hers, kissed them, and then tossed it aside. The vampire’s body began to smoulder as the sun began to rise. Felix looked at his arm and tensed, waiting for the sting of poison.

Nothing happened.

He looked up. Khalida was watching him, her head cocked to the side. ‘I don’t think it’s working,’ he croaked.

‘It hasn’t worked in four centuries,’ Djubti croaked from behind him. The liche-priest looked as tired as a dead man could, and leaned on his staff. Behind him came Rhupesh and Kharnak, the latter cradling Zabbai in his arms. Felix smiled as he saw her. The smile faded as Djubti continued. ‘Poison dries up quickly, after a few years.’

‘What?’ Felix said, not understanding.

Gotrek frowned, but not for long. He gave a loud guffaw. ‘Ha!’

‘What?’ Felix demanded.

Khalida reached towards him and tore the bracelet from his wrist before he could pull away. ‘I needed to ensure that the Doom-Seeker did as I bade.’

‘But-but you said…’ Felix began. ‘You lied!’

‘Yes,’ Khalida said. ‘I am queen. It is my prerogative to lie to barbarians, and to my enemies.’ She looked at Gotrek. ‘I could not trust you to do as I asked. So I had to ensure that the game was played the way I wished.’

‘But-but… you didn’t even need the sword!’ Felix said. ‘I almost died – we almost died!’ he shouted. Gotrek put a restraining hand on his arm.

‘Leave it, manling. We got a good fight out of it, at least,’ Gotrek said. He rubbed his wounded shoulder. ‘Not much of one, mind, but good enough.’

Before Felix could reply, drums thundered, and chariot wheels rattled. Felix turned, and saw that the horizon to the west of Lybaras, where the Devil’s Backbone stretched, was occupied by an army of the dead. Not zombies these, but skeletons clad in bronze, and bearing standards in the shapes of scorpions. Their approach had been hidden by the distraction of the battle.

The drums continued to roll, and as he watched, the newcomers lowered their spears, set their shields and began to advance. ‘Mahrak,’ Khalida said simply.

‘Are they here to help, or…’ Felix trailed off.

Khalida didn’t look at him. She watched the assembling legions. Behind them, the Lybaran forces began to form up, readying themselves to meet this new threat. They had just finished one war, but didn’t seem too bothered about starting another. He recalled Antar’s words about war being a game, and the interminable battle in the crater and shuddered. Was battle all that there was in these lands?

His heart sank as he considered it. It seemed that even if the poison had been nothing more than a ploy, he was still going to die. Khalida held up her remaining hand as Kharnak and the other ushabti stepped forwards, stopping them from racing towards the enemy. Behind them, the Emerald Sentinels stomped into position, and they too froze at Khalida’s command.

A trio of chariots rumbled out of the newcomers’ ranks and towards Lybaras. Felix shook his head as he recognized one of the riders. Gotrek laughed. ‘Look, manling. He survived after all.’

‘Yes, I see that,’ Felix said, as Antar descended from his chariot. The tomb-prince, like Zabbai, looked much the worse for wear from his travels. How he had managed to survive the Temple of Skulls and make it back to his city, Felix couldn’t say, but it was clear that it had taken a toll upon him. Antar was rattling worse than ever as he strode towards them, accompanied by his driver. The driver stepped forwards, as if to speak, when Antar shoved him aside.

‘Antar, Most Beloved of the Sun, Moon and Stars, sees that you have defeated the charnel rabble, O Queen of the Serpent’s Vengeance. He is pleased! Your victory is Antar’s victory, for it was he who helped you achieve it!’ He gestured towards the waiting army. ‘Antar thought you might need aid, and thus, he mustered the Scorpion Legions of Mahrak to come to fight at your side.’

‘Indeed, son of Mahrak, you did,’ Khalida said. ‘And Lybaras thanks you, and asks that, since our enemies have been routed, you take this army you have so thoughtfully brought and remove it from our demesnes.’

Antar cocked his head. ‘Ah. The Helpful Lion regrets that, having roused the Scorpion Kings of Mahrak, he must provide them with battle. If it be not with the enemies of Lybaras, then it must be with Lybaras itself. Such is the will of King Tharruk, who has himself come to witness the battle.’ He gestured back at a splendidly adorned chariot, and its regal rider. Antar looked at Khalida. ‘Of course, Antar did convince the king that, in lieu of open battle, a contest of champions would be a most fitting decider for the grievances between our cities.’

‘Oh?’ Khalida said. ‘And who fights for the City of Decay?’

‘Who else?’ Antar said, spreading his arms. ‘Antar, Mightiest and Most Magnificent of All Princes, Whose Glory is as the Sun, will fight for Mahrak. For is he not Mahrak Embodied? The question, mighty queen, is who shall fight for Lybaras? Your Herald is crippled,’ he said, gesturing to Zabbai.

Zabbai began to squirm in Kharnak’s grip. ‘Crippled, am I? Let me down, honoured one! I shall take his yattering jaw,’ she hissed.

‘Be at peace, Herald of Heralds,’ Khalida said. ‘You have done all I asked, most faithful one. Djubti shall make you whole, and you shall serve me anew. But our guests appear to be the impatient sort, and likely will not deign to await your restoration.’ She looked at Antar, who inclined his head, and waved disparagingly at Zabbai. The latter reached for him with a throttling motion, and Kharnak was forced to tighten his grip to keep the broken Herald from squirming out of his grip and going after the prince of Mahrak.

‘As you say, most puissant queen,’ Antar said, backing away from Zabbai, who filled the air with curses. ‘Though I would happily await the Herald’s pleasure, we are here now, and spears rattle and swords are raised. Battle! Battle calls to us! The gods watch and champions must clash! Yes? Yes! Antar is but the game-piece of fate, and he is burdened by glorious purpose!’

‘Then it seems that I require a temporary herald.’ Khalida looked at Gotrek. ‘Have you any wisdom to offer, Son of Stone?’

The Slayer was silent for a moment. Then he smiled and looked at Khalida. Felix looked back and forth between them, hoping that the next words out of Gotrek’s mouth weren’t going to be what he expected. ‘You didn’t give me the doom I was promised, but it’s not every day I get to kill a queen. I owe you for the fight, by my reckoning, High Queen of Lybaras. And I always pay my debts, one way or another,’ Gotrek said.

Khalida examined the Slayer. ‘You are not bound, Gotrek Gurnisson. You have done all I required. You are free to leave, to go where you wish.’

‘I always was,’ Gotrek said with a huff. ‘Aye, and I will, by and by. But this mouthy crow’s leavings and I have a fight to finish before I and the manling take our leave of your lands. A debt of honour stands to be settled, between the folk of Mahrak and mine.’ Gotrek grinned and looked past Antar, where King Tharruk watched from his chariot. ‘I want that hammer back, you sun-bleached oaf!’ he roared, shaking his axe.

‘Hammer?’ Felix blinked. ‘Oh, oh no, Gotrek, really?’

‘Of course, manling. The Hammer of Algrim! I bet that buzzard vomit has it on him,’ Gotrek said, waving his axe at the distant chariot. ‘One of them does, at any rate. Better to shave my beard than let an opportunity like this pass. I’ll silence this chattering numbskull,’ he hiked a thumb at Antar, ‘and I’ll return Algrim’s hammer to Karak Azul. That alone will make this trip worth it, doom or no.’ He looked at Khalida expectantly.

She examined him for a moment, and then inclined her head. ‘Will you lend me one final service, Gotrek Gurnisson, before you depart for the lands of the living?’

Gotrek grinned. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

Felix groaned.

‘Good!’ Antar barked. ‘It is our time come around at last, cheating monkey. Now shall Antar have his vengeance and he shall have King Alkharad’s as well! Antar shall await you between the armies! Come and die, one-eyed ape!’ He spun about and trotted away, still shouting and gesticulating.

‘This’ll be fun,’ Gotrek said, and slapped Felix on the back. Felix took in the enemy army and swallowed. It was massive. Drums crashed as Antar bellowed something to the troops who’d come with him. They raised a clattering cheer. Behind them, the Lybaran forces began to form up into organised lines. Zabbai inclined her head as he met her gaze. Djubti fussed about her, realigning her cracked bones and poking at her wrappings. She’d be up and around in no time. He was glad she’d survived. He realised that he would miss her, when all was said and done.

‘Cheer up, manling. I’m almost positive I won’t survive this one,’ Gotrek said cheerfully. He gave his axe an experimental swing. Felix looked at him.

‘Here’s hoping,’ he said.

Gotrek guffawed.

‘That’s the spirit!’ he said. Then, with a laugh, the Slayer hefted his axe and went to meet his waiting opponent, as Felix watched the rising sun, and thought of Tilea and sandy beaches.

LOST TALES

CHARNEL CONGRESS

Josh Reynolds

‘Sylvania. Its name stands out on a map like a pox-mark. It is a black boil that has been lanced again and again, yet never ceases to plague Sigmar’s children, and it is one that I fear never will. I would journey into that sinister demesne more than once at my taciturn companion’s side, though never without paying a higher toll in blood and hope than I would have liked.

Ulrika…

Sylvania, whose only export is death; Sylvania, whose serpent-fanged masters cluster in forgotten places like the great bats whose bones decorate the rude peasant shrines which line the black road! It was – and is! – a dangerous place, even for a Slayer, and more so for this all-too-human wordsmith. But as to just how dangerous, we were sorely unaware.

Luckily, or unluckily, we were soon to make the acquaintance of a tutor of some distinction…’

– From My Travels with Gotrek, Vol. II
By Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)

The black water split as the pole came down. It pierced the murky depths and stirred up the dull mud below. Leaning hard against the pole, Andree Borges whistled tunelessly through stumps of rotted teeth as he forced his skiff through the water, a single torch lighting his way. The tune was half-prayer and half bawdy sonata, and had been passed down from father to son since as far back as Andree could recall. Which, he had to admit, wasn’t very far. He wasn’t a thinker, Andree, and he knew it. You couldn’t be a thinker and survive in Hel Fenn. Instinct and faith… those were the only tools that mattered. Well, those and a good strong axe.

Eyes long since turned yellow from cheap rotgut scanned the arthritic trees that clustered on the legion of hummocks and boles of strange black earth that seemed to float on the oily water. The torch, its flame caged in an iron hood with holes punched in to let out the light, made the ugly little islands seem to dance. Andree shuddered. His grandfather had avowed as those buboes of dirt were graves, and that the Fenn was naught but a bone-garden flooded way back when.

Andree could believe it. If there was one thing that the Fenn didn’t lack for, it was bones. White, yellow and brown, hiding in the tangled roots of trees or beneath the mud, there were bones everywhere, of every shape and distinction. Anatomists and articulators from as far away as Altdorf paid a pretty penny for full skeletons in good condition. Carnival men paid even more for mismatched specimens, strung together with catgut and twine, which they could pass off as mutants or daemons. And maybe some of them even were.

The dark between the trees hid many secrets, after all, and there were bowers and run-offs that Andree would not have gone into for all the karls in Stirland or all the ale in Nordland. Hel Fenn was home to more than just the dead, though they were, by far, the most visible inhabitants.

‘Dead no see, spirits no hear,’ Andree murmured, pitching his thin shoulder against his pole. It was an old prayer, but a good one, especially this close to the Black Road. ‘Keep the Kings of Bats and Rats from smelling our fear,’ he continued, listening to the whispers of the Fenn. If you had ears trained to hear, it spoke volumes, this old swamp. The flap of a heron’s wings or the splash of a snake sliding into the water told you where it was safe to go. The chittering of marsh-rats spoke to the presence of the waterlogged dead that stumbled mindless through the trees, still fighting a battle long over. The rats ate the dead as they wandered, riding them like a furry cloak, squirming and heaving as they gnawed and fought over the putrid meat. That was the story, anyway, and he had seen enough to know that stories were close enough to the truth where the Fenn was concerned.

Andree felt his gorge rise and turned his thoughts to other things; namely shiny things, or even rusty things, as long as they were old things. For generation upon generation, the Borges had ploughed the Fenn for the treasures of ancient days. And not just them – the fenmen were as numerous as the townsmen, though less apt to congregate.

The Fenn had been the sight of so many battles, of so much death, that beneath its stagnant waters was wealth enough to forge a nation. The arms and armour of human kings and lords and dwarfen thanes and elven princes were there for the taking, if you knew where to look. Aye, and more besides that; when the Blood Counts had marched to war out of the mountains and forests, they had sunk towns and villages into the mire with dark magics. Andree’s ancestors had been the survivors of one such great drowning, or so his grandmother had sworn.

In a way, if you looked at it right, it was only just that he ply the swamp for his livelihood, since the swamp had taken so much in its turn. He resumed his whistling, momentarily cheered. He bent his pole forwards, digging into the mud.

The whistle died behind his lips as the skiff thumped to a halt. Mouth suddenly dry, he braced himself and probed the water with his pole. It was a root or a rock, nothing more, he thought. But the water is skull-deep, a small voice whimpered in the back of his head.

He jabbed down with the pole, hoping to dislodge or shift whatever he had run into. The swamp had gone silent. Andree began to tremble. He jabbed again, more forcefully.

Something grabbed the skiff. He shrieked in disbelief as the hand came out of the water and fastened on the prow of his skiff with an ugly wet sound. Bloated, dripping meat hooked the wood. Fingers like rotten sausages tightened and the skiff dipped. Andree fell onto his rear and crab-crawled backwards, trying to get away as water slopped over the sides and filled the prow. ‘No, no, no…’ he babbled.

A slash of orange split the water a moment later, and a strange gurgling sound filled the air. Fear gave Andree frenzied strength and he jerked the pole loose from its captor and drove it down towards the strip of orange even as it thrust upwards. The sound became words and the pole was seized scant moments from impact by a ham-sized hand. A face out of nightmare rose from the water, spitting curses.

‘–on of a pox-riddled grobi!’ the dwarf snarled, ripping the pole out of Andree’s hands. A single eye blazed furiously at Andree out of a face that had seen the wrong end of too many fists, and a great orange crest of hair dipped and bobbed alarmingly over the sun-browned expanse of a shorn skull. The dwarf spun the pole and gripped it like a spear, thrusting one end down at something he was seemingly straddling below the water line. ‘Die, you oversized hunk of offal! Die and be damned,’ the dwarf bellowed, his massive shoulders bunching and flexing as he struck his unseen target again and again.

Whatever it was shifted beneath the water and the dwarf toppled into the skiff, still beating at it with Andree’s pole. The skiff’s prow sank lower, thanks to the dwarf’s weight, and Andree screamed, fearing he’d be in the water with the thing in moments.

But, instead of sinking the skiff, the dwarf’s opponent chose to follow him out of the dark embrace of the Fenn. Eyes like boiled eggs glared blankly out of a face-that-wasn’t. The dead man’s jaw champed mindlessly as the zombie reached for its prey. Andree yelped.

‘You want something to chew on, maggot-belly? Have this,’ the dwarf growled, clambering to his feet and letting fly with the pole. The zombie’s skull exploded in a burst of black gore and stinking meat as the dwarf’s blow connected.

The skiff bobbed back above water as the twitching corpse slumped back into the swamp. The dwarf watched it sink, and turned to Andree. He was big, bigger than any other of his kind the fenman had seen before. A veritable ambulatory boulder, he was bare-chested and clad only in a pair of striped trousers and thick boots. A leather patch covered one eye and a delicate chain connected one nostril to one earlobe. Vibrant blue tattoos covered the muscular frame and moved in odd ways as the dwarf breathed. ‘See the other one anywhere, manling?’ he rumbled, gripping the pole tight enough to cause the hard wood to creak.

Andree could only gape. The dwarf grunted in apparent exasperation. Then his one good eye narrowed and he raised the pole, as if to do to Andree what he’d done to the zombie. Andree shrieked and tried to dart past him. The dwarf shoved him aside and brought the pole down on the head of the second zombie as it pulled itself up onto the rear of the skiff. It fell forwards, revealing a large axe embedded in its back.

‘There it is,’ the dwarf grunted. He tossed the much-abused pole to Andree and stamped on the back of the zombie’s neck. He grabbed the axe, wrenching it easily out of the squirming corpse’s back, and then, almost casually, let fly with a backhanded swipe that sent the zombie’s head splashing into the water some distance away.

The dwarf kicked the headless body into the water to join its head, and then turned to Andree. ‘Well? What are you waiting for, manling? Get out,’ he said.

‘W-what?’ Andree said, clutching the pole tight to his chest.

‘Are you deaf? I said get out,’ the dwarf said, examining the edge of his axe. In the torchlight, it seemed to glow with an eerie fire. He ran a thumb across the blade and popped it into his mouth. ‘I need your skiff. I’ve got more maggot-men to return to their graves.’

‘Look to your left,’ Felix Jaeger shouted as he drove the edge of his sword through the soft neck of an ambulatory corpse. ‘Damn it, Heinz! Left, I said!’ As his opponent fell, still clutching for him blindly, Felix splashed towards the other man as fast as he could. It wasn’t fast enough, unfortunately. Luckless Heinz gave an abortive shriek as the dead man he hadn’t seen grabbed his head and gave it a brutal twist. Felix winced at the sound of bones popping and ligaments snapping, but then he was on the thing, with no more time for anything save violence.

Felix chopped through a mossy skull, dropping the zombie like a rock. He yanked Karaghul free and spun, just in time to see Heinz, with his head still the wrong way around, stagger upright. ‘Heinz…’ Felix said as a chill caressed his spine. They had met the man in Wurtbad, and he’d seemed a decent enough soul for a sell-sword. Now he was anything but.

Felix ducked under Heinz’s groping arms and stabbed upwards. His sword cut through the corpse’s chest and thrust upwards, burrowing towards the dead man’s skull. Kicking Heinz’s now-quiescent body into the hip-deep water, Felix whispered a silent prayer to Morr for the man’s soul. As Heinz’s face vanished beneath the water, he said, ‘I guess you were right, Heinz. We should never have left Wurtbad.’

He looked around, blinking sweat out of his eyes. It felt like they had been fighting for hours, but he knew it had only been minutes. Minutes since they had brought their quarry to ground, only to find themselves caught in a trap.

In retrospect, it should have been an obvious ploy. They’d been fools to think the necromancer wouldn’t know they were on his trail and wouldn’t prepare some obstacle for them. Said obstacle had been a number of zombies hidden beneath the dark waters of the Fenn, waiting to overturn and shatter their boats. Now they were all waist-deep in the foul waters of the Fenn, fighting a seemingly innumerable horde of zombies. ‘Hindsight makes seers of us all,’ he grunted to himself as he waded towards the others. They had been twenty strong setting out from Wurtbad. They were now only ten.

Well, nine; Gotrek was Sigmar alone knew where. The Slayer, already at a decided disadvantage in the water, which was shoulder-deep for a dwarf, had been pulled underwater by a trio of dead men and had, as yet, not resurfaced. The thought left a bad taste in Felix’s mouth. Not just because Gotrek’s death would vastly increase the odds against his own survival, but because he had sworn to witness said death. Despite everything, he had come to believe that the Slayer truly did deserve a saga to celebrate his berserk death-wish.

That and he had no doubt whatsoever that the Slayer’s shade would haunt him unmercifully if he failed to deliver that saga. Gotrek had pulled him from beneath the hooves of the Emperor’s elite cavalry, and Felix had sworn thereafter to chronicle the dwarf’s heroic doom. Alcohol had been involved, as it was in most things involving the Slayer, but Felix’s sense of honour, battered as it was, held him to his newly chosen course.

A scream of pain jerked him out of his reverie. Two zombies fell on a brawny mercenary named Hugh, their jagged teeth tearing into his flesh. He howled in agony as they dragged him down beneath the water. A third fell on him and bit out his throat, reducing the number of the group to nine. As Felix passed them, he took the head off Hugh’s killer. There was nothing else he could do for the man, and standing still for too long would only ensure that he joined him in death. Or undeath, as the case was for some of their companions.

He thought of Heinz and felt sick. The clutching dead were as foul as anything he’d encountered in his travels with Gotrek, even worse than mutants. At least mutants were still alive; ugly, but alive.

Nearby, Marten Holtz, a scar-faced priest of Sigmar, roared out prayers and imprecations as he swung his hammer with almost mechanical precision. Near him, Stefan Russ, a templar of the Order of Sigmar, fired one of the seemingly innumerable pistols that were holstered about his person and potted a stumbling corpse before it could close with the bellowing Holtz. The two men were the nominal leaders of this possibly doomed expedition, and though Felix had little use for either the witch hunter or his priestly companion, he had to admit that both men were giving a good account of themselves.

Maggot-riddled fingers became tangled in his red Sudenland cloak, nearly jerking him from his feet. Felix almost dropped his sword as the zombie hauled him backwards. He fumbled at the cloak’s clasp as it constricted about his throat. A sword flashed and Felix stumbled forwards, off-balance. The zombie, de-limbed, turned slowly, groaning. The sword flashed again, dropping the creature to its knees.

‘Eyes forward, Jaeger,’ the blade’s wielder said. Pale skinned and shock-headed, Andryzy Iuldvitch, a templar of Morr, was nearly as inhuman-looking as the corpses they fought.

Felix coughed his thanks and swept Karaghul out, bisecting a cadaverous thing with a cleft face. Iuldvitch joined him and they turned in a circle, dispatching the moving corpses that sought to surround them. ‘Where’s Olaf?’ Felix said over his shoulder.

A sizzling spurt of flame nearby gave him his answer. Olaf Norheimer, bulky and bullet-headed beneath his vibrant crimson beard and wildly-spiked hair, splashed forwards, gesturing with his staff. ‘Burn, you maggoty beasts, burn!’ the wizard bellowed. As zombies were reduced to staggering torches, he began to laugh wildly, his eyes glittering. A sash made of clattering bronze keys dangled from his torso and a belt of the same swung about his waist. Strange tattoos covered his muscular arms and chest.

‘He enjoys his work,’ Iuldvitch noted dispassionately as a burning corpse toppled into the water in front of him.

‘Perhaps a bit too much,’ Felix muttered. The wizard had accompanied Holtz and Russ from Altdorf, though neither man appeared happy with his presence. Felix couldn’t blame them. He’d met several magic-users in his time, and Olaf was by far the most disturbing. The wizards of the Bright College were, to a man, the most dangerous of their kind, as wild and uncontrollable as the flames they wielded.

That said, none of their group was what a sane man would consider to be a particularly comforting presence. A zealot priest, a witch hunter, a servant of the death god, a mad wizard, and, of course, Gotrek… A stranger crew Felix couldn’t imagine.

And their quarry was even worse. Ernst Schtillman was, by all accounts, a third-rate necromancer whose sole claim to previous fame was being arrested for making dead rats dance in a restaurant that had refused his custom. Now he was accused of stealing a reliquary of some importance from the Garden of Saints beneath the Grand Temple of Sigmar in Altdorf, and murdering a number of priests and templars in the process.

The greatest heroes of the Empire were interred in the Garden of Saints, including past emperors, high-ranking fellows of the Colleges of Magic and notable members of several templar orders, so Felix could only imagine what Schtillman had stolen. The skull of one of the Patriarchs of Magic or the preserved finger of a Grand Theogonist, perhaps… It could be anything. Neither Holtz nor Russ was saying, though Felix had tried his best to worm the answer out of them on the road from Wurtbad.

Besides the reliquary, Schtillman had also kidnapped the daughter of a semi-friendly publican who had been keeping Gotrek in ale during their stay in Wurtbad. The man was a companion from Gotrek’s days as a mercenary, or so he said. That had been enough motivation for Gotrek to bully himself and Felix a berth in the hunting party.

Thinking of the girl elicited a stab of guilt. Elsa. Felix had hoped she’d share his bed, but Schtillman had put paid to that. Abruptly, a rusty sword looped towards his head and he was forced to defend himself. He pushed all thought of the girl aside. Despite Olaf’s sorcery, their attackers’ numbers didn’t seem at all diminished. Their quarry had all the dead of Hel Fenn at his disposal, apparently, and he wasn’t shy about it.

Something that might have once been an elf lurched at him from the side, moving with a crooked sort of grace. Flesh crawling, Felix parried the too-swift blow it launched at him and tried to remove its head. The zombie jerked back, blind eyes rolling in its skull. Its thin, needle-like sword darted for him, piercing his guard and tracing a line of fire across his arm. Even in death, it was faster than a human.

Cursing, Felix stumbled and fell on his rear in the foul water. The elf-thing loomed over him, raising its sword. Desperate, Felix shoved his weapon up and the zombie impaled itself on the point. With a grunt, Felix tossed the twitching body over his head and accepted a hand up from a gaunt Stirlander named Horst. ‘We’re going to die here,’ Horst said, seemingly neither pleased nor displeased with that fact.

‘Possibly,’ Felix said, jerking past him to spit a zombie that had been creeping up behind the man. Kicking the corpse off his blade, he continued, ‘But I don’t intend to make it easy for them.’

‘We may not have a choice,’ Horst’s equally dour cousin, Schultz, moaned, braining a long-dead orc. ‘They’ll overwhelm us if we don’t–’ he began, but whatever he’d been about to say died with him as an axe older than Felix chopped down into his head. Schultz sank to his knees, tongue protruding, eyes bulging as the dripping zombie pulled its weapon free. Horst shrieked and made to stab his cousin’s killer, but two more dead things grabbed him by his arms and pulled him in half. Felix blinked in horror as blood splattered his face and then he scrambled back as more cadavers erupted from the water.

He backed away, his sword extended and his heart sinking. More corpses stepped out from between the close-set trees or rose from the water. Schultz had been right. Holtz and Russ fell back, Iuldvitch trailing them. Olaf joined Felix, his face split in a wild grin. ‘Down to us, lads!’ he barked, ghostly flames coruscating around his hooked fingers.

‘Don’t sound so happy about it,’ Felix said.

‘Sigmar stands with us!’ Holtz snapped, getting a better grip on his two-handed hammer.

‘And Morr guides our hands,’ Iuldvitch said mildly. Holtz and Russ glared at him. The latter pulled two pistols from beneath his ragged cloak and cocked them. Felix readied Karaghul, the hilt slippery in his hands. He swallowed, trying not to gag on the stink of death that surrounded them. He hadn’t planned on dying this way. I hadn’t planned on dying at all, he thought desperately.

‘Bugger all gods,’ Olaf yelped, throwing his hands out. The water boiled and the zombies that waded through it began to cook. The wizard gesticulated and spat painful syllables and the heat grew blisteringly intense, causing the water to turn into a stinking mist and nearby trees to curl up like dead bugs.

Despite the heat, however, the dead kept coming. They had neither fear nor physical sensation to exploit. The rotting flesh sloughed off their bones, cooked into a stinking stew. Olaf cursed virulently as skeletal hands groped towards him, grabbing for his spiked beard and robes. He fell back, his bravado melting into momentary panic as he flailed backwards. Felix and the others stepped forwards to join him, stabbing and shooting.

Fingers that looked like burst sausages clutched at Felix’s wrist and blade, and the flesh of his hands turned red as he stamped and cut and shoved. Felix’s arms and shoulders began to cramp from exhaustion and heat, and his hands and face stung from the burns. A steaming skull thrust towards him, blackened jaws gaping. He cried out and made to swat it away, until he realised that it wasn’t attached to anything.

Instead it hurtled past him, struck a tree and fell into the water with a hiss. A moment later he realised that he could hear a familiar voice bellowing imprecations in Khazalid, the tongue of the dwarfs. A shattered ribcage and a snapped femur fell into the water at his feet as the steam began to dissipate.

‘Trying to kill them all yourselves, manlings?’ Gotrek Gurnisson growled.

Gotrek was perched like a gargoyle on the prow of a skiff. Relief flooded Felix. Zombie parts floated around him, some still twitching, and the Slayer’s muscular form was covered in spoiled blood and rotting meat. ‘Where did you find this skiff?’ Felix said, looking up at the Slayer.

The Slayer motioned absently towards the swamp. ‘Out there,’ he said. It was obvious that he had cut his way through the rear of the horde as Olaf’s wall of steam had consumed them from the other side, though he wasn’t even breathing hard. Gotrek looked around. ‘You didn’t leave me much to do, manling,’ he grumbled, fixing Felix with his single glittering eye.

‘You weren’t around, so we had to make do,’ Felix said, laughing shakily.

Gotrek sniffed. ‘No fault of mine. My axe was stuck.’ He looked around at the others. ‘Looks like enough of you survived, at any rate,’ he said dismissively.

‘No thanks to you,’ Russ snapped. The witch hunter was a lean man with hang-dog features and hard eyes. He was busily reloading his pistols. Felix got the feeling that the man would have been happier with a good death than he was with Gotrek’s rescue.

Gotrek fixed the man with his one good eye. ‘Am I expected to fight your battles for you then, burner of women?’ he said. Felix swallowed, recognising the tone in Gotrek’s voice. The Slayer was still worked up and killing-mad. The zombies hadn’t dulled his frenzy as much as strengthened it. He could explode into violence at any time.

‘I burn heretics, Slayer,’ Russ spat. ‘Be they men or women, human or otherwise.’

Gotrek flushed and bared crooked teeth in a snarl. His axe trembled in anticipation.

‘An argument serves no purpose,’ Felix said quickly, moving between them. ‘Schtillman is still out there and likely planning to send more of his corpse-legions after us. Maybe we should get while the going is good.’ Even as he said it, a twist of guilt speared through him, though he knew the likelihood of Gotrek agreeing was slim to none. He didn’t like the thought of leaving Elsa to the necromancer’s attentions, good reason or not. ‘We could go back to Wurtbad. Rouse the militia…’ he said half-heartedly.

‘Run away? Flee from maggot-men and a near-sighted whelp of a necromancer?’ Gotrek guffawed. Felix forced himself not to smile in relief. ‘My axe thirsts for more substantial fare, manling, and I’ll not deny it!’

‘Aye, and Sigmar demands justice,’ Holtz said. ‘The necromancer’s desecration of sacred ground must not stand.’ Russ nodded, obviously in full agreement.

‘Schtillman has been for the pyre for a long time now,’ the witch hunter added.

‘Not to mention the fate of the girl,’ Iuldvitch said, sheathing his sword. The guilt in Felix’s gut grew heavier. He glanced towards the trees and immediately wished he hadn’t. ‘Gotrek…’ he hissed, his fingers tightening around his sword-hilt.

‘Aye, I see them,’ Gotrek said.

‘We all see them,’ Russ muttered, his fingertips dancing nervously across the butts of the pistols hanging across his narrow chest in their waterproof holsters. ‘Sigmar preserve us…’

‘He does,’ Holtz said. He had his eyes closed, as if in prayer.

Clumsy shapes splashed through the trees. More zombies, Felix realised with a chill. ‘How many dead men does this cess-pit hold?’ he said.

‘Thousands,’ Holtz said, opening his eyes. His scarred face twisted into an expression of distaste. ‘More even than fell in the Battle of Hel Fenn. They say every river in Sylvania carries corpses to the Fenn.’ He patted the hammer that lay across his shoulder. ‘It is a cursed place. One day we will burn it from the map.’

Olaf laughed. ‘Count me in, scar-face. Let’s start today!’ He gestured and a spurt of flame crashed into the trees. Ranks upon ranks of zombies, both human and otherwise, were illuminated by Olaf’s conjured flames. Had they been watching them all this time, Felix wondered?

Several of the creatures began to stumble forwards. Gotrek snarled. He tightened his grip on his axe and plunged off the skiff and into the water to meet the lurching dead. They closed in about him and the Slayer disappeared from view. Felix started forwards.

‘What are you doing?’ Russ said, grabbing his arm.

‘Gotrek needs help!’ Felix said, shaking his arm loose of the witch hunter’s grip. There was a roar and then several rotting bodies skidded across the water like skipping stones.

‘No,’ Gotrek grunted, ‘I don’t.’ The Slayer floundered through the water, dripping and sullen. ‘Dead things are no challenge,’ he growled, fiddling with his crest, which drooped alarmingly thanks to his plunge in the water. ‘Well. Is that it?’ he roared out, shaking his axe at the swamp. Silence greeted the Slayer’s demand.

Then, in the darkness, someone laughed.

‘Am I mistaken, or were there more of you earlier?’ a thin, reedy voice said, vicious amusement evident in its tone. ‘Oh, wait… There they are!’

Familiar faces stepped into the light of Olaf’s fire. There was Hugh with the gaping hole in his throat and Schultz, his bifurcated face grinning and frowning at the same time. Horst was there as well, and the others who’d fallen.

‘Quite a group,’ the voice continued. ‘Hard men all, and dangerous, I’d say; some of you more than others.’ A giggle followed. Then, a thin shape stepped out from between the trees, followed by a herd of corpses, some better preserved than others. The firelight was reflected by a cracked pair of spectacles. The face was that of a perpetual youth, spoiled and beardless. Pox scars dotted the hollow cheeks and yellow teeth surfaced from between thin lips as Schtillman the necromancer smiled at them like a boy greeting long-absent friends.

‘Abomination,’ Holtz roared. He smashed a low-hanging branch in his fury, his hammer reducing the inoffensive limb to splinters.

‘Hello,’ Schtillman said mildly. His eyes moved weasel-quick across the rest of the group. Felix felt himself shiver as the necromancer looked at him; there was nothing recognisably human in that gaze. ‘Welcome gentles all, to this, my crowning moment of glory,’ he continued, gesturing grandiosely. With the air of a lecturer, he bent and sat on a tree root, head bowed. ‘I was not expecting an audience, it must be said, but needs must when daemons drive, eh? Eh?’ He spread his hands and shrugged. ‘I would ask who put you on my trail, but I know I’m quite certain, my yes, the culprit or culprits, as it were, indubitably et cetera and such…’ he trailed off, head tilted. ‘Still, no reason you can’t bear witness to such historical proceedings.’

‘Enough ranting,’ Russ snapped, unlimbering a pistol and taking aim. ‘Return what you have stolen, thief, and your death will be as easy as we know how to grant.’

‘Death is never easy,’ Schtillman said, removing his spectacles and rubbing them on his robes. ‘And I am no thief, I assure you.’

‘The stolen souls of our companions say otherwise,’ the witch hunter said, cocking his pistol. ‘Four brothers, pure and strong, stolen from the very halls of the Grand Temple in Altdorf are added to your debt, Schtillman.’

‘Is that you, Stefan?’ Schtillman said, putting his spectacles back on. ‘I thought I recognised your voice. You, of all of these, should know me better than that, I should think. Corpse-fondler and restaurant critic I might be, yes, but thief? I have some standards, you dyspeptic clod.’

Russ’s pistol sparked. A rotting heron, flying despite the condition of its bedraggled wings, intercepted the bullet and tumbled into the water, where it thrashed in an altogether hideous fashion. Russ made to draw another pistol, but more dead birds burst out of the trees and swarmed him. He screamed as cracked and broken beaks tore at him.

Olaf roared and flung out a hand. Talons of crackling flame arched towards the dead birds. Felix charged forwards and tackled the witch hunter into the water as a wave of heat and flame engulfed the squawking cloud, incinerating some of the zombie flock. As Felix rose, pulling a spluttering Russ with him, he glared at the wizard.

‘Are you mad?’ he snarled.

Olaf appeared not to hear him. The Bright Wizard howled with laughter as he consumed the flock in a tornado of fire. As if this were the signal he’d been waiting for, Gotrek gave a bellow and broke into a charge, his axe held over his head as he fought his way through what was shoulder-deep water far quicker than Felix thought possible.

Schtillman looked momentarily nonplussed and shot to his feet. He spat a stream of nonsense words and Gotrek hesitated, his eye narrowing as a black cloud seemed to take shape around him. ‘What’s this?’ he growled. Then he grunted and slapped at himself. Soon he was swatting at the air. ‘Cursed insects!’ he shouted, staggering. The cloud followed him, doubling in size. Gotrek howled and dived under the water. He surfaced a few feet away, but the insects followed, and something else as well… Felix called out a warning as the immense shape of a snake cut through the water towards the preoccupied Slayer. Gotrek turned as the zombie-serpent coiled around him. Roaring, arms pinned, he toppled backwards.

‘Bugs, beasts and birds,’ Schtillman cackled, clapping his hands. ‘The dead come in all shapes and sizes, you know.’

‘Send them all, we will not be deterred,’ Holtz said, striding forwards, his hammer gripped tightly. Felix and Russ drew their swords and joined him as Olaf drove the end of his staff into the water. Two walls of fire rose to carve them a corridor through the gathering zombies. ‘Sigmar guides us and damns you, necromancer. Return our reliquary, return the girl and return the dead to Morr’s embrace!’

‘No, no, and no,’ Schtillman said, hopping backwards. ‘Not when I’m so close! Not when I’ve finally found him!’

‘Then die and be damned!’ Holtz said, racing forwards suddenly, his scarred features alight with mad fervour. His hammer crashed down and connected with the interposed shield of a corpse clad in rotting armour. The dead man whipped out a rusty sword and nearly gutted the priest. Holtz stumbled and the corpse followed, moving with a smoothness Felix took to be a bad sign. Several more armoured cadavers followed the first, and with a start Felix, recalling the heraldry drills his status-conscious father had forced him to do, recognised the faded emblem on one’s breastplate… the bat rising and the dragon rampant of the von Carstein family!

‘Sigmar preserve us,’ he muttered, closing with one of the dead men. Sudden suspicions as to Schtillman’s purpose clustered at the edge of his mind as he blocked a surprisingly strong blow. ‘It can’t be!’

‘Oh, but it can!’ Schtillman said, apparently having heard him. ‘Persistence yields success,’ he said, sounding for a moment like one of Felix’s old tutors. ‘Study yields results and results allow extrapolation! From extrapolation, we can match variables and triangulate and thus, he rises! Unconquered! Undaunted! Undead!’ The necromancer’s voice rose to a shrill shriek. ‘Bring forth the sacrifice!’

Two zombies stepped from around the tree, dragging an unconscious form between them. Felix immediately recognised Elsa, and he redoubled his efforts. Karaghul seemed to twist in his hands as he battered at his opponent, sending it slumping to one knee. His sword cracked the ancient helmet and spilled what was left of its brains into the water and then he was past it, moving quickly. More of the dead barred his path and his frustration boiled over into violence. He looked around for help, hoping to see Gotrek, but willing to settle for anyone. Unfortunately, all of the others were engaged in their own struggles. Exhaustion and numbers were beginning to tell, and even Olaf’s flames were fading. Where was Gotrek?

On the hummock of black earth, Schtillman was ordering his zombies to position Elsa’s limp form as he drew a curve-bladed dagger from within his robes. ‘One thrust and the deed is done,’ the necromancer said. He raised the weapon, and Felix knew that he wasn’t going to be in time. All at once, everything went silent, as if the entirety of Hel Fenn were holding its breath. Time seemed to slow to a crawl.

And then Gotrek’s axe took off Schtillman’s hand at the wrist on its way towards embedding itself in the skull of one of the zombies gripping Elsa. Schtillman screamed and grabbed at the gushing stump. Felix turned and saw Gotrek rising from the water, his squat form covered in welts from the insect bites and the head of the snake gripped between his jaws. The dwarf spat out the head and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Insects!’ he thundered as he stomped forwards. ‘You try to kill me with insects and snakes? Are you stupid as well as mad, manling?’

Schtillman whined like a dog and sank to his knees, futilely trying to stem the blood spraying from his wrist. The zombies staggered and slumped as his concentration wavered. Gotrek stepped past the huddled necromancer and ripped his axe free of the zombie’s head. More gently, he plucked Elsa from the slack grip of the other corpse and tossed her easily to Felix. Felix caught the woman and grunted, going to his knees.

Gotrek raised the necromancer’s chin with the flat of his axe. Schtillman’s whimpering changed in cadence. ‘Gotrek, he’s chanting!’ Felix cried, shifting Elsa around and trying to get at his sword.

Schtillman’s good hand shot out, clawing for Gotrek’s face. Gotrek jerked back with a curse and twisted his axe around with a flick of his wrist. The edge bit upwards through Schtillman’s frenzied features, obliterating them in a splash of gore. Gotrek stepped away, not wanting to get any of the writhing body’s blood on him as it fell forwards. The necromancer’s body twitched and jerked for several moments and then fell still. Gotrek spat on the body and turned to Felix. ‘No doom here manling, grand or otherwise; just old death and maggots,’ he growled.

Felix looked down at Elsa and thought that Gotrek was missing the point, as usual. No sense in saying as much, however. The Slayer would be in a foul mood as it was. Surviving made him irritable. The woman in his arms stirred, but didn’t awaken.

‘Mandrake root and grave mould,’ Iuldvitch said, touching her cheek. Felix looked at him.

‘How do you know?’ he said.

‘Necromancers are a bit like cooks. They all use the same basic recipes for certain things, like drugging sacrificial victims,’ he said. ‘She’ll sleep for a few days, if Schtillman didn’t misjudge the dose.’

‘You look like you could use the same,’ Felix said.

Iuldvitch smiled tiredly and shook his head. ‘No rest for the weary.’

‘Where is it?’ Holtz shouted, causing them to turn. ‘It has to be here!’ The big priest was tearing through Schtillman’s belongings, meagre as they were. Russ watched silently, as did Gotrek, though the latter’s expression was anything but interested. ‘It’s not here!’ Holtz spun around, his glare accusing.

‘Maybe he was telling the truth,’ Felix said.

Holtz goggled at him. ‘What?’

‘I said, maybe he was telling the truth when he claimed not to have stolen the reliquary.’ Felix shrugged. ‘Are you certain he was the thief?’

‘Certain? Certain?’ Holtz said, his face flushing purple. The scars on his face stood out like livid tattoos. He motioned to the floating bodies that filled the nearby waters. ‘What more certainty do I need?’

‘I’m not denying that he was up to something, but maybe he wasn’t the man we were after,’ Felix insisted, wishing he could simply shut up, but finding it impossible to do so. ‘Who gave you his name? Who put us on his trail?’

‘You ask a lot of questions for a sell-sword, Jaeger,’ Russ said, wiping muck off his blade. ‘Schtillman was our man. He must have hidden the reliquary. Perhaps in Wurtbad…’

‘Perhaps,’ Felix said, sharing a look with Gotrek. The Slayer looked disgusted.

‘What of the fiend’s body?’ Olaf said, holding up a finger upon which a flicker of flame danced. ‘Should we burn it?’

‘Let the swamp have it,’ Holtz grunted, shouldering his hammer. ‘Let us go.’ He started off back in the direction they had come from, Russ at his heels. Olaf shook his head and followed, Iuldvitch trailing behind. Felix looked at the body of the necromancer and shifted Elsa’s weight. Gotrek held out his hands as they climbed up out of the water onto a hummock of solid, albeit soggy earth.

‘Give her to me before you drop her, manling,’ the Slayer said. Almost tenderly, he cradled the unconscious young woman to his barrel chest and set off after the others, moving across the patches of dry ground carefully. Felix hesitated, fingering his sword. He didn’t like the idea of leaving the body as it was. But he didn’t plan on sticking around to see to it by himself either.

‘Curse it,’ he muttered, hurrying after Gotrek.

Behind him, Schtillman’s blood pooled in thick puddles in the soft ground and ran beneath the roots of a tree, first in trickles, then in rivers. The tree was black-barked and crooked, bulging with knotty tumours and sickly lichen. Its barren limbs scraped together in a sigh as the blood bubbled and dripped into the depths beneath its roots.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

And, after a time, something long dead, but nonetheless dreaming, opened its eyes and said, ‘Ahhhhh…’

Like pale blossoms unfurling after a rainstorm, the worm-white fingers pierced the black soil that was packed loosely amongst the tangling roots of the tree. The fingers stretched up and up, until the cat-like nails that dotted each tip hooked into one of the thicker roots. Then, with a convulsive heave, a skeletal shape swam to the surface, dirt and mud sloughing off long-buried limbs.

Flanged nostrils quivered in a death-mask face and needle teeth sprouted from bloodless gums. Pointed ears twitched above a rat’s nest of grey hair, and wolfish jaws gaped, sucking in a great lungful of foetid air, tasting it in the same way a snake would. ‘Ah,’ it said.

It grabbed the higher roots and pulled itself up and out into the dark of Hel Fenn, bare feet scraping across the wood. Muscles that had remained rigid for a century or more pulsed and flexed. Memory, thought and instinct warred in a reptile-sluggish mind. Hunger and caution met and the former won, prompting the shape to again taste the air.

It crouched as a tantalising scent intruded. Covered in mud and soil, and remaining motionless, it blended easily with the surface of the tree. Pale pink eyes blinked slowly, watching the approach of its prey, and a colourless tongue dabbed hungrily at almost nonexistent lips.

Andree Borges cautiously made his way across the shifting hummocks, prodding the path before him with a bent stick he’d found. As he moved, he cursed the thieving dwarf under his breath. The curses burst into full flower as he saw the state of his skiff. The little boat had drifted into a nearby fire and it had been reduced to a charred ruin.

‘No!’ Andree wailed, rushing towards it. Sighting the floating bodies nearby, he skidded to a halt, almost falling face-first into the water. Warily he looked around, taking in the carnage. The stink of old death hung heavy on the air and his spirit quailed. There were places in the Fenn a sane man didn’t go and this was one of them.

Maybe he should find the dwarf and his companions… There was safety in numbers, and it would be the least they could do for destroying his skiff. Unwillingly, but unable to do otherwise, his eyes were drawn to the bloated tree that occupied the centre of the immediate area. It was an old thing, resembling a grasping hand rising from the belly of the swamp. The fenmen told stories about that tree, about packs of shrieking ghouls dancing about it on nights when the witch-moons were full, and the strange, thready rhythm that seemed to rise from the swamp when the water was low.

Something scraped against wood, and Andree froze, sweat popping on his face despite the chill in the air. ‘No, oh please no, no,’ he muttered, looking around, trying to see everywhere at once. The stories his father had told him as a boy swam to the surface of his mind unbidden, filling his head with terrors.

Water splashed and he spun, jabbing out with his stick even as he clawed for the hatchet in his belt. There was nothing behind him. Branches rattled and he turned again, biting down on a scream. He needed to get out of here. He could get a new skiff. He began to back away.

There was a wet growl and Andree’s limbs locked involuntarily. His eyes bobbed in their sockets, taking in the shadows lingering between the close-set trees. Something cold brushed across the back of his neck and this time he did shriek. He lashed out with his stick and hatchet, but hit nothing but air.

He whirled again, and caught a glimpse of pale limbs as something bounded away. What was it? A ghoul? A daemon? The Fenn was full of them. His breath whistled harshly in his ears as he turned to run. He began to crash through the trees, not watching the path or the water. There was no time for caution, not any more.

He ran blind, swatting aside clutching branches and tripping over snakey roots. Something pursued him; he could hear its claws tearing up the ground and rattling the branches. Andree didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to see it.

Water splashed up around his thighs and his run slowed to a crawl. Heart thudding in his chest, he looked down and a strangled moan escaped from between his lips. Not water… quicksand! Tears rolled down his weathered cheeks as he thrashed about, hoping to make it to solid ground, knowing it was impossible. A shadow fell over him and he looked up.

The thing watched him from its perch, eyes shining dully from behind a curtain of stringy hair. It hissed like a kettle coming slowly to the boil. It wore the remains of strange armour and fine clothing, all reduced to mud-encrusted rags and bulges.

‘Please…’ Andree croaked.

It leapt. The weight drove him down into the quicksand, and his attacker sank with him, leaving behind only a stir of bubbles to mark the existence of either. Silence fell.

The quicksand bubbled, burped and split as a tall shape rose from its outer rim, striding purposefully towards firm ground. Despite the apron of blood that covered it from mouth to groin, the shape looked more human now than earlier. Sustenance-starved muscles had thickened somewhat and the white hair had filled out. The pink eyes now blazed a bright crimson.

It examined its hands and then ran them over its arms and chest. It wore ancient armour of anarchic make. Sharp edges and jutting ridges made it unlike anything worn by man, and the remains of a great cloak crafted from the fur of wolves and bats hung lankly from the shoulder plates.

‘Where…’ it croaked, licking blood from its teeth. It wiped a palm across its mouth and looked at the congealing blood there. ‘Blood,’ it said, more strongly. The animal-mind shuddered and the red fog receded. ‘It’ became ‘he’ as patchwork fragments of memory swirled about the hurricane of hunger that tried to consume him.

He shook himself and extended his hand, spreading his fingers wide. He could feel the winds of death circling him and he reached out to grab them. ‘Dhar,’ he murmured, feeling the ethereal threads gather about his fingers. The winds of dark magic kissed his fingertips like excited wolf-pups, and he drew his fingers together, pulling the power towards him. He glanced at the quicksand pit.

He brought his hand to his lips and blew gently, sending the tendrils of power coursing down into the quicksand. The surface twisted and bubbled and then Andree’s blood-drained corpse hauled itself out of the quicksand with slow, agonised movements. The former fenman rose into a parody of a bow and then bobbed from one foot to the next with the unsteadiness of the newly undead.

He turned away and snapped his fingers. ‘Come.’ The zombie followed obediently, insects already clustering about the gaping wound where its throat had once been.

The fog in his head began to lift as the stolen blood flowed through his body. It was not enough, but it would do for now. He ran his claws through his stringy hair. Eyes closed, he marshalled his thoughts as his last waking memories threatened to overwhelm him. He could feel the heat of that accursed sword as it cut towards him. The sword had writhed in his killer’s hands like a thing alive. Its blade was squirming with runes that were painful to his magically-attuned senses, even at a distance.

He had turned to face his pursuers where the Stir entered Hel Fenn, pinned by the elements and his own pride. How many had he killed? Not enough. The sword – that cursed sword! – had pierced him through and true, the heat of it burning him as it slid through his withered heart.

He staggered, clutching at his chest. He could feel a rippling scar there now, beneath his black armour; a parting gift from his murderers. A reminder of the price of arrogance, he thought bitterly. It hurt still. He leaned against a tree, eyes closed, letting the winds of death caress him and dull the pain. ‘Martin,’ he snarled. ‘Martin!’

The name meant something. It tasted foul in his mouth. ‘Weak,’ he said, eyelids cracking open. The zombie, true to its nature, said nothing. The silent dead made adequate companions. He looked into the zombie’s filmy eyes and then away. His last memory was of death. So, why then was he alive?

Quickly he made his way back to the tree, his eyes narrowing to slits as he scanned the area, taking in everything. Even dulled by the circumstances of his resurrection, his mind was like quicksilver. He touched a scorch-mark high on a branch and probed the edges of a zombie’s cleft head. Then he caught the scent of fading magics and bounded towards one body in particular. Jerking the mauled carcass up by its sodden robes, he laughed darkly and shoved the body towards the zombie. The zombie staggered, but held the body up in a parody of an embrace.

‘It stinks of dark magic,’ he murmured, turning to look at the ground. There were papers and books scattered about the marshy earth. ‘Ah,’ he said, stooping. He snatched up a thin volume bound in tanned skin and flipped through the pages. The writing was cramped, but legible. ‘Schtillman,’ he hissed after a while. ‘That was your name, was it? You meant to spill virgin blood on my remains, and so you did, though not precisely in the way you had intended, eh?’ He grunted. ‘Necromancers… all work and no sense of pleasure.’

The name was familiar, though. Where had he heard it before and in what context?

He looked back at the body, red eyes narrowed. Then he slit the robes open with a thumbnail and exposed the scrawny chest. ‘Ha,’ he said, tapping a curious brand scarred into the flesh above the heart. He dug his claws into the slack flesh around the mark and twisted his wrist, ripping the gobbet of flesh free. He wrung it like a rag over his upturned mouth, and then casually flensed the skin from the meat, tossing the latter aside and examining the flap of hide.

He pursed blood-stained lips and ran a thumb over the brand. ‘A mark below a mark,’ he said. His eyes flickered up, meeting those of the zombie. ‘And both of them are familiar, though I cannot say why.’ He looked past the zombie and gestured to the half-sunken remains of one of the skiffs littering the area. ‘Fix it,’ he said. ‘I would see civilisation once more.’

Wurtbad, the capital city of Stirland, was two cities in one. The High Town sat high up on the hill that Wurtbad had been built on, while the Low Town sat on the River Stir like a toad. As places went, Felix judged that he had seen better. Everything smelled of damp and mould and the locals looked like criminals. When he said as much to Gotrek, the Slayer had given him a look that might have been considering and said, ‘You’re one to talk, manling.’

Felix blinked. ‘Was that a joke?’

‘Dwarfs are renowned for their sense of humour, manling. Ask anyone,’ Gotrek said with a belch. He was as close to cheery as Felix had ever seen him, though it was likely due to the amount of ale he had put away since they’d sat down. Old Hugo, Elsa’s father, had been so overjoyed to see his daughter alive and unharmed that he had re-opened Gotrek’s tab. Felix thought, somewhat sourly, that Hugo’s generosity was likely to burn out sooner than Gotrek’s thirst. The Slayer could put away enough alcohol to drown a regiment.

There were two things that Gotrek was good at, Felix had often noted. Drinking and fighting, not always in that order. When he wasn’t doing the one, he was engaged in the other. Felix thought that perhaps both were forms of forgetting; what little he knew of Slayers in general, and Gotrek in particular, suggested that whatever shame had forced Gotrek into assuming the orange crest and tattoos of the Slayer-cult could be as minor as a point of personal pride or as major as a criminal offence.

Felix, like any good poet, often speculated on that point. It nagged at him in quieter moments. What had set the dwarf on his path? What had propelled him across the width and breadth of the known world in a quest to die? And speaking of which…

‘Why would Schtillman go to Hel Fenn?’ Felix said, looking at Gotrek. ‘Sylvania, I understand. But surely there’s no lack of corpses in more comfortable climes. He could have gone north, or fled the Empire entirely.’

‘Hel Fenn is a sump of death-magic,’ Gotrek said. ‘Always has been. Even in my father’s day.’

‘Your father?’ Felix said, his ears perking up. It wasn’t often that the Slayer spoke of his family. Indeed, not at all, to Felix’s recollection.

‘Aye, manling,’ Gotrek said and his voice became softer than its usual rock-hard rumble. ‘He was there, you know…’

‘Where?’ Felix said.

‘Hel Fenn, on the day that dwarf and man stood shoulder-to-shoulder against the lords of unnatural creation.’ The Slayer sighed wistfully. ‘They say it was a dark day, that. The sky was as black as a grobi’s heart and the wind from the Fenn was foul. The sky was full of carrion-birds, following Mannfred von Carstein and his rotting legion.’

Von Carstein… The name sent a chill through Felix’s heart. He knew the story; every child born in the Empire did, though the implications were hidden behind a veil of myth.

‘My father stood with the other Longbeards,’ Gotrek continued, pride evident in his voice. ‘Only my people held their ground that day. When the men broke, driven to flight by fear of the dead, my people stayed firm. They gave Martin of Stirland, the elector count, time to rally his men.’ Gotrek grinned, displaying his gap-teeth. ‘He was a brave one, that manling. Went blade-to-blade with the arch-undead himself, old Mannfred. Pierced him through as well, and sent the blood-sucker running.’ Gotrek laughed. ‘Didn’t get far though, and my father was among those who brought him to bay at the edge of the Fenn.’ His laughter faded. ‘They say Mannfred killed a dozen men, even dying, and that when he fell, no man dared touch him. They let him sink into the swamp, and good riddance…’ He gazed at his mug sourly. ‘That’d have been a doom worth singing about.’ And just like that, the Slayer’s good mood evaporated into melancholy.

Felix recognised the look in the Slayer’s eye well enough. He’d get no more out of him tonight. He looked around. The taproom of Hugo’s tavern was crowded with rivermen and travellers of all shapes and descriptions. Lumber merchants travelling the Old Dwarf Road south mingled with fruit-sellers from the Moot, who bought a round for a trio of dwarf prospectors, all of whom glared balefully at Gotrek, who pretended not to notice.

It was curious to Felix that Gotrek’s reception among his own kind veered between the two extremes of relief and dismay. There was no middle ground that he had seen. He contemplated asking Gotrek about it, and then decided that his time could be better spent on other, more pleasant tasks.

‘I’m going to go check on Elsa,’ he said, rising to his feet.

‘The templar is with her, manling,’ Gotrek burped, shaking his tankard up over the table. When only a single drop dripped from the rim, he frowned thunderously. ‘Hugo!’ he roared.

‘Does that mean I shouldn’t pay my respects?’ Felix said, strapping on his sword-belt.

Gotrek leered at him blearily. ‘Is that all you’re planning?’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘No. What I am is thirsty! Hugo!’ Gotrek bellowed again, slapping the table with one broad hand.

‘Enjoy abusing Hugo’s hospitality,’ Felix sniffed.

‘You too,’ Gotrek said.

Stung, Felix headed for the stairs. Gotrek was right, of course. It was folly of the worst sort to pant after their host’s daughter. But he couldn’t help himself. Felix liked to think of himself as a romantic, but in his more self-reflective moments, he had to admit that he fell in love the way Gotrek drank… stupidly and often.

‘Or maybe I’m simply being too hard on myself because I’m angry,’ he muttered as he climbed the stairs, leaving the cacophony of the taproom behind. Angry with myself, angry with Holtz, angry with the situation, he thought. It rested like a leaden ball in his gut.

The trip back to Wurtbad hadn’t been pleasant. Holtz had gotten it into his head that Elsa had been involved with Schtillman, and that she knew the whereabouts of the lost reliquary. Russ had backed the priest up, leading to a number of stand-offs with the others. Olaf didn’t seem to care either way, but Iuldvitch had come down firmly on Felix’s side. Whether that was because he agreed with Felix, or simply because he didn’t like the Sigmarites very much, Felix couldn’t say.

At the moment, Iuldvitch was seeing to Elsa. Once they’d arrived in Wurtbad, the templar had sent away to an alchemist for herbs and potions to treat the daze Schtillman had put her into. Felix was grateful, but at the same time ever-so-slightly jealous of the templar’s ministrations. Even though he knew that his chance to garner Elsa’s affections had long since passed due to circumstance, it still rankled.

He reached the landing, and the sound of raised voices reached him. Instinctively, his hand found Karaghul’s hilt and he strode quickly towards the door to Elsa’s room. Russ was lounging against it, his arms crossed over his chest and his fingertips stroking the brass butts of his pistols. His eyes narrowed as he saw Felix approaching. ‘Keep walking, Jaeger. This doesn’t concern you.’

‘No?’ Felix said, not stopping.

Russ pushed himself away from the door, opening his mouth to form a reply. Felix’s fist shot out, catching the witch hunter in his prominent nose. Russ staggered back, both hands flying to his abused snout, and Felix shoved past him into the room.

Holtz spun around, eyes wide. ‘Get out of here, sell-sword!’ he snapped. The priest was in full oratory mode, the Book of Sigmar clutched to his chest, his amulet wrapped around his other fist. Iuldvitch stood between Elsa, who cringed back on her bed, and the red-faced priest.

‘No, I think not,’ Felix said, kicking the door shut on Russ and pressing his back to it. ‘I thought we had made it clear to you earlier, Holtz. The girl had nothing to do with the theft. She was the victim, remember?’

‘So you say,’ Holtz spat. ‘The cults of the corpse-eaters spread like leprosy. Their taint is well-hidden, unlike the marks of Chaos.’ He grimaced. ‘She must know something. She must have seen what he did with the–’ He stopped short.

‘What he did with what, Holtz?’ Felix said. ‘What is so cursed important that you’d chase a man from Altdorf to Stirland and threaten an innocent girl for it? I think it’s time you told us.’ Behind him, Russ began to beat on the door.

‘What do you care, mercenary?’ Holtz said, pulling himself up to his full, imposing height. ‘You stink of the strange, Felix Jaeger.’

Felix’s chin jerked. ‘Oh?’

‘Yes,’ Holtz continued, stepping closer. ‘A stink almost as bad as that of necromancy…’ In the light of the candles strewn about the room, the priest looked decidedly sinister and Felix felt himself quail slightly. He shoved his hesitancy back and forced his shoulders to square. Travelling with Gotrek had taught Felix more about intimidation than any puffed-up priest could manage.

‘Are you making an accusation, Herr Holtz?’ Felix said, stepping to meet the priest. Behind him, the door opened, but it was too late to worry about it.

It was Holtz’s turn to hesitate. Before Felix could press his advantage, he heard the click of a pistol behind him, and felt the chill of a barrel as it dug into the back of his skull. ‘Your usefulness to the Church has ended, Jaeger,’ Russ said.

‘Not until you’ve paid us, it hasn’t,’ Gotrek rumbled. Felix turned and saw the Slayer standing behind Russ, his axe pressed gently against the man’s spine. The Slayer swayed slightly, and Felix realised that he was still drunk.

‘We didn’t ask for your help,’ Russ said. Felix couldn’t help but admire him. Not every man could mouth off with Gotrek’s axe a hairsbreadth from reducing him to a red ruin.

‘True enough,’ Felix said, stepping aside. ‘But we helped all the same. I daresay without us, you’d be quite dead.’

‘True,’ Iuldvitch said, speaking up. The pale man met Holtz’s glare. ‘And it is not their fault, nor is it the girl’s, that Schtillman wasn’t the thief you were after.’

‘That is still to be determined,’ Holtz said harshly. ‘If you would let us put her to the question…’

‘I think we’ve all had enough questions, eh?’ Olaf rumbled from the hall. The red-bearded wizard stood behind Gotrek, his thumbs hooked in his belt. Beside him stood Hugo and two of his sons, as brawny as their father. Olaf sniffed and examined his fingernails. ‘Hugo here was concerned, so I brought him up. Wanted to show him his daughter wasn’t being bothered after everything.’ The wizard grinned, showing his teeth. ‘And here we find her deluged with protectors, eh?’

Felix shot a grateful glance at the wizard, whose grin grew wider. Olaf hadn’t seemed overly concerned with the girl’s fate on the trip back. Likely it was just his way of tweaking Holtz’s nose… something the wizard seemed to enjoy.

‘Is she well, templar?’ Hugo asked respectfully. This close to the dark forests of Sylvania, the servants of Morr were better regarded than elsewhere in the Empire. Where the dead walked, those who made it their life’s work to see such abominations back safely in their graves were figures of high esteem; much more so than officious priests or brutal witch hunters, at any rate.

‘Well enough for her ordeal,’ Iuldvitch said. He looked at Elsa, who shot a look at Holtz and then nodded briskly.

‘Well enough to get back to work, at least,’ she said, stepping towards her father.

‘No! You must rest,’ Hugo protested.

‘And who will serve your customers, poppa? Hans? Wilhelm?’ she said, jerking her chin at her brothers. ‘They’re more liable to give them baths than beers, considering how clumsy they are.’ Her brothers protested half-heartedly, but Felix got the impression that Elsa had won that argument long ago. Hugo took his daughter in his arms and herded his children out of the room and away from the clutches of the seething Sigmarites.

Olaf rubbed his hands together. ‘I hear a beer calling my name. Who’s with me, eh?’

‘Drink is the hobgoblin of the soul,’ Holtz said mechanically. He glared at the empty bed and then turned and stalked out of the room, trailing after Olaf. Russ followed him, pausing long enough to gesture at Felix with his pistol. Felix repressed the urge to swallow.

‘There will be trouble with those two, manling,’ Gotrek said, watching them go. ‘Your priests aren’t the most tolerant sort.’

Felix looked at him for a moment, struck by the ridiculousness of the Slayer chiding anyone for their lack of tolerance. Then he turned to Iuldvitch. ‘What now?’ he said.

‘I’m for the Temple of Morr, myself,’ the templar said. ‘Schtillman has been a mark in our books for some time now and I need to report his passing.’ He looked at Felix. ‘That and you’ve gotten me curious about the object of our friends’ concerns.’

‘And you think the Temple of Morr will have answers?’

‘We are quite knowledgeable in some areas, yes,’ Iuldvitch said blandly. He shrugged. ‘Besides, Holtz will almost certainly be reporting to the local prelate of Sigmar. I can do no less. Appearances must be kept up.’

‘May I accompany you?’ Felix said.

‘Still want to know what gewgaw the priest is hunting, manling?’ Gotrek said.

‘Don’t you?’ Felix said.

‘Not particularly,’ Gotrek said. ‘But I’m sober now, so I might as well accompany you.’ He shouldered his axe and snorted. ‘Besides, Hugo’s ale leaves something to be desired.’

‘It is free though,’ Felix said.

‘Aye, there is that.’

Swords sang off bleached bone, and the sky was full of the sound of wings, feathered and otherwise. Horses and men screamed and wolves howled and the carrion winds blew strong and steady. Clawed fingers scratched thin lines in the filthy surface of his cuirass, right above the point where the blade had entered him.

He lounged in the rear of the repaired skiff, his eyes half-closed, letting his tattered memories have full rein. Hel Fenn faded in the distance, and his earlier weakness with it. Hunger still gnawed at him, but several days along he was more fully in control of his desires. The Stir would carry them further and faster than a horse, but he found himself missing his coach. Long gone now, as were his holdings and servants, he judged.

How long, though? One year or a hundred, it was all the same. His eyes flickered open and he examined his withered claw. The raw stuff of the blood he’d taken had faded, leaving him weak again. He reclined, looking up at the cold stars. The heavens had once fascinated him, he recalled. Now, above his head was simply a void… eternal, cold emptiness.

‘Like the grave,’ he rasped. The zombie didn’t react. He reached down and picked up his sword. He’d retrieved it from where it lay beneath the tree, sleeping in its mouldering sheath. Just like him. He unsheathed it, admiring the terrible beauty of it. It was a thing of death, his sword. Larger and heavier than a normal man could wield, it felt as light as a feather in his hand.

His nostrils flared as the wind shifted and brought an influx of scents to him. He sat up, his red eyes fastening on a distant shape drawing swiftly closer thanks to the zombie’s inexorable poling. Even at a distance of however much time had passed, he knew a pleasure barge when he saw one. The River Stir had always been a popular route for the moneyed traveller. Cutting through the Great Forest as it did, it was a beautiful trip if you were in no particular rush.

Swiftly, he gave orders to Andree and then slid over the side so quietly that there was nary a splash. While it was true that all of his kind suffered Nagash’s Curse and thus had to avoid the glare of the sun, running water was only an obstacle to the weaker among them. He sank down slowly, and bounded up, loping across the river bottom, his unnatural eyesight easily piercing the darkness of the Stir’s depths. Freshwater fish scattered at his approach, shooting in all directions. Silt billowed around his boots, and his cloak flared around him like the cap of a toadstool as he gazed up at the shadowy shape of the pleasure barge.

He pushed himself upwards, extending his hands. His claws sank into the wood of the barge and slowly, cautiously, Mannfred began to climb the slope. As the crown of his head pierced the water’s surface, Mannfred caught the rough voices of the pleasure barge’s crew. Stirlanders by the accents, he thought. They were calling out to Andree, who was keeping the skiff just out of the light cast by the lanterns mounted on the rail. Mannfred grinned and scuttled to the side. The barge was a side-wheeler of the type once devised by the dwarfs as war machines. Obviously, the design had been co-opted by some mercantile-minded individual.

He hopped up onto the rail, his cloak settling about him. Saliva gathered as his mouth became a sharp slash filled with needles. He inhaled softly, his spear-blade nose quivering. The crew had their backs to him, occupied as they were by Andree. He heard gasps as Andree and his skiff drifted at last into the light. A zombie, especially one in Andree’s condition, was never a pleasant sight.

He rose to his feet and shrugged back the folds of his dripping cloak. ‘Permission to board?’ he asked, breaking the horrified silence. Men spun, their hands clawing for weapons. He laughed and dived upon them. A sword slid past him, ripping the cloak from his shoulders, and he thrust his claws into its wielder’s face, crushing bone and gouging flesh. Stripping the meat from the man’s skull, he flung the bloody mess into another man’s face. A boat-hook swung at him and he caught it easily. Jerking it from the crewman’s grip, he snapped it in two and drove the jagged end of one half into the astonished man’s belly.

He lifted the dying man over his head and spread his jaws to an inhuman degree, his tongue uncoiling like that of a serpent. As he gulped down the ensuing shower of blood, he used the other half of the boat-hook to shatter the neck of another crewman. Dropping the body, he looked around. There were five men left on deck, though someone was below decks ringing an alarm bell. He spread his arms and bared crimson-stained teeth. ‘Come one at a time or all at once. The music fades and I’d have this dance done,’ he snarled.

He could have used his magics to sweep the life from them, he knew, and, at one time, he might have done so. It had always been his nature to take the slow path, to proceed cautiously. But he felt the urge to stretch his killing muscles; there was an undeniable pleasure in physical carnage, especially when he had for so long been denied the joys of the flesh. He didn’t even need to draw his sword. Not for pitiful specimens like these. His playfulness was flushed out of his system on the instant, replaced by a sudden burst of hunger. His claws and fangs extended and his vulpine features became something horrible to behold as he pounced.

He shrieked, grabbing a man’s head and ripping it in half like a soft melon. Swords and clubs rattled off his twisted armour as he tore through the sailors and the deck was awash in blood when he finished with them. The stink of fear filled his sinuses, calming him, and he turned, looking towards the upper deck. Terrified faces stared at him like mice stunned by the sudden appearance of a snake in their midst.

Slowly, savouring the fear emanating from them, he made his way to the upper deck. ‘I apologise for my most abrupt embarkation. Regrettably, I have need of your vessel.’ He paused, as if thinking, and then continued, ‘And yourselves.’ His tongue extended in a cat-like fashion and dislodged the drying blood from his mouth. The hunger had him now. More blood, he needed more. He needed seas and messes of it.

There were half a dozen men and women on the observation deck. Two of the men stepped forwards as he came up the stairs; both drew rapiers, though only one looked as if he knew how to properly use it. He drew his own sword, relishing the way their faces went pale at the sight of it. ‘W-who… who are you?’ one said.

He stopped. ‘Who,’ he said, curiously. It wasn’t a question he had thought about before. In sleep, he had had no need of a name or an identity. And in his life he had had many; dozens of them, hundreds of them and the titles to go with them. He flashed through them, trying to find the most recent. Who was he, at this time, in this place? The answer came in a flash of red and he gave a courtly bow as he said, ‘Allow me to introduce myself… I am Mannfred von Carstein.’ His lips skinned back from his fangs. ‘And I am hungry.’

The Low Town of Wurtbad was like a different country. Thanks to the prevalence of river-traffic, Low Town was home to a wide variety of people from all over the Empire, as well as more than a few from beyond. A babble of accents and languages mingled to create a persistent background hum. Business went on in Low Town at all times. The setting of the sun was no impediment.

Felix spun as he heard the clash of steel echoing off the baked clay bricks. One hand hovered over his sword-hilt. Gotrek chuckled unpleasantly. ‘Paranoid, manling?’ he said.

‘Just cautious,’ Felix insisted, hurrying to catch up to the Slayer and Iuldvitch. The templar walked briskly, his palm resting on the hilt of his sword.

‘Wurtbad is a vibrant place,’ Iuldvitch said, not sounding at all happy about that fact.

‘Surprising, considering how close we are to Sylvania,’ Felix said.

‘In my experience, you humans never laugh louder than when you’re trying to ignore the wolf at your door,’ Gotrek grumbled.

‘Better than the alternative, I suppose,’ Felix said, shrugging. ‘Strange that the temple would be in Low Town,’ he went on, looking at Iuldvitch.

‘Not really,’ the templar said, smiling thinly. ‘Morr is a necessary god, but not a loved one. And the dead are regarded more warily in these regions. Those who live in High Town have their own private mausoleums and their own pet priests, but for the rest of the population, the Garden of Bones must suffice.’

They moved across a square and then to a battered wooden footbridge that led across a narrow, brick-rimmed channel. Felix looked down into the sluggish water, marvelling at the feat of engineering that had gone into creating the web of man-made tributaries that provided water to every part of Wurtbad. Altdorf had something similar, as did Nuln, or so he’d heard. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it,’ he said, looking down at Gotrek.

‘Eh?’

‘This, all of this,’ Felix gestured around them.

Gotrek’s reply was a wad of spittle plopping into the water. They left the bridge behind. The Bone Garden sat silent in an empty space at the end of a quiet plaza. Felix looked down and realised with a start that the face of Morr had been picked out in ivory stones in the centre of the plaza. He stooped, curious, and then straightened abruptly. They weren’t stones. ‘Gotrek…’ he began, his mouth dry.

‘Aye, it took you long enough to notice,’ Gotrek said without stopping.

‘Men of faith donate their bones to the temple, even as we donate our bodies to Morr’s service,’ Iuldvitch said, stopping before the great gate of iron that marked the boundary to the Garden of Morr. He looked at Felix. ‘You disapprove?’

‘I – ah – no,’ Felix said hesitantly.

‘Good,’ Iuldvitch said, smiling. He turned back to the gate and reached for a silver bell mounted in the wall. ‘The temple here is a small one. Only one priest, but then, we have never needed more…’

‘Wait,’ Gotrek said suddenly, raising his hand in a gesture of warning.

‘What?’ Felix said, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword.

‘The gate is open.’

‘What?’ Iuldvitch drew his blade. Gotrek, axe in hand, tapped the gate and it swung outwards with a shrill shriek. Felix flinched, the noise causing his teeth to vibrate in his gums and the soles of his feet to itch. He looked down.

‘Gotrek,’ he said. ‘Look, footprints.’ Felix gestured with his sword, showing the dark footprints that stained the white space before the gate. ‘And bare feet as well; who would wander bare-footed through a cemetery?’

Iuldvitch cursed and darted through the open gate. Felix shared a look with Gotrek and then they hurried after the templar. A persistent mist curling off the river permeated the cemetery, drifting between the headstones and statuary. Felix’s flesh crawled at the cold feel of the mist and he remembered suddenly that he had always hated bone-gardens. Morr was not a comforting presence, as gods went. His was the sad inevitability of oblivion, and no man liked to think of that, not with the memory of wine still on his tongue or the touch of a woman’s hand on his heart.

Gotrek, of course, seemed altogether unbothered. ‘Burying your dead in the dirt,’ he grumbled. ‘That’s what causes the problems, manling. Stone is the only appropriate resting place for the dead. You never see the dead of a dwarf hold rising in revolt!’

‘Give it time,’ Felix muttered. Gotrek glared at him but didn’t reply. They caught up to Iuldvitch just outside of the garden chapel. He waved them to silence, his pale eyes narrowed. The chapel was a squat square of brick, adorned with skulls that clustered in nooks and crannies. A peaked roof studded with weathervanes completed the image of something that was less an actual building than the merest aperture of some unseen temple.

Gotrek sniffed the air. ‘Spoiled meat,’ he growled low in his throat. ‘And old blood as well.’ Iuldvitch started forwards, his sword out. He opened the chapel door and stepped inside. Gotrek and Felix followed, one to either side of the templar.

The chapel was little more than a corridor filled with softly-burning candles and rough wooden benches. At the opposite end, beneath the light cast by a lantern held by a stone image of Morr, was the altar. And on the altar was the priest. But he was not alone.

Felix choked on a sudden rush of nausea. Gotrek snarled and hefted his axe. Iuldvitch started forwards, his face a stiff mask.

The white, hairless things that had been crouched over the priest turned, their bestial faces twisting in surprise. There were five of them, and they were skinny creatures, balloon-muscled and bloat-bellied. One of them shrieked, sounding like the largest, angriest bat that Felix had ever heard. Then, with a howl, they sprang off the altar and rushed towards the trio.

The woman squirmed in Mannfred’s grip. He drank deeply of the pulsing red river of her life, but stopped short of running it dry. Contemptuously, he rolled her body off him and rose to his feet. Stepping over her, he stalked to the rail, licking blood from his claws.

The other five were attached to each other and to the lounging bench by the anchor chain. Blood encrusted the links, and they all hung limp and weak in their bonds. He had drunk from them all in the past few hours, and he would again before they reached their destination. He would drain them of every drop of noble blood that they possessed and replace it with something older and finer. He smiled, a razor slash in the dim torchlight. Mannfred leaned over the rail, the painted wood cracking in his grip. This was only the beginning.

His memories were less haphazard now. He had glutted himself, and his form, while still weak, was stronger now than it had been. Strong enough to do what came next, at any rate.

He looked down at Andree standing among the bodies of the slaughtered crew and raised his hands. The Carrion Winds caressed the edges of his mind and he spoke, the words echoing like shattering ice. On the deck, the bodies began to tremble. They twitched, squirmed and finally sat up, some still clutching the weapons that had proven so useless against their new master. In his head, Mannfred could hear the groans of horror as the bound spirits realised their predicament.

He smiled, glorying in the delicious spiritual agony. To master the dead was a fine thing indeed. To rip them from the clutches of jealous Morr filled him with a raw pleasure that was only matched by taking their lives in the first place.

‘Only the beginning,’ he hissed. Dominance came naturally to his kind. It was built into them to strive and conquer and rule. Even more so than in the humans they preyed upon. Vlad had taught him that; one of the few useful lessons his creator had ever given him.

Only the strongest could conquer. Only the most cunning and the canniest could rule. Instinct demanded that he return to Sylvania, to the ancient places of power. But Mannfred had ever been master of his instincts. Of them all, he had been the most cunning. While Vlad had become lost in ancient books and wasted lovers, and Konrad had raged impotently against phantom enemies, Mannfred had gone out into the wider world and supped on its delights.

He had learned things: the arts of Dhar and Shyish, the way of manipulating men and indeed, more than men. He had walked unseen in the deserts of the Land of the Dead and faced foes more terrible than any elector count armed with a bit of borrowed dwarf steel.

He frowned. That, of course, simply made his failure all the more painful. The Empire, by rights, should have been his. All of the pieces had been in place, everything was perfect, and then… what?

Mannfred reached into his belt and extracted the slice of Schtillman’s flesh. He examined the brand again, his still-sluggish memories shuffling into view in his mind’s eye. The brand was of old Khemri, but it had been used much more recently. Mannfred hissed in frustration as he tried to recall what it had signified. He squeezed the scrap of skin so hard that it stretched and tore in his hands.

‘What are you?’ he growled. He had brought the necromancer’s notes with him, hoping for answers of some kind. He – all of the von Carsteins, really – had been Schtillman’s life’s work. The wretched creature had spent decades hunting for Mannfred’s last resting place. But nothing in his interminable notes told Mannfred why.

Necromancers served his kind. It had always been thus. Vlad had said that it had been one of the first vampires who had passed on Nagash’s ancient wisdom to the cattle, and taught them the arts of necromancy. Mannfred could see that. Some among his kind, while sorcerous in nature, had less magical aptitude than a rock. They knew the why and the how, but lacked that spark that all humans possessed that allowed them to commune with the winds of magic.

Mannfred himself had no such need for the Schtillmans of the world. He had scoured the Books of Nagash clean of knowledge and drained the Concordances of Arkhan of all that they might teach him. Granted, there was still more to be learned. There was always more. But unlike some, the knowledge he sought had a use.

He looked down at the ragged shred of flesh in his hand and traced the mark on it, noting again how it looked to have been cut up, as if someone had tried to remove it or otherwise deface the brand. He knew what it was. He had to. But he could not bring it to mind.

Mannfred snarled in frustration, and his captives whimpered in fear. His mind was still wounded, even if his body was growing stronger. It had been all he could do to raise the dead crew and set them to work getting the barge moving. He turned from the rail, stuffing the scrap of Schtillman’s flesh back into his belt.

He needed more blood.

Gotrek gave a bark of joy and bounded past Felix and Iuldvitch to meet the ghouls charging towards them. ‘Ho, corpse-eaters! Come to Gotrek!’

Three of the beasts pounced on the Slayer while their two fellows darted past, heading for Felix and the templar. Felix stepped back as one of the things leapt up onto a bench and launched itself towards him. It crashed into him, surprisingly heavy for its size. An unpleasantly human face thrust itself at his and bit at him wildly. Pushing it back, he drew Karaghul and made to disembowel the monster. It twisted aside and leapt at him again. Felix whirled, sweeping his cloak out to catch it. The creature shrieked as it became tangled. Felix jerked his cloak aside and stabbed the off-balance creature. It folded over his blade, weeping black blood. Disgusted, he kicked it off and turned to help Iuldvitch.

The templar needed no help, though. He fought more fiercely than Felix had seen; he literally battered the creature he faced off its feet, his normally stoic features twisted in an expression of disgust. Another of the creatures flew between Felix and Iuldvitch, trailing a tendril of dark blood. It hit the far wall and flopped down, motionless. Felix turned and saw Gotrek stamping on another’s neck, even as he held the last of the grisly beasts above his head.

‘Ha!’ the Slayer laughed. ‘My axe isn’t to your tastes, eh?’ He looked up at the last beast and grinned into its snarls. Then he slammed it down atop its fellow and drove his axe through the both of them in a display of strength that stunned Felix momentarily. He was even more stunned when the floor gave a groan and the boards split and fell in, carrying the bodies with them.

Gotrek disappeared into the newborn pit with a roar. The floor gave way beneath Felix’s feet and he followed the Slayer with a yelp.

He hit the bottom of the pit with a thud and something clattered beneath him. Bones, he realised with horror. Gotrek was already on his feet. The Slayer had held onto his axe on the way down, but Felix’s sword was still above ground. Gotrek looked at him and shook his head. ‘I’ve never yet met a human who could hold onto his weapon,’ he grunted.

Felix restrained the urge to snap at the Slayer and scrambled to his feet. The pit was full of bones, and more of them decorated the walls. ‘What happened? Why did the floor collapse?’ he asked.

‘Shoddy human workmanship, I’d wager,’ Gotrek growled, peering around. There was a foul stink rising from the pit below, and Felix wished he had a handkerchief. It was dark and a wet mist rose up, carrying the stink with it. ‘The ground is soft here, manling,’ Gotrek said looking more closely at the walls of the pit. ‘It’s been dug out as well, though not by tools.’

‘It’s a ghoul warren,’ Iuldvitch intoned hollowly from above them.

‘Ghouls,’ Felix repeated, the word bringing with it a creeping sensation of dread. Even to a man with his upbringing, the word was one of horror, dredging up as it did every half-true fable of starving families eating the dead to survive a harsh winter and degenerating into inhuman scavengers as a consequence. Better a slow death by starvation than that. He prodded one of the bodies that had fallen with them with his boot, his curiosity momentarily overcoming his disgust. In death, they looked human enough, despite the slick greyness to their skin and the bestial cant to their spine. He paused as he noticed a strange brand on each of the beasts, on shoulders or haunches. It was a curious, crawling shape and it hurt his eyes to look on it.

‘They cling like blowflies to the grounds of some cemeteries,’ Iuldvitch said. Felix looked up at him. His flesh crawled at the thought. How long had the corpse-eaters been scurrying beneath Wurtbad and carving their foul-smelling tunnels?

‘I thought it your lot’s job to keep them from doing that!’ he said.

‘It is,’ Iuldvitch said grimly. ‘I’m going to go find a rope or something. Don’t move.’

‘Where would we go?’ Felix shot back. Iuldvitch vanished without replying.

He looked at Gotrek. The Slayer was running his hand across the rough circumference of the pit. ‘The templar is wrong,’ he grunted.

‘This looks like part of a warren to me,’ Felix said.

‘It’s more than that. No beast can dig through stone that easily,’ Gotrek said. He dug his fingers into the mud and pulled a chunk away, revealing what looked to be smooth stone.

‘What is that?’ Felix said.

‘It’s a keystone, manling,’ Gotrek said, pressing his palm to the stone. He looked up, squinting. ‘My people use them to identify routes and passages.’ He looked down, his eye searching for something. ‘This is a landing. There are stairs here, somewhere. More than one set, and dwarf-work.’ Gotrek’s eye narrowed. ‘Wurtbad was built over an older settlement, if I recall.’

Felix heard a strange scraping sound and turned. The bones in the walls of the pit were shifting and crumbling. ‘Gotrek,’ he said, wishing he had his sword. The scratching grew louder, sounding like rats behind the walls of a house. The sound was echoed from the other sides of the pit. Even Gotrek had stopped to listen, his head cocked.

‘Rats,’ he said.

‘That’s not rats,’ Felix said.

‘Big rats,’ Gotrek said.

The walls of the pit collapsed inwards, showering both of them with mud and bones. Felix found his arms pinned against his sides as the dirt swept him back. Dozens of ghouls, much larger than the others, bounded out of the holes towards them.

‘Those aren’t rats!’ Felix yelled, trying to free himself. Gotrek had managed to get his arm free, but not his axe. As a ghoul lunged at him, the Slayer’s hand shot out, his palm covering the lower half of the creature’s face. With a quick push, Gotrek snapped the creature’s neck.

Felix fought desperately to free himself as several ghouls moved towards him on all fours, their distorted bodies moving more like those of cats than the men they had once been. Gotrek snarled in pain as a ghoul avoided his fist and leapt onto his back, burying its teeth into his shoulder. With a powerful shrug the dwarf ripped his other arm free of the mud and reached up to grab the ghoul.

Felix jerked back as a ghoul made an almost playful snap at him. A pair of them circled him, licking their chops and chuckling. He forced his hand down, reaching for the dagger sheathed on his belt. It wasn’t going to be of much use but it was better than nothing.

Gotrek forced himself up out of the mud, but was quickly bowled over by the ghouls. The bigger beasts were far stronger than their smaller cousins. Gotrek bellowed and thrashed, driving an elbow into the jaw of one creature, knocking it backwards. He rose and grabbed another in a bear-hug. Felix heard bones snap and pop.

He got his dagger free at the last moment and jabbed it upwards into the soft spot under a lunging ghoul’s jaw. It leaned into him, eyes bulging hatefully. Felix forced the blade further in, hoping to pierce the creature’s brain. Its foul breath washed over him and then it sighed and slumped. Black blood washed over his hand, burning his flesh slightly.

He tried to jerk the dagger free, but he knew he wouldn’t get it loose in time. Another ghoul was too close. Felix steeled himself for the bite he knew was coming.

But it didn’t.

Felix’s eyes cracked open. The ghoul’s jaws gaped, but its eyes had rolled up in its head, as if looking towards the blade of the axe embedded in its skull. Gotrek had hurled it across the pit, killing the creature moments before it could do the same to Felix.

‘Is everyone all right?’ Iuldvitch called out from above.

‘Oh yes, just fine,’ Felix said, his voice a touch more hysterical than he would have liked. ‘I’m not dead,’ he said.

‘No,’ Gotrek said, retrieving his axe and plucking Felix out of his predicament. As he hauled Felix out of the mud, he pointed to where the ghouls had emerged. ‘Stairs, manling,’ he said triumphantly.

‘I never doubted you,’ Felix protested. There were indeed stairs there and they appeared to go down, but Felix wanted to go up and he looked away from them as Iuldvitch lowered a thick chain snagged from one tomb or another. ‘Best I could find, I’m afraid,’ the templar said apologetically.

‘It’ll do,’ Felix said, as he and Gotrek climbed out quickly. ‘Thank you,’ Felix said, brushing mud off his sleeves. Iuldvitch didn’t reply. He was staring at the body of the priest. Gently he began to arrange the dead man’s outflung limbs to hide the gaping ruin of his belly and chest. ‘I would have thought this place would be safer than most…’ He turned and Felix noticed that his hands were trembling slightly.

‘Those creatures weren’t alone,’ Gotrek said. ‘Remember the footprints, manling?’ He gestured with his axe towards the gates. ‘Like as not, the rest of the pack went into Low Town. And judging by the stink, there were a lot of them.’

‘You can tell that?’ Felix asked.

Gotrek tapped the side of his nose. ‘Of course; the stronger the stink, the more of them there were. It’s the same with grobi and skaven.’ He headed for the door. ‘My axe still thirsts. We can probably catch up with them if we hurry.’

The thought of fighting more of the things caused Felix to squirm inside, but he hurried after Gotrek nonetheless. He stopped when he realised that Iuldvitch wasn’t following them. The templar had drawn his sword and was kneeling in front of the altar and the priest’s body.

‘Iuldvitch?’ Felix began.

‘Leave him, manling,’ Gotrek said, grabbing Felix’s arm. ‘He’s got his own path to follow.’

‘He’s right,’ Iuldvitch said without turning. He stood slowly, leaning on his sword. ‘Where one pack rises, others are sure to follow, unless the warren is purged. This close to Sylvania, there’s no telling how many packs of the creatures are lurking. I’ll not have this place corrupted any further.’

Felix hesitated. ‘Surely we should help,’ he said, looking at Gotrek.

‘We will be, manling,’ Gotrek said, shoving the chapel door aside. ‘By tracking down and slaughtering the rest of this filth before they do to any others what they did to the priest.’

Iuldvitch smiled thinly at Felix. ‘Go on, Jaeger. This is what I do, and I do it best alone. Besides, one of us should warn the authorities. There could be more ghouls in the city, especially if we’ve stumbled afoul of some deeper plan.’

‘Plan?’ Felix said.

‘Ghouls don’t do this sort of thing on their own initiative. They’re scavengers. Even a pack this size…’ Iuldvitch shook his head. ‘Something forced them up here. Be careful.’

Felix nodded and hurried after Gotrek’s swiftly stumping form.

‘Wurtbad, jewel of the Stir,’ Mannfred murmured, leaning across his cocked knee, his red eyes gazing at the approaching docks in barely repressed eagerness. ‘It has been some time since I last tasted its delights,’ he continued, more loudly, as he turned. The six newly-made vampires hissed and snarled in reply as they clustered about him, feral faces twisted in hunger.

Mannfred slapped aside a vampiress who’d gotten too close and snarled at the thirsty pack, causing them all to scramble to the opposite side of the deck. He’d drained them dry over the course of the trip, and then filled them up again, with his essence. Their thoughts, full of hunger and frustration, fluttered around the edges of his consciousness like moths around a dark flame.

Ruthlessly, he spread the tendrils of his mind and gathered their thoughts before crushing them, causing the vampires to twitch and moan. Satisfied that they would cause no trouble, he grunted and turned away to watch the zombie crew move mechanically about their duties. In truth, he’d have preferred to avoid the whole messy process of creating more of his kind. Weak-minded as they were at the moment, they were more a threat to each other than to him, but as his experiences with brother Konrad had shown, vampires were not pack animals, despite being able to assume the form of wolves.

Unfortunately, he needed servants of a more durable nature than Andree and his new fellows. Armies had to start somewhere. He extended his tongue, tasting the air. It was foul, this close to the city, smelling as it did of industry and strange spices. But below that, he could scent the far sweeter smell of death, and necromancy. It was a familiar scent, and not in the general fashion that all things derived from necromancy were familiar.

It was frustrating, that familiarity. Magic, when wielded by a particular hand, had a particular odour. It was a tang that prodded at the heightened senses of sorcerous beings like Mannfred. He could follow that tang across any ground, as his every instinct now urged him to do. To hunt was his nature and it had been too long.

He signalled his zombies to drop anchor in a bend in the river. The boat would be safe enough here, on the outskirts of Wurtbad’s docklands. Abandoned jetties and outbuildings lined the shore, used only by smugglers and other rabble engaged in illicit dealings. Other than a few members of the river-watch, who were likely in the pay of those aforementioned smugglers, no one would notice. Not until morning at any rate. And he intended to be someplace else by then. Wurtbad played host to a number of secret places and lairs for one of his kind. He had set up most of them himself, in fact, during his last visit.

Planning and preparation had ever been his way. The cautious spider, rather than the rabid wolf, as Konrad had been. He had even been more cautious than Vlad, in the end. Suddenly, he looked up, eyes widening slightly, and grunted. ‘No… It couldn’t be,’ he muttered, pulling the scrap of Schtillman’s flesh out of his belt. ‘But if it is…’

He traced the brand with the tip of a claw. It had been the thought of Vlad that had done it. That was where he had seen that brand before. And a very particular brand it was. ‘Would they dare?’ Mannfred said, looking at his vampires as if expecting a reply. None was forthcoming, of course. Their will was his will. They could have no other.

There was a scrape of wood on wood as the crew brought them close to the jetty and he turned, stuffing the scrap back into his belt. He glanced at the vampires and pointed at them. ‘Stay until I call for you, then come in all haste,’ he said. Without waiting for a reply he leapt from the prow to the jetty, his shape blurring as he fell. Bone cracked and twisted and stiff hairs pierced his flesh like thousands of spear-points, causing him to be surrounded in a bloody mist as he dropped downwards. Changing shape was a pleasurable sort of pain for Mannfred. The bodies of his kind were dead and thus ultimately malleable. The more power they had, the more shapes that were theirs to assume. Weak as he still was, there was only one shape that met his current needs.

Four feet landed on the jetty, causing the wood to bow slightly, and a great black wolf bounded into the fog. Mannfred ran faster than any wolf, however, and his claws struck gouges in the wood of the jetty. Muscles pumping with stolen blood, he sprang from the jetty to the roof of an outbuilding and ran towards the city.

He went unnoticed past the trio of watchmen heading to investigate the newly-arrived barge, and gave a silent, snarling laugh at the thought of what awaited them, should they board the barge. His new followers would satiate their hunger on the unlucky men and be ready to aid Mannfred in whatever endeavour awaited him tonight.

The wolf dropped into the crooked alleys of Low Town, moving with the surety of one whose absence has not resulted in much change in old haunts. The Empire did not change, Mannfred knew. It simply persisted. It was as much a zombie as Andree, lumbering down through the centuries, its blood growing thinner and thinner with each generation.

That was reason enough to put it out of its misery. The wolf that was Mannfred growled in satisfaction, thinking of things to come. He would rebuild his forces in the secret places of the Empire, and when the time was right, when the eyes of the Empire’s defenders were turned elsewhere, he would strike.

The wolf bounded up onto the awning of a vendor’s stall and leapt onto a sloping roof, scrambling up and across. He ran across the rooftops of Low Town, following the skeins of dark magic he had scented in the harbour. They permeated the town, tangled up in the damp mist that seeped upwards out of the streets. Mannfred skidded to a halt as the stench of rotting meat and spoiled milk caught his attention. He loped to the edge of the roof and gave a bark of surprise as he saw the pale shapes of a dozen or more ghouls creeping towards him from the opposite direction. They swarmed up walls and across the curves of the rooftops of the city, moving like spiders, their pale gangly limbs flashing in the moonlight as they crept closer.

But not towards him; the ghouls were creeping towards the building he crouched on. Mannfred sank down, inhaling as his shape billowed back out to its human proportions. He smelled a strong wood fire and cooking meat, fermentation and human sweat. It was a tavern. Mannfred rose to his feet even as the first ghoul landed with a thump on the roof.

It shrilled at him, baring yellow teeth. Others joined it, swarming up to crouch in a semi-circle of simian malevolence around Mannfred. There were twenty of them, and he could smell more of them coming closer. One snarled and stretched out a hesitant claw. Mannfred met its dim gaze and flashed his fangs. It squeaked and shoved back, nearly dislodging several of its fellows from their perches. The brands on their flesh burned like torches to his eyes and he snarled. It was the same brand as marked the shred of Schtillman’s flesh.

They had been sent on some errand, but his presence had cowed them for the moment. Deep in their tainted blood, the beasts knew who their real master was, no matter the petty magics that leashed them to hidden hands. Their kind had served his since their first degenerate antecedent had sworn fealty to the first vampires.

Curious, he stepped aside and gestured. Almost gratefully, the ghouls piled past him, whimpering and growling. They began tearing at the roof. He could hear their fellows doing the same to the closed shutters of the upper-storey windows. He watched them for a moment longer and then whispered a guttural phrase. The strings of necromantic magic that were hooked into the brands on the ghouls stretched back the way the beasts had come, across the rooftops. Mannfred gave a short, sharp laugh and set off on the trail of old friends he had thought long since gone to their well-deserved graves.

Even on two legs, his speed was preternatural, carrying him swiftly from the roof of the tavern to another overlooking a bone-coloured square that marked the entry point to the local cemetery. He caught sight of the image on the floor of the plaza and hissed, throwing up a hand instinctively. Wincing, he hurled himself the distance from the edge of the roof to the top of the wall surrounding the Garden of Morr.

Even Mannfred, the most logical of his breed, felt some small disquiet at the thought of willingly entering an abode of the God of Death. Everything that Morr was, Mannfred and his kind made mockery of. And Morr, like any god, was a jealous entity, and prone to grudges.

Crouching on the wall, Mannfred sniffed the air cautiously. The Bone Garden reeked of dark magics. Like an apple eaten inside out by rot, it was no longer dedicated to the Final God, but instead to – what? It stank of necromancy, and the mist clung fiercely to the headstones and mausoleums. Mannfred dropped down into the cemetery and the mist coiled up around him, like striking serpents. With a gesture, he dispersed it and started towards the chapel. He could feel the tingle of the sacred there; a final holy flame.

A born conspirator, Mannfred knew a plot when he stumbled over one. It would take a sorcerer of his standing years to undermine the innate protections of a Garden even as small as this one. And the brand on the ghouls bespoke a familiar band of plotters indeed. Memories surged, bobbing to the surface of his wine-dark thoughts.

He smelled the delightful scent of newly-spilled blood emanating from the chapel. Licking his lips, he stepped inside. The mist retreated, and Mannfred himself felt an invisible pressure radiating from the altar at the other end. A figure knelt, head bowed in prayer. The syllables struck Mannfred like slaps, and he could not restrain a snarl.

The man sprang to his feet and spun around, eyes widening as he caught sight of Mannfred. ‘Who–’ he began.

Mannfred did not let him finish. He rushed forwards, cloak flaring out behind him, the curved ridges of his armour swallowing the light. His fangs and claws extended and he dived onto the warrior. A sword slashed up, nearly bisecting him, and Mannfred twisted in mid-air, avoiding the blow. He landed on the altar and lunged at the swordsman without pausing. Mannfred did not know him, but he was familiar nonetheless. He had faced servants of the death god before and he knew their maggoty stench.

The man’s sword burned with letters of cold fire and Mannfred’s flesh crawled as he ducked under a precise sweep and dug his claws into his opponent’s steel gorget. The blow lifted the warrior off his feet and flung him back to crash into the closest of the benches that lined the chapel. Mannfred tossed the bent gorget aside and stalked towards the warrior, who lay in the ruins of the bench, gagging.

Mannfred scooped up the fallen sword, but tossed it aside with a yelp. His palm had blistered at the touch of the hilt and he cursed himself for being foolish. He thought of drawing his own blade, but dismissed the thought. Why sully it? The warrior was trying to get to his feet, one hand to his damaged throat. Mannfred could almost admire such determination… almost, but not quite.

Mannfred sprang forwards and grabbed the pale man by his head. He restrained the impulse to crush the man’s skull like an egg and instead leaned close. There was something going on, and he wanted to know what.

‘Tell me what you know,’ he hissed, his eyes widening and his thoughts driving forwards to pierce the mind of his captive. The templar jerked and groaned as blood began to run from the corners of his eyes and his nostrils. Mannfred pulled him closer. ‘Tell me…’

The mist seemed thicker somehow, and Felix could taste a hint of strange rot in his sinuses. The vapour was high enough now that Gotrek’s crest cut through it like a shark’s fin. ‘Maybe we should rouse the others,’ he said as they left the Bone Garden behind. Gotrek snorted.

‘And what use would they be, manling?’

‘Quite a bit, in Olaf’s case, I think,’ Felix said bluntly. He threw a hand in the direction of the Garden. ‘You saw the look on his face, Gotrek. And you said yourself that there’s bound to be a lot of those beasts loose in Low Town! We need to alert someone – anyone!’

‘What, and spook the corpse-eaters?’ Gotrek seemed aghast.

‘Weren’t you the one who was just talking about preventing any further deaths?’ Felix snapped. He batted in annoyance at the mist as it curled around his hands. It hung off everything like a wet shroud. It made him think of Hel Fenn, something he really could have done without. Thinking of Hel Fenn made Felix think again about Schtillman and what he’d been planning. He had not voiced his suspicions as to the necromancer’s intentions, seeing no need. But he wondered if that had been the correct course, considering what they had seen in the Bone Garden.

Of course, he had no proof as to what Schtillman’s plan had been. He had seemingly been the only one to hear Schtillman’s ranting and the thought of it was inconceivable. Resurrecting Mannfred von Carstein? The idea was laughable.

Then again… Felix shook droplets of wet off his sleeve. He looked up and tried to see the stars through the mist, but it was too thick. ‘We need to get help, Gotrek,’ he said. ‘Especially if…’ He trailed off.

‘If what?’ Gotrek said impatiently. The Slayer stopped so suddenly that Felix almost ran into him. ‘What’s stuck in your craw, manling?’

‘It’s von Carstein!’ Felix burst out.

‘What?’ Gotrek said.

‘That’s who Schtillman was talking about in the swamp,’ Felix said. ‘What if he succeeded, what if Elsa was just meant as an – an appetiser for something that was already back and hungry?’

Gotrek shook his head. ‘Manling…’ He turned to continue on, but by the set of his shoulders Felix could tell he was still listening. He decided to press his luck.

‘What if that’s what Holtz and Russ are after?’ Felix insisted. ‘What if the reliquary wasn’t a reliquary at all, but a body?’

Gotrek stopped again. Felix bobbed from one foot to the other nervously. The mist seemed to press against him from all sides, like hands at an Altdorf orgy. ‘Even the Sigmarites wouldn’t be that stupid… to not destroy the vampire’s body, if it had been found,’ Gotrek said, but he sounded doubtful.

‘Of course they would!’ Felix said. ‘It’s common knowledge that they keep all manner of monsters in the Great Temple!’

‘Common knowledge, eh?’ Gotrek said.

‘Well, rumour and innuendo, but every fiction has a kernel of truth,’ Felix said. ‘Gotrek, we may not be just facing ghouls, but one of the Lords of the Undead as well!’

‘And?’ Gotrek demanded.

‘And? And?’ Felix said. ‘Gotrek, we have to tell someone. If Mannfred von Carstein has returned, the entire Empire is in danger!’

‘All the more reason to chop the snake’s head off now,’ Gotrek said. ‘Speaking of which…’ Felix saw the Slayer’s axe loop out and he threw himself to the ground. There was a scream from behind him and a ghoul crumpled to the cobbles, jerking and dying. Gotrek ripped his axe loose and flicked a blob of sticky blood from the blade. ‘Looks like we found the ghouls,’ he said.

Felix looked up and saw dozens of red lights shining above him in the mist. He drew his sword. Gotrek roared and cut a falling ghoul in two. A shower of gore filled the alleyway, but Gotrek didn’t appear to notice. More ghouls dropped from the walls and rooftop, moving with almost reptilian grace. Several tried to dog-pile the Slayer, but Gotrek became a blur of muscle and metal, and body parts rolled into the gutters.

Felix, while not as deadly, was also not the target. The ghouls seemed less concerned with him than with bringing Gotrek down, and he couldn’t blame them. Nonetheless, Karaghul darted out and a ghoul staggered, clutching its bloody throat.

Felix’s former nausea was washed away in a rush of hatred. These creatures were monsters, not men. Whether of their own accord or at the behest of some monstrous master, they had dug their own grave as far as Felix was concerned. Any pity he might have felt for them was gone. He hacked and slashed at the capering figures and the world dimmed to a red tunnel.

Only when his sword scraped the brick of a wall did he come out of it, and he heard Gotrek laugh. ‘Good, manling, good. But they’re getting away.’ Felix turned and saw black shapes scampering away. Gotrek was already charging after them.

Felix hurried after him. He could hear the sound of alarm bells ringing and the cry of horses; he couldn’t see where the sounds were coming from, but it sounded like all of Wurtbad was in an uproar. The mist was literally crawling up the walls of the buildings around them. He could see barely a foot in front of his face. Indeed, he had lost sight of Gotrek entirely.

‘Gotrek?’ he said.

‘Smell that, manling?’ Gotrek said, from somewhere close to his elbow. Felix jumped, startled.

‘What?’

‘Smoke,’ Gotrek said, waving his bloody axe through the mist. Felix sniffed and then looked. There was a dim glow in the haze.

‘And where there’s smoke, there’s fire,’ he said grimly.

‘Let’s go, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘That’s Hugo’s tavern!’ The Slayer took off at a run, and Felix followed. He didn’t ask how the Slayer knew that it was Hugo’s tavern that was on fire; the dwarf’s senses were far keener than a human’s. Instead, he concentrated on running. Fear for the others, especially Elsa, filled him, lending him speed. If the ghouls had attacked them as they had gone after Gotrek and him…

The mist seemed to draw back suddenly, like a curtain being twitched aside, and a two-storey inferno was revealed. Hugo’s tavern was indeed burning. The street in front of it was jam-packed with people, most running in all directions, and not a few ghouls. The latter were tearing into the panicking crowd with berserk abandon. Gotrek roared and launched himself to the attack. Felix left him to it and grabbed a running figure. ‘Where’s Hugo?’ he shouted.

‘They’re still inside!’ the soot-stained man said. ‘Let me go! Those things are everywhere!’ The man jerked himself free of Felix’s grip as a ghoul bounded towards them. With a start Felix realised that it was blind, its eyes boiled in its sockets, and char-marks and blisters covered its greasy hide. It leapt towards him and he jerked Karaghul up at the last moment, separating its grasping hands from its wrists. It shrieked and tumbled past him. Felix didn’t bother to finish it. Instead, he rushed towards the burning tavern.

‘Gotrek, Hugo and the others are still inside!’ he called out to the Slayer, who was busy bashing his skull into that of an unlucky ghoul. Gotrek looked up, his face a mask of ghoul-blood.

‘Then what are we waiting for, manling? Let’s go get them!’ the dwarf said, dropping the dead ghoul and uprooting his axe from the body of another. But even as they headed for the door, a tide of screaming, burning ghouls barrelled out of the fiery tavern and ran blindly towards them.

Gotrek shoved past Felix and his axe swung out in a savage arc, spilling frying entrails and bubbling blood across the street. Felix rammed his sword through a howling ghoul, driving it back against the smouldering door-post. It clawed at him in agony and he ripped Karaghul free and dived past it into the tavern. There was smoke everywhere and Felix pulled his cloak, still damp from the mist, up to his face, hoping it would protect him long enough to find the others.

The common room was almost entirely aflame, and comets of burning wood dripped from the ceiling. The upper floors were completely consumed, Felix knew, and anything that had been in them. In the centre of the common room, within a ring of overturned tables, stood Olaf, his arms outthrust, the flames cascading around him like an eggshell and his feet set. Blood stained the front of the wizard’s robe, pouring down from under his wide beard, and even at a distance and through the smoke Felix could tell that he was weakening. Holtz knelt beside him, cradling a limp shape, and Hugo was slumped nearby, the flames licking at his boot-heels.

Ignoring the heat, Felix rushed towards them. Olaf saw him and gave a bloody smile. His legs began to buckle and his long arms stretched out. Felix felt a moment’s relief from the heat. ‘Olaf, you–’

‘Caught me in the throat, surprised me,’ Olaf gurgled, blinking blearily. ‘Let it loose without thinking… stupid.’ He bobbed like a drunkard, but shook his head violently as Felix reached out to steady him. ‘Get ’em out, Jaeger. Get ’em…’

Felix looked down. Holtz was slumped and his robe was ripped and bloody. Felix’s heart jumped to see Elsa in his arms, however. From above there came a groan and a crashing creak. He looked up. ‘Grab her and lets go, manling, the ceiling is giving way,’ Gotrek snarled.

Felix looked over and saw the Slayer carrying Hugo draped over his shoulders. The Slayer jerked his head and made for the door. Felix reached down to take Elsa from Holtz’s slack arms. The priest didn’t resist. Indeed, he toppled over as Elsa’s weight was removed. Felix hesitated, wondering if he should try and get the Sigmarite out as well, but Olaf shook his head weakly. ‘He’s dead, the stupid bastard. All dead. Go, Jaeger. I can’t… can’t keep the flames at bay much longer.’ He coughed and more blood spilled down his chest.

The flames pressed closer suddenly and he could hear Gotrek roaring his name. Felix held Elsa close, shrouded in his cloak, and made a lurching run towards the door. He felt more than saw Olaf topple to the floor behind him, and one of the stout timber beams of the roof gave way, smashing into the floor and hiding the wizard from sight.

With the fire clutching greedily at him, Felix hurled himself and Elsa out the doorway and into the street. Noise ripped through the smoke that filled the air. More alarm bells were being rung throughout Low Town and the sound of weapons rang through the streets. Dropping Elsa to the ground as gently as he could, he ripped off his cloak and beat out the flames that clung to it. ‘Good job, manling,’ Gotrek said. Felix looked over and saw the Slayer pinching out the wisps of fire that had scorched the top of his crest. Hugo sat beside him, coughing.

‘What happened in there?’ Felix said, helping Elsa sit up as she came around. He patted her back as she coughed. ‘Was it the ghouls?’ he said, looking around. Shadowy shapes lurked on the rooftops and the bodies of those they’d killed lay in the street.

‘Never known the corpse-eaters to set fires,’ Gotrek said. He shifted his grip on his axe as his nostrils flared. ‘They’re watching us,’ he growled.

‘It was the wizard. Olaf,’ Hugo said hoarsely. ‘Ghouls came in through the upper storey and attacked Holtz and the witch hunter in their room. The fight got loud and Olaf went to help. By then, there were ghouls swarming through the common room, attacking everyone. The wizard’s fire got out of control…’

‘They cut his throat,’ Felix said, rubbing his own. ‘It must have made it hard to concentrate.’

‘M-my sons?’ Hugo said, looking at Gotrek. The Slayer hesitated and then put a hand on the publican’s shoulder. Hugo’s face crumpled and he hunched over, sobbing. Elsa went to him, tears streaming freely down her cheeks. She looked up at Felix.

‘They tried to help the witch hunter upstairs, but they never came down,’ she said. ‘I went to find them, but the priest – he stopped me – oh Felix, he was bleeding and then the ghouls came and he fought them but there was so much blood…’ She trailed off, staring at nothing as she unconsciously comforted her father.

‘All dead,’ Felix said, echoing what Olaf had said. ‘Gotrek…’

‘It’s as the templar said, manling,’ Gotrek said, starting back towards the Garden of Morr. ‘And I know where they’re coming from.’

‘Gotrek, we can’t just leave them,’ Felix said. He looked down at Elsa and her father.

Elsa looked up, her features twisting into a mask of hatred. ‘Leave!’ she spat. ‘Go and kill them! Kill all of them!’ Felix flinched, but set his face and turned to follow Gotrek, who hadn’t stopped.

‘Why would they attack Holtz and the others?’ Felix said as they moved swiftly through the ever-thickening mist. ‘Out of all the public houses in Wurtbad, why did they pick Hugo’s?’

‘Maybe they weren’t a fan of his ale,’ Gotrek said nastily. He was nothing but a dim, ape-like figure in the mist, but Felix thought he could see the glint in the Slayer’s eye nonetheless. Gotrek was angry, and that did not bode well for the ghouls.

‘Gotrek, something is going on!’ Felix said, exasperated. ‘If I can see it, surely you can as well!’

‘You’re a poet, manling. It’s your job to see stories where there are none,’ Gotrek said.

‘Iuldvitch said it himself… something is driving them out of their warrens! They don’t do this,’ he said, gesturing to the city. Shapes ran across the mouth of an alley, and he heard a piercing shriek rise up before being abruptly silenced. More screams echoed from all over and the smell of smoke was omnipresent.

Despite that, they arrived back at the cemetery without incident. Gotrek didn’t slow down as the gate rose up before them out of the mist. One broad shoulder struck the gate, slamming it open. Felix came after him, calling out ‘Iuldvitch!’ He hoped that the templar hadn’t already gone into the warrens. If he were right and there was a vampire on the loose, then a templar of Morr would come in handy.

‘Save your breath,’ Gotrek growled, hurrying along. Felix ignored him. The ground felt soft and mushy beneath his feet, and for a moment he wondered how far the ghoul warrens extended beneath the cemetery. ‘He’s either already down there, or he’s dead. Either way, he’s no help to us,’ the Slayer continued.

They went inside the chapel. The smell of blood was strong, stronger than it had been before. The hole was still there, where Gotrek had put it. The Slayer looked down into the hole, his face like carved stone. ‘Mannfred von Carstein is dead and gone, manling,’ he said, after a moment. ‘But you’re right; someone has sent the ghouls out.’

‘But why?’ Felix said. ‘And if not the vampire, then who?’

‘Does it matter, manling?’ Gotrek said, running his thumb along the blade of his axe. He eyed the bead of blood on his thumb for a moment, and then rubbed it out. ‘They are, and that’s enough for me. Are you coming?’ Without waiting for a reply, the dwarf leapt easily into the pit and started down the ancient stone steps. Felix hesitated, then climbed awkwardly down the chain and followed suit.

Within moments, darkness had enveloped them. Felix was forced to trust Gotrek’s sense of direction. He knew dwarfs could see in the dark to some degree. As they moved downwards, he was reminded of their trip to the City below the Eight Peaks, and another shudder wracked him. The troll-thing that they had faced there was worse than any ghoul, he knew, but it was hard to be objective in the dark. Especially when he was certain that he could hear the damn things scraping and crawling on the other side of the loose-bricked walls of the ancient stairwell.

‘There are towns almost as deep as any dwarf hold in this part of your Empire,’ Gotrek said, his voice echoing off the walls. ‘Every time they’re destroyed, you just build over the ruins, like ants.’ Felix couldn’t tell whether the thought pleased Gotrek or disgusted him.

‘I’ve heard there’ve been three cities here, since Sigmar’s time. And Low Town burns to the river bed every summer, when the wildfires on the plains get out of control,’ Felix said, more for something to say than any other reason. He kept his voice low, but it echoed nonetheless.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and Gotrek paused, as if steeling himself. ‘Gotrek,’ Felix said.

‘Did I tell you my father helped hold down the leech-king at Hel Fenn, manling?’ Gotrek said, staring into the darkness of the tunnel. ‘Held him in place while the Stirlanders put him down…’ His axe flashed out suddenly, striking the wall of the tunnel and causing a shower of sparks to burst into being. ‘I have longed to test my axe against one of his kind, manling. To meet one of the carrion-kings in combat,’ Gotrek said. Then, more loudly, ‘Come out, corpse-lovers! Come to Gotrek!’ He roared and cursed for several minutes, spitting oaths into the darkness.

There were vague, distant shufflings in the darkness, but that was all the reply Gotrek’s cries received. Felix’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark, and he blinked as he saw that contrary to his earlier assumption, there was, in fact, some light to be had. It was a faint, surreal glow, just enough to see by, emanating from oddly-shaped patches of mould that grew on the walls and ceiling.

‘Grave mould,’ Gotrek said helpfully. ‘They say it grows on untended graves.’

They continued on, following the sloping corridor. Felix thought that it might have been a street at one time, for the walls were less solid stone than bricks punctuated by hard-packed river-clay and soil. Vague shapes that might have been bricked-up doorways lined the tunnel, and at points in the ceiling, Felix caught sight of strange rectangles that he knew were coffin bottoms.

Gotrek’s mood grew fouler as they moved further down. The sound of scuttling grew omnipresent, as did the distant hum of the River Stir, which caused the river-side wall of the tunnel to vibrate and drip incessantly.

‘Where are they?’ he snarled. He struck out at the walls, scoring the stone and causing the unseen scuttlers to move faster and further.

Personally, Felix was glad for the lack of enemies. His muscles ached and he was ready to call it a night, ghouls or no. ‘Maybe they’ve all gone up. Maybe Iuldvitch was wrong, and this was just a random attack by these beasts…’ he said, somewhat hopefully.

‘Ghouls don’t attack cities, manling,’ Gotrek asserted. ‘Not without encouragement.’ He touched the wall and rubbed a bit of powder dribbling from the place his axe had cut between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Limestone, and thin, manling; the river is right on the other side.’

‘How can you be sure–’ Felix began, when the sound of scuttling suddenly ceased. He looked at Gotrek, whose good eye widened slightly. Beneath Felix’s feet, the stone gave a subtle shift. ‘Oh no,’ he said.

With a shrill crack, the stone gave way and they hurtled down into the lightless abyss below.

Mannfred, crouching in the eaves of the roof, watched the dwarf and his human companion enter the ghoul warren and grunted in satisfaction. They hadn’t seen the body. The templar had resisted until the end. He had pitted his mind against Mannfred’s and died in the doing.

Mannfred dropped from the eaves and, stepped to the door of the chapel, sending out a silent call, plucking the ever-strengthening strings of magic and blood that bound him to his followers.

He flexed his talon-tipped fingers and watched the play of his muscles in the light of the guttering torches. He looked up at the sky, judging that there were several hours yet until sunrise, which meant that there was plenty of time to deal with the current situation.

Mannfred shook his head. ‘How the fates do conspire,’ he murmured. It seemed appropriate, somehow, that the very agents of his destruction should themselves be destroyed on the eve of his resurrection.

Oh, they hadn’t driven the blade into his heart, but it was they who had sown the seeds of his demise, spiteful wretches that they were. His lips skinned back from his fangs and he looked at the dead ghouls on the floor, and the familiar strange shifting brand that marked them as the property of their masters… the brand of the Charnel Congress.

The Charnel Congress, Vlad von Carstein’s pet necromancers, schooled in the art of the Wind of Death by Vlad himself, whose knowledge of necromancy was greater even than Mannfred’s. Mannfred snarled softly. And they were pets; loyal dogs, nipping at the heels of Vlad’s heirs in the years after the first von Carstein’s final death. They had scattered when mad, bad Konrad had assumed the stewardship of Sylvania, though he had hunted them mercilessly, desiring their service. Mannfred had thought them destroyed, until well into his own reign, when they had resurfaced, hungry for vengeance on him.

They had blamed him – him! – for Vlad’s fall, and acted accordingly, pestering him as he fought a running battle with his other enemies. The leaping hound might not bring down the hunted bear, but it can render it vulnerable to the hunter’s spear-thrust.

Granted, it had been his hand that had guided Vlad’s enemies in disposing of him, but they hadn’t known that. They had only suspected. It was almost insulting.

‘Vlad, you chose your servants poorly,’ Mannfred said aloud, tearing the flap of Schtillman’s skin from his belt and ripping it in two. ‘As did the Congress, apparently; was that why they removed you from their ranks, Schtillman, you petty hedge wizard? Did you fail them? Or did you succeed in something untoward?’

Such as learning the location of Mannfred’s mortal remains, perhaps. No, they wouldn’t want that, would they? Mannfred’s return might upset whatever scheme they had going. ‘Might,’ he growled. There was no might, no perhaps. He would smash it. And smash them, because it pleased him to do so. Betrayal could not go unpunished, even so long after the fact, could it?

The question was, what were they planning? Ghouls slinking through the city streets, while a pleasant enough evening’s diversion, were not enough to seize control of Wurtbad. No, there was something else. Something he wasn’t seeing. Something, perhaps, that had to do with the dwarf and his companion; why else would they be here?

He looked back at the body of the templar, and his smile grew savage. In life, the templar had resisted him, but in death? He bounded towards the altar. Scooping up the body, he tossed it onto the altar and looked up at the statue of the death god with a snarl. ‘Thus to you, god of maggots,’ Mannfred said, as he tore open the templar’s chest, exposing his heart and organs to the torchlight.

It was the work of a moment to sever the spinal column and pull loose the dead man’s skull and brains. Mannfred lifted the head in both hands and breathed into its mouth. Red mist passed his lips and filled the head’s nostrils, lips, ears and eyes. It was no small thing to do this, especially to a servant of the death god. Morr guarded the souls of his servants and protected them from the call of the Carrion Wind. But though he could not make the templar walk at his behest, he could make him talk. He forced more of his essence into the spell, shoving aside the defences around the templar’s spirit by brute force. He felt his limbs, newly engorged by blood, begin to wither and shrink as he breathed more and more red mist into the head in his hands. Finally, the slack face twitched. ‘Tell me what you know,’ Mannfred rasped.

The lips quirked and squirmed as the word ‘Theft,’ dropped out. Mannfred grunted. ‘What sort of theft? What was stolen?’

‘Don’t… know…’ the head moaned.

‘Who does?’

‘Huh-Holtz…’

Holtz… Mannfred’s jaw widened and he sucked back some of the mist, drawing images and names out of the head. Holtz was the priest of that jumped-up barbarian king-cum-god Sigmar. Vague notions and theories spread through Mannfred’s mind like cobwebs. Something had been stolen from the Great Temple in Altdorf, something necromancers would want. Something–

‘Ah!’ he said, his eyes widening. He gave a guttural growl. ‘You pathetic mongrels,’ he said. Only this Holtz would know for sure, but if what Mannfred suspected was true, then this whole affair might prove to be even more amusing than he’d first thought. He drained the rest of the mist from the head, sucking it back into him, bolstering his flagging strength. Then he hurled the head from him.

He swept the body of the templar aside, off the altar, and sat in its place. With his arms spread he called to the Wind of Death, letting it sweep around him. It was easy, especially in this place, at this time. With a sharp gesture, he sent it hurtling off through the city streets, seeking the recently dead.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were many of those, their spirits winking like fireflies. Fires raged throughout Low Town, and High Town had sealed its entrances, the rich and powerful setting their private soldiery to the task. Come plague or peril, their response was ever the same. Vlad had been fond of saying that one could judge the season by the mood of the nobility.

The ghouls of the Congress were rampaging through the streets, attacking those that the mist – magically induced – hadn’t driven indoors. Men and women died in alleyways, and Mannfred’s spells curled lovingly around their corpses, dragging them to their feet. Finding one dead man would be tricky, even under the best circumstances. The simplest plan, then, was to bring all the newly dead to him. Besides, Mannfred had no doubt that he would find a use for them.

And speaking of use… he chuckled, thinking of the man and his stunted ally. He recognised the taste of the magics on the dwarf’s axe, though only in a general fashion. It was a fell thing, and mighty. Mannfred himself would hesitate to face it, especially in his current state. And the sword the man – Jaeger was his name, according to the templar’s shade – bore was no mere chopping blade, but something that was, in its own way, as potent as the Slayer’s axe. The dwarf was implacable, and he would keep the Charnel Congress occupied while Mannfred prepared to deliver the killing blow.

Spectres and ghosts groaned in the air above him, pulled from their rest by his manipulations. It wasn’t much of an army, but it would do for Mannfred’s purposes. The key would be hiding it from the Congress’s own magics. If they knew of his presence, they would scatter and flee like the graveyard rats they were. Mannfred could not allow them to interfere with his second life. Hopefully the dwarf would keep them busy long enough for his forces to gather.

‘Masssster…’ a feminine voice purred. Mannfred smiled. His servants had arrived. The vampires hesitated at the door to the chapel, fearing to come in. Behind them, zombies hunched and shuffled, carrying makeshift weapons.

‘Come,’ he commanded, rising to stand on the altar. He drew his sword and felt the dark magics bound to the blade stir. With a roar, he spun and sliced through the head of the statue of Morr, sending the chunk of marble crashing to the floor. Kicking it aside, he turned as a burnt corpse stumbled into the chapel, drawn by his summons. The vampires pulled back from it, hissing. Mannfred leaned on his sword. ‘Welcome, Holtz,’ he said, holding out a hand to the charred carcass of the warrior-priest. ‘We have much to discuss, you and I. And then we will go to war.’

The fall proved less a plummet than an ignoble slide into the darkness. Felix rolled to a stop, slamming into Gotrek’s immoveable shape with a curse. Coughing, Felix let Gotrek haul him to his feet. ‘Do you live, manling?’ Gotrek said.

The words seemed to boom out thunderously. Felix looked around. They had fallen into what appeared to be a great cavern. The dark length of the Stir poured over the rocks through a natural channel, and the air was thick with a wet haze that settled unpleasantly on Felix’s skin. More of the strange fleshy, glowing fungi Gotrek had pointed out earlier clung to the rocks and to their clothes as well. ‘No thanks to our tunnel-digging foes,’ Felix said. ‘I’m getting tired of traps, Gotrek.’

‘All the more reason to give them a taste of good steel,’ Gotrek replied.

‘Yes,’ Felix said, looking around. He felt cold and his clothing was sodden. The ground beneath his feet was powdery and there was a strange smell on the air. Not the river, though that was part of it. ‘Gotrek, do you smell something?’

Gotrek sniffed. ‘Bats,’ he said, looking up. Felix did the same, and immediately wished he hadn’t. He had seen bats before; what native of Altdorf hadn’t? But those had been minuscule things compared to the abnormalities that clung to the roof of the cavern, huddling amongst a veritable upside-down jungle of glowing fungus. They were huge, with wingspans as wide as a rich man’s coach.

‘Sigmar preserve us,’ Felix whispered.

‘Grimnir send them to us,’ Gotrek snarled. Felix grabbed the Slayer’s shoulder and Gotrek turned to glare at him.

‘We’re not after bats, Gotrek!’ Felix hissed.

‘The bats are after us though, right enough,’ Gotrek growled, grabbing the front of Felix’s shirt and yanking him forwards. Something leathery and hard brushed through Felix’s hair and then the great bat was soaring away, up into the darkness. Squeals and shrieks echoed from above and Felix felt a moment of panic. ‘Draw your sword, manling!’ Gotrek said, shoving away from him.

The Slayer roared out an oath and something screamed a reply. Felix drew his sword and slashed wildly at the hairy shape that flopped towards him. Several bats hopped towards him on all fours, the way he’d heard that their smaller cousins in the New World did. Gotrek cut them off, slugging one in the side of the head and burying his axe in another’s humped back. The cavern soon became a tornado of teeth and leathery flesh as more and more bats dropped from their roosts to launch themselves at the men who had invaded their sanctuary.

‘Gotrek, we have to get out of here!’ Felix shouted, trying to be heard over the shrieking of the bats. Gotrek gave no sign that he heard, however. All Felix could see of him was his brightly-coloured crest and the flash of his axe as it struck the wall.

A bat swooped low and crashed into Felix a moment later, carrying him backwards and down. Felix could feel the force of the river vibrating through his back as he struggled to get his sword up. The bat’s wings folded around him like a clammy blanket, and its talons scratched at him, gashing his arms and chest. Its foul breath washed over him and Felix gagged as it snapped its knitting-needle teeth at him. ‘Gotrek!’ he cried out.

The only reply he got was the sound of stone cracking. The rocks beneath his back shifted, and water began to spray from the cracks. ‘Gotrek!’ he tried again, more insistently. The bat lunged for him, its jaws snapping closed only inches from his face. Felix took a chance and grabbed its quivering, flanged nose in one hand and twisted, eliciting a squeal that set his teeth to shivering. As the bat’s weight shifted, Felix brought Karaghul up and buried it to the hilt in its furry, bloated body. The bat bucked and screamed, and there was a loud crack and then Felix found himself pushed into the waters by the dying bat. He slammed into the rocks and spun away from his thrashing opponent, carried by the irresistible current. Gasping, he fought to keep his head above water, and, more than once, his skull connected with the roof of the tunnel as the waters dragged him deeper and deeper into the darkness.

He held tight to Karaghul’s hilt and tried to jam it into the rocks to halt his tumbling progress, without success. Sharp edges and fang-like stalagmites jarred him, reducing his world to one of darkness and pain until, at last, he was caught up in a swirling spout that spat him down a narrow tube of rock and, from there, into a blessedly still body of water. Felix hit the surface hard enough to wrench him out of his daze and he surfaced with a gasp and much splashing. The water glowed softly, lit from below by more of the fungi. Bones of all shapes and sizes were visible beneath the water.

The body of the bat he’d killed floated nearby, its eyes staring sightlessly at him. It wasn’t alone… other bodies, of bats and other, stranger beasts, bobbed around him. With a start, he realised that the pool was yet another trap – a natural run-off, used by the ghouls to collect food from above. There was an entire world down here that no one above even suspected. These ghouls were not Sylvanian invaders, Felix knew, but native Stirlanders! They fished the Stir, even as their human cousins did, sifting the waters for food.

Swiping water out of his face, he slowly made his way towards the shore. Halfway there, waist-deep in water, he froze. Pale shapes glided out of the forest of stone, chuffing and chittering as they came to squat on the shore. ‘And here come the attentive fishermen now,’ Felix muttered. He raised his sword. The ghouls didn’t seem bothered, however. Several had already entered the water and were dragging the dead bat onto shore.

Others started towards him, licking bestial lips with pale tongues. Felix prepared himself for the incipient charge. The gunshot, when it came, was surprising. It echoed through the cavern, and the ghouls scattered, yowling.

‘Jaeger, you are just full of surprises,’ a familiar voice said. Felix gaped as Stefan Russ stepped out of the darkness, his witch hunter’s outfit replaced by dark leathers and a hooded doublet. He still wore his pistols, however, and as he re-holstered the one he’d just fired, he drew a replacement and cocked it. ‘I laid odds that the dwarf would have made it, rather than you.’

‘Russ? But Olaf said…’ Felix trailed off as more men, dressed similarly to Russ, stepped out to join him.

‘Olaf? I wouldn’t put much stock in what a dead man says,’ Russ said, smiling. Felix found the expression more disturbing than the more familiar glower. ‘He is dead, isn’t he? I was aiming for his head.’

‘He’s dead,’ Felix said, feeling a sinking sensation in his stomach.

Russ nodded briskly. ‘Good. I never liked him, the loudmouth pyromaniac.’ He tapped his cheek with the barrel of his pistol. ‘As soon as our servants warned us of your arrival, I wondered which of you would make it to this point. I was hoping for Iuldvitch, myself.’

‘He’s busy alerting the watch,’ Felix said. He had no idea where the templar was, but he could hope.

‘Or maybe he’s lying in ragged pieces in the tunnels above,’ Russ said. ‘Now, drop your sword, Jaeger, or you can join him.’

‘I might prefer that to whatever you and this lot have planned,’ Felix said. Was Iuldvitch dead? Russ had to be lying. Felix hoped for his own sake that that was the case.

‘Maybe. Then, you won’t find out unless you drop that sword. Now.’ Russ gestured with his pistol. Several of the other men moved forwards, wading into the water towards Felix. Their faces were pale and drawn, their eyes shining with an unhealthy light. Felix gave a moment’s thought to resisting, and then handed Karaghul over to one of the men.

‘Fine,’ Felix said. ‘You’ve got me. Now what?’

‘Now? Now you finally get the answer to that question you’ve been asking so incessantly,’ Russ said. ‘Aren’t you the lucky fellow?’ Strong hands grabbed Felix’s arms a moment later and he was dragged to shore, not feeling particularly lucky at all.

Felix was tossed to the rough stone floor of a torch-lit cavern. It was more compact than the other, with an air of design to its smoothly-shaped walls that spoke of long use. He rolled over onto his hands and knees with a groan and pushed himself into a kneeling position. His hands had been bound in front of him. Stalactites and stalagmites decorated everything, and pillars of dripstone spiralled in all directions, giving Felix the unpleasant impression that he was in the mouth of some massive beast. Russ stood behind him with one hand tangled in Felix’s hair, the black-clad men surrounding him. ‘He survived,’ someone said. ‘You owe me a karl, Stefan.’

‘Feel free to collect anytime, Utrecht,’ Russ said. A heavy-set man stepped out into the light, his thumbs hooked into the broad leather belt around his waist. To Felix he looked like any other wealthy burgher, made heavy by too much good living. Utrecht sniffed as he took in Felix’s bedraggled appearance.

‘I think I would have preferred the dwarf. This one looks far too thin and pale.’

‘He’s not thin, he’s… slender,’ a woman said. She joined Utrecht in looking at Felix. She too was dressed finely, though inappropriately for her surroundings. Her dress swept the floor clean behind her as she stepped forwards and bent low, running her sharp fingernails across the trail-seams in Felix’s face. ‘Rather like a stray cat,’ she continued, her tongue running across her lips.

‘Thank you, Ilsa, your contribution is so noted. Someone note that please,’ Utrecht said, looking around. ‘Who’s taking the minutes?’ Felix saw several other figures behind Utrecht and Ilsa.

‘I believe it falls to me, Utrecht,’ a thin man said, pushing his gold-rimmed spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. ‘Then, it always falls to me, doesn’t it?’

‘Don’t be sour, Norrys,’ Ilsa said, still looking at Felix. ‘You like taking notes.’

‘We all have our hobbies,’ another woman said, stroking the fur stole that was wrapped around her shoulders. ‘I knit, for instance.’

‘No, you pay people to knit while you watch, Helga,’ Russ said, shoving Felix forwards. ‘That’s different.’

‘But I do know how, and that’s more than some of us can say,’ Helga said mildly, looking at Ilsa, who stuck out her tongue.

‘At least I don’t wear human hair and pretend it is real fur,’ the younger woman said. She tapped her belly. ‘I keep my fashion accessories subtle, thank you very much.’

‘A corset made of human bone is hardly a taboo-breaker, my dear,’ Norrys said. ‘It’s all the rage in Kislev, I understand. Then, they are a funny folk.’

‘That’s the problem with the younger generation… no sense of work ethic,’ an older man said bitterly, with the air of one making an old argument to an audience that long ago ceased listening. ‘In my day, we dug up our own materials and stitched our own soldiers.’

‘In your day, you wore black rags and hid in ruined towers,’ Utrecht said. ‘We do things differently in Wurtbad. We have come far, since the good old days. Why, some of us are even upstanding members of the church!’

There was scattered applause and Russ bowed ironically. Felix felt sick. ‘Who are you people?’ he said. Russ grabbed his hair again and forced Felix to look up at him.

‘The masters of your destiny, Herr Jaeger,’ he said.

‘Very poetic,’ Utrecht said. With a grunt, he sank to his haunches and examined Felix the way a butcher might examine a cut of beef. ‘You should feel honoured, Herr Jaeger. You are in the presence of history itself.’ He threw out a chubby hand, indicating the walls of the cavern, which, in the light of the mounted torches, could be seen to be decorated by strange carvings and paintings, all of which made Felix uncomfortable. ‘By now, you’ve seen the Under Town, which goes with the Low and the High. It has been abandoned for a thousand years, by everyone except our servants and us.’

Felix heard a quiet shuffling sound and saw that ghouls huddled in the corners and on the overhanging ledges of the cavern. They stayed just out of the light, as if frightened by the men and women gathered there. ‘What are you people?’ he said.

‘We are the last faithful servants,’ Utrecht said. ‘The finest hour, stretched over centuries.’

‘Now who’s being poetic?’ Russ asked. ‘We’re necromancers, Jaeger. From long, proud lines of the same… though some lines are longer than others,’ he said to Felix. Russ seemed to be enjoying Felix’s growing disgust. ‘And we have been waiting a very long time for this moment. Generations of our families have been manoeuvring and searching for what would be needed to accomplish the last great task our ancestors were given by our lord and master.’

‘Enough talking! Do you have it?’ the older man barked, pushing past Helga and Norrys to point a shaking finger at Russ. ‘Where is it, damn your eyes?’

Russ released Felix and snapped his fingers. One of the black-clad men stepped forwards, holding a small, sturdy-looking chest. ‘Here, Helm, you old bone-bag… straight from the Garden of Saints in Altdorf.’

‘You were the thief!’ Felix said. Russ casually kicked him in the chest, knocking him backwards.

‘Technically, I was allowed in there,’ Russ said. ‘I am a servant of the church, after all. Those foolish priests were quite surprised when I killed them.’

‘Then Schtillman…’ Felix began. He needed to keep them talking. The more they talked, the greater his chance of escaping. He glanced around, looking for the man who held Karaghul. He was relieved that they hadn’t simply thrown the sword away.

‘Was an idiot and a traitor,’ Helm, the old man, snapped as he cradled the chest. ‘And dangerous to boot.’

‘Luckily, your friend dealt with him in a most effective manner,’ Russ said. ‘Two birds with one stroke, you might say.’ He smiled nastily. ‘Schtillman had bad habits and a dangerous obsession; one that endangered us all. But you saw to that, you and that dwarf. And now, as a reward, I think you should see just what it is you keep asking about…’ He reached over and flipped open the chest that Helm held, revealing its contents.

‘Behold,’ Utrecht said, ‘the skull of Felix Mann!’

As the echoes of his booming proclamation faded, all eyes turned expectantly towards Felix, who looked at the fractured, yellowed skull in confusion. ‘Who?’ he said.

‘Felix Mann,’ Russ said intently, gesturing. ‘Mann! The thief who stole Vlad von Carstein’s source of invincibility? The man who singlehandedly saved your Empire from the clutches of the Vampire Counts?’

‘Felix Mann,’ Helm hissed. ‘The Bastard Thief! The only man who knows the location of the object we require!’

Felix frowned. ‘I was never one for ancient history,’ he said.

Russ, looking chagrined, cleared his throat. ‘That was disappointing. Fine. We didn’t save you for your limited capabilities as an audience anyway.’

‘Why did you save me?’ Felix said, pulling his legs up. If he could just get his feet under him…

‘We are firm believers in efficiency, Herr Jaeger,’ Helga said. ‘Why kidnap a sacrificial victim when one handily waltzes into your lair?’

‘Sacrificial?’ Felix said hoarsely. ‘Oh bilge.’

‘Two birds, one stroke,’ Russ said again, chuckling. He looked at Helm. ‘Well, old man? I think we’ve wasted enough time, don’t you? We have a god to resurrect.’

Felix was jerked to his feet by Russ’s men. ‘A god?’ he said desperately. ‘Which god?’

‘Why, the creator of us all,’ Ilsa purred, patting Felix’s cheek. ‘He is our Father in Darkness, if you will.’

‘The Avatar of the Wind of Death,’ Helga said reverentially.

‘The king of the cats,’ Utrecht said.

‘Nehekhara reborn,’ Norrys said, fiddling with his spectacles.

Helm lifted the skull from the chest and tossed the latter aside. ‘Vlad von Carstein,’ he whispered, a crooked smile creasing his features.

The name tore through Felix like the blade of a knife. It was a name that stretched across the history books like an ever-suppurating scar. Vlad von Carstein, the first of Sylvania’s bloody counts, the being that had brought death to the very walls of Altdorf and shattered the armies of the Empire with an ease that the servants of the Dark Gods envied. Childhood nightmares spun through his mind’s eye, bringing with them a cold, wet fear that settled about him like a cloak, strangling thought and courage in its embrace. He wanted to shout denials, to hurl curses, but no sound came out.

As Felix watched, mute, each of the six necromancers pulled a plain-looking amulet from somewhere about their person. Scratched into the surface of each was the same symbol that Felix had seen on the ghouls earlier. ‘That symbol,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s ancient Lahmian,’ Norrys said, apparently happy to lecture. ‘It’s quite interesting, in essence it is–’

‘Our master’s initials,’ Russ said. ‘Stop talking to the sacrifice, Norrys.’

Felix fell silent. His arms were held by two of Russ’s men. No one was paying attention to him, however. All eyes, even those of the ghouls, were fastened on the skull in Helm’s hands. Felix’s hackles bristled as a cold breeze wafted through the cavern, causing the torches to whip and dance wildly. Three of the necromancers were chanting, their voices growing louder and louder.

Ilsa sidled close to Felix. ‘Can you feel it, Herr Jaeger? Dhar… the Wind of Darkness; it flows strongly through these tunnels, and has since Mannfred von Carstein used them to raid into the Empire centuries ago.’ She stroked his hair and Felix shied away. She giggled and he shuddered. ‘You’ll make a fine sacrifice,’ she said. ‘Your blood will be the gate and the key and then he will return, even as was foretold…’

A sickly light had suffused the skull and it bobbed and shifted on Helm’s upraised palms like a sack full of rats as the chant became wilder. Felix wanted to look away from it, but he was unable to. The skull rose into the air, its fleshless jaws clattering in an almost comical fashion. The necromancers raised their hands as if pushing it upwards. They strained, as if the skull were far heavier than it looked.

Helm muttered fiercely, his eyes closed, his arms thrust above his head. The other necromancers watched as the skull began to rotate faster and faster until suddenly it ceased, and bent low, as if it were attached to an overlong neck. Felix winced as something that was less a voice than a stab of cold pain flowered in his mind. It was asking a question, one he was glad wasn’t directed at him.

Russ stepped forwards, his fingers dancing nervously on his pistols. ‘You know who we are, Mann!’ he said. ‘And you know what we want! Where is the ring of the von Carsteins?’

Felix shifted slightly. His guards paid no attention, being preoccupied by the entity before them. Felix looked around, hoping to see something – anything! – that would help him out of this situation. There were plenty of weapons available, but even if he could grab one, it’d be only a matter of moments before he was overwhelmed. That was, if Russ didn’t simply shoot him out of hand.

‘Answer me, Mann!’ Russ shouted, his face going red. ‘We bind you thrice and forevermore by your bone and name! Answer us!’

A twitching, dying ghoul plummeted into the centre of the cavern, landing in a heap. Gasps of alarm and curses filled the air and men drew swords as a burly, bloody shape appeared on a high ledge. Felix looked up, his face breaking into a wild grin. ‘If it’s an answer you want, traitor, I’ll be glad to give you one!’ Gotrek shouted, gesturing with his axe.

‘Gotrek, you’re alive!’ Felix said, relief flooding him.

‘Water and stone and overgrown vermin are no death for a Slayer,’ Gotrek snarled. ‘Maybe you prancing fools can do better!’ With a loud cry, Gotrek took a running leap off the ledge as the other ghouls closed in on him. He landed lightly for a being of his bulk, his axe unimpeded by either the skull or the torso of the guard it cut through on the way down. As the body fell in two halves, Gotrek snatched Felix’s sword from the ground where it had fallen and sent it sliding towards him. ‘Here, manling! Join the fun!’ Then, laughing, Gotrek waded into the fray as men and ghouls moved to bring him down.

Felix lunged, wrapping his bound wrists around Ilsa’s neck. The young necromancer hissed like a cat and elbowed him in the gut. Felix bent double, narrowly avoiding the blade she pulled from within her dress. She stabbed at him again and he caught the blade in his bonds. With a swift tug, the ropes frayed and parted and his hands were free. She shrieked in rage and flew at him, but he stepped aside and scooped up Karaghul. He flung aside his scabbard just in time to meet a downward stroke from one of the black-hooded men.

The man was strong, and had a wild gleam in his eye that Felix didn’t like. He booted the man in the groin and leapt past him, heading for the sound of Gotrek at work. Despite all they’d been through this evening already, the Slayer didn’t seem tired. Indeed, he was as energetic as Felix had ever seen him, bounding back and forth like a typhoon of destruction, tackling any opponent that either got too close or didn’t scramble aside fast enough. His horrible axe looped out and spun, cleaving air, stone, steel, muscle and bone alike. The stones beneath his feet were slippery with the axe’s leavings and Felix fought to keep his balance as he made his way to Gotrek’s side.

‘Glad to see you up and about. Had enough of a rest, then?’ Gotrek said.

‘I could ask the same of you,’ Felix said, parrying a sword-stroke meant for Gotrek’s back. ‘The last I saw, you were busy with the bats!’

‘Aye, devils in the air, but not so good in the water,’ Gotrek said. ‘Most of them drowned or flew away before I could get to them!’

‘Shame,’ Felix said.

‘Yes,’ Gotrek said, lopping off a clawed hand as it scratched at his beard. ‘It is.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s the traitor? I’d like to decorate his skull for what he’s done…’

‘I didn’t realise you were that friendly with Olaf and the others,’ Felix said.

‘I wasn’t,’ Gotrek snarled. ‘But that black-hearted bastard burned down the only decent tavern in Wurtbad!’

A gunshot sounded, echoing above the roar of voices, and Gotrek’s crest wobbled as the bullet plucked a few stiffened bristles loose from his scalp. Gotrek spun and Russ danced back, his eyes wide and his mouth twisted in a snarl. ‘Kill him. Kill him!’ the necromancer howled.

‘Yes, kill me,’ Gotrek said. He leapt towards Russ. ‘But first…’

Felix cracked a ghoul in the face with his elbow, knocking the beast down. He saw Russ scrambling backwards, Gotrek advancing on him implacably. The necromancer threw aside his useless pistol and raised a hand. Strange garbled syllables spewed from his lips and black lightning crackled. It spilled across the upraised edge of Gotrek’s axe, lashing out at the men rushing to attack him from either side and causing them to topple in clouds of blood. Russ’s expression turned comical.

In truth, Felix knew that he and Gotrek were likely only still alive because their enemies’ numbers were working against them in the confined space of the cavern. As soon as the other necromancers regained their senses, they’d surely employ whatever fell magics they possessed against the Slayer, and then Felix in turn. He didn’t like to think about his odds without Gotrek by his side. They needed an edge… His eyes lit on the still-hovering skull. The other necromancers were still shouting questions at it, but the spectre they had summoned seemed either unable or unwilling to answer.

‘Gotrek, we need to get that skull!’ he shouted. Gotrek, intent on Russ, didn’t appear to hear him. The dwarf’s axe thudded into the rock between the necromancer’s legs and Russ scrambled up. Gotrek made to bring him down, but he was bowled under by a trio of ghouls. Felix cursed and headed for the floating skull and its questioners. If he could get his hands on it, maybe it would be enough to trade for their lives.

Before he could reach it, however, he felt the floor beneath his feet begin to tremble with the sound of booted feet, ringing on the stone. Felix’s heart leapt. Perhaps someone had roused the watch. Felix cut down a gibbering ghoul and turned to face the direction of the sound, a sloping tunnel. A shape burst into the cavern, beheading a ghoul as it came.

His words of welcome turned to ash in his mouth. It wasn’t the watch. The man, if it was a man, wore bloody clothes and looked as if he had undergone the tortures of the damned. Red-eyed, the being was followed by several others like it, all of them stinking of the river and slaughter, as well as a host of dead men. The zombies were of every description and condition, most of them smelling faintly of smoke.

In that moment, Felix felt as if every drop of blood in his veins had turned to ice. The red eyes of the pack found him, examined him and dismissed him the way a hawk would a singularly unappetising mouse. Felix found himself unable to move, frozen in place by that glance.

He was not alone. Throughout the cavern, bodies stilled their motion. Even Gotrek, normally as sensitive as a stone, had paused in his rampage. Every eye was on the newcomers. The only sound was the hiss of flames and the whimper of frightened ghouls. The latter backed away from the red-eyed beings, crouching and whining like beaten dogs.

A single word burst into Felix’s brain at the sight of the newcomers… vampire! These were the blood-drinking heirs to the wickedness of Sylvania, with far less distance between him and them than he would have wished. He had fought their kind before, but to see this many of the creatures in all their terrible glory, and so close, was terrifying. He swallowed and looked for Gotrek.

The temperature in the cavern had dropped and the torches flickered as if a dark wind had them in its clutches. The dead shifted and stumbled around the newcomers, or, in some cases, crawled. One of these struggled to a sitting position, its shattered spine sticking through its tattered back. One of the red-eyed women stroked the dead thing’s head, as if it were a faithful hound.

‘No,’ Helm moaned, breaking the silence. The necromancer’s voice was heavy with despair. He raised his crooked hands protectively.

‘What is it?’ Russ snapped. ‘What is it? What’s going on, Helm?’

‘He’s here…’ the old necromancer groaned, his eyes bulging. ‘He’s here!’

‘Yessss,’ something hissed. Felix shuddered at the sheer malignity evident in that voice. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. The torches flickered again. ‘Yes, Helm, you old wretch.’ The shadows cast by the torches shifted like creatures preparing to pounce. ‘Did you think I was dead, Helm?’ A sound like snakes slithering across the rock followed those words. Felix’s nerves felt strained to breaking point. Something rustled in the darkness of the cave’s ceiling. ‘Did you hope that Schtillman had failed?’ it purred, and Felix felt a chill caress his spine. ‘Did you hope that I would remain buried in history and mud?’

The rock walls echoed with the scrape of claws. The tread of heavy, unseen boots circled them all like the pacing of an unseen animal. ‘You sent assassins to kill him, to stop him from bringing me back to feel the kiss of the Carrion Winds, because… Why? Were you afraid that I would stop you, Helm?’

‘No, false one,’ Helm said. ‘No. You are too late! We have summoned the spectre of Felix Mann and he will give us the location of that which we seek!’ The other members of the Charnel Congress moved into a protective circle around the old man.

‘Oh? You mean Vlad’s pretty little ring, then?’ the horrible voice said, its words echoing. It chuckled and Felix thought that he caught a flash of crimson in the darkness. ‘I thought that might be why you stole those brittle old bones. A very good plan, or it would have been, if that skull had actually belonged to the thief…’

‘What?’ Utrecht said. The necromancer and his fellows all had weapons out or their hands readied for sorcerous gestures. Felix held his own sword up. The shadows seemed to be creeping closer, coiling through the fang-like stalagmites. Felix saw that Gotrek stood stock-still, his one eye moving steadily, as if following something only he could see. Could the Slayer see whatever – whoever – it was that their opponents were so terrified of?

‘Did you honestly think I would allow the bones of a man who knew what Mann knew, a man who I killed precisely because of that knowledge, to fall into the hands of my enemies?’ the voice hissed. ‘Surely you were wondering why that dead thing hadn’t answered you yet.’

‘You mean–’ Helga gasped.

The cavern echoed with foul laughter; the shadows seemed to ripple with the sound of it, and the ghouls set up a wail. As the laughter faded, the voice continued, ‘Mann’s remains are in a place known only to me, and the secret of Vlad’s bauble is buried with him. And you traitors, you deceivers all, you will pay for your trespasses against Mannfred von Carstein!’

Quicker than Felix’s eye could follow, the shadows solidified into a tall and cadaverous shape. It had sharp, corpse-like features and a smile like the grin of a shark. Razor-blade teeth surfaced from behind thin lips as it lunged, the fat, long blade of its sword driving through Norrys’s narrow body and pinning the thin man to a dripstone like an insect to a board. The other necromancers scattered in shock and terror, scrambling for safety amongst their minions.

The creature jerked its sword free of Norrys and the stone and turned to face the others, smiling like a tiger. Its eyes narrowed to fiery slits. ‘Kill them,’ it snarled. The zombies jerked into motion and barrelled into the stunned ghouls and black-clad cultists, and the cavern suddenly rang again with the sounds of melee.

Mannfred stalked through it all, unconcerned. The ghouls shied back from him, and the few human servants who dared close with him were swept aside like leaves in a hurricane wind. Felix had the impression that few living things could match this creature in the physical realm. He had seen the hideous strength of the abominable warriors that served Chaos, and knew that even a champion among them would have had difficulty facing the vampire; no, not just a vampire – the vampire. Mannfred von Carstein was the purest incarnation of that horrible word.

The shadows seemed to cling to him as he waded through his enemies, and Felix felt the urge to flee, to run back into the darkness and throw himself into the Stir and let the river take him away from this monster. So paralysed by fear was he that he almost missed the telltale hiss of something behind him. Felix forced himself to move and threw himself aside as a female vampire lashed out at him lazily, her mouth full of fangs.

He hit the hard stone and rolled onto his back, blocking her second blow when it came. The strength of the blow left his wrists aching, and he jabbed a boot into her gut, all thought of chivalry cast aside. She snarled and grabbed at his leg and her hand vanished in a spray of blood. The vampiress shrieked and reeled as Gotrek knocked her down and separated her head from her shoulders.

‘Things have gotten complicated,’ Felix gasped as Gotrek hauled him to his feet.

‘No,’ Gotrek said, a berserk light dancing in his eye. ‘The solution is still the same, manling. Kill them all and let Grungni sort them out.’

Mannfred expected the necromancers to flee. Instead, they attacked. He felt the threads of dark magic coalescing as they hurled their magics at him. He spat a word and the stabbing tendrils of black lightning clashed with his hastily-summoned defences, driving him back a step.

‘You should have stayed in the grave, usurper!’ one of the necromancers, the one called Ilsa, shrieked. Withering words followed and Mannfred snarled as he felt them tear at him. Their mastery of necromancy had improved since he had last faced them.

‘And you should have stayed hidden,’ Mannfred said, grabbing for her. She screamed as he bore her to the ground, his fangs sinking into her pale throat. He smashed her head into the floor as he tore her throat out. One of his vampires screamed as it was turned into a walking torch. It fled into the melee, setting zombies afire in its blind blundering.

Tendrils of human hair seized him, jerking him up and flinging him back. Mannfred clawed at the animated substance. Helga cursed and gestured, her stole of living hair tightening its grip on the struggling vampire. Mannfred set his feet and began to pull her towards him.

A rapier pinked him in the neck and he twisted, snarling at the fat necromancer, Utrecht, as he danced back, face red with hate and fear. ‘I was satisfied to send your ancestors scrambling for rat-holes, but I’ll exterminate you fools root and branch,’ Mannfred said, freeing a hand and gesturing towards Utrecht, who grabbed his chest and screamed. The necromancer toppled as his internal organs began to bloat and fuse within him. ‘Even at their peak, the Charnel Congress was no match for me!’

He turned back and snagged the lengths of animated hair that now sought to dig into his skin. With a roll of his shoulders, he ripped it free of Helga’s grip and tore it apart. Tossing the shredded stole aside, he dived at her.

Cold flames struck at him, causing his flesh to bubble, and Mannfred winced. Forcing past the pain, he tweaked the skeins of magic, cutting off the spell at its source. Helm staggered back, eyes bulging. Mannfred slapped Helga to the ground and advanced on Helm. ‘What did you fools think was going to happen here, eh? Did you think you’d simply resurrect Vlad and… What? The days of wine and roses and babies spitted over the roasting fires?’

‘Vlad von Carstein is the Wind of Death made manifest,’ Helm babbled, trying to beat aside Mannfred’s will and resume control of the winds of magic roaring through the cavern. ‘It is our duty to bring him back, we have sought his ashes scattered across the Empire…’

Mannfred lunged and caught Helm by his throat. With contemptuous ease, he tore the locket from the necromancer’s neck and held it up, examining it. ‘So I see… and you thought to bring him back, even as Schtillman brought me back. Tell me… did you think he’d thank you?’

‘Admittedly, you weren’t part of the picture,’ someone said.

The pistol barked and Mannfred screeched as the bullet took him in the spine, piercing a weak place in his armour. He flopped to the ground, momentarily nonplussed. Russ, his clothing torn and bloodied, tossed aside the smoking pistol and drew two more. ‘Silver bullets, usurper, in case you were wondering. I’ll put you back where that fool Schtillman found you!’

Mannfred laughed and wriggled like a snake, launching himself off the floor and striking, his teeth clamping down on Russ’s hand. The necromancer yelped and fired his other pistol, taking Mannfred in the shoulder. Mannfred gathered his legs under him and swatted his opponent to the ground. ‘How the once-mighty have fallen,’ he said, pinning Russ in place with a boot to the chest. He crushed the man’s pistol and looked down at him. ‘Your magics are so weak you must rely on these toys? Would you kill me with bullets and swords and scalps?’

‘What about an axe then?’ Gotrek said, charging towards Mannfred.

Mannfred turned and caught the axe blade between his palms with a grunt. ‘I forgot about you,’ he said from between clenched fangs. ‘I won’t make that mistake again.’

‘Glad to hear it, lord of maggots,’ Gotrek said, his muscles bulging as he forced the axe towards Mannfred’s face. The vampire bent back for a moment and then began to meet the Slayer’s strength with his own.

Mannfred caught a glimpse of Jaeger circling them and he hissed in frustration. These two were proving obstinate in their survival. They had been adequate distraction, but it was time for the finish. ‘You cannot defeat me, Trollslayer. I have fought legions of your stunted kin, after all, and all of them with better reason to kill me than you.’

‘Maybe, but if you knew anything about me and mine, leech, you’d know that your defeat is… a… bonus!’ Gotrek roared, veins writhing on his arms and neck as he threw every bit of his strength into forcing the axe down. Mannfred blinked as the blade slid through his palms and his shape dispersed into a mist as the axe chopped down.

He screamed as whatever ancient magics had been wrought into that blade struck at him, even in his mist-shape, and he reformed a few feet away, black blood dripping from between his fingers. ‘You… hurt me?’ he said, hardly able to credit it. He had known the axe was a fell thing, but knowing and feeling were two different things. He staggered, shaking his head.

He looked around. The situation had deteriorated while he’d been distracted. The cavern was lit as brightly as a summer’s afternoon by the burning remnants of his zombies and those that were left were being finished off by the ghouls and few remaining human servants of the Charnel Congress. As he watched, the last of his fledging vampires was pinned to the ground by several swords.

‘Now, take him!’ Russ shouted, pointing. Mannfred turned as a number of the surviving ghouls ploughed into him, knocking him down. Magic thrummed through their spindly limbs and he knew at once that a flesh-working had been cast. He roared and thrashed, trying to free himself, but too late.

Mannfred howled like a broken-backed wolf as the ghouls began to melt into one another, their whimpers of agony becoming a deeper, uglier sound. Even as he tore at the bubbling, pulsing flesh, it healed itself and he found himself trapped in the thing’s gut.

It took an unsteady step, on a dozen feet, and groaned as the surviving necromancers approached. ‘Thrash all you like, usurper,’ Helm cackled, holding up his broken amulet. ‘You might have thwarted our plan, but we are nothing if not adaptable, eh, Helga?’

The woman smiled and made a curling motion. The flesh-tomb split, disgorging Mannfred, his arms and legs bound by shifting ligaments and steely bones. ‘Indeed, blood and the ring would have been the best, but a vampire’s blood is even more potent!’

She spat in Mannfred’s face. ‘Besides, this way seems more fitting somehow… from out of his traitorous offspring’s essence shall Vlad’s resurrection be wrought!’

Felix had watched as Gotrek and Mannfred faced one another, marvelling that the Slayer could meet the creature’s eyes. And when Mannfred turned into a mist, he hoped the creature would flee. Instead, the necromancers captured it, and Felix knew that while their earlier scheme was no more, the change of circumstances wasn’t in his and Gotrek’s favour.

The cavern was rapidly filling with smoke and the members of the Charnel Congress were fleeing through a side-tunnel, their hideous creation lumbering after them. Coughing, Felix started towards Gotrek.

The dwarf was kneeling, leaning on his axe and breathing heavily. Burning zombies stumbled around him, bereft of will at Mannfred’s capture. Felix raced through them and grabbed Gotrek by the shoulder. ‘Gotrek, get up,’ he said, trying to pull the Slayer to his feet. Gotrek was bleeding from dozens of scrapes and bites that Felix hadn’t noticed earlier.

‘Where is the leech?’ Gotrek muttered, pushing himself up. Felix prodded a burning zombie aside.

‘They’ve taken him through one of the tunnels, and I think we should follow them. This whole cave is filling with smoke and I don’t fancy suffocating,’ Felix said, coughing. Gotrek shook his head as if to clear it.

‘Then point me in the right direction, manling,’ he growled.

They hurried through the crawling flames, Gotrek seeming to regain his strength with every step. The tunnel was lit by rusty lanterns, and it sloped upwards sharply. Rough steps, much like those they’d descended in the chapel, had been cut into the stone. Gotrek took them two at a time, and Felix followed. Blood and other, less pleasant, fluids dotted the stairs, marking the trail of the conjoined thing. At a curve in the stairs, a crossbow bolt narrowly missed Gotrek, skipping off the stones. The dwarf pushed Felix back flat against the wall as a second bolt followed the first.

‘Looks like they don’t want anyone following them, manling,’ Gotrek said, frowning.

‘Well, I don’t intend to go back down there,’ Felix said, gripping his sword more tightly.

Gotrek nodded sharply and then, with a roar, he pushed away from the wall and charged up the stairs. Felix hesitated a moment and then followed, cursing under his breath. More bolts skidded off the angles of the tunnel as they came and Felix saw a trio of black-clad forms waiting for them at the head of the tunnel. The Charnel Congress obviously didn’t want to risk anyone following them up out of the Under Town. He ducked his head and charged on in Gotrek’s wake.

A final bolt bounced off Gotrek’s axe and then he and Felix were among them. Felix cut a crossbow in half and kicked its wielder down the stairs. Gotrek killed the other two with one sweep of his axe, spraying the stone with blood. ‘I smell wine,’ Gotrek said, stepping over the bodies.

‘Well, we are in a wine cellar,’ Felix said, poking his head out through the aperture the dead men had been guarding. ‘They said that these tunnels go throughout the city. I guess it only makes sense that some of them would come up under houses.’

Gotrek grabbed a bottle off the rack and cut the neck off with his axe, then upended the broken bottle over his open mouth. Felix winced as the wine ran down the sides of Gotrek’s mouth and dripped through his beard. ‘That’s a Tilean Burgundy, Gotrek, not a mug of ale,’ he said.

‘Tastes like something elves drink,’ Gotrek burped, dropping the bottle and heading for the cellar stairs. As they climbed them, Felix could smell the river and hear the sound of alarm bells ringing.

Gotrek, not in the mood for niceties, bashed the door open and strode through into the corridor beyond. Distant screams echoed and the light of fires was reflected in the windows. Felix went to the latter and looked out. ‘We must be in High Town, Gotrek,’ he said.

‘I don’t care where we are,’ Gotrek growled. ‘I want to know where those cowards are!’

‘The city is burning,’ Felix said, turning from the window.

‘Maybe it’s a welcoming party for the beast they were planning to bring back,’ Gotrek said acidly. ‘There. They went up those stairs. Follow close manling, I doubt I’ll have time to save you if we get separated again.’

Felix said nothing. There was a time for argument and a time for simply following in the trollslayer’s wake. They climbed the stairs, and Felix studied their surroundings. It was a fine house, reminiscent of his father’s house in Altdorf. Fancy furnishings decorated the interior, though there was a sense of rot that pervaded everything. Whoever lived here had other considerations than the upkeep of their property. He wondered which of the necromancers owned this place.

Voices reached their ears, intoning strangely. Gotrek moved more quickly, reaching the landing. Felix caught up to him before he could bellow a challenge and signalled the Slayer to remain silent. Gotrek glared at him and Felix hastily drew his hand back.

‘Quietly, Gotrek,’ he hissed. ‘For all they know, we’re dead.’

‘Not yet,’ Gotrek said grimly.

‘Let’s do it carefully. After all, if I get killed, there’ll be no one to tell the story of your battle with the last of the von Carsteins, will there?’ Felix said desperately.

Gotrek’s one eye blinked slowly, and he rubbed his eye-patch. ‘Good point,’ he said truculently. They crept along more slowly, following the rising murmur of voices. Gotrek stopped and raised a hand, and gestured towards a door.

The necromancers had placed no guards. Perhaps they had no guards left. Or they felt that they would need none. Gotrek pressed himself flat against the door frame and Felix swung around to the other side. He peered around the frame. The room beyond was barren of everything, save several hastily-lit braziers and the bodies of two of the black-hooded guards. The conjoined ghoul-thing squatted in the centre of the room, drooling and wheezing. Mannfred, still held by the creaking lengths of muscle tissue, struggled and snarled at his captors, his eyes blazing as bright as the torches. A twitching hand was clamped tight over his mouth.

The three surviving necromancers were holding their amulets, as well as those of their fallen fellows, before Mannfred. Helm raised a goblet of what could only be blood taken from the two dead men on the floor and slowly shook something from his amulet into the goblet.

‘Is that dust?’ Felix mouthed, looking at Gotrek. Gotrek shook his head.

As if in answer to his question, Helm said, ‘Behold, usurper, the very essence of our lord and master, gathered from across this damned world. The priests of Sigmar burnt him and scattered his ashes to far-flung chapels and holy places, but over the centuries, bit by bit, we gathered every fleck of ash or stub of charred bone. It took generations to convene it all, but it has been done and now, only the quickening of these cold ashes is left to do. They will gain form in the blood of our servants, but with yours, that form shall become what it once was!’

Mannfred’s struggles redoubled, and his prison jerked back and forth. The vampire’s strength was useless without leverage, however, though the ghoul-thing moaned in obvious strain and agony.

‘All of our lives have been bent to this moment,’ Helm said. In his hands, the goblet was bubbling and frothing. Mannfred’s thrashing grew more furious and his eyes glowed like lamps as he gnawed at his bonds and mumbled muffled imprecations.

‘Quiet!’ Russ snarled, and stabbed Mannfred in his exposed torso. The vampire screamed and then Gotrek dived around the door frame and charged towards the necromancers.

‘Ho, hedge wizards! Leave him! He belongs to me!’ Gotrek shouted. Russ spun and stabbed at the dwarf, but Felix slid smoothly between them, almost eager to lock swords with the necromancer.

‘Surprised to see us?’ Felix said. Russ’s only reply was a growl of frustration and he swung wildly. Felix blocked the blow and jerked forwards, his brow cracking against Russ’s. The ex-witch hunter reeled and Felix sliced his arm open. The man grunted and backed away. ‘You killed good men, Russ,’ Felix said, advancing. ‘I didn’t care for you before, but now I’ll happily cut out your heart.’

‘The feeling is mutual,’ Russ said, twisting around and bringing his sword down on Felix’s head. Felix stumbled aside and Karaghul sank into Russ’s side. The necromancer gasped and fell against the wall, leaving a streak of blood as he sank down.

It was almost anticlimactic, considering the things Russ had done. Felix yearned to say something clever, to mark the traitor’s passing, but nothing came to him. He turned to see Gotrek driving the other two necromancers back.

Behind him, Mannfred had begun to struggle, and his strength was such that the ghoul-thing staggered and whimpered. Helm gave a great cry as Gotrek’s axe cut across his chest and the goblet went flying. The frothing substance within splattered across the floor. A moment later, Mannfred tore his arm free of the cage of living flesh with a snapping of ligaments and a cracking of bones. Distracted, the necromancers had allowed their spell to weaken. And now Mannfred was free. The ghoul-thing sank down onto its numerous knees in its death-throes. Mannfred ripped his way out of the sagging cage-creature as quick as a cat and tore out its throats with a laugh, letting the whole roiling mass collapse.

He landed in a crouch before Helga, and even as the terrified necromancer wove a defensive spell, Mannfred punched his claws through her chest and out her back, removing her heart in the process. The woman slid off his arm and he turned to Felix. ‘Thank you for the distraction, Jaeger. There is one more service you can provide me, however, for I thirst,’ he said, gliding towards Felix.

Gotrek’s bellow caught their attention. The Slayer’s axe sparked as it cut through one of Helm’s spells and the flare of dispersed energy momentarily blinded Felix. When he could see again, Mannfred was almost upon him. ‘Put the sword down,’ the vampire hissed.

With those red eyes on him, it was all Felix could do to hold on to his sword. The urge to drop it grew overpowering and he grabbed Karaghul’s hilt with both hands. Sweat rolled down his face and his muscles felt as if they would rip free of his bones, so hard was he shaking. Mannfred gave a little chuckle and lunged. He grabbed Felix by the neck, forcing him back against the wall. ‘A strong will is like a fine spice,’ the vampire said. ‘It merely enhances the taste. First I will wring the juice from the meat of you, and then I will do the same to your stunted companion.’

Felix saw movement behind him. Mannfred, realising that Felix wasn’t looking at him, turned slightly, fully expecting to see Gotrek. Instead, something snarled and sent both man and vampire staggering back in shock and horror.

The process of Vlad’s resurrection had not been interrupted by the spilling of the blood-soaked ashes. Quite the reverse, in fact; the concoction had crept across the floor, seeking the sustenance it craved, the sustenance necessary to begin rebuilding the thing that had called itself Vlad von Carstein. But instead of healthy human blood, or even the charged brew of a vampire’s fluids, it had found the corrupted juices of the dying ghoul-thing. What resulted both was and was not Vlad von Carstein.

The strange brew bubbled and stirred, the dark liquid emitting a thin shrill sound as a noxious smoke began to rise from it. In the smoke, a face formed and its mouth opened in a silent howl as it billowed and contracted according to the breeze. As it broke apart, something ugly surfaced from the spreading blood. Yellow fangs clashed in a bone jaw and it snarled again, despite lacking either lungs or flesh. More bones grew and clattered as the thing heaved itself up out of oblivion. The skull, up to this point vaguely human-shaped, began to sprout blossoms of cartilage as it shattered and spread, widening into a new shape. The other bones snapped and fibres of marrow grew between the tumbling halves, lengthening them to inhuman proportions.

The flesh of the ghoul-thing heaved itself free of the crumbling old bones and stretched over the new, thinning and then thickening. Coarse bristles burst through the gaping pores, spreading like a plague. The skull snapped and twisted as flesh flowed over it.

Finally, the heaving, hairy shape rose onto four twisted limbs and opened its fang-filled maw to give voice to something that was not quite the scream of a man, nor the shriek of a bat or even the howl of a wolf. The monster that crouched before them was a mingling of the worst aspect of all three creatures, with a size to match.

Felix’s bowels turned to water as the great, foul eyes found him and a hungry grunt echoed through the room. ‘What-what-what–’ he stammered.

‘Varghulf,’ Mannfred hissed, flexing his claws.

‘Looks like just another bloody vampire to me,’ Gotrek said. He tossed the limp body of Helm at the abomination and it tore it from the air and stuffed the old man’s corpse into its greedy maw. Still chewing, it looked around at Felix and Mannfred and shrieked again as the latter tried to sidle away. ‘I think it recognises you, leech,’ Gotrek said.

‘Impossible,’ Mannfred sputtered.

The varghulf stretched itself, its stubby wings raking the ceiling and splintering the wooden beams. It snarled and Felix thought there might have been words there, but he couldn’t be sure. Mannfred, however, apparently was. He snarled something in a strange language and scooped up Russ’s fallen sword.

The varghulf threw itself at the vampire, roaring. Gotrek, echoing it, stretched out a hand, grabbed a hank of the beast’s mane and hauled himself up its broad back. The varghulf’s talons tore up the floorboards in its haste to come to grips with Mannfred. Felix jumped aside as a flailing claw tore a section out of the wall. In its frenzy, the monster was destroying the scene of its rebirth.

Gotrek, straddling the monster, brought his axe down. It screeched and reared, reaching for him. As it did so, Mannfred rose and rammed his sword into its belly. It howled and plucked Gotrek from its back and slammed him down on Mannfred, sending them both sprawling. Gotrek’s axe was dislodged from its back, and Felix saw with horror that the wounds the vampire and the dwarf had created were already healing.

Felix backed away, until his back thumped against the far wall and the great curtains that covered it. Turning, he stripped the curtains aside, revealing great bay windows that opened out onto a wooden balcony overlooking the section of the Stir that cut through the city. Felix saw movement reflected in the glass and ducked as the varghulf pawed at him, shattering the windows in the process. Felix scrambled out onto the balcony as the beast squeezed out after him, burning spittle drizzling from between its jutting fangs. It snapped at him and he dived between its legs, scrambling back into the room.

‘Out of the way, manling,’ Gotrek growled, running towards the balcony. He leapt at the creature, his axe biting into its face and skull. It tore at the dwarf, snatching him out of the air and smashing him into the floor hard enough to shatter several floorboards. It released the Slayer and stepped back, blood coating its claws.

And then Mannfred was there, his sword piercing the top of the varghulf’s skull and exploding out through the bottom of its jaw. Hanging from the hilt, Mannfred looked into the beast’s bulging, animalistic eyes and hissed, ‘Have the good grace to die this time, Vlad!’

In reply, the varghulf slapped the vampire off its head and into the wall. Behind the beast, Felix saw a glimmer of light. With a start, he realised that the sun was rising.

The varghulf moaned, pawing at the sword in its head, trying to dislodge it. Felix looked at his own sword and knew that no matter what power it contained, it wasn’t going to do the trick. He saw the shattered boards at the monster’s feet shift. Gotrek’s hand rose and Felix knew what he had to do.

He snatched up a brazier and stabbed the flaming end like a spear at the monster. It snarled and tried to grab the brazier from his hands. Steeling himself, he stabbed at it again, trying to get it out on the balcony. Instead, it lifted a wing and let the brazier slide past it as it lunged, jaws wide.

‘Ha!’ Gotrek cried, thrusting his axe up as the monster passed over him. The edge bit into its hairy throat, releasing a spray of foul blood. Gotrek, legs coiled beneath him, shoved upwards, using his body to force his axe’s edge all the way through the monster’s neck.

The varghulf’s head came free of its neck and rolled across the floor, snapping mindlessly. Gotrek, covered in blood, hacked at the body, which had remained upright. ‘Gotrek, get it outside!’ Felix said, using the brazier to pin the snarling head in place. ‘The sun is coming up!’

Gotrek seemed to have heard him and the dwarf redoubled his efforts, chopping at the stumbling shape and driving it backwards. It went blindly and ungracefully, its limbs moving independent of one another.

‘You’re a wise man, Herr Jaeger,’ Mannfred said. Felix spun, raising the brazier. Mannfred seized it with one hand and shoved Felix down, distressingly close to the still-animated head of the varghulf. ‘Nagash’s Curse will see to that abomination readily enough,’ Mannfred said, glancing at the varghulf’s head. He frowned in distaste.

He rose, yanking Felix to his feet. In a quick movement, he reversed their positions and Felix found himself with the length of the brazier pressed against his windpipe. In his other hand, Mannfred grabbed the varghulf’s head. He forced Felix towards the balcony. The sun was an orange stripe on the horizon, and Felix felt Mannfred shiver. The vampire’s armour cut into his back and Felix tried to move as little as possible.

On the balcony, Gotrek was on all fours, clutching his chest near the unmoving body of the varghulf. He was breathing heavily, and Felix knew that the night’s activities had taken their toll on the dwarf’s superhuman vitality. Still, Gotrek had his axe to hand and when Mannfred stepped out onto the balcony, his one eye flashed.

‘Well done, master dwarf,’ Mannfred called out. He tossed the varghulf’s head towards the dwarf, and Gotrek batted it aside. ‘You two have helped me greatly, I must admit.’ Mannfred’s teeth clicked together distressingly close to Felix’s ear. ‘As a reward, I will let you lie in Morr’s embrace undisturbed when I rebuild my forces.’

Gotrek shifted and let his axe fall with a thunk into the balcony. Beneath their feet, the wood gave a groan. Mannfred blinked. Gotrek gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Why are you smiling? Are you so welcoming of death?’

Gotrek uprooted his axe and let it fall again. The balcony trembled slightly. ‘Not quite, leech. Not unless it’s your death you’re talking about.’

‘Gotrek, what have you done?’ Felix croaked, clawing at the brazier. Mannfred tightened his grip.

‘Followed your advice, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘You said get it out on the balcony. It’s not my fault the balcony is typical shoddy human craftsmanship.’ He chopped at the balcony again. There was a creak, and everything shifted suddenly towards the water. ‘Rotten joists; it’s the river water that does it. That’s why dwarfs use stone instead of wood. Wood rots. Stone doesn’t.’

‘Stop it,’ Mannfred said. His eyes blazed in their sockets and Gotrek stiffened. Felix could feel the vampire’s black will beating against the iron of Gotrek’s own just as it had beat against his own earlier. His head was filled with a purple agony that pulled the strength from his limbs.

‘Even stones crumble before the tide, dwarf,’ Mannfred said. He forced Felix forwards. ‘Drop your axe,’ he commanded. Mannfred’s semi-human countenance faded as he stared at the dwarf. His flesh, marble-pale before, had gone practically translucent. Black veins spread across it like a spider’s web of cracks, and his fangs had grown as long as Felix’s finger. Madly, Mannfred champed at the air, his lips writhing against the force of unspoken curses. And still, the Slayer stood firm.

Gotrek’s fist tightened convulsively around the haft of his axe. Veins bulged alarmingly along his arms and neck, and his teeth were bared in a frozen snarl. His eye started from his head. The head of the axe trembled and then fell, straight into the floor. Gotrek gave a satisfied grunt as the damaged joists squealed. Mannfred hissed in consternation. The vampire shot a glance at the door. Felix felt a chill and realised that the vampire was changing shape.

‘Gotrek, he’s trying to escape!’ he said, jerking forwards and trying to drag Mannfred off balance. Gotrek jumped forwards and got between Mannfred and the door. The sun was no longer a strip of light, but a wide swath of brightness. Mannfred’s shape steamed and he snarled, his body twisting and changing as he made for the door.

‘Not this time!’ Gotrek said, slicing through the vampire’s foggy shape. Mannfred screamed and the mist turned crimson, and then he was solid once more and staggering back. Felix stretched out and the vampire tripped over him and slammed into the balcony’s railing. The sudden shift in weight was followed by a snapping and tearing of wood. Felix lunged for the door and Gotrek moved past him, throwing himself at Mannfred even as the balcony gave way in a burst of brick, splinters and noise.

Felix felt the world fall away and pain flared in his chest as he caught the edge of the lintel and held on. Dangling half-in and half-out of the room, he pulled himself up and to safety. Then he turned and looked down.

Gotrek’s axe had become embedded in one of the remaining support beams, which hung awkwardly, half-cracked in two from the force of the collapse. Gotrek held onto his axe – not even death would break that hold – but his skull was bloody and he looked badly dazed. And clinging to his leg was Mannfred. The vampire hissed up at Felix, his formerly aristocratic face now a bestial mask not that far removed from that of the varghulf. Claws dug into the Slayer’s thigh, and Gotrek’s blood ran down Mannfred’s arms. Slowly, the vampire reached up, grabbing the dwarf’s shoulder, obviously intending to climb up.

Felix stood and, before he could reconsider, climbed down towards the support beam. It shifted beneath his feet and he sank to all fours. ‘Gotrek,’ he said.

‘Save your breath, Jaeger,’ Mannfred snarled. ‘You’ll join him in death soon enough!’ But even as the words left Mannfred’s mouth, Gotrek’s eye snapped open and he reached up, grabbing the vampire’s throat. Mannfred’s eyes widened and he scrabbled at Gotrek’s arm. The Slayer grunted, obviously in pain, and swung Mannfred away from solid ground and held him out over the Stir, directly into the gaze of the sun.

Mannfred howled and his increasingly furious struggles caused the support beam to shift and creak alarmingly. Felix didn’t stop, but instead crept closer to Gotrek.

Mannfred’s features began to smoke and burn and his screams became high and thin. Gotrek jerked the vampire close and stared into his agonised eyes, as if wanting to commit to memory every moment of his death. But then Mannfred swiped his claws across Gotrek’s face and the Slayer roared, releasing his hold on the vampire.

Mannfred von Carstein plummeted downwards, striking the surface of the Stir like a screaming black comet. But even as the water closed over the vampire’s form, the support beam finally gave way. Felix lunged, grabbing Gotrek’s wrist and nearly falling himself. ‘Hold on!’ he said.

‘What in Grimnir’s name do you think you’re doing?’ Gotrek said incredulously. ‘He’s getting away!’

‘Drowning in the Stir isn’t exactly a heroic doom, Gotrek!’

‘Dwarfs don’t drown!’ Gotrek snapped. But he grabbed onto what was left of the support beam and began to pull himself up, grumbling the entire way. Felix didn’t waste his breath arguing.

When they had gotten back to the doorway, Felix looked down at the river and said, ‘Do you think he’s dead? Again, I mean.’

Gotrek looked at him steadily. Then he hefted his axe and glared at the runes inscribed on the blade, as if they were responsible for yet another failure to die. ‘I hope not,’ he said finally.

THE RECKONING

Jordan Ellinger

There is nothing quite like watching the torch-lit streets of a city that wants you dead receding into the night. From where Felix stood on the stern of the Dorabella, he could just make out tiny orange dots moving up and down the docks as the city watch searched for them. Unfortunately for them, dozens of ships choked the busy harbour. There would be no telling which one they’d gotten on.

‘You must have made many friends among di Peacocks for dem to still be chasing you dis late at night,’ said Captain Di Venzo, a portly old Tilean who dressed as colourfully as he spoke. When Gotrek and Felix had dashed up his gangplank in the dead of night, he’d taken them on eagerly. The docks of Miragliano hadn’t exactly been filled with men eager to make the dangerous voyage to Lustria, land of the man-eating lizardmen, and he was desperate for paying passengers. Though Gotrek wasn’t much of a sailor, the rune axe strapped over his shoulder had convinced Di Venzo that he would be good for something. The Tilean hadn’t cared much that the city watch had been in hot pursuit at the time. After all, half his crew were probably wanted men. ‘Ne’er seen the Peacocks so upset,’ he said, spitting on the deck for emphasis.

Felix sighed, remembering the drunken fight Gotrek had started at the Purple Sheep. ‘Accusing a nobleman of cheating at dice likely nets you a night in jail. Cut off his hand for the same crime and they turn out the whole city watch.’

‘Better you let dem catch you,’ said Di Venzo with a smirk. ‘Most men choose de gaol over de Dark Continent. De hangman’s noose offers a cleaner death.’ He smiled, revealing yellowed teeth. ‘Now, signor, I go. I’ve got to whip dese bastards into shape.’

Felix nodded, but continued to stare back at the city as Di Venzo returned to the sterncastle. Only a moment ago he’d been glad to leave and now he was sorry to see it go.

Lustria.

After having failed to find his doom in the north, Gotrek had abruptly stated that if nothing in the Old World could kill him, he’d try the new one instead. Their travels together had taken them everywhere from the seediest brothels in the Border Princes to the skies high above the Chaos Wastes in an airship piloted by a mad engineer, but the thought of travelling to a continent where humans had a mere foothold, and that the rest of the land was ruled over by the ancient and mysterious Scaled Ones, scared Felix more than he liked to admit.

Of course, he’d had little choice in the matter. As Gotrek’s Rememberer, he’d vowed to record the Slayer’s death in an epic poem, and it would be pretty difficult to do that from across an ocean.

He turned away from the railing and found a nearby crate to sit on. The Slayer was ensconced in their cabin, trying to spend as little time on deck as possible. Dwarfs have no love for ocean travel, and Gotrek less than most. There was no glory in a death at sea. He’d most likely be passed out in a hammock, the tankard of ale he’d taken with them when they’d fled the Purple Sheep dangling from his fingers.

Felix envied the dwarf’s ability to sleep wherever and whenever he chose. Instead of joining him, Felix decided to jot down a few notes on the day’s events in his journal. Perhaps amputating Viscount von Korloff’s arm over a set of loaded dice might merit a stanza or two in Gotrek’s epic.

He’d just freed his journal from his pack when the Dorabella lurched abruptly and the sound of breaking lumber rent the air. He was thrown against a cabin wall, hitting hard enough that he dropped it. The precious book landed on its spine, then flopped open, the wind fluttering its pages.

Overhead, a scream ripped through the air as the sudden stop tore a sailor from the rigging and threw him into the ocean forty feet below. A lantern flew off its hook and smashed against the deck, spreading oil and fire in its wake. Overhead, lines snapped taut and the mast groaned. The sails were full, but the ship had stopped dead.

Still struggling to catch his breath, Felix snatched up the journal and quickly shoved it back into its pouch. He’d spent months writing in the gods-be-damned thing – he wasn’t about to see it slip overboard.

More cries of alarm sounded, and then Di Venzo began roaring orders at the top of his lungs. The captain strode amongst the crew, cursing and clubbing them back into some semblance of discipline. He sent a few to help the poor bastard who’d gone into the sea, and then directed others to beat at the spreading flames from the overturned lamp with their surcoats.

Felix hesitated, wondering if he should join them. Fire was every sailor’s nightmare, but it was nothing these men hadn’t fought before. Under Di Venzo’s watchful eye, they formed a human chain with the man on the end lowering buckets into the ocean by means of a rope.

Instead, he decided to investigate why the ship wasn’t moving. What had they struck? If it was a sandbar, they could hopefully put out one of the longboats and tow the schooner to freedom before the sun rose and they were discovered. If it was a rocky shoal, they might all have to swim for shore. He wanted to find out which before he woke the Slayer.

The ship lurched again. Wood cracked and the rigging above Felix danced madly in the torchlight. A stack of crates slid against each other and tumbled to the deck, forcing him to leap to the side to avoid them. He found himself pressed up against the ship’s rail as the ocean surged and churned below him.

Near the bow, a dark shape the size of a whale rose out of the waves, forcibly lifting the front of the Dorabella out of the ocean. Stunned, Felix couldn’t help but stare at it. Silhouetted figures dashed along its spine, stopping at a cylindrical protrusion near its bow. Metal shrieked as they swivelled it to face the ship. A flash and then a boom blossomed from it, revealing the low, sleek contours of a ship, but not one Felix had ever seen before. Made from huge plates of riveted copper, it looked like a kettle had been crossed with a fish. Could this be some infernal skaven device for travelling beneath the waves? Their cunning knew no bounds.

A spear point the size of Felix’s head smashed into the side of the Dorabella. A cable attached to the spear grew taut and the Tilean schooner lurched again as it was drawn close to the submersible. They were being boarded!

Felix spun away from the railing, looking for Captain Di Venzo. Despite the crew’s best efforts, the fire had spread along the seams of tar between deck boards. Men still attempted to douse the flames with buckets of water, but the captain was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he’d heard the crash and gone to investigate? Felix caught the arm of Alessio, the orphan who served as Di Venzo’s cabin boy, as he dashed by.

‘Go below decks and awaken my travelling companion. Tell him we’re being boarded. And be careful,’ he said as the boy dashed off. ‘He’s probably drunk.’

Felix watched him go and then set off in search of the captain. He found him near the overturned crates at the rear of the ship.

‘Herr Jaeger,’ he called to Felix. ‘Our cargo has shifted! If we don’t get dese crates to de bow, we’ll take on water.’

Di Venzo still thought they’d struck a sandbar! He’d been so concerned with keeping his ship afloat he hadn’t even looked over the railing.

‘You’ve got bigger problems, captain,’ Felix shouted back. ‘You’re being boarded!’

Di Venzo’s eyes widened. He set down the crate he was carrying and dashed around the sterncastle towards the bow, followed closely by Felix. Just as he arrived, a few strangled cries of alarm sounded from the sailors stationed there. Dark shapes moved across the deck, cutting men down where they stood.

‘Forget the fire, men,’ he roared thrusting his scimitar into the air. ‘Repel de boarders!’

A short, but powerfully built, figure clumped out of the shadows towards Felix bellowing a war cry and hefting a huge maul. This was no skaven, as Felix had initially suspected, but a dwarf!

‘Wait, I–,’ he said, throwing his hand out. Before he could utter another word, the maul crashed down at him. He barely drew Karaghul in time to parry and the force of the blow shook his arm down to the bone. He tried a quick riposte, and though the dwarf’s strike had left him open, he was so heavily armoured that Felix’s blow drew sparks. Ineffective though it was, it caused the dwarf to take a step back, wary of another strike.

Why were dwarfs attacking a Tilean schooner? They were far from their holds in the Worlds Edge Mountains. There must be some mistake…

The dwarf darted in again and swiped at him with the hammer, a huge sweep that would have taken Felix’s head clean off his shoulders. Instead, Felix stepped inside the blow and brought the pommel of his blade down on the dwarf’s helmet, denting the metal and provoking a grunt of pain. The dwarf’s knees buckled and he began to drop, but just as Felix was about to turn in search of Gotrek, he drove his shoulder into Felix’s chest. They slammed into the ship’s mast and Felix slumped to the ground, crushed by the weight of a fully armoured dwarf. His vision momentarily dimmed and the enemy warrior raised his maul for the killing blow. There would be no parrying this time. Karaghul had slipped from Felix’s grip and lay on the deck a few feet away. It was unarmed.

‘Wait!’ he yelled, throwing his hands in front of his face in a plea for mercy. ‘I’m a dwarf friend,’ he shouted.

The figure grunted hollowly. ‘You’re no friend of mine,’ he said, hefting his maul. Felix quickly scanned the deck, looking for something that could help, a rope, a weapon, but his eyes alighted on his backpack. Unattended, the fire had spread across the deck towards the mast, and now licked at the leather. His journal!

Out of sheer desperation, he pushed off from the mast and launched himself at the dwarf. He caught the haft of the maul on his shoulder and felt it go numb, but he was still alive. Momentum carried him into his opponent. It was like hitting a wall of steel. Dwarfs were shorter than humans, but far stockier and this one was solid muscle. Grabbing the haft of the maul, Felix kicked out and landed a blow squarely on the dwarf’s breastplate. He stumbled backwards, tripped over a coil of rope and crashed to the deck.

The maul was far too heavy for Felix to use effectively, so he cast it to the side, where it thumped onto the deck. He looked around. Men screamed in pain as a dozen enemy warriors moved through them, their heavy armour easily turning aside the sailors’ cutlasses. The smell of burning tar and wood smoke hung thick in the air, making Felix’s lungs burn and his skin smart.

He cast about desperately for Karaghul and spotted it lying on the deck near the railing. He hesitated. Should he go for the weapon or the book? He had a split second to make the decision and in the end he couldn’t let his journal burn. The Siege of Praag was contained in that book. It could not go up in flames! Forgetting about his sword, he dashed towards the fire and snatched up the backpack, beating at the flames with his red Sudenland cloak.

The pack was ruined of course, and his quill singed beyond recognition, but the jar of ink, although hot to the touch, was whole and his journal safe within its oiled leather carrying case. He tucked them into a pouch on his cloak, and then cast about for his sword. It was nowhere to be seen. Had it slid off the deck into the ocean? The thought of losing Karaghul made his heart twinge. The blade had been at his side through so many adventures it felt like a part of him. Losing it would be like having an arm chopped off. Worse, he thought. He had two arms, but there was only one Karaghul.

He felt, more than heard, displaced air against his cheek and dodged backwards just in time to avoid a hammer blow. The armoured dwarf he’d knocked down before stepped out of the flames.

‘You just don’t quit, do you?’ asked Felix in frustration.

The warrior shrugged. ‘I’m a dwarf,’ he said, by way of explanation.

Alone and still unarmed, Felix cursed his luck. Why hadn’t he gone for his sword? He looked around for help, but the battle had moved away from them and if there were any sailors still alive, he couldn’t see them. He didn’t stand a chance.

Just as the dwarf stepped in for the killing blow, a snarling figure emerged from the flames and hurled itself at Felix’s opponent. Bare-chested and tattooed, Gotrek Gurnisson batted aside the maul with his rune axe and lashed out with a ham-hock fist. It impacted the dwarf’s armoured jaw with a metallic clang that sent him crashing to the deck. Gotrek didn’t even bother shaking his hand after the blow.

‘Barely out of port and you decide to burn down the ship around my ears?’

‘Good to see you too, Gotrek,’ said Felix. The pig grease that the Slayer used to shape his hair into a crest had partially melted and smeared his skull and forehead. His skin was an angry red from the heat, almost as red as his fiery beard. He clutched his rune axe tightly in one hand. In the other… a sword?

Gotrek grunted and then held out the weapon, pommel first. It was Karaghul. ‘You wouldn’t be much good to me without a sword.’

Felix’s heart sang as he took the blade, feeling again its perfect balance and heft. He’d genuinely thought he’d lost it. ‘Gotrek…’ he said.

‘Save it,’ responded the dwarf gruffly. He looked down at the fallen warrior. ‘Now let’s see what kind of dwarf attacks an unarmed man.’

He knelt in front of the armoured warrior and ripped off his helmet with one hand, revealing a heavy set dwarf with features that looked like they’d been chiselled from stone. Dark eyes and a large, craggy nose framed a black beard bound into a warrior’s braids with thick golden clips. ‘Vabur Nerinson,’ said Gotrek with a curse.

‘You know him?’ asked Felix, stunned.

‘Of course I know him,’ spat Gotrek. ‘He’s a Reckoner out of Barak Varr. If Vabur’s here then that means… Norri Wolfhame! Come out and face me, you coward!’

Dark shapes stepped through the flames. Their leader wore mail and an open-faced horned helmet that flaunted a thick, white beard. He was flanked by two soldiers of identical height and build, each levelling black powder rifles. Their armour, too, was identical, except that one helmet was moulded in the shape of a lion and the other an eagle.

‘Gotrek Gurnisson,’ called the dwarf with the white beard – Wolfhame, Felix guessed. ‘You’re under arrest in the name of King Byrrnoth Grundadrakk.’

Just as he finished speaking, a burning spar above them cracked and popped, littering the group with ash and charred rigging. The Reckoner paid no attention to it. Single-minded to the point of razor-like focus, he seemed to be unaware that they were standing in the middle of an inferno.

‘What’s the charge?’ asked Felix.

Wolfhame’s gaze found his and Felix was suddenly embarrassed to have spoken. He felt like a child who had broken the silence in one of Sigmar’s temples.

‘Treason,’ Wolfhame answered, eyes glittering in the firelight.

Treason? The pair were guilty of a lot of crimes, but as far as Felix could remember they’d never committed treason against the King of Barak Varr. Could Wolfhame be pursuing them because of some crime Gotrek committed before he’d come upon Felix in the Window Tax Riots? But that was twenty years ago! Just how long had these dwarfs been pursuing the Slayer?

‘Your king was the one who committed treason, Norri, and you know it,’ growled Gotrek.

Wolfhame continued on as if Gotrek hadn’t spoken. ‘And – as if that wasn’t enough – common thievery.’

Felix felt his jaw clench. Gotrek hunched his shoulders and took a step towards Wolfhame, prompting the twin warriors to tighten their grips on their rifles. After a visible struggle, Gotrek regained control of his temper. Felix had seen him deflect arrows before with his rune axe, but charging two dwarf warriors with rifles levelled was madness, even for him. It was the goal of every Slayer to die gloriously, not anonymously at the hands a couple of Reckoners with rifles.

‘Explain yourself, Norri Wolfhame,’ growled Gotrek. ‘I’ve been called traitor before, but never a thief.’

Before the Reckoner could elaborate, a low, thumping groan came from the bow and the crack of split wood rent the air once more. Though the sturdy dwarfs were unmoved, Felix stumbled and nearly fell as the ship’s deck lurched. As he regained his footing, he spotted two longboats already in the water, rowing frantically for shore. The crew had abandoned ship – and for good reason. He could see the sea pouring over the Dorabella’s stern as she finally began to sink.

‘Can we hurry this up a little?’ he asked nervously. Ocean water swept up the deck towards them, and Felix noticed with some distress that the stern of the ship was almost completely submerged. When would these blasted dwarfs get to the point? ‘Do you plan to take us prisoner or carry out the sentence right here on the deck? Because if it’s the latter, the sea will soon beat you to it.’

‘I am not permitted to discuss the details of your crimes in front of an umgi,’ said Norri Wolfhame to Gotrek, eying Felix suspiciously.

‘The manling is my Rememberer and a dwarf friend. Anything you need to say to me can be said in front of him,’ replied Gotrek.

‘How do you merit a Rememberer?’ asked one of the twin warriors in surprise. He was quickly silenced by a stern look from Wolfhame. Annoyed, the Reckoner turned back to Gotrek.

‘You’re already aware of why you’re wanted for treason,’ he said, his face stony and unreadable. ‘As for the theft? The vault of Musin Balderk has been breached.’

‘You lie,’ sneered Gotrek with such ferociousness that the twins cocked their rifles. ‘I built that vault myself. It would take a dozen dwarfs with a barrel of black powder the size of this ship more than a week to get in. If you’ve let that happen, then there’s no help I can offer you.’

For the first time since they’d met, Norri Wolfhame lost his composure. His cheeks reddened and his beard twitched. ‘Are you accusing me of incompetence?’

‘Come, manling,’ said Gotrek, lowering his axe and stomping towards the three Reckoners.

Felix took a few hesitant steps after Gotrek, still unsure what had happened. One minute it looked like the Slayer was determined to go down with the ship and the next he was, well, if not surrendering, then at least agreeing to terms. ‘Where are we going?’

Gotrek’s single eye glittered. ‘To Barak Varr. I want to see for myself how these fools let someone into my vault.’

Despite the immense amount of dwarf technology that went into the construction of a vehicle that could travel for days beneath the waves, Felix couldn’t help but think they were travelling inside a floating dungeon.

Since space inside what Gotrek called a Nautilus was at a premium, everything was sized for a dwarf and Felix was forced to crouch in the narrow passageways. His back hurt the instant he set foot inside the vessel, and hurt more when he considered that it might take weeks of travel to reach the Barak.

They were led along a narrow passageway down what Felix assumed was the ‘throat’ of the giant copper fish. They passed rooms filled with narrow bunks and then a small infirmary where a few dwarfs were being treated for minor burns sustained in the inferno above. The entire vessel smelled like lamp oil, only heavier and more pungent. Once, Felix put his hand down on what he thought was a guardrail only to have it come away covered in grease.

They turned onto a metal gangplank made from wire mesh that allowed Felix to see into the inner workings of the vessel. It was like staring into a clock. A tangle of gears and pipes turned an enormous shaft that disappeared towards the stern of the ship. The air here smelled of oil and what the dwarfs called ‘blackwater’. It was a pleasant smell, but one that Felix knew better than to inhale too deeply.

Wolfhame led them down the gangplank to a small, windowless cell in the back of the submersible. It had probably once held provisions, judging from the stink of rotten potatoes that hung in the air. A few smokeless lamps gave the room a yellowish pall, and strange copper pipes that were hot to the touch skirted the ceiling. At first these made the cramped cell unbearably hot, but as the Nautilus descended into the depths the walls grew cold and Felix began to think the ship’s designers had placed them there deliberately to keep the room’s occupants warm.

The Slayer had told Norri that he was coming to Barak Varr as an engineer, not a Slayer, but Felix couldn’t help thinking that the vault of Musin Balderk was but the smallest part of it. His mind kept going back to the charge of treason. Dwarfs were a stubborn bunch and valued loyalty above all else. Felix had studied at the university at Altdorf and he could count the number of dwarfs accused of treason on one hand and not need the thumb. Yet, despite the seriousness of the charge, Gotrek had said nothing in all the years they’d travelled together. Felix could not keep his gaze away from the Slayer’s fiery red crest and body tattoos. Could Wolfhame have been hunting Gotrek for the very crime that had caused him to take the Slayer’s Oath?

Despite Felix’s attempts to engage the Slayer in conversation, he would not speak of it. After a few days, he would not speak at all, merely staring darkly at a spot on the opposite wall.

With a sigh, Felix opened his journal, bit an edge into his singed quill and put ink to page. He had found precious little writing time on the road, and had not yet written of the death of Arek Daemonclaw and the events that had followed.

The days passed quickly, and he lost track of how long they were at sea. Guards came by twice a day to empty their chamber pot and feed them a thin, but nourishing, gruel. Though Felix had no way of telling time from the confines of his cell, mealtimes were so regular he could predict them by the grumbling of his stomach.

By the time he noticed a change in the constant hum that Gotrek had explained came from the ship’s engines, he’d filled forty pages. Soon afterwards, the ship lurched and a dull, metallic thump echoed through the ship’s hull. The hatch’s handle spun and it hissed open. Norri Wolfhame stepped over the threshold, still in full armour. Felix suspected he slept in it.

‘Finally muster enough courage to face me without your two henchmen, Wolfhame?’ sneered Gotrek. The pair were technically prisoners, but no one had been brave enough to relieve Gotrek of his rune axe. Wolfhame eyed it warily and fingered his hammer, but did not draw it.

‘We’ve docked under the palace. From here we will be proceeding directly to the king’s private chambers via a secret route. Though it is supposed to be reserved for the king’s private use, some members of the palace staff have been known to use it on occasion and if we should encounter them, you will remain silent. Should you utter the slightest sound, my men will kill you where you stand.’

Felix rose slowly, feeling every ache and pain of the long voyage in a cramped space. He was disappointed to hear they’d already docked. Last time they’d been in Barak Varr, they’d been aboard a Bretonnian merchantman, and seen first-hand the huge sea cave in which it was situated. He’d been looking forward to seeing such a sight again. Lanterns the size of a carriage strung to the ceiling with huge chains had set fire to the perfectly still ocean and highlighted the busy harbour beyond.

It was only when he stood on the deck of the Nautilus that he realised the true magnitude of what Wolfhame had said. Unlike the harbour of Barak Varr, this was nothing more than an enclosed gorge that had been enlarged just barely enough to accommodate the Nautilus. Wolfhame’s pilot must have had incredible mastery of his vessel in order to pilot it between the narrow walls. No crates or supplies lined the docks, making it obvious to Felix that the harbour only served one purpose – to bring people to and from the palace in secret. Dwarfs were such a pragmatic breed that, even though Wolfhame had just told them the dock was reserved for kingly use, it was undecorated. He glanced at Gotrek as the Slayer followed the Reckoners up a rough-cut stairway and through the secret passage. Why the need for this level of secrecy?

He wished he could ask Gotrek if he knew what was going on, but Vabur Nerinson, the black-bearded dwarf the Slayer had felled with a single punch, marched only a few feet away. His giant maul was slung over one shoulder and he carried his dented helmet under one arm. Every time he caught Felix’s eye he smiled evilly and petted his weapon. Better to remain silent than to give that one an excuse to soothe his wounded pride on Felix’s skull.

The walls of the passage were unmarked and the ascent so steep that Felix had to concentrate on keeping up to the hardy dwarfs. Soon he was sweating and breathing heavily. He longed to spot some kind of sign that would mark their progress, a floor number, or at the very least, another exit, but the walls were plainly cut stone and there were no doors in sight. Finally, they emerged into a wide hallway. In contrast to the corridor they’d just left, the construction here was superb. Intricate carvings graced the walls and several stone busts of past kings sat on a series of pedestals that ran the length of the hallway. Wolfhame led them deliberately to the huge oaken doors that marked the entrance to King Grundadrakk’s chambers.

A half-dozen of his closest advisors were gathered around a large oaken table, upon which rested a map of the lower tunnels as large as a bed sheet. Thumb-sized stone figures dotted the map, some carved to look like Ironbreakers, while others, more crudely carved, looked like ratmen.

Felix could identify Grundadrakk immediately, despite never having met him. Completely bald with a flowing white beard that stretched nearly to his belt buckle, he towered over his advisors. Even bent over the tunnel map as he was, Felix could tell he was as large, or larger, than Gotrek – perhaps even as wide as Snorri Nosebiter. He was a giant among dwarfs.

‘Your majesty,’ said Wolfhame as they entered. ‘I’ve brought you Gotrek Gurnisson, the Trollslayer.’

The king carefully picked up a stone figure, and then circled the map and placed it at a different spot. He surveyed it, checked its relationship to the other carvings, its distance, its height, and only then looked up with a frown. ‘He’s still got his axe.’

‘Let the dwarf who wants to take it from me step forward,’ said Gotrek, grinning evilly and running a thumb up its blade until he drew blood.

‘I should have you executed,’ said the king nonchalantly. Having placed the ratman where he wanted it, he rose and turned towards them, judging them with a glance. ‘This Grim Brotherhood nonsense,’ he said, waving his finger at Gotrek’s tattoos and crest, ‘has never impressed me. There are those – even amongst my advisors – who believe that the Oath absolves one of all their crimes. This is false. It is just that Slayers usually have the good grace to die before their sentence can be carried out.’

‘Are you saying I’ve been avoiding my doom?’ Gotrek asked, his voice low and dangerous. Felix could sense the air in the room grow cold. Grundadrakk’s advisors drew away from the king unconsciously, clearing the space between them.

Only one venerable dwarf remained at the king’s side. He was stocky, sporting a belly that overhung his belt. He wore jewellery in the manner of the richest merchant-princes, one who fought wars in the marketplace rather than on the battlefield. Each finger glimmered with a jewelled ring, and he wore a thin silver band across his forehead. His forked beard was immaculately oiled and his skin free from blemishes. Though Felix admired his courage, Gotrek would cut right through him on the way to the king, unless Felix did something to defuse the situation.

‘Why have you, um, summoned us, your majesty?’ he asked quickly, and then gulped when all eyes turned towards him. Far from defusing the situation, he’d turned their anger on himself instead.

‘Drumnok,’ said the king to the oiled merchant-prince. ‘Who is this umgi?’

‘Unless I miss my guess, he is Felix Jaeger, your majesty,’ said the merchant prince, ‘Dwarf friend, and Rememberer to Gotrek Gurnisson.’

Felix was surprised that Drumnok had identified him so easily. Had news of their deeds spread so far? ‘You have impressive sources, my lord.’

Drumnok shook his head. ‘Just Drumnok. I’m no thane – merely an ale merchant who’s done well for himself. But to answer your question, we’ve been pursuing Gotrek Gurnisson for more years than you’ve been alive. It was only prudent that we compile a list of known associates.’

Felix flushed. Of course. It would take years for news of their part in the Siege of Praag to filter down from the north, if it ever did. In most parts of the Empire, they were far from heroes. In fact, they were still wanted criminals. It was a blow to his ego to be known merely as Gotrek’s accomplice, but he supposed it fit.

‘Where is the book, Trollslayer?’ asked the king, his attention shifting back to Gotrek like a lion picking which sheep to devour. He picked up another figurine, a crudely carved skaven, and traced its contours with his thumb.

‘Book?’ asked Gotrek. ‘You brought me back because of a book?’

‘Don’t play with me, Trollslayer,’ said the king. ‘I’ve not forgotten what you did.’

Slayer and king glared at each other with hatred pure and cold. Felix felt certain that Gotrek had at last met his match – at least in stubbornness.

‘The Book of Grudges.’ Drumnok stepped forward, knowing, like any good merchant, when to break an impasse. ‘It went missing from the vault of Musin Balderk under the very noses of my personal guard.’

‘What problem is that of mine?’ asked Gotrek sullenly.

‘No problem at all,’ said Drumnok, steepling his fingers. ‘Except that the vault was untouched. Not a mark on it. My finest engineers went over it inch-by-inch and could not determine how the theft was committed. Only one dwarf could open that vault and not leave a trace–the engineer who designed it.’

Felix felt his stomach sink. All the secrecy that had shrouded their visit suddenly made sense. The Book of Grudges was one of the most sacred artefacts in a dwarf hold. In it was written every wrong that had been committed against a particular clan for thousands of years. Each new grudge was written into the book in the king’s own blood, and it was considered a mark of personal triumph for a monarch to extract justice for a past grievance and cross a grudge off the list.

Without the book, the king could not show his face in public. There was no telling how the hold would react should they learn of its disappearance. Wolfhame’s threat to kill them, should they utter a word to a member of the palace staff, had obviously not been idle. Grundadrakk would do anything to keep knowledge of the theft from leaking out. The only reason they were still alive was that he believed they had something to do with it.

‘I’ve been penned in these quarters for a solid month, Trollslayer,’ said the king, banging his fist on the table so hard the stone figures jumped. ‘My subjects are beginning to forget what I look like. I don’t care if you stole the book or your faulty design allowed it to be stolen. You owe me a book and I want it back.’

Instead of getting angry, Gotrek lapsed into silence. It was one thing to question his ability as a Slayer, but it was quite another to question his skill as an engineer. He took the former personally. He took the latter as a challenge. He was, in all likelihood, mentally reviewing plans he’d memorised decades ago, looking for any flaw.

‘Did no one else have access to the vault?’ asked Felix.

‘No one,’ said Drumnok firmly.

‘No,’ said Gotrek. ‘There was another. My former apprentice. Malbak Drumnokson.’

‘How convenient,’ sneered the king. ‘Malbak is the one who accused you of the theft.’

‘Convenient for whom, your majesty?’ Felix asked pointedly. ‘Two dwarfs had access to the vault and one of them was a thousand leagues away when the crime was said to have taken place.’

Grundadrakk’s eyes narrowed and he turned to Drumnok. ‘Your son says he had evidence that the Trollslayer was the culprit?’

‘He swears it, your majesty,’ replied Drumnok firmly.

Grundadrakk considered this for a while, and then finally set the skaven carving back on the tunnel map. ‘You know I’ve always been grateful to you for your counsel, my friend,’ he said to Drumnok, ‘but the umgi raises a valid point. It is difficult for even the best of thieves to commit a crime from a thousand leagues away.’

Drumnok reddened and his belly shook indignantly. ‘Your majesty, I–’

‘Clear every corridor from here to the vault,’ said King Grundadrakk to Wolfhame who nodded smartly. ‘And have Malbak Drumnokson meet us there. It is time for us to get to the bottom of this.’

They took the same hidden passage they’d used to come from the harbour. The king was large enough that his bulk nearly filled the corridor and he cursed fate richly for necessitating that he use the infernal passageway. When they’d travelled roughly halfway back to the docks, Norri Wolfhame stopped in what appeared to be the middle of an empty hallway and opened a hitherto unseen door that led down another series of corridors to the vault area. Felix wondered just how extensive this network of secret passageways was. It appeared to him that Barak Varr was riddled with them.

Malbak Drumnokson met them in front of a massive stone door. Short, even for a dwarf, he looked nothing like his father, except for the rapidly developing paunch he tried to keep hidden behind a leather girdle. His beard was as red as the wispy hair that grew out of his ears and not on his head. He wore a thick gold chain around his neck and sparkling earrings pierced his ear. Gotrek grunted and told Felix that no member of Malbak’s line could bear to be parted from the precious metal for even a day, which explained Drumnok’s occupation as a merchant, and his son’s as a vault engineer. Malbak was breathing heavily, as if he’d had to jog to meet them at the vault.

‘Your majesty, I–’ he said, beginning a bow that was arrested when he spotted Gotrek. ‘You!’ he said, his voice loaded with hatred. ‘You should be dead.’

Gotrek grinned a toothy smile that showed the yellow stumps he called teeth. ‘Gods willing.’

‘Malbak!’ barked Drumnok sternly. ‘You forget yourself in front of the king.’

Malbak looked chastised, turning and completing the bow he’d started before he’d spotted the Slayer. ‘Your majesty. It is always an honour to have you grace the vaults.’

‘And it’s always a pain in the neck to come down here,’ grunted the king. Despite his size and relative health, Felix could tell that Byrrnoth was feeling his age. ‘To think that before the skaven attacked, we used to store most of this stuff several levels down.’

‘The skaven, your majesty?’ asked Felix, trying to hide his disgust. The world’s most prolific thieves arrive and everyone was surprised when there was a theft? There must be more to it.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Herr Jaeger,’ said Drumnok reprovingly. ‘The skaven may have attacked the lower levels, but they have come nowhere near here. In fact, much of the treasure in the lower vaults was brought here specifically because this vault was deemed impregnable. After all, it was built by one of the Barak’s most capable engineers–and Gotrek Gurnisson.’

Malbak and his father exchanged satisfied looks, but if Gotrek caught the slight, he ignored it. He tapped a finger to his lips as he studied the vault door.

‘Open it,’ he said softly.

Grundadrakk ignored the lack of a title and simply nodded at Malbak. The younger engineer removed a golden chain from around his neck, from which dangled a large key. He moved towards the door and began to hum a deep and complex melody as he traced his finger across a string of runes. One by one the runes lit up, until their flickering blue light illuminated a keyhole. Malbak inserted his key into the lock, turned it, and then stepped back. Somewhere inside the smooth stonework, huge gears ground together and huge weights thunked into place as the door slid open.

Felix was amazed by the thickness of the stone. Made from solid bedrock, it must have weighed hundreds of tons and yet it was so perfectly balanced a child could have pushed it shut.

Though the inside of the vault was no large than the room in which they’d stayed at the Purple Sheep, there was more wealth inside than Felix had ever seen before. Gold ingots piled as high as a dwarf could stand, jewels the size of a clenched fist set in sterling silver necklaces, a rack of unfathomably ancient scrolls… and the empty lectern where he guessed the Book of Grudges had once rested. Felix had never felt much desire for wealth, but looking upon the contents of that vault he felt a stirring in his chest that the dwarfs might call gold lust. Karl Franz himself would weep over the treasure laid before them, and Felix guessed there were many more vaults just like it hidden in the underground expanses of Barak Varr.

Gotrek surveyed the treasure critically, as if he was mentally weighing the contents of the vault. At last, he stirred. ‘I need four dwarfs to help me empty it.’

‘Empty it?!’ King Grundadrakk nearly popped a vein. ‘It took weeks just to move it up here.’

Drumnok hurried forward, gently placing a hand on Gotrek’s shoulder, then yanking it back when Gotrek glared at him. ‘The vault of Musin Balderk shelters some of the Barak’s most precious artefacts – not to mention a few state secrets. We can’t simply store it in this antechamber.’

‘Fine,’ said Gotrek, crossing his arms and leaning casually against the door. ‘Find the book yourselves then.’

‘Wolfhame,’ said the king between clenched teeth. ‘Order your men to help the Slayer empty the vault.’

Six hours later, the vault was empty and the antechamber littered with untold wealth. The dwarfs stood in the hall stretching weary limbs, watching each other suspiciously to see who among them would show the first signs of fatigue, all the while trying to conceal their own tiredness.

The heaviest object by far was a large golden statue of Grimnir that Drumnok claimed was life-sized, even though it was twice as large as Gotrek himself. Much more crudely carved than the other treasures, Felix supposed the dwarfs valued it more for its sheer weight than its craftsmanship.

Though Gotrek had done the majority of the heavy lifting, he strode straight into a corner of the vault and kicked at a pile of refuse – gnawed wood, chewed bones, and droppings.

‘Skaven spoor,’ said Gotrek.

‘Impossible,’ said Drumnok, with a glance at the king. ‘It must be something else.’

‘Step into the vault and I’ll make sure you get a closer look,’ growled Gotrek with an evil grin.

‘You said that some of these treasures used to reside in the lower vaults? The ones that had been attacked by the skaven?’ asked Felix.

‘Yes,’ Drumnok answered reluctantly, ‘but they were untouched when we beat back the ratmen. They could not have laid a paw on so much as a single gold piece. Even so, when we transferred their contents here for safekeeping, we had each item inspected by a runesmith. There was no trace of skaven sorcery on any of them.’

He stepped back from the vault. ‘Even if they were somehow able to bypass the vault’s defences with a spell, why would they take the book? We know the skaven have no love for gold, but this vault contains quite a few magical trinkets. Why would they settle for cheap parchment when they could have taken those? And how would they escape with their stolen goods? Any skaven wandering these halls would be cut down by a hundred angry dwarfs.’

‘Seafaring dwarfs,’ said Gotrek, spitting on the floor. To a Karak-born dwarf, ocean travel was anathema and seafaring dwarfs the victims of some collective madness. The occupants of Barak Varr, wealthy though they were, were met with scorn in some quarters.

‘Tread carefully, Slayer,’ growled Wolfhame, glaring at the Slayer.

Gotrek’s face twisted into a snarl. ‘One more word from you, Norri Wolfhame, and you’ll be picking my axe out of your teeth,’ he said, his finger stabbing into Wolfhame’s chest. He rounded on King Grundadrakk. ‘The ratmen may have your book, but they didn’t get past my door. My vault did what it was supposed to do.’

The king regarded the Slayer with outright hatred. Then his eyes narrowed craftily. ‘You’re forgetting something, aren’t you Gotrek? We have evidence of your involvement in the theft.’ He beckoned Drumnok’s son forward. ‘Malbak?’

‘Your majesty?’ Malbak had been enjoying the conflict from the rear, not having offered to help the Reckoners clear the vault.

‘You said you had evidence that Gotrek was involved?’ said the king triumphantly. ‘Show it to him.’

‘Your majesty, my word as an engineer…’

‘The evidence, Malbak!’ Grundadrakk’s triumphant tone gained a frustrated edge.

‘Very well.’ Malbak drew an iron chisel from a pouch and handed it to Wolfhame, who handed it to the king. ‘Gotrek left this behind after he… fled.’ He beckoned them over to a patch of bare stone on a corner of the vault’s door. ‘There,’ he said, accusingly. ‘I believe you’ll find those marks match Gotrek’s chisel exactly.’

To Felix, the stone looked like any other stone. No chisel marks were apparent. Not for the first time was he envious of the dwarfs’ keen eyesight.

The king and his advisors approached the stone and studied the markings. After a moment, when the king rose, a pulsing purple vein was apparent on his forehead. ‘Do you take me for a fool, Malbak?’

Malbak paled. ‘Your majesty?’

‘Even the umgi can see that these marks are from the vault’s construction,’ said the king with a dismissive wave at Felix, who could only shrug sheepishly at the others. ‘And in any case, if you’ve been in possession of Gotrek’s chisel all the while, how do you think he used it to gain entry to the vault?’

‘He…’ Malbak glanced nervously from the king to Drumnok and back again. ‘He must have stolen it… there’s no one else who could have gotten past the vault’s defences!’

Grundadrakk shook his head and muttered a curse under his breath. When he turned back to Gotrek, his demeanour had completely changed. ‘You may not be guilty after all, Trollslayer, but that does not change the fact that the skaven have my book.’

‘So send your armies after them and leave me to find my doom!’ said Gotrek petulantly.

Grundadrakk shook his head, then met the eyes of all who were present. ‘Our armies have tried to dislodge the skaven and failed. They are too numerous. But a smaller expedition, consisting of no more than a dozen dwarfs, might escape their notice. Norri Wolfhame will head just such an expedition, consisting of all who know of its loss – with the exception of my faithful advisor, Drumnok.’

‘Your majesty,’ said Norri Wolfhame, struggling to conceal his shocked expression. ‘Assuming the Slayer is right and the skaven have stolen the book, how are we to find it? We have no idea which skaven have it, or where they could have gone.’

Drumnok coughed and stepped forward. ‘Our scouts know in which direction the skaven forces retreated. Surely, they will have taken such a prized artefact to the very centre of their armies. Go where the skaven forces are most numerous and you’ll find the book.’

Felix’s heart sank as the collected dwarfs erupted in a cacophony of objections. The skaven were present in large enough numbers to sack the lower vaults, and yet a small group of dwarfs was supposed to succeed where the army had failed? The king was sending them on a suicide mission. At least Felix got some small satisfaction from watching the smug grin fade from Malbak’s face as he realised that Grundadrakk had ‘volunteered’ him along with the others.

‘You cannot expect…’ he sputtered to the king.

‘Silence!’ roared Grundadrakk. He waited for the last objection to die in a mutter, then continued. ‘If you succeed, then the book will be returned with none the wiser. If you fail, then you’ll take the secret of its loss with you to your graves.’

‘I’m not doing your dirty work, Byrrnoth,’ said Gotrek. To emphasise his point, he crossed his arms and leaned against the corner of the vault.

‘You’ll go,’ said Grundadrakk grimly. ‘Your name was the last inscribed in the book. Bring it back and I’ll make sure it’s crossed off. Stay here and I’ll make sure your doom isn’t fit to be sung about in the seediest tavern this side of Karak Eight Peaks.’

Gotrek darkened like a storm. Tell him to do a thing and he was more than likely to do the opposite just to spite you. Felix was genuinely worried that he’d draw his rune axe and hack his way to the sea gates. If there was one thing about Gotrek, it was that he could not be bullied. Once again, it was up to Felix to defuse the situation.

‘Thank you, your majesty,’ he said thinking fast.

Slayer and king both blinked, and then turned and stared at him.

‘What are you playing at, manling?’ asked Gotrek suspiciously.

‘Indeed?’ said the king, arching an eyebrow.

‘I am merely thanking your majesty for granting Gotrek the chance at a doom worthy of an epic,’ he explained. ‘A suicide mission to retrieve a valuable artefact from the clutches of an untold number of skaven warriors? That’s the kind of doom Trollslayers salivate over.’

Thankfully, he was able to keep the quaver out of his voice. A suicide mission was all well and good for a Slayer… but it was far less appealing to his Rememberer.

Gotrek paused as he considered this. Then his face cracked into a toothy smile and he clapped Felix on the back. ‘I like the way you think, manling!’

‘Yes,’ said Grundadrakk as Felix did his best to maintain his smile. ‘I have a feeling the umgi is smarter than he looks.’

The need for secrecy coloured every aspect of their preparations. Supplies could only be procured through Drumnok, and he was so stingy that he treated every request as if Felix had asked for his first-born. While they waited for rations and packs, and all the other supplies one needed for a journey into hostile territory deep underground, they were confined to their quarters. Gotrek threatened to break down the door until King Grundadrakk sent him a cask of Bugman’s to shut him up. Of course, that meant he was hung over the morning the expedition departed. Even so, the prospect of a grand doom gave him new energy and he quickly took the lead.

Norri Wolfhame quickly joined the Slayer at the head of the column – his Reckoner’s instinct no doubt compelling him to stay close to the dwarf he’d tracked across half a continent. Gromnir and Gromnar walked just behind the Slayer as if he were their prisoner. If Gotrek noticed them at all, he didn’t show it.

Malbak, furious that he’d been embarrassed in front of the king, skulked just behind the Reckoners, cursing under his breath and bemoaning his fate, while Vabur Nerinson walked nearby, still carrying his dented helmet like a mark of shame.

The king had specified that the expedition consist of all those who knew of the book’s disappearance, but Drumnok, ever the merchant, decided that that didn’t mean others couldn’t tag along. Wanting to afford his son the best possible chance of survival, he’d used his considerable influence and deep pockets to buy the services of Ulgar Masonsheart, a skilled runesmith, and his apprentice, Glorin. Ulgar wore a bearskin cloak and a long iron-shod staff covered in runes. His apprentice’s staff was newer, but carried its own set of runes.

Labouring along at the back of the column was Tebur Tanilson, a Thunderer who had lost half his hearing in an explosion years earlier. He was by far the oddest member of the expedition. His beard was patchy with old burn scars. He stank of saltpetre and brimstone, and his fingernails were pitted and blackened by blackpowder. Though he carried a rifle, it was his pack that had gotten him banished to the rear of the column. It was as black as his fingernails and bulged in odd places. From the way the other dwarfs winced whenever he set it down for a rest, Felix guessed that he carried some kind of bomb. On those few occasions when they got an opportunity to speak, he referred to Felix as ‘Herr Jogger’.

The final member of their expedition was Martinuk Ironshield, a gruff dwarf with a scarred face and ruddy red hair who wielded an axe and shield with quiet confidence. He wore a set of goggles around his neck as well as an odd mask made from a dark, rubbery material. It reminded Felix of the cone-shaped masks worn by doktors in Altdorf.

Martinuk smiled grimly when Felix asked about it. ‘I saw a ratman wear something like this the day my clan was ambushed in the Lower Reaches. Many of our warriors died tearing at their throats and clawing at their eyes that day, victims to clouds of poison gas emitted from hollowed-out egg shells the skaven threw at us. I tore off one of their masks and wore it during the battle. Doing so saved my life. Later I took their design, improved upon it, and crafted this.’

Vabur Nerinson, walking nearby, barked with laughter. ‘You put your face in there? Might as well kiss a skaven on the lips. You’ll be dressing like them next, won’t you?’

Martinuk shrugged, untroubled by the larger dwarf’s jibe. ‘Lungs as big as yours can hold a lot of gas, Nerinson. When the time comes, you’ll beg me to let you wear it.’

‘Not likely,’ said Vabur. He swung his maul in a casual arc and shattered a lump of stone the size of his head that occupied the path in front of him. ‘They’d have to get past my hammer first.’

‘So you say,’ said Martinuk, nodding his head.

Despite spending half his life in the company of a dwarf, Felix had never quite become used to travel underground. Though dwarf-built tunnels were wide and well-constructed, often they weren’t especially tall, forcing him to duck his head in places. Without the sun, it was impossible to tell time and he felt like they could have been trudging for hours or even days. The dwarfs seemed to possess a sixth sense that told them when to stop for lunch and when to break camp, for which he was thankful. Night fell whenever they hooded their lanterns, which, in turn, plunged them into pitch blackness.

Though the areas close to Barak Varr were safe and well-maintained, as they proceeded further into the depths, signs of prosperity began to dwindle. The dwarfs here were sallow-cheeked with shorter, scraggly beards, and wore clothing badly in need of repair. Some were prospectors, combing over already heavily-mined veins of minerals in the hopes of finding a few nuggets the original owners had missed, while others were hermits who cared little for social comforts and had chosen a life away from the hold. Still others were simply mad.

They encountered their first threat in an ancient tunnel that ran close to a massive underground wall that kept the sea outside at bay. The rocks were slick with moisture and a small stream carved its way down the centre of the passage they followed. Even dwarf masonry did not last forever, and they’d just left behind a small crew of stonemasons who were patching a hole when a huge spider leapt out of the darkness at Felix. All eight legs extended as it flashed through the air towards him; it was brought down at the last moment by Vabur’s maul. Another blow crushed it into pulp.

‘Thank you, herr dwarf,’ said Felix white-faced.

‘I was worried about the stonemasons,’ said Vabur with a shrug. He scraped spider innards off his maul with the bottom of his boot, slung the weapon over his shoulder and continued on down the corridor. After a few moments, Felix quickly joined him.

When they entered the skaven warrens, Felix longed for the comforts they’d left behind in the dwarf-built tunnels. Most passageways twisted oddly, as if the skaven had merely dug where it was easiest to dig. The walls were crudely carved rock – Felix had heard stories that the skaven often made slaves dig with their bare paws and, looking at the way the stone was furrowed he believe it to be true. It was easy to catch clothing on rocky outcroppings, or even cut a hand on a sharp piece of stone. Sometimes the tunnels became so narrow that he had to turn sideways and shuffle through an opening with a cheek pressed against the rock. He had nightmares of getting stuck and being trapped beneath hundreds of tons of rock and ore until he starved.

Despite being heavier-set, the dwarfs seemed to have no problems navigating the maze of tunnels. Even Vabur Nerinson, whose shoulder-width must have been twice as wide as Felix’s, somehow managed to squeeze through openings sized for skaven.

They began to encounter a few skaven patrols, which they quickly dispatched. Despite this, there was little sign of the ‘massive army’ that had attacked the Barak. These skaven looked hungry and their fur was matted with filth. It looked to Felix like they’d gotten lost or cut off when the main skaven force retreated.

They’d slept three times – though whether that meant three days had passed was anybody’s guess – when Felix began to hear the roar of distant water. The crude skaven tunnels soon opened up into a series of caverns. Torchlight glimmered off an underground river that churned and spat foam onto wet walls. The walls here were plain bedrock shot through with veins of granite like glittering white lightning bolts flashing amidst rolling thunderclouds. A wide ledge ran along the river’s edge from where it emerged from a rounded tunnel that might once have been a lava tube to where it disappeared underneath a shelf of rock. As far as Felix could tell, they had two choices – continue through the caverns and see if they opened into more skaven tunnels, or try and follow the ledge upriver, through the lava tube, towards the unknown.

Wolfhame, marching ahead of the group to avoid having his night vision spoiled by their lanterns, raised a hand to stop them, then advanced to a spot at the edge of the river and knelt.

‘Skaven spoor,’ he said, lifting a ball of dirt to his nose. He dropped it in disgust, and then wiped his hand on his armour. ‘They’ve been here recently. They could be the band we seek, or they might simply be scouts for the skaven force that attacked the vaults.’ He kicked at a pile of refuse nearby, and then looked around. ‘Be alert. These tunnels are unknown to us. The skaven could be anywhere.’

‘Unknown?’ asked Gotrek looking up towards the ceiling. ‘How they can be unknown? There’s dwarf construction here.’

Though Felix peered through the gloom, he could see nothing but the jagged rock the river had carved out of the bedrock.

‘You have sharp eyes, Slayer,’ said Vabur Nerinson, gruffly. He walked over to the tunnel wall and ran his fingers across the wall. ‘The river made this tunnel, but dwarfs worked it.’

The smooth patch of stone Gotrek had spotted was a reinforcing column, so cunningly crafted that Felix would never have seen it had Vabur not pointed it out. ‘Could this be a forgotten part of Barak Varr?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Malbak, adjusting his belt buckle around his belly. ‘The tunnels under the Barak have to be carefully planned and constructed in order to keep out the sea. Besides, we’re days away from the hold.’

‘It’s old,’ said Vabur. He stepped back, his gaze following the column up to the ceiling.

Felix gulped. If a dwarf said something was old, he might very well mean it was from an era before Sigmar united the tribes of man. To a race with a lifespan several times that of the oldest man, ‘old’ meant ‘ancient’.

‘Karak Tam,’ said Martinuk quietly. The name hung in the air as the mercenary eyed the other dwarfs meaningfully.

Felix felt the temperature drop two degrees. Karak Tam? He struggled to remember his geography. Barak Varr was far from the mountains in which the dwarfs typically built their holds. Surrounded by the Border Princes, the closest thing to a mountain range nearby were the Varenka Hills – if they could even be called that. A goblin could spit over them on a windy day. It would be a poor location for a dwarf hold. ‘What’s Karak Tam?’ he asked.

‘A story,’ said Wolfhame scornfully. ‘A fable.’

‘There is some truth in those old stories,’ said Ulgar. The runesmith’s voice was as deep and gravelly as the sound of two rocks grinding together deep beneath the earth. He tapped his rune-covered staff against the ground, and it began to glow a violet colour that illuminated the ancient masonry. He reached out and touched the worked stone reverently, then quickly drew back.

‘Karag Dron,’ he said, turning to Felix, ‘the volcano your race calls ‘Thunder’, was once mined by a clan of dwarfs who used its fires to craft the finest weapons. For many generations their forges churned, until one day the mountain erupted. Racing to outrun the lava flows, the survivors fled east, towards the sea. Legend has it that they stopped in the Varenka Hills when their king came upon a boulder that was struck through and through with gold. He proclaimed it a miracle. Unfortunately, the boulder had been brought there by fields of ice that had long ago retreated, and the surrounding regions were so poor in metals the newly founded hold was unable to support itself. In order to survive, they redoubled their efforts to become the finest weaponsmiths in the world. And they succeeded! Their weapons were without peer. It was said that a king who wielded a weapon from Karak Tam could never be defeated in battle. Many of the weapons in your race’s legends were forged at Karak Tam.’

‘If it was such an important hold, why is it now forgotten?’ asked Felix.

‘The War of Vengeance,’ said Gotrek with a sneer.

‘The hold could not survive without a constant supply of new metals,’ Wolfhame explained. ‘But with our forces committed against the pointy ears, there was no metal to spare.’

Felix found it ironic that a hold renowned for crafting weapons would be a casualty of war, but what Wolfhame said made sense. A rune blade might be invaluable to a king, but a thousand iron axes would be worth much more to an army.

‘They say some of the finest weapons ever crafted by a dwarf still lie within the vaults of Karak Tam,’ said Malbak, striding back towards the gear as if some of those weapons were rusting into oblivion with each passing second. ‘The contents of even one of those vaults would be enough to make us all as rich as King Grundadrakk.’

‘Be mindful of why we came down here,’ said Wolfhame dangerously. ‘It’s the Book of Grudges we seek, not personal gain.’ He turned to Gromnir and Gromnar, the twin Reckoners. ‘Scout out the passage ahead. For all this talk of ancient riches, do not forget that skaven now infest these tunnels.’

The two saluted in unison, then turned and clumped off into the darkness. Felix shook his head. The heavy plate they wore made them the worst scouts in the history of the profession. But perhaps that was Wolfhame’s plan. Those two would trigger any skaven trap long before the expedition’s more vulnerable members got close–such as Malbak.

The portly engineer spoke to Ulgar’s apprentice in hushed, but urgent tones. Glorin wielded a rune-covered staff, which, like his master, he had caused to glow violet. Malbak was using its light to struggle into his pack.

Felix neither liked, nor trusted, the engineer. It was obvious that he’d thought Gotrek long dead, and thus a convenient scapegoat for a break-in he could not explain. When Gotrek had actually shown up, instead of admitting his mistake he’d tried to cover it up with a hastily contrived excuse. Felix resolved that he would keep a careful eye on Malbak for the duration of their mission.

Most of the other dwarfs had finished admiring the column and were beginning to make their way after the twins, so Felix bent to retrieve his own pack, and then thanked Glorin when the apprentice held out his staff to offer more light.

It was only when Felix rose that he saw the silvery cord descend from the gloom above Malbak’s head. Coiled into a loop at its end, it slipped quietly around the engineer’s neck and then jerked tight. Malbak’s eyes flew open and his hands went to his throat as he was hoisted silently into the air.

Felix dropped the lantern and went for Karaghul, but there was no way he could make it to the engineer in time. ‘Glorin!’ he yelled in alarm.

Glorin turned in surprise. He saw Malbak’s feet dangling in the air and panicked, dropping his staff and leaping after the engineer. He caught Malbak’s lower legs in a bear hug, their combined weight dragging them down.

Felix darted towards them, intending to cut through the cord with Karaghul, but a flash of silver in the light of the dropped torch alerted him to the presence of another noose. He ducked, but not fast enough and felt the cord settle around his shoulders. Desperately, he dropped his sword and grabbed at it. He managed to free his neck, but the noose tightened around his arm instead. The cord jerked and he felt it constrict, the material biting into his skin. It was strong like iron, but as supple as silk. Had it settled around his neck as intended, he might have asphyxiated.

The force on the cord grew and he was lifted to the tip of his toes and then into the air. The river churned beneath him, soaking him with spray. If he fell into that he might be swept miles downriver. Suddenly his struggles to get away turned into struggles to hang on.

Above him, a score of dark shapes clung to the roof of the tunnel. Humanoid rats with dark, greasy fur that reeked of blood and offal clung to the ceiling with the aid of a foul-smelling tar they’d painted onto their paws. Though dwarfs had excellent senses of vision and hearing, smell was not in high demand in their dry and dusty mountain holds and was not as well developed. Even Felix had not been able to detect the pungent aroma, masked as it was by the churning spray of the river below. The skaven had planned their ambush well.

Though each rat warrior was armed with several blades, they kept them sheathed, preferring to rely on the nooses and other, non-lethal, forms of attack.

Felix’s shout of alarm had alerted the other dwarfs. Gotrek raced back towards them, axe bared, and sliced through the cord around Malbak’s neck, sending both the engineer and the younger runesmith tumbling to the ground.

‘Come down here and face me, you cowardly tail-biters!’ he yelled, shaking a fist at the ceiling. Several more nooses descended towards him, catching him around the fist and neck. Instead of avoiding them, the Slayer let them come and then laughed evilly as he yanked down sharply. Caught off-guard, a half-dozen skaven were pulled from their moorings and tumbled to the cavern floor.

Behind the Slayer, Ulgar chanted in the harsh Khazalid tongue and a rune on the tip of his staff exploded into brilliant violet light, illuminating the skaven warriors. The roof positively seethed with skaven, more than Felix could easily count. Most clung to the ceiling with the aid of the tar he’d seen earlier, but the more massive among them hung on to ancient loops of metal that had been hammered into the rock. Most of the silver cords ran through these, back to a hidden ledge where more ratmen waited to haul in their prey. Most were dressed in black, but at least one albino rat – a grey-furred creature he recognised as one of the fearsome grey seers – was visible in their midst.

Their leader appeared to be a huge rat-ogre, half as large as their largest warrior, naked but for a ridge of red fur that ran from its sloped forehead to the tip of its tail. Strange purple whorls marked its skin in a terrifying parody of Slayer’s tattoos. Even with the aid of the metallic loops and black goop, it was a wonder to Felix that it could keep that vast body suspended. The strength in those muscles must be immense! Either that or the grey seer he’d spotted earlier had used some dark skaven sorcery to enable the feat. Regardless, it paid no attention to Felix. It had eyes only for Gotrek.

At its squeaked command, several ratmen bit daggers between their teeth and dropped towards the Slayer and the young runesmith apprentice. Others followed, and soon it was raining fur and steel.

Two of the largest ratmen carried between them a metallic net that glinted in Ulgar’s purple light. They landed on either side of Glorin, who was still regaining his feet, and swept him into the netting. They called up to the roof in the skaven tongue and he too was lifted towards the ceiling.

Below, Gotrek laid into the skaven with his axe, knocking aside their pitiful attempts to parry. His axe was a blur of steel and wherever he went, death followed closely. A skaven warrior lunged at him with a crude axe. Gotrek ducked aside and put his rune axe through the back of its skull, spewing blood and brain matter onto the floor. For a moment, there was a lull in the battle as the skaven skittered back from his blade, wringing their paws and clawing at their masters for mercy. In one fluid motion, Gotrek bent, picked up the skaven weapon and hurled it at the ceiling.

The axe flashed within a hair’s breadth of Felix’s ear and embedded itself into the chest of the skaven warrior who was hauling him to the ceiling. It stared at the axe dumbly and then vomited a torrent of blood and phlegm into the river far below. It let go of the cord around Felix’s arm as its body went limp, and it would have fallen were it not for the noxious black bonding agent on its paws. A second skaven made a valiant attempt to hang onto the cord, but Felix was far too heavy for it, and it squeaked in alarm as the rope cut into its fingers.

Felix felt a brief moment of weightlessness before he plunged twenty feet into the river below. He hit the surface hard on his back and sank like a stone. Cold water stabbed into him like a knife and the shock of it almost made him gasp. For a few desperate moments, he didn’t know which way was up. He opened his eyes but, this far from the lantern light, it was as dark as a grave.

Already short of breath, he struggled to free himself from the cord. He felt the knot come loose just as a stone hit him hard in the back, nearly driving out what little air he had left.

The current had him.

He was being swept along the bottom towards the unknown. His chain shirt felt like a rock tied to his back, but there wasn’t time to remove it. Desperate for air, he got his feet under him and kicked for the surface. He swam as hard as he could, and then his head hit rock hard enough that he nearly blacked out. With dogged determination, he clung to consciousness. To lose it meant death.

He clawed at the rock, feeling for an air pocket, anything. His lungs were screaming and his vision was dissolving into a smear of red.

Suddenly a hand grabbed his mail and yanked him hard against the current. He broke the surface with a gasp and sucked in air sweeter than any he’d yet known as he was hauled onto the rocks. After he’d caught his breath, he looked up at his rescuer and then recoiled in fear. A rubbery black face with dark, beady eyes stared back at him.

‘Gas,’ a muffled voice said, and then a calloused hand removed the skaven mask, revealing the scarred face and broken nose of Martinuk the mercenary. He pushed a second mask into Felix’s hand. ‘Put that on. You’re going to need it,’ he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at billowing green clouds that rolled across the cavern floor.

The skaven on the roof were throwing small, egg-shaped bombs at the dwarfs. Wherever one landed it shattered, releasing more gas. Martinuk had told them he’d witnessed his friends go mad and tear at their own skin at a single whiff, but this weapon seemed to have a different purpose. On the edge of the battlefield, Vabur Nerinson was caving in a skaven brainpan with every swipe of his maul, but as the gas hit him, his movements slowed and grew clumsy. Ratmen wearing masks similar to Martinuk’s retreated and let Vabur swing drunkenly around himself. When he finally sank to his knees, they advanced with a net.

‘Quit dawdling! They need our help,’ said Martinuk, strapping his mask back on.

Felix mimicked the dwarf’s motions and strapped the rubber thing to his own skull. The pungent aroma of offal and fur hit him like a punch in the face. ‘It smells like wet rat,’ he said in dismay.

‘You look like a wet rat,’ said Martinuk pointedly. He drew a long dagger and passed it hilt-first to Felix. ‘Take this.’

‘Thanks,’ said Felix grimly. He felt naked without Karaghul, but at least he’d dropped it on dry land and not lost it in the river. Otherwise it might be halfway to the ocean by now.

Martinuk pulled his mask tight, saluted, and said something that was too muffled for Felix to make out. Without waiting for an answer, the mercenary drew his axe and leapt into the fog, shouting a slurred battle cry. Felix reluctantly did the same, eyes watering at the smell.

The combination of mask and rolling clouds of gas deadened all sound. Visibility was restricted to vague shapes that passed into and out of view, furred creatures struggling with armoured dwarfs. Some of the dwarfs had already fallen and were being dragged away by skaven warriors. The enemy was fighting to capture, not kill – quite unlike any skaven Felix had ever fought before.

Suddenly, a furry form materialised out of the fog. Its eyes were yellow and bloodshot, the fur around its muzzle slick and oily, encrusted with dried snot. It reeled back, not expecting a fully armed and alert adversary. Felix sliced open its belly with Martinuk’s dagger, then took its sword and left it to gasp out its last breaths of air on the cold rock.

More skaven appeared through the gas, each taken off guard by Felix’s appearance. The battles were short and furious. The ratmen fought to take prisoners. Felix fought to kill.

Soon, he heard Gotrek shouting curses through the gas. As he turned towards the sound, he tripped over a still form. It was Ulgar, the runesmith. The dwarf was sprawled on his stomach. His bearskin cloak nearly covered him, which explained why the skaven hadn’t found him yet. His staff had stopped glowing and lay nearby. Felix stared at the swirling runes on its tip. This gas was skaven magic. If only Ulgar were awake, he could find some way to dispel it!

Tentatively, Felix reached out to shake the runesmith and was rewarded with a groan. He was barely conscious. He quickly knelt and rolled Ulgar over. Holding his breath, he removed his mask and strapped it onto the runesmith. Instantly, the pungent aroma of urine and bitter almonds hit him. A terrifying thought suddenly occurred to him. Dwarfs were notoriously resistant to poison and other toxins. If the skaven had mixed their gas to render them unconscious, it might very well kill a human like Felix.

A skaven warrior bumbled out of the gas in front of him. It wore a mask, but it had been neatly sliced open, along with most of its muzzle. A few yellowed teeth stood in stark contrast to the white of shattered bone. Its eyes went wide with fear and a new aroma punctuated the gas. The musk of fear, Felix had heard the ratmen call it.

He advanced on the skaven, feeling no pity. The ratmen were brutal warriors who took slaves when food was plentiful and ate them when it wasn’t. It was easy to set aside all thoughts of mercy when he knew none would be given in return.

He expected the ratman to turn and flee, but instead, in a blind panic, it rushed forward and headbutted Felix in the sternum. He felt the air whoosh out of his lungs and he had to twist to avoid falling. Something warm and slick coated his wrist, and he realised the crazed skaven had run straight onto his blade.

Even with no air in his lungs, Felix tried to hold his breath, but the damage was done. His head began to feel heavy and woolen, and weariness stole over him like a burial shroud. He sank to his knees and felt the dagger slip from his hands. Gotrek could fight a few minutes without Felix at his side. He was only going to take a short nap.

Suddenly, the sound of chanting filled the air, and then the sharp rap of steel on stone, once, twice, three times. A slight wind began to stir the gas, merely twirling a few eddies at first, and then growing in power until it was a wall of wind that shoved the gas up the river tunnel like a physical thing. The dissipating clouds revealed the aftermath of an intense battle. Most of the dwarfs were down, some in the process of being tied up by stunned skaven who’d suddenly lost their cover.

Only Gotrek still stood. He was surrounded by a wall of dead skaven and hacked off limbs. The gas had slowed but not stopped him, and even a slowed Gotrek was more than a match for a few score skaven.

Close on the heels of the wall of wind was another sensation. Something reached deep into Felix’s guts and infused him with energy. At first, it felt like he’d eaten too many Arabyan peppers, but soon there was a fire in his belly that suffused him with strength… and rage. He leapt to his feet and hurled himself at the nearest skaven. Still stunned, the ratman fell easily under his blade.

He was soon joined by the other dwarfs, who’d also been energised by Ulgar’s runic power. Together they cleaved left and right with joyous abandon. Gromnar and Gromnir appeared and formed an iron wall, penning the skaven in while Gotrek hacked them to pieces. At some point during the battle, Felix came upon Karaghul lying on the tunnel floor. He hooked its hilt with a toe, kicked it into the air and caught it with one hand, and then stabbed an unwary skaven who’d thought to take advantage of his distraction.

With the dwarfs at full strength, the skaven stood no chance and began to flee up the river tunnel. Those without black fluid on their paws scrabbled at the walls, and then hurled themselves into the river in terror. Soon, the skaven had retreated. The battle was won.

The dwarfs were bloody, but mostly unharmed. The skaven forces, on the other hand, had been decimated.

‘How did we win?’ asked Felix, stunned by the sheer number of enemy corpses.

‘They fought to capture, not slay, manling,’ said Gotrek, kicking a skaven corpse into the river. It landed with a splash, then disappeared beneath the churning foam. ‘Though for what purpose, I can’t begin to guess.’

‘Why did you not fall to the gas like the rest of us, Slayer?’ asked Wolfhame suspiciously.

Gotrek shrugged. ‘I’ve always preferred slaying to sleeping.’

For the first time since they’d met, Norri Wolfhame cracked a smile. He took Gotrek’s hand, shook it once, and then clapped him on the back.

But not all of their members had escaped unscathed.

‘Glorin?’ called Ulgar. When there was no answer, the old runesmith called his apprentice’s name again, a note of desperation in his voice. Alarmed, Wolfhame did a quick head count. Glorin was nowhere to be found.

‘They took him,’ said Tebur. The Thunderer’s tone was grim, but his voice was comically loud, the result of one too many shattered eardrums. ‘Netted him, but good.’

‘If they’ve harmed a hair in his beard I’ll burn every one of them to a cinder,’ said the old runesmith, eyes blazing. A few of the runes atop his staff shimmered ominously. Felix felt their power prickle the back of his neck. He almost felt sorry for the ratmen. Almost.

‘Can you track them?’ asked Wolfhame of Gromnir, or perhaps Gromnar. Felix was still having difficulty telling them apart.

‘Don’t need to,’ said the Ironbreaker matter-of-factly. ‘They went up the tunnel.’

Wolfhame sighed. ‘After that, iron skull.’

Gromnir nodded. ‘We tracked the Slayer, didn’t we?’

‘And it only took you twenty years to catch me,’ said Gotrek with a snort.

Wolfhame put his hand on the Reckoner’s chest to stop him before he could do something rash. ‘Then we go. Now. There isn’t a skaven alive who can outrun a dwarf underground.’

‘You’re joking!’ Malbak’s voice broke and he tried to cover his fear with a cough. ‘Follow them? Have you all gone mad?’

One of Vabur Nerinson’s massive hands crashed down on Malbak’s shoulder. His bushy, black eyebrows were drawn low, his eyes dark and serious. ‘If Glorin hadn’t grabbed your feet, it would be you we’re chasing after.’

‘I know,’ Malbak admitted. ‘He’s a hero. I’ll remember him always. But we were nearly killed.’ He looked around at the assembled dwarfs for an ally and found none. ‘They’ll be expecting us this time.’

An angry silence reigned that was only broken when Martinuk held up a handful of rubber masks. ‘My fellow dwarfs. Might I suggest we take a few of these along? Just in case?’

They pursued the skaven for two days without rest, and by the morning of the third day Gromnir admitted that the trail had gone cold. The black liquid gave the ratmen too much of an advantage. While the skaven raced along the roof of the river tunnel, the dwarfs had to do the best they could on foot. At times the way narrowed to a crack and they had to claw their way along slick rocks as the river raged behind them. Other times they found their way blocked entirely and had to find another route.

Exhausted, they’d stopped for a quick meal of hardtack and stale cheese and were about to resume the pursuit when Ulgar gave a cry. ‘We’re close! My apprentice is nearby.’

Gromnir scratched his head and looked down the tunnel. They were in the middle of another detour and the passageway was dark and crudely constructed. ‘Can’t be,’ he said gruffly. ‘We can’t have gained on them that much.’

‘Unless they doubled back,’ offered Gromnar.

Gromnir shook his head. ‘They’re days ahead. Why would they double back?’

‘I’m telling you, he’s near,’ said Ulgar, pushing himself into their midst. He held out his staff and pointed to one of the runes. It glowed a faint green. ‘I’ve enchanted it to glow when a dawi is near.’

Felix was about to point out that several dawi were near, but thought better of it. Obviously, Ulgar had accounted for the others. If his staff was glowing, it meant that Glorin was nearby.

Exhausted though they were, the team stumbled into a trot, intent on rescuing the apprentice. Felix was relieved to see Ulgar’s staff brighten as they proceeded. Could Glorin have escaped his captors and made his way back towards the group? Felix began to feel the faintest ray of hope that the apprentice might be alive after all.

As they rounded a final corner, they spotted a figure slumped against the tunnel wall.

It was indeed a dwarf.

But it was not Glorin.

The dawi they’d found was near death. He was emaciated, hovering on the edge of starvation if not firmly in its grip. His face was harsh and lined, marred by what appeared to be a permanent squint and framed by a wispy white beard he’d tucked into a battered leather belt. He wore crude rags that might once have been sturdy dwarf wool and his pants were stained by sweat and viscera. His feet were over-large, even for a dwarf. Completely bare, they were cut and scratched in a dozen different places. If he’d fled his captors, he’d done it barefoot over sharp rock.

Vabur offered the Longbeard his aleskin and the dawi took it gratefully. He sputtered and choked on the first pull, then began to drink so vigorously that Vabur had to rescue the skin before it was completely emptied.

‘Not too much, ancient one. It’s zharrgot,’ he cautioned. He took a pull himself then looked around sheepishly at the disgusted looks on the other dwarfs’ faces. Even Felix couldn’t hide his loathing. Zharrgot tasted like the rutz and tended to give one the same. ‘I have a weakness for pepper ales,’ admitted the giant dwarf with an uncharacteristic blush.

‘What are you called, ancient one?’ asked Norri Wolfhame.

‘Balir,’ said the dwarf. ‘Balir Balirson.’ He blinked up at the group. ‘I’d ask if I was in Grimnir’s halls, except I can’t imagine what an umgi would be doing there.’

‘This is Felix,’ said Gotrek. ‘Dwarf friend and Rememberer.’

Felix ignored Balir’s slight. Judging from the look of him, the Longbeard had been through a lot. They gave him food from their meagre stores and, after a quick meal, he pronounced himself if not whole, then at least passable.

He’d been the leader of a patrol sent into the lower vaults to investigate signs of skaven encroachment when that was still but a rumour. They’d run into a group of ratmen using the same tactics as the ones who’d attacked Wolfhame’s crew at the river ambush, except they hadn’t had Martinuk on hand to distribute skaven masks. They’d quickly fallen victim to the gas.

Balir had awoken in a nightmare.

He’d found himself in a tiny cell with a dozen other dwarfs dressed in rags, each of them so pale and thin that their ribs shaded their bellies and their skin was like parchment stretched over bone. He didn’t recognise any of them and they spoke in heavily accented Khazalid that he had difficulty understanding. They were at the end of their physical strength and had little interest in communicating, so he passed the time making and then discarding plans to escape. How long he had languished there, he did not know, but the number of dwarfs in his cell dwindled daily as skaven guards dragged them screaming into the lower tunnels.

When Balir’s turn came, they took him down into the bowels of what he soon realised was a dwarf hold. The masonry was ancient and crumbling, but he recognised the quality of dawi work. His guards brought him to a large central chamber. Many more black-clad skaven like the ones who’d ambushed Balir’s team were stationed about the room, their tails twitching occasionally as they stood at attention.

At the far side of the room was a massive vault door that was large enough to ride a herd of mountain ponies through at once. An intricate rune was carved in the wall above it and on the floor below lay a pile of stinking corpses, many so badly rotted that it was impossible to tell what race they might once have been.

The guards threw him to the floor in front of a skaven shaman. Given Balir’s limited comprehension of the ratman tongue, he could discern only that the other skaven called it ‘Tazuk’.

Tazuk was a fearsome sight. He wore a dawi skull for a helmet and, Balir realised in horror, a cape made from dawi skin. A dozen golden loops pierced his muzzle ridge from his snout to his beady little eyes. Worst of all, the creature wore around his neck a necklace made from what Balir could only assume was braided beard hair. The skull, beard, and cape made Tazuk look more like a dwarf than a rat, and Balir soon guessed that that was the point.

In any other circumstance, Balir might have laughed. A skaven wanting to be a dwarf! Imagine! One look into Tazuk’s eyes and the laughter died in his throat. He was indeed mad, and it was the kind of insanity would drive the grey seer to kill without mercy or remorse.

It was then that Balir knew that if he didn’t escape he would end up like one of the corpses in front of the vault. While Tazuk cursed his troops in their weird, squeaking tongue, Balir seized a curved knife from the belt of one of his guards and stabbed the creature in the knee. Before it could even squeal in pain, he spun and plunged his dagger into the eye of the other guard, and then bolted for the door.

Luck was with him. He’d caught the assembled skaven by surprise. Only a single black-clad rat stood between him and the door. In a fair fight, Balir knew he could have defeated the guard, but he could not afford to waste the seconds it would take to kill it. He had only moments before the rest of the skaven came to their senses.

Instead of engaging it, he ducked his head and charged forward, hoping to bowl it over and make his escape. The skaven shrieked in alarm and try to hurl itself aside, but it was too late. They crashed together. Seconds later several distinct pops told Balir why this particular skaven had been so desperate to avoid him. The ratman had been carrying dozens of gas-filled eggs, most of which had burst open when he’d fallen.

Sweet-smelling gas filled the central room as Balir untangled himself from the skaven warrior. Dark green clouds stung his eyes and burned his throat, but he was able to push onwards and soon left the gas behind. It had done its work on the skaven though, knocking out Tazuk and much of his household guard. No pursuit was mounted for several hours.

The Longbeard finished his tale with a grunt. ‘And for the first time in days I decided to take a short nap. That’s when you lot showed up to interrupt it.’

Norri Wolfhame’s brow wrinkled. ‘A mad skaven wearing a dawi skin? A pile of corpses? What are we to make of this?’

‘Who knows what foul rituals the ratmen perform away from the eyes of the dawi?’ answered Malbak with a shrug. ‘Perhaps they were sacrificing prisoners to their god.’

Vabur Nerinson bounced the head of his maul in the palm of one hand. ‘I knew a dwarf who wore a string of skaven ears around his neck. The ratmen could be doing the same with dawi bones. We’re a badge of honour to them.’ He seemed to approve, despite the gruesomeness of the thought.

Felix shook his head as the others debated the meaning of the story Balir had told them. He knew far less about the ratmen than the dwarfs, but he could not imagine them leaving a pile of corpses to rot. They were rumoured to eat whatever their paws could grasp, and he’d seen with his own eyes evidence that they ate their own dead. So why stay away from the bodies? Could they be poisoned? That made no sense. Skaven were reputed to eat warpstone and other toxic brews that would fell even a dwarf. So if the corpses weren’t poisoned, somehow the skaven must have been prevented from approaching them. But how? Balir had mentioned the presence of a rune nearby.

‘Can you sketch the rune you saw?’ he asked suddenly, interrupting the others. Quickly, he outlined his line of reasoning to the group.

‘Of course I can,’ said Balir gruffly. He took a dagger from Vabur and carved out its likeness in the rock-dust that coated the floor of the passageway. Ulgar grunted once when he was halfway through, then again when he was done.

‘The armoury,’ the old runesmith muttered to himself. ‘The armoury of Karak Tam.’

‘Ulgar?’ asked Norri Wolfhame. ‘Do you recognise the rune?’

Ulgar looked up with haunted eyes. ‘We must send for the armies of Barak Varr right away.’

‘You’re not serious…?’ asked Wolfhame hesitantly.

‘When you spoke of Karak Tam I thought, as many of you did, that it was merely a legend,’ admitted the runesmith. ‘But the secret to crafting the rune Balir has drawn was lost to us in the War of Vengeance. It is said that the magics involved in its creation were such that it took a dozen of the finest runesmiths ever born to the dawi race over a hundred years to craft, and craft it they did. Over the entrance to the armoury of Karak Tam.’

‘What does it do?’ Malbak asked breathlessly.

Ulgar ignored him, instead focussing on Balir. ‘You made a mistake fleeing from the skaven. The safest place for you would have been inside the armoury. The rune you speak of kills any non-dawi who crosses the threshold.’

There was a moment of silence as they digested this. A rune that kills any creature but a dwarf! If the secret to its creation hadn’t been lost, who knew what the dawi nations might look like today? Felix could well imagine the dour race scrawling one over the entrance to every hold.

‘If I’d have been safe inside the armoury, why did the skaven bring me there?’ asked Balir.

‘It wanted you to bring out whatever was inside,’ offered Felix. It seemed obvious to him, but the dwarfs looked at him like he’d just suggested that Tazuk the Mad had wanted Balir to cover himself in honey and dance a jig with a cave bear. The idea that a dwarf would cooperate with the skaven was so foreign to them that they hadn’t even considered it. ‘That’s why the skaven who attacked us strove to capture, not kill us. This “Tazuk” believes there are still powerful weapons locked inside the vault and he will need dwarfs to get them out.’

‘It’s possible,’ admitted Balir. ‘I was the last of the prisoners to be removed from my cell. Maybe they sent the others into the armoury, and they were smart enough not to come out.’

‘Can Tazuk be on to something?’ asked Wolfhame of Ulgar. ‘Could there still be weapons inside the armoury?’

Ulgar shrugged. ‘The histories do not say. But if there are, they would be among the most powerful rune weapons in existence. The dwarfs of Karak Tam were some of the finest runesmiths and weaponsmiths in the entire dawi nation. Their weapons feature prominently in many of our legends. If they were to fall into any hands but a dwarf’s it would be a disaster. If a mad skaven were to get a hold of them…?’

‘Grimnir’s beard,’ said Wolfhame, his armoured fist crashing into his palm. He stared down the tunnel towards Karak Tam, then back the way they came. ‘King Grundadrakk must be alerted, but I’ll not leave poor Glorin to such a fate. We’ll send our strongest warrior back to Barak Varr while we continue the pursuit.’

Gotrek cursed. ‘You mean your second strongest warrior.’

Felix looked back up the tunnel. They’d followed a relatively straight path upriver, but before that? He remembered the twisting tunnels carved by skaven slaves. How could anyone retrace their steps through that maze? ‘Does anyone remember the way?’ he asked.

They all looked at him like he was mad. ‘You don’t?’ Malbak blurted out, before being elbowed into silence by Martinuk.

‘Don’t make fun of the umgi,’ whispered the mercenary. Felix flushed scarlet. Of course a dwarf would remember. Navigating these kinds of tunnels was second nature to them.

‘Vabur,’ said Wolfhame, ignoring Felix’s outburst. ‘It’s you. Get going.’

The giant dwarf crossed his arms stubbornly. ‘I’m not fleeing to the surface like a coward. Send Malbak. He doesn’t even want to be here.’

‘I would dearly love to send Malbak,’ said Wolfhame with a roll of his eyes, ‘but I worry the message would not get through. No. It has to be you.’

Vabur puffed up, somewhat mollified by Wolfhame’s confidence in his skills.

The white-bearded Reckoner knelt in front of Balir. ‘I would not ask this if the situation were not dire, but the ratmen have captured one of our own and we mean to rescue him. Can you lead us back to the Karak?’

The Longbeard looked up at the other dwarfs with suspicion that quickly gave way to weary resignation. ‘I can,’ he said.

‘Then it’s settled,’ said Gotrek rubbing his hands gleefully. ‘My axe will feast on skaven blood tonight!’

But Gotrek’s axe did not feast on skaven blood that night, nor the next.

Balir’s presence in the group both helped and hindered them. He was able to lead them around skaven scouting parties but, despite his stubbornness, he was simply unable to match the pace they’d set before. Gromnir, who seemed to be the twin most versed at tracking, informed them that they were days behind the group who’d taken Glorin. Felix could only hope the skaven would keep the apprentice in a cell for a few days before they brought him before Tazuk and give them time to rescue him.

It was during one of their infrequent rest periods that Martinuk approached him.

They’d scattered up and down a narrow tunnel, each of them dropping their packs in the dust and then wearily following them to the ground. Gotrek had gone ahead to scout with one of the twins, so Felix had taken the opportunity to catch up on his writing. He’d been relieved to find that his journal had remained safe in its oiled leather pouch during his dip in the river and had just put pen to page when Martinuk sat down beside him. He cut a slice of hard cheese off a block and offered it to Felix. It was stale, but it made the hardtack go down easier, so Felix took it gratefully.

‘How goes the Remembering?’ asked Martinuk abruptly.

Felix studied the page, knowing that the question was probably just one of the niceties of conversation and deserved a flippant answer. ‘Not well,’ he admitted. ‘Gotrek’s adventures span many years. I find my greatest problem is deciding what parts to leave out.’

Martinuk grunted. His fingers beat against the block of cheese. Felix could tell the dwarf wanted something from him, but couldn’t find the words. He closed the journal and returned it to its pouch. ‘Was there something you wanted to ask me?’

‘I saved your life back there,’ the mercenary said gruffly.

Felix nodded solemnly. ‘I owe you a great debt, herr dwarf.’

Martinuk nodded as if the matter were settled. Abruptly, he spoke again. ‘Why him?’

Puzzled, Felix spoke slowly. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘You’re Gotrek’s Rememberer. Why is he worthy of your services? Trollslayers take oaths to end their lives because of some great shame – often a crime they’ve committed,’ said Martinuk. ‘Gotrek’s a criminal. And yet you’ve sworn an oath to immortalise his deeds in an epic poem.’

‘I–’ Felix stuttered. Though their actions during the Window Tax Riots had made them wanted men across half the Empire, he’d never consider the fact that Gotrek’s own race might think of him as a criminal. ‘I suppose I never thought of it that way,’ he admitted. ‘Gotrek speaks little of his past, and has never spoken about the events that caused him to take the Slayer’s Oath.’

‘And what if those events make him unworthy of an epic?’ Martinuk asked softly.

Felix considered this and found he didn’t have an answer. That in itself terrified him. To Felix, Gotrek’s life began on that fateful day in the midst of the riots when he’d rescued Felix from the Reiksguard. But dwarfs were exceptionally long-lived, and Gotrek may have lived the equivalent of many human lifetimes before they’d met. His deeds as a Slayer formed the bulk of Felix’s epic, but what if the foundation was rotten? What if Felix had spent the last twenty years of his life recording the deeds of a criminal?

King Grundadrakk’s words to Gotrek echoed in Felix’s ears: Your name was the last inscribed in the book.

Gotrek had been the engineer in charge of constructing the vault in which the Book of Grudges was housed – likely the Royal Engineer. Had he committed some crime that had gotten him banished from the Barak?

Felix looked up and down the line of dwarfs. Likely he was the only one amongst them who was in the dark about the nature of Gotrek’s great shame. Although curious, he’d never pressed Gotrek on its nature, but he resolved to ask again the next time they stopped.

The Slayer himself emerged from the darkness at the end of the tunnel, followed closely by Gromnir.

‘We’ve found a vault,’ said Gromnir excitedly.

‘That’s not the right vault,’ said Balir angrily.

The expedition had gathered on a terrace overlooking a great hall far beneath them. The twins had found places at a marble banister, evidently fearless of being seen by whatever was below, while Norri Wolfhame stood with arms folded near the Longbeard. Malbak hung far back with Ulgar and Tebur Tanilson, near a pile of wood dust that had once been a painting.

The sheer volume of the hall amazed Felix. It was nearly a hundred feet deep and several hundred across. Though it was lit only by scattered torches in iron wall braces, the dwarfs could no doubt see to its far recesses. Felix, on the other hand, had some difficulty piercing the gloom, even from their elevated vantage point.

A fine layer of rock-dust lay everywhere on the floor below them, disturbed by narrow paths of skaven tracks: paw prints followed by wide smudges where their tails occasionally dragged against the ground. The hall had once been home to a fountain, in the centre of which stood a majestic statue of Grimnir, judging from the dual axes.

A circle of raised rock surrounded the statue, forming what might once have been a reflecting pool. Dry now, it had probably once been fed by the very same river they’d followed into the depths. It was the kind of fountain lovers in Altdorf might have cast copper pieces into as they wished for romance. Of course, thought Felix wryly, dwarfs as a race were too cheap to throw money into puddles, but it was likely that the fountain had served some similar romantic purpose.

At the far end of the hall was an enormous door – larger, even, than the vault of Musin Balderk. It lay slightly ajar, balanced on steel hinges that reflected the flickering torchlight so well that Felix judged them to be nearly free of rust – a miracle for such an ancient monument. Though Felix stood at the edge of the terrace, it was too dark to see into the next room.

‘Look!’ said Gromnar. ‘Dwarfs!’

Several figures shambled towards the vault in single-file along the far wall. They followed one of the paths the skaven had beaten through the rock-dust. They wore thick grey cloaks stained the colour of iron ore, so that they looked like boulders come to life. They moved with a peculiar gait as if they were in constant pain, but if they’d been tortured, their torturer was nowhere to be seen.

‘They’re not dwarfs,’ said Gotrek with a curse.

‘What makes you say that?’ Wolfhame rubbed his chin as he studied them. ‘Those are Ironbeard cloaks, unless I miss my guess. They were a smallish clan that mined a vein of magnetite on the outskirts of Barak Varr before the skaven came. They disappeared during the war.’ His eyes were grim as he met their gazes. ‘We’d thought them the first victims of the ratmen, but now we know they came here instead.’

‘Ironbeard cloaks or no, no dwarf would ally himself with a skaven,’ said Martinuk with a curse. Gotrek nodded in agreement, but his brow creased when Martinuk averted his eyes and spat on the ground instead. It was an odd feeling for Felix to encounter someone who treated the Slayer not as a hero, but as a criminal. ‘If they have joined with the ratmen,’ continued Martinuk, ‘then they should be dealt with in the same manner as the skaven – axe first.’

‘Balir?’ asked Wolfhame, turning to the Longbeard. ‘What do you know of these dwarfs?’

Balir glowered into the darkness. ‘Maybe the dwarfs I shared a cell with were Ironbeards, but I passed through this hall during my escape and there were no dawi to be found.’

‘Something is rotten in Marienburg,’ said Felix with a scowl. He shrugged when the dwarfs looked at him with puzzled expressions. ‘It’s a human saying. It means that there is something amiss.’

‘Marienburg is indeed a cesspit then,’ said Wolfhame. Felix suppressed a sigh. Dwarfs were a literal breed, and explaining a decent metaphor was often more trouble than it was worth.

Gromnar had kept his eyes trained on the column of dwarfs. If Gromnir was the tracker, then Gromnar was the scout. He had the keenest eyes of any of them. ‘They’ve got a prisoner.’

Felix looked where the Reckoner indicated. A solitary skaven warrior walked among the ranks of the dwarfs. Smaller than average with a snub nose like an Altdorf bullhound, it clutched its tail in its paws, as if reassured by its presence. Other than this the ratman was unarmed and unarmoured, though it carried a heavy pack on its back. Felix could see no sign of restraints, or anything at all to keep the skaven from darting away from the column.

‘Maybe the vault is some kind of prison?’ suggested Gromnir as the column disappeared behind the door.

‘What good would a skaven prisoner be to a dwarf?’ asked Ulgar. The runesmith looked disgusted by the very thought. ‘What would you feed it? Other skaven?’

‘They have been known to eat their own kind,’ said Martinuk darkly.

‘There’s another one,’ said Gromnar.

An enormous skaven emerged from the open door of the vault carrying a huge golden hammer embossed with runes. Half again as tall as the dwarfs, it was the same beast Felix had seen clinging to the ceiling at the river ambush. Naked, except for a red crest of fur that ran from its creased brow to the spot where its tail might once have been, its crude tattoos were clearly visible even in the dimness. It paused at the entrance, the glow from the room beyond highlighting its silhouette, and scanned the terrace where the dwarfs were hidden. Though Felix thought he felt its gaze on him, it was bright in the hall below and dark on the terrace. It must not have been able to see past the gloom. After a moment, it barked something to those inside in its crude language, and then turned around and lumbered back into the vault, leaving the door ajar behind it.

‘Grimnir’s beard,’ barked Wolfhame loud enough that Felix worried they’d be heard, despite the distance. ‘A skaven Trollslayer!’

Everyone looked at Gotrek, clearly expecting some kind of explosion. The Grim Brotherhood was often referred to as a cult, with the Slayer’s Oath at its heart. Their markings were sacred. Beyond sacred – they defined all Trollslayers. This skaven mockery was sacrilege of the highest order.

Instead of storming down the stairs, axe bared, as everyone expected, Gotrek merely narrowed his eyes. ‘Mine,’ he said quietly.

‘Caution, Slayer,’ said Ulgar with his dark rumbling voice. A set of yellow and disfigured eyes belonging to the cave bear skin he wore as a cloak glimmered just above his own. ‘Unless I miss my guess, Tazuk has managed to free at least one of Karak Tam’s fabled weapons from its armoury. The golden rune weapon wielded by the Ratslayer was the Flamehammer. Though it may not work correctly for a skaven, it will retain some fraction of its power. And a powerful weapon it is.’

‘I’ll pit my axe against a hammer any day or night,’ sneered the Slayer, unbuckling his axe and swinging it back and forth to test its weight.

‘Remember our purpose, Gotrek,’ cautioned Norri Wolfhame. ‘We’ve come to rescue Glorin and to find the Book of Grudges.’

‘That’s not my purpose,’ growled Gotrek. ‘My doom awaits.’

‘And a glorious doom it would be, wouldn’t it?’ asked Martinuk darkly. ‘Die in battle against a few dwarfs and a painted rat, and leave an innocent boy like Glorin to fend for himself. You Slayers think of no one but yourselves.’

Gotrek reddened and glared at Martinuk with his one good eye. ‘Did you say something, mercenary?’

‘You heard me,’ responded the dwarf, unlimbering his own axe.

Thinking quickly, Wolfhame nodded to the twins. Gromnir stepped in front of Gotrek, while Gromnar placed himself squarely in front of Martinuk, each a wall of solid metal.

‘Dwarfs do not fight dwarfs when there are skaven to be killed!’ Wolfhame said in a stage whisper. ‘When we get back to Barak Varr you two can gut each other for all I care, but for now you’ll both be silent.’

‘I’ll be silent when I’m dead,’ said Gotrek with a growl, and such was the fury that underlay his tone that Gromnir took a nervous step back, armour or no.

‘The Ratslayer is the same creature that led the ambush at the river,’ Felix quickly interjected. ‘I saw him when I was hoisted to the ceiling. All we have to do to find Glorin is follow him back to wherever he came from.’

‘When were you going to tell me about this, Rememberer?’ asked Gotrek balefully.

‘My eyes aren’t as good as a dwarf’s,’ countered Felix. ‘I wasn’t sure of what I’d seen.’

If there was one thing he’d learned in his years travelling with the Slayer, it was that if you ever needed to placate a dwarf, all you needed to do was appeal to his vanity. A dwarf’s senses were so acute that they tended to think of humans as blind, deaf and dumb by comparison. To their way of thinking, it wasn’t Felix’s fault that he hadn’t gotten a good look at the Ratslayer. He was only human.

‘It seems you’ll get your wish after all, Slayer,’ said Ulgar. The runesmith had stepped to the railing and clutched it with both hands. ‘If we find this mad Seer Tazuk, then we find my apprentice. And, as the manling says, that red-haired monstrosity will lead us right to him.’

They descended via an ancient stairway cut into the wall. The vault door that the Ratslayer had used was perilously close to where they stood. Even Felix could hear gentle chanting through the slightly-open door, dark words rich with eldritch meaning and pain. He’d heard rumours long ago of a race of dwarfs who’d surrendered themselves to Chaos and wondered now if these Ironbeards might not have done the same.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Wolfhame studying the vault door. ‘There could be ten dwarfs or a hundred in a vault that size.’ He turned to the Longbeard. ‘Is there a way around them?’

‘There is,’ Balir admitted. ‘But it would take days to circle around to it. This is an old hold, built in times of great conflict. The founders of Karak Tam wanted to defend only one entrance and this is it. The armoury lies beyond this room,’ he said.

‘We could fight them,’ said Gotrek, an evil gleam in his eyes.

‘They’ll be quickly reinforced,’ said Balir with a shake of his head. He pointed at several dark side passages. ‘The bulk of the skaven dwell outside the hold. Tazuk has only a small force within, perhaps to avoid sharing the loot with the entire horde.’

‘We should go around,’ said Malbak a little too shrilly. He blanched when the others glared at him. ‘Well, it’s obvious the Ironbeards don’t have the book, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, quit dribbling on the floor, Drumnokson,’ said Gotrek, unable to disguise his loathing of his former apprentice. Felix wondered if there was more to it than Gotrek’s customary disdain of cowards. Could Malbak have had something to do with Grundadrakk’s grudge?

Martinuk had stolen ahead and slipped into the shadows near the vault door in order to get a look inside. He returned as quietly as he could, leaving small divots in the rock-dust like a deer track across fresh snow.

‘The chamber beyond is huge, and a set of… obstacles separate us from the other dwarfs,’ said the mercenary hesitantly. ‘If the Slayer can keep his mouth shut for more than a few minutes, we can slip around them with none the wiser.’

Gotrek swelled up like a balloon.

‘What kind of obstacles?’ Felix asked quickly. Silently, he cursed Martinuk for provoking the Slayer. How long before those two came to blows?

Martinuk cast a nervous eye at the rest of the group. ‘Best you see for yourselves,’ he said finally. Without another word, he turned and started back for the door, leaving them to follow as they chose.

Before hurrying to join Martinuk at the door, Wolfhame quietly instructed them to step in Martinuk’s footprints to better disguise their numbers, and further threatened to disembowel the first man or dwarf to make a sound.

It was only when they were pressed against the wall just outside that Felix got his first look at the chamber beyond the door. It was almost as large as the one in which they now stood, and lavishly decorated by stone carvings on the walls. Once, they might have depicted heroic deeds by dwarfs of old – a dawi-version of the epic poem Felix was writing for Gotrek – except that some had been defaced by lewd carving of genitalia and scrawling glyphs that Felix guessed where curse words. A line of pillars marched down the centre of the room, each of which was carved to resemble a dawi warrior holding up the ceiling. These statues were too enormous to deface, but their feet had been chiselled away, and often been replaced by crude carvings of ratmen wielding swords. It was obvious the skaven had been here at some time in the recent past.

Piles of rubbish and possibly excrement lay about the periphery of the chamber, as if the dwarfs had been using it for a toilet before converting it to its current purpose. Though the smell assaulted Felix even from this distance, the score or so of dwarfs who surrounded a central stone slab that was placed between the massive pillars seemed unaffected. Each of them stood as if hypnotised by their leader. A hollow-eyed dwarf dressed in rags that might once have been holy robes stood over the skaven prisoner. It lay its stomach on a crude stone altar, tail outstretched. The dwarf held a rusty butcher’s knife in one hand and raised it to cut off the tail at its pinkish base.

What they were up to, Felix could not begin to guess. The stink of madness lay about the place. Perhaps these dwarfs had caught whatever disease had rendered mad the grey seer, Tazuk.

The sole exit was on the other side of the chamber. Martinuk led them around the edges of the vault, keeping the piles of rubbish – the ‘obstacles’ to which he’d referred – between himself and the Ironbeards. Privately, Felix thought they could have simply walked straight to the opposite door, so engrossed were the dwarfs in their ritual. The whole room reeked of Chaos magic and foul, rotting things.

‘Gold…’ Malbak whispered behind him. The engineer had stopped in his tracks and was staring at one of the midden piles. ‘It’s all gold.’

Felix’s eyes widened. Something deep within the pile was reflecting amber torchlight. It was gold! Piles of it. Coins, ingots, and who knew what else.

What kind of dwarf kept his gold in a pile of trash? A skaven might hoard gold in such a manner if it wished to hide it from its rivals, but dwarfs as a race had too much respect for the metal to treat it in such a fashion.

‘Leave it,’ he hissed to Malbak. The others were leaving them behind, and Felix had no wish to be in the room when the Ironbeards’ ritual was complete.

‘What harm could it do to take just one piece?’ asked the engineer in annoyance. He reached into the midden pile and drew forth half a gold chain. The other half appeared to be caught on a bone spur deep within the pile. ‘Just… need to…’ he grunted, giving it a tug.

Felix eyed the shifting offal warily. ‘Malbak…’ he said, reaching for the dwarf.

Suddenly, the pile shifted and an avalanche of trash crashed down around their ankles, narrowly missing Felix. Malbak held the gold chain triumphantly, but the echoes of the crash still reverberated throughout the vault.

In the centre of the room, twenty dwarfs looked up, their skin sloughing away like melted wax. Felix realised to his horror that the creatures inside the vault weren’t dwarfs after all. They were skaven wearing dawi skins like clothing. Amber rodent eyes, shot through and through with wormy veins, stared at the dwarfs through crudely cut eye holes. Even though their snouts were stunted and deformed compared to normal skaven, they could not quite fit them under their skin masks and their faces bulged hideously at the snout. If they had tails at all, they were small pink nubs, scarred over at the top. That was why they had been walking oddly as they entered the vault, Felix realised. None of them had tails.

The skaven-dwarfs stared at Malbak and the others with cold, dead eyes, and then drew wickedly curved blades from under their skin-cloaks. Their leader, the one who’d been about to sever the tail of their prisoner, pulled down its mask like the hood of a cloak, to better see its attackers. Its eyes were pools of blood in snowy white fur that glared at them in hatred. Felix recognised it immediately as a grey seer… not Tazuk, but no less dangerous. With a hideous squeak, it ordered the attack.

‘Grungni’s forge and anvil, it can’t be. They’re not dwarfs at all,’ gasped Norri Wolfhame. The Reckoner’s eyes reflected the horror they all felt. Skaven, dressed in dawi skins.

‘Nobody dishonours a dawi by wearing their skin,’ growled Gotrek as he freed his axe. His single eye burned with a kind of fury Felix had rarely seen before.

Martinuk glared at Malbak with undisguised disgust. ‘You may be an idiot, Malbak, but at least we have a fight on our hands.’ With that, he drew his axe and hurdled the offal pile, followed closely by the Reckoners.

Malbak quickly stuffed the gold chain into his shirt, and then unapologetically began rummaging through the midden pile for more gold. ‘There might be weapons in here,’ he said lamely.

Felix shook his head as he drew Karaghul and joined the dwarfs in battle. The skaven outnumbered them three to one, and he was certain he’d seen one or two of their number dart down the hallway towards reinforcements. Malbak’s most profitable mission might end up being their last.

As usual, the fighting was thick and furious around the Slayer. Gotrek’s axe wove a cage around him as he parried blows and then brought his axe around to sever a spine or amputate a wrist. A particularly powerful strike shattered a skaven blade into shrapnel that flew back into its eyes and face, provoking a shriek of dismay.

Felix took up his customary position behind and to the left of the Slayer. Even Gotrek couldn’t swing his axe in every direction at once, and it was Felix’s job to protect the Slayer’s flank. Several skaven had circled around Gotrek, well out of reach of his flashing axe, and now leapt to the attack. Felix cut the shortened snout off one with a backhand stroke, leaving it with nothing but a shrieking mass of tongue and enamel for a face. He kicked it in the chest, sending it reeling back into its fellows. A second ratman, more agile than the rest, lunged inward before Felix had regained his balance and stabbed at him with a recurved dagger. Unable to twist again in time, he felt the rat’s blade skip along his mail shirt and was once again grateful for its protection. He brought the pommel of his sword down on the skaven’s skull and felt something give. It stumbled backwards, half its body limp and unresponsive. It was almost a mercy when Felix cut it down.

Elsewhere, Gromnar and Gromnir wove through the tangle of skaven reaping lives like a farmer reaps wheat at harvest. Experts at armoured fighting, they were pure offense, relying on their armour to deflect those few blows that got past them.

Though Norri Wolfhame was as heavily armoured as the Reckoners, he fought with more finesse. When a snarling skaven hurled itself out of the crowd, black fur matted in its own blood, Wolfhame merely ducked and let the creature fly overhead. It landed heavily on the ground beyond and before it could recover itself he hewed downward with his hammer, splitting its skull like kindling.

A boom echoed out from the middle of the skaven horde and fur-lined gore was hurled into the air. Felix turned with the others and spotted Tebur Tanilson giggling madly as he lit the wick of a second metal globe and hurled it at the ratmen. He hadn’t even bothered to load his rifle, preferring the mayhem his charges wrought.

From atop the dais, the grey seer drew a few pellets of something that glowed a sickly green from under its skin-robe and popped them into its mouth, barely bothering to chew before swallowing them down. It shuddered, then squeaked as if in pain or ecstasy and began chanting a hideous ritual. Two points of stagnant light lit up in the vicinity of its belly, glowing beneath its skin and fur, which spread to the creature’s arms and legs. With a final shriek to its Horned God, it hurled the malevolent light at the dwarfs.

Felix braced himself for the effects of the skaven magic, but at the last second the blast made a right angle turn and flew into Ulgar’s staff. The runesmith watched the last of the eldritch power fade into one of the finely wrought runes at its tip, and then turned around and used it to smite a particularly brave skaven, caving in its chest.

As the combat wore on, Felix settled into a comfortable rhythm. Chop, parry, riposte. Crazed as they were, these skaven had no skill – they practically threw themselves onto his blade. Still, they had numbers. During a lull in the fighting Felix looked out into the horde and saw more warriors pouring out of the side tunnels. Worse, the grey seer had directed the majority of its troops to the entrance, cutting off their escape.

‘Gotrek,’ he called over his shoulder as he kicked a skaven body off his blade. The ratman collapsed and its dwarf skin settled over it with a sound that might have been a sigh of relief.

‘What is it, manling?’ grunted the Slayer. A rat-ogre had emerged from the crowd, tusks protruding from a distended jaw. It bellowed, drowning out Gotrek’s next words. The Slayer leapt forward and, with no more effort than he’d expended on any other foe, disembowelled it and sent it tumbling into the crowd. The Slayer had already amassed a heap of corpses in front of him, and the floor was slick with their viscera.

‘They’ve cut off our escape,’ Felix yelled, pointing at the door with Karaghul. Gotrek looked over just in time to see four skaven slam it shut. The last one, quicker than the rest, attempted to dart around the door before it was fully closed and was crushed to a paste by a hundred tons of stone.

‘They’ve cut off their own escape, manling,’ said Gotrek with a chuckle. Though he bled from a dozen minor wounds, he had barely begun to sweat. ‘They’re trapped in here with me now.’

Felix ducked the tip of a spear wielded by a one-eared skaven with blood on its muzzle. He grasped the shaft with his free hand and jerked it towards him. The skaven screamed as it was pulled onto the tip of his blade.

During a brief lull in the fighting, he scanned the room, looking for the others. He could see only one of the twins, and aside from Wolfhame, who stood in a circle of crushed corpses, the others were lost in the fog of war. Were any of them still alive? There must be hundreds of skaven and they could attack from all directions. If the expedition stood any chance of survival, they needed to get somewhere where they could force the skaven to come at them in small numbers.

Now that the door was closed, there was only one way out – a narrow passage that extended deeper into the hold. It wasn’t perfect, but it was their only chance for survival.

‘Gotrek,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘We’ve got to make for that passage.’

‘Go on without me, manling,’ answered Gotrek happily. ‘My doom calls!’

Felix shook his head. A greater doom awaited the Slayer than death at the hands of Tazuk’s insane minions. On the other hand, who was he to decide where and when Gotrek met his end? If the Slayer chose to perish here, that was his business. Unfortunately, if Gotrek fell, his Rememberer would not last long on his own. Felix looked up at the bare stone of the ceiling and felt an intense longing to see the sun again before he died. He would not perish here.

‘If you die now, your epic dies with you and the only thing the world will have to remember you by is your name in Grundadrakk’s Book of Grudges,’ he shouted.

Stunned, Gotrek momentarily dropped his guard. He rounded angrily on Felix. ‘That is an evil line of reasoning, manling,’ he said accusingly. Behind him, a black-furred skaven leapt forward, hoping to take advantage of the Slayer’s distraction. Its dagger descended towards Gotrek’s exposed back. The Slayer blocked it without even bothering to look, shattering its dagger and leaving it panicked and weaponless. ‘I won’t forget this,’ he threatened.

Turning back around, he swatted the black-furred skaven into the next life with the edge of his axe, then began fighting his way towards the door. Felix breathed a sigh of relief and followed. Gotrek wasn’t afraid of dying – he welcomed it. But he guarded his epic jealously. It was his one concession to vanity.

They joined up with Wolfhame and Gromnir, whose lion-crested helmet was covered in gore. The four of them fought back to back in a circle that slowly spun towards the far exit. Nearby, Martinuk had formed a kind of barricade behind a pile of offal and he’d cut down so many skaven as they swarmed over it that it had begun to collapse under the weight of their bodies. As soon as he spotted them, he renewed his attack, axe-clutched in one hand. He dragged a bundle of rags with the other that turned out to be none other than Malbak.

They found Tebur at the door. The skaven had left him for dead, or perhaps set him aside to devour as soon as it was safe. A gash in his chest hissed as he breathed, revealing something ropy and grey that might have been a lung. He looked up at Felix through bushy white eyebrows and caught his gaze with eyes Felix hadn’t realised were blue.

‘Herr Jogger,’ he wheezed, beckoning Felix down to his level. ‘T-take my pack,’ he said. A gout of fluid spilled out of his mouth and stained his beard. The pack he offered Felix felt lumpy and solid and dangerous.

‘I can’t take this, Tebur,’ said Felix regretfully. It felt odd to refuse a dwarf’s dying request, but there was no way he could carry it and fight the ratmen at the same time.

‘No, Herr Jogger,’ said Tebur with a toothy smile. He produced two of his metal globes, each casting off sparks from a burning wick. ‘If ye don’t take it, ye’ll be blasted apart with the rest of ’em.’

Felix’s eyes widened. He tore open the top of Tebur’s pack. The acrid scent of blackpowder that wafted out told him everything he needed to know. Tebur was carrying more explosive powder on him than an Imperial Iron Company.

‘Gotrek!’ he yelled over the din of melee.

Norri Wolfhame was the first to disengage from the press of ratmen. He looked down at the explosives in Tebur’s hands and cursed. ‘Gromnir!’ he called, grabbing the Reckoner by the pauldron. ‘We’re getting out of here!’

Gromnir looked down, his lion-crested helmet opened in a roar that framed his face. ‘No! Gromnar is still out there!’

‘He’s dead,’ yelled Wolfhame.

‘No!’

All of a sudden, Martinuk appeared out of nowhere and clunked the back of Gromnir’s helmet with the haft of his axe. Despite the metallic ringing, Gromnir did not go down, but he was off balance enough that Wolfhame and Martinuk were able to wrestle him into the passage.

Malbak stood nearby, bloody and cut. Felix shoved Tebur’s bag into the engineer’s hands and propelled him after the Reckoners, and then drew Karaghul and stood next to the Slayer. He wouldn’t put it past Gotrek to try for his glorious death right here in the passage.

‘Gotrek,’ he yelled, sidestepping a skaven blade and then stabbing out an eye with the tip of his blade. ‘Remember the Book of Grudges!’

The Slayer snarled and cut a ratman in half. He bent down and retrieved a spear from the ground and then sighted carefully along its length with his one good eye. With a mighty heave he hurled it across the room. The weapon shot straight over the heads of the horde and buried itself in the chest of the grey seer. The rat froze in mid-squeak. As the greenish warpstone fire died out around it, it tottered to the edge of the dais and fell into the crowd.

‘One less rat,’ said the Slayer, his smile revealing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth.

Felix couldn’t help but grin alongside Gotrek as he turned away.

At his feet, Tebur sighed and went still, releasing the metal balls. They bounced on the ground and then rolled towards the skaven as their sparking wicks disappeared inside their shells. Before they could go off, skaven warriors were swept aside as if by the hand of a vengeful god, and Ulgar stepped out of the crowd. ‘I thought you were never going to kill that wizard,’ he barked at Gotrek.

The two metal balls rolled between his legs and he recognised them instantly. Spotting Tebur’s corpse, he cursed and then dashed forward with all the grace and speed that runesmiths were famous for not having.

Gotrek and Felix followed an instant before smoke and fire obliterated the passageway behind them.

They were now eight in number.

Tebur’s two explosive balls had produced enough fire and flame to set off the rest of his supplies, save for the barrel Malbak now carried. The conflagration had obliterated most of the skaven horde. If not for a final burst of speed, Gotrek and Felix would be nothing more than charred corpses, crushed into jelly when the passageway had caved in behind them.

Gromnar was gone and presumed dead, though no one had seen him since the opening minutes of the fight. Gromnir’s armour was so dented that he was unable to sit, and so knelt on one side of the corridor, weeping openly. It was a rare enough sight among the dwarfs that none of them seemed to know what to do about it, and now and then one attempted to awkwardly console him.

Martinuk had a deep gash in his leg that he’d sustained in his mad dash towards the corridor. He took out a noxious smelling black paste from a pouch at his belt, smeared it on the wound, and then briefly set it on fire before hissing in pain and quickly snuffing the flame with his cloak. Privately, Felix thought that the treatment was worse than the wound itself, but in a few minutes Martinuk was pacing back and forth as if he was uninjured.

Balir’s arms and chest were coated with blood, but the gruff Longbeard assured them it belonged to those he’d slain. Mostly.

The skaven had left Ulgar alone while he’d fought the grey seer. Perhaps they knew better than to interfere in a magical duel, or perhaps they hoped the runesmith would kill the seer so that one of them could take its place. However, he was not unharmed. He’d sustained his wounds when he’d activated the rune to deflect Tebur’s explosion. The runes at the top of his staff had heated to a searing white and then shattered, spraying shrapnel over the runesmith’s shoulders and back. Thankfully, his magic had held out and they’d emerged whole from the corridor.

Wolfhame stared back into the passage. Great slabs of rock and stone blocked the way back and the smell of dust was still thick in the air. ‘Skaven dressed in dawi skins,’ he said. ‘I would never have believed it.’

Though Wolfhame had been at the centre of it, his armour and his skill with a hammer had mostly protected him. The same could not be said of Malbak. He was bloody from a dozen different wounds, and he’d lost the tip of one ear to a skaven blade. He sat apart from the others with Tebur’s keg of blackpowder, still wearing the gold chain that had started the battle.

Gromnir seemed to notice him sitting there and rose all of a sudden. Tears had carved a dusty path in his cheeks and soaked his beard. ‘You! You did this!’ he roared, pointing his axe at the engineer. ‘You’ll die for what you’ve done!’

He strode across the floor and swung at Malbak like a woodsman cutting kindling. If it weren’t for Wolfhame’s hammer catching the haft of Gromnir’s weapon, the engineer would be dead.

‘Calm yourself!’ said Wolfhame and such was the fire in his voice that Gromnir took a step back. ‘We’re trapped in a hold full of skaven with no book and no way to return to the surface. We don’t even know if Vabur Nerinson was able to alert King Grundadrakk to our whereabouts, which means that not only are we trapped, there might not even be a rescue coming.’ He sneered down at Malbak. ‘The engineer might not be much of a fighter, but we’ll need every dwarf – and man,’ he said, nodding at Felix, ‘to work together if we want to return to our holds.’

Gromnir spat on the floor, but remained silent.

‘They know we’re here now,’ said Malbak. ‘They’ll come again in greater numbers. We need to turn back.’

There was such a note of despair in his voice that Felix almost took pity on him. Coddled by his father’s money and power, assigned a prestigious apprenticeship under Gotrek, and then given a cushy job guarding the vault of Musin Balderk, he’d probably never set foot outside the Barak. Wolfhame, Gotrek, even Felix himself, were hardened to the terrors of battle. Malbak wasn’t. That didn’t excuse his cowardice, but it did put it in a different light.

‘That way is blocked,’ said Wolfhame in disgust. ‘And I wouldn’t turn back in any case. We’re here for the Book of Grudges and I won’t return to King Grundadrakk empty-handed.’

Martinuk spoke up from the edge of the group. ‘Sorry to interrupt your speech-making, but I’ve found something at the other end of this passage that you’ll want to see.’

While the others had been arguing, Martinuk had scouted ahead. He took them down the corridor to a room that might have been a twin to the one they’d just left. The ceiling was so high that it was lost to the light from their lanterns. Instead of torches in iron wall sconces, the whole room was lit by an eerie green glow that came from a set of tubular tanks that lined either wall.

Felix stared in awe at the tanks. Set in brass bases larger than carriage wheels, they reminded him of nothing more than the glass test tubes he’d sometimes seen Imperial doktors use to store medicines. The glass alone was as tall as he was and must have cost a fortune to produce. He wondered if even Emperor Karl Franz’s personal glass blowers had the skill to produce something of this scale. Surely, it couldn’t be skaven work. It had to be some forgotten technology left behind by the dwarfs.

Riveted copper pipes through which murky fluid flowed connected each tank to its neighbours before rising upwards and disappearing in a tangle of metal into a hole in the ceiling. A low mist clung to the floor of the room that swirled into shapes that dispersed at the slightest disturbance. He felt like he was walking between the pillars of a temple to some forgotten god, only recently awakened. The air here was charged with evil and reeked faintly of cinnamon.

‘Ulgar,’ said Wolfhame, his gruff tone poorly disguising his fear. ‘What manner of magic are these?’

The runesmith advanced on one of the tanks and studied it. A nearby pipe gurgled as something semi-solid passed through it on its way to the ceiling. Ulgar brushed aside his cave bear hood as if to get a better look at it, and then muttered a few words under his breath. The tip of his staff began to glow a soft magenta, turning the green liquid a bluish brown. Warily, he tapped the glass with the tip of his staff. Clunk, clunk.

Confident that it was thick enough to resist a few blows, he advanced still further. Wiping a thin sheen of water droplets from the exterior of the tube, he cupped his hand over his brow and peered into its depths.

A sound echoed back at him from inside the tank. Clunk, clunk.

Ulgar looked back at the rest of them grimly. Felix wondered if anything could be living inside the tube, some horrible skaven experiment. They’d already seen ratmen wearing the skins of dwarfs. To what other depths of depravity could the skaven sink? Suddenly, he felt a wild urge to get as far away from the tank as possible.

Ulgar turned back towards it, and then reeled back with a shout as a dark face smashed up against the glass from the inside.

While the rest of them started back, Gotrek merely stood there, arms folded. ‘Put away your weapons,’ he said in annoyance. ‘It’s not getting out.’

Felix was embarrassed to find Karaghul in his hand, and he wasn’t the only one. Wolfhame had drawn his hammer, and Martinuk his axe. As they put away their weapons, the Slayer drew his and advanced on the tank. Ulgar barely had time to get out of the way as Gotrek wound up and smashed the tube with his axe.

Glass shards rode a wave of viscous liquid onto the floor. A body came with it, which Gotrek scooped up with one arm and deposited on the floor nearby. Pale as a worm and barely clad in soiled rags, it looked like a dwarf, but its face was grossly distended into a muzzle with a disturbingly humanoid nose on the end. The hair on his head and – most shamefully – his beard had been shaved, but new tufts of coarse brown hair grew from his shoulders and back and on the nape of his neck.

‘Glorin!’ said Ulgar, running to his apprentice’s side. He knelt quickly and began to treat Glorin’s wounds, muttering soothing words as he did. The apprentice gasped in short, hard breaths, as if there was so much liquid in his lungs he could not draw in enough air.

Felix could not believe his eyes. It was difficult to recognise the young apprentice. He’d heard of creatures in Sylvania who were half wolf and half man – and had even had a close brush with a mutant or two who might have looked like Glorin did now, but dwarfs were notoriously resistant to mutation. What had the skaven done to him? And to what purpose?

Ulgar’s calming words had an effect on the apprentice. Glorin’s breathing soon slowed.

‘By Grungni’s hammer and forge.’ Malbak took a few tentative steps towards the pair. He looked genuinely distraught. Glorin had been the one who’d saved Malbak from a similar fate. If not for his sacrifice, it would be the engineer lying on the floor with the face of a beast.

Ulgar looked up at Malbak as he knelt beside them and quickly covered up a flash of annoyance when he saw the expression of the engineer’s face.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Malbak of the master runesmith.

‘He’s cursed,’ said Ulgar bitterly. He touched Glorin’s distorted cheek then yanked his hand away as if it had been burned. ‘The skaven have some foul magics at their disposal, but I’ve rarely seen them work on the dawi. Perhaps this foul liquid eased the transformation. For what purpose, I can’t begin to guess.’

‘Can you fix him?’ Malbak’s voice was small and loaded with guilt.

‘Sometimes the best cure is a quick and merciful death, boy,’ answered Ulgar, though Malbak was far from a boy.

‘Did you know about this room?’ asked Wolfhame of Balir, anger flaring.

‘The armoury is near here and I passed through this room in my flight, but never would I have guessed its purpose,’ admitted the Longbeard. ‘If I had, I would never have left it intact.’

‘We’ll destroy these tanks and make sure that no dwarf ever again shares Glorin’s fate,’ said Norri Wolfhame.

‘Wait,’ said Felix. He ignored the dwarfs’ stares as he looked down at the spot Malbak had just vacated. The engineer had left behind Tebur’s great cask of black powder.

The way back was sealed, leaving only one other entrance to this room… If they could somehow lure the skaven here and then detonate the keg, they might be able to even the odds.

‘Ulgar,’ he said, ‘you told us that the rune Balir saw above the armoury door barred entry to any but a dwarf.’

‘Aye,’ said the runesmith suspiciously.

‘Tazuk the Mad,’ said Felix to himself. His mind was racing. Skaven wearing dwarf skins, a curse designed to turn a dwarf into a skaven… it all made a twisted kind of sense. Tazuk wanted the weapons of Karak Tam so desperately he’d become unhinged. When the skaven were unable to enter the vault he’d tried to ‘fool’ the rune by dressing his own warriors in dawi skins. Transforming young Glorin into a skaven was merely the latest iteration of Tazuk’s madness.

‘What are you thinking, manling?’ rumbled Gotrek, but Felix was too caught up in his thoughts to pay heed to the dangerous undercurrent in the Slayer’s tone.

‘How many prisoners were in your group, Ancient One?’ he asked of the Longbeard.

Balir scratched his head and glared at the ceiling as if the answer could be found amongst the shadows. ‘Two score? Perhaps more?’

Two score! Hadn’t Balir told them earlier that it was possible that some of those dwarfs were already inside the armoury? That they’d been smart enough not to come back out?

‘I need to see the armoury,’ he said.

Gotrek, Felix, and Balir knelt near a stone balcony overlooking the armoury of Karak Tam. The room below them had obviously been intended for a last defence of the armoury’s treasures and was littered with cunningly placed stone benches that could quickly be overturned to offer cover from archers, while leaving open a killing field in front of the massive stone door that guarded the armoury.

Tazuk stood on a central dais, holding the Book of Grudges before him, exhorting his followers with all the fanaticism of a warrior priest and all the majesty of a squeaking rat. He was the same grey seer who’d ambushed them at the river near the start of their quest – the line of piercings that ran up his snout could not be mistaken. He still wore his armour of finger bones and his skull helmet. He looked like something old, newly arisen from the grave.

The door to the armoury of Karak Tam stood nearly twenty feet high and twenty more across.

‘Just as I thought,’ he said. ‘The door is closed.’

‘What are you getting at, manling?’ asked Gotrek.

‘That door is sealed,’ he said, indicating the vault. ‘Why would the skaven do that? They want inside so badly it’s driven them mad.’

He drew back away from the balcony and kept his voice low. ‘The skaven have been sending dwarfs inside to retrieve Karak Tam’s weapons, but like you said, no dwarf would aid a rat. I think Balir’s right. I think there are dawi inside that armoury.’

‘They’d be in rough shape, but if we could get word to them that we’re here to help it might help to even up the odds,’ said Balir thoughtfully.

‘Is there any way to alert them to our presence?’ asked Felix.

‘Certainly, manling,’ said Gotrek with a grin. ‘We fight our way through fifty skaven and knock.’

Felix looked back the way they’d come. A skaven sentry lay on the floor in a pool of blood. Its head lay a few feet away. Fifty-on-three were poor odds indeed, but he could not help but think the Slayer had gone up against worse.

‘We can use Grundlid,’ offered Balir.

‘Grundlid?’

‘Hammertongue. It’s a tapping language we use to convey meaning through the rocks themselves.’ The Longbeard glanced at the skaven below and, seeing that most watched Tazuk with rapt attention, he stole to the rear of the balcony and selected a section of wall that appeared to be cut from solid bedrock. He tapped it quietly with the pommel of his dagger, then waited, with his hand pressed against the rock.

Though Felix listened for some response, none came. In the chamber below, Tazuk squeaked viciously and a dozen skaven warriors thrust their fists at the ceiling. How long until one of them looked up and spotted the three of them skulking about on the landing? How long until the sentry was missed? Perhaps it might be better to simply abandon the plan and retreat back to the other room.

Balir’s face lit up. ‘They’ve responded.’

Felix realised he’d been holding his breath and let it out slowly.

Balir tapped out a complex code of short and long taps, and then awaited another response. ‘They’re two score in number and starving to a point where they just want to slay the skaven before they die. Unfortunately, they’re not able to open the door from the inside.’

‘We’ll have to open it from this side then,’ said Gotrek with a grin that said he’d like nothing more than to leap into the skaven horde below and hack his way to the door.

‘We’ll have to fight our way there,’ said Balir gruffly. ‘That big one worries me.’ He nodded at the hulking mass of rat flesh that stood next to Tazuk. The Ratslayer was not quite as tall as some of the other rat-ogres in the room, but he was twice as wide as any of them. Felix could tell that he was built like a dwarf, as if Tazuk had somehow managed to combine the best of both races. A golden hammer hung from his belt, the weapon Ulgar had called the Flamehammer.

‘How do we get from here to the armoury door and then hold it long enough for the dwarfs to open it from the inside,’ Felix asked to no one in particular. They’d have to fight their way through the entire horde to reach it and, as good a fighter as Gotrek was, even he could not fight them all. If only they had some kind of disguise that would allow them to pass through the skaven unseen.

He scanned the balcony, looking for some inspiration, and his gaze alighted on the slain skaven sentry. A horrible thought occurred to him.

‘I think I know how we can do it,’ he said.

Felix had felt so confident in his plan on the balcony, but now, facing seven dwarfs, some of them badly injured, he almost laughed at how ludicrous it was. If any of them had suggested an alternate course of action, he probably would have taken it.

‘Well, spit it out, manling,’ said Gotrek.

Felix cleared his throat and adjusted his chain shirt with a roll of his shoulders. Gotrek was right. If he didn’t spit it out, he would lose his nerve.

‘All right. The skaven outnumber us fifty to one, and when those rats we didn’t kill in the antechamber join up with Tazuk’s bunch, it’ll be worse than that. We need to strike now, before that happens.’

‘Strike? There’s only eight of us,’ said Malbak. He’d lost the whine from his voice ever since he’d seen what the skaven had done to Glorin, but he wasn’t stupid.

‘Yes,’ said Felix hastily, ‘but we have Tebur’s black powder bomb. A smaller amount than this killed nearly everything in the other room. If we can somehow lure the skaven here, we’ll retreat down the side passage and seal it behind us. Once we’re out of the blast area, we’ll set off Tebur’s bomb, kill the skaven, and bury the poor souls in those tanks all at the same time.’

‘That’s a fine plan, but it has at least one flaw,’ said Wolfhame. ‘What’s to stop them from simply retreating back the way they came?’

‘Well, that’s where Malbak comes in,’ said Felix reluctantly.

‘Me?’ Malbak exclaimed.

‘Balir used Hammertongue to communicate with the dwarfs inside the armoury. Though they’re few in number, they’ve pledged to attack the skaven from behind. But they can’t open the armoury door from the inside.’ He looked to Balir for support. The Longbeard nodded for him to go on. ‘Someone needs to get past the army of skaven and open the door.’

Malbak’s face and cheeks reddened with indignation. ‘You want me to fight through an army of crazed ratmen in order to secure the aid of a handful of starving dwarfs?’

‘Sounds like a job for a Slayer,’ reasoned Martinuk.

‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, his face splitting into a wicked smile. ‘But if I took that position the skaven would die before they got to this room.’

Felix glared at the mercenary before turning back to Malbak. ‘We’ll need every available warrior to block the side passage. What good is it to close the back door if the rats can escape out the front?’

‘You’ve seen me fight,’ said Malbak in disgust. ‘I won’t get more than five steps before they cut me down.’

Felix felt bad bullying the engineer, but he agreed with Malbak’s self-assessment. He was useless with a blade. On the other hand, the side corridor was wide enough that it would take the rest of the fighters to hold it against the skaven. Felix hated himself for what he was about to do, but the engineer was the only one they could spare.

‘You… won’t have to fight,’ he said reluctantly.

Gotrek cast a bloody lump at Malbak’s feet. The dark brown fur of the skaven sentry he’d killed was stained with gore and smelled like copper and offal. Gotrek’s axe was eternally sharp but was meant for killing skaven, not skinning them. Chunks of flesh still clung to the fur.

‘I got the idea from the skaven,’ Felix explained. ‘It’s crude, but if we create enough of a distraction it should get you past them, provided you stick to the shadows.’

‘What about the smell?’ asked Wolfhame dubiously. The Reckoner stared at the skin morbidly and nudged it with his toe.

‘You can’t seriously be considering–’ exclaimed Malbak in alarm.

Gotrek held up a pair of brownish sacks, criss-crossed with a web of purplish veins. ‘That’s what these skaven glands are for.’ He seemed to be taking entirely too much pleasure in Malbak’s predicament. ‘They call it ‘the musk of fear’. Maybe it’ll cure your stink.’

Despite Malbak’s protests, it had taken surprisingly little convincing to get him to wear the skaven skin. Felix had noticed a change come over the engineer ever since they’d found Glorin. Malbak was still a braggart and a coward, but it seemed that the sight of the apprentice runesmith’s ruined face had aged him years.

‘In poor light, and with a little luck,’ said Wolfhame as he stepped away from the engineer, ‘you could pass for a skaven warrior.’

‘I don’t see a difference,’ said Gotrek with a bark of laughter. Malbak glared daggers at him, but said nothing, smouldering quietly.

Felix eyed the others. Gromnir shrugged while Gotrek merely grinned. It would take more than poor light for the most blinded of ratmen to recognise Malbak as anything but a dwarf. The skaven sentry had been rail-thin, as most skaven were, while the engineer was heavy-set even for a dwarf. Wolfhame had done his best to cure the skin with a torch, but it still showed enough blood to make Malbak look like he’d sustained a mortal wound. They’d scooped out the ratman’s brains, but its skull was too small for Malbak’s head, and he wore it like an ill-fitting hat. Worst of all, he smelled like a tannery. Felix had a sneaking suspicion that the so-called ‘musk of fear’ was something that approximated urine. Felix mouthed a silent prayer to Sigmar that the skaven would be struck by a sudden and inexplicable plague of blindness. Otherwise, Malbak’s mission would be short-lived.

Balir returned from setting up Tebur’s keg, wiping his hands on a dirty white cloth. ‘Your Thunderer knew his black powder. We should be well away from here when that goes off,’ he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

In the days before he’d taken up the hammer, he’d been something of a Thunderer himself, or at least so he told them. After watching him work, Felix began to believe. Balir’s training had returned with record speed.

Tebur had been organised if nothing else, and had packed the charges and blasting caps necessary to set off the bomb in the same sack. Balir had examined it with a critical eye, pronounced it adequate and commenced to work.

While Balir tampered with the keg, Norri Wolfhame and Ulgar had done what they could to hasten Glorin’s spirit into the afterlife. Interrupted mid-transformation, the apprentice had died shortly after Gotrek had broken the tank. To Felix, that was a mercy. Life in that state was too horrible to contemplate. They dared not set fire to his body with the skaven so close. Gotrek had dispatched a few sentries and soon Tazuk would begin to notice their absence. Instead, they placed him close to Tebur’s keg. It was undignified, but it would do the job.

While the others made their preparations, Felix tried to pen an entry in his journal – an entry that might be his last if their plan failed. He tried putting his pen to paper but found he couldn’t write. Martinuk’s words rang in his ears. Was Gotrek a criminal? He had to know.

He found the Slayer leaning against a wall, chewing on some hardtack.

‘Gotrek?’ he asked nervously. The Slayer had never been very forthcoming about the events surrounding his shaming and Felix worried that he would once more be rebuffed. ‘Why does King Grundadrakk hold a grudge against you?’

The Slayer glared up at him as he munched his hardtack. ‘That is none of your concern, manling.’

Felix nodded and turned away, but after a moment he turned back. He struggled to find words to describe how he was feeling, to sum up the conflict he felt. At last, he gave up. ‘I have to know,’ he said simply.

Gotrek studied him. Felix could not begin to guess what was going through his mind. It was for a Slayer and a Slayer only to know his shame. Felix had violated centuries of tradition just by asking. Perhaps Gotrek read something in Felix’s expression that he’d never seen before, because finally he spoke. ‘You’d better have a seat.’

Felix sat and waited patiently for the Slayer to continue.

‘The road to Karak Kadrin is long, and I did not travel directly to the Shrine of Grimnir after…’ Gotrek trailed off, his eyes grew distant. ‘Though Barak Varr was not directly in my path, it was one of the places I came before I swore the Oath. I’d run into a druchii raider in some nameless port and by the time I’d cut off his third finger he’d told me that Grundadrakk’s predecessor had had a hand in my shaming.’

Gotrek cracked his knuckles one by one as his thoughts returned to the events that had taken place all those years ago. ‘My wounds were still fresh and I was mad with rage. The guards recognised me from my former employment as the Royal Engineer and since I had not yet taken the Oath, they didn’t realise the danger their king was in.’

His face twisted into a snarl and his fist crashed into his palm. ‘He knew when he found me waiting for him in his chambers why I’d come. He didn’t even call for his guards. Instead he just laughed, like it was some great joke. I left him in a pool of his own blood, but I could not wipe that grin off his face. It stayed frozen on his corpse.’

Felix’s heart grew cold. Had Gotrek just confessed to murder? Had he killed the previous king of Barak Varr in cold blood? No wonder Grundadrakk had sworn a grudge against him. No wonder Norri Wolfhame had tracked him across the world for over twenty years.

‘What part did he play in your shaming?’ Felix asked.

Gotrek looked at him sharply. ‘That is not for you to know, manling.’

‘I must know,’ said Felix. ‘For the epic.’

Gotrek shrugged. ‘Then I release you from your oath.’

Felix shook his head. ‘It’s not that. I just need to know if the king’s death was justified.’

‘I could swear an oath that it was,’ said Gotrek. ‘But after all our travels together you either trust me or you don’t.’

With that, he rose and walked away. Felix watched him go, his emotions in turmoil. Gotrek had killed the previous king of Barak Varr in cold blood, but did that make him a murderer?

After all our travels together you either trust me or you don’t.

In all those years, Gotrek had left a bloody trail across half the Empire, but he’d never killed an innocent. He was a complicated dwarf. Martinuk had called the Grim Brotherhood ‘a selfish bunch’, but Gotrek had time and again sacrificed a glorious death to right some wrong. His code of honour compelled it.

You either trust me or you don’t.

Could he trust Gotrek? Who better to trust? Every moment the Slayer lived was evidence that he cared for causes greater than himself.

Felix felt as if a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Inspired, he unslung his pack and retrieved his journal from its oiled pack. He put his pen to paper and the words began to flow.

It was some of the finest prose he’d ever written.

When the preparations were complete, Norri Wolfhame called them all together in the centre of the room. ‘Everyone know their places?’ he asked when they were all assembled.

Felix had sought Gotrek out and, instead of explaining himself, simply read some of the passages he’d written. The Slayer seemed to approve and all was well between them again. Now Felix stood side by side with Gotrek in the small circle of dwarfs that huddled around Wolfhame.

‘So the Slayer and the manling attack the skaven and draw them back to this room,’ said Norri, quickly outlining the plan. ‘While we hold them here, Malbak will slip into the horde and make his way back to the armoury where he will release the Ironbeards. They will, in turn, attack the horde from behind and drive them further into this room. When the skaven are massed at their thickest, Ulgar will detonate Tebur’s keg from afar, killing as many as possible. After that, it should be a simple matter for the Ironbeards to aid us in mopping up the scraps.’

Even though it was his plan, Felix could not help thinking how foolish it was. Everything had to work perfectly for it to succeed. If the Slayer failed to lure enough of the skaven away from the armoury, if Malbak turned coward and ran, if the skaven managed to overwhelm the Reckoners too soon… if any part of it failed, they were all doomed.

He looked around at the others, hoping that they didn’t feel the same way he did. Most wore sombre, but determined looks. Gromnir’s face was especially grim. Perhaps the Reckoner was thinking of the fate that had befallen his brother. Felix thought of his own brother, Otto, in far-away Altdorf. How long had it been since they’d shared a meal? Years? He resolved to visit as soon as he could. If he survived.

The Reckoners and Ulgar took up their stations at the room’s one remaining entrance while Gotrek, Felix, and Malbak proceeded towards the armoury. When they reached the tunnel, Malbak took up his position.

‘Good luck, engineer,’ said Felix stoically. Malbak nodded in return. Perhaps the most important part of their plan rested on his shoulders. Had that been a terrible mistake? They would soon see.

Gotrek and Felix proceeded down the tunnel towards the armoury, alone once again. They said nothing because no words needed to be spoken. They were merely two warriors about to confront their doom.

When they were near, Gotrek stopped. ‘A Slayer is enough of a distraction to get their attention,’ he said. ‘You can go back with the others.’

Hope flared in Felix’s chest. None of them had decent odds of escaping Karak Tam alive, but Gotrek would face the worst odds of all. Half the skaven horde would descend on him. ‘No,’ said Felix. ‘What kind of epic ends with its subject disappearing down a tunnel never to be seen again?’

‘I’ll try not to die before I lead them back to you,’ the Slayer offered.

Felix shook his head. ‘What can I say? I’m a slave to my art.’

No further words needed to be spoken between them. They’d placed their fates in the hands of the gods. One wanted to die gloriously and the other wanted to write about it from the comfort of a warm inn. This day’s end would see which one got their wish.

The sound of a hundred rodents chanting a foul ritual grew louder as they passed down the corridor, until they emerged into the circular room which held the armoury. The room was packed with skaven and smelled like sweat-soaked fur and musk. Tazuk stood in front of the armoury door, dressed in his bone armour, with the Ratslayer at his right hand. They were the only skaven facing the entrance, and so far they hadn’t noticed the pair.

Gotrek stood on the threshold, waiting to be seen. Slayer’s honour was a peculiar thing, Felix reflected. Gotrek had killed more men than some armies and yet he was reluctant to stab an enemy in the back. Finally, he walked up to one of the taller skaven and coughed. It cast a look over its shoulder, then squeaked and spun around.

That seemed to satisfy whatever condition Gotrek’s honour demanded, because in the next second it was choking on its own blood with a gaping axe wound in its chest. Before the body could hit the ground, the Slayer had ripped a dagger out of its sheath and hurled it straight at Tazuk. If a rat-ogre hadn’t chosen that moment to stand upright and investigate the sound, it would have caught the Seer in the throat. Instead the rat-ogre dropped with a dagger in its eye.

Tazuk screeched in outrage, but the Slayer was already at work, hewing at the skaven like a lumberjack chopping wood. An instant after Gotrek’s first kill, Felix stabbed a skaven warrior through the gut before it had even drawn its blade and then lashed out again, severing an arm and stabbing into the face behind it.

It wasn’t until the Ratslayer bellowed in anger and tried to force his way through the crowd towards Gotrek that Felix realised perhaps the biggest flaw in their plan. The whole thing was predicated on Gotrek retreating and drawing the skaven after him, but the Slayer had been thirsting for a chance to bring down the Ratslayer since he’d first laid eyes on the giant rat. Instead of retreating, Gotrek hacked his way further into the crowd, bellowing challenges and threats in the direction of the crested rat-ogre.

Felix struggled to keep up. Gotrek swept his axe in wide arc that clove flesh and bone with equal alacrity, but even he could occasionally let an enemy through his guard. Once, an axe blow severed a skaven’s arm and knocked the ratman to the ground. An instant later, driven by some foul magic no doubt originating with Tazuk, it leapt back to its feet, dagger in its other paw, and lunged at the Slayer’s back. If Felix hadn’t stabbed it at the last minute, Gotrek might have found his doom at the hands of an opponent he’d already killed.

Suddenly, a skaven spear lanced out of the crowd and caught Felix square in the chest. The air exploded out of his lungs and he was thrown backwards, tumbling to the ground. His vision reddened at its edges and he struggled to breathe. Dark blurs that he knew were skaven warriors squealed in triumph and pressed forward, only to be stopped at the last moment by a massive metal shape.

It was Gromnir. The huge Reckoner with the lion-created helmet bull-rushed a skaven warrior that sported a mismatched tusk in its muzzle, slamming into it with full force. As it stumbled back, he lashed out with his axe, decapitating another skaven and sending its head into the crowd.

Norri Wolfhame reached down a hand and helped Felix to his feet. Surprised to find himself alive, Felix felt around on his chest for blood, but came away with only a few damaged links of chain. If he survived this battle, he’d most likely have a deep bruise on his sternum, but his chain shirt had protected him from what was probably a very dull spear.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be guarding the other room?’ he asked Wolfhame as the latter blocked a skaven dagger.

‘We’ve been following the Slayer for nearly twenty years. I doubted he’d do as he was told,’ said the white-bearded Reckoner.

Martinuk and Balir fanned out beside him. The Longbeard wielded one of Martinuk’s spare axes in one hand and a hammer in the other. Though there’d been plenty of spare armour salvaged from the skaven sentries they’d slain, he wore only the clothes they’d found him in. Felix could easily imagine him grumpily refusing to don anything previously worn by a rat.

‘All right, brother dwarfs,’ said Norri Wolfhame. ‘We’re all Slayers today. Sell your lives dearly, and try and take as many of them with you as you can.’

Ulgar looked up at where Tazuk stood on the stone dais in the centre of the room. ‘That one killed my apprentice. If you can keep the ratmen off my back, I’ll show him that skaven sorcery is no match for dawi rune magic.’

The dwarfs quickly formed a wall of shields around the runesmith and began to tear into their enemies. Though they were few in number, they were heavily armed and armoured, and far better trained than the skaven fighters. When Wolfhame had proclaimed a single Reckoner to be worth ten skaven lives, he was being pragmatic, not optimistic.

Still, thought Felix as he fell in beside the Reckoners, the sheer number of enemy fighters would beat them down eventually. Exhaustion would slow their reflexes or pure chance might thin their numbers. A skaven victory seemed inevitable.

Elsewhere, the tide of battle was conspiring to keep the two Slayers apart. Though both fighters shouted oaths and curses at each other, somehow they could not quite meet. Finally, the last few ranks of skaven parted and there was nothing to hold them back from each other.

Suddenly, Tazuk screeched and pointed at the small group of armoured Reckoners near the door. Reluctantly, the Ratslayer disengaged and turned towards them.

‘Come back here, you filthy offal-eating flea-bitten skrug-lover!’ Gotrek bellowed, shaking his fist at the retreating Ratslayer. A skaven warrior dared to attack him. He killed it almost indignantly, and then began hacking his way back towards the Reckoners.

Suddenly a small grey skaven shoved into Felix. In a flash, Felix had brought Karaghul around, ready to cut it down. At the last second, he realised that it was no skaven after all. It was Malbak. Frantic and terrified, the engineer disappeared into the melee, all but ignored by the other skaven.

That Ulgar’s rune magic had worked was a minor miracle, but a greater one was that Malbak was making his way towards the armoury door. Glorin’s death had matured the young engineer. If he lived, he would be a better dwarf for the experience.

Martinuk fought close to Felix, assuming the same position Felix usually occupied when he fought with the Slayer. The mercenary fought quick and dirty, disembowelling his opponents more often than not and leaving them to bleed out their lives on the ground.

He’d just killed a large black ratman with red eyes when Felix noticed him drop his guard and stumble backwards as a few metal stars blossomed from his chest. A slim skaven with a whip-like body stood only a few feet away. Certain it had killed the mercenary, it turned towards Felix, fanning more throwing daggers in its hand like a gambler with a deck of cards. A moment later Martinuk’s blade pierced its chest and it dropped to the ground, dead as a stone.

Mortally wounded, the mercenary could not properly defend himself. Though Felix struggled to reach him, he disappeared under a hundred skaven bodies. When they were done with him, they rose with dripping blades and came for the rest of the company.

A huge form shoved its way to the front of the press of skaven. The Ratslayer was half again as tall as Felix. Its crest stood as stiff and straight as a horse’s freshly cut mane, and its pallid skin was mottled and scarred. From this distance Felix could see a thin sheen of unshaven fur that covered its tattooed body.

It had already hacked through half the skaven army to get to them, and evidence of the mayhem it had caused lay all about it. A piece of meat was draped limply over its shoulder, a long purplish vein painting blood over its chest. The other skaven drew back, much as a school of minnows part before a shark, giving the huge beast room to do as it would.

The Ratslayer picked its target carefully – the largest, most intimidating among them. Though Felix was the tallest of the lot, Gromnir easily outweighed him in muscle alone, and his mail made him almost unstoppable. The Ratslayer shifted its grip on its enormous golden hammer. The craftsmanship of the weapon was exquisite – runes covered its length in an intricate pattern that formed a dragon’s head, its open jaw embossed on the hammer’s face.

A circle cleared around Gromnir and the Ratslayer – no skaven was brave enough to come between them. The crested rat took a step forward, and then another, and then it rushed forward as it swept its arms downward in an overhand strike. Gromnir deflected the blow with his shield. Any other weapon would have bounced harmlessly off from the dwarf-crafted steel, but the runes on the Flamehammer flared to life and it left a furrow of melted slag across the face of Gromnir’s shield. The hammer face hit the floor hard, kicking up fragments of glowing rock with the impact.

Gromnir gasped as heat seared his arm and shook the shield loose. It broke in two as it hit the ground, the halves reminding Felix of a shattered plate. Undeterred, Gromnir shifted to a two-handed grip on his axe and lashed out in a vicious sweep that would have cut the Ratslayer in two had it connected. Instead, the giant rat dexterously parried Gromnir’s axe with the haft of its hammer, and then stepped forward and struck the Reckoner square in the breastplate. Though it looked to Felix that the blow had been a glancing one, Gromnir bellowed in pain and fell back, clawing at his armour. A glowing red circle had twisted the metal and Felix smelled sizzling flesh. Gromnir was essentially cooking inside his armour.

Wolfhame rushed in to try and cover for the Reckoner, but the Ratslayer shifted opponents seamlessly. Felix noticed that the runes on the Flamehammer seemed to sputter to life and then die again at random, as if the runes that lined its length would not work properly for a skaven. The Ratslayer seemed to recognise when its weapon wasn’t functioning properly – parrying when the runes were dim and attacking ferociously when they flared to life. The battle raged with furious intensity while both fighters exchanged blows. Unfortunately, the white-bearded Reckoner had learned from the Ratslayer’s battle with Gromnir and watched the hammer warily. The Ratslayer took advantage of this distraction, feinting with the weapon and then kicking out with a clawed foot that knocked Wolfhame to the ground.

Felix was the only one left standing, and the Ratslayer’s eyes narrowed as it turned to face him. His palm was sweaty and he shifted his grip on Karaghul. The beast had just dispatched their most powerful fighters in mere seconds. What hope did he have? Though Karaghul was also a rune weapon, it was attuned to dragons and he figured that the likeness of one on the hammer’s head wouldn’t count for much.

The speed of the Ratslayer’s attack belied its size. Felix was barely able to get Karaghul up to parry. Though he’d put all his strength into the block, the skaven was far stronger. Its strike batted aside his sword and passed close enough to his head for the wind of its passing to tug at his hair.

The spot where Karaghul had impacted the golden hammer glowed cherry red and, though it took a moment for the heat to radiate up the blade, Felix gasped in pain. Despite the searing heat, he dared not drop the blade. Instead, he lunged at the Ratslayer and cut it along its thigh. It screeched in pain, but the wound only seemed to anger it, and it struck out again, the hammer passing inches above his head. Once again Felix attacked, stabbing up at its wrist. He was rewarded with a gout of blood, but not enough to disable it.

The Ratslayer shrugged off the wound and raised the hammer overhead. Felix watched it intently, knowing that one blow would send him into Morr’s embrace. Suddenly, the Ratslayer snatched at him with its other hand, catching him hard about the throat. Claws dug into his soft flesh like daggers and he was lifted into the air. He had fallen prey to the same trick that had felled Wolfhame. He’d watched the weapon and not the fighter.

With his air supply cut off, he flailed about desperately with Karaghul, but he wasn’t able to do much damage while he was dangling in the air. The Ratslayer raised its hammer to end him when a voice cut through the crowd.

‘Trying to steal my doom, manling?’

It was Gotrek. Small specks of blood and fur and brain matter that were spattered about his body gave him the impression of a grinning corpse. Sweat had mingled with skaven blood and he left a bloody trail as he advanced into the circle of ratmen, axe at the ready.

The Ratslayer grinned evilly and casually tossed Felix aside. He landed in a heap close to Norri Wolfhame. Air rushed back into his lungs and his vision cleared. He felt like he had a crushed windpipe and it was difficult to swallow, but as he stood a quick inventory told him that aside from a few minor scratches, he was unhurt.

In the centre of the room, Tazuk the Mad was obviously displeased that his army had ceased to fight the intruders, and screeched orders for them to attack. A few brave ratmen began to once again advance on the dwarfs, but the Ratslayer countermanded them with a bellow. He wanted no interference in this battle. Surprisingly, the skaven drew back at his command. Felix wondered who was really in charge here: Tazuk or the Ratslayer.

The two Slayers faced off and slowly began to circle one another, each testing his opponent out with a flurry of blows that was quickly parried. Each time the two weapons connected, sparks showered the floor around them, which Felix hoped were coming from the Ratslayer’s hammer and not Gotrek’s axe. He’d always thought that the runes on the Slayer’s weapon made it invulnerable, but as he watched the metal gradually redden under the Ratslayer’s onslaught he wasn’t so sure. Balir had told them that Karak Tam had produced many of the dwarf race’s most powerful weapons. Could the Flamehammer be a match for Gotrek’s rune axe?

The Ratslayer attacked in earnest now, raining blow after blow on Gotrek, forcing him to give ground reluctantly. The Slayer was by far the strongest dwarf Felix had ever met, but the skaven beast had a dwarf’s frame and an ogre’s muscle. The Flamehammer flashed in golden arcs that descended again and again, each blow lethal, each barely turned aside by Gotrek’s axe.

The Slayer’s weapon was glowing merrily now from blade to haft, and the smell of burning flesh polluted the air. The runes on the Flamehammer occasionally sputtered out, forcing the Ratslayer to retreat, but far less often than in the battle with Norri Wolfhame. It was as if the weapon recognised the power in Gotrek’s axe and was determined to match it with its own. Gotrek’s hands and arms were seared and he grimaced as his weapon betrayed him, but it was a testament to his willpower that he held fast to the axe, even though it had become a burning brand. Felix could feel waves of heat coming off the rune weapon, and it left a trail as it arced through the air. No matter how tough Gotrek was, there would come a point when his hands were seared into useless lumps. After that, it was only a matter of time until the Ratslayer brought him down.

Suddenly, it looked like it was over. The Ratslayer feinted left and Gotrek could not recover in time. The hammer smashed into his right arm with a sickening thud and the sizzle of burning flesh. The Ratslayer leered and, instead of pulling the weapon back for the killing blow, it pressed it further into the wound, revelling in the pain it must be inflicting. Gotrek grimaced in agony. Any other dwarf would have dropped his weapon and collapsed, but Gotrek merely shifted the axe to his left and struck out – not for the Ratslayer, but at the hammer itself.

More sparks burst forth and the Flamehammer was knocked away, leaving Gotrek with a new mark – a brand on his right arm in the shape of a dragon’s grinning mouth.

The Ratslayer roared again and struck out with its hammer. Instead of parrying, Gotrek chopped at the weapon again. Confused by this new tactic, the Ratslayer stepped back, but Gotrek pursued. Instead of targeting the beast, he went after the Flamehammer with a vengeance, chopping at it again and again. On those few occasions when the Ratslayer managed an attack, its hammer was met with full force by Gotrek’s axe, and every time the two weapons met the combatants were showered with sparks. Felix could not tell which weapon was giving them off. The Slayer’s axe was now glowing so ferociously that he couldn’t see if the blade was notched, and the Flamehammer was so intricately carved that any crack was lost amongst the runes.

It was a daring strategy. True to his word, Gotrek was literally pitting his axe against the Flamehammer, gambling that the ancient weaponsmiths of Karak Tam could not have crafted a weapon to match its power. His grimace of pain had twisted into a mad grin as he struck with such fury that the Ratslayer was forced to its knees. Gotrek had become a berserker, crazed with pain and battle lust. He abandoned all pretence of skill and simply beat at the Ratslayer with abandon. The white-hot axe crashed down again and again on the haft of the Flamehammer until, with a flash of brilliant light, it snapped and the rune axe buried itself in the Ratslayer’s skull. So mad was Gotrek with berserker fury that he didn’t even realise that he’d killed his opponent until three strikes later.

He arose from that corpse like some avatar of grim violence, breathing heavily, a silver snake of saliva matting his fiery red beard. Not a creature stirred. Not a sound intruded on that place but the Slayer’s tortured breath. He turned on the other skaven, madly daring them to attack, but not one of them moved. Even Tazuk stood in quiet contemplation of the massacre he’d just witnessed.

A baritone rumble broke the silence, the sound of rocks shifting deep beneath the earth. The vault door shifted behind Tazuk, and then with a gasp came open. A glittering horde emerged, dressed in shimmering gromril armour and wielding sparkling weapons. At their fore stood a pathetic-looking skaven warrior that was no skaven at all. Malbak had taken advantage of the distraction to open the vault, and the captured dwarfs poured forth, hacking into the skaven army from the rear with weapons from the days of yore.

Caught between Gotrek and the Reckoners on one side and the heavily armoured dwarfs on the other, the skaven had no choice but to fight, and the room dissolved into chaotic battle. It was every warrior for himself. Felix started to assume his customary position behind and to the left of the Slayer, but quickly realised that Gotrek was fighting left-handed now and shifted to the other side. If the fight with the Ratslayer had at all tired him out, Gotrek didn’t show it. If anything he drew power from his wounds and cut through the skaven army like a scythe through wheat.

At one point, Felix saw a great cave bear rear out of the melee and strike down Tazuk with a blow from a glowing white staff. He soon realised that it was no cave bear. Ulgar stood above the downed grey seer and struck him again and again with the butt of his staff, with every blow bellowing out, ‘This is for my apprentice, you vermin-loving whoreson!’

All of a sudden, the press of skaven gave way to armoured dwarfs and Felix realised that they’d met the Ironbeards in the middle. Skaven corpses lay all around them. A few survivors were fleeing for the exits as fast as their paws could carry them.

Gromnir was dead. He’d removed his melted armour and fought on bare-chested until a skaven spear had taken him in the gut. He’d killed three more ratmen before he succumbed to his wounds. They found Balir’s body under a pile of skaven, a mad smile still plastered across his face. He’d demanded vengeance for what the rats had done to his clan and he’d achieved it, in the end.

After the remaining dwarfs had counted their dead, they greeted their brothers from the armoury. Though each was resplendent in some of the finest armour Felix had ever seen, when they removed their visors, he could see gaunt, half-starved faces. So weakened were they by hunger and battle that some of them could barely hold an axe.

Of the dwarfs who’d set out from Barak Varr, Norri Wolfhame, Ulgar and Malbak had survived, and each of them had been changed by the horrors they’d witnessed. Only Gotrek, by now immune to horror, was unchanged. He’d cursed Ulgar when the runesmith had insisted on putting his broken arm in a sling and complained bitterly when he put a salve on the brand he’d gotten on his right arm.

Norri Wolfhame waited patiently for Ulgar to finish before he laid into the Slayer. ‘We had a plan, didn’t we? You were supposed to lure them back to the experiment room.’

Gotrek merely shrugged, then winced in pain and rubbed his shoulder. He favoured the Reckoner with a glare. ‘Plans change. Seems to have worked out in the end.’

‘Speaking of the experiment room,’ said Felix, ‘didn’t we…?’

A dull ca-rumph echoed through the hold and the hall through which they’d entered coughed rock-dust. Tebur Tanilson’s keg of black powder had gone off after all. Perhaps it had simply gone off on its own. More likely some of the fleeing skaven hadn’t been able to restrain their curiosity. Either way Glorin would finally sleep in peace.

It was Norri Wolfhame who finally remembered the purpose of their quest. He found Tazuk’s body and pried the Book of Grudges free from the paws that clutched it even in death.

‘Grungni’s hairy beard,’ he exclaimed when he opened it.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Felix.

Instead of answering, Wolfhame passed him the book. The leather felt strange and coarse in Felix’s hands. The tome was very thin, too thin to hold all the grudges of Barak Varr from now to antiquity. When he opened it, he could see why. It was filled with nothing but scrawled characters interspersed with pictures of skaven, sometimes involved in lewd acts.

‘It’s not the Book of Grudges,’ he said simply. He passed it to Gotrek, who leafed through it himself.

‘I don’t believe it!’ said the Slayer.

Malbak stared at the book, then at the carnage that lay all around him. ‘If that’s not the Book of Grudges, then where is it? We searched the vault of Musin Balderk and it wasn’t there.’

Felix stared at Tazuk’s corpse. It had never been a question that the skaven seer was mad. He’d dressed up his own warriors in the skins of dwarfs, and even tried to cross the dawi with his own race in a hideous experiment. He’d tried to emulate the dwarfs in every way, so why create a fake book? Why not try and steal the real one?

Felix creased his brow. Maybe he had. They’d found skaven spoor in the vault of Musin Balderk, after all. But they hadn’t found any skaven. And Gotrek himself had told them that no break-in had occurred.

Suddenly, Felix remembered the huge statue of Grimnir outside the great hall where they’d first engaged the ratmen. And then there were the piles of gold in the next room… What if the ratmen had broken into the vault and not been able to get out?

‘I think I know what happened to the real Book of Grudges,’ he said.

‘You’d better know what you’re doing, manling,’ said Gotrek balefully.

The trip back to the surface had been harrowing. They’d found a store of mouldy cheese and wheat that the skaven hadn’t fouled, and though it wasn’t much, the starving Ironbeards had fallen on it like it was a king’s banquet. Though the skaven had been vanquished, the dwarfs still encountered scattered pockets of resistance as they fought their way to the surface. If not for the weaponry they’d salvaged from the armoury of Karak Tam they might not have made it. While none of the weapons they found was the equal of the Flamehammer, put together with the gromril armour, the small group of half-starved dwarfs was a force to be reckoned with.

Halfway to the surface they’d encountered Vabur Nerinson, who led a small force of dwarf Ironbreakers. After a hearty greeting and a moment of silent contemplation for those who’d lost their lives, he’d escorted them the rest of the way back to the Barak.

Now they stood once more outside the vault of Musin Balderk, thinner in numbers but fatter in great deeds. Though the Ironbeards had returned to their holds after paying tribute to the king in the form of fabulous rune weapons and gromril, Norri Wolfhame, Malbak, Vabur and Ulgar had chosen to remain with Gotrek and Felix.

King Grundadrakk stood nearby, arms folded across his chest, his golden crown sitting uneasily on his bald head.

‘We’ve searched this vault before, Herr Jaeger,’ said the king angrily. ‘I’ll be quite displeased if we have to search it again.’

‘We know exactly what we’re looking for,’ said Felix, nodding at Malbak.

The apprentice engineer had kept his skaven skin and wore it now like a cape – a badge of honour for one who’d had a very short supply when they’d originally left the Barak. He stepped forward and traced the opening runes, humming the correct melody to activate them, and then hauled open the door.

As Grundadrakk watched suspiciously, Felix handed Gotrek a cruder axe than the Slayer’s rune weapon, one that wouldn’t be mourned if it were to suffer damage from what he was about to do with it. Gotrek stepped past the engineer and hefted the weapon. Before anyone could react, he brought it down in an overhead sweep that cut the massive golden statue of Grimnir in half. Three desiccated skaven corpses tumbled out of its interior. It was obvious they’d starved to death.

He bent down and pulled a large and ornately bound book from their clutches. Without saying a word, he marched over to Grundadrakk and shoved it into his hands. They exchanged a long and dangerous look, and then the Slayer spun on his heel and stomped down the hall. Felix turned and followed.

‘I haven’t dismissed you yet,’ bellowed Grundadrakk holding the Book of Grudges in his hands. ‘Where are you going, Gurnisson?’

Gotrek answered without even turning around. ‘To get myself a drink!’

INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH

Frank Cavallo

1

Felix Jaeger ran for his life.

His feet slashed across the muddy ground with every hurried step. His muscles ached, screaming for rest. His lungs burned and his chest heaved. But he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t slow down, not even for a moment. Not even to catch his failing breath.

The beast was near. He could hear it, snarling and howling as it ripped through the thick forest behind him, shrinking the distance between them with each passing instant. The chase had already stretched on for almost an hour, tearing a scar across the dark forests of eastern Talabecland. It was a desperate race, a break-neck pursuit through treacherous woods and dense, overgrown brush-tangles. And it was now drawing to its inevitable, brutal end.

Each second brought the claws and the fangs closer. Every time he risked a glance backwards, Felix could see those same merciless red eyes, glowing against the cold shadows of the Great Forest. No matter how far he ran, their gaze remained locked on him. In moments the monster’s furious gait would finally close the gap. Soon the beast would outlast him and Felix’s exhausted sinews would become nothing more than food for the ravenous predator.

A thistle branch tore away his sleeve as he rushed through a thicket of brambles, cutting across his arm and spilling more blood in his wake. Garbed in what had once been the silken finery of a student at a prestigious university – everything he wore was now shredded and frayed – months of wandering along the fringes of civilization had left him in rags and second-hand scraps. Stains of sweat, mud and blood discoloured the expensive dyes of his ruined clothing.

When he spied a rocky clearing in the forest ahead, only a few steps away, he staggered towards it. The monster’s roaring gait was growing ever louder behind him. Every step made it swell. A rushing river bounded Felix to his right, churning with white rapids, making the frothing water impossible to negotiate. Ahead, at the edge of the stone outcropping, he caught sight of the fat trunk of a great old oak, towering above the uneven ground and reaching up into the dark canopy. He clenched his fists and summoned his last ounce of strength. He charged into the open.

The beast broke through the wall of brambles behind him only an instant later, splitting the nest of thorn bushes. It was a massive, wild canine, its powerful muscles warped and swollen into a drooling grotesquery of fur and flesh. A mane of razor-sharp bristles crowned the mutant hound’s fearsome head, exaggerating the heft of its enormous shoulders. Its thick body surged with hideous growth. Twisted tusks sprouted from every corner of its flea-swarmed, gore-speckled hide. Ridges of bony spines ran down the length of its arched back. Its haunches flexed over the top of scaly, claw-like paws and its scorpion tail whipped wildly through the air behind it.

Bounding in bloodthirsty fury over the last few paces towards Felix, it was on his heels in seconds. Snapping its rabid, frothing jaws, it howled at the warm scent of man-flesh that filled its slimy nose.

Felix leaped for the tree, less than a single step ahead of the hound. He stretched his arms out, as long and as hard as he could muster, straining to reach the lowest-hanging branch and ignoring the pain that rippled through his body. For a moment he was airborne, flying through the woods in a final, frantic effort to escape. His hands clamped down on an arm of grey bark, but his palms were dripping with sweat. One hand slipped from the grip a moment after, leaving him swinging in the wind, hanging on by only a single, precarious grasp.

The hound gave no quarter. It too sprang on its back legs, careening up towards the vulnerable man, suspended by his tenuous hold.

Its dagger claws swiped at his leg, tearing through his boot leather right down to the skin. The hound’s snout chomped at him, gnashing its fangs within inches of Felix’s midsection. He could taste the beast’s hot breath, stinking with the foul odours of carrion as it bayed in maddened, mindless wrath. But the nimble young wanderer held fast. He kicked at the hound’s snout, smashing its nose. Then he swung his entire body back in the other direction, somehow managing to again avoid the beast’s snarling jaws.

As the mutated hound fell back to earth, Felix quickly re-established his grip, using his momentum to haul himself up from below. The snarling beast leaped a second time, but Felix draped his legs over another branch, further elevating himself until he could pull his entire body out of harm’s way.

The ferocious hound remained undeterred, leaping and growling at the base of the old tree, but for the moment, Felix had found his haven. For the moment, he was safe.

2

With the beast still circling beneath, the chase averted for at least a while, Felix reached into his pack. The tattered green travel bag was now his only worldly possession and, as he expected, it was nearly empty. Just a handful of nuts and some dry berries remained among stale crumbs. The stolen bread he’d packed away days before was long gone.

Breathing easily for the first time in a long while, his cheeks were flushed from the hunt. His chest still pounded with the rush of adrenaline as he tried to relax. Perspiration soaked his clothing, dripping from his sleeves and from the long blond locks that had fallen down over his face. He pulled back the mop of hair with a grimy hand, raising his sights to the heavens.

The wet, shoulder-length strands fell down over his collar and the top of his dirty tunic. He was a lean, lithe young man, with a hard-edged jawline and narrow eyes that always seemed to squint just a little. Despite having been on the run for many weeks, his youthful face showed only the earliest hints of a beard, no more than scattered patches of fine whiskers on his chin and a thin bit of a moustache forming above his lip.

No longer a boy, but not quite old enough to grow the beard of a man, as his father used to say.

Felix watched the hound below, licking its fangs with a serpentine red tongue. If it was hunger that motivated the vicious abomination, then he shared at least that much in common with the beast. The gurgling pain deep in his own gut, as empty as his burlap rucksack, hurt worse than any knife wound. A constant, excruciating reminder of how far he’d fallen and how much he’d lost.

It had been days now since he’d been on the run, since he’d awoken with a splitting headache to find himself alone in some of the most dangerous wild places in the Empire. Though he whispered curses to any number of gods, he also could hear his father’s disapproving voice for another reason, scolding him within his head. He well knew what the old man would have said: that he could blame no one but himself for his current string of misfortunes – save perhaps the brigands who had recently knocked him unconscious and relieved him of nearly everything he owned.

He’d known, even at the time, that taking up with a band of strangers in Wurtbad was a strategy not likely to bring him good fortune. But his options had been limited.

The association had begun with the best of intentions. Seeking out a place to drown his sorrows with the last of his coins, he’d stumbled into a dingy tavern on the edge of the city and just as quickly found himself sharing tankards of ale with a motley band of other, apparently like-minded, young ruffians.

It was only after they’d become entangled in a brawl and found themselves chased out of the city that he’d begun to question the wisdom of his choice of company. The exact details, though recent, were rather sketchy in his recollection. It had all happened so fast, and after so much ale.

Someone in his drinking circle of new acquaintances had taken offence at the song being sung by another patron, praising the virtues of Reikland at the expense of all other provinces, if he remembered correctly. That of course, had led to an argument, which had led to a fight, which had turned into an all-out melee in a matter of seconds.

It was only as they fled the scene, overwhelmed by the other patrons and chased even by the city guard, that Felix discovered the identity of his new friends. But by then it was too late to excuse himself from the company of the followers of the infamous local bandit, Therkold Red-Scar.

There was no way he could have foreseen that, having made their escape to a secluded cabin along an old road north-west of the city, Therkold and his men would soon turn on their new-found friend, robbing him of all that he carried and leaving him to die in the wild forest.

Though, as he re-traced the steps in his mind, Felix realized that it all looked quite obvious in hindsight.

Returning to his present predicament, he looked down once more. The hound was still there, but was no longer pacing beneath him. Instead it had begun to look elsewhere, its interest snared by something else, out in the forest shadows beyond the clearing. Its sinister tail elevated, curling up over its body as its ears pointed in an alert posture. Whether scent or sound, Felix did not know, but as he watched, the hound began to creep away, skulking out towards some other victim.

With nothing to eat, and nothing near enough to threaten him – for the moment – Felix Jaeger laid his head back against the moss-covered bark, and closed his eyes.

He didn’t rest for long.

A commotion roused him only moments later. Groggy and still aching in every part of his body, Felix was a moment in responding. But as the noises grew and his senses returned, he scrambled to make up for the lapse.

Shouting dominated the cacophony, angry calls that echoed through the darkness of the forest. They were yet too far away to make out any words, but for the occasional curse or obscenity, hollered above the rest of the calls. A band of brigands perhaps – but men at least, from the sound of distant voices. Trouble to be sure; one never could be certain what kind of rogues were likely to emerge from the shadows of the deep woodlands.

The shouting swelled as the ground shivered and trembled, sending ripples through the trees and the bushes, dislodging rocks from the riverside sediment. Then came the howls. Fierce. Feral. Familiar.

And getting louder – closer, with every second. The hound was returning, and this time it was not alone.

His body pressed against the trunk of the great oak, Felix felt the vibrations. They were rhythmic, not the widespread rumble of a quake, but a repetitive, powerful pounding. When he looked out from his makeshift shelter, his senses were confirmed. The raging hound charged out once more, again emerging from the deep of the woods. Every footfall of the massive beast was like a hammer-strike upon the earth. The wild monster stomped its way right up to the edge of the river, stopping and letting loose a ferocious squeal as it dug its paws into the silt.

But this time, it was not concerned with Felix at all.

It was wounded now. Blood ran in streaks and splotches across its thorny, brown haunches. A dozen arrows and just as many spears pierced its midsection from every angle, lodged beside the spiny growths that jutted out from its hide. Blade-wounds had cleaved chunks of flesh from its shoulders and underbelly, exposing raw muscle and furry flaps of torn skin.

Whatever the beast had gone forth to find, it had met with more than mere prey. It was now the hunted. Felix smiled at the apparent reversal of fortune.

Only a few moments later, after the shouting had risen to a frenzied crescendo, a party of men came up in its tracks. They appeared to be mounted hunters, just as Felix had already guessed. But they were no common trackers or woodsmen. To a man, they were garbed in matching burgundy surcoats, stitched with a gold chevron and double-eagle herald, denoting some noble livery.

Most were armed to the teeth, wielding cumbersome blunderbusses, crossbows, spears and other ranged weapons. But Felix saw that all of them were dishevelled and spattered with mud, their horses panting from their own long pursuit.

As he remained in his secluded spot, careful not to reveal his presence, the hunters dismounted and re-grouped. They fanned out in a semi-circle fashion, closing off any avenue of escape for the wounded beast, its back against the forbidding rapids of the river. Although the men were clearly no strangers to violence, hulking, burly figures all, Felix noticed that they took their orders from the smallest of their number.

His horse, the finest of the group, took up a position behind the centre, and furthest from the hound. It was a regal black stallion, well-fed, meticulously groomed and saddled with an expensive gold-trimmed bridle. Its gear hauled several large packs. The other steeds in the party, however, were equipped differently. Obviously sturdy riding horses all, their accoutrements were just as well-crafted, but lacking such elaborate flourishes, and most showed signs of wear. The leather was broken-in and the shine was worn away from the iron buckles. The animals themselves were powerful geldings and most bore the scars of old wounds etched into their hides.

The young man’s head was the only part of him exposed, and to Felix, his features marked him as a youth probably not much older than himself: pale-skinned, with close-cropped sable hair and a clean-shaven face. His features were sharp, with an angular chin and nose that lent him an almost royal bearing.

Slight of build and careful to remain at a distance, he wore none of the accoutrements of a noble house or of a fighting man. Instead, he was garbed in ill-fitting, voluminous dark robes that seemed to swim around him as he moved, and he carried only a scythe atop a long, crooked staff.

Despite that, he was undoubtedly in command of the armed men who stood before him. He directed the hunters with a combination of shouted orders and deliberate gestures. The last of them was a general order to finish the hunt. With perfect obedience, the men began to move forward, closing their ranks like a vice.

First came a new round of ranged attacks, a bank of arrows fired in a single rush. Then a hail of spears hurled at the beast, as the men moved ever nearer to close quarters. The gunners took aim next, setting their wide-barrelled firearms against their shoulders and firing off the blunderbusses in an ear-splitting spasm of smoke and flame. The beast staggered with every hit. Each new wound blasted out dark, foetid blood and chunks of mutant flesh from its hide. But despite its many injuries, the battered hound stood its ground, spitting acid-mucus from its snout in utter defiance.

The man in the black and violet robes called for a change of tactics. He ordered the force arrayed before him to shift into units. Breaking off into these smaller groups, two or three at a time, the hunters followed up their distance-strikes, racing in with slashing swords held high. They alternated angles at his behest, hitting the beast from the left, then from the right, keeping it moving and bewildered as he directed their movements with shouts from afar.

But still the hound rebuffed every new attack, squealing in misery and ever-swelling wrath as it swatted down a different hunter with each attempt to subdue it. Those not cut in half by its whirling, serrated tail or gored by its upturned fangs were knocked to the side, crushed by the stomping of its claw-like paws. Others were thrown into the air, landing unconscious all over the stony ground of the riverside outcropping.

Felix watched in horror as the entire hunting party was cut down and cast aside until only two remained standing. The first was a grizzled old veteran, barrel-chested with arms like tree trunks. Streaks of black ran like tiger stripes through his bushy grey beard. Behind him, the man who directed the contingent cowered in the shrinking shadow of his lone surviving soldier. They now faced a beast with darkness surging through its blood, raging in a vicious ardour of hunger and pain.

With a fierce canine snarl, the hound charged. The lone remaining warrior heaved a half-broken spear, but the wild-eyed monster brushed it aside like a twig. The tired fighter backed up as the beast closed in on him, and his own feet betrayed him. Tripping blindly on a broken stone, he fell backwards, leaving the hound a clear path to the defenceless young man in the strange robes.

For a long, tense moment, the horrific beast paused, as though unsure of which vulnerable prey to strike first. While the veteran struggled to come to his feet, disarmed and dangerously near to the hound, he appeared careful to make no sudden movements that might provoke it into a final assault.

As he did, the man in the robes behind was not so still. Instead, he lifted his scythe, waving it as he recited some incantation that drew the beast’s crimson stare. For an instant, the young man seemed emboldened as a spell wove itself around his staff in a swirl of purple fog. He then swung his scythe, casting off a blade of sparkling mist. It sliced down upon the beast, breaking like sea-waves upon its hide.

For a brief moment, Felix thought the battle won, but he soon realised that his faith was misplaced. The hound was paralysed for but an instant before it shook off the mist-attack, snarling and coughing at the fading fog, though otherwise unharmed. The young spell-caster’s eyes widened at the failure. His face suddenly panicked. Again he tried to launch an attack, rushing through the complex incantation once more. But his second salvo proved even weaker than the first. This one fizzled in mid-air before the mist-wave even reached the hound.

The beast growled and then roared, its attention now focused solely on the young man. Though the pale youth raised his scythe in some feeble attempt at defence, the summoned mist seemed to dissipate from around him as the hound closed in for the kill.

Though exhausted, starving and weary, Felix could not sit idle any longer. He leaped from his seclusion, shouting with his hoarse throat to draw the beast away from the unarmed man.

It proved effective enough. The young man managed to duck aside and the hound overran him, leaving his rear flanks exposed for an instant. It was a chance Felix did not waste. Snatching a sword from the hand of a fallen hunter, he leaped towards the beast that had sought to make a meal of him, intent on having a measure of revenge for himself.

Well-schooled in the formal art of the duel, but not a hunter by training, Felix slashed across the hound from behind, slowing its recovery enough to allow him to kick a second discarded blade to the fallen soldier. The grizzled veteran clambered to his feet as his youthful master once again ducked behind. Their partnership unspoken, but sealed nonetheless in that moment, the two men pressed the attack.

Felix moved with the speed and grace of a practiced hand, slipping away from the beast’s mindless charges and slicing through its already broken hide with every turn. The other man proved his mettle as well, stabbing and hacking at every vulnerable part of the hound; a trained hunter who showed no fear in the face of a ferocious enemy.

In moments, the pair had the monster broken, exploiting its existing wounds and inflicting enough fresh ones to drain what remained of its strength. Yet the hound still did not relent. Huffing and wheezing, it lumbered towards Felix in a desperate final attack. Feinting and parrying in the manner of all expert duellists, Felix opened a gash across its soft throat, spilling black blood onto the mossy rocks and sending it down, its front legs crumpling beneath it.

Before he could shift his footing, the other man leaped. He jumped atop the hound, raised his blade to the sky then plunged it through the creature’s skull, cracking it open and rendering the death-blow. The lifeless carcass quickly collapsed into a heap underneath him.

His bearded face and jerkin spattered with dark blood, the man looked up in triumph. He smiled with a mouth full of crooked teeth as the foul vapours from the beast’s innards bathed him in death-steam.

‘Ernst Erhard,’ he said, by way of introduction. ‘Sergeant-at-arms for Count Otto von Halkern.’

‘But you may direct your queries to me,’ the other man added, stepping up from behind now that the danger was past. ‘I am Draeder von Halkern. Son of the aforementioned count.’

Felix responded with the polite half-bow of a gentleman, introducing himself.

‘Felix Jaeger, and I am…’

The thought occurred to him in mid-sentence that he had not had cause to speak his own name in a formal introduction since his recent disgrace and expulsion, and he stopped short of using either his father’s name or that of his former university.

‘At your service, my lord,’ he finally concluded.

3

They only rested for a moment, catching their breath beside the steaming, rancid carcass. There was no celebration. No cheers or songs of triumph. Only a hard-earned repose.

The pause allowed Felix the chance to take a longer look at the uncommon attire of his new-found companion. It was clear to him now that Draeder was not only the son of a nobleman, but was indeed a wizard of some sort.

In contrast to his apparent youth however, the silk and velvet robes he wore looked quite old, with frayed edges and dyes faded from the passing of years. Totems and talismans of a macabre character adorned his mantle and his sashes; white skull insignia decorated his pointed sleeves and his boot-length waistcoast. The gold trim on his breechcloth and vest were stitched with human bones woven into the worn fabric. Arcane runes ran in columns down the length of his cloak, but his cowl was absent of decoration, a hood of purest black that made the man’s pallid complexion seem all the more stark.

What appeared to be an hourglass hung from his belt, the timepiece dangling as another man might wear a sword. The only thing he carried that looked like a weapon was the reaper’s scythe, a wicked, curved blade affixed atop a crooked wooden staff.

Their respite lasted only a few short minutes, just long enough for Erhard to recoup his strength before Draeder ordered that he return to his duties. Despite his obvious exhaustion, the grizzled sergeant obeyed with little more than a nod.

The first order of business was to see after the remainder of the von Halkern men. In this effort, Felix joined Erhard, if for no other reason than Draeder appeared oddly uninterested in doing so himself. Instead, the young man in the fine, old robes remained beside the beast whose demise he had done so little to assist, while Felix and Erhard went about tending to the fallen.

The sergeant was a stout man, not particularly tall but very heavily built, his massive arms and broad chest evident beneath his hauberk and mail. The hair was thinning atop his pate and his tanned face had the round fullness common to men at middle age. His nose was wide and crooked. It looked to have been broken more than once. The most recent injury had healed a permanent kink across the bridge. The dappled beard he wore covered most of the lower half of his face; even his mouth was hidden beneath his thick moustache.

His gear was well-worn and his hands were callused, the signs of a life spent hard at work. Half a dozen blades and two longswords were affixed to his belt, and even with his horse nearby he carried a pack at all times that would strain the spines of most other men. Though all appearances suggested him to be far more experienced and capable than Draeder, he nonetheless went about his work following the younger man’s orders with never a complaint, even as his master appeared to sit idly by.

Some of the men they were able to rouse without much effort, merely knocked unconscious by the force of the hound’s blows but otherwise unharmed. Of the dozen who had entered the fray, they found four in reasonably good condition.

Three more of the men were still alive, but wounded and requiring aid. The best that could be offered was river water to wash out their lacerations and bandages from Erhard’s pack to bind them. Felix could already tell that one of the men was hurt too badly to survive without more expert care. In its absence, he’d be dead within a day.

The other five men lay dead, their bloody, savaged bodies bearing witness to the brutality with which their lives had been taken: throats torn out, flesh ripped from their bones, disembowelled or bled nearly dry from too many wounds to count.

At Erhard’s direction, the able-bodied four and Felix joined him in the task of corralling the horses and then interring their lost comrades in shallow, muddy graves along the edge of the treeline. As they finished that grim work, Felix accompanied the bearded old sergeant back to the river’s edge, where Draeder remained beside his peculiar prize.

Erhard made a round of introductions once the group was re-gathered.

‘Young Felix, these are some of the most trusted servants of House von Halkern,’ Erhard said, presenting them as they stood, in a kind of informal muster. ‘These first two dangerous looking men are Reinhard and Volker.’

The two acknowledged him with polite head nods. The hunters were obviously veterans, not as experienced as Erhard, but men who bore the scars of battle across their skin and their similarly well-worn gear. The first was thick-armed and compact, the second taller but no less hearty.

Erhard came next to the most fearsome looking of them all, a dark figure with a craggy face and a patch over one eye. He stared out from under a brooding mass of long, black hair and a forked beard. His brigandine and surcoat were stained with both blood and soot, and his gauntlets and pauldrons were studded with dozens of iron spikes.

The man beside him however, standing almost in the other’s shadow, looked to be even younger than Felix. His hair was dark, but clipped much shorter than the others, and like Felix his beard had not yet grown in fully. His eyes were brighter and wider than the man next to him, although the two had very similar, narrow faces and resembled one another in a certain respect.

‘These two are my twin attack dogs,’ Erhard joked. ‘The brothers, Strang and Torsten. Thick as thieves and utterly inseparable, try as we might. Strang is one of my most experienced men, and Torsten is the youngest of the company, but we expect great things from him given that he’s learning from a sibling with such distinguished service.’

The smallest of the hunters, Torsten’s frame was thinner than the rest and his armour bore none of the dents and stains that soiled that of his fellows. While his elder brother said nothing, his greeting was the most enthusiastic of them all.

‘Good to have another hand at the ready,’ he said, although the others grumbled a little at his eagerness.

A newly-built fire centered their makeshift camp, some distance from the festering hound carcass, in the relative safety of a larger stone outcropping along the riverside. The beast seemed like something akin to a trophy to the young wizard, and he at first appeared reluctant to leave its side. Indeed, he seemed enrapt by the fallen monster, admiring every warped corner of its flesh as a cultured patron might study a painting or sculpture.

Finally, having concluded his examination, Draeder von Halkern left the dead creature and joined his men around the fire, seating himself atop the highest rock in sight, as if assuming the mantle of a conquering hero. The sun had crept lower on the horizon by then, bringing a dour dusk to the party of men that was now halved in strength. As the brothers assumed sentry duty, Erhard retrieved a flagon from the pack he kept on his horse, and he proposed a solemn toast to those of their number who now lay beneath the ground.

When it was done, Draeder announced what they all suspected. They would make their camp there for the night, in the relative safety of the clearing among the rocky outcropping along the river.

‘You’re quite good with a blade,’ Draeder said, as Felix sat down. ‘Had you not joined our cause, we all might have fallen victim to this vile creature.’

Erhard passed the flagon to Felix, who took a long drink of the wine inside it, despite its spoiled, vinegary taste.

‘I should be thanking you,’ Felix answered. ‘That beast nearly made a meal of me, before you came upon it.’

Draeder smiled.

‘Indeed, that abomination has been rampaging throughout these lands for some time now, often straying into my father’s estates nearby. Many folk living on my father’s grounds found themselves facing the same difficulty as you. The rest were not so fortunate in the end, however,’ he said.

‘We’ve been chasing this hound for days, tracking it deep into the haunted woods,’ Erhard added.

The old sergeant lit an ivory pipe and began puffing a sweet-smelling smoke.

‘So it seems this was indeed something of a common cause for us both,’ Felix replied.

‘Well then, on behalf of House von Halkern, we are happy to have been of assistance to you,’ Draeder said. ‘That does beg the question however, of how you came to be all the way out here at all. These dark woods are haunted by many dangers. Monstrous beasts are not even the worst of them. It’s no place for wandering alone, even for one so skilled with a sword as you appear to be.’

Felix grimaced, and he took a second, longer draught from the flagon.

‘Let’s simply say I have no one but myself to blame, and leave it at that,’ he replied.

Draeder laughed.

‘Forgive me, good sir,’ Felix continued. ‘But I must tell you, though I am not native to these lands, I recognise the name of your noble house. Yet something troubles me.’

‘And what is that?’

Felix paused for a moment, unsure if his next words would bring offence. Given the circumstances, he finally decided the chances were unlikely.

‘The fierce reputation of Count von Halkern is known even in my home in the north of the Empire,’ he said. ‘Yet I must ask, I know of only two sons born to the man. One is said to have been killed in battle, and of the other they say his combat prowess is the equal of his sire.’

Draeder smiled, flashing his teeth in a knowing, almost clever grin. He did not seem offended at all by Felix’s insinuation.

‘Forgiveness is not required, but you’ve not actually asked a question,’ he said.

Felix nodded, grimaced a little as he took another drink, then put his manners aside entirely.

‘You do not appear to be either a ghost… or a warrior,’ he said.

Draeder laughed.

‘Still not quite a question, but diplomatic nonetheless,’ he said. ‘You clearly come from a refined background.’

‘My father is a merchant, fairly well off indeed,’ Felix replied. ‘Though we are somewhat… estranged at the moment.’

‘Ah, then perhaps we have even more in common than either of us has yet realised,’ Draeder replied. ‘But you have been patient with me, and I have not yet answered your query. I am indeed the son of Count Otto von Halkern, and you are correct as to the identity of his first two sons.’

‘His first two?’

‘I am the much less well known third son of House von Halkern,’ Draeder said. ‘The one my father has never been proud to speak of, and so the one you – and most people – have never heard of.’

‘And why is that?’

Draeder laughed.

‘You’ve seen me facing a beast, would you ever mistake me for the son of a renowned warrior?’

‘He disowned you because you couldn’t fight?’ Felix asked, making no attempt to disguise his amazement.

‘Oh, I never said I have been disowned. At least not formally,’ Draeder answered with a sly smirk.

Felix noticed Erhard grumbling a little at the suggestion. Felix downed more of the lousy wine.

‘No, the situation that brings me to this place is quite a bit more complicated than that,’ Draeder continued. ‘But it is true, my father and I are not on the best of terms, and our falling out did indeed begin with my failure to take to the ways of swords and armour.

‘I was always more given to the study of books than to blades, you see. That alone made me the least of my brothers in my father’s eyes, as you can well imagine. Eventually I left his estates, looking for a way to regain my lost favour through other avenues. That led me to Altdorf, and to the Colleges of Magic.’

‘So you are a wizard, then?’ Felix asked. ‘I had thought as much, given your attire. But I must admit, I have rarely been acquainted with users of magic. And your spell against the hound was somewhat…’

Erhard muttered something under his breath, which Felix couldn’t quite make out. Draeder did seem to hear it though, and his face tensed. Felix thought he sensed a slightly defensive turn in his voice as he glanced over at his sergeant with a disapproving eye.

‘There is quite a reasonable explanation for my apparent lapse against that beast,’ he finally replied. ‘Controlling the winds of magic is a complex and difficult endeavour, and one not easily understood by common folk. The hound was clearly more powerful than I expected. Had I known the extent of the dark influence upon it, of course I would have chosen a different approach.’

Draeder seemed to be very nearly boasting, despite what had seemed to Felix an obvious failure. Again, Felix noticed Erhard bristle in the dim, though the sergeant said nothing more.

‘Should I face such a beast again,’ Draeder continued, ‘I promise you the correct spell would dispatch it with little effort. My studies with the Amethyst Order have taught me many ways of dealing with such abominations.’

Felix’s face went blank. Without thinking, he recoiled, edging away from his new companions. He looked again at Draeder’s attire, as if for the first time. The skulls. The bones woven through aged fabric. The sinister black runes.

‘The Amethyst Order?’ he said. ‘You’re a student of… death magic?’

Draeder nodded. He took a reassuring tone, clearly seeking to put Felix’s trepidation to rest.

‘Do not be frightened by that, my friend,’ he said. ‘Whatever you may have heard, the Amethyst Order is not a cabal of necromancers. The study of death is the study of change. Of endings and beginnings. Consider, for a moment, how can one truly understand life, if one does not also comprehend the mysteries of death?’

The explanation seemed to satisfy Felix. He reflected on the notion with a furrowed brow – and yet more wine.

‘I had never viewed it in such a fashion, but there does seem to be some sense in that, I grant you,’ he finally said. ‘Did your father not see the wisdom in that philosophy?’

Draeder laughed.

‘He might, if I ever actually converse with him over it. But as yet I have not done so. You see, I have only just recently returned from the Order after several years spent cloistered away, deep in study. Shortly after my return to my father’s castle we heard tell of this hound terrorising the local villages.’

‘The count dispatched us to see after the threat,’ Erhard said. ‘He ordered Draeder to lead the expedition. Though I had not laid eyes on him in several years, I knew him at first sight.’

‘A challenge, no doubt. For that is the kind of man my father has always been. And so I joined my old comrades on the hunt, to perhaps prove to him that my training has been worth something after all,’ Draeder said. ‘In my father’s estimation it is no source of pride to have a son studying something as cowardly as magic. But, now I can return to him having led the expedition that has slain a threat to his people. My sincere hope is that such a feat might erase some of the disappointment he feels at my course in life.’

Felix’s face changed. His eyes brightened, and he lifted his head.

‘Disappointment? You feel like you’re an embarrassment to him?’ he said. ‘I know exactly how that feels, as it happens.’

Draeder von Halkern put down his flagon.

‘Do you now?’ he said, a curious and rather serious glint in his eye, despite the effects of the drink.

‘As well as any man in the Empire, I’d bet,’ Felix answered, rising to his feet. The wine was affecting him now, and he began to speak as though giving a half-drunken speech in a tavern. ‘I know how it feels to do precisely what he says, just what he tells you that you have to do to satisfy honour and tradition. I know how it feels to try to do everything you can to live up to his exalted name – and to be kicked in the face for the effort.’

Draeder extended Felix a hand.

‘You must tell me of this,’ he said.

That was all the incentive Felix required.

‘Three years ago he sent me off to study at university. I remember how his face beamed when I left, so proud of having a son enrolled at such an esteemed institution. We have had our disagreements since then, of course. My passion for poetry was not to his liking, for example. But we remained on good terms, until the events of this spring.’

‘What was that?’

‘Another student and I became embroiled in a dispute. The details are rather unimportant now; that it involved a woman and too much wine is all you need to know. This fellow crossed a line, widening the dispute to offer insult to my family and my heritage. It was an affront I could not tolerate. My entire life, I had been striving to earn the respect of my family, and this spoiled aristocrat spat upon my very name! I could not stand for it.’

His voice fell still for a moment. His eyes looked out to the shadows of the darkening woods, as if seeing the events unfold against that black tableau. His hand drifted to the hilt of his sword.

Draeder guessed what came next.

‘You duelled,’ he said. ‘And given the skills I have witnessed you employ this day, I’d imagine this other man stood very little chance.’

‘I’ve never been one to run from a fight. I gave him just what he deserved. I ran him through like a pig, in the main square, in sight of all,’ Felix answered.

‘And for that, they expelled you,’ Draeder replied.

Felix nodded.

‘Word made it to my father before my belongings were even collected. He cared nothing for the circumstances, nothing for our honour. He cared only that I was expelled. I had besmirched our good name, he wrote to me. And I am thus forbidden to return home.’

‘Then we are kindred souls indeed,’ Draeder said.

‘You appear to have fared better in your exile than I,’ Felix answered. ‘Since my dismissal I have done nothing but wander. I have taken up with brigands and outlaws and many a wench, but most nights my aimless journeys have left me with without so much as a roof over my head. At this moment, I cannot even say with authority where in the Empire I am.’

‘Then you are in luck, on both accounts,’ Draeder replied.

‘What do you mean?’

‘For one, I can not only tell you exactly where you are, I can show you.’

He began to reach behind him, putting a hand into one of his travel bags. Erhard reached across to clutch at the young wizard’s arm, lowering his voice to a whisper that Felix could not quite hear. But Draeder waved off his sergeant’s hushed concerns with a dismissive gesture.

‘This man saved your life, as well as mine,’ he said. ‘What else could he do to earn your trust?’

Erhard nodded, and returned to smoking his pipe.

From within a leather saddlebag that he had placed behind him, Draeder pulled out a thick scroll of parchment, brittle from age. He untied the scarlet bands holding the scroll closed, and then unfurled it very slowly, holding it with care, as one might handle a most treasured heirloom. The edges were uneven, ragged and frayed and charred in spots from some long-ago fire.

The inside surface of the vellum was stained with splotches and discolorations of every sort: blemishes from wine, soot and possibly even blood, all of which bespoke the document’s great antiquity. The centre of it was covered in faded lines, sketching out a design in old black ink that Felix recognised as some kind of ancient cartography. Unlike the modern maps with which he was familiar though, this scroll was etched in a highly stylised script, with artfully drawn mountains and rivers alongside images of serpents and horrific daemons.

The map quite literally reeked of age. When Draeder rolled it open, a musty odour spilled out, along with hints of dust and mould.

The young wizard held it out for Felix to see. He pointed at a section near the bottom, just north of where two great rivers separated, near where a smaller third tributary split off from the eastern stream.

‘The river that runs beside us is the Stir,’ he said, then touching his finger to a single spot. ‘We are roughly here, in southern Talabecland, on the edge of some of the deepest woods in the Great Forest.’

Felix studied the map. The geography looked vaguely familiar, but the notations and script were of a sort he had never seen before.

‘That settles one question, then. What of the other?’ he asked.

‘As it happens, my journey back to Castle von Halkern was not quite a direct route. Instead, the mission upon which I was engaged when I returned to my father’s house was only half-finished when this beast intruded upon our lands.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Felix said.

‘Quite simple, really,’ Draeder answered. ‘I was recently dispatched from the Amethyst Order on an official, albeit rather secret, errand, to seek an item of great value that my superiors believe is to be found to the north-west of here. That is the purpose of this map, in fact, for it is our guide through these most perilous of lands. I had at first intended to purchase the services of some hired swords to assist me in the effort, but having secured this contingent of my father’s men, that soon became unnecessary.’

Draeder rolled the map scroll back up, returning it to his pack before clasping his hands, bringing them together under the wide sleeves of his wizard’s robes. His eyes narrowed.

‘However, you do seem to be just the sort I was looking for,’ he continued. ‘In fact, I’d say you more than passed the audition.’

Felix lifted his eyes at the suggestion.

‘Are you offering me a job?’ he asked. ‘Doing what, exactly? My most recent attempts at employment have not gone as well as I would have hoped.’

Draeder smiled.

‘We have just this evening buried five of my men, and three more nurse deep wounds. This quite obviously leaves my party rather short on manpower. I could use someone with your kind of skills. I have been promised by my superiors in Altdorf a chest of gold to be split among the mercenaries who accompany me. Quite a decent haul for a young man such as yourself,’ he said.

‘And just what is this mission that you’re on?’ Felix asked.

Draeder looked to his comrades, then leaned in closer, bringing his face so near to the campfire that his pale skin was cast in a deep, blood-red shade. His voice fell to a deliberate stage whisper.

‘I’m searching for something that even my fellow wizards of the Amethyst Order have never seen, though they have sought it for centuries: a book that holds the key to unlocking the deepest mysteries of life and death,’ he said.

‘I must confess, I do not know much of magic at all, whether contained in books or otherwise,’ Felix answered.

Again, Draeder took a measured tone in response.

‘I assure you, Felix, my intentions are only the purest. What I told you of the College of Amethyst guides everything we do. The book I seek is a very old and very important text. It was compiled ages ago and it contains many of the oldest spells known, as well as some of the most powerful methods to harness even the most obscure currents of magic.’

‘Unschooled as I am in such things, I will admit that it sounds like quite an important volume,’ Felix said.

Draeder laughed.

‘An uncommon gift for understatement! That could only come from a poet,’ he joked. ‘Indeed, my new friend, anyone who possesses a book such as the one we seek, if they also command a sufficient knowledge of the lore of death, would be the greatest of assets to the Empire.’

‘How is that?’

‘While many wizards do fight alongside the armies of the Empire, I am quite obviously unsuited for combat. But what if I were to stand with them in command of forces that could shield the armies from death itself? Imagine if all those who did take up arms in the Emperor’s name were protected from the cold touch of mortality. Our warriors would never fall to the swords of the enemy. Our homeland would be made stronger than ever. Invincible, perhaps.’

Felix, whether because of the drink or the persuasive tone of Draeder von Halkern, could find no fault with the man’s reasoning. The sound of adventure seemed to brighten his eyes and lift his already brimming spirits.

‘Well then, consider me among your party,’ he said. ‘Never let it be said that I shy away from action.’

Erhard laughed, taking the flagon from him.

‘Awfully quick to rush into things, aren’t you?’ the old sergeant said, his voice raspy and rough from a lifetime of pipe smoke.

Felix almost took offence at the suggestion, but elected to find humour in it.

‘I suppose that’s one of the reasons I’m here, come to think of it,’ he replied.

‘Well, you’d best be careful. One of these days, you might rush into something you can’t get out of so easily,’ Erhard said.

The eager young wizard, shrugged off his sergeant’s worries.

‘Don’t listen to him, Felix. He’s an old timer, his best days are behind him. The future belongs to men like us, men willing to venture into the unknown, to take risks. And even if the gold were not enough to persuade you, consider this… It could mean even more to you than money,’ Draeder said.

‘How do you reckon?’ Felix asked.

‘Think of how you would be viewed by your family if you were to assist me,’ he continued. ‘If you were to return not as a disgraced student, but as the hero who helped bring such power to the armies of the Empire? How could your family refuse a son celebrated by the Emperor himself?’

Felix pondered again, his mind now awash with suggestions, a flicker of lost hope and the thrill of both money and adventure quickening his pulse. He looked over to Erhard, then back to Draeder, before answering with the kind of certainty only known to the young – or the foolish.

‘Like I said before, count me in,’ he said.

4

The gloaming of dusk had faded, followed by the roaring scarlet of the campfire. So too had the conversation. Eventually the flagons had run dry, and the old familiar numbness had crept into every corner of his exhausted limbs. Then Felix Jaeger put aside the horrors and the mundane triumphs of his day. He found a spot to rest his tingling head, grabbed a ratty old cloak to wrap himself in, closed his eyes and finally slept.

What awakened him this time, many hours later in the darkest still of the night, was neither violence nor carnage. It was something far stranger, at once more wondrous and troubling than anything he could have imagined.

It was a voice. A hissing sort of call that seemed to cry out from a distance, as though half-buried in the whistling of the cold night wind. At first its silky, spectral whispers soothed him, rousing Felix gently from sleep. Just enough to announce their presence, without disturbing the peace of the evening.

He didn’t even lift his head, merely listening to the strange echoes as they rose and fell in a soft and slinking symphony; the peculiar music of the haunted shadows.

But the echoes in the dim did not remain tranquil. What had been one voice soon doubled, and then doubled again, until the single tone had swelled into a ghostly chorus, bringing a multitude of eerie, rasping voices. Somehow, they all seemed to shout and whisper at once.

The change roused Felix ever more slightly. The numbing effect of the wine combined with the utter exhaustion in his bones had sent him into the deepest of slumbers, and he came around to no more than a muddled, groggy haze. The gauze of a deep repose veiled his eyes like a curtain of mist.

When he looked out, he saw only gloom. Black skies over dark woods. The fire was all but dead. Gone were the crimson and golden glimmers of the camp hearth. Only the milky shine of moonglows now lit the river banks.

The rest of the men huddled in their cloaks, nestled in every crevice and nook of the rocky outcropping. Most snored in a similarly deep slumber. Even Ernst Erhard lay still, wrapped in his woollen shroud beneath the great oak tree.

Draeder von Halkern, alone among them all, was not at rest.

Dressed in his capacious robes, black and violet and emblazoned with the grisly designs of the Amethyst Order, Draeder was outside of the camp. He’d hiked down-river, just barely in sight. He looked to be standing over the carcass of the hound, ministering like a priest over a coffin. The old leather-bound volume was open in front of him again, set upon the flank of the hound like a lectern. He seemed to be reading from the pages, as though speaking to an invisible congregation at an altar that stank of death. He chanted and made blessings, and each of them found its echo in those ghostly whispers that somehow carried on the wind itself.

Neither Draeder’s words nor the answers spoken from the deep recesses of the night were in a language Felix understood. It wasn’t even one he had ever heard spoken. The words were utterly foreign, almost serpentine in their rhythm, in the elegant way each syllable wove its way into the next. To the ear of a poet, attuned to the subtleties of tempo and meter, Draeder’s recitations wove an intricate tapestry of voice, made all the more exotic by its inherently incomprehensible character.

For a long while, Felix watched. And he listened, unsure even if what he was witnessing in the hazy pre-dawn hours was real or merely a dream. He dared not disturb the strange rite, fearful of making so much as a whimper lest he draw the attention of the spirits spilling forth from the darkness. So he continued to watch, quiet and still – until, inexplicably, everything stopped.

After a long and twisted incantation, Draeder paused. He looked down over the length of the beast, as though studying it yet again. Its wounds already festered with pus and the first stages of decay, a process of putrefaction only accelerated by the dark forces that had corrupted its form.

Once his eye settled on a section of the beast-corpse, near the mane of thorny bristles that framed the hound’s great head, he reached a hand into the folds of his mantle. From within the dark robes he drew a single-edged sword, more like a woodsman’s machete than a fighting weapon. Draeder then knelt down above the hound carcass, and proceeded to hack the largest of the beast’s tusks from its hide.

The carving was not easy, the tusk rooted deep in the hound’s thick skin. Draeder chopped and sawed at it with more effort than Felix had witnessed him employ at any other task. When he finally managed to cut it free, he returned to his feet, clutching the severed tusk like a precious gem. Dark, congealed blood clung to his hands like clumps of black jelly and oil. It dripped down on to his sleeves and splattered across his pale face.

The student of the Amethyst College then picked up his scythe, which had rested next to him as he worked. Caring little for the stains on his hands, he wrapped a leather thong around the base of the tusk, then lashed it to the very crest of his reaper.

‘And now the blood,’ he announced, speaking to the winds again, but now in common Reikspiel. Once more he consulted the pages of the aged book in front of him. ‘I summon the purple winds of Shyish. May the blood of the living and the blood of the dead now come together within its cold embrace.’

Draeder turned his blade. Slicing open the palm of his own hand, he let blood leak out from the slit in his pale flesh. It fell on the tusk, staining the ivory dark red and slathering the wild beast’s horn atop his staff.

Another incantation followed. Once again, the winds answered. But this time, they did more than echo his inscrutable verses. Descending from the clouds, a column of mist centred around the blood-bathed tusk. Every word from Draeder’s lips spurred the winds, turning them around the scythe.

As the air churned, the blood-speckled wind seemed to ignite, first spinning the red-purple tusk at the centre of its vortex, then sparking flames that soon overwhelmed the entire crest of the scythe-staff. Soon the glows merged into a single column of flickering purple flame, a ghostly violet fire that burned atop the tusk-crowned reaper.

The violet fire gave off no smoke. It made no sound. Its light was unreal, cold and unforgiving and unlike true fire.

Draeder lifted the flaming scythe into the sky, piercing the swirl of ghostly, whispering winds. The fire climbed, as though fuelled by the ghostly congress of purple wind. It grew and grew until the violet flame rose up into the clouds, roiling with dark lightning.

It all built to a crescendo, until the flame could ascend no more. Then the churning winds collapsed back down on the violet flame, sending a wave of phantom light surging across the outcropping. The whispering voices screamed in that moment, their ghostly calls fading away just as the flash of flame.

When it was done, all that remained was Draeder von Halkern, standing beside the hound corpse, holding his scythe in the air as he bathed beneath the purple flame. His eyes glowed with the same foul fire.

Felix clenched his muscles, too frightened to move. He squeezed his eyes shut, but despite his exhaustion, he barely slept at all the rest of the night.

5

When the men began to stir just after dawn, Felix remained in his place. He waited until all the others had arisen before getting himself up. When he saw Draeder standing upon the edge of the river with his scythe in hand, he couldn’t help but stare. He puzzled over the events of the past night, questioning his own perceptions.

If it had been a dream, then it was the most vivid of his life. If it had been real, then Draeder von Halkern was indeed something more than the ineffectual young wizard he’d saved from the jaws of a rabid hound.

In the light of day, there was no hint of the purple flame, and the winds were calm. But when Felix looked closer, he noticed that atop Draeder’s reaper-blade there was indeed a single bloody tusk affixed to the staff. When the wizard turned in his direction, and for an instant caught him staring, Felix quickly looked away.

A chill ran through him.

For close to an hour the men gathered up their things in near silence, struck camp and prepared to move out. None of them even seemed to know of it, unless all of them held their tongues out of some measure of fear, as Felix himself did. He was not inclined to broach the subject, either way.

Two of the wounded had died over the night, and the matter of their final rites brought the first real discussion of the day. Draeder appeared anxious to move on, and initially ordered them left where they lay. When that met with some protest from Erhard, he further suggested dumping their bodies in the river. Again, Erhard argued with his master, until he finally relented.

As the others assisted the last surviving wounded man, Walder, to make ready for travel, Felix helped to bury the dead once again. He and Erhard carried one of the bodies out to the edge of the woods, digging a shallow grave in the wet ground just as they’d done the day before. But this time, when Felix put down his spade and lifted the body to lower it into the dirt, Erhard stopped him. Instead, the old sergeant knelt down before his fallen comrade.

Felix at first assumed it was a moment of solemnity, a final farewell to a lost friend. He bowed his head in a show of sympathy, but Erhard soon disabused him of such sentimental notions.

The veteran began pulling off the dead soldier’s regalia, first his hooded cloak, surcoat and belt, before unstrapping his iron gauntlets and studded leather jerkin. He looked up at Felix with a wry grin.

‘Perhaps you’d be willing to lend a hand,’ he said, ‘Given that this is for your benefit.’

Felix knelt down too, and Erhard passed him the gauntlets and sword belt from the dead man.

‘Put on as much as you can, whatever fits is now yours.’

‘I’m not sure I feel right taking your dead friend’s gear,’ Felix said.

‘Where we’re going, you’ll need every bit of it. Trust me, it does him no good to hold on to anything now.’

Erhard made sure to take every bit of useful material, including a fine pair of woodsman’s boots, several knives, some armour and a chainmail shirt. Felix found that most of it did fit him, and the rest required only a few adjustments.

‘I admire what you did back there,’ he said, as he donned the dead man’s attire.

Erhard seemed confused by the comment.

‘What’s that, exactly?’

‘You challenged Draeder, in front of the men, no less,’ Felix said. ‘He is your lord, is he not?’

Erhard nodded, but with a shifting smile that hinted at sarcasm, if not outright resentment.

‘He is the son of my lord,’ he said. ‘I indulge him as part of my service to his father, and because I have always done as much for him.’

‘So you’ve known the man a long while?’

‘Since he was a boy,’ Erhard replied. ‘I’ve served in his father’s livery for more than twenty years now.’

‘You watched him grow up then?’

Erhard scoffed a bit. He looked up from the dour task of grave-digging to cast an eye at Draeder, standing at a distance with his head held high along the riverside.

‘I watched him get older, let me say that,’ he answered. ‘None of us were certain if he would ever grow up.’

‘He seems to have done quite well for himself though,’ Felix answered. ‘Sent forth on this official mission by one of the Colleges of Magic.’

Erhard came to his feet, stuck his shovel into the mud and rested his hands atop the shaft.

‘Just between you and I,’ he continued, in a lower voice. ‘We were all more than a little surprised when he returned to these lands recently, fully attired in the mantle of the Amethyst wizards.’

Felix was intrigued, if not a bit indignant.

‘Just like his father, you expected him to fail as well?’

Erhard shook his head.

‘I’ve probably said too much already.’

Felix put a hand on his shoulder.

‘If I’m to travel with your party into these haunted woods, and to take up arms with you again, do I not deserve to know at least a little of what you do?’

Erhard agreed.

‘There’s nothing to tell, really,’ he said. ‘I’ll only say that… Draeder was simply never the type to follow through with anything. If there was an easy road, you could always count on him to take it.’

‘He cheated?’

‘He did whatever he needed to do, whatever the situation required to accomplish what he wanted – usually with the least amount of effort. So you can understand that it came as a bit of a shock to me when, after vanishing with no word for several years, he returned not as an acolyte or an apprentice, but having claimed the hard-earned title of wizard.’

‘He does indeed appear to command the winds of magic, does he not?’ Felix said.

Erhard grimaced.

‘Just barely, at times,’ he said, though he seemed to think better of his insult only a moment later. ‘But who am I to judge? I’ve never been fond of mages.’

‘Nor I,’ Felix said. ‘At least thus far.’

They didn’t set off on the trail until mid-morning. But their path soon took them from the banks of the river to the perfectly-fitted masonry of an ancient road. Felix recognized it, for it was the very same road his companions from Wurtbad had taken on their exit from the city. The weathered paving stones seemed to have endured for ages, scarred with the ruts and grooves worn down by centuries of wagon traffic. While choked with weeds and overgrowth, it remained as a silent echo of days past, fading yet defiant of the wilderness into which it led.

‘This road goes all the way to Talabheim,’ Draeder said, reading from the map, though he seemed to have memorised the details. ‘We’ll follow it as far as the third marker – that’s as near to the Barren Hills as most ever go. After that, we’ve only this map to guide our way.’

Felix looked out over the massive expanse that lay ahead of them from the high ground where the old road crested atop a hill. The forest stretched out as far as he could see, a vast expanse of dense, old trees clustered so thick that the vista blended into an ocean of leaves and shadows. He breathed a little deeper as he surveyed the massive, perilous wilds. He felt his heart begin to pound.

The Great Forest was notorious. Felix couldn’t help but wonder what horrors lurked beneath that dark canopy. It was said to harbour all manner of beasts and rogues, unspeakable and unimaginable.

Draeder charted their course, following landmarks etched in faded markings on the parchment map and using the ancient road as a reference. His companions acted as something of a guard, two riding on each side of him and with Ernst Erhard bringing up the rear on his old spotted gelding.

Just before midday, Draeder fell back from the lead, to ride beside Felix, who had also taken the horse of one of the fallen men. He was now rid of his ruined university attire, garbed more like a woodland tracker or huntsman. He wore a heavy woollen cloak, the hood lowered for travel and clasped at the neck with a brass amulet. A new sword hung at his side, a bandolier of daggers was slung over his iron-studded leather jerkin, and he wore a knife on the side of each boot. Everything stank of sweat and grime, but after a short while, he found the foul odours no longer bothered him, for he was as filthy and unwashed as the dead man whose clothes he now wore anyway.

He had not taken the fallen soldier’s livery-emblazoned coat however, setting him apart from the other men in the party. It was this decision that he expected Draeder to mention when the wizard came up beside him, looking him over in his new attire. Instead, he asked something completely unexpected.

‘So you’re a poet?’ Draeder asked, very much out of the blue.

‘I’m a student of verse, yes,’ Felix answered.

‘You recite it, but you don’t create it?’

‘Oh I do, believe me. It’s just that my own efforts at composition have yet to find the audience they deserve,’ Felix answered. ‘But that is why we study the works of those who have gone before, is it not? To build upon their art and to take it somewhere it has not yet been?’

‘Indeed it is,’ Draeder answered. ‘I happen to know precisely how it feels to be unappreciated in one’s true calling. And I am something of a student of the written word myself, in a manner of speaking.’

‘How so?’

‘The incantations and rites of my schooling are very much like your poems, I imagine,’ Draeder said. ‘In fact, many of them possess a quality not unlike the rhythm of good verse. That is how one commits so many of them to memory, after all.’

Felix looked over at him, and found Draeder staring back at him with a knowing, almost suspect glare. He suddenly realised that the young wizard might be referring to the ritual he had witnessed the night before, though he was still quite unsure if that was something he was not supposed to have seen. He elected to remain stoic.

‘I had never thought to make such a comparison,’ Felix said. ‘Though I must confess, I am rather unfamiliar with any rites of magic or spell-craft, having never seen them employed for myself.’

He looked back at Draeder with those words, and the wizard’s face changed the moment he said them. His glare softened. He nodded once to Felix; an acknowledgement perhaps of some greater level of trust just now established, or else suspicion erased. It put Felix at ease, at least for a while.

They came to a peculiar landmark on their third day trekking along the ancient road, a huge rocky spire that rose up from the undergrowth with three points of smooth granite. It looked vaguely like a dragon, stretching its wings as it took flight.

Draeder brought their party to a halt. He flashed the map so that Felix could see it, pointing to an inscription. Though Felix could not read the runes, he recognised the drawing that accompanied them – a dragon taking flight.

The men gathered round in a circle of horses at his behest.

‘Men of House von Halkern,’ he began. ‘Here we leave the road behind, and we begin our true journey. Beyond this point no woodsmen dare venture. No trails set down by men penetrate this most thickly-grown wilderness. And so it is time to tell you what lies ahead.

‘My colleagues of the Amethyst Order have long laboured in the study of reams of ancient manuscripts. They’ve spent years searching for clues to a quest that has lasted generations. Recent discoveries have led my superiors to one inescapable conclusion: the lost volume called the Book of Ashur rests in a secluded tower deep in the hidden mists of this very forest, north-west of our present location, in a lost valley of the Barren Hills,’ Draeder said.

‘The Barren Hills?’ Felix asked. ‘Is that land not cursed?’

‘According to some, but the rumours and stories of it are mostly wild tales and outright myth,’ Draeder said, appearing more confident than his comrades.

‘That depends on who you ask,’ Erhard added, echoing the palpable unease that had come over the rest of the men. ‘There are those who live amongst these woods who would tell you that the Chaos moon spat upon these lands many years ago, and its noxious spittle turned the once-green hills foul. Most everything alive was killed in a single night, and what little did survive was changed.’

‘Changed how?’ Felix asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

‘It was said that everything touched by that poison moon’s light grew warped and twisted, plants and animals alike, bent and perverted in ways too horrible to relate,’ Erhard said.

‘But I had always heard that the elector count’s men swept through the ruined hill country, seeking to eradicate the vile mutants. Did they not?’ Torsten asked.

‘Indeed they tried, but no force of men could ever hope to clear an area this large of so many horrors. No doubt many escaped their blades, and others lurk in the caves and shadowed thickets of the deep woods to this very day,’ Erhard replied.

‘That’s comforting,’ Felix added.

‘How, may I ask, did this book of yours come to be in such a cursed place to begin with?’ Erhard asked, turning back to Draeder.

The young wizard seemed perturbed by the question. He answered with a sour expression that hinted he was losing his patience.

‘The valley we seek, deep in the Barren Hills, was once the home of a reclusive necromancer,’ he said.

The men stammered, muttering to each other in hushed tones. The suggestion alone appeared to make them all plainly uncomfortable, agitated in a way uncommon among such imperturbable fighting men.

Even Erhard, as stalwart a soldier as Felix had ever met, seemed suddenly apprehensive. He furrowed his brow and shook his head, stepping back a pace in unconscious solidarity with his nervous men.

‘A necromancer?’ Felix asked, his voice lowered as though the word itself was a curse to even utter. ‘You told us this was about the “nobility of death magic”, not the work of some evil sorcerer.’

The men echoed his complaint, their muffled protests breaking out into open grumbling. Draeder lifted his arms in response, waving at his soldiers in a gesture of reassurance. The hard-edged lines of his face softened, as if to stress his own, more decent motives. But Felix sensed something else in that instant, a look in the young nobleman’s eyes that, while indeed more gentle, still betrayed a kind of arrogance. He looked for a moment as if he were about to speak to children, pitying them for their naïve folly and proud of his own superior wisdom.

‘My friends,’ he began. ‘You are wise to be concerned, of course. These are dangerous lands into which we venture, and I would never proceed if I did not have the greatest of faith in the determination and the strength of the men accompanying me.’

‘Admirable, young master,’ Erhard replied. ‘But such qualities will take us only so far in the face of a rogue of the kind you describe.’

‘You must permit me to finish, for while the mission upon which we act is fraught with peril, I can bring you the greatest of assurances from the Amethyst Order itself that the corrupt conjurer has long since perished. My colleagues in Altdorf are convinced he wasted away years ago, withered into nothing at the end of a vain and failed quest to achieve eternal life.’

‘That may be, but it does not change the fact that you have set us on a course in pursuit of an item that was once employed by an evil magician, to the foulest of purposes, I can only imagine,’ Felix said.

Draeder again looked at him with a condescending gaze.

‘My friend, do not fall into the trap of judging the object by the character of the man who wields it,’ he said. Then he pointed at the sword resting by Felix’s side. ‘Should your blade fall into the hands of an evil man, it would no doubt be put to evil ends. That would not render your sword an instrument to be loathed in and of itself.’

Felix nodded, forced to admit that he agreed.

‘The book we seek is no different,’ Draeder continued. ‘It is true, it was stolen ages ago and set to foul purposes by a cruel and wicked man, but it need not be so. The wisdom it contains is just as capable of serving the Empire as harming it.’

‘I see the wisdom in that,’ Felix conceded.

Erhard stepped up again, clearing his throat as if to draw all attention to himself.

‘That may all be the case,’ he said, signalling at least a vestige of incredulity. ‘But should my men be asked to ride out into the lands of a sinister villain, even one long dead, we must know precisely what it is we are about to face.’

‘Your men?’ Draeder replied. ‘These are servants of House von Halkern all, including yourself, as if I needed to remind you.’

Erhard growled.

‘We entered this forest as servants of your father, it’s true. And we continued on at your behest for that reason, but the moment you purchased our further services with the promise of gold, you took us beyond the limits of our fealty,’ the old sergeant said. ‘Make no mistake, these boys may serve your house, but they serve with me. Servants to your noble name they are, but these men are like my own family. I will not see them ride off unaware of exactly what they face.’

Draeder lowered his hands. He sighed as if exasperated, but seemed persuaded nonetheless. The tone of his voice changed from that of a noble rallying his troops to a man merely telling a story.

‘The man’s name was Skethris, and he was a master of dark magic so powerful his like has rarely been seen beyond the tombs of distant Khemri,’ he said. ‘No one living today knows from whence he came or for how long he walked the earth, all we can say is that the rumours were many and varied.’

‘What do you know?’ Felix asked.

‘The best of the tales are sketchy and of questionable provenance, but I believe this much about him: he began as we are, a simple man, who set about searching for the secrets of this world. Only his path led him astray.

‘Some say he was a rogue magic user even then, a hedge wizard in the days before the founding of the Colleges of Magic. He pursued the study of the mystical winds in secret, travelling from city to city, following whispers and legends of secluded masters. He learned from them all, taking whatever elements they could offer and adding them to a growing repertoire of spells and incantations.

‘But always he sought more. More knowledge, more skill and more power. Eventually, he grew obsessed with seeking the one thing that no amount of fortune or facility can bring – more time. Thus did he embark on a quest to prolong his life, to continue learning and accumulating knowledge. It is possible that he began with the best of intentions; we will never know now. But in the end, it corrupted him.’

‘How so?’ Felix asked.

‘Some say he ventured to the distant, sun-scorched Land of the Dead to steal the secrets of the Tomb Kings, others that he murdered wizards in an attempt to take by force the secrets they refused to teach him. It was even reported that he sought out the tutelage of the living dead, a vampire lord, to reveal to him the mysteries of controlling death – and ultimately defying it.

‘Perhaps all of those legends are true, perhaps none. What we do know, however, is that he extended his reach deep into the realms of shadow, and the foul things he drew forth prolonged his life for centuries, in the least.’

‘They say such men are driven mad by the darkness,’ Erhard said, a haunted look falling over his eyes.

‘And so it must have been for Skethris,’ Draeder answered. ‘He would have peered longer and deeper into the haunted places than almost any other man I’ve heard of. No one can do so without suffering ill effects. Whatever power he obtained would have been enormous, but the cost even greater.’

Draeder stepped away from them, staring off into the sky with an almost dream-like gaze.

‘I can see it now… Currents of dark magic filled his body, flowing through his blood like the most terrible, wonderful poison,’ he said, raising his arms for effect.

Felix looked to Erhard then, for they both saw a change in Draeder as he continued. The more hypnotic his words became, the less frightened his voice grew, until the young wizard almost sounded admiring – even envious. It began to seem as though he was doing more than simply relating a history, more than merely telling a story. He seemed to be enjoying it. His voice lowered and his pace quickened, as if he were seeing the macabre events he could not possibly have witnessed.

‘The dark magic corroded his body, forcing him to delve deeper and into ever more foul reaches to preserve his flesh, to stave off the decay that only grew worse with every passing year,’ he continued, stretching out his own arms either to give effect to his words, or else imagining himself performing the acts he described with such careful, intimate detail.

‘Just as his body failed him then, so too did his mind. The things he witnessed beyond the veil haunted him, driving him past the brink of madness until he fell into a permanent nightmare from which he could never awaken.’

Felix and Erhard looked to each other, and then back to Draeder, momentarily lost in his own rambling story-telling. He did not seem inclined to continue.

‘And then what?’ Felix prodded.

Draeder was a moment in responding, staring off into the distance a while longer. When he did finally turn back, his cadence had returned to normal.

‘Eventually, I imagine he could not sustain himself any longer, and that was how he passed finally out of existence, fading into the shadows he had so long struggled to master,’ he said. ‘No one really knows, truth be told.’

‘How do you know the book is still there, if the necromancer himself has indeed passed away?’ Torsten asked.

‘There can be no doubt that Skethris had the book. No one has seen or heard from him in decades. He is surely long dead by now,’ he answered. ‘It is rumoured that other expeditions have ventured into these wilds before, seeking the same thing we do. But the book has never been seen anywhere else in all that time, even though possessing it would bestow enormous power upon whoever owned it. The only conclusion is that none of them returned.

‘Thus, the reasonable place to look is where the trail ends. The book is there, of that I have no doubt,’ Draeder said.

‘If no one has returned alive, then that means others have ventured into this cursed land and failed in the same endeavour you have now set us upon,’ Felix said. ‘How exactly do you propose to spare us the same fate?’

Draeder smiled. He lifted his glowing, flaming scythe overhead. Its peculiar purple light fell on them like cold rain.

‘I have here fused the dark energy that pervaded the flesh of that mutant hound with the winds of Shyish, the source of all Amethyst magic. In so doing, I have woven this veil of violet light, whose source is the wild energy of the forest itself. It will help protect us from the savage horrors that lurk in the deep of the cursed land.’

All of them stepped closer together, drenched in the light of the magical purple flame. Draeder rolled up the map and handed it to Erhard. Then he held up his scythe and announced what they all knew.

‘Now we are prepared to approach the Valley of Death.’

Excerpt, Journal of Felix Jaeger – Unpublished, undated

Our journey has been long, these past several months. Beset by dangers and hazards each and every day, I fear I have not had the occasion to make entry in this journal as often as I might otherwise have done. Having now come upon the best shelter we’ve found in weeks, I finally have the opportunity to once again open these pages that I might chronicle at least some of the perils we have survived of late.

Since we left behind the ancient road, the path charted upon Draeder von Halkern’s map has led us on a winding route, ever deeper into the dim reaches of the Great Forest, a dark and thickly grown wilderness where a foul mist lies upon the land at every hour and currents of polluted air move with every shifting of the wind.

Unspeakable vermin have been our constant companions, creeping out from infested groves of twisted, unnatural trees and swooping down to sting at us from above. The pestilent undergrowth swarms with carnivorous plants that slither thorny vines through the mud, reaching out to strike at every turn.

On occasion, the light of the purple flame has indeed protected us from a cruel and grisly fate, just as Draeder promised. The eerie fire hid us from both a horde of immense spiders and two marauding packs of rabid tuskgors. But more often than not, the conjured flame was no guarantee of safe passage. On more than one occasion over these trying, difficult months, we have been forced to fight for our very survival amidst this fierce and terrible wilderness.

A vicious tribe of forest goblins nearly overwhelmed us a while back, after we charted what now appears to have been an unwise shortcut around a smouldering crater. Erhard and I both took the heads of more than a dozen each, while the brothers Strang and Torsten proved their worth as well, battling bravely alongside one another in a long and desperate fight, a struggle that claimed the lives of two of our number: both Reinhard and Volker.

Less than a week later we were forced into a similarly narrow escape upon trespassing over the sacred burial lands of a troll clan. That misstep had us all imprisoned for days in a deep pit of the trolls’ camp, and had brought one more of our men to the premature end of his journey, Walder having been roasted upon a spit and eaten by the barbaric creatures. We could hear his horrific screams for hours as the contemptible creatures burned him alive, and I must truly confess that it was perhaps both the longest and the worst single night of my entire life.

I managed to trick the dullest of the trolls into releasing me from the vile pit the following morning. That was a mistake that Strang and Torsten made the troll pay for with his life, as the rest of us regained our horses and rode away.

I fear the dreams of gold are fading in the minds of my companions as our trek begins to keep us in this horrid realm far longer than any of us expected. The brothers have already started to grumble. Strang, as laconic a soldier as there is, yet confines his complaints to his superior, Erhard. Torsten, however, less experienced and disciplined than his elder sibling, has begun to talk openly of abandoning the adventure altogether.

As dusk fell yesterday evening, we could detect a change in the terrain. The ground has grown hilly and rocky. Draeder now seems moved by some new urgency.

I await the sunrise yet again. Of what horrors may yet lurk ahead, I cannot even begin to guess.

6

For several days they trekked uphill, their horses slowed by the increasingly difficult ground they were forced to negotiate as the Great Forest became even more rolling and strewn with rocks. A deeper chill seemed to fill the air as they moved higher in elevation, condensing into a thick mist as they continued under the ever-present shadows of tall, ancient trees and vermin-haunted thickets.

The treeline seemed to falter however, when they came to the sight of a long ridge above them. The dense growth that had long surrounded them faded into scattered copses of oaks and lonely pines across the length of the long slope that led up to the bare, stony rise.

Beyond it, the forest came to an abrupt end. What lay ahead was an altogether different landscape, unlike anything they’d witnessed on their journey. A bleak expanse of scrub brush and exposed rock.

‘Finally… the Barren Hills,’ Draeder announced, as they all came over the ridge to survey the lands before them.

Slate grey and the pale yellow of withered grass dominated the vista in every direction. The terrain was fractured and uneven, dented by deep swales and scattered with jagged, stony outcroppings that reached up into a fog of low-hanging clouds. A cruel stink hung over the empty wasteland, the odour of stagnant marsh water and hints of sulphur fumes.

Draeder alone among them seemed encouraged by the frightful vista, and it spurred him forward with a renewed purpose, his eyes alternating between the map and the seemingly forsaken lands. He rode out ahead of the party, taking his horse down a precarious slope and then up along the edge of a barrel-shaped rock mound. For a moment, he looked out in each direction, searching for a landmark or some other point of reference on his map.

When the rest of the riders caught up to him, he turned and pointed towards another hillock half-shrouded in the mist. They once again followed, only to repeat the same routine yet again, and then a third and fourth time until their passage through the foggy barrens seemed to stretch on for hours.

Overhead, massive carrion birds appeared out of the haze. The unnaturally large crows squealed and circled, five or ten at a time. For a long while, the foul scavengers stalked the party from the air, keeping pace with them as they went, always present, but never close enough to reach.

Paying the birds little attention, Draeder once again rode out ahead of them, his eyes snared by some formation in the hazy distance. At Erhard’s direction, Strang and Torsten took to the gallop behind him, leaving Felix with him, behind at the rearguard.

‘Would it be impertinent to suggest that we may be lost?’ Felix asked, as they watched the trio charge into the fog beyond.

Erhard grunted.

‘It would be,’ he said. Then his gruff, craggy face widened in a broad smile as he continued. ‘But that wouldn’t make you wrong.’

Felix laughed. As rough a man as he was, Erhard had become something of a mentor to him over the long months of their journey. The old sergeant may not have been of high birth, but it was clear that he had earned his position as a leader of men.

‘You don’t trust him, do you?’ Felix said. ‘I wouldn’t mention it in general company, but given our present circumstances, I may not have another opportunity.’

Erhard looked out, first to Draeder galloping out once again in the distance, then back to Felix. Again, he answered in the simple, direct manner to which Felix had become accustomed.

‘I do not,’ he said.

Although it confirmed his suspicions, hearing the old sergeant speak them so plainly struck Felix.

‘I’m not certain I ever have, truth be told,’ Erhard continued. ‘But even less so now.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Perhaps it would be better that I speak no more of this,’ Erhard said. ‘I know that you look up to him, that you see something of yourself in Draeder, in your shared background.’

Felix agreed, but pressed the conversation regardless.

‘I do respect what he’s done, given his circumstances,’ Felix said. ‘I understand what it’s like to be cast aside by a prominent family. But I’ve also seen how you carry yourself these past months. You care about your men and you’re as fine a solider as I’ve ever known.’

Erhard nodded.

‘Thank you, young sir,’ he said.

‘So then you must tell me, as we’re moving ever deeper into this strange wilderness at Draeder’s behest – you have known the man far longer than I – what troubles you?’

‘You’ve seen what I’ve seen, have you not?’ Erhard replied. ‘I trust a man I can count on. A man who can handle a sword, as you can. Some of Draeder’s spell-casting works, some of it does not. Would you call that reliable?’

‘His magic does seem rather… erratic,’ Felix said, relieved that he was able to express his own concerns openly for the first time.

‘That’s charitable,’ Erhard replied. ‘At times his conjuring has been quite useless indeed. I don’t trust wizards as a rule, but one who cannot be counted on in battle is one I will never put my faith in.’

‘It is strange, as you say. He wears the weathered robes of an old, wise wizard,’ Felix replied. ‘I know very little of the Colleges of Magic, but I had always heard that mages of that sort engaged in long study, for decades sometimes, before they attained the mantle of a fully-fledged wizard.’

‘So had I,’ Erhard answered. ‘But Draeder was gone from his father’s estate for no more than three years before he returned, clothed in the way you see him now, in the age-worn regalia of an old adept.’

‘And dispatched on a mission of some importance by his superiors, no less,’ Felix said. ‘Do you suspect he’s lying?’

The question seemed to make Erhard uncomfortable. He winced as he answered, clearly reluctant to continue the exchange.

‘I can’t say I suspect anything in particular,’ Erhard said. ‘Though in my experience, I’ve found it better to suspect everything. That’s the reason I’ve lived this long.’

Felix smiled. He was about to reply, when a scream interrupted.

Both men arched up in their saddles. The rest of their party had just vanished in the mist ahead of them, obscured by a bank of dense fog that had settled over a low swale. Another followed. The first was a cry of pain. The second was a call of battle.

Felix noticed the crows were gone from overhead. Neither man said a word. They simply charged.

Galloping headlong into the low terrain, they soon found themselves swallowed up by the cold, heavy mist. The hooves of their horses splashed through a boggy flat of stagnant, muddy water. The fog was so thick at the bottom of the marshy vale that Felix and Erhard could barely see an arm’s length in front of them.

That was when they heard the terrible squeals close in from above.

The black birds strafed them, diving down out of the thick clouds and then retreating back into the grey. Talons clutched at them, tearing at their horses and ripping across their shoulders. Wings flapped and soared in every direction as the screeching swelled into a rage.

Felix swung his sword wildly overhead, trying to fight through the haze to see what he was striking as he struggled to beat back the attackers from above. Blood splattered into his eyes. Black feathers, wet with slime and stinking of carrion, fell in every direction.

Their forward gallop brought Felix and Erhard together with the others, all of them swarmed by the vicious birds.

‘Ride hard, men!’ Erhard shouted through the mist. ‘Climb the slopes out of this blasted marsh or we’ll never see the sun again!’

Felix kicked his boots into the side of his mount, joining the others in a hard, blind gallop forward. The raven swarm did not relent. Even as they urged their horses on, the birds continued their onslaught.

But with the forced ride, the horses quickly found a slope on the far end of the swale, bringing them all up to a crest where the fog cleared. Out of the mist and finally able to see again, the men swatted down the ravens who remained, slashing and chopping any who swept low enough to reach.

When it was over, the remains of the bird swarm lay scattered in every direction, leaving them at the centre of a field of blood and butchered ravens.

‘I thought those were supposed to be scavengers, just carrion birds,’ Felix said, panting as he fought to catch his breath.

Draeder, however, regarded the carnage with an almost solemn eye, looking over the messy, scattered remains of the slain animals with a kind of reverence.

‘In the Barren Hills, you’ll find that very little is what you would expect,’ he said.

7

Draeder once again studied the vista before them. He scanned the map, looked at the fields of seemingly featureless stone and scrub weeds, and pointed them towards a rounded barrow hill just a short ride off. Once they arrived at the tumulus, a low and unremarkable mound, he quite unexpectedly issued an order that none of them wanted to hear.

‘We’ll set up camp here for the evening,’ he declared.

The men bristled, and Erhard spoke up for them.

‘We have several hours of daylight left, and given what we’ve just gone through, we’re all restless to get on with this journey. Let us press on at least ’til nightfall,’ the old sergeant said.

Draeder shook his head, flashing his hand with the same dismissive wave he had so often used to silence his long-serving aide-de-camp. This time, however, he found the gesture met with some resistance.

‘We should keep moving ahead,’ Erhard said, edging his horse near enough to grab Draeder by the arm. ‘Unless you have lost your way.’

The affront to his authority drew a cold stare from the young wizard.

‘We have not gone astray and I have never taken orders from you, old man,’ he said. ‘I certainly have no intention of starting now.’

Erhard would not relent.

‘We’ve all sacrificed for this mission of yours,’ he said. ‘Most of my men have been lost already, every one of them claimed by a death I would not wish upon my enemies. Yet we have seen nothing to make us believe we are any closer to our goal.’

‘Is this some rebellion you’ve concocted?’ Draeder replied. ‘Are you now to mutiny against me like traitorous sailors upon a lost ship – and after my magic has protected you for this entire way?’

Felix could feel the tension. It had been simmering between them all for weeks. While Draeder’s claim of magical prowess was rather an exaggeration and Erhard was now verging on outright breach of his oath of fealty, Felix nonetheless tried to manoeuvre his horse between the two in an effort to defuse the situation.

‘An explanation might go further than you think,’ he said to Draeder, attempting to mediate. ‘Perhaps Ernst is out of line, but even still, he is right. We’ve all suffered on this trek and in so doing we have all demonstrated our loyalty as well. I’m sure I speak for every one of us in saying that if we are indeed finally close to the end, then you must tell us why we do not proceed.’

Draeder edged his mount back. He straightened his robes and lifted his chin.

‘I do not need to answer to anyone,’ he said. ‘But if it will placate you, then I will indeed choose to tell you what I know that you do not.’

Felix nodded, though he could see that Erhard remained unconvinced. Draeder, however, was a moment in answering, as though he actually had no explanation at the ready, despite his boasting. Finally, after a long and uncomfortable pause, he replied with a rambling narration.

‘We are in fact very close to our goal. Next we must seek out a single hill, one unlike any other across these barren fields, for it is crowned by a distinctive marker, an ancient gateway of three great standing stones. There will we find the passage into the Valley of Skethris. The map outlines the trail we have thus far followed, and I believe we will find the location soon. But we must be fully prepared when we arrive.’

‘Prepared for what?’ Felix asked.

‘The dolmen stones are watched over by an unliving guardian.’

‘A ghost?’ Felix asked.

‘More than that,’ Draeder replied. ‘But the texts do not make clear the nature of the sentinel. They say only that this guardian is bound to the portal itself, and that it never sleeps. It is forever on watch. By the time we see the hill-tower, that-which-dwells-within will already have seen us.’

‘Then how do we hope to pass through it?’ Erhard asked.

‘The secret to entering and safely crossing through such portals is a matter of magic, and thus it is my concern. You need not consider it except to know that if we are to succeed, I must be quite ready before we arrive.’

He held out the vellum, but only so that Felix could see it, pointing to a series of runes stencilled beside the representation of a dolmen. Felix studied it for a moment, puzzling at what he saw.

‘There appear to be two markers there, are there not?’ he asked, pointing at the dolmen and something beside it. ‘Which one is the right one?’ he asked.

Draeder sneered. He yanked the map away.

‘That is my concern. I was not asking for help,’ he said.

‘Why wait then?’ Erhard questioned. ‘If you know the path, and you have the rite at hand, then lead us there. What more must you prepare?’

Draeder scoffed at him, as though he were but an ignorant child.

‘Here indeed is written the oath that must be recited upon these hills, the incantation that can open the gateway. But it is more than a mere matter of recitation,’ he said. ‘The tower must only be approached by moonlight. To attempt to cross the path any other time would be disastrous. Even a perfectly done incantation would fail if not performed at the right time.’

Erhard groaned and bade his horse to edge backwards. He fell in with Strang and Torsten, whose haggard eyes bespoke their shared frustration.

‘We’ve come this far,’ Felix said.

‘Listen to Felix. Let me do what only I can do, and soon I will… we will have the Book of Ashur within our grasp,’ Draeder said, half by request, but spoken more as a command.

Felix looked over to the men and then back to Draeder. Erhard finally nodded, and the others agreed.

‘Do what you must,’ Felix said. ‘We will camp here while you prepare. Summon us when you’ve made ready and this journey can finally come to an end.’

Draeder nodded.

‘Indeed. Make your camp and I will consult my volumes. Once I have the incantation prepared, we can proceed.’

As the men turned away, satisfied for the moment to merely circle their horses in preparation for setting up camp, Draeder put his hand on Felix’s shoulder. He drew the young man aside, sidling their horses close and lowering his voice so none of the others could hear.

‘Keep your eye on them, Felix,’ he warned. ‘They’re not like us. They’re not men of education. Only you and I can truly understand our purpose here. You and I, Felix. We must watch out for one another as this mission goes forward. I know I can count on you.’

Felix nodded, but as Draeder dismounted and collected his volumes, he cursed under his breath, realising that the two men he most depended upon did not trust one another, and that both might soon ask him to turn upon the other.

Several hours passed in near silence. Draeder sat with his back turned, perched atop the barrow itself. He was frozen in a pose of perfect concentration, all sign of him lost beneath his huge shroud. The entire time, neither Felix nor Erhard detected so much as a hint of movement from the mage.

The men huddled together in a small circle at the base of the hill. Having no wood with which to build a fire, they wrapped themselves in their cloaks to guard against the damp cold that prevailed over the misty barrens. For a long while they clustered there, some trying to steal a few moments of sleep while the others patrolled the area, keeping a watchful eye for whatever might come out of the wastelands as the sun set upon the Barren Hills, lowering a veil of darkness over them once again.

They were not looking for a threat from within. But only moments after the fall of night, a terrible, blood-curdling scream alerted them to their error.

It came from behind them, from the barrow itself. The shrieking was vile and it reverberated with many voices – high-pitched and deep-throated in unison. It roused them all at once, scrambling to their feet, but covering their ears in some small effort to blunt the awful noise.

Yet that was hardly the worst of it. Still down on his knees and straining as the horrible wailing pounded in his head, Felix managed to look up. He saw a column of mist and shadow emerging from the heart of the barrow. At first merely a shapeless mass, the currents of darkness and fog began to coalesce and, as he watched, they took up a human-like form.

The figure assembled itself into a kind of translucent female, as dreadful and horrific as an animated corpse. Her stare was ghastly, a face frozen in an anguished grimace, with sunken cheeks and eyes that glowed pure white. Black currents of twisted, moving shadow crowned her with a mane of ghostly hair. The gown of mist that trailed behind her was a shredded mantle that rippled with every scream from her pale lips.

Her voice shrieked with abominable fragments of sound. As she moved towards them, she raised her thin, bone-like hands, pointing long white fingers at them as she wailed.

Felix leaped from the ground, slashing his long sword at the ghostly maiden. The blade passed through her with no effect. When he pulled back his sword the steel was cold and covered in frost.

Erhard did the same, but again to no avail. The banshee ignored the attack altogether. Unperturbed by any strike or flail, she merely pointed her long, ethereal fingers, and continued her screeching cry.

Draeder came running down the hill, drawn by the sight and the sound of the ghost maiden. As Felix moved for yet another attack, the wizard shouted at him to hold his position.

‘Our weapons have no effect!’ Felix shouted. ‘Is there nothing you can do?’

Draeder came to the base of the hill, falling in beside Felix and his men. He pointed his scythe at the banshee, but that too seemed to accomplish nothing.

For a long, terrible moment the translucent figure merely hovered over them, screaming.

Then, just as suddenly as she had appeared, the ghostly woman backed away. In the same fashion as she had come, the wraith drew herself off, floating backwards towards the haunted barrow. The shadows of the hill seemed to reach out to reclaim her as her spectral form began to fade, disappearing like little more than candle-smoke.

As she vanished, the last thing that remained of her was her skull-like face. It turned from a ferocious visage into a devious, evil smile before it too faded away.

‘We drove it off!’ Torsten said.

‘We did no such thing,’ Erhard replied. ‘That cursed spirit left of its own accord.’

‘Why?’ Felix asked. ‘But for a fright, it did us no harm at all.’

‘It wasn’t trying to harm us,’ Draeder said. ‘It was issuing a warning.’

‘What was it warning us about?’ Felix asked.

‘Not us,’ the wizard replied, looking out towards the misty, dark horizon. ‘It was warning the guardian. Night has fallen, and now it knows that we’re coming.’

8

Moonlight touched the Barren Hills with an eerie, ghostly glow. The pale shining of Mannslieb reflected off every surface, glinting from steep slopes and at odd, oblique angles. A haze of cold shimmers and ever-shifting shadows filled the air. Deep and sombre quiet reigned across the barrens by night, a stillness that sent a shiver through Felix. No howling or shrieking he had heard in all his travels bothered him quite so much as the spooky, flawless still of that deathly silence.

They’d made haste after the banshee’s departure, having no time to lose with their presence now known across the barrens. After a short while trekking through yet another stretch of badlands, a larger formation grew up out of the foggy distance. A single rocky hill rose high over the bleak sea of stone, its rise dominating the terrain for miles around. The path of a winding trail had been cut into its face, snaking up along the front slope. Upon its crest there stood a lonely, half-crumbled stone triptych. The ancient, free-standing granite blocks sparkled in the weird moonlight, like a beacon across the misty barrens.

Again, Draeder halted the party. He studied his map, compared it to what he saw and puzzled for a moment.

‘That is the hill,’ he said. ‘There we will find the entrance to the Valley of Skethris. We must be on guard now.’

As if in answer to his announcement, the ground rumbled underfoot. An eerie call sounded in the distance, a guttural roar that echoed through the cold mist.

‘There can be no doubt. It knows we’re here,’ the wizard said.

They rode ahead with swords drawn, Draeder still at the lead but now with Strang and Torsten never more than a pace behind him.

As they proceeded, the dead silence began to give way. At first the still was broken only in isolated bursts, a screech in the distance or a muffled howl somewhere in the shadows. But it soon became more and Felix began to wish for the uncomfortable quiet he’d so dreaded only hours earlier.

When they reached the crest of the hill and dismounted, they found the great dolmen standing alone. It appeared to be a large doorway of rock leading down into the earth. Composed of three great standing stones, two were anchored into the ground while a thinner, flat capstone lay atop them, tilted at a slight angle.

‘I’ve never seen such a thing,’ Felix whispered.

‘The ancient tribes who once ruled these lands laid their kings and chieftains to rest beneath monuments such as this. They were believed to mark portals to the land of the dead,’ Draeder replied.

Although he realised he should have been inured to such a notion already, the suggestion sent a fright through Felix.

‘What must we do?’ Erhard asked.

‘Just as it was for the ancients, the dolmen is the entrance for us as well. Beneath that stone triptych is the portal into the necromancer’s realm,’ Draeder said.

‘We can just enter it?’ Felix asked.

Draeder shook his head.

‘I’m afraid it is not nearly that simple. I must perform the proper rite in order to open the way. And you must distract the guardian for long enough for me to do so.’

Felix stammered, looking around across the barren, lonely hill.

‘But I see no guardian,’ he said.

Draeder stepped back, leaving Felix and the men nearest to the dolmen.

‘Look again,’ he advised, even as he receded.

Just as the wizard spoke, the moon-shadows beneath the capstone began to stir. Once more the eerie howls echoed, and as the wind began to blow they were joined by a sort of sinister laughter.

Clanking and shuffling and the hard grinding of stone against stone accompanied the movement beneath the dolmen. A figure crept up from beneath, as if spawned from the foetid earth. It reached out with pale hands until it emerged fully from the grave, standing before them in a display of evil majesty.

The wight was massive. He wore finely-crafted armour of an archaic sort, the antiquated gear of an ancient barbarian warlord. His breastplate was age-tarnished bronze, the edges and the faded inlay infested with green verdigris. His black iron pauldrons and gauntlets had been dulled by centuries of dust. A mail undercoat fell to his knees, the links rusted out in places, leaving gaping holes.

His great, old helmet was crowned with a single spike and a pair of ragged eagle’s wings. Beneath the visor his haunted eyes gleamed bright crimson, stark against his cadaverous, decayed face. He wielded a massive broadsword, the flat of the blade inscribed with black runes that pulsed with dark magic.

‘That is no mere watcher,’ Felix whispered.

Draeder was already a pace behind him.

‘No doubt the warrior-king interred beneath this grave,’ he said. ‘Raised from death and bound to this place long ago by the black hand of Skethris himself.’

The undead warrior king still retained a shadow of his human form. What remained of his skin was desiccated and discoloured. Swathes of his bare, dry flesh were the greenish-grey shade of a corpse, while other places bulged with black and purple splotches where congealed blood had settled and hardened long ago.

‘Welcome, travellers,’ the wight said, its deep thundering voice making the ground tremble again. ‘It has been so long since anyone has come. So long indeed that I’ve nearly forgotten the pleasures of company.’

Felix looked to Erhard. He raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

‘We come with no ill will,’ Felix said. ‘We wish only to pass.’

The wight laughed.

‘Why, that is the very pleasure I have so missed,’ the wight replied. ‘Killing those who wish to pass this way.’

Felix lowered his hands. They all lifted their swords. Draeder, standing further from the menacing figure, looked up and centred his eye on the full moons rising behind the hill.

‘The rite must be employed now, while the light shines down. The glow of the Chaos moon will show us the way. I’ll require time to recite the entire incantation.’

‘It does not appear we have much!’ Erhard shouted.

‘You do not need to defeat the wight, merely hold him while I perform the rite that will open the portal,’ Draeder said.

‘That’ll be harder than it looks,’ Felix said. ‘And it doesn’t look easy.’

Felix charged at the undead warrior-king, slashing at him with an expert cut from his blade. The wight merely brushed it aside with little effort, and Felix was forced to quickly duck down from the return blow of the wight’s great rune-blade. Even then, he was nearly cut in two by the undead warrior’s next swipe, two blows rendered faster than any living man could have placed one. The enchanted sword sliced across his jerkin but luckily did not go any deeper. He whirled, and cut through the arm of the unliving guardian, but the strike seemed to have no effect against the hulking, unfeeling attacker.

As the warrior-king swung around, his ardour undiminished, Felix dodged yet another slash of the massive broadsword. This time he leaped up the moment the blade was past him and plunged his own sword directly into the wight’s throat. The blade penetrated and came right back out, pulling with it nothing more than foul-smelling dust.

The wight simply cackled, returning the favour with another blow that Felix only barely managed to block. The sheer force of it sent him tumbling.

Erhard raced into the fray just as Felix fell. He struck at the wight, cutting across rusted mail and severing a rotted leather belt. Yet none of his attacks weakened the guardian either. In moments, he too was thrown aside, landing in a heap beside the dolmen itself.

‘This is madness!’ Torsten exclaimed, his eyes wide with a kind of panicked terror that bordered on insanity. ‘We can’t defeat such an enemy!’

Strang grabbed his brother by the collar, yanking him back to a measure of sense.

‘Then we die here, brother,’ the one-eyed man growled.

The encouragement held them all together as they backed up, keeping close as they fought off every new attack from the undead warrior-king. Felix looked back to Draeder, ministering with his Amethyst scythe.

The wizard stood before the dolmen, reciting a long and complex chant, lifting and gesturing with his staff as if trying to focus for the magic he was attempting to channel. But for all his incantations and summoning, nothing appeared to happen.

Only a moment later, Strang met with disaster.

The veteran warrior stabbed at the wight and struck it dead on in the chest, but found his blade lodged in the old armour and dry flesh of his attacker. He struggled to pry it loose, but a defenceless moment was all that the undead warrior required. The shambling monstrosity reached over Strang’s trapped sword, slashed his great blade through the man’s throat and tore his head from his neck in a fountain of blood.

Torsten shrieked as he watched his brother die, felled by as horrible an end as could be imagined. He shivered and wailed, swinging his blade wildly as a mad frenzy overcame him, erasing all reason and sense.

The wight laughed with a deep, maddened chortle, somehow enlivened by the pain and suffering he had inflicted. Torsten leaped at him, raising his sword high, but the wight merely caught it with his bare hand, wresting the blade from his grasp. His own massive rune sword whirled in a terrible arc, slicing down upon Torsten. It cleaved clear through his cloak and mail, splitting his neck from his shoulder in a bloody, vicious gash that opened up half his chest.

Felix and Erhard hurried backwards, the powerful wight still bearing down as he cast the young soldier’s mangled body aside. They fell in beside Draeder, standing before the dolmen in confusion, puzzling over the failure of his rite to accomplish anything.

‘I performed it exactly as it is written,’ he muttered. ‘Each rune, each verse. Every turn of the staff exactly correct.’

‘Try it again!’ Felix shouted, seeing the wight close in.

‘What good will that do?’ he replied. ‘I’ve done it all exactly right, it was supposed to work. It should have worked. The moonlight should show the…’

A moment later, Draeder saw something that stopped him. Behind the dolmen, on the far side of the hill, he caught sight of something. A pile of stones rested over an indentation in the earth, where one flat rock lay atop the rest. It was glowing. The stone was illuminated, gleaming in the moonlight. Runes sparkled milky white and bright red across its surface.

‘Of course!’ he shouted. ‘The second stone marker! The dolmen is not the gateway! That is!’

Felix readied for another attack. He looked over to Draeder, pointing frantically in the direction of the glowing rune-stone.

‘But you said the dolmen was–’ Felix began.

‘I was mistaken,’ Draeder replied. ‘You were more correct than you realised, Felix. The rune stones there are the second marker on the map! That is the meaning of the inscription. The portal rests behind the dolmen, not within it! We must get past the wight!’

‘It’s impossible!’ Erhard shouted back. ‘Have you seen nothing here? It can’t be slowed, or even wounded. It is relentless. There’s no way to get by.’

Draeder snarled and he reached for Erhard, grabbing his subordinate by his cloak like a master would assail an unruly child.

‘I cannot abandon this venture now!’ he shouted in the older man’s face. ‘I refuse to accept that. There must be a way! You must find a way!’

Erhard finally lost his temper. Seething in a rage of suppressed anger, he reached up with his thick arms and seized Draeder. He stared into the younger man’s face.

‘I am done taking orders from you, boy!’ he shouted.

Then he lifted Draeder off his feet and heaved him backwards, throwing the young wizard against the dolmen. He landed so hard his back edged the upper stone of the triptych, grinding it against the stones beneath.

He groaned and wheezed as he fell, but Felix noticed something else in that instant – the guardian staggered as well.

As Draeder tried to come to his feet, the mix of pain and wrath across his face making clear that he intended on a second run at his sergeant, Felix jumped between the two. Erhard turned his back on the wizard, returning his attention to the wight.

‘You’ll pay for that!’ Draeder shouted.

‘I doubt any of us will live long enough,’ the sergeant answered.

He lifted his sword once more, and again he charged the wight, its armour dripping with Strang and Torsten’s blood.

Draeder grabbed his scythe and started to follow, but Felix stopped him.

‘This creature is bound to this spot, you told us,’ he said.

The wizard seemed uninterested in answering. Felix grabbed him and shook him.

‘Tell me!’ he demanded. ‘How is this undead thing held here?’

‘As I said,’ Draeder replied, angrily. ‘The dark magic of Skethris binds him to his eternal resting place.’

‘This dolmen,’ Felix replied.

‘Indeed, he is bound to this place for…’

Felix ignored the rest of his answer, turning to the dolmen itself. He dropped his sword, bared both hands and pushed against the capstone. For all his strength, he managed to shift it only a tiny bit.

The moment it moved however, even just a small distance, he heard a peal of agony from across the hilltop. Turning his head, he saw the wight stagger again, though Erhard had not landed a blow.

‘Help me!’ Felix shouted, grabbing Draeder and turning him towards the dolmen. ‘Push with everything you’ve got!’

The two men joined forces, heaving their full weight into the capstone until they felt it edge away, grinding pebbles and dust under it as it scraped across the standing stones beneath it. The effort took all of their might.

The wight howled, stumbling for a moment. Erhard stood against it still, his twin swords meeting the undead warrior’s next blow.

‘Again!’ Felix shouted.

Once more the two men pushed, and a second time they managed to shove the dolmen’s top stone until it was teetering. The wight staggered again, weakened but not defeated. It raged, striking a blow that sent Erhard careening across the hill. The old sergeant fell with a painful thud.

Felix knelt down next to him, helping him back to his feet.

‘Give a hand to Draeder,’ he said. ‘When I call back to you, follow his lead.’

The sergeant nodded, fighting to regain his balance as he fell in beside the young wizard, both men poised beside the dolmen with the precarious capstone.

Once again lumbering towards them, Felix intercepted the cackling wight. Drawing his sword, he bounded and leaped towards the grisly guardian.

‘Now!’ he shouted back to the others.

Draeder and Erhard threw their combined weight at the dolmen. They pushed hard against it with everything their arms could muster, until the capstone slid off of its perch between the two supports, collapsing down in a heap of broken stone.

Felix’s blade crashed against the barbarian king’s rune sword the instant the dolmen crumbled. The two razor edges slid down against one another until the pommels met, wedging the cross-guards together with a clang and a spark.

The wight squealed in agony as the ancient monument broke apart. He shrieked and shook, but Felix held fast. He wrestled with the weakened guardian, forcing the undead sentinel backwards. They moved to and fro, the wight’s strength failing with Felix’s every move. Then, as the dead king staggered, Felix shouted back to Draeder and Erhard a second time.

The two answered the call, joining Felix in jumping upon the wight with sword and scythe. As Felix held the undead watcher, Erhard stabbed at the creature and Draeder slashed. This time, their blades wreaked havoc, cutting and chopping the pale flesh of the watcher until his body mirrored the ruin of his grave marker. His severed arms dropped down at his sides, followed by his legs as they collapsed under him.

Finally, Felix swung his sword in an arc, slicing through the wight’s throat. His head tumbled down from his neck, dropping the winged helmet as his body crumpled into a heap of dust and ancient armour.

Draeder fell back against the fractured dolmen, relieved and out of breath for the moment. When he did recover, he ignored Erhard and looked to Felix only.

‘Good thinking all around, Felix,’ he said. ‘Truly, I could not have asked for a more able assistant on this endeavour.’

Erhard looked over to Felix, his face dour and his brow furrowed. Felix sighed and turned his head, for he found that he could not muster anything to say.

9

It was not much of a memorial, but Felix and Erhard took the savaged bodies of the fallen brothers and carried them both to the dolmen. There, in the centre of the ancient burial site, collapsed though it was, they laid the two brave warriors to rest.

Though they gave some thought to keeping Strang and Torsten’s horses, they chose instead to leave them behind, freeing the animals to run wild. By the time the moon was fully overhead, they were re-packed and ready to move on.

No sooner had they observed a silent moment than Draeder demanded they resume. He had already studied the portal entrance, the stones above it still gleaming with inscrutable runes. Where there had once been little more than a marker of several stones embedded over a hole in the earth, his incantation had magically opened it into a wide stone gate. Behind lay a tunnel, deep enough to ride a horse down into it with room to spare.

Draeder led the way again, the first to enter the portal. Felix and Erhard formed up in his wake, leaving behind the moonlight and following only the eerie glow of Draeder’s violet scythe flame.

‘I seem to think I might have once considered something like this rather unwise,’ Felix said, as his horse carried him down into the tunnel. ‘But now I suppose I can’t complain.’

The descent through the tunnel seemed to carry them deep into the earth. No hint of the outside world remained as they moved down a long and dark path. On the far side they found that it opened upon a slope at the edge of a long and deep valley – but of the dolmen or the Barren Hills, there was no sign at all.

The grade was steep and the ground was rocky. They could not see the floor of the valley, blanketed by a thick carpet of fog. Strangely, the mist did not rise to the higher elevations, obscuring only the distance but leaving the near terrain untouched.

Jagged boulders lay strewn about, massive broken hunks of stone that looked more like the rubble of giants than natural formations. The fractured rock jutted out from the dirt, forcing them to follow a narrow path that snaked for miles in every direction before it finally brought them down to the edge of the mist.

A vile reek filled their nostrils before they reached the fog, and it only grew deeper as they penetrated it. There was no wind down there. The air was cold and stagnant, and filled with a dense curtain of grey mist that hung all about in a dim murk. It stank of corpses, the musty reek of old tombs and decay.

While Felix and Erhard recoiled at the stench, Draeder took the opposite approach. He inhaled the rotten scent with a peculiar relish.

The sun had just gone down, their winding descent having consumed the entire day. Though they found themselves now on the floor of the valley, the fog robbed them of all but the faintest hints of moonlight to guide their way, leaving the forest ahead cloaked in a deep shadow.

‘Should we not pause here and attempt to continue once the safety of daylight has returned?’ Felix asked.

Draeder shook his head.

‘Daylight may guide our eyes, but we now follow the path of the scythe. The violet flame is strongest at night. Death magic is weakest at midday, and nowhere is the odour of death stronger than here. We must proceed now.’

‘It might be wise to leave the horses,’ Erhard said. ‘If we’re to approach this place with some stealth.’

‘Indeed,’ Draeder replied, as if it had been his own idea. ‘I believe we should proceed on foot from here.’

They dismounted, tethering the horses to a tree and following behind him on foot as they entered into the lower valley. The realm of the necromancer quickly revealed a more ghastly character than the monster-addled lands they’d left behind. The forest had been cleared in every direction, leaving only scattered groves of winter-bare trees. What stood in its place was an immense landscape of blight and ruin.

Hints of faded grandeur stood all around, age-worn and battered, yet clinging to a shadow of opulence, a vast plantation of death.

Crumbled walls lined the edges of what might have once been gardens. The stone work was incredible, chiselled with such care that the granite seemed as thin as a veil of lace, petrified for all the ages. Everything was mouldered and decrepit, a ghost of its former splendour.

Rows of broken columns flanked the grim estates. The pillars were solid marble, but cut with such exquisite artistry as to resemble flowers in spring bloom, vine-covered and delicate as rose petals. The once-fine white stone was now stained with swarms of black lichen. The perfect masonry was pockmarked and charred from some long-ago violence.

Felix ran his hand over the faces of some, almost in disbelief at both the richness and the decay alike. He found that the stone had been eaten away in places, as if gnawed upon. The thought sent a shiver through him.

Water remained in artificial ponds, brown and foetid with oily slicks that lingered across the weed-clogged surface. The detritus of some long-forgotten battle left its mark in the broken spears and rusted helmets that lay abandoned throughout, grisly monuments to the fall of an entire realm.

The complex and beautiful designs of ancient courtyards survived as mere outlines etched into the scrub-brush and the dirt. Dry canals choked with debris traced the lines of once-flowing streams and captive waterfalls, the rushing rivers reduced to mere trickles of sludge.

The viscous grey mist floated beside them everywhere they went, seething up from the rotten earth, stinking of decomposition. After more than an hour pressing onwards, strange noises began to echo in the dim. Footsteps sounded in the misty shadows. Creaking and clanking followed, joined by muffled screams in the distance.

The men penetrated ever deeper into the ruins, and with every moment the noises grew louder. Still they moved forward, further into the gloom, until figures began to emerge from the haze and the darkness ahead.

At first, only their outlines could be discerned, and they were unlike any sentinels the three men had ever seen. Thin and nearly stick-like in silhouette, their movements were likewise inhuman. Awkward, herky-jerky steps brought them closer until the front ranks paraded into the moonlight, revealing their horrific nature.

They appeared from the mist as though marching forth from a nightmare. None were truly men, nothing more than bones animated beyond the grave. All of them stared ahead with cold, soulless eyes, every face exactly the same – a bare skull.

‘The watchers of the valley,’ Draeder said. ‘Long-dead warriors forever bound to this place by the will of the necromancer.’

Erhard pointed just behind them to their left, where a wall of ancient stone ran along the edge of a decrepit garden.

‘I don’t think they’ve seen us yet,’ he whispered. ‘If we circle back, taking cover behind the wall, we might be able to side-step them and find another way forward.’

Felix looked at Draeder. Both nodded.

‘No argument,’ Felix said.

Stepping away with utmost care and proceeding on as stealthily as they could, the party ducked behind the wall and re-traced their steps back, looking to chart a path around the advancing skeletal host.

But their efforts soon proved futile.

Coming up from behind the length of the wall, they found their path once again blocked by yet more of the foul walkers. These emerged not only from the mist, but from the foetid ground as well, creeping up from the rotten earth in fits and starts to stand among their undead brethren.

Of the dozen or so who now mustered before them, some still clung to fading vestiges of life. Scraps of dried flesh or stringy hair hung from a few. The tattered, yellowed remains of tunics and cloaks dangled from others. Their evil, hollow black eyes scanned in every direction, holding their mouldered shields and waving their antique swords before them.

‘What a vile sight,’ Felix gasped. ‘Of all that we’ve encountered so far, what could be more horrific than bare skeletons that still walk as living men? Please tell me the magic of your scythe holds sway over these things.’

Draeder didn’t answer. Instead he slowed, taken aback by the lumbering undead that now approached.

Felix sensed his trepidation.

‘You may wish to draw your swords now,’ Draeder whispered.

Erhard grumbled, unsheathing his twin blades. He sneered at the wizard.

‘I hope your courage is stronger than your magic.’

Draeder scoffed at the insult, but beads of sweat had started to form on his forehead, despite the chill.

‘It is no failing of mine,’ he said. ‘My scythe flame draws its power from the wilds of the forest and the winds of Shyish. Though it follows the currents of the purple wind, it has no power to control those who walk beyond death.’

Felix snarled, as he drew his own longsword and prepared to meet the dreadful sentinels. Erhard fell in beside him, though Draeder attempted to edge his way back, shuffling in the opposite direction. The old sergeant extended his arm, blocking his path.

‘Not this time,’ he said. ‘If you’re planning to conjure some spell you’d best get to it, because you’re about to stand and fight right alongside us.’

Felix girded himself for the fight, nodding at Erhard as the two men prepared to enter battle beside one another yet again. The undead came at them in a surge of unliving warriors staring at them with dead eyes.

Erhard crossed swords with two skull-faced sentinels at once. Withered though they were, they wielded their blades with relentless furore. It took all of Erhard’s might to force two of them back. Even then, they parried his return strokes, dodging and blocking several times without a hint of fatigue.

Though the veteran sergeant managed to dispatch them both, smashing the skull of one with a pommel strike from above and chopping the other to pieces, he took a slash across his shoulder. Blood began to stain the edges of his jerkin, soaking through his undercoat.

Felix struggled in similar fashion beside him, matching every feint and counter-strike before he was able to cleave his undead attacker’s mandible from its jaw. Though it betrayed no hint of pain, Felix nonetheless pressed his advantage and cut down the ghastly guardian with two more cuts that shattered its vertebrae. Once its skull came away, the bones collapsed at once into a heap.

‘The heads,’ Felix shouted. ‘Cut off their heads.’

Erhard saw it, and despite his injury he immediately began striking at the bony necks of the sentinels. Even Draeder took the advice to heart, whirling his scythe in wild fashion, decapitating skeletal warriors one after another.

Drawing on some of his old fencing tutor’s more obscure lessons, Felix dropped down to his knees and sliced the legs out from under three of the skeletal warriors with one single swipe. As they crumpled to the dust, he seized a spear from one, and using his full weight, he drove it through the shield of a warrior nearby, pinning it to four others behind and knocking down an entire row of the undead guardians.

Once the undead warriors were knocked to the ground, Erhard and Felix swooped in. They stomped on the fallen skeletons, chopping the skulls from each one until the entire patrol had been reduced to nothing but a pile of bones.

When it was done, once all hint of movement and every last twitch among the animated bones had quelled, Felix dropped down to one knee. He held out his sword to prop himself up. Erhard too permitted himself a rare moment’s rest, taking a seat on an empty helmet as he felt under his shirt, gauging the depth of his wound.

‘I don’t know how much more of that I could have taken,’ Felix said, out of breath as the sweat dripped from his hair.

‘Nor I,’ Erhard wheezed. ‘I’m not a young man any more. If we don’t find our destination soon, I’m likely to end up just like one of these old boys here soon enough.’

Felix laughed.

‘Nonsense, old man,’ he said. ‘You’re not done yet.’

Draeder, breathing heavily himself, though he had taken down the fewest of the assailants, was the first to return to his feet.

‘We must keep moving,’ he said.

‘Not yet. At least permit Erhard a moment,’ Felix said.

‘We know there are more of these creatures lurking beyond. The longer we remain in one place, the greater the chance that more of these things will find us,’ Draeder replied.

Felix was about to argue, but Erhard stopped him as he began to get up, having already tied a torn piece of cloak around his upper arm as a makeshift bandage.

‘He’s right, Felix,’ the sergeant said, as he took up beside Draeder to continue on ahead. ‘Don’t worry about me, young man. I’ll be just fine.’

10

They passed through the remainder of the outer precincts quickly after that, but always on guard for more undead sentries. Feeling the effects of their long struggle, each one of them haggard and pushed nearly to the limit, they now preferred discretion to valour. Careful in their every movement, they skirted the edges of ruined gardens and kept off anything that looked like a pathway. In so doing they managed to avoid two more such patrols as they charted a winding course deeper into the heart of the valley.

Finally, they came to the ruins of a large stone wall, which seemed to mark a border of sorts, to what had once been some kind of inner realm. Beyond it stood more elements of ancient architecture, but they quickly saw that these sections were somehow better preserved than the faded, crumbling ruins scattered through the remainder of the valley. While the columns and courtyards that lay ahead had also fallen into disrepair, overgrown with weeds and black lichen, their condition suggested that they had been abandoned much more recently, hundreds of years past perhaps, rather than thousands.

The style of the carvings and stonework differed in another respect as well, and it was one Felix took note of straightaway. Where the age-worn, dilapidated ruins of the outer valley hinted at a kind of lost elegance, a sort of finery rarely seen in the Empire, what they gazed upon now were grim, dour monuments.

Skulls replaced floral motifs atop the columns. Sigils depicting fangs and crossed swords glared in faded tones across the flagstones and the archways. From atop the broken stone embankment, Felix caught a hint of what lay even further out, behind the gruesome landscape, still half-shrouded in the mist.

He could barely discern the outline of a tall tower, cast in silhouette by the fog and the moonlight, looming in the distance directly ahead of them. He pointed it out to the others.

‘The tower of Skethris,’ Draeder said. ‘We’re nearly there.’

They pushed on, risking a final approach without benefit of cover. But the moment they moved out into open ground, they realised that they weren’t alone.

Directly before them stood a portal that opened with three archways. Beneath each one stood what at first appeared to be great statues of magnificently armoured warriors holding large, curved swords before them. When the massive warriors began to move however, marching out in unison towards them, it was clear that they faced yet another, even greater set of guardians.

Though only three, matching them man-for-man, it was obvious that these warriors were of a different, more dangerous sort. While the guardians were skull-faced, just as their brethren in the outer valley, these tall warriors were well-armoured from head to toe. Mail hoods and full length hauberks covered their bones, overlaid with bronze plate. They carried massive round shields and huge broadswords.

Their hollow eyes glowed with a foul green light.

‘Skeletons they may be, but it’ll be much tougher to take their heads from their necks,’ Felix said. ‘And I don’t honestly know how much strength I have left.’

Erhard grimaced, his wound clearly bothering him more than he wished to let on.

‘We cannot fight through such a force again,’ he complained.

‘Agreed,’ Felix said, turning to Draeder. ‘Have you truly no spells to combat such a scourge? I can’t believe the winds of death are no help against warriors who are themselves undead!’

Erhard sneered.

‘I wouldn’t look there for assistance,’ he said, lifting his blades once more for what now seemed the most desperate of fights.

This time the insult appeared to motivate Draeder, and he stepped nearer to Felix, leaving Erhard apart and closest to the ghastly sentinels.

‘Dead or not, if I cannot stop them, I may be able to draw up a spell that will hold them – for a while, at least,’ he said. ‘But I’ll require time to summon the winds of Shyish.’

Felix acknowledged him with a hard pat on the shoulder. Then he closed ranks with Erhard, coming shoulder-to-shoulder with the sergeant.

‘Let him fall back to work his magic,’ Felix said. ‘It’s the only chance we have.’

Erhard refused.

‘He’ll do nothing of the sort!’ he said. ‘He’s not capable of it!’

Felix looked back to the wizard.

‘Can you do it?’ he asked.

Draeder looked to the attackers, marching forward and nearly upon them. Then he gazed back to Felix.

‘Of course, I can,’ Draeder replied, as if it were not even a question. ‘But you must hold them at bay for long enough for me to perform the rite, or I will not be able to loose it upon them.’

Felix took Erhard by the arm.

‘What other choice do we have?’ he asked.

The sergeant grudgingly acknowledged. Felix looked back to Draeder.

‘Stay behind us,’ he said. ‘We’ll hold them here for as long as we can, but waste no time. The moment you are able, cast your spell!’

Draeder assented with a nod. Felix and Erhard rallied. They shouted curses and battle cries and met the charge of the guardians head-on. Hacking and chopping for every inch of ground, the exhausted swordsmen parried every blow of the undead warriors, listening to the archaic verses that Draeder chanted behind them. Bones and blades and broken shields scattered in every direction. Dust choked the staid, foul air.

Struggling for every foothold, Felix slashed his way forward. For a brief moment he managed to push back the onrushing skeleton sentinels, cutting ancient armour and brittle bones with every stroke. But the offensive lasted only an instant. Beside him, Erhard howled as he took another blow. Blood spilled out from a fresh wound in his leg, hobbling him.

‘We can’t hold them, Draeder! Let loose your spell, by Sigmar!’ Felix shouted.

The wizard stepped forward, raising his scythe and calling out the final words to summon the magic he sought. Felix and Erhard continued to battle at close-quarters, in brutal hand-to-hand combat, holding off the skeletal guardians in an increasingly failing effort.

When Draeder’s incantation seemed to accomplish nothing, leaving him standing behind them with no magic summoned to his call, Erhard only renewed his jeering.

‘Damn you!’ he cursed. ‘I knew this was folly. We’re doomed because of you!’

Felix however, remained resolute. He turned to Draeder again, who now looked sheepish and terrified at the onrushing attack he seemed powerless to stop.

‘Try again!’ Felix shouted.

Draeder wiped the sweat from his brow, his hands trembling. He lifted his staff and once more began the spell. But Erhard’s strength had already run out. He screamed, swinging his arms in a wild fury as one of the guardians drove its blade deep into his gut.

Felix held his ground, but as soon as he heard the old sergeant’s terrible scream he knew what had happened. Even as he fought on, he peered out of the corner of his eye, watching as Erhard beat back the skeletal warrior who had impaled him, until his blade managed to cut through the undead walker’s spine, reducing it to a crumpled heap of bones.

Now there were only two guardians remaining, but Erhard couldn’t stand for much longer. With blood drooling from his lips, the grizzled sergeant dropped to his knees. Felix abandoned all caution, fighting his way over to the old soldier, knocking the remaining two guardians back a pace with his sudden, bold counter-attack.

When Felix turned, he saw something he did not expect. Draeder had stepped up in his place, standing alone against the two remaining skeletal warriors. With a swing of his scythe, a pale ring of purple mist did finally spread out across them. It seized the pair, holding them fast and quelling their attack.

Safe for at least a moment, Felix helped Erhard to the ground. Blood was spilling out from the wound in his stomach, gurgling in his throat. The old sergeant clutched at Felix’s cloak as he came to rest in the dirt.

‘Easy, old timer,’ Felix said, trying to comfort his companion, though he knew very well that the wound was mortal.

Erhard pulled him close, near enough to whisper with his last bit of breath.

‘Trust your instincts…’ he wheezed. ‘He’s not what you think… Not what he says…’

Felix, puzzled, again tried to comfort the dying warrior.

‘You must listen,’ Erhard managed. ‘You’re a good man. You’re not like him.’

Felix tried to encourage the grizzled veteran, but the man had nothing left. His eyes froze and his chest stopped moving. Then Ernst Erhard, sergeant-at-arms for House von Halkern, died in Felix Jaeger’s arms.

Felix cradled the body of his fallen friend, holding him tight for a long, quiet moment. Tears choked his eyes, running down through the grime on his cheeks.

When he finally wiped them away to look out at the stilled scene of battle, he saw Draeder standing over the frozen sentinels. The young wizard wore a gleaming, triumphant look upon his face, all-but ignoring the death of his loyal, long-time servant.

Felix looked back at the dead man resting in his embrace. Despite Draeder’s obvious success, or perhaps because of it, Erhard’s last words repeated in his mind. He felt a chill run through his blood, making him shiver down to his bones.

11

Draeder and Felix pushed ahead. They had no choice now. It was not long before the fog cleared out, and a space opened before them that evoked both awe and terror in equal measure.

The tower they had glimpsed in the distance was even more fearsome up close. Skull-topped flag poles crowned with bronze wings flanked a long avenue leading to its gates. They lined the narrow path from the outer grounds into the very centre of the cursed estate. The standards themselves were worn. The fabric was faded, the ends tattered and frayed. But the sigils remained evident: skulls, blades and the bony wings of bats.

Twin statues stood at the terminus of the death-walk. The figures each guarded an obelisk of pure obsidian glass that reflected their shapes in the weak moonlight. Both were carved from a single slab of alabaster five times the height of a man. Garbed in archaic armour, with scythes and oval shields, their faces were skulls.

‘Fantastic,’ Draeder whispered. ‘He made this a monument to the worship of death itself.’

Still reeling from the death of Erhard, Felix could say nothing, merely taking in the evil vista. The tower of Skethris loomed beyond. It was not at all what Felix had expected it to be. It was much worse.

No common citadel lorded over the centre of the wicked grounds. Stout defensive turrets crowned with bastions and crenulated walls formed the core of it. The base and the sides of the structure were solid, old stone: great, hewn mega-blocks of basalt and black marble locked together in perfect order. But there was something gruesome about it as well. The steep outer walls were interlaced with something else, and that was neither stone nor mortar.

Felix stared at the massive, eerie tower, and he shuddered when the dreadful realisation came to him, peering ever closer. The remainder of the structure was the dirty yellow shade of old bones, as though the entire keep had been somehow fortified with the remains of the unliving.

The skeletal conglomeration seemed welded to the stone keep in a twisted, parasitic fashion, as though not built or fused to the original structure by ordinary means, but rather something that had grown into place; like the gnarled, fractured trunk of a long-dead tree or some great, thorny weed that threatened to swallow the host upon which it climbed. Outcroppings extended from the whole ghastly length of it, bony arms reaching out to the darkness. Some were interwoven amongst themselves, creating a frightful skeletal latticework all around the structure.

Dark stains befouled the whole of it, dry rivulets of deep red that hinted at something unimaginable, a downpour of blood or the proceeds of some immense slaughter draining away from the misty heights, the site of such atrocities now hidden behind the clouds.

Felix couldn’t help but pause, standing in grim awe of such dark and evil splendour. But Draeder was unmoved. Holding his scythe high, he yanked Felix by the shoulder and pulled him into the musty shadows of the necromancer’s tower.

‘We’re close now,’ he said. ‘Very close indeed.’

They forced open the tall, rusted-out iron gate, raising a gritty, high-pitched creak from the old hinges. It required the strength of both men to edge it apart wide enough for them to pass, the joints nearly frozen in place after ages of disuse. Behind it was a small antechamber under a vaulted arch. A gauze of cobwebs hung down, blocking the way. Felix cut them apart, spilling a cloud of dust into the staid air. He coughed as they moved forward, Draeder doing the same as he followed.

Behind the entranceway, the inner tower opened into a round chamber. It too was suffering the effects of age and neglect. A thick carpet of dust and old webs coated everything. It smelled rotten, musty and decrepit like an old tomb opened after centuries under seal.

‘The Book of Ashur should be with the altar,’ Draeder said. ‘That would be at the highest point of the tower.’

Felix pointed to the spiral staircase that wound its way up along the far side of the chamber, leading up to the entrance of a second level. It was rusted and swathed in grey, but it made for the only path they could follow.

Though Felix took the first steps on the old stairs, testing if the iron was any sturdier than it appeared, Draeder quickly pushed past him, taking the lead as they proceeded into the upper reaches of the tower.

Above, they found nothing more than a second chamber of the same sort. The entire place seemed to have been unused for quite some time. Finding nothing of note, Draeder wasted no time, following the stairs ever higher.

They fought through several rounds of spider webs and rotten stenches stirred up by their arrival, climbing nine such levels without any hint of an end. Already exhausted from the constant fighting and now nearly out of breath, Felix finally paused at the base of the next level before continuing their seemingly endless ascent.

‘From the outside, this tower looked no taller than five, maybe six storeys, at most. Yet we’ve already scaled nearly twice that and seem no nearer to the top,’ he said, gasping a bit. ‘How can this be?’

‘The winds of magic can be turned to many purposes,’ Draeder replied enigmatically.

The strangeness did not appear to disturb him, and his answer seemed to Felix like nothing more than an after-thought. Instead, he merely continued to chart the path forward, looking up to yet another level.

Coming up through the tenth level, they met with an obstacle – a wall of broken stone. The rubble of some ancient collapse, blocks of shattered stone from the level above had fallen in, piled to the ceiling, clogging the stairwell that was their only path further up.

Felix looked around. There were only a few small windows and no corridors leading off the main chamber. For a few minutes, he and Draeder tried to peel away the fallen roof, but the effort left them no closer. Behind each stone lay more rubble, and the largest of the blocks were too big for twenty men to budge.

‘It’s no use,’ Felix finally said, wheezing and out of breath. ‘We have no idea how high up this goes. All we know is that we are no closer to a way through it, and half of these stones will not move no matter what we do.’

‘So close,’ Draeder whispered. ‘Again, so close. And again, we face a barrier we could not have foreseen.’

‘On that, finally, we agree,’ Felix said.

He picked up one of the smaller stones. Grunting with frustration, he heaved it across the hall. It smashed against the old wood of the nearest shuttered-up window. The stone broke through the aged timber, opening a portal to the sky beyond. Mist from outside drifted in through it, breaking the staid air of the tower.

Draeder jeered at the seemingly pointless act, turning to once again study the stone blockade. Felix, however, fixed his eye on the window. Something had caught his attention.

He went over to it, tested the heft of the remaining shutters and then stepped back. With a snarl that drew Draeder’s eye back to him, he drew his sword, reared back and broke out the rotted wood of the shutters, opening the entire window to the outside.

Beyond was not a flat wall, but a ledge. He scanned the side of the tower, looking over the walls. The entire structure was composed of irregular blocks overlaid by the grisly bone-lattice that encircled the whole of the tower.

‘I have an idea,’ Felix said.

‘We cannot go back down,’ Draeder replied, guessing at his comrade’s notion without even bothering to inquire further.

‘I’m not suggesting that we do,’ Felix said. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. Come here. Look out upon the walls.’

Draeder rather reluctantly came to Felix’s side, and peered out from the broken window frame.

‘That ledge is more than wide enough for a foothold,’ Felix said. ‘And the bones above it offer plenty of places to grip.’

Draeder stepped back.

‘What are you saying?’ he asked. ‘That we should climb up?’

Felix answered by sheathing his sword, jumping up on the ledge and straddling the window.

‘Exactly,’ he replied.

‘That’s madness,’ Draeder said.

Felix stepped out fully onto the outer ledge, leaving only his head and his arms inside the tower.

‘It’s not madness. Given our predicament, it is, I believe, the only sensible course.’

The two men climbed for a long while, realising as they proceeded that the tower was somehow even taller than they had already imagined. Fog obscured the ground beneath them, and above them the parapets remained hidden behind a thick bank of clouds.

Using the latticework of bones to scale the wall, they managed to ascend for a few moments without incident. No skeletal warriors troubled them out in the mist, but even high up on that most remote of places, they soon found that they were not alone.

Ghostly voices hissed at them with nearly every foothold, taunting them or cursing the pair in some attempt to distract them. Several times, the phantoms nearly succeeded. Draeder and Felix each slipped on more than one occasion, both grabbing the other whenever a false step made a fast hand necessary.

Spectral faces appeared from the fog, glaring at them with sinister eyes and haranguing them with high-pitched, wraithlike screams.

Finally, with their arms aching and the skin on their hands rubbed bloody and raw, they recognised a change in the wall. Just above them, the bone lattice tapered off. Beyond that there arose a final ring of giant blocks that crowned the tower. The stones were obsidian black, three times the height of a man and utterly smooth.

‘There’s no place to grab,’ Felix said. ‘Nothing to hold.’

Draeder scanned the heights. Though Felix expected a rebuke for setting them on a futile course, none came. Instead, Draeder began to kick at the bones nearest him, breaking several free from the superstructure.

‘What are you doing, robbing us of what little we have to stand on?’ Felix asked.

Draeder did not reply. Instead, he took several of the bones in hand, recited a chant-like invocation and then tossed the bones up into the air. Instead of falling, the bones aligned themselves in a magical row, forming a sort of makeshift ladder suspended in the fog. It stretched all along the un-scalable section of the wall.

Draeder turned back to Felix with a smirk.

‘What was that you were saying?’

‘Lead the way,’ Felix replied.

As they climbed higher, the ghostly minions only grew more numerous. Every step closer to the tower summit seemed to bring more of them streaming down from the clouds, their faces ghastly and skull-like despite their phantom forms.

They swooped all around the two men, weaving and diving on currents of frost-choked wind. They shouted and taunted from afar, then crept closer, whispering obscene curses in their ears.

After a while, one chorus rose up above the rest. The spectres all seemed to join in uttering the same phrase, one after another as they passed by.

‘Draeder…’ the ghostly voices whispered. ‘Draeder von Halkern…’

They repeated the same thing over and over, as if the wizard’s very name were an accusation. Felix heard it, and though he struggled to keep climbing through the pain and the fatigue in his bones, he managed to call out to his companion above.

‘These phantoms… They seem to know you,’ he said. ‘How can that be?’

Draeder tried to ignore it. He pressed onwards, shouting down to Felix to do the same. But the voices only grew louder, and more numerous.

Among the myriad phantoms dancing about in the mist, one figure finally veered closer. Its spectral form grew more substantial, drawing in fog and shadow until its features were well-defined. No mere phantom, Felix could see that the hovering ghost had taken the form of an old man.

It swooped down, apart from the cadre of spectral familiars, to pass right by Felix and then past Draeder above him.

‘Betrayer!’ it said, in a raspy, eerie voice.

The phantom turned, moving through the sky for another pass. Its eyes were black and its translucent hands tried to clutch in vain at Draeder as it flew along.

‘I gave you shelter. I took you in,’ it continued. ‘You repaid me with treachery… deceit… and murder.’

‘What does that mean, Draeder?’ Felix shouted. ‘What is it saying?’

‘Pay them no mind, Felix,’ Draeder shouted back. ‘The dead who dwell here are jealous of the living and wish to deprive us of our lives. They will do or say anything to make us like them. Deceivers and liars, all.’

‘But how could they…?’

Draeder pre-empted him, looking up at the bastions rising atop the tower, finally in view, almost near enough to reach.

‘Keep moving, Felix,’ he yelled down. ‘Do not allow them to lead you astray. We’re nearly there. Just keep climbing!’

Felix looked out at the swirling spectral familiars, hovering and cavorting in the haunted mist. He caught sight of one. The ghostly old man stared him in the eye as he paused on the bone ladder. Something about its gaze gave him pause. Though frightful and ghastly, a far greater horror occurred to him as he looked into the phantom’s eyes.

He somehow knew that every word it said was true.

12

Felix and Draeder both collapsed upon reaching the top of the tower.

Exhausted from the climb, their eyes were red-sore and haunted by the ghostly terrors that had assailed them. They were at first relieved to find the rooftop quite empty, though Felix blanched at the stench. A foul stink pervaded the place with odours of rotting carrion and mouldered, decaying flesh.

For a moment, they merely listened as they huddled, doing their best to catch their breath and recover whatever strength they had left. The tower crest was eerily silent. No banshee screams or ghostly howls could be heard atop it. Everything was still and deathly cold. Not even a gust of wind disturbed the peculiar, sinister serenity that reigned atop the necromancer’s black tower.

Pillars crafted of bleached human skulls framed the perimeter of the rooftop. Tattered banners hung limp beneath them. The crest was bare in every direction, crowned only by a single altar, elevated at the centre of a crimson star etched into the roof stones. The red pentacle sparkled against the granite, gleaming in the cloud-diffused moonlight.

It was a massive piece of ceremonial statuary, set upon a huge pile of discarded human bones. The ritual dais was itself a single mighty slab, gilded and bejewelled in a ghastly fashion. The face of it was cut to the likeness of a horned skull. On each side there stood familiar skeletal guardians, their bony limbs garbed in gold armour and their gauntlets resting upon massive swords.

Skeletal vultures cast in pure gold flanked the flat-top central platform, their bony wings rising up like serrated daggers on each side of it. Dark, oily smears of blood and muck stained the whole of it with old spatter and thick streaks. Beneath it lay dry pools of maroon and purple that reeked of death.

Draeder was the first to get up. He staggered across the summit, approaching the altar with a kind of reverence Felix had never seen him employ before. Despite that, he quickly began searching all around the platform. He cast aside bones and refuse, digging and reaching all around the altar.

‘It’s not here,’ he muttered. ‘It should be here.’

Felix came up behind him, straining just to walk.

‘You have to explain,’ he said.

Draeder looked around.

‘It should be here,’ he said. ‘Everything I read, everything I learned tells me it should be near the altar.’

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Felix replied. ‘And you know it.’

Draeder didn’t seem to hear him, or to care.

‘Those phantoms knew you. They knew about you,’ Felix continued. ‘What did they mean… murder?’

‘I told you, ignore them, it was nothing,’ Draeder said.

He came around the far side of the altar, posing as if he were the necromancer himself, lifting his hands in a mock ritual, guiding himself through a silent rite.

‘What are you up to?’ Felix asked.

Draeder didn’t reply. He kept looking, scanning the back of the altar until his eyes widened. He reached down, grabbed hold of something and pulled it. The slow groan of rusted hinges once again rose up, just as tired and creaky as the tower gate far below. With the sounds, the altar itself began to move, sliding forward to reveal a chamber directly beneath.

Felix came around to see what Draeder had discovered.

‘Of course,’ the wizard said. ‘The necromancer’s lair was beneath the summit. It must be there. It must be.’

Descending yet another winding, cobwebbed staircase, the two men entered a chamber of the macabre. The room beneath the rooftop was a shrine to the study of darkness. It was at once a vast library of foul knowledge and a repository of tools devoted to the most sinister of conjuring.

A round room not unlike the many lower levels of the black tower, this one was crammed full of every grim accoutrement imaginable. Shelves lined the entire room, floor to ceiling. Every bit of space was crammed with texts. Rows upon rows of bound volumes circled the chamber, mismatched and arranged in chaotic fashion. Their spines bore all manner of varied inscriptions, hieroglyphs, runes and twisted elven characters. Dozens of racks beside them were packed full of weathered, crumbling scrolls.

Baubles and gemstones affixed atop white skulls rested upon gruesome pedestals draped in chains. Candelabra cobbled together from human bones stood at intervals throughout, holding the remains of old black candles, the cold wax frozen in ancient drippings.

At the centre of it all though, resting upon a bone-carved stand all its own, was the prize they had so long sought. A single book.

Draeder approached it slowly, creeping towards the tome with the lightest of footsteps. When he came close enough, he reached out and scooped up the dusty volume in his arms as a father might cradle a newborn child. Tears welled in his eyes.

‘It is true. It is here,’ he whispered. ‘The Book of Ashur.’

It was a volume unlike any other Felix had ever set eyes upon, or any other in the grim library itself. A grisly monument to unspeakable horrors, the very spine of the tome appeared to be made of human vertebrae, the white bones stitched together with strands of woven gold. The leather cover was blackened from age and centuries of exposure to the foul winds its pages conjured from the depths.

Draeder held the book with the awed reverence of a true believer. When he opened it, leafing through the pages, he inhaled the rotten scent of old papyrus, every inch of its surface scrawled with bright crimson runes.

‘Written in the very blood of the ancient mages themselves,’ he whispered. ‘This will make me the most powerful wizard alive.’

Felix turned at the statement.

‘So it is true,’ he said.

‘What is that?’

‘You have no intention of helping the armies of the Empire. You never did. This was about you all along.’

Draeder looked up from his precious volume. His eyes were narrowed, and sinister. The grin on his lips was merciless. A terrible feeling crept over Felix in that moment. The last words of Erhard echoed in his head.

‘And what of all the good men we lost on this journey, the sacrifices and the hardships we suffered?’ Felix continued.

Draeder peered back at him with a familiar, condescending gaze.

‘Those men served their purpose. Do not fret over them. As I told you before, they were beneath us, Felix,’ he answered.

‘You were out for yourself all along.’

‘We’re all out for ourselves, Felix,’ Draeder replied. ‘A lesson I’m surprised it took you this long to learn.’

Felix stammered.

‘In any case,’ Draeder continued. ‘That is all in the past now. You should be pleased, my friend. Soon I will take my rightful place as the most powerful wizard of this age, and for your assistance on this journey you will continue to enjoy my favour – as my loyal assistant.’

But Felix refused to let the matter go.

‘All your talk of the nobility of death magic, was that a lie as well?’

‘No, that was quite accurate,’ Draeder replied. ‘The Amethyst Order believes precisely what I told you.’

‘But you do not,’ Felix realised.

‘The true power in death magic is the ability to control it, to move through it. To live beyond its cold touch,’ he continued. ‘I admit, I seek that power for myself, in these lost secrets of Skethris that I have now obtained.’

‘And that was why they threw you out of their order,’ Felix said.

Before Draeder could reply, a third voice answered instead. It was weirdly familiar as its tones reverberated through the chamber.

‘This man was never in the Amethyst Order,’ the strange, ghostly voice declared.

As the words echoed, a figure took shape out of the mist. When the fog came together, Felix recognized the face. It was a tired, old man.

‘The ghost beside the tower,’ he said.

The figure took on a more complete form then, spectral but garbed in the full regalia of an Amethyst adept.

‘You know him, this ghostly wizard,’ Felix said. ‘Tell me how.’

Draeder sneered. He clasped the book and turned towards the stairwell. The voice called out to him nonetheless.

‘You were turned away by the Amethyst Order, adjudged unfit for the study of magic,’ the ghostly figure said, pointing an accusing finger at Draeder.

Felix looked over to Draeder.

‘The erratic casting. The failed spells,’ he said. ‘You were never a true wizard. Erhard saw through it, but not until it was too late. That was what he was trying to warn me about.’

‘They refused to listen to me!’ Draeder protested. ‘My talents were obvious. My natural facility with the winds of magic was greater than any of them. I would have been the greatest of their Order! My gifts frightened them.’

‘But you were not one to fade into the shadows,’ the ghost wizard taunted.

‘I spent years honing my skills, learning from anyone who would teach me,’ Draeder said, now arguing with the ghost.

‘You’re nothing but a hedge wizard,’ Felix replied. ‘That’s why your spells were so inconsistent.’

‘Strong enough to save your life on more than one occasion,’ Draeder rebuked.

‘But weak enough to fail us on many more,’ Felix replied. ‘We all watched out for one another on the trail. Every one of us saved the others’ necks more times than I can count. But that changes nothing. Everything you said, everything you did was a lie. And many good men died because of it.’

‘As I said, they were of little consequence. Those men died so that I might take what I deserve to have,’ Draeder answered.

‘What you deserve?’ the ghostly wizard continued, his voice rising as his spectral face twisted with wrath. ‘You’ve earned nothing. You came to me as a weary traveller, pretending to beg assistance. I took pity upon you, and the moment my guard was down you murdered me. You stole everything I had: my book, my scythe and even those robes you wear – my very identity!’

Felix stood stunned. Now, when he gazed upon the man who had been his travel companion, the only other survivor of their long ordeal, he had only contempt. He looked at everything again. The age-worn robes. The great scythe. The spell book.

Draeder remained indignant. He continued on his way, ascending the stairwell back to the tower summit. But Felix followed close behind, clambering to the top of the steps and clutching at Draeder from behind. The imposter wizard turned, anger simmering in his eyes.

‘Ignore that ghostly wretch, Felix,’ Draeder said. ‘It matters little now.’

‘But it is all true,’ Felix replied. ‘You lied, you cheated and you murdered your way to this place.’

Draeder clutched the book but looked back to Felix with an expression not of shame, but filled with a strange pride.

‘Indeed,’ he finally said. ‘I did all of those terrible things, and many more, if you wish to know.’

Felix stepped back, his hand reaching for his sword.

‘And do you know what it all means?’ Draeder said. ‘Nothing. It means nothing now. For I have the Book of Ashur. The power long denied to me is finally mine to wield. There is no one who can stand against me now.’

Felix drew his sword, pointing it at the wizard.

‘I can’t let you leave here with that,’ he said.

Draeder sighed, shaking his head.

‘You’re making a mistake, Felix,’ he warned. ‘You and I are very much alike. I saw it in you the moment we met. We’re men of culture and wisdom. We deserve to take what is rightfully ours. We are the men who should rule this land, and this book gives me the power to do so. Now put aside this nonsense and take your place beside me.’

Felix kept his blade raised.

‘I want no part of this.’

‘Step aside, Felix,’ Draeder said. ‘Lower your sword and permit me to pass. I could have struck you down already, if I wished to.’

Felix clenched his teeth and gripped his blade.

‘You’re going to have to,’ he said.

Draeder smirked back at him, lifting his scythe and pointing it at Felix. He began to chant, and his great staff started to glow with violet flame, ready to strike. Felix shifted into a fighting stance, prepared to launch his own attack.

Neither one got the chance. A booming crash of thunder split the skies overhead, quaking the very floor of the tower. With it came a flash of crimson lightning. It blinded them both, casting their armaments aside and sending them reeling.

A terrible, ghostly voice followed. It seemed to call out from the dying echoes of thunder across the summit.

‘Blood will be shed here only by my hand,’ the voice proclaimed.

It was possessed of an ethereal quality, deep-throated and raspy, yet mellifluous as a winter wind. The words were enunciated with an antiquated, formalistic diction, in the manner of a man to whom the common tongue was quite foreign. His accent was unrecognisable, blending words together with an eerie, slithering lilt.

‘Who goes there?’ Felix demanded, turning his sword from Draeder and raising it against the shadows. ‘Reveal yourself!’

A swirling smog of red mist and black flames answered him, a sudden cyclone that swirled out of dark clouds above. Ghastly faces, claws and vile phantasms roiled within the foul tempest. The wrenching cries of weeping maidens, suffering and wailing in some unknown sorrow, sang a foul serenade to the coming of the storm. Bloodcurdling, sinister laughter echoed from the dim, sending ripples through the rancid mist.

Draeder seemed to recognize the signs. His confidence melted into a look of utter terror.

‘By the gods,’ he muttered. ‘It cannot be.’

The unliving fog was a mere harbinger. From its heart, a centre of raging darkness and howling winds, a figure began to grow. At first no more than the outline of a being, a silhouette against a tableau of shadow and flame, its full aspect soon came into view. Draeder turned to look upon it, and his face went pale.

Even as he said the name, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

‘Skethris.’

13

His was a visage of utter terror – something that only barely resembled a living man. He was so gaunt as to be skeletal, though not shorn of flesh like the undead guardians beyond the tower. Desiccated, grey skin covered his ghoulish face. It was deathly pallid and emaciated, hints and outlines of skull showing through the leathery skin that was drawn thin across it. The barest hint of beard whiskers, wispy and long, clung to his pointed chin. A twisted rune was branded into his forehead.

His deep-set eyes peered out from under a set of bony brows, glowering like two crimson flames.

The robes he wore were ancient and ragged, deep sable and the maroon shade of old blood. The folds of his mantle were almost ethereal, as though woven of nothing more than mist and shadow. Ghostly faces shimmered in and out of view within the many creases of the voluminous sheath; the tortured faces of the undead screaming out for a rest they could never know.

Skulls and cryptic death-runes ran along the edges of his midnight-black cloak, glistening red. A spiny cowl rose up like a series of evil horns behind his baleful head. Stringy, matted locks of long, white hair hung all about his crown, framing his face and further suggesting his great age.

Felix’s eyes burned and his lungs revolted. He choked on the icy frost and the sulphur fumes that flooded the tower summit. He looked upon Skethris in frightened disbelief. For a moment the ghastly figure merely menaced them in silence. Then he spoke again.

‘How foolish of you to attempt to steal what has long been mine,’ he said. ‘Your punishment for that will be unimaginable, an everlasting agony the likes of which you cannot yet even conceive.’

Felix edged back from the roiling, haunted mist. He came nearer to Draeder, though even that seemed unwise.

‘You said he was long dead,’ Felix said, trying to keep his voice low, as if to hide his words from the necromancer.

‘Everyone I consulted told me that he was,’ Draeder replied, though his gaze could not turn away from the dreadful sight of the necromancer. ‘They lied to me!’

Skethris snickered, a deep and disturbing laughter that echoed like his booming, ghastly voice.

‘Just as I gather you have lied to all those you have met, ever since,’ the necromancer replied. ‘Rather fitting, is it not?’

Felix and Draeder came together, united again for the moment in the face of a much more terrible enemy. But the necromancer permitted them no quarter. Not even a moment’s respite.

‘Now you will pay for your crimes,’ Skethris declared.

The necromancer raised his bony arms, bringing the horrid swirl around him to a boil. Incomprehensible incantations followed, sparking blood-red lightning across his pointed fingertips. The wailing souls that flanked him raged as he cast down his cold vengeance, raking the crest of his tower with jagged bolts of black flame.

The summit erupted in a paroxysm of dark fire. One twisted tangle crashed into the floor only inches in front of Draeder. He tried to dodge, to make a leap for some kind of safety, but a second whirl of death magic sent him into a tumble across the rooftop. Felix rushed to his side. But he never made it. Yet another blast of cold flame sent them hurtling apart.

As he staggered to his feet, Draeder was hit by a final explosion of lightning. He lost his grip on both the book and his scythe-staff as he fell backwards, sending them sliding across the floor of the tower. In no more than a moment, he and Felix lay exposed. Skethris cackled at the sight of the two interlopers, howling in delight as though merely playing with them before exacting his true vengeance.

Felix regained his footing first, seeing Draeder coming to his feet slower, weakened by the attacks he’d already endured. The force of the blow had opened a gulf between them, separated by a stretch that seemed so very far under the watch of the necromancer and his minions. The Book of Ashur now lay across the tower summit.

Felix didn’t waste a moment. Risking another attack, he dodged a column of ghostly fire and leaped towards Draeder, sliding through the foetid dust until he reached the hedge wizard.

‘We have to stay together,’ he said. ‘It’s our only chance.’

Draeder shook his head.

‘We can’t fight him, he’s too powerful,’ he replied.

‘We may not need to,’ Felix said. ‘If we charge for the edge of the tower, right through the centre of the ghostly horde, we might be able to get over the side fast enough to make it down.’

‘And if we can’t?’

Felix lifted his sword, turning towards the horror they were about to launch themselves upon.

‘Then we’ll die, just as we surely will if we stay where we are,’ he said.

Draeder hesitated. He looked back at the menacing, horrid form of Skethris, the master of the undead looming in the heart of the storm. Then he turned to the book. It lay just out of reach. He couldn’t draw his sight from it, despite the danger.

‘All that power, so very near,’ Draeder whispered. ‘If I could only reach it…’

The ghostly figures closed in around them.

‘We must go, ‘Felix shouted. ‘Now!’

Felix struggled to his feet. He lifted his sword one more time, whispered a final prayer to Sigmar and pressed the attack. Though he could not see who or what his blade struck, he plunged headlong into the mist, his own sight robbed from him as he dove into the putrid miasma of ghosts and fumes. He whirled and slashed, shouting and raging in his last stand against the darkness. But he soon realized that his blade cut only mist. His steel met nothing but smoke and shadow.

It was a moment before he realized that Draeder was not beside him. The young wizard had made his own charge – but not with Felix.

He turned, and tried to see through the mist and the black haze. When he finally saw the nobleman, he was across the rooftop. Though Draeder had managed to once again take hold of the Book of Ashur, he was surrounded by the ghastly minions of Skethris.

‘Draeder!’ Felix shouted. ‘You must leave it behind!’

It was already too late.

As Felix watched in horror, Skethris turned his full fury upon Draeder, not attacking directly but rather swarming him with his spectral followers. Claws and cold hands grasped at him from every direction. Vaporous tentacles coiled like serpents around his legs, rooting him into the floor of the tower. Phantom chains sprang up from the stone. They encircled him, plunging barbed hooks and spears into every corner of his flesh.

‘Though your feeble magic was enough to bring you here,’ Skethris taunted, ‘you are nothing compared to me. My hands command the winds of death itself. Even with the Book of Ashur, you stand no chance against my power.’

The foul necromancer hovered before Draeder. He towered above the frightened young hedge wizard in a column of mist and dark fire. When he lifted his bony, gnarled hand Draeder’s entire body rose up. Skethris reached out with his other hand, his long fingers stretched like talon claws aimed at Draeder’s face.

‘But you are… interesting,’ the necromancer said.

His eyes grew brighter, burning with scarlet flame as he studied the man he held in thrall before him.

‘The stench of death surrounds you,’ Skethris continued. ‘The tortured spirits of your many victims trail behind you, in an ever-present wake of suffering and ruin.’

‘Please, I only wished to learn,’ Draeder pleaded. ‘To see what you see. To know what you know.’

Skethris smiled as he clenched his fingers into a fist. Draeder cried out in pain the moment he did so, howling with a scream of such agony that it turned Felix’s blood cold.

Felix readied himself to face the same fate, holding his sword high in a last measure of defiance, though he knew it was no use. The necromancer seemed unconcerned with him however, all of his attention focused on Draeder.

‘You wish to learn the deepest mysteries of the dark?’ Skethris said.

Draeder trembled, squinting and squealing in absolute misery as the necromancer delighted in tormenting him.

He could manage little more than a feeble response.

‘Yes…’

Again Skethris turned his fingers, sending jolts of pain rippling through every inch of Draeder’s flesh, laughing at the spectacle of suffering.

Felix edged backwards, finding that the phantoms still did not impede him. All eyes upon the summit were now drawn to Draeder von Halkern, suspended above the tower, tortured and pilloried for his hubris, the dire consequence of his abject failure.

‘You wish to know death itself?’ the necromancer asked.

Draeder could barely acknowledge.

‘I am death,’ Skethris said. ‘And you belong to me now.’

A dark energy pulsed through Draeder. It surged in his bones, filling his eyes with a blood-red glow.

‘I am yours… master,’ he said.

Skethris smiled, laughing along with his chorus of lost souls.

‘Then as your first act of servitude, renounce the world of the living and rid this place of the defiler who remains,’ the necromancer announced.

Draeder’s head turned, moving slowly until his glowering crimson eyes came to stare upon Felix.

Across the summit, Felix gripped his sword. He now realized what had not occurred to him before – Draeder had not failed. He had found exactly what he sought.

The rogue wizard leaped from the embrace of the necromancer, trailing mist and flame as he charged upon Felix. His scythe swung high over his head, the long, wicked blade slashing down as he came.

‘You should have joined me when you had the chance, Felix,’ he hissed. ‘Now your choice has doomed you.’

Felix met the attack, and though his muscles ached with exhaustion, his sword clanged against the wizard’s staff in a clash of steel and splinters. Draeder’s face was crazed, his eyes seething with dark magic. He wheeled, and struck again, but this time Felix was faster. He parried, knocking Draeder’s scythe aside.

Then he whirled around, slicing back at Draeder. His sword tore a bloody gash across his chest. A second cut ripped open the flesh of his leg in a blur of red. The wizard howled and clutched at his wounds, staggering through the flames and the blood.

‘You’re wrong,’ Felix whispered. ‘This was always your choice. Your path. It was never mine. I’m not like you.’

Draeder swung his scythe again in a last-ditch effort, flailing it towards Felix. But Felix dodged, cutting the staff to pieces with a slash that ripped through Draeder’s arm, sending him crumpling down in a heap.

Then Felix turned and ran, and though Draeder wailed in agony behind him, calling out his name as he crossed over to the edge of the wall, Felix never looked back. He jumped over the parapet, sliding down until he reached a ledge, where he climbed the rest of the way to the floor of the valley.

For a moment, as he passed the tower gates towards the avenue of death, Felix could still hear the awful, chilling screams. He could make out the last dying echoes of Draeder von Halkern; cries of desperate anguish, fading somewhere in the distance, cursing him through unspeakable tortures.

Then it was gone. The mist and the shadows and any hint of the undead menace that he now knew lurked behind him in the shadows. With nothing but his sword at his side, thankful for the very life in his bones, Felix turned his back on the darkness and began the long journey away from the Valley of Death.

CURSE OF THE EVERLIVING

David Guymer

Felix angled his face from the wind and narrowed his eyes, holding up a hand to shield himself from the grapeshot hail and sleet. The snow was falling thick and hard, whipped up into swirling eddies by the howling gale before lashing spitefully back at his face.

‘Gotrek!’ he cried, straining to be heard over the storm.

He blinked hard, spitting ice water as a fresh gust blasted his cheeks. The Trollslayer had been right there, not ten paces ahead, but the moment the blizzard had struck it was as if the dwarf had simply vanished. Felix had screamed until his throat burned, for all the good it had done him. He tried again anyway, shouting his companion’s name into the storm.

‘Gotrek! Where are you?’

He turned on the spot, feeling panic rise. It was like a directionless maze of formless white and it would be easy for him to lose his bearings. Quickly, he spun around, stooping into the wind as he staggered on.

His eyes focused on a dark shape as it emerged from the snowstorm. ‘Thank Sigmar,’ he mumbled, stumbling towards it. ‘We need shelter, Gotrek,’ he yelled as he drew near. ‘We can’t stay out here in this.’

The shape remained motionless. Its stillness was unnatural, its body becoming steadily buried in snow. It was not the Slayer, that much was clear. It was the statue of a man, kneeling in the snow with its face lifted to the sky in prayer. Something in its aspect chilled Felix even more than the harsh winds, but he tried to set the feeling aside. Not even in the desolate wilds of Kislev did statues appear in the middle of nowhere. It meant people and, hopefully, shelter.

He placed a hand on the statue’s icy shoulder, using its support to rest his legs as he cast his eyes about for the Slayer once again. He snatched his hand from the statue, staring at it as he tried to make sense of what he had just felt.

That had not been the touch of stone.

With a grim sense of foreboding, he reached out and worked to brush away the snow from the shape’s forehead. Even half prepared, he couldn’t hold back a cry of horror as he swept away a layer of frost to reveal a pair of dull green eyes staring out from that upturned face.

He shook his head at the sorry sight. A frozen corpse. The whites of the eyes were cracked and dry, faded with the departure of the man’s soul.

‘There’s another one over here, manling.’

Felix bit down on his lip to swallow a curse. ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that,’ he muttered tersely. ‘Where have you been anyway? You said the map pointed in this direction.’

The dwarf didn’t respond, forging through the snow like a barge through pack ice. Small icicles sprouted from the frosted gold of his nose chain and the blizzard had left his bright crest of hair flattened and sodden, running orange dye smearing the swirling tattoos on his forehead. His immense battle axe rested lightly across one hugely muscled shoulder; the glowing runes of its silver-blue blade painted the falling snow like a bloody halo. The Slayer’s bare torso was goose-bumped – a thick, squirrel-skin scarf wrapped beneath the beard his one concession to the harsh demands of a Kislevite winter.

Gotrek paused to examine the frozen figure. ‘Same clothes,’ he mumbled, seemingly to himself.

Felix craned forward to see for himself. By the look of his attire, the man might have been some kind of knight or warrior priest. He was garbed in crimson robes cinched at the waist with a silver chain and worn over an armoured suit of interlocking white scales. His most striking feature, however, had to be his age. He was old, very old, deep lines frozen for eternity into hard flesh, arms and chest withered by time.

Gotrek stepped away, clapping snow from his ham-like fists. ‘I don’t like this, manling. I don’t like this one bit.’

Felix thought long and hard before answering. It had been too long since he had seen something he had liked. A sudden rush of wind tore the reply from his lips, sodden shanks of filthy blond hair slapping at his cheeks as he hunched low. He choked as his cloak snatched and fought at his collar.

As the wind subsided, he straightened and grinned.

The sudden gale had parted the snow to grant them a momentary glimpse of a squat, black-walled castle crouched atop a nearby hill, before the blizzard swept over them again.

‘Gotrek! We’re saved!’

Gotrek turned and peered through the flurry with his one good eye, as if the wall of snow were no barrier to his dwarf vision. He shrugged. ‘If you say so, manling.’

Felix edged along the dark-stoned corridor, his footsteps echoing eerily along the length of the abandoned hallway. It seemed Gotrek had been justified in his misgivings. The gate had been unbarred, but they had found dozens more frozen guards inside. Felix wished he had turned around right there, but his bones ached with the cold and whatever else this place was, at least it was out of the wind.

They pressed on, past faded, peeling canvases and beneath high arched windows that rattled angrily in the snow-laden wind. The hallway continued until it met with another, stretching into frigid darkness to left and right.

‘Hold up there, manling,’ rumbled Gotrek, just as Felix had begun to move.

The dwarf stepped past him and got down to his knees, setting his axe reverently on the flagstones by his side. As the dwarf brushed aside the frost that clung to the dark stones, his damaged face was suddenly bathed in a soft, bluish light.

‘What is that?’ whispered Felix, peering over him.

‘Ice runes. For warding or protection, I think.’ Gotrek stood up with a shrug. ‘Poorly rendered. I can’t read it.’

Felix looked about nervously, his fingertips feeling for the dragonhead hilt of his runesword Karaghul. ‘Protection from what, I wonder?’

Gotrek smiled grimly, recovering his axe. ‘Let’s just hope we don’t freeze to death before we find out.’

Felix turned away with a scowl. Trust the Slayer to be thrilled by the prospect of a minion of Chaos close by. All he craved was somewhere warm to sleep.

‘Come on, let’s–’

‘Silence,’ Gotrek hissed, cutting him off with a raised hand. ‘Listen.’

Felix froze. At first he heard nothing, except the buffeting of the wind against glass. He was ready to say as much when another sound reached his ears. From the shadows of the left-hand passage there came the sickly sound of shallow, rasping breaths; something approaching with the shambling gait of useless limbs dragged across stone.

Felix struggled to draw his sword in the narrow hallway, holding it tight to his own chest, its point almost against his chin.

Gotrek pressed him forward, bristling with unbridled aggression. ‘Out of my way, manling!’

Felix would have loved nothing better, but the dwarf was far too broad to squeeze past him, and the realisation dawned that he was trapped between an agitated Slayer and the dark silhouette just beginning to rise from the gloom.

‘Hold!’ he yelled, as the apparition came near.

The shuffling form halted.

‘Are you... real?’ rasped the voice from the darkness.

Gotrek shoved Felix aside. ‘Real we may be,’ he barked, ‘but what is it that asks?’

An awkward moment passed. Felix hardly dared to take a breath.

‘A dwarf,’ observed the voice. ‘I don’t remember ever seeing a dwarf before. I suppose you must be real.’

The figure that dragged itself free of the shadows was as near to a corpse as a living man could be. His skin was drawn and callow, hair clinging to his head in clumps of silver. The only features that looked alive were his eyes, with pupils of the most striking gold, but even those were hung with heavy bags like bruises.

The old man shambled closer, his feet sliding to a halt as they neared the frostily glowing ice runes. ‘You’ll forgive me. It has been so long since I last had visitors.’ He extended a pallid, blue-veined hand that seemed almost transparent in the rune’s light. ‘Viktor. Last of the Bilenkov line.’

Felix took the old man’s hand, trying not to show how its tinder-dry touch made his skin crawl.

Gotrek pointed back down the corridor. ‘Your home is filled with frozen corpses,’ he said, showing his usual amount of tact. ‘Are they the rest of your lot?’

The old man’s gap-toothed smile faltered, and it took him a moment to answer.

‘They are... were, sworn to me, after a fashion. It comforts me to see them here still.’

Gotrek turned and muttered to himself. ‘Mad as a coot.’

Felix frowned but didn’t contradict him. Viktor seemed not to hear.

‘You will want food and warmth. Come! I have food enough for a hundred, and spiced vodka from Erengrad, untouched for two centuries. Come!’

The strange old man shuffled off the way he had come. Felix made to follow as Gotrek appeared at his side, a brawny fist pinning his arm at the elbow. The dwarf sniffed the air. ‘Smell that, manling?’ He sniffed again, his ugly face cracking apart into a leering grin. ‘Chaos taint.’

‘Oh really, this far north? I imagine you can spit on the Chaos Wastes from the battlements, on a clear day.’

Gotrek laughed grimly. ‘Interesting thought, manling, but mark my word. There’s something in this castle. Something powerful and old. When have I been wrong?’

Felix suffered his opinions in silence. There was really no right answer to that.

He hurried on after the old man, trying to ignore his sudden trepidation. Viktor waited for them before a dark, iron-banded door at the hall’s end. Felix struggled to keep his teeth from chattering and even Gotrek – sturdy though his dwarfish constitution was – hugged his thick arms close to his chest. How did a feeble old man survive out here on his own?

A prickling sense of disquiet wormed its way into his belly as Viktor reached for the latch. ‘Herr Viktor, wait. Perhaps you should let us check that all is as it should be.

Viktor treated him to a wide grin as he unlatched the door and pushed it inwards. ‘Such courage. Yes, you will do nicely.’

A fresh blast of icy wind drove through the open doorway. Felix shivered as he felt it pass straight through him.

‘Come,’ said Viktor. He turned and passed through the open doorway before calling back. ‘Let me warm you.’

Felix caught Gotrek’s look. The runes of the dwarf’s axe underlit his scarred and battered face with a baleful glow. ‘Do you smell it now?’

Felix nodded reluctantly, and raised his sword. ‘Sigmar’s mercy!’ he exclaimed. ‘The old man.’ With the Slayer in tow, he rushed headlong into the open chamber.

The room was circular with high walls surrounding an inner ring of limestone columns. The pillars stood bereft of purpose amidst the rubble of a fallen ceiling, sinking into the snow that billowed through the cracked roof.

‘Viktor!’ Felix yelled into the darkness.

‘Be still, manling. I think we’re about to learn what those runes were for.’

Muttering a curse, Felix attempted to peer through the swirling snow. It was hopeless. He couldn’t see ten strides. ‘Is he a cultist? A sorcerer?’

‘I reckon there’s more to him than that.’

Adopting a fighting stance, Felix held his sword before him as he crept towards the nearest pillar, studying each of the stone columns in turn. Where was the old man hiding? He tried listening for any sign of movement, but all he could hear was the crunch of fresh snow beneath Gotrek’s boots as he made his way towards the centre of the room.

‘Gotrek,’ he hissed. ‘I think that’s possibly the last place we want to be.’

‘Are you suggesting there’s anything here I should be afraid of, manling? Hah!’ Gotrek swung his axe through a lazy circle, making the starmetal sing. ‘Come out, fiend,’ he bellowed. ‘My axe thirsts!’

Felix hurried to the Slayer’s side, the echoes of the challenge fading away into the falling snow. His short breaths came in clouds of rapidly cooling fog; his arms were trembling. At last he could endure no more. ‘You heard him, Viktor! Where are you?’

A cold laugh reverberated between the circle of standing stones. ‘Dead, Herr Jaeger, long dead. Merely a single link in a neverending chain.’

‘Hold fast, manling. He hopes to weaken your guard,’ Gotrek snorted. Hot air blasted from his flattened nose as if he were a maddened bull. There was something about the Slayer’s presence that was always profoundly reassuring. Felix doubted the crazed old man would laugh so hard once Gotrek was done with him.

But again, wicked laughter echoed through the whiteout. ‘And what is it that you fear, dwarf?’

‘I fear nothing, in this world or the next!’

‘Bold words from someone so small.’

Felix shuffled backwards as the insane tittering engulfed him. ‘And as for your human companion – he is filled with fear.’

Felix felt his fingers tremble on the grip of his sword. The old man’s words circled some animal part of his brain like wolves. Inarguable instinct commanded him to run and–

‘–Oww!’

Thick fingers pressed into his bicep like bands of steel. He looked down into the steady gaze of the Slayer.

‘Take so much as one step back, manling, and you’ll find my axe in your spine. How’s that for fear?’

His lips parted to form an answer. Suddenly his eyes widened as a shape emerged from the snow like some daemon of shadow. Gotrek’s back was turned and he was blind to the danger as the entity closed with impossible speed. Without time for fear, Felix dropped his shoulder and slammed into the dwarf’s stomach. Gotrek bellowed in surprise as Felix bore him over, something angry whisking past as they rolled together through the snow.

Gotrek swore in Khazalid, no doubt to curse Felix for the clumsy get of goblins and simpletons that he was, and he came up straddling Felix’s chest. The Slayer’s thighs pressed down on his chainmail shirt like a vice, his eye glinting madly. ‘Thank you, manling.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he wheezed though the dwarf’s crushing grip.

With a roar, Gotrek spun to his feet, swinging his axe in an upward arc. The clang of metal on metal rang in Felix’s ears. He looked up to see Gotrek’s straining features, every massive muscle bulging and taut as the wiry old man forced a slender-bladed rapier onto his axe. Steam rose from Viktor’s skin, his flesh bubbling like hot oil and his eyes blazing gold. The daemonic thing noticed his regard and opened his mouth into a lopsided grin. The open maw was empty but for bleeding gums.

Gotrek gave a strangled roar, forcing every sinew against whatever daemonic might lent strength to Viktor’s withered arms. The runes of his axe glowed brighter and brighter as Gotrek struggled, bathing the contest in a bloody light.

All of a sudden, one of the ancient runes of power flickered and died, followed by another, and then another. Felix had never seen anything like it.

‘What in all the gods...’ he murmured.

Viktor cackled, oblivious to the blood that ran freely from his mouth, as the Slayer’s axe turned dark. The old man raised one hand from his sword, showing no difficulty restraining the spitting and cursing Slayer one-handed as he grabbed the dwarf by the dyed and crusted roots of his beard. In one moment of impossible strength, he hauled Gotrek from his feet, spinning him around and around like a hammer before letting go. The Slayer flailed his arms madly, before crashing through one of the limestone columns. The massive pillar crumpled, crashing to earth at the old man’s back, but Viktor didn’t even flinch.

Felix cried out. ‘Gotrek!’

Viktor vanished into the billowing whiteout, but Felix knew he couldn’t be far. His heart thumped. He knew of only one thing that could gift such power – daemonic possession. His hand groped for his sword but he had lost it somewhere in that initial roll with Gotrek.

He spotted it some way off in the deepening snow, buried halfway to the hilt. He dived, his fingers tightening around its grip as he dropped into a roll that carried him back to his knees, steadying himself upon the icy stones.

He flicked a strand of hair from his eyes, squinting into the glittering haze.

Where was the cursed creature?

A kick struck him under the jaw before he even registered the movement. His head snapped back, reflex jerking the sword from his grip. A hand, soft and sticky with blood, but stronger than a troll, gripped his throat. Helpless as a child, Felix was hauled upright.

He stared into the demented eyes of his attacker, just as one golden orb burst into flames. The eye burned like balefire in its socket but the thing that had been Viktor didn’t seem to notice or care. Its face sloughed away to reveal bleeding muscles, and its toothless mouth opened to speak, its voice bubbling as though its lungs drowned in blood.

‘Sentinels die and wards fade, but I am Everliving. Your body is strong, for a mortal, and still youthful. It will last me for many years still to come.’

Felix tried to speak but could not. He felt sick. He had always suspected that it would end like this.

Viktor opened his bleeding mouth and began to chant, sickly brutal words flowing from his lips like blood from a severed artery. Felix felt his vision swim, a wave of dizziness passing through him. He looked up at the leering daemonic thing, but its face seemed to warp and twist before his very eyes. Pain seared his skull, echoing with the daemon’s voice.

‘In you I will live anew...’

For an instant, their minds touched. He saw a flurry of images, like a blood-soaked picture book of horrors and brutality perpetrated over uncounted centuries. Faces raced by. Men. Women. Children. Some, he recognised from the portraits in the hall, but there were more, so many more. All in pain, all in terror, all dying in unspeakable violence. And he heard a name.

Ghrizzhtadt... Ghrizzhtadt the Bloody. Death is not the end. Not for the Everliving...

Just as his own consciousness began to flounder under the weight of untold atrocities, Felix felt the daemon’s presence dragged away. He opened his eyes, sights and sounds flooding back in a rush.

He came up like a drowning man, finding his face dripping with blood.

Viktor’s grip still held, but the lower half of his jaw had vanished and taken his chanting with it. A defiant artery spurted blood into Felix’s face, and he glanced aside to see Gotrek’s thrown axe embedded in the stone of the nearest column.

‘Hold, Chaos spawn!’ bellowed Gotrek. ‘My axe is not yet done with you!’ The bruised and bloodied Slayer stood atop a rock pile, his arm still extended from the throw that had saved Felix’s soul. He leapt down, shaking dust and snow from his muscular frame.

Felix’s fists beat against the daemon’s arm. Flesh fell from the limb in greasy globs, until he scratched at naked muscle, but still the grip was like hell-forged iron.

Robbed of his daemonic voice, Viktor gargled from his splayed mouth, his tongue flopping around the unpronounceable words.

Gotrek ignored his protests, hurtling forwards unarmed, but Viktor’s grip gave and he dropped Felix to the floor, molten fat dribbling from his fingers. Viktor howled in frustration as a punch from Gotrek smashed his ribs like brittle clay. He gasped, his melting body flopping to the bloodstained snow like a jelly-fish. The old man tried to laugh, a sickly dying sound, blood splattering from his throat in seemingly endless supply.

Shaking off his disgust, Felix retrieved his sword from the snow, holding it point down above the daemon’s dissolving chest. The thing met his eyes.

‘Death is not the end,’ Felix muttered. ‘Not for the Everliving.’

The creature shuddered, a red mist rising from its body like a bloody shroud. Felix plunged his sword through the daemon’s heart – so little of the beast remained that the blade passed through it as if it were not there at all. Felix’s cry of triumph was cut short by a yelp of pain as the point struck hard stone.

The old man rocked from side to side as though in silent agony. Felix stepped back, leaving his sword standing as the man’s body decayed around it. The collapsing husk continued to vent the strange mist which, if Felix squinted just right, seemed to coalesce into some kind of brooding shape, a golden pinprick glimmering like a single malevolent eye within the roiling haze.

Gotrek waved his axe angrily through the cloud, eliciting a terrible shriek that made Felix wince. The dimmed runes on the Slayer’s axe flared once with blinding brilliance, before returning to a normal glow that slowly faded as the evil mist dispersed.

‘You see? Daemon taint,’ said Gotrek, spitting on the thing’s corpse even as it continued to dissolve. ‘Firmly back in the claws of its master now, I’d wager, and good riddance to it!’

Felix shivered and then sneezed. He felt clammy under his mail and he dreaded the thought of the sweat freezing against his skin. He gathered up his cloak and wrapped his hands, pressing the bundle to his face as he huffed warm clouds of air. ‘Come on,’ he mumbled. ‘Let’s find somewhere to start a fire while I still have the fingers to pen your epic.’

It was finished, he told himself. He let the dwarf lead him away, trying to dismiss the malicious laughter ringing between his thoughts.

Black smoke choked the small antechamber, summoning tears to Felix’s eyes. He dared not open the door, not even a fraction. Even sat this close to the fire he could feel the ice in his bones.

And some instinct told him he should not. Some whispered fear implored him to stay down, stay hidden. Shivering, he tore more pages from an ancient book and tossed them into the flames. Watching the paper bundles disappear in crispy flares, he tried to convince himself that all was well. It didn’t work.

He glanced over the fire at his silent companion. Felix frowned. Gotrek had probably retreated into one of his more morose moods. His failure to meet the glorious death he craved weighed heavily upon him at times.

Gotrek brooded over a yellowed parchment, the corners curling inwards from where it had been rolled. Felix was distrustful of any map that confused Middenheim with Marienburg, but the dwarf had been immediately convinced by its authenticity. Or perhaps it had been the promise of gold that had convinced his companion to part with two coppers to possess it?

He shivered again, blowing his nose on the hem of his cloak before presenting his open palms to the fire. ‘The tomb of Okedai Khan, Gotrek?’ He forced a smile in an attempt to quell his unease, but he felt about as cheerful as the frozen guardians they had encountered in the castle grounds. ‘It seems unlikely that hobgoblins would bury their leaders with gold, even if the man who sold you that map was truthful about having already seen it.’

Still the dwarf said nothing, simply staring down, his one eye glinting red with reflected flames. Felix scratched his stubbled chin in concern. He had honestly thought the mention of gold would spark some life into the dwarf’s heart.

He shuffled around the fire’s edge until he was sitting at his companion’s side. ‘Gotrek. Are you asleep?’

The dwarf remained unresponsive, staring blankly down. Felix saw clearly now: the red fire was no reflection. Gotrek’s eye glowed with its own light, the daemonic lustre of some inner horror!

He fell back with a cry, and the dwarf’s eyelid flickered. ‘Quiet, manling. I’m trying to think. It’s hard enough in this damned cold without you carrying on like some hysterical elf woman.’

Felix gasped with relief. ‘I thought... I thought...’

He trailed off. He’d thought what? That Gotrek was possessed by a daemon? What was he, a child that saw dark shapes in firelight and ran to his mother for protection from wicked spirits? He laid a palm on his forehead. He had a fever.

‘What’s the matter with you anyway?’ Gotrek grunted, stretching his massive arms before the fire.

Felix’s eyes widened. The Slayer’s huge, broad chest was stained with barely dried blood, and the swirling blue tattoos seemed to writhe in the firelight as though quickened by some dark magic. The runes of his axe glowed with a dull red light, piercing Felix’s soul like the eyes of a daemon.

‘I’m... I’m sorry. Never mind.’

‘Get some rest. You look bloody awful.’

Felix lay down, but sleep wouldn’t come. The shadows had eyes. He felt them prickling at the nape of his neck. Gotrek had assured him more than once that the daemon was gone, banished by his axe to the Realm of Chaos.

Felix opened his eyes to glance suspiciously at the dwarf.

But of course, he would say that.

He cursed himself for a fool and, fighting down the sense of foreboding, tried to sleep. Fragments of memories swirled through his fevered mind. Not all of them were of events he recognised. There were unknown faces and cold, foreign lands. There was battle. There was death. He saw himself towering above it all, his blood-drenched sword gleaming in his hand, a mountain of bodies strewn before a throne of skulls.

He tossed and turned on the hard floor. A voice spoke in his mind, nothing more than the shadow of a whisper, ever present when he wasn’t thinking of it, conspicuous by its absence when he did.

‘Sleep, Felix,’ it whispered, over and over with a tortuous monotony. ‘Sleep.’

‘No...’ he mumbled through dried lips, his eyes half closed.

Suddenly, filled with uncertain dread, he snapped awake. His heart raced from some half-remembered terror. The fire had sunk to glowing embers and he could hear the Slayer’s vigorous snores from across the chamber. He worked his way into a corner and hugged his knees to his chin, staring fearfully at the darkened room. Gotrek’s axe loomed large. It seemed to have grown massive, throwing dim shapes against the walls that flickered and writhed with shadow claws. At its black core, runes pulsed with a cold, rhythmic heartbeat.

‘It’s just a fever,’ he repeated, over and over like a prayer. With his eyes scrunched tight, he tried to block out the fear, listening instead to the insistent voices inside his mind.

Felix’s leather boots crunched into knee-deep snow. The sound of them carried unnervingly. The sun rose late in this strange northern sky and, despite the lateness of the morning, the forest remained dark, stars peering down from a clear sky. His scalp itched under their unwelcome scrutiny. He fancied that he could hear their cold, hard, whispering voices on the north wind.

A panicked squawk split the air. Felix shot his head around as a flock of waxwings took noisily to flight. He let out a long breath as he unclawed his fingers from the hilt of his sword.

Some way back, Gotrek waded through the drifts with his usual aggressive fervour. Lacking Felix’s longer legs, the dwarf struggled in stubborn silence. Felix pinched the bridge of his nose as the dwarf caught up with him. Gotrek hadn’t acted in any way he could call abnormal, but still the poet’s stomach clenched every time the dwarf came near, with the strangest sensation of otherness that made his heart skip a beat.

Gotrek panted heavily. He planted his axe shaft into the frozen earth, crossing his powerful arms over the butt of the blade as he fought for breath. ‘Trees and snow,’ he said, staring at the spindly, snow-capped forms with a disapproving eye. Felix knew what was coming. ‘Nothing but trees and snow. There’s only one thing I despise more than trees and snow, and that’s–’

‘Elves!’ screamed Felix. ‘Yes, I understand – you hate elves! Shallya’s mercy, you say nothing for hours on end and when you do speak I have to suffer this interminable nonsense!’

Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Felix trembled, his disquiet finally having bettered him. Gotrek merely glowered.

‘I don’t care much for your tone, manling. If it weren’t for the oaths of friendship we swore, your corpse might now be decorating those damnable trees.’

‘Oh yes, the oath!’ cried Felix, close to tears. Since the day he had made the oath, Gotrek had dragged him to every foul place in the Old World and beyond. He had promised to follow the Slayer and record his mighty doom. It had been the naive promise of a drunken young fool.

A strange anger stoked his blood, filling his veins with bitterness and bile, bringing all of the hurt and pain bubbling back to the surface. ‘Curse you! And curse your oath! I have a father who is old and frail, and a family that needs me. What of that?’

‘Have a care, manling. There’s naught in this world lower...’ He paused for a moment before spitting out the words as though they were poison. ‘...than an oathbreaker.’

Felix tried to calm himself but couldn’t. It was as if he were no longer in control of his own tongue. Rage filled him, a burning hatred that was only partly his own. He was doomed. Doomed to follow this mad dwarf until they were both dead. Suddenly it all became clear. It was so obvious he couldn’t believe it had never occurred to him before.

Gotrek had to die.

His sword slithered from its scabbard almost with a will of its own.

Gotrek studied the blade with interest. His face split into a grin as his own ham-like fist slid ominously down the haft of his axe. ‘And what do you plan to do with that, manling?’

Felix gave no answer, but something did – amused laughter whispered between his ears. ‘Now you will rest, Felix. Rest, and live anew...’

Whatever strange madness had driven him slipped away. He felt cold and empty. What had he done?

Something rustled amidst the trees, some animal, he assumed, startled by his little outburst. Gotrek heard the noise too, and something about it made his expression change, softening it into a crooked grin. He winked.

Felix’s mouth dropped open.

The Slayer laughed and shoved a brawny fist into Felix’s chest. He swayed back, arms windmilling in an unsuccessful attempt to stay upright as he plunged backwards into deep snow.

Spluttering on a mouthful of ice, Felix saw Gotrek turn away to face the forest.

‘Come out, you filthy lurker!’ he shouted. ‘We know you’re there.’

Felix rose, shivering uncontrollably as a shape detached from one of the nearest trees. It was a tall, barrel-chested man, almost invisible against the snow in white fur britches and coat. The flaps of a mink ushanka hid his face such that only a short blond beard and pinched red cheeks peeked out below a pair of icy blue eyes. He carried a short yew bow unstrung in his hands like a staff.

‘An excellent distraction, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘I’ll admit, you had me going there until I heard his breathing for myself.’

The fur-clad man held up his hands as Gotrek strode over to him. ‘I mean no harm, I swear. My name is Tamascz and I was just gathering berries when I heard raised voices.’ He looked downwards, clearly embarrassed. ‘I hid.’

‘Berries particularly vicious up here, are they?’ grumbled Gotrek, prodding the man’s bow with his axe.

‘This is not your Empire,’ said Tamacsz. ‘In Kislev, everyone must be prepared to fight, be they man, woman, or child.’

Felix grunted in something that might have been amusement had his fraught nerves allowed it. He knew a thing or two about the... ferocity of Kislevite women, even before his former lover had been lost to darkness.

‘Be gone, woodling. Run back to your berries,’ Gotrek jeered.

‘Wait, please,’ said Felix, turning to Tamascz. ‘We’re a little lost. Maybe you can help us.’

‘Say nothing, manling. You thought to venture into that castle against my advice. I don’t trust this fellow, and I’ll certainly not be sharing my gold with him.’

The woodsman backed away with a look of horror. ‘You come from Castle Bilenkov?’

Felix shrugged. ‘Perhaps. What of it?’

‘Then goodbye!’ Tamascz hurried away, almost slipping in the snow in his haste. ‘Whatever fate awaits you is one you’ve earned. That house is cursed!’

‘Bah!’ scoffed Gotrek, waving his hand after the fleeing figure. ‘Good riddance to him.’

Felix wasn’t listening. His attention had been wholly claimed by Gotrek’s axe, which seemed to be glowing brighter and brighter in the dwarf’s hands. At last, the Slayer noticed, staring as though his timeless heirloom had been switched for some cheap replica. Vicious daemonic syllables seemed to drip from its edge in an unholy chant. It was Viktor’s voice.

Or that of the daemon that had inhabited his form.

The axe glowed red hot now and, as Felix watched, a red mist bled from the ancient starmetal, streaming off after the running woodsman. A wispy umbilical hung in its wake, fastening to the blade like a tether.

‘What has it done to my axe?’ bellowed Gotrek, charging after its departing shape, swinging his weapon madly through the ethereal cloud.

Tamascz turned to look over his shoulder just as the daemon cloud struck, his face twisted in horror as the red mist descended. Battling through the snow in pursuit, Felix saw the man disappear into the cloud, evident only in an arm or leg that thrashed within the enshrouding mist.

‘Don’t attack it,’ yelled Felix, hoping that the maddened Slayer would hear. ‘You’ll only hurt him.’

Bellowing a war cry, the dwarf swung back his axe to strike, the mere proximity of the Slayer seeming to affect the daemon cloud like a sacred icon of Sigmar might repel the undead. It lifted from the ground, relinquishing the gasping woodsman as Gotrek barrelled into its roiling mass, laying about with his axe like a madman. The red fog enshrouded the Slayer completely, and Felix could only vaguely hear muffled shouts from within.

The shape shuddered, a wave of what Felix imagined to be pain rippling across its nebulous face. It shrank back, seeming to draw in on itself until Felix noticed it was being pulled back into Gotrek’s axe.

The Slayer roared as the fog withdrew into his beloved weapon, slamming the axe again and again into the bole of a nearby tree as though it might shake the daemon loose. Gradually, he calmed down and sank into the snow beside the splintered trunk. He stared glumly at his axe.

‘It would appear you’re right, manling. This Ghrizzhtadt does not die so readily.’

Felix extended his hand to the cowering woodsman. Tamascz stared at it for a moment as though it might grow teeth and bite him. Eventually he took it and allowed Felix to help him to his feet.

‘The Everliving should be trapped in its castle,’ he muttered. ‘There are wards, there are guards!’

‘What, exactly, is the Everliving?’ asked Felix.

Tamascz gave him an odd look.

‘A daemon, but not any daemon. It is said that during the Great War, Voivode Bilenkov refused to abandon his home and retreat to Erengrad. He denounced his rulers and appealed to the gods for strength to fight alone.’

‘And then what?’ asked Felix.

‘What do you think? He got it! But somehow the daemon remained after Bilenkov passed, claiming the souls of his family one by one. That was when the Knights of the Silent Shield were founded. It was they who warded the castle, and who stand sentry to this day.’

‘Tell us about these knights,’ said Gotrek.

‘The Silent Shields are sworn to destroy the daemon. Deafness is the one defence against the Everliving, and initiates take needles to their ears to thwart its curse.’

Felix winced, but Gotrek only snorted. ‘It seems your Everliving has outlived its gaolers,’ he said. ‘They should have killed it while they were still able.’

‘It can’t be killed, don’t you see?’ said Tamascz, on the brink of tears. ‘And it’s out now, thanks to you!’

‘Well it’s not staying in my axe!’

‘But Gotrek, if it’s bound to your axe maybe we can just take it back and bury it.’

Gotrek glared at him, his voice low and threatening. ‘I’d sooner bury you, manling.’

‘We have time to think of something. It’s trapped in the axe, so long as its magic protects us.’

The three of them stared at it. As if the imprisoned daemon had selected that precise moment to act, one of the glowing runes blinked out with a metallic chime, the potent ward fading like a dead star.

Gotrek snorted with black humour. ‘Not as much time as you might wish for, manling.’

‘H-how many of those wards do you have?’ murmured Tamascz.

‘Enough,’ grunted Gotrek, testily.

‘Then what do we do?’ asked Felix.

Gotrek ran his thumb down the blade of his axe. He grinned as though someone had just offered him a tzarina’s ransom in gold. ‘We find it a new host. Something I can kill!’

Felix buried his face in his hands. He should have known.

‘Not for me,’ said Tamascz firmly. ‘You set this horror loose. I have a wife and two girls at home.’

‘You can’t leave, Tamascz,’ said Felix, gently. ‘If you venture too far the daemon will try to claim you again. I’m afraid you’re stuck with us.’

Rolling his eyes, Gotrek turned to walk away. ‘Fine, he can stay. But he’s sharing your half of the gold.’

Felix couldn’t help a disbelieving smile. He didn’t know what was stranger, the dwarf’s hunger to face the Everliving one last time or his conviction, even now, that they might still locate the barrow of Okedai Khan.

‘Which way shall it be, then?’ asked Gotrek.

‘That way,’ said Felix and Tamascz together, their fingers pointing away to some shared, hidden point in the trees to the north.

Gotrek’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s over there?’

‘I-I don’t know,’ stuttered Tamascz, paling.

The three of them let their eyes fall back to the axe, silent and grim in Gotrek’s fists.

The dwarf chuckled coldly. ‘Ha! I don’t even care. Let the daemon lead us where it will. It wants the same thing as I do.’

Felix felt his skin crawl. He wasn’t so sure.

A darting form caught Felix’s eye. He spun round, sword drawn. He stared hard between the brooding trunks at where the thing had been, but now there was nothing. The snow was undisturbed, the hard leaves still. Again, the sound came from behind him, and again he spun. It was the sound of running feet. The strains of a woman’s laughter crystallised from the air like ice.

‘Gotrek,’ he called, his voice seeming muffled and faint even to his own ears. ‘Gotrek, help me.’

The movement came again, closer this time. He shifted his body just as something small and lithe but with tremendous strength carried him from his feet, and slammed him face down into the snow-blanketed earth.

He looked up into the face of a woman as beautiful as she was regal. Her hair was as pale as snow, her touch as cold as death. ‘No...’ he whispered. ‘Not you.’

With tender affection, the pale woman caressed his cheek with an icy palm, uttering soothing noises, as if he were a tearful child. She smiled to see his fear, her soft red lips curling up to reveal dagger-like canines. ‘Hush Felix, so fearful. Rest now. Live anew.’

She opened her small mouth wide. Felix felt the prick in his neck as one of her teeth snagged in his flesh.

‘No! Ulrika!’

He fought, punching at the restraining strength with elbows and heels. He was rewarded with a grunt of pain and he felt the weight slide off him. He didn’t allow himself a moment’s hesitation, knowing he could not do what must be done if he did. He took up his blade and dived onto the vampire, holding aloft his sword to bury it in her heart.

‘Felix! Stop, it’s me.’

He looked down at Ulrika. She was beautiful, so beautiful.

He scrunched his eyes shut. Something was not right. That was not her voice.

She reached for him, her eyes beseeching.

‘T-Tamascz?’

The woodsman suddenly relaxed, his head flopping down into the soft snow, sighing in relief as Felix hesitantly lowered his weapon. ‘You cannot let yourself sleep,’ he said. ‘That is how the Everliving will trap you. Its evil finds your fears to use against you. Your mind is weakest when it dreams.’

Felix let out a shuddering breath, trying not to imagine the daemon inside his mind. He glanced around the circle of dark trees, the night lit only by the embers of their dying campfire. Then he looked across at Gotrek. The Slayer never seemed truly peaceful, but he slept soundly enough, undisturbed by daemons or nightmares or Felix’s yelling.

‘Why not him?’ Felix asked, nodding in the dwarf’s direction. ‘Why doesn’t it come for him, too?’

The woodsman shrugged.

‘Fine,’ Felix grumbled. He’d already gone one night without sleep. What was one more?

For most of the next day they trudged through knee-deep snow and unchanging forest. Felix had long ago lost any sense of direction, yet neither did he doubt that their path was true. Why that was, he couldn’t say, and nor could Tamacsz, yet the burly Kislevite seemed to share his conviction. That in itself worried Felix, but his mind was too full of fog to treat such concerns with the severity that they were due. He would almost welcome death, the chance to lie down, and close his eyes...

‘Look here, manling.’

Gotrek’s granite-like voice roused him, pointing him in the direction of firelight. The glow threw long, shimmering shadows into the forest that danced to the beat of a distant drum.

They crept closer, lurking just beyond the tree line and peering out into a wide clearing that heaved with cavorting beastmen. Felix released a long breath. There must be over a hundred of the brutish creatures. If Ghrizzhtadt wanted the three of them dead, it seemed he was going to get his wish.

The herd was gathered around an immense brass gong twice the height of a man and suspended within a broad, triangular wooden frame. It practically thrummed with dormant power, rendering the clearing unseasonably warm. No snow settled here and flowers bloomed in the long grass, like some trick of fate to bestow this oasis of Kislevite springtime into the keeping of the Ruinous Powers. Beastmen stomped amidst the delicate blooms, sometimes pausing, seemingly at random, to pound the instrument with their claws or antlered heads. Some danced to the drums and pipes of others of their kin. Others fought, stag-like horns intertwined, while others still rutted in a horrific blending of animal parts that Felix prayed he would live long enough to forget.

Gotrek smiled broadly. ‘A glorious sight, eh? Ha!’

The Slayer roared in delight, charging from the tree line, the music snarling to a halt as all eyes turned on the demented dwarf bounding towards them.

‘He’s mad,’ muttered Tamascz, notching a white-feathered arrow to his bow.

Felix smiled ruefully. ‘You’ve no idea.’

Gotrek reached the nearest of the beastmen, a shaggy haired abomination with the head of a bull. As Gotrek swung his axe, Felix noticed the red mist trailing from it once more like a priest’s censer. The cloud grew darker as it took on a greater solidity, wrapping around the Slayer’s shoulder and pulling him down. The dwarf fell, rolling through the grass as he wrestled with the daemon mist. The bull-headed beastman blinked in surprise, its slow mind not quite keeping pace with events, before the dwarf leapt up and laid into the herd.

Crude weapons were drawn, and Tamascz loosed his bowstring, but the arrow flew high and wide. Evidently the woodsman was more accustomed to hunting rabbits than the beasts of Chaos.

Cursing the day he had met the doomed Slayer, Felix leapt from cover and sprinted after him. Gotrek seemed to be holding his own despite his struggles with the daemon mist. He acknowledged Felix with a grunt before spinning away to crush a beastman’s ribcage with a sickening blow. Limbs, horns and sprays of gore flew around the rampaging dwarf as he carved a bloody ring into the crowding beastmen.

Felix tucked in behind the Slayer, shielding his companion’s left side, focusing on fending off the herd of beastmen while letting Gotrek do the bulk of the killing. The Slayer cleaved a bloody path towards the great wooden pyramid in the centre of the clearing and Felix, keeping close, followed in the trail he left.

There they held, fighting back-to-back, using the frame to guard their flank. Up close, the metal of the gong was hellishly warm, its tremulous surface whispering its acknowledgment to the snorts and bellows of the raging herd.

With a roar of fury, Gotrek split a beastman’s jaw in two with a savage upwards swing. The red mist quivered, seeming to grow ever more solid with each life the Slayer took. It flowed across his broad shoulders, trying to throttle his neck whilst also pulling on both arms. Emboldened by the Slayer’s struggles, the beastmen were circling closer.

‘How is it coming along?’ Felix shouted. Gotrek shot him a confused look. ‘Finding our angry friend a body, I mean! Don’t be picky. Any one of these will do!’

‘It’s a daemon, manling, not a bloody crossbow. I can’t just point and shoot!’

Lowing in blood-crazed hysteria, another beastman charged in, thrusting its spear up and into the Slayer’s shoulder. Gotrek gritted his teeth against the pain, channelling it into a howl of pure outrage as he ripped the barbed point clear and brained his would-be attacker with the thick wood.

Gotrek flexed his massive muscles and bellowed at the rest of the cowardly beastmen. He bled from a dozen cuts, the one in his shoulder merely the worst of many. The daemon mist coiled about his many wounds like a swarm of hornets, shuddering and sparking with dark energies at the touch of blood. As the cloud swirled, a hollow chant began to ring from its formless depths, and it rose up from the battlefield like a crackling vortex.

Man and beast alike lowered their weapons to stare in horrified wonder as, trailing blood like a comet’s tail, the daemon swooped down upon the nearest living thing.

The glaive-wielding beastman gagged as the cloud flooded its throat, its body jerking in violent spasms. The beast’s fur stood on end, static discharges igniting the air, absorbing every last speck of daemon mist. Giving one final shudder, the beastman opened its eyes. Where once had been dull, black disks there now swirled pools of liquid gold.

Felix didn’t know whether Gotrek’s axe offered less protection to the evil beasts of Chaos, or whether their animal minds were simply more pliant hosts for the daemon, empowered by the blood of many new victims. Feeling his fears and woes known to the tremendous, undying intellect behind those eyes, Felix found himself certain of only one thing.

Ghrizzhtadt the Everliving had a new host.

Felix flinched as an arrow zipped by his cheek, embedding in Ghrizzhtadt’s heart with a solid thunk. The daemon merely glanced down at the twelve inches of wood sticking from its chest, and snorted in some bestial facsimile of laughter. Felix noted that the arrow shaft had begun to burn. The tips of the daemon’s fur fizzed like a thousand lit tapers.

‘Free. Free at last,’ whispered Ghrizzhtadt in the fractured, grunting speech of a beast. ‘I should thank you, for bearing me from my prison. I could never have passed the wards alone.’

Gotrek cackled madly. ‘Come to me then, daemon. My axe misses you already!’

The daemon pumped its fists high above its head, clenched knuckles throbbing with power. It roared to a riot of hoots and barks from the gathered beastmen. ‘Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the throne of Ghrizzhtadt the Everliving!’

The beastmen surged around the pulsing daemon prince, inspired by a sudden killing zeal. Gotrek met them with equal fervour, demonstrating his joy at reclaiming his beloved axe with the bountiful blood of his foes.

Felix kept in tight to the Slayer’s back, fending off any beasts the dwarf missed. Still, things didn’t look good. From the corner of his eye he saw Tamascz dragged from the trees. He struggled for a moment before a lumbering beastman gutted him with a swipe of its bull-like horns.

The man’s screams were like a knife in Felix’s side.

Felix was forced to ignore them as a heavy-bladed falchion stroked towards his skull. It gouged through empty air as Felix leapt back at the last moment, angling his sword into a guard position, and the brawny beastman wielding it followed after him. It lowed a challenge and stomped its hoofed feet, kicking up great clods of turf. Then, seemingly forgetting its weapon, it loped towards him, building to a gallop as it dropped its spiral-horned head and charged like a ram.

Hopelessly misjudging the creature’s speed, Felix slapped the flat of his sword harmlessly off its flanks even as the horned head crunched into his chest. His mouth gaped in breathless agony as he was tossed back several feet, landing in a clattering heap of bruises and chainmail.

Through a film of tears, he watched the monster circle, wielding its falchion in two hands to finish him off with a thrust through the heart. Acting almost wholly on instinct, he kicked out, crunching his heel into the brute’s shin. The beastman fell to one knee and he ran his sword through its belly.

With a grunt of pain, Felix found his feet once more. He hunched to better cosset his injured ribs, and looked up to see Gotrek forging a path towards Ghrizzhtadt.

Snarling, the lumbering daemon-host barged aside the other beastmen to meet the Slayer head-on. It hefted its glaive and thrust at the charging dwarf, but Gotrek batted it aside on the haft of his axe. As he reversed his grip to slash at the thing’s face, the daemon swung around the butt of its weapon shaft and smote it across the Slayer’s chin. Gotrek staggered back, but only for the time it took to readjust his grip and lunge in again.

The Slayer’s axe and Ghrizzhtadt’s glaive became an inseparable blur of motion. For over a minute, the duel raged at that ferocious pace, only slowing when Gotrek sheared the glaive in two with a roar of triumph. The daemon’s hands flew aside, each clutching half of the broken weapon. It smiled evilly, even as the Slayer’s next strike rammed up through its ribs.

The daemon fell with a gurgled sigh of satisfaction.

‘Foolish... dwarf... Do you still not see? You cannot kill... the Everliving.’ Ghrizzhtadt looked past the body of its would-be slayer, its golden eyes meeting Felix’s horrified stare. ‘When this craven line of cowardly tzars lies buried under the ruins of Kislev, I will forge a new land, a strong land. These beasts of Chaos are fit to fight and to die, but only a man can rule...’

The daemon’s otherworldly chanting began again, the adopted body convulsing, blood bursting from its vessels in a grisly spray. The red cloud swept over the clearing, ignoring the beastmen that fled its path as it bore upon Felix.

The hideous words forced themselves into his ears like grasping claws, boring a path straight into his brain. His sword fell from his grip, and his mouth opened into a scream. He clamped his hands over his ears, but he could not block out the daemon’s vile incantation.

Felix opened his eyes to see Gotrek lumbering away through the red mist, paying it no heed. He was charging towards the great gong in the middle of the clearing. The dwarf leapt into the air with his axe high over his head, powerful muscles bringing the magical blade down with all his might.

It crashed against the raised boss at the gong’s centre, the titanic strength of Gotrek’s blow releasing a shockwave of power from the ensorcelled metal which blasted him away through the air.

The bloom of force exploded outwards in all directions, striking beastmen from their feet and snapping branches from the trees at the edges of the clearing. Felix took the deafening blast like a hammerblow to the chest, which cracked a few of his already tender ribs and sent him skidding through the grass and trampled flowers.

He lay winded for a long moment, before he realised that he could hear nothing but a high-pitched ringing in his ears. Still stunned, he glanced around to see beastmen clutching their tufted ears and lunging around in pain, blood running thinly from their shattered eardrums. Gotrek too was grimacing and rubbing at the sides of his head, his axe lying on the ground nearby.

The dwarf’s actions had deafened them all.

The pain in Felix’s ears grew, and he shrieked wordlessly, no sound seeming to leave his throat. Finally, with blood trickling between his fingers, the ringing in his head dropped away to a faint, tinny squeal. He recalled Tamascz’s words: Deafness is the one defence against the Everliving.

He tried to mouth his thanks as he saw Gotrek rise. The Slayer’s face was bloody, his lips moving too fast for Felix to follow. He sat up, trying to shake the painful tinnitus from his ears, and looked again. Gotrek was still yelling, but now he was pointing too, gesturing wildly at something behind Felix’s back.

Using one hand for support, Felix tottered to his feet and turned to see what had so excited his companion.

A curse tried to form on his lips, but the words would not come.

The thwarted daemon cloud fizzed and roiled before him, denied the new host it had sought. Instead it compressed under its own fury, becoming solid, sculpting itself into a massive, man-like shape. Clenching its coalescing fists, the daemon roared. It was near twice Felix’s height and without a single scrap of flesh anywhere on its monstrous frame. Naked muscles pulled taut and proud between glistening ropes of sinew. Exposed arteries ran the length of the daemon’s mighty form, blood haemorrhaging from them in impossible, seemingly limitless quantities. Its face was proportioned like that of a man, but with sharp, balefire-blackened horns thrusting from its flayed forehead either side of a single, vast eye – gold and lidless – that flickered with a fierce corona of light.

Felix felt his arms go weak, his courage seeming to plummet like a stone into a bottomless well. Every terror he could imagine was promised in that thousand-millennia stare. In a heartbeat, Felix felt as though he experienced every single one. He collapsed with a cry of horror.

Ghrizzhtadt ignored him completely, plucking the nearest beastman from its feet and hurling the yammering creature into the still trembling gong with daemonic strength. Felix felt, rather than heard, the impact which tore the instrument from its frame, and smashed the wood to splinters. The muffled sound still pained his ears, but it was nothing compared to the fury of the daemon itself.

‘You think to thwart me so easily, dwarf? Think again! When I am done, the man will still be mine. No more weakness, no more games. Feel the wrath of a daemon prince of Khorne!’

Gotrek met the monster’s gaze with his one good eye, undaunted. ‘I’m still waiting, daemon.’

Ghrizzhtadt lifted its face and howled in the ecstasy of power. A serrated row of obsidian spines erupted from its arms in a shower of gore. It twisted its torso, throwing blood around like rain.

With startling speed, Ghrizzhtadt pounced, hammering down a fist. Gotrek dived beneath the daemon’s blow as it smashed into the ground where he had been. Rolling between its trunk-like legs, he brought his axe down, aiming to sever the monster’s hamstring.

Blood fountained from the torn muscle, forcing Gotrek to turn away. Gasping and sputtering for breath under the sickly torrent, the Slayer hacked blindly at the daemon’s legs. He shortened his grip and pressed the attack, but the flow would not abate and Gotrek was forced to spend more effort shielding his eyes and mouth than actually swinging his axe. In just one moment of inattention, the daemon caught him a glancing blow to the temple with a cloven hoof, and he slipped to the ground in a blood-sodden heap.

Within a rout of panicked beastmen, Felix watched in a daze. The creatures fled from the daemon, requiring only the occasional lick of Felix’s sword to encourage them on their way. His ears still ringing, he saw Gotrek fall, disappearing into the bloody mud as it began to pool at Ghrizzhtadt’s feet. The Slayer’s mouth was wide and gasping for air, even before the daemon stamped down on his struggling form, grinding him deeper into the slick.

‘Drown, little dwarf. Drown in blood.’

Though fear still gripped his heart at the sight of the daemon, Felix knew he had to do something. From the corner of his eye, he spotted the broken body of Tamascz. The man’s bruised face and bloodstained furs rendered him all but undistinguishable from the beastmen that lay beside him. Felix’s gaze shifted to the short bow that lay on the grass by his side.

Yes!

He scrambled across the field of corpses, weaving between stampeding beastmen to where the dead man lay. Snatching at the bow with one hand, he fumbled with the woodsman’s quiver. He cursed as his fingers brushed against hard feathers – there was only one arrow left. It would have to do.

Spinning into a crouch, he turned to face the towering daemon. He nocked the arrow, taking a deep breath as he hauled back with two fingers on the string, squinting with one eye down the arrow’s length. The daemon was oblivious to him, its baleful eye fixed on the Slayer that splashed and raged with impotent fury beneath its hoof.

Felix released his held breath and the taut string as one, leaping to his feet with an exultant shout as the shot struck home.

The daemon’s head jerked back and it staggered drunkenly away, letting out a sky-shattering scream of agony. It raised a hand to its eye, an arrow shaft jutting between its fingers.

Felix cried out in relief as he saw Gotrek’s massive axe flash from the bloody pool and bite into the daemon’s groin. The daemon grunted and continued edging back, drawing the Slayer from the mud like some unlikely midwife delivering a particularly ugly, bearded newborn.

And, like most newborns, Gotrek was far from happy.

He pulled himself up one-handed on his axe, grabbing onto the great curved spines of the daemon’s forearm. Before it could react, the Slayer wrenched his axe free, bringing it up in an overhanded swing, hewing into the tuberous, palpitating mass of Ghrizzhtadt’s throat.

Ghrizzhtadt threw itself about in blinded fury. Gotrek held on tightly as, more by chance than by design, he was clobbered by a monstrous fist, encircling his body with powerful, blood-dripping fingers that tried to wrench him free. He hacked again and again at the meat of the daemon’s arm; blood ran in rivers, but Ghrizzhtadt seemed beyond caring.

At last, Gotrek’s strength gave and the daemon prince pulled him clear, waving the cursing dwarf above his horned head like a trophy before turning and fixing Felix with its blind gaze.

Felix dropped the bow and took up his sword. He took a breath to steady himself, before letting it out in a nervous whistle. He felt a twinge of guilt that he might actually die before Gotrek. A strange thought, all things considered, but a promise was a promise. He raised his sword and broke into a run, a war cry rich with vengeance upon his lips.

He powered his runesword with all his might into Ghrizzhtadt’s belly. The aftershock shuddered down Felix’s arm, threatening to spring the sword from his grip. He cried out in alarm as he saw that his blade had barely scored the daemon’s hide. He leapt clear of its enraged counter, dancing away from its clumsy blows. His ringing ears conspired to unbalance him and, even blind, the daemon struck with a frenzied, unnatural speed that took all his wits to evade. All the while, above his head, as though disconnected from his world, he heard Gotrek hacking into the daemon’s arm, a slew of barely intelligible insults hurled after every stroke.

Felix jumped from the path of a ploughing fist, the killing spines shredding links from his chainmail and sending him stumbling over the body of a fallen beastman. Ghrizzhtadt took full advantage, bowling him from his feet and pinning him against the corpse with a massive, blood-soaked fist.

‘Kislev will be mine. There is nothing to save you now.’

‘That old tzar is long dead,’ Felix shouted. ‘The Great War is over.’

‘So naive. War is never ov–’

Gotrek fell to earth with a cry of triumph, still gripped in Ghrizzhtadt’s severed hand. The daemon stared dumbly at the gushing stump of its wrist as the dwarf squirmed free, trailing bloody vapour into the air.

Felix tried to focus on the daemon prince, but its form flickered and swam. He blinked, believing it to be some trick of his eyes, but the hazy outline of its body was beginning to blur into kaleidoscopic mist. The Slayer looked little better – his left arm hung limp at his side, the wound that the beastman spear had inflicted looking ugly and pale.

His face grim, the Slayer brandished his axe in his good hand and made ready for the final battle. He was ready to face his doom at last.

Felix took up his sword once more. If this was to be Gotrek’s end, then he had to witness it. That had been his promise, as much as it pained him now that the moment was upon them. Every vile horror in the world would not make him abandon a friend.

Sniffing the air, Ghrizzhtadt cackled with glee and advanced with deliberate slowness. ‘At last, Gotrek Gurnisson. I know what it is that you fear.’

‘I told you, daemon, this dwarf fears nothing! Come see for yourself.’

‘No. You fear that you will not die with honour. You fear that your crime will never be absolved. Drop your axe, dwarf. This is a fear you need never face...’

To Felix’s horror, Gotrek’s axe actually lowered a fraction and the daemon sprang forwards, angling a blow to eviscerate the hesitating Slayer on the spines of its forearm.

But Gotrek hesitated for only a second, his face darkening with an anger Felix had seldom witnessed. With astounding speed and ferocity, he brought up his axe, catching the daemon’s swipe on his blade. The starmetal wedged firmly between two long spines, its runes glowing brightly as inhuman strength measured itself against ungodly fury.

Ghrizzhtadt glared at the defiant dwarf with crimson rage. ‘Foolish! You are mortal. You will die. You wish to die. Why not... just... die!’

The daemon roared, power flaring in a glittering nimbus around its fading form as it forced its arm inexorably forwards. In the face of the losing battle, Gotrek let go, giving his axe one last twist to nudge the daemon’s mad swing on its way as he ducked beneath it. Immediately, the Slayer bounced back up, giving the daemon no time to recover his arm as he swung his axe and, with every ounce of strength, hammered the ancestral weapon into its heart.

Ghrizzhtadt vomited blood as its legs separated from its body, dissolving before his eyes as the magic that kept it whole dispersed. Gotrek threw himself clear as the daemon fell, its jaw cracking hard as it landed.

It lay wheezing for a moment, its face pressed into the bloody mud.

‘I... am... Everliving. I won’t... go back... to him.’ With that, Ghrizzhtadt once again took up its terrible chant, its spirit preparing to take flight once more.

Ghrizzhtadt’s golden eye rolled sightlessly as the Slayer climbed onto its back, axe in hand. For the first time in its long existence, the Everliving knew for itself the cold taste of fear.

‘None of that rubbish, daemon.’

Gotrek planted his boot into the back of the daemon’s skull, crushing its face into the ground, stifling the unholy words before they could be uttered. Ghrizzhtadt began to thrash and jerk, writhing in panic as it fought to dislodge the Slayer from its shoulders, but it was already too far gone. Blood bubbled from a vanishing throat even as the daemon prince’s body came apart, piece by piece.

Felix stood within an aurora of bursting and colliding stars as the remains of the Everliving were carved up by the Winds of Magic. As the last, it was as if it carried with it the faintest hint of a plea for mercy, an infinitesimal cry of anguish, before that too disappeared into oblivion.

‘One thing’s for sure – his bloody master’s not awfully fond of magic,’ Gotrek snorted, his face spread into a vicious grin. ‘I’m thinking this Ghrizzhtadt has some explaining to do.’

Gotrek rose, presenting a battered golden circlet to his good eye for closer inspection. He frowned and bit into it before tossing it back onto the body of its former owner with a curse.

‘Bah, typical Chaos beasts. Naught but gold leaf and copper.’ The Slayer looked up at Felix with an expression that, on any other face, might have been considered kindly. ‘We can head back to your Empire, manling. If you wish.’

‘Truthfully?’

‘You worry for your family. Nobody knows the importance of kin like a dwarf. And besides, who’s to say we cannot meet our doom there, eh?’

Our doom, thought Felix, but dismissed the argument before it arose. He was too tired. He gazed wistfully in what, he fancied, was the direction of the Empire, of Altdorf, and home. He missed them, it was true... and yet his gaze turned northwards. It was all purely academic, of course. There was nothing to see in any direction but spindly, snow-capped trees. Not that he minded – with the Everliving gone, and its hold over him broken, he felt renewed.

Reborn, even?

‘I wonder what’s over there,’ he murmured, gazing into the distance.

Gotrek grinned toothlessly. ‘Our gold, I’ll wager. The tomb of Okedai Khan.’

‘Let’s go and find it.’

Felix turned, just in time to see the heavy shape of Gotrek Gurnisson topple face-down into a bed of daisies. He lay, snoring raggedly; it appeared that the dwarf’s exertions had finally caught up with him.

Chuckling, Felix cast his eyes over the clearing one last time. It was strewn with corpses – the scattered beastmen might return at any time and the brass gong, even broken, still veritably hummed with undimmed potency. At least it was warm, he thought. That was, after all, all he had really wanted.

MARRIAGE OF MOMENT

Josh Reynolds

Felix Jaeger blinked blearily as the grey light drizzled through the rips in the canvas roof of the wagon. He closed one eye and opened another, trying to stop his immediate surroundings from shuddering. When that failed to achieve the desired equilibrium, he slowly rotated his head, painfully conscious of the alcohol-induced hammers that were ringing down on the inside of his skull.

He was sprawled in the back of a wagon and his lanky frame was crammed amongst bags of corn meal, oats and stoppered casks of beer. His back ached abominably, and he realised that he was lying across his sword. Dried sausages dangled from the ribs of wood that held the canvas up, and a leg of salted pork bumped against his aching skull none too gently when he attempted to sit up. He sank back down, cursing virulently, and Karaghul’s ornate hilt stabbed him between the shoulder blades, eliciting further curses.

‘Are you awake then, manling?’ Gotrek Gurnisson inquired in a raspy growl. Felix rolled carefully onto his belly and tried to push himself upright, after sitting up proved to be too unpleasant a task. He looked around for the Slayer, and was rewarded by the sight of Gotrek’s scarred features peering back at him from the front of the wagon. The dwarf shoved the canvas flap aside, allowing a coil of frosty mountain air into the back of the wagon, along with the thick animal odour of the mules that were pulling it. His tattooed pate was scraped free of hair, save for a massive crest that had been dyed orange and stiffened with pig grease. His thick, braided beard had been dyed the same colour, and more tattoos covered his heavily muscled frame. Compared to his imposing companion, Felix resembled an overlarge youth, being slim-muscled and lanky, with the build of a trained swordsman.

Felix glared at the Slayer and then fell onto his stomach, hands over his eyes. ‘Yes, though I wish I weren’t,’ he moaned. ‘Where are we?’ He could recall the previous night only dimly. They had been in Solberg, a one-horse town in the Border Princes, far too close to the Badlands for Felix’s liking. Solberg wasn’t big, as far as towns went, even towns in the Princes, but it had had a tavern, which had been enough for Gotrek.

‘A wagon,’ Gotrek said. The Slayer gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘That should be obvious, even to you, manling.’ Felix recalled that the Slayer had put away a vat of the vile brew that the tavern-keeper had claimed was a local vintage, but, as usual, he seemed none the worse for wear. Felix, on the other hand, felt as if his guts were being eaten away from the inside out.

‘Yes, thank you. Where is the wagon going?’ Felix grunted. The wagon bounced as its wheels went over a rut, and Felix’s stomach lurched. He clapped a hand over his mouth and made a sound like a clogged pipe. Gotrek chuckled nastily.

‘We’re in the mountains,’ he said, knuckling his eyepatch absently. ‘There’s a wedding to attend, after all.’

‘A wedding,’ Felix said dully. Something about the word tugged at his thoughts. He gripped his stomach as the wagon gave another jouncing lurch. ‘Who’s getting married?’

‘You, manling,’ Gotrek said.

‘What?’ Felix yelped and shoved himself upright. ‘What in Sigmar’s name are you talking about?’ He flung out a hand towards the Slayer. Gotrek grunted in annoyance and one huge, meaty paw clamped shut over his wrist and Felix was dragged out onto the buckboard of the wagon. He winced. He’d once seen Gotrek kill a goblin with an open-handed slap, and he’d lost count of the skulls and necks that the Slayer had broken in their time together. As he fell face-forward across the buckboard, the Slayer released him. The Slayer’s great rune-axe was sitting by his feet on the buckboard, within easy grip, and Felix’s nose almost bumped against its wicked edge. Felix hastily pulled himself up and looked around. They were on a mountain trail, though just which mountains he couldn’t say. ‘Where are we?’

Gotrek gave him a look. ‘We’re in the Worlds Edge Mountains, manling, near Iron Rock, or thereabouts. Isn’t it obvious?’

Felix looked around, taking in the stunted trees and mossy deposits that decorated the dark rocks that thrust up around them. He’d explored more mountains than he could remember since becoming Gotrek’s companion, and they all looked more or less the same to him. A thrill of alarm coursed through him, as he processed Gotrek’s words. ‘Iron Rock, as in territory of the Iron Claw orcs,’ he said slowly. ‘Why are we heading into the territory of the Iron Claw orcs, Gotrek?’

‘Calm yourself, manling, we’re not, more’s the pity,’ Gotrek said. He smiled. ‘We’re after gold, not green, today.’

‘Fine, but whose wagon is this?’

‘His,’ Gotrek said, hiking a thumb at the man at the reins. The latter turned and gave Felix a wide, yellow smile. Felix recalled that smile, though not the name that went with it. He was a wiry man, dressed like a drover, in trail-stained leathers and a heavy wool cowl and travel-cape that resembled Felix’s own bright red Sudenland cloak. Felix pulled the latter tight around him as the mountain air planted chilly kisses on his exposed flesh.

‘Who’s he, exactly?’ he hissed, looking at Gotrek.

The ugly slash of the Slayer’s grin widened amidst the orange thicket of his beard. ‘An envoy from a very old, very important manling clan, isn’t that right?’ he growled, casting a meaningful look at the drover. The yellow smile faltered, but only for a moment.

‘Aye, Metternich, if it please you,’ he said, nodding to Felix. ‘You were a bit the worse for drink last night, so I’ll not hold it against you, Herr Jaeger.’

Felix examined Metternich more closely. The man wore a pair of bone-hilted daggers on his hip, and had a face like chipped rock. He was an Ostlander by his accent, though that wasn’t surprising. There were men from every principality and nation in the Border Princes. The mountainous, heavily forested no-man’s land was claimed by a dozen or more feuding independent princedoms, as well as twice that number of would-be warlords, war-chiefs and petty landed aristocracy, all striving to control their fiefdoms.

‘How obliging,’ Felix said. ‘Maybe you’ll oblige me further and tell me what my companion is talking about?’

‘Why – the wedding contract you signed,’ Metternich said, looking askance at him.

‘What wedding contract?’ Felix asked through gritted teeth.

‘Your friend there said you were looking for a wife,’ Metternich said.

‘Did he?’ Felix turned a gimlet gaze on the Slayer, but Gotrek met it with his single eye, unperturbed.

‘I did,’ he said. ‘What of it?’

‘Why did you do that?’ Felix nearly howled. He shot to his feet, gesticulating wildly. The wagon hit a bump and his arms windmilled as he fought to keep his balance. Gotrek’s hand shot out, grabbing a handful of Felix’s jerkin. The Slayer yanked him back down into a sitting position.

‘Because it’s the only way to get the gold, manling,’ he said.

‘Oh, yes, it all makes perfect bloody sense now. Of course – the gold! How could I be so stupid?’ Felix said sarcastically. ‘What are you talking about? Where are we going? Never mind, I’m getting off here. Stop the wagon!’

‘Don’t stop the wagon,’ Gotrek rumbled.

‘Stop the wagon, Metternich,’ Felix said, rising to his feet.

‘Do it, and it’ll be the last thing you do,’ Gotrek growled.

Metternich looked from one to the other and then nodded apologetically to Felix. ‘You did sign a contract,’ he said.

‘I don’t recall doing any such thing,’ Felix snapped.

‘Well, I helped,’ Gotrek said.

Felix looked at him incredulously. Gotrek shrugged. ‘You were having trouble holding the quill. Being as you were drunk.’

‘And why, pray tell, were you so helpful in this matter?’ Felix said. He rubbed his aching head. ‘I can’t see how condemning me helps you find your doom…’ There was a bitter tang to the situation that Felix found naggingly familiar. He had been drunk when he’d first sworn an oath to accompany Gotrek on his quest to find a mighty doom to expunge whatever crime had set the Slayer on his suicidal path. It had made a tremendous amount of sense at the time.

‘This isn’t about doom, manling, mine or otherwise,’ Gotrek said, tapping the side of his bulbous nose. ‘Like I said, it’s about treasure: gold, manling, a thane’s ransom.’

‘Gold,’ Felix repeated, leaning back against the buckboard. There were only three things that could jostle the Slayer from his normal taciturnity – the prospect of a mighty doom, a sufficient quantity of ale, or the gold-greed that seemed to afflict the dwarfen race as a whole.

‘Gold,’ Gotrek emphasised, rubbing his big hands together in apparent glee.

‘A dowry, technically,’ Metternich interjected.

‘Of course,’ Felix said, burying his face in his hands. After a moment, he looked at Metternich. ‘Who am I marrying?’

‘Esme Shandeux,’ the man said, reaching into his cloak for something. ‘Ah, she’s a lovely girl. She’s the oldest daughter of the Shandeux clan, and judged quite a prize in these lands. I was hired to find a proper gentleman for Lady Esme to marry.’ He swept out a hand and said, ‘The Shandeux are an old family, and powerful as folk judge things.’

‘Rich – he means rich,’ Gotrek added. His single eye glittered.

‘That they are, and in the market for a husband for Esme. It doesn’t happen often, mind,’ Metternich said slyly. ‘Very insular, the Shandeux, very private.’

‘The family tree has few branches, I take it,’ Felix said bitterly.

‘More like one very large branch,’ Metternich said. ‘A bit crooked, but very sturdy.’ He found what he was looking for, and stretched an arm across Gotrek, to hand something to Felix. ‘Here she is,’ he said.

The object in question was a tarnished locket. Felix took it and flipped it open to reveal a miniature portrait, painted with great skill and care. The young woman was lovely, there was no denying it, though she was as far from the thin, waif-like Imperial noblewomen of Felix’s experience as it was possible to get. There were more curves, for one thing, and generous ones at that, from what he could tell from the head and shoulders that made up the image. ‘She’s quite striking,’ he said carefully.

‘That she is. She’s a wee thing, but she once beat a wolf to death with a half-brick in a stocking, so you can tell she has spirit.’ Metternich nodded happily.

Felix blinked, not quite knowing how to reply. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘quite. What sort of stocking was it?’

‘Forget the stocking,’ Gotrek growled. ‘Get to the gold.’

‘The Shandeux got gold all right,’ Metternich said. ‘Enough to keep them in supplies and retainers, at least. I’ve only been working for them for a few months, but they’re as wealthy as an Altdorf aristocrat.’

‘Speaking of aristocrats, I’m not one,’ Felix said. ‘You did mention that to him, didn’t you, Gotrek? Somehow, I don’t think these people are going to be happy with what you’re bringing them.’

‘We came to an arrangement,’ Gotrek said.

‘Aye,’ Metternich said. ‘An arrangement and a fine, fair one at that.’

‘Please, illuminate me,’ Felix said sourly.

Gotrek held up a gold piece. It resembled the dwarf coins Felix had seen, but there was no image stamped on it. Instead, an odd shape had been cut into it. Age and handling had worn the shape into an indistinct lump. ‘Look at it, manling,’ Gotrek grunted.

‘What am I looking at?’ Felix asked. ‘It’s just a gold piece. An old one, if I’m any judge.’

Metternich snickered and Gotrek grinned.

‘I’ve seen gold like this before, in the Badlands and the high passes of the Worlds Edge Mountains, in the ruins of ancient outposts and old fortifications, from a kingdom long dead… and good riddance to it.’ He spat a glob of spittle over the edge of the buckboard. ‘Mourkain, it was called. Or Morgheim,’ he said. ‘The orcs wiped it out long ago. Shattered their empire and destroyed their great city.’ He paused. ‘They say the orcs never breached the great vaults of that city, though. That the wealth of Mourkain still sits undisturbed in some black cavern.’ He tossed the gold piece up and caught it. ‘This gold was theirs, I’m certain of it. It bears the mark of that damned folk, or I’m a filthy grobi.’

‘And you think – what – that they’ll tell you where they got it?’

Gotrek grinned again. ‘No, but I think they’ll tell you.’

Felix stared at him. ‘This is unworthy of you, Gotrek,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I have never known you to be so – so dishonourable, before.’

‘What did you say?’ Gotrek rumbled, anger sparking in his eye. The Slayer tensed, his good humour evaporating like water on a heated stone. Accusing a dwarf of acting dishonourably was the equivalent of poking a badger with a pointy stick, but Felix hadn’t chosen the word lightly.

‘Greedy? Yes. Violent? Obviously. Foolish? Perhaps. But this…’ Felix shook his head.

‘Careful, manling,’ Gotrek growled, leaning towards him pugnaciously, his face clouding over.

Felix felt a momentary thrill of unease, but pressed on regardless.

‘But this,’ he went on, ‘this is simply beyond the pale. I wouldn’t have expected you to stoop to swindling strangers out of their coin.’

‘I’m not swindling anyone,’ Gotrek snapped. ‘It’s a marriage of moment, nothing more.’

‘A what?’ Felix said, peering at the Slayer. He looked at Metternich, who shook his head in obvious confusion.

‘A marriage of moment,’ Gotrek said. He looked at Felix as if he were an idiot. ‘It’s just a temporary contract.’ He looked at Metternich. ‘Tell him,’ he demanded. Metternich looked at him helplessly. Gotrek’s brow furrowed. His gaze swung back to Felix. ‘My people do it all the time,’ he said. ‘When two clans want to quickly seal a trading agreement or need to sift their ore a bit, they each put forth a youngling, and a marriage is made. Dowries are exchanged, the marriage is consummated, and then annulled, and both younglings return to their respective clans. Honour is satisfied and blood is shared, and the full value of the respective younglings for a future oath of marriage with a more important clan is retained, as is proper. These folk of Metternich’s need their ore sifted, and they’re offering gold. It’s the same thing, whatever manlings call it.’

‘That’s… not how human marriages work, Gotrek,’ Felix said slowly.

‘I told you, it’s not a real marriage,’ Gotrek snapped. ‘It’s completely honourable!’ Felix opened his mouth, and then closed it. Gotrek’s eye narrowed. ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Stop gaping like a fish and say something.’

Felix ignored the fuming dwarf. He looked at Metternich. ‘How binding is that contract?’

‘You wouldn’t be thinking of backing out on me, now, would you? I made an arrangement in good faith with your friend here, and I’m not a man to be tested,’ Metternich said. His hand drooped towards his daggers. Gotrek lanced him with a sulphurous stare. Metternich swallowed and his hand jerked away from his blades as if they’d grown red hot. ‘Not that I’m the one you have to worry about, of course, but I already passed the papers along with a rider this morning, and the Shandeux, they’re not ones to let a contract be broken willy-nilly,’ he said hastily. ‘They’ve sent hired blades after more than one reluctant bridegroom, and they’ll not hesitate to do so again. They’re a very touchy family.’ He gave Felix a weak grin. ‘I assumed the plan was that you’d do a runner after the nuptials, I swear to Ranald. It didn’t make sense, otherwise.’

‘You haven’t dealt with many dwarfs, have you?’ Felix said acidly.

‘What is this fool saying, manling?’ Gotrek said.

‘He’s saying that it’s anything but a temporary contract,’ Felix snapped.

Gotrek grabbed a handful of Felix’s jerkin and jerked him forward, until they were eye to eye. ‘Watch your tone, manling,’ he said. ‘It appears I was misinformed.’ He glanced at Metternich, who blanched.

Felix grabbed uselessly at Gotrek’s brawny fist. ‘Really, or were you too busy counting all that gold?’

‘I don’t recall you objecting.’

‘I was drunk!’ Felix shouted.

‘So was I,’ Gotrek said stubbornly. ‘That’s no excuse.’ He released Felix and sat back with a grunt. ‘Well, you can’t very well go about getting married when you’re still oath-bound to record my doom,’ he said, crossing his thick arms over his barrel chest.

‘This is what I’m saying,’ Felix said. ‘Metternich, stop the wagon.’

‘Quiet, manling,’ Gotrek barked. ‘You signed the contract. You are sworn to this woman, whoever she is. I’ll not travel with an oath-breaker.’

‘You– I– but–’ Felix began, trying to find the words. The dwarf’s logic was as impeccable as it was circuitous. He owed Gotrek a debt, but the Slayer had forced him into another, and the dwarf’s own sense of honour wouldn’t allow Felix to get out of either obligation. That Gotrek himself was solely responsible for the situation seemed to have escaped the dwarf entirely.

‘So what are we going to do then?’ Felix said, unable to keep a sullen note out of his voice.

‘I’ll think of something,’ Gotrek muttered.

‘Well, you’d better do it quickly because we’re here,’ Metternich said.

Felix looked up and frowned. The fortress wasn’t as impressive as he had expected. In fact, it was more like an encrustation than a fortification. It was a barnacle of crudely piled stone mingled with long marches of wooden stockade, clinging tight to the side of a mountain crag.

‘That – ha!’ Gotrek gave an explosive bark of laughter. ‘That’s what they call a citadel?’

‘It’s served them well enough since they first came to these lands,’ Metternich said. ‘They say more than one band of raiders looking for Shandeux gold found out just how strong those walls are, back then.’ He clicked his tongue and snapped the reins, urging the mules into motion. The winding mountain path slithered up and around towards the gatehouse for the fortress.

The gatehouse was, like the greater part of the walls, made of heavy wooden logs, piled one atop the next and the gaps had been filled with clay, mud and what Felix thought was likely animal dung to hold it all together. Wooden stakes lined the outside of the stockade, rising from a shallow ditch in the stony ground, and more than one of them had dark stains marking their lengths.

As they drew close, Felix realised with a start that the fortress had seemingly been built up against the mouth of a vast gouge in the side of the crag, and was, as such, much larger than he’d first thought. When he said as much, Metternich nodded. ‘The interior of the keep extends a fair bit into the mountain, though not so deep as you’d think. From what I can tell, they found a cave and built their fortress inside it. Over time, it got too big, and spilled out onto the slope. They’ve been working at it for a fair few centuries, so the damn thing’s a maze, as you’d expect.’

‘I’ve seen bigger,’ Gotrek said. The wood and stone barbican looked as if it had been grown rather than built, so encrusted with mould and moss that it looked less like a structure than a piece of the mountain and the portcullis, which was more rust than metal, rose with a screech that caused his teeth to shiver in his gums. The only part of the barbican that wasn’t crusted over with moss or rust was the gargoyle-like stone carving which marked the top. It was a horrid face, with all the vilest aspects of a variety of animals mingled into something that was uniquely hideous. As the wagon passed beneath it, Felix shuddered. Gotrek grunted. ‘Not dwarfish work, this,’ he said.

‘Dwarfs aren’t the only stonemasons in the world,’ Felix said.

‘They’re the only ones who count,’ Gotrek said. He made a face. ‘This is shoddy stonework. The whole structure was sloppily built. I can hear the mortar powdering from here. And the weight is distributed all wrong. A stiff northern breeze would knock this thing over.’

‘Lucky we’re not in the north then, eh?’ Felix said.

Gotrek squinted at him, before nodding. ‘Aye,’ he grunted.

The wagon rolled through the gatehouse and into the outer courtyard. A squawking flock of chickens scattered in front of the plodding mules and several fat hogs wallowed in the lee of the walls, grunting and filling the air with unwelcome flatulence. There were men in the courtyard, all armed. Felix knew mercenaries when he saw them: they were a motley lot – one wore the hauberk and pot helm of a Bretonnian man-at-arms, while another had quite clearly served in the Empire militia. They wore thick woollen cloaks, much like Metternich, that appeared to be as close as they came to a proper uniform. All of them eyed Gotrek with a healthy amount of caution. Even hardened sell-swords knew better than to provoke a Slayer. One, a dark-complexioned Estalian, raised a hand in a gesture of recognition. ‘Metternich, late as usual,’ he called out, in heavily accented Reikspiel.

‘Rodrigo, as ever your mastery of the obvious is impressive,’ Metternich shot back.

‘Have you found one, then?’ Rodrigo said, ignoring Metternich’s jibe.

‘Right here,’ Metternich said, flapping a hand.

‘The dwarf,’ Rodrigo said, his eyes widening.

‘No! Are you mad? The other one.’

Rodrigo’s dark eyes flickered over Felix like a man examining a horse. ‘Sort of… tall, isn’t he?’

‘Is there a height requirement to get married?’ Felix said blandly. As the guard shook his head, Felix jabbed Gotrek with an elbow and pointed. ‘Gotrek, look,’ he said. Gotrek followed his gesture and his good eye widened as he saw the other wagons and the small group of loudly conversing individuals standing near them, under the watchful eyes of the closest guards. To a man, they were halflings – eleven halflings, in fact. Eleven halflings, dressed in a variety of fashions and styles, from Marienburg to the Moot. All of the stubby, chubby figures were armed and were arguing loudly, save one, who was seemingly occupied filching foodstuffs from a wagon while it was being unloaded.

‘Why are all of those hairy-toed egg-sucking Moot-rats here?’ Gotrek growled, reaching for his axe, and casting a fiery glare at Metternich, who cringed back.

‘Did I not mention that?’ he said.

‘No,’ Gotrek rasped.

‘I’m certain I did.’

‘Are you?’ Gotrek said, lifting his axe so that the keen edge just barely scraped a patch of bristles off the man’s unshaven chin.

‘Maybe not,’ Metternich said. ‘I shall rectify that at once.’ His eyes darted to Felix. ‘You’re possibly not the only suitor to come a-courting the Lady Esme?’

‘Why are they all halflings?’ Felix said. He’d seen the stout folk of the Moot often enough in Altdorf, and more than once since, though Gotrek despised them. Most dwarfs did, though for no clear reason that Felix could discern. True, they had the tendency to pilfer, and were greedy, bawdy and obnoxious, but aside from the pilfering, so were dwarfs.

‘Are they? I hadn’t noticed,’ Metternich said.

‘If you’re playing us false,’ Gotrek growled, grabbing a handful of Metternich’s cloak, ‘I’ll have your skull for a drinking cup and your lungs for mittens.’

‘I’m not, I swear!’ Metternich yelped. More than a few pairs of eyes turned towards the altercation and Felix grabbed Gotrek’s arm.

‘Put him down, Gotrek. Let’s not make this more of an ordeal than it already is,’ he hissed.

Gotrek gave a wordless growl and released Metternich. He swept the courtyard with his gaze and snorted. ‘I’ve seen prettier privies.’

The courtyard was larger than Felix had first thought, and full of more halflings than just the suitors. Halflings were laughing and talking on the parapets and in doorways, halflings were overseeing humans who were taking the supplies out of the back of the wagons, and halflings were looking at him curiously. A chill scraped across his neck. ‘They’re all halflings,’ he said. ‘The only men here are hired swords or servants, aren’t they?’

Gotrek blinked. Then, surprisingly, the Slayer guffawed. Wheezing with laughter, he hunched forward and slapped his knee. Felix looked at him in astonishment until the reason for Gotrek’s humour became apparent. ‘Oh,’ he said. He looked at the locket. ‘Oh, Sigmar damn me.’

‘You’re going to marry a halfling!’ Gotrek bellowed, laughing.

‘Courting, not married, not yet,’ Metternich said. He climbed down off the wagon. ‘But he will, if you want to see that gold.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ Felix protested as he climbed down as well.

‘There’s no law against it,’ Metternich said.

Felix glared at Gotrek, who swatted him on the back hard enough to nearly propel him from his seat. ‘Cheer up, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘Think of the gold.’

‘The gold – really, Gotrek,’ Felix said, ‘is that all you can think about? I don’t suppose you’ve come up with a brilliant plan to get me out of this yet?’ Gotrek didn’t reply. Felix snorted. ‘I thought not,’ he said, and climbed down.

He looked around. The courtyard didn’t look any better from the ground. It was a sty, and its inhabitants were equally unpleasant looking. Halflings had a reputation for bucolic slovenliness, but these had taken it to extremes, seemingly leaving anything that required effort to their human servants.

‘It’s not a pretty sight, is it?’ a voice said, at his elbow.

He turned and then looked down. The face he’d so recently admired in miniature looked up at him with the air of a horse-dealer examining a new acquisition. ‘Hunh,’ Esme Shandeux said. ‘He’s a bit tall, Metternich. But pretty,’ she added.

‘Thank you?’ Felix said, not certain how to reply. She was imposing, for a woman less than half his height. She was dressed in an archaic dress, long out of fashion and altered to fit halfling proportions, with a wimple covering her head. She wore a profusion of golden jewellery carelessly which she fiddled with constantly.

‘I endeavour to serve, Lady Esme,’ Metternich said, crossing his arms and leaning against the wagon. ‘And he’s exactly what you need. Him and his friend here,’ he added, indicating Gotrek, who dropped off the wagon like a boulder rolling downhill.

‘He’s not quite so pretty,’ Esme said.

‘The feeling is mutual,’ Gotrek rumbled, showing his square, yellow teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. Esme’s eyes narrowed and Felix stepped between them, bowing obsequiously. He took her hand and brushed his lips across her knuckles.

‘It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lady,’ he said. ‘Am I correct in assuming that you concocted this scheme, then?’

‘Very gentlemanly, highboots,’ Esme said, reaching up to pat his cheek. ‘And I wouldn’t call it a scheme, really, so much as a desperate gamble.’

‘Best kind, I’m given to understand,’ Felix said, straightening. ‘My name is Felix Jaeger. My companion is–’

‘Rude?’ Esme interjected.

‘Gotrek Gurnisson,’ Felix said smoothly. ‘We’re at your service.’

‘I bet you are,’ Esme said. ‘And I’ll bet the gold has nothing to do with it, eh?’

‘What do you know about it?’ Gotrek said. He cast a glare at Metternich, who shrugged.

‘We have an arrangement, Metternich and I,’ Esme said pugnaciously.

‘It seems Herr Metternich has made quite a few arrangements,’ Felix said. Gotrek’s glare could have cut stone.

Metternich raised his hands.

‘I make deals, Jaeger, that’s how a man survives in the Border Princes. Esme wants out of here, preferably well-funded. Gurnisson wants the gold. We can all help each other,’ he said soothingly.

‘And you, Metternich – what are you getting out of this?’ Felix demanded.

‘None of your business,’ Metternich said. His hand dropped to the polished pommels of his daggers. But before he could draw one, Gotrek’s big hand clamped down on his, and Felix pulled his own poniard from its sheath. He pressed the tip to Metternich’s codpiece, while Gotrek held his pinned hand.

‘Last chance,’ Felix said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’d like to know that myself,’ a new voice cut in. The noise level in the courtyard dropped suddenly and as Felix turned he saw a strange sight – two brawny men had stepped out of the keep, a heavy shield of strange design balanced on their shoulders, and atop the shield, a stumpy, cloak-clad figure glared at him and Gotrek. ‘Who are these fools, Metternich, and why have you brought them here?’

‘I was simply following your orders, Lord Shandeux,’ Metternich said, sweeping out his arms and bowing low. ‘I found a suitor, to complete the dozen required for the contest. He’s a bit tall, but keen nonetheless.’ Metternich gestured to Felix, who hesitated for a moment, wondering what Metternich meant by ‘contest’, but then stepped forward after hastily sheathing his dagger. Esme had slipped away. There was more going on here than either he or Gotrek had realised. He had the unpleasant feeling that they were bit characters in someone else’s play, and he didn’t like it.

‘He’s human. I sent you out for a halfling, Metternich,’ Shandeux said. He was broad, but not fat, as many halflings became when they reached a certain age, and somehow crooked, as if his limbs weren’t correctly proportioned. There was an ugly cast to his pinched, petulant features that Felix found disconcerting.

‘So you did,’ Metternich said hurriedly. ‘What about the dwarf? We could split the difference?’

‘Dwarf,’ Shandeux said, seemingly noticing Gotrek for the first time. His lip curled as he looked down at the Slayer. ‘I thought I smelled something. Can’t abide dwarfs, me. Greedy buggers, always scrounging in the dirt, so they are,’ he said. ‘Have you come to steal my gold, dwarf? Come to pinch some Shandy gold? What about you, eh, tall fellow?’ The halfling squatted on his shield and peered down at Felix with bloodshot eyes. Up close, he was unpleasant to look at: he had a wonky eye, an off-centre nose, blotchy skin and his crooked fingers played ceaselessly with an amulet. It was an ugly thing, with a fierce face carved into its flat surface. Felix felt a thrill of disgust as he got a better look at it. He hoped never to meet anything with a face like that in the flesh. ‘Come to wed a Shandy beauty? Come to try your luck in the god’s bowels?’

‘I should hope not,’ a halfling – one of the other potential suitors – barked, as Felix tried to figure out what Shandeux had meant by his last statement. They had drawn quite a crowd. The speaker was dressed like a dandy, with a huge, wide-brimmed hat perched at a rakish angle on his head, an immense feather sprouting from its hat-band and a halfling-sized pistol with an ivory grip holstered on one round hip.

Another halfling, this one dressed like a country elder of means, pulled a pipe out of his mouth and said, ‘It isn’t proper, not at all. Look at those arms and legs, like stretched giblets.’ The other nine would-be suitors joined in, displaying their distaste for Felix’s presence. Shandeux didn’t look at them. Instead, his eyes never left Felix’s face.

Gotrek’s elbow nudged Felix. ‘I have,’ Felix said, with a sigh.

‘Good. Dwarf, man or halfling, it’s all the same to me.’ Shandeux straightened and raised his amulet. ‘Jabas has blessed this day. Twelve is an auspicious number. Come, my fine, fat, gentles… a welcoming feast has been laid out, and while we eat I shall speak of Shandy tradition and what awaits you in the god’s bowels.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Felix said, as Gotrek joined him. He looked around for Metternich, but the man had joined Rodrigo and the other sell-swords. Gotrek didn’t reply. They filed into the keep with the others. He noticed that the Shandeux halflings seemed subdued, and the human guards fell in around the newcomers as if to prevent any of them from having second thoughts, though they kept their distance from Gotrek.

The inner keep was as badly laid out as the outer, but the deeper they moved into the keep, the more things had changed. Sloppiness had given way to a more sturdy, albeit cruder design. There was another structure here, buried beneath the slapdash construction that comprised the Shandy citadel. When he mentioned it to Gotrek, the Slayer said, ‘This keep has been built atop another, older keep, from a time before your Empire was even a glimmer in dwarfish eyes.’

As he listened, Felix noticed Metternich’s eyes on them. The mercenary had a speculative look on his face, and Felix wondered what he was thinking. Gotrek wasn’t exactly whispering, so there was every chance that Metternich had overheard him.

There were more mercenary guards, here and there, as well as more halflings, many of them clad in robes. Felix knew that many strange religions could be found in the Border Princes; strange practices and rites from across the Old World flourished on the fertile, if blood-drenched, soil of these lands. Perhaps the halflings had taken to one of these, rather than their own, native gods.

When they reached the feast-hall, Felix saw that it had, so far as he could tell, been decorated to resemble the communal feast-halls of the Moot. Though he’d spent little time there, the rustic style was easily recognisable. Despite the decoration, however, he noticed tiny signs that it had once been something quite different. Long benches – the right size for halflings and dwarfs, but most assuredly not for humans, he noted with some chagrin – lined the hall in two rows and soon enough, after everyone had filed in and taken a seat, human servants moved up and down the rows, filling the cups of laughing halflings. The air was already thick with pipe smoke and the smell of roasting meat, but beneath it all was another smell, like damp stone. Remembering how he’d gotten into this situation in the first place, Felix drank sparingly, and ate little.

Shandy appeared to be sparing no expense in feeding his guests. Given how much the average halfling appeared to be able to put away, Felix wondered just how much of the fabled Shandeux hoard was still around. The tables were groaning with the weight of it all – bowls of fruits from Tilea and Bretonnia, trays wet with grease from the portions of cooked duck and ham, rashers of bacon heaped on plates, portions of stag and boar and goose mounted still smoking on skewers, small mountains of pies vied for space with unsteady pyramids of freshly baked bread and, interspersed through it all, cakes of all sizes and shapes. The halflings ate, stuffing their faces with so much meat and pastry that Felix felt slightly ill on their behalf.

Despite the apparent jocularity of the gathering, Felix felt that there was a definite undercurrent of tension to the proceedings that only grew more oppressive as course after course slid across the table. The suitors ate with gusto, and Shandeux sat in his overlarge chair like a monarch-in-miniature, his expression as that of a farmer choosing a beast for slaughter as he watched them. Esme, on the other hand, looked alternately worried and impatient. She was turning this way and that, as if looking for someone. Yes, there was definitely something going on that he didn’t like the feel of. Gotrek seemed to be of the same mind, for as he held out his mug for a refill, he said, ‘We’re being played for fools, manling.’

‘You’re just now realising that?’ Felix said, trying to get comfortable. He was bent almost double on his bench and his knees were entirely too close to his chin for his liking.

Gotrek drained his mug again and held it up for another refill. ‘Where did these Moot-rats get such a treasure?’ Before Felix could reply Shandeux stood on the table, his hands held up. The celebrants began to fall quiet.

‘We Shandy have a storied history,’ he said, his voice slithering about the hall. ‘Like all of our folk, we once tilled the fields and stoked the hearths of the Moot. We were happy then and ignorant in that happiness.’ His lips wrenched back from his teeth in a leer. ‘And then the Beast came. Konrad Von Carstein, who butchered six in ten of our folk, and set the rest into flight, after glutting himself on their blood. Five hundred years ago, the first Shandy, elder of his village, led his people away from the ravages of the beast and into these lands, in search of safety. He led his folk away from the easy life they had known and into these rocky lands, where they grew strong. They found new gods, since the soft gods of the Moot had failed to protect them…’

He stroked his amulet as he spoke. Felix felt a chill course down his spine at the word, though he couldn’t say why. ‘Jabas,’ Shandeux said, his voice growing more strident. ‘Yes, Jabas, the god of these hills, who first supped upon and then saved our folk and showed them this place, from which they could face the world. Jabas, who led them into wealth. Jabas, whom we honour, even today. For it was Jabas who showed the first Shandy the wealth from which all of this has sprung, and it is Jabas who demands that any who wish to join the Shandy must first pass the test of the god’s bowels.’

‘Sounds inviting,’ one of the suitors piped up, causing the others to laugh.

‘Oh, it is,’ Shandeux responded, chuckling. ‘Very inviting, but many enter, and few leave. Jabas is a harsh god, and holds fast to what is his, as he taught his followers to do.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Come, your bellies are full, and that is when a halfling is at his best. Let us waste no more time. We begin the test. Soonest done, the sooner my niece is married and we may commence the wedding feast!’ He hopped off the table and swept out of the hall, to the cheers of his folk. Rodrigo and the other guards chivvied the suitors to their feet. More than one seemed reluctant to leave the table. Esme stayed behind. The last Felix saw of her, she was speaking hurriedly and with much agitation to Metternich who looked grim.

They were led deeper into the fortress, where it stopped being a free-standing structure and instead became part of the crag upon which it perched. They were ushered into a chamber that was more cavern than hall, lit by torches and echoing dimly with the sound of dripping water. Here and there, Felix could see the marks left by tools where the first rulers of this place had shaped it. Set into the thick stone walls was a massive portcullis. Unlike its surroundings, it was only a few centuries old, at best.

‘I expected rather more ceremony,’ Felix murmured to Gotrek. ‘I was hoping for a bit more time to come up with a plan.’

‘If they were dwarfs, you would have gotten it,’ Gotrek grunted. ‘But halflings hate ceremony almost as much as honest labour. The little rats can barely stand a moment’s recitation before they’re sniffing out food and drink.’

‘You don’t like them much, do you?’

Gotrek looked at him, as if trying to judge whether Felix were serious. Then, he grunted, ‘No.’

Felix snorted. He wasn’t likely to get more than that from the Slayer, if past conversations were anything to go by. Whatever grudge Gotrek bore the people of the Moot, he wasn’t planning on sharing it.

‘Let’s not deceive ourselves,’ Shandeux said, as the suitors fell silent. ‘You’re all here more for Shandy gold than for Shandy women. We know this, and there is no shame in it. Many have come before you, and many will come after. ’ He gestured to the heavy portcullis. ‘Behind this gate lies our vault. It sits, hidden, within the ancient keep that our ancestors used as their home until they built this mighty edifice. Beyond the gate, there are many passages. Only one leads to our wealth. Only a true Shandy, only one judged fit by Jabas, can find it.’ He gestured, and several of his guards set themselves to raising the portcullis. Shandy smiled as a musty, foul wind escaped from the now-open gate and washed across the gathered men and halflings.

He clasped his hands together piously. ‘Find the gold, and you shall win the hand of my niece, Esme. Fail and, well, you won’t be seeing any gold, I can tell you that.’

His words were greeted by a nervous twitter.

‘What if more than one of us finds it?’ a halfling asked.

‘That has never been a problem, in the past,’ Shandy said, grinning in a way that made Felix uneasy. He wanted nothing more than to grab Gotrek and leave, but the dwarf had that look in his eye. The one that said he’d set his course, and was damned if anyone would sway him from it. Guards passed out torches. Weapons were seemingly allowed, which only made Felix more nervous. What was waiting for them in there?

‘I take it that you’ll be accompanying your friend, master dwarf?’ Shandy said.

‘And if I am?’ Gotrek said.

Shandy shrugged. ‘It makes no difference. Twelve or thirteen, Jabas will judge you all as he sees fit.’

‘Then he’d best do it quickly. I’m the impatient sort,’ Gotrek said, stomping towards the raised portcullis. Felix trailed after him.

As a group, they and the halflings entered the god’s bowels. The portcullis began to drop back down after they were all through, and the clang of it falling into place echoed through the forecourt they found themselves in. True to Shandy’s claim, there were a number of tunnels beyond. There were more than a dozen, in fact. Some had the look of constructed corridors, while others appeared to have been crudely carved out of the rock of the mountain. He met Gotrek’s gaze. The Slayer eyed the tunnels carefully. The halflings were already splitting up, picking their paths at random, with much jocularity, laughter and vulgarity. Gotrek spat and stuck his finger into his mouth. Pulling it free, he held the wet digit up. ‘That one.’

‘Are you certain?’ Gotrek glowered at him and Felix shrugged. ‘I was just asking.’ Gotrek stumped off and Felix hurried after him. They hadn’t gone far when they saw the first of the bones. They weren’t human, though Felix thought at first that they might have belonged to children. ‘Halfling,’ he whispered to Gotrek.

‘Like as not,’ Gotrek said. He didn’t seem concerned.

‘I think those are teeth marks,’ Felix said, shivering slightly.

‘So?’ Gotrek said.

‘So, that means there’s something in here with us!’

‘Good,’ Gotrek said, tapping his cheek with the flat of his axe. They continued on, the number and variety of bones increasing. And the strange odour grew worse. Felix felt as if he’d inhaled swamp gas. There were strange marks on the corridor walls, as if something had scraped itself on the sides or, in other places, as if something had burnt the stone black. The sensation of danger increased, and Felix grew more and more nervous.

Then, at a crooked junction, Gotrek paused. ‘Hsst.’ The dwarf held up a hand. ‘I hear something.’

Felix’s hand fell to his sword-hilt, wondering if one of the other suitors had followed them, hoping to take advantage of the dwarf’s natural inclination for tunnels. If so, the halfling was in for a nasty surprise. Gotrek waved him back, and the Slayer crept forward. Then, with surprising speed, he leapt into an alcove that Felix had missed, and grabbed hold of a tall figure, flinging it to the ground while simultaneously shoving his axe against the throat of a second, smaller figure. ‘Ha! Now I’ve got you!’ the Slayer crowed.

‘Gotrek, wait!’ Felix said, raising his torch high to reveal Metternich on the ground and Esme cowering back from Gotrek’s axe.

‘What trickery is this?’ Gotrek asked, not lowering his axe.

‘No trickery, master dwarf,’ Metternich groaned as he sat up. ‘We came to help. Not that you need it, it seems,’ he added.

‘How did you get ahead of us?’ Gotrek snarled.

‘And why are you here? This has got to be against the rules,’ Felix said.

‘We’re changing the rules,’ Metternich said. ‘And there’s more than one way down here.’

‘Stefano is gone,’ Esme said, bluntly.

‘Who’s Stefano?’ Felix asked.

‘And why should we care?’ Gotrek growled, hefting his axe meaningfully.

‘My husband,’ Esme snapped, matching Gotrek’s glare. ‘Or, he will be, if he’s not already dead.’

‘I thought you wanted the manling to be your husband,’ Gotrek said.

‘Yes,’ Felix said, feeling faintly insulted, if not surprised.

Esme frowned at Felix. ‘Metternich told me he could get me a man who could win through the god’s bowels,’ she said. ‘It’s never happened. No one has ever made it through. They have either all disappeared or been driven insane. No Shandeux has married an outsider in over ten generations. That’s why we always wind up marrying our cousins. But if someone did make it through, a human, say…’

Felix pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘You’d be free to marry who you wanted. Because no human would want to marry a halfling,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He looked at Metternich, who shrugged.

‘I only want old Shandy’s map, and whoever won through would split the dowry with Esme. She leaves with Stefano, I get my map, and we all go home happy.’

‘Map, what map?’ Felix said.

‘That’s my business,’ Metternich snapped, his hand dropping to his knives.

‘And I’m making it mine,’ Gotrek said, hefting his axe meaningfully. ‘What map, manling?’

Metternich licked his lips. ‘Morgheim,’ he said finally. ‘Old Shandy got that gold from somewhere. I don’t buy that bollocks about him finding it in this cave. Rodrigo and the others ride out once a month with Shandeux and come back sometimes with saddlebags full of gold.’ He looked at Esme. ‘Ask her.’

Felix laughed. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I was wondering how a treasure hoard could last five centuries. It didn’t, did it? You’ve been adding to it.’

Esme made a face. ‘Maybe,’ she said sullenly.

‘What do you mean “maybe”?’ Metternich said. ‘You said there was a map. We had an arrangement!’

‘Arrangements change,’ Esme bit back. ‘They aren’t set in stone.’

‘Only halflings think like that,’ Gotrek said. ‘They’re liars and thieves, manling. My people say that if you shake hands with a halfling, you’d best make sure it doesn’t come back full of turnip.’

‘What?’ Felix said.

‘It doesn’t translate into the human tongue,’ Gotrek snapped.

‘What about Stefano?’ Esme said.

‘I don’t care. I want that map,’ Gotrek barked. ‘You can track down your hairy-footed lover yourself.’

‘You signed a contract,’ Esme protested.

‘And that map is mine,’ Metternich said.

‘You deceived us,’ Gotrek said, poking Metternich hard in the chest with a square finger. He grinned nastily. ‘Whatever contract the manling signed is broken. The map or we leave. There’s no doom here, and no treasure worth the trouble.’

Metternich hesitated. Esme looked at Felix helplessly, but for once he agreed with Gotrek. Whatever problem these folk had, it was none of their affair. He wanted nothing more than to leave as quickly as possible, preferably before anyone realised they were missing. Metternich slumped. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘We’ll split the map. I could use two strong blades at my back, and better the bravos I know, than ones I don’t, eh?’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘There’s likely enough gold in the Badlands to see us all very rich men, and dwarfs, of course.’

Felix thought Gotrek was going to argue further, but before the dwarf could get a word out, a harsh, serpentine rattle filled the musty air. Felix’s hand fell to his sword and he looked about, trying to locate the source of the noise, but to no avail. ‘What is that?’

Esme, pale and shaking, whispered, ‘Jabas.’

‘So there is something down here,’ Gotrek said. ‘What?’

‘Jabas is… Jabas,’ Esme said softly.

Metternich cast nervous looks about. ‘I thought it was just a story the Shandy kept up to keep his folk in line.’

‘Jabas is real,’ Esme hissed. ‘It’s real and it’s deadly. That’s why I wanted Metternich to find a warrior! While Jabas lives, my uncle holds us all in thrall. Only the priests know how to get past it, to get to the gold.’ She hesitated, and added, ‘And Stefano, too.’

‘Or so he claimed,’ Metternich said sourly. ‘He probably thought he could cut out the middle man, the sneaky little fool.’

‘But now he’s missing.’ She grabbed Felix’s arm. ‘I need your help, highboots. I’ll give you anything if you help me get my Stefano back.’

Before Felix could reply, a scream rang out, echoing through the labyrinth. Metternich cursed and drew one of his blades, and Gotrek raised his axe eagerly. The scream rose in pitch and then, abruptly, ended. Moments later, they heard the thump of feet on stone. Given the strange formation of the stones, the sound carried as clearly as if they were right beside the runner. Another scream came – and this one lasted longer than the others – spiralling up and up, into shuddering heights before it dissolved into a whining cackle that was finally silenced.

There was a sound like rock being torn from the earth, and scales clattering. At the mouth of the corridor, a small shape darted past, panting with exertion. Their torches flickered and the shape vanished, leaving only a despairing wail to mark its presence. ‘That’s three,’ Felix said hollowly. Small sounds, like the skittering of rats, or the rustling of cloth, suddenly filled the darkness. Metternich spun, shoving his torch all about him, illuminating the corridor.

‘What is that? Does anyone see anything?’

‘It’s coming from within the wall,’ Gotrek said, pressing his palm to the wall.

‘What is it?’ Felix said.

‘Rats, maybe,’ Gotrek said. He looked at Esme. ‘Well, lass? What does this Jabas look like?’

‘No one has ever seen it, not even the priests. They just know how to avoid it.’

Gotrek grunted. ‘Could be anything, then,’ he muttered, looking up. He began to tap the wall with the back of his axe, and pressed his ear against the stone as he did so. He stepped back a moment later and said, ‘This way.’

‘How can you tell?’ Metternich said suspiciously. Gotrek looked at him. Metternich raised his hands in surrender. ‘Forget I asked. Lead on, master dwarf. I trust your judgement.’

Gotrek grunted and led the way. They passed through narrow, curving corridors, which seemed to twist and bend with the mountain, and Felix thought that the name Shandy had given these corridors was, while vulgar, appropriate. The torches flickered and dimmed as musty breezes zipped through the corridors, carrying the sound of more skittering and, once or twice, distant screams. The other suitors weren’t faring so well. Jabas, whatever it was, was eating well this night.

‘So, this Stefano… he’s your cousin?’ Felix said, more to break the stifling silence than from any burning desire to know.

Esme shrugged. ‘Probably,’ she said.

‘But not the cousin your uncle wants you to marry?’

‘No,’ she said. Then, proudly, ‘Stefano has the right number of fingers and toes, you know. That’s why uncle hates him.’

‘Really,’ Felix said, bemused.

‘Oh yes, twelve of each,’ Esme continued happily. ‘We plan on going home, to the Moot. Stefano will become an elder, and we’ll start our own village.’

‘Just – ah – just the two of you,’ Felix said.

‘Oh no,’ Esme said. ‘There are a few others. No one’s really happy here, but this is where the gold is.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, we’ll take the gold, or as much of it as we can carry, and the others will follow us.’

‘And your uncle,’ Felix said. ‘What about him?’

Her round face darkened. ‘He can sit here and rot for all I care, him and Jabas both.’

‘Quiet,’ Gotrek said. The corridor had widened out into a circular room, and the entrances to several more tunnels sat across from them. Above him, the flickering light of the torch revealed a curved ceiling with heavy columns that marked the walls. There was a large cistern in the centre of the chamber. ‘What is this place?’ he whispered. He could hear the soft sound of water emanating from the cistern, and the air was damp and slimy feeling.

Gotrek made a face. ‘This isn’t a fortress, manling. It was just an outpost, a barracks, and this was the water supply. The folk of Mourkain stole the secrets of the und – the hidden outpost – from us, and they built their fortresses around these water chambers. These crags are soft stone, and there’s water below that can be coaxed up, if you have the wit, and once there were likely rain collectors somewhere above that funnelled rain and snow into the reservoir as well.’ He gestured to the other tunnels. ‘Those will lead back to the forecourt, where we entered, if I’m any judge.’

‘So, this is it?’ Felix said, with dawning comprehension.

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said distractedly, examining the walls.

‘Then where’s the gold?’ Metternich said, stepping past Gotrek. He held his torch high. ‘Where’s the bloody gold? Where’s that fool Stefano? He said he knew how to get to the treasure room.’

‘It’s here,’ Gotrek said. ‘I can smell it.’ He tapped a wall with his axe.

‘Yes, well, I want to see it,’ Metternich snapped. Then, ‘What was that?’ He spun about, thrusting his torch forward. Felix had heard it as well – a stifled whimper. In the light of Metternich’s torch, he saw a crumpled figure on the other side of the cistern. Esme gave a gasp – ‘Stefano!’ – and hurried forward before Felix could stop her. But she stopped short as Felix and Metternich caught up with her.

‘That’s not Stefano,’ Metternich said. Felix recognised the dandified halfling who’d first spoken out against his inclusion. The fancy hat, with its feather, lay stomped into shapelessness nearby, and its owner was curled into a whimpering ball, arms over his head and his sword still in its sheath. More startling, however, was the fact that his hair had turned a greasy shade of white. ‘What happened to him?’

‘Jabas,’ Esme hissed, drawing a wicked-looking dagger from her belt. ‘He has seen the face of the god.’

Metternich cursed and Felix’s attention was drawn upwards in the moment before something long and pale shot down out of the darkness, slapping against Metternich’s face like a wet rag. The mercenary dropped his torch and reached up to claw at the fleshy tendril. Even as the first muffled scream issued from his mouth, he was yanked bodily into the darkness above, his legs kicking futilely. A moment later, there was a crunch and then a deluge of blood that struck the floor like a hard rain. Still chewing on the luckless mercenary a monstrous shape scuttled along the curve of the ceiling, marking its path with a trail of blood. Felix peered into the darkness above, raising his torch to try and see what it was that they faced. At his feet, the maddened halfling was whining like a whipped dog.

‘Gotrek,’ Felix shouted.

‘I saw, manling,’ Gotrek said, hurrying towards them.

‘Don’t look at it, highboots,’ Esme whispered harshly, grabbing Felix’s hand and pulling his torch down. ‘The sight of Jabas drives folk mad.’ She nodded to the whimpering halfling.

‘Aye, turn around, manling,’ Gotrek flipped his hand absently, his eye locked on the shape on the ceiling, ‘No need to watch this, it won’t be a minute. I’ll just chop its heart out and we can get back to finding the Moot-rat. With Metternich gone, that map’s all ours.’ His face was set in a tight grin, and his one eye was narrowed in anticipation. He ran a calloused thumb across the edge of his axe and stuck the crimson digit into his mouth.

‘Gotrek–’ Felix began, but Esme forced him to turn away.

‘One side, manling, there’s a god that needs killing. I’ll need the elbow room,’ Gotrek said, stomping past him. ‘Ho, beast, come and get me! I’m not planning to spend all day searching for you in this oversized rock garden!’

And then Jabas came.

Felix only caught a glimpse of the thing, but that was enough for him – there was something of the bat about it, and the insect and the frog, amongst other more abominable things. It was malevolence made into flesh, and its cry pierced his skull like a blade. Felix dropped to his knees, his hands clapped to his ears. It fell upon the Slayer like a bolt from the blue, a sudden strike of scales, talons and teeth. A serpentine tail, dotted with bony boils, slithered swiftly about the Slayer, seeking to ensnare him in its slimy coils. Gotrek’s roar was muffled by the bulk of the creature as it crouched over him, its scales glittering in the torchlight.

Felix, on his knees, heard the wet thunk of Gotrek’s axe and the scrape of scales on stone as he pulled his hands from his ears. He heard the Slayer bellow hoarsely, and the thing responded in kind with a sort of gibbering shriek that made Felix’s flesh itch. He felt wrong somehow, as if the thing had infected the air about it with madness. Felix could feel that madness clawing at the edges of his mind. He had seen many horrific sights in his time with Gotrek – sights that would have blasted the mind of any other man – but he knew, with an atavistic instinct, that to see the thing that the Shandy worshipped would be to go stark, raving mad. He felt the vibration of the battle through the stone floor. He caught the guttural snarl of Gotrek’s laughter cut short, and heard flesh part beneath cruel talons. Fear gripped him. If Gotrek fell, how long would he and Esme last?

Desperate, Felix drew Karaghul and saw movement reflected in the unnatural sheen of the blade. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. He’d heard stories of creatures that could kill with a glance, and of men who’d slain them while looking at a reflection, rather than the thing itself. He whispered a quiet prayer to Sigmar and hurled his torch across the room, over the combatants.

Fortunately, even with the light, all he could see in Karaghul’s length was a black smudge. The thing’s tail suddenly lashed out, carving a lengthy gouge in the wall of the room. Felix ducked and twisted, barely avoiding being pulped. He sent Karaghul humming upwards to chop into the snaky length of muscle and alien meat. Bile-like blood spattered across him, burning his flesh and charring his jerkin and cloak. The thing gave an abominable screech that set blisters of black to pop across Felix’s vision. Momentarily blinded, he lashed out again, cursing as more acidic blood struck him, leaving red marks on his hands and face. A flailing talon struck him, scratching down his jerkin and nearly snagging his mail. He staggered back.

Gotrek bellowed and cursed, and the flash of his axe filled Felix with hope. The Slayer didn’t seem to be suffering from any beast-induced insanity. Then, perhaps he was already mad. He caught a glimpse of a curling horn and saw that Gotrek had gripped it and hauled himself onto the thing’s back. It rolled over, trying to crush the Slayer. Its bulk struck the wall of the chamber with a dull crunch, but the Slayer was more nimble than his shape implied.

As the creature’s malformed skull swung away, Felix risked a look and saw that Gotrek was clinging to the front of the beast’s skull with limpet-like tenacity, gripping its horns, his brow pressed to a point between its eyes. His axe was buried – apparently stuck – in the wattles of scaly flab that ringed the thing’s neck. Before Felix’s horrified gaze, Gotrek reared back and brought his forehead down with a sound like a stone smashing an egg. The creature’s rear limbs skidded out from under it as it gave a piercing whine. Gotrek struck it again, his forehead slamming down like a smith’s hammer. Its tail snapped out spasmodically, striking the walls and filling the air with debris.

Felix ducked under the tail, but, in the process, tripped over the mad halfling. The latter shot to his feet, shrieking madly, and flung himself at Felix, pudgy fingers hooked like claws. Felix rolled across the floor, trying to dislodge the biting, spitting, wailing halfling. As the crazed creature bit at him, Esme suddenly appeared behind him and wrapped one arm around her would-be suitor’s throat and jerked him off. With a grunt, she slung the other halfling into the side of the cistern. The crazed halfling struck the stone and bounced forward, right into Esme’s fist. He fell. Felix rolled to his feet and flung himself at Esme, scooping up the halfling and carrying them both away from the flailing tail. Its bony protrusions snagged his cloak, tearing it. As he bobbed to his feet, Esme in his arms, he saw that Gotrek’s face was red with blood, and thin plumes of yellow bile-smoke rose from his brawny frame where the thing’s blood had spattered him.

The Slayer had torn a horn from the beast’s skull and was using it as an improvised club, battering the thing senseless. It slumped against the wall, shrieking. The shriek rose in decibel as Gotrek tossed the horn aside and lunged to grab the haft of his axe. Muscles bulging, Gotrek ripped the axe loose and brought it down hard enough to split flesh and bone and crack the stone floor beneath. The ugly head bounded loose from the stubby neck and pinwheeled across the floor, jaws still snapping. The bloated body seemed to deflate, and hissing, churning yellowish blood spewed from the stump, striking the wall and floor and sending up a thick cloud of smoke.

‘Ha,’ Gotrek said, stepping back. He swept the blood from his face and grinned. ‘I told you. It didn’t take long at all.’ He spat and peered at the wall, which now had a decided hole in it. ‘Ha! I knew it!’ He pointed. ‘Look, manling! A secret tunnel,’ Gotrek said. ‘That’s how they did it, the little sneak-thieves. I should have known. I’ve never met a halfling who didn’t cheat.’

Before Felix could stop him, Gotrek had clambered over the creature’s body and through the hole its stinking blood had melted through the stone wall. Felix looked down at Esme, who was staring at the beast’s body in shock, and perhaps a bit of fear. He patted her shoulder helplessly. ‘I’m… sorry?’ he tried.

‘Jabas is dead?’ she said softly.

‘Unless he’s one of those gods who comes back to life, almost certainly,’ Felix said, picking his torch up.

‘Come on, manling! There’s gold to be claimed!’ Gotrek bellowed, from the other side of the hole. Felix moved towards the carcass and gingerly climbed up it, helping Esme do the same. The body was settling in stages, slumping and falling inward, as if whatever passed for its blood was devouring it from inside out. Even dead, it was no less nausea inducing than before. Climbing up its haunch, he noticed what looked like blisters pushing through its scales. Curious, he stabbed one with Karaghul. Something horrible latched onto his blade, and a thin whistling cry stabbed his ears. Something moved in the fluid discharge, and he caught the glint of wet scales. Cursing, Felix twisted his blade and bisected the tiny monstrosity. He looked at the other blisters – there were dozens now, and more seemed to be forming. ‘What in Sigmar’s name is this thing?’

‘My folk call them zakikdum – “the madness that walks”,’ Gotrek supplied cheerfully, blood still running down his face into his matted beard. ‘I’ve heard your folk call them jabberslythes. They usually haunt marshes. Not hard to kill, but hard to get rid of. Leave those blisters be, manling. Otherwise we’ll have a pack of the things nipping at our heels. They don’t breed so much as moult.’

Feeling distinctly queasy, Felix joined Esme and Gotrek in the tunnel. Gotrek was already moving. ‘I can smell gold. Come on,’ the Slayer said.

The tunnel was on a downward slope, and Felix wondered whether they could use it to get out. He didn’t think Shandeux was going to look kindly on them for killing his god. He looked down at Esme padding beside him and wondered what she was thinking. Was she worried that the creature had done for Stefano? He made to comfort her, when suddenly they were stepping out of the darkness and into bright torchlight.

‘Stefano,’ Esme shouted.

A heavy-set halfling was on the floor, lying amidst a slick of gold spilled from several chests. It wasn’t much by Felix’s reckoning. Barely a baron’s ransom, let alone a king’s. The halfling – Stefano – was pinned to the floor by Rodrigo’s boot, and the Estalian gazed at Gotrek with wariness. Esme tried to run to her lover’s side, but Felix held her back. Felix realised, with a sinking sensation, that Rodrigo wasn’t the only guard in the room. There were a dozen of them. The trapped halfling twisted around and said, ‘Esme! I told you I could find the treasure!’

‘What’s this, then?’ Gotrek rumbled, hefting his axe for emphasis.

‘Just a bit of a miscommunication,’ Stefano said, grabbing at Rodrigo’s boot.

‘Miscommunication nothing, you little sneak-thief,’ Rodrigo said. ‘You tried to cheat us. We don’t take kindly to that.’

Gotrek stepped forward, and the guards tensed, readying their weapons. Rodrigo took his foot off Stefano, who scrambled towards Esme, babbling explanations. Felix didn’t bother to listen. He could see what had happened easily enough. Stefano had obviously known about the passage and had led Rodrigo and the others to the gold. ‘Esme and Metternich weren’t the only ones with a plan, were they?’ he said.

Rodrigo grunted. ‘Stefano was worried that Metternich would betray them. Wisely, I’ll admit, given that he’d already made a deal with us to take all of the treasure for ourselves. All we had to do was find the map.’ His eyes turned hard. ‘But there was no map. The little thief was trying to cheat us.’

Gotrek growled wordlessly. ‘No map, is it?’ He glared first at the halflings, and then at Rodrigo and his men. ‘Then I’ll take the gold, until I find it.’

‘Over my dead body,’ Rodrigo snapped. ‘I want something for my trouble.’ His men were already scooping what little gold there was into sacks. ‘Even if it’s not the hoard I was promised.’ His eyes flickered past Gotrek. ‘Where is Metternich anyway?’

‘Dead,’ Gotrek said and grinned. ‘Care to join him?’

‘Watch your mouth, dwarf,’ Rodrigo said. ‘There’s more than enough of us to handle you, Slayer or not. We’ve fought our share of berserkers in these mountains.’ His men stopped scooping up gold and drew their own swords. Gotrek laughed.

‘Aye, maybe so,’ he said. ‘But you’ve never fought me.’ Then the Slayer was hurtling forward, as if propelled from a cannon. His axe spun in his hands, stirring a whirlwind of destruction amongst the startled guards. Men died screaming as the dwarf rampaged among them, bellowing happily as he lopped off limbs or bisected bodies.

Rodrigo, who was no fool, had dodged the dwarf’s charge. He scrambled towards Felix and the halflings, his sword extended. ‘I’ll settle you little rats at least,’ he snarled and lunged. Felix drew Karaghul and blocked Rodrigo’s blow in the same motion. They sprang apart instantly and faced each other warily. Rodrigo yanked a dagger from his belt. His eyes narrowed. ‘Altdorf school, eh? Liechtenaur, single-sword style, isn’t it?’ he said, commenting on the way Felix held his blade.

Felix grunted in surprise. ‘Yes, and you – that was a textbook de Carranza estocada, if I’m not mistaken,’ he said. ‘A powerful thrust, but easily countered by the Adler versetzen.’

‘As you demonstrated, and from the sheath, no less. Very impressive,’ Rodrigo said, smiling slightly. ‘A swordsman, then. There are few of us in these lands. Mostly hack-and-hew amateurs.’

‘The way certain people use blades is quiet distressing, I will admit,’ Felix said. ‘It’s all power and no finesse.’ He raised Karaghul in both hands to the side of his head, the point aimed at Rodrigo.

‘Says the man employing Blum’s Ochs guard,’ Rodrigo said, ‘and at close range to boot!’

‘I may have gotten a bit sloppy, but I’m not the one using a Carrancistas technique with a Pachequistas extension,’ Felix said haughtily.

Rodrigo grunted, and Felix smirked, knowing he’d scored a point. The man looked at the dagger in his hand and frowned.

‘You wound me, and rightly,’ Rodrigo grated. He smiled ruefully. ‘It will be nice to ply my trade against a true master of the subtle art for once. Ready yourself, for now we–ack!’ Rodrigo’s eyes rolled up and he sank down, clutching at his back. Esme stood behind him, a dagger in her hand.

She looked at Felix in apparent disgust and shook her head. ‘Do all humans talk so much before they fight, or just you?’ she said.

‘Ha! I’ve yet to get an answer to that particular question,’ Gotrek said, ripping his gory axe free of the last guard. The dwarf had butchered twelve men in as many minutes, and was obviously feeling cheerful. He snatched up a bulging bag of gold and slammed it into Stefano’s arms, nearly knocking the halfling over. ‘Come, manling, let’s grab what we can and leave this midden-heap before the stink of the dead gets all over my gold.’

Felix sheathed his sword sourly and did as Gotrek bade. Between the four of them, they managed to gather all of what remained, though Felix was sure that the two halflings had secreted some of it about their persons while Gotrek was otherwise occupied. Felix said nothing. There was more gold here than he and the Slayer could comfortably carry, and it served Gotrek right, given the trouble he’d put Felix to in this ill-advised venture.

Then, with Stefano in the lead, they began to move up the hidden corridor, back towards the keep. Stefano kept up a steady stream of babble the entire way. ‘I found it entirely by accident, you know. But I was smart enough to keep the old man from finding out. I’ve been pilfering gold for a few months now, but we needed more than I could carry if Esme and I were to live comfortably,’ he said, as they approached the featureless slab of a door that marked the entrance to the secret tunnel from the keep. He reached out a stubby hand and touched a seemingly ordinary stone in the wall, and the door swung open on unseen hinges. Gotrek sniffed, unimpressed.

‘I’ve seen beardlings build better secret doors,’ he muttered as they stepped out. Felix saw that they were in the chamber outside the maze with its great portcullis. A thought occurred to him and he glanced at Esme.

‘How did you and Metternich get in there, anyway, if not through that door?’

‘A question I will most assuredly find the answer to in time,’ said an unpleasantly familiar voice. Stefano gave a yelp and dropped the bag of gold he’d been carrying, which split upon impact sending coins rolling in every direction. Felix’s hand froze on the hilt of his sword as he saw the semi-circle of guards waiting for them, crossbows at the ready.

Shandeux sat on a rock nearby, smoking a pipe. ‘That’s six you owe me, Emil,’ Shandeux cackled, slapping his knee and looking at one of the crossbowmen. ‘I told you the dwarf would do it. He’s a mean one, I said.’ Shandeux looked at Esme and clucked his tongue. ‘Such a lack of gratitude, girl,’ he said. ‘After all I’ve done for you.’ Esme glared at him. Shandeux’s gaze came to rest on Felix. ‘A cuckold before you’re even married, hey, big fellow?’

‘Quiet, crook-back,’ Gotrek rumbled. ‘We’ve passed your little test. I’ll be taking my reward, now.’ He made to pick up the bag Stefano had dropped, but the twitch of the crossbows in the guards’ hands caused him to hesitate. Gotrek wasn’t frightened, Felix knew, but getting punctured by a bunch of backwoods guards wasn’t exactly a fitting doom.

‘So this was what – a game? You knew what Esme and Metternich were trying to do, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t bat an eye when Gotrek and I showed up,’ Felix said, trying to distract them. Gotrek might survive – he’d done so against worse odds – but it wasn’t the Slayer that Felix was concerned about. ‘What was the point?’

Shandeux shrugged. ‘Not much to do in the mountains,’ he said, sucking on his pipe. ‘You’ve got to make your own fun.’

‘And what about the beast?’ Felix asked.

Shandeux grinned. ‘My guard-dog, you mean? It was here when old Shandy first arrived, lurking in these vaults. It had made this crag its lair. It was while he was running from it that my ancestor found the kernel of this trove of wealth,’ he said, swinging out an arm. ‘My ancestor tricked it into these corridors and sealed it off, hoping it would die. No such luck, though. Damn thing just kept living, year after year, century after century, scrabbling around these darkened corridors, eating anyone stupid enough to come in. That’s why they built the outer keep, to put as much distance between themselves and it.’

‘And over time, they came to believe that it was a god,’ Felix said. He could hear something, like the skittering of rats. Something was moving through the tunnel.

Shandeux cackled. ‘It does something to your head, even at a remove. Most of those who came with old Shandy went a bit barmy after a while. Those who weren’t eaten, I mean. And the barmy ones were easy to convince, and the others either got religion or got fed to the beastie. Send it a few meals a year, and it stays quiet, mostly. We’d run out of family members quick, if we fed it from our own ranks, so my old gran hit on the idea of sending out for – heh – suitors. It’s stood us in good stead since. Only some of us knew the truth. It kept us safe, y’see. Kept everyone here, where Shandy could keep an eye on them and keep them out of harm’s way. Besides, if they’d known what it really was, they might want to divvy up the gold and leave – and we couldn’t have that.’

‘What did I tell you, manling?’ Gotrek muttered. ‘Greedy.’

‘But it was worth it. Or it was at the time,’ Shandeux continued. One hairy toe prodded a coin from the spilled bag. ‘Not so much now. Gold has a way of slipping through your fingers, even out here. But you can have it, if you like. A deal’s a deal. Leave my treacherous niece and her lover to me and you can be about your way.’

It was a reasonable offer, and one that, in other circumstances, Felix might have encouraged Gotrek to take. But one look at the frightened faces of Esme and her lover was enough to prod Felix to open his mouth to refuse the offer. But Gotrek beat him to it.

‘It’s not gold I’m after,’ Gotrek said. His eye was on Shandeux. He seemed to have thought of something, Felix thought. There was a familiar gleam in his eye.

Shandeux’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then what do you want?’ he asked flatly. His hand went to his amulet.

‘The map,’ Gotrek said. ‘I’ll be having that.’ He pointed.

‘Map? What map?’ Shandeux asked.

‘The map you use to keep yourself wealthy, Shandy,’ Gotrek said. ‘The wealth of Mourkain – it’s scattered all through these hills, in ruins and barrows. And you know where it all is, don’t you, you hairy-footed crag-rat?’

Shandeux hunched forward, clutching his amulet so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Felix almost laughed as he realised what Gotrek had been pointing at. So that was why Stefano hadn’t been able to find the map. It made sense. You wouldn’t want to part with something that valuable. ‘You can’t have it. It belongs to me. Take your gold, and be glad I show you mercy.’

‘The map, runt, or you’ll be the one needing mercy,’ Gotrek growled. The haft of the Slayer’s axe creaked in his grip. The sound of skittering had grown louder. For a moment, Felix thought he was the only one to hear it and then he saw the guards’ eyes widen in sudden horror.

One cursed and ripped his sword from its sheath, even as a horde of miniature jabberslythes poured out from the tunnel, stunted wings flapping, tiny mouths open in a sibilant cacophony of mingled shrieks. Men screamed as the typhoon of biting, clawing, screaming monsters enveloped them. Felix cursed and swept his cloak out and around him, knocking the creatures from the air. He lashed out with his torch, setting several alight. Others landed on him, biting and snarling shrilly.

Gotrek was cursing and roaring, whirling his axe about with brutal abandon. Shandeux screamed as he was bowled over by a number of the creatures. The halfling kicked and howled and then fell silent as he disappeared beneath the creatures. Felix hesitated and saw Esme and Stefano striking out at the attacking beasts with their daggers. ‘Quick, under my cloak,’ he shouted. The two halflings did as he said, and Felix did the best he could to keep them all covered beneath the thick wool garment.

Gotrek had picked up a fallen torch and was whipping it about along with his axe. ‘Get the hair-foots out of here, manling!’

‘What about you?’ Felix shouted.

‘I’ll be along in a moment! Go!’

Hunching his shoulders against the battering cloud of monsters, Felix started moving towards the exit. Through a rip in the material, he saw a guard pitch forward, covered in a living blanket of struggling, frog-like bodies. From the sound of his screams, Felix thought the man was being eaten alive. He flailed about him with his torch as they ran through the corridors and back into the keep.

The jabberslythes seemed intent only on attacking everything that moved. Servants and guards and halflings alike were running through the keep, screaming and cursing as the plague of little creatures spread through the interior of the keep in an orgy of gnashing teeth and foul, frog-like bodies. Shaking the last few determined creatures off his cloak, he turned, hoping to see Gotrek following them. But there was no sign of the Slayer.

‘We have to get out of here, highboots,’ Esme said, grabbing his arm. ‘Those things will be on us in a few minutes. And your torch has set everything that’s not stone alight.’ She gestured and Felix felt a moment of embarrassment as he saw that the embers from his torch had caught the wood and bedraggled tapestries that marked their path. Servants were forced to choose between fighting jabberslythes and the growing fire.

‘It’s not just me,’ he said defensively. Men and halflings were using logs from the fireplaces and torches from the stanchions to fight the biting, screaming cloud that sought to envelop them. Burning jabberslythes spread through the keep like miniature comets, shrilling in agony and anger in equal measure.

‘We have to get out of here,’ Stefano said, grabbing at his arm.

‘Not without Gotrek,’ Felix said. Gripping his torch, he prepared to head back towards where he’d last seen the Slayer, but even as he started forward a heavy shape stomped into sight, covered in blood and gnawing, biting beasts. Gotrek tore the creatures from his body, cursing all the while. As he stamped on the last shrieking jabberslythe, he held up Shandeux’s amulet. Gotrek prised it open and revealed an etched interior. Even in the dim light, Felix could tell that the marks made a crude map.

‘Had to go back for the map, manling,’ the Slayer said, and laughed.

BERTHOLD’S BEARD

Josh Reynolds

No birds sang.

Felix Jaeger paused, one hand on the hilt of his sword, his eyes flicking from the ruined doorpost to the shattered wall to the gaping ceiling. The ancient house had more holes than Averland cheese and it stank of age and beasts. The foundations might be stone, but the rest of the manse was rotting. Walls slumped against one another and the roof sagged down with alarming inexorability. Rotten support timbers stabbed down into the floor like the fangs of some long-dead leviathan. A pelt of hairy mould covered everything, and as he stepped through the hole in the wall the floorboards beneath his feet creaked and dipped alarmingly and Felix imagined for a brief, sickening moment that he was stepping onto the back of some vast, breathing thing.

‘Gotrek,’ he hissed; then, louder, ‘Gotrek!’

There was no reply save the sound of the house shifting on its foundations, settling. Swollen wood squealed. Felix stopped and glanced over his shoulder. It had felt as if there had been something on their trail since they’d entered the wild hills north of Wolfenburg. The Middle Mountains were rife with beastmen and had been for centuries, as the degenerate descendants of the rampaging hordes of Gorthor the Beastlord bred in the dark glens and bowers.

‘Aldrich,’ Felix tried. Aldrich Berthold was the sole heir to the substantial mercantile empire of the Wolfenburg Bertholds, a family that had, of late, gone through an inordinately unusual number of suicides, accidental self-immolations and at least one incident involving cuttlefish. Aldrich was also the nominal owner of the ruin Felix found himself in.

Star Hall, as it had once been known, had been abandoned centuries earlier, during the invasion of the aforementioned Beastlord. The Bertholds had left behind their former lives as country gentry for the urban comforts of Wolfenburg and had flourished ever since. At least if you listened to the gossips and wags. But though it had been abandoned, Star Hall remained and its secrets with it.

Felix cursed under his breath. ‘Gotrek,’ he cried out. ‘Where are you?’ It had taken them several days to reach the hall; its location was a well-guarded secret among the Berthold clan, and for good reason, to hear Aldrich tell it. But evidently not that well-guarded, for Gotrek’s keen senses had caught a whiff of a cooking fire before either Felix or Aldrich had seen the thin query mark of smoke rising above the ruin and into the deepening dusk as they crossed the bluff above.

Gotrek had insisted on circling around. Aldrich had vanished not long after. Felix found himself in the unenviable position of being utterly alone.

Wood creaked beneath a sudden weight.

Instincts first shaped by the finest fencing master in Altdorf and honed in hundreds of melees since brought his sword up to almost gently tap aside the falchion’s grimy edge as it dropped towards his head. His perception of the world around him had slowed to a crawl in those first few moments of surprise, but now as the blades touched and rang, motion, thought and time once more lurched forwards at their proper speed. Felix did not stop with the parry. Instead, he loosened his red Sudenland travel cloak from about his throat and spun, stealing his opponent’s momentum and tangling the snorting, gibbering beastman that had leapt at him in the cloak’s folds.

The creature, more goat than man and more man than dog, staggered to its knees. The edges of the cloak flared, revealing its broad, hairy back. Felix rammed Karaghul between its shoulder blades and sawed upwards with professional brutality, cutting short a bleat of agony. He rode the creature to the ground, forcing his weight down on the hilt of the sword. Beastmen took altogether too much killing for Felix’s liking. As he wrenched the sword free, he heard Gotrek’s joyful roar and noted that for some, however, it was just the right amount.

A sense of relief flooded through him as another beastman crashed through one of the rotten interior walls and landed in a heap of blood and wood splinters. Another staggered backwards through the hole, its boar-like maw opened in a squeal of desperation. A moment later, a short, impossibly broad shape followed with a bloodthirsty roar.

Gotrek Gurnisson buried his rune-scrawled axe into the swine-thing’s prodigious belly and lifted it off its disturbingly childlike feet with the force of the blow. Bone cracked and flesh ruptured as the wailing thing folded over the blade and slid off in two squirming pieces. ‘Ha!’ Gotrek snarled, his one good eye glinting with battle-lust as he spun. ‘Come on, scum, come to Gotrek!’

The beastmen obliged, tumbling towards the Slayer like a pack of slavering hounds through the hole in the wall. For a moment, the squat form of the dwarf was utterly obscured, save for his tall crimson crest of hair which bobbed above the hairy shapes engulfing him. Then a beastman, its bovine head hanging at an odd angle and its bottom jaw nearly sheared off, flew from the scrum to crash against a fallen support beam. There was a sympathetic groan from the manse, and Felix feared that the decrepit structure would collapse in on them. Then he was too busy fending off a bird-headed monstrosity to do anything other than fight. The creature was as quick as the crow it resembled, and it croaked vaguely intelligible curses as it chopped at him with the ill-cared-for woodsman’s axe in its talons.

Its berserk assault forced Felix back against one of the fallen beams. It was all he could do to avoid or parry the flashing axe as it bit at his face and limbs. Then the bird-man gave a startled squawk and staggered around, a gaping wound in its back. Felix grimaced as blood and feathers splattered him and then Gotrek was kicking the dead thing aside. ‘Having trouble, manling?’ the Slayer grunted dismissively. His broad frame was striped with so much blood that his tattoos were almost obscured and the massive, ham-sized paw that clutched his rune-axe was drenched to the shoulder joint.

‘When do we not, Gotrek?’ Felix shot back as he wiped strangely hairy feathers out of his eyes. What sort of beast grew hair and feathers? The strands seemed to curl around his fingers as he brushed them hurriedly away. Gotrek grunted again, with what Felix thought might be humour. It was hard to tell with a being as taciturn as Gotrek.

There were a half a dozen of the beasts left, though they didn’t appear confident that their numbers would provide any sort of advantage. Having seen Gotrek in action far more times than he cared to admit, Felix could understand the brutes’ hesitation. Gotrek raised his axe threateningly and started forwards. Watching a dwarf run was akin to watching an avalanche slide sideways, and the Slayer’s impossibly smooth yet lumbering charge was no exception. There was a sense of violent inevitability to it that always impressed Felix.

It seemed to have the opposite effect on the beastmen; with a chorus of howls, barks, grunts and cat-screams, they rushed to meet Gotrek. Felix bit back a curse and followed the Slayer. It wasn’t as if Gotrek needed the help, but he was honour-bound to aid the Slayer as best he could. And if that meant keeping him from dying an ignoble death because he was too unobservant to guard his back, then so be it. Gotrek deserved a better death than these beasts could give him.

A beastman slashed wildly at him with a club topped by the fanged jawbone of a wolf. Felix skidded aside and caught sight of Gotrek driving his head into a cloven-footed nightmare’s belly even as his axe took off another’s leg at the knee joint. The club came at him again and he twisted aside, the yellowed teeth of the jawbone biting only empty air. The club’s wielder was as hairy as the others, its goatish features nearly obscured by a mop of tangled, matted hair. It screamed and came at him again. Felix drove Karaghul into its chest. He grunted as the blade bit into bone and he was forced to plant a foot on the creature’s chest to try and retrieve his sword.

Even as he did so, however, he heard the scrape of hooves. He turned, trying to jerk his sword free as something both feline and equine shrilled out a triumphant cry and leapt from its perch on one of the fallen support beams. A pistol cracked, and the creature dropped in mid-leap, crashing through the floor and into the darkness below. Felix gaped, and then looked around, spotting Aldrich Berthold crouching near the gap in the exterior wall. Aldrich pointed with his smoking pistol. ‘Look out, Jaeger!’

Felix jerked Karaghul free just in time. The axe that had been aimed at his head slid off the blade in a shower of rust flakes and sparks. The simian-faced mutant grunted as Felix kicked its kneecap out of place and he split its skull as it fell. Felix turned as Gotrek brought the last beastman down.

The Slayer had his hands wrapped around its neck, his axe being embedded in the skull of another. As Felix approached, Gotrek efficiently crushed the thrashing creature’s throat. The Slayer let it fall to the floor and wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘Filthy beasts,’ he grunted, spitting on the body.

‘My thanks, Aldrich,’ Felix said as he cleaned his sword. ‘That was a timely intervention.’

‘I’m paying a lot for your services, Jaeger,’ Aldrich said. ‘I’d hate to see that money go to waste.’

Gotrek’s eye blazed at the mention of money. Even the merest whiff of it did odd things to dwarfs, and it was one of the few things that could stir Gotrek other than the promise of a glorious death. Aldrich had promised them Gotrek’s weight in gold to escort him to Star Hall. The journey was normally to be undertaken alone, but the rash of accidents among his kin had made Aldrich wary, and as the last surviving Berthold he felt comfortable breaking with tradition. Felix couldn’t fault him for that.

‘Did you find the fire?’ Felix said. ‘Was it the beasts?’

Gotrek grunted in assent. ‘Back there,’ he said, hiking his thumb over his shoulder. He looked down into the hole in the floor through which the beast that Aldrich had shot had plunged. ‘Smells foul down there,’ he added.

‘Who knows how long those creatures have been squatting here,’ Felix said, sheathing his sword. He looked at Aldrich. ‘I’m surprised no one ever mentioned it to you.’

‘There’s a lot I don’t know,’ Aldrich said, holstering his pistol. ‘I didn’t even know I was related to the family, despite the name, until last week.’ He looked around. ‘I certainly wasn’t expecting to have to come here.’

‘Why are we here anyway?’ Felix said. ‘You weren’t very clear about that in Wolfenburg.’

Aldrich frowned. ‘I’m looking for something,’ he said after a moment.

‘What?’

‘A beard,’ Aldrich said.

Felix blinked. ‘What?’

Aldrich made a face. ‘Well, more a lock from a beard.’

‘Maybe you’d best explain, manling,’ Gotrek rumbled, cleaning his axe on the mane of one of the dead beastmen.

‘The Bertholds are – were – a large family,’ Aldrich said. ‘And their fortune is even larger. Star Hall was built with that fortune, by Bollin Berthold, the first Berthold.’ Aldrich looked around. The shadows cast by the setting sun were deepening and creeping across the floor. ‘He was entombed here, in the vaults below, before the Beastlord put Ostland to the torch. When the family left, they left him here. It’s become a... tradition of sorts, for those coming into their inheritance to come to Star Hall and pluck a hair from the beard of the first Berthold in order to prove their blood to the family’s legal representatives, the firm of Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel.’ Aldrich made a face. ‘They’ve been seeing to the family’s interests since the time of the Three Emperors.’

‘Odd sort of tradition,’ Felix said. He glanced around. There was a sound he couldn’t place. A faint scurrying or slithering that he dismissed a moment later as the sound of branches in the evening breeze.

‘No odder than anything else you manlings come up with,’ Gotrek said. ‘This place still smells of beasts.’

‘We should start a fire. It’s getting dark,’ Aldrich said, looking uncomfortable.

‘I would have thought you’d have wanted to claim your prize,’ Felix said.

Aldrich shook his head. ‘If there are beasts about, I’d rather wait until daylight, if it’s all the same to you, Jaeger.’ He grinned. ‘What’s one more night after all?’

‘May as well use the beasts’ fire pit,’ Gotrek said. He led them through the hole in the interior wall and into the room beyond. It had been a parlour once, Felix judged. Architectural styles didn’t change much in the Empire, much less Ostland. It was in as bad a shape as the rest of the house and there were holes in the floor and the walls that put Felix in mind of rat-holes. There was a stone fire pit in the centre of the room, and charred kindling still smoked within it. Felix sniffed.

‘I was expecting it to smell like a sty,’ he said.

‘Maybe the beasts haven’t been here as long as we thought,’ Aldrich said.

‘Someone was,’ Gotrek said, tapping his axe on the edge of the fire pit. ‘Those beasts didn’t start this fire.’

Felix was about to reply, when he again heard the soft scurrying sound. Rats in the walls, perhaps? Or something else... Felix watched the hairy patches of mould clinging to the walls undulate in the breeze and he repressed a shudder.

‘Of course the beasts set the fire,’ Aldrich said. ‘Who else could have?’

Felix caught sight of something out of place in the debris of the room. He strode over and drew Karaghul, using the blade to lift the object in question. ‘Perhaps whoever owned this?’ he said, showing his companions the boot.

‘It’s a boot,’ Aldrich said.

‘It’s got blood on it,’ Felix said.

‘Bah, the beasts probably killed some traveller,’ Gotrek said. ‘Not everyone is as lucky with a blade as you, manling.’

Felix ignored the backhanded compliment. ‘But first forced him to light a fire?’

‘I’ve heard stranger things, manling,’ Gotrek said with a shrug. ‘It doesn’t matter. Whoever set the fire is gone and the beasts are dead. And if there are more, well, we’ll soon fix that.’ He ran his thumb along the edge of his axe for emphasis.

As the fire curled to life, the sky, just visible through the gaps in the roof, turned dark. Felix watched the smoke rise through the gaps. Gotrek sat staring into the fire, his attentions turned inwards, as ever. Sometimes Felix wondered what it was the Slayer saw in his mind’s eye on such occasions. But only sometimes – for the most part, he was glad that such things were hidden from him.

Aldrich, on the other hand, only seemed to get more nervous as the night went on. From the way he had coolly potted that beastman earlier, Felix had assumed that the man wasn’t easily rattled. But then, Felix couldn’t fault him for being a bit out of sorts. The fire cast weirdly dancing shadows on the walls and the sounds didn’t help. Every creak and sigh set Felix’s hackles to bristling. And there was something else... A steady sound, distant but unceasing, like the beat of a drum.

Finally, he said, ‘Gotrek, do you hear that?’

Aldrich started at the sound of his voice, nearly dropping the piece of jerky he was chewing on. Dried meat and cheese were all they had brought in the way of supplies. Felix had assumed that they could catch a rabbit or a bird, but the signs of wildlife had dwindled the closer they’d come to Star Hall, though he blamed that on the beasts. But it was strange how even the grass and trees seemed to shy away from this place.

‘Hear what, manling?’ Gotrek said, shaking himself from his reverie and turning.

‘That,’ Felix said, gesturing. ‘That sound, whatever it is... Do you hear it?’

‘It’s water,’ Gotrek said dismissively. ‘Water beating on stone; these mountains are the worse for water, with weak roots and too much limestone.’ Gotrek knocked his knuckles on the stone of the fire pit. ‘Soft stones these. That is why you men could shape them as you did. No need for skill.’

The echo of Gotrek’s knuckles was loud in the silence. It bounced from pillar to post, growing louder and quieter in turn. Felix felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night. ‘Why did they call this place Star Hall anyway?’ he said, more to fill the oppressive silence than from any real curiosity.

‘The usual reasons, I’m told,’ Aldrich said absently. ‘A star fell here. Its landing created the clearing the house occupies.’

Gotrek was suddenly on his feet, and there was a look on his face that Felix didn’t like. He sniffed, suddenly alert to the stench he’d smelt all night. He’d put it down to the stink of the dead beasts, but he wondered if that were the case. There was a persistent dampness to the smell, like wet hair, he thought.

The sound was back as well, and louder. Not just the dull thudding but the scurrying. Felix’s suddenly sweaty palm dropped to Karaghul’s hilt. Aldrich hadn’t moved, but it was clear that he heard it as well.

In the shadows, shapes moved. Gotrek gave a triumphant bark and leapt on one, his big hands snapping out to grab a flapping limb. With a roar, he tossed the figure into the light. ‘Ha! Caught you,’ he shouted. Felix leapt to his feet, his sword in hand. ‘Watch him, manling, I’ll take care of the others,’ Gotrek said, grinning wildly.

‘Gotrek–’ Felix began, looking in horror at Gotrek’s captive. Gotrek snatched up his axe and bounded into the shadows, ignoring him. Felix looked back at the body that Gotrek had dumped at his feet. The man was dead, and had been for several days, by the look of the wounds that had done for him. But that was not what caused Felix’s gut to turn icy with fear.

Something long and black and glossy stretched from the body into the darkness and as Felix watched, the serpentine shape twitched, causing the body to jerk and sway upright. Then, with nary a sound, it was dragged back into the darkness. Gotrek roared out inarticulately, and Felix saw him striking out at bobbing, weaving shapes that moved less like living things than puppets on strings. But what was pulling those strings?

‘Aldrich, did you see–’ Felix turned and looked down the barrel of Aldrich’s pistol.

‘I have seen far more than I liked, Jaeger,’ Aldrich rasped, his eyes wide and his face twitching with strain. ‘Now be a good hired sword and get out there with your friend.’

‘What is this?’ Felix said.

‘Just do your job, Jaeger. Do what I paid you and your stunted companion to help me do–’

A familiar shape flew through the air, broken beak clacking. The hairy bird thing that had nearly done for Felix earlier fell down towards them, claws flailing. Felix lashed out with his sword, knocking it to the side. It flopped bonelessly into the fire, the coiling black tendril that had been manipulating it like a hand puppet writhing as the flames licked at it for a moment before its thrashing doused them. A horrid smell, like burning hair, filled Felix’s nostrils as everything went dark.

Light dripped down from the thin sliver of moonlight visible above. Felix gagged on the smell and spun, holding his sword in both hands. There was a sound like a nest of serpents rubbing across the floor. ‘Aldrich,’ he said, then, ‘Gotrek?’

He could hear the grunts of the latter and the wet chop of Gotrek’s axe as it sank into dead flesh. They had faced the walking dead before, but this was something different. Fouler somehow... Something brushed his face. Felix let slip a cry of disgust and lashed out. ‘Aldrich, relight the fire, or Gotrek – somebody!’ More somethings slithered around his legs and waist and arms, snagging him in warm coils that felt like hemp rope.

He was yanked off his feet and slammed to the floor. Karaghul slipped from his hands and as he clawed for it he found himself being dragged roughly and swiftly across the floor. He crashed through the piles of debris as he tried to dig his fingers into the floor. Splinters bit into his fingers and he cried out as he struck the wall. He felt the wall buckle and mould drifted down on him like snow.

A dark shape loomed over him suddenly and he heard the whistle of metal cutting the air. Suddenly he was free. A strong hand grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him into the air. ‘Are you alive, manling?’ Gotrek said.

‘For the moment,’ Felix gasped. ‘What are these things?’

‘Whatever they are, they’re making me angry,’ Gotrek snarled. He dragged Felix away from the wall and back towards the fire pit. Contrary to Felix’s earlier observation, there was still a red glow to the embers in the pit. Gotrek threw a chunk of wood in and stirred it with his axe. There was a sudden burst of light and heat. Felix looked down and uttered a grunt of revulsion.

‘Gah, get it off me!’ He beat at his arms and chest, trying to dislodge the coils that still clung to him. Gotrek snatched one up and bounced it on his palm. Felix grimaced. ‘What is it?’

‘Hair,’ Aldrich said. Felix half rose to his feet and Gotrek tensed as Aldrich stepped around the fire pit, his pistol in one hand and Felix’s sword in the other. ‘Don’t twitch, master dwarf... I’d hate to bring your quest to such an ignominious end.’

Gotrek growled wordlessly and made to start forwards, but Felix grabbed his arm. The dwarf glared at him, but paused nonetheless. ‘What’s going on, Aldrich?’ Felix said. ‘Did you bring us here to feed us to... whatever that thing was?’

‘If need be,’ Aldrich said. ‘You weren’t my first choice, if that helps.’

Felix recalled the look on the other man’s face when he’d found the boot. ‘Who were they? Not friends, I hope,’ Felix said.

Aldrich’s face twisted into a sneer. ‘More like employees. They were effective at murder, but not so much at monster-fighting.’

‘You killed your own kin,’ Gotrek rumbled. As the Slayer spoke, it all fell into place in Felix’s head.

‘You murdered the rest of your family for the inheritance!’ he burst out. Beneath his feet, the floorboards clattered as if something immense were moving beneath them.

‘Murder? It was a service,’ Aldrich hissed. ‘If you knew what I know, you wouldn’t accuse me of murder... you’d thank me.’ He stabbed Felix’s sword into the floor and held out his hand. ‘Give me the hair.’

Gotrek gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Come and take it, kinSlayer.’

‘Don’t force me to waste a bullet on you, Slayer, or your companion,’ Aldrich said. He cocked his head, listening to the sounds of the ruin. ‘Can you hear it? They kept it here all this time. That’s why they left, the poxy bastards... not because of beasts, but to escape their own taint.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘My taint too, I suppose. The money will ease the pain.’ He began to back away. ‘You’ll want to keep that fire lit,’ he said. ‘It hates the light. I’d hate it too, living in darkness for all those centuries.’

The eaves and beams shifted and sighed. Felix heard the water-rumble again, only louder this time. It was like a wave approaching from all directions.

‘It recognises its own, that’s the only thing I can figure. That’s the only way they could have done it,’ Aldrich continued, licking his lips. ‘The beastmen worshipped it and fed it, but when a Berthold came, it kept them safe. But not me... it knew. Somehow, it knew what I had done and it came for us. For me,’ he hissed, his eyes rolling in their sockets. ‘But I escaped! Or maybe it let me go.’ The panicked orbs swivelled, fixing on Gotrek. ‘I thought that was it, but then I saw you, master dwarf and I knew you might just be what I was looking for.’

‘Star Hall,’ Gotrek said, his one eye blinking slowly.

‘What?’ Aldrich said.

Gotrek held up the lock of evilly glistening hair and sniffed it. ‘Ha!’ he growled. ‘I thought I smelled warpstone.’ He grinned at Aldrich. ‘This house must be sitting on a nest of the stuff. I thought only the ratkin were mad enough to build their lairs in such sour places...’

Felix felt a chill course through him. His skin suddenly itched where the tendrils of hair had touched him and he was forced to fight off the urge to strip naked and check himself for signs of mutation. ‘What is it, Aldrich? Tell us that at least. What devil is lurking in the darkness?’

‘Haven’t you guessed?’ Aldrich said, stretching out his hand. ‘Are you deaf? Give me that hair!’

‘First tell us what’s moving down there,’ Felix said, his muscles tensing. If he could get to his sword, and Aldrich didn’t shoot him first, they might make it.

‘Bollin,’ Aldrich said hoarsely. ‘Bollin Berthold. He didn’t die, but he was entombed nonetheless.’

A groan erupted from the depths of the manor, sending shivers of nausea shooting up through Felix. Aldrich twitched. ‘The secret shame of the Berthold family, revealed only to those who profit from its wealth,’ he muttered. ‘Something buried here changed him, and the family fled, only to return again and again. But after me, there’ll be no more. I’ll change my name. I’ll go west, to Marienburg, and leave this behind.’ He looked around wildly. ‘I don’t want it, you hear?’ he screamed. ‘I don’t want your damned name!’

Silence fell as the echoes of his cry faded.

And then, the sound of wood snapping as the floor began to buck and heave. Aldrich’s scream was drowned out by a thunderous roar as something vast and hairy burst upwards through the floor, its flabby lips slamming shut on the last Berthold. It was all writhing hair, save for a huge face, all the more horrible for the distinctly human cast to the features, which resembled Aldrich’s, albeit twisted into a brutish and inhuman leer. It was as if someone had stretched and pulled a human face across a jumble of barrels, and the lashing tendrils of its great beard and moustaches stretched out with quivering eagerness. Massive, square teeth ground the pulpy thing that had been Aldrich into a red stain as it heaved itself around, its mad, empty eyes fastening on them.

‘Stoke the fire, manling,’ Gotrek said, raising his axe. ‘It’s time someone put paid to this pest-hole.’ With an inarticulate roar, the Slayer charged towards the monstrous spawn of Chaos, his axe licking out to sever the tendrils that sought to snare him. Felix began throwing wood on the fire, fear lending him speed and strength.

Gotrek was like a man caught in a bramble thicket, hewing and chopping, unable to press forwards more than a few steps at a time. His roars mingled with those of the thing, and a deluge of raw sound hammered at Felix’s ears. His hands bled from splinters as he tossed more and more broken wood onto the fire. Light drove back the shadows, more fully illuminating the battle.

Gotrek’s flesh was bruised and battered by the pounding, yanking tendrils, but he staggered on. Blindly, he groped out, snagging a handful, and with a snarl he struck out with his axe, letting the haft slide through his palm. The blade of the axe bit deep into the bulbous, pasty flesh of the thing’s cheek, and a fountain of foul-smelling fluid spurted. The Berthold-thing wailed and rolled, nearly pulling Gotrek off his feet.

‘Out of the way, manling,’ Gotrek bellowed. Felix needed no further encouragement. Even as he dove aside, the Slayer set his tree-stump-like legs and every muscle in his arms and chest swelled. Then the Chaos-thing was sliding unwillingly across the broken floor and up off whatever passed for its feet as Gotrek gave a mighty heave and sent it rolling into the fire pit.

There was an ear-splitting wail and a rush of noisome odour and then the greasy crackle of the hungry flames drowned out everything else. The agonised thrashing of the beast sent chunks of burning wood spilling across the floor and walls and very quickly the mouldy structure became engulfed. Bollin Berthold, if that was who the beast had truly once been, burned even as the house he’d built did the same.

‘Up, manling,’ Gotrek said, hauling Felix to his feet. ‘Time to go.’

Felix scrambled to his feet, snatching up Karaghul as he went. Together, he and Gotrek fled the ruin, even as the light of the cleansing flame illuminated the night. The creature’s screams pursued them into the clean night air, fading only after a painful length of time.

Once they were outside, Gotrek watched Star Hall burn, a sour look on his face. ‘No doom and no gold,’ he grunted, his good eye reflecting the firelight.

‘Well, the one can’t be helped, true enough,’ Felix said. He reached down and plucked a thin curl of singed hair from Gotrek’s axe. ‘But as to the other, who’s to say?’ He held up the hair so that Gotrek could see it. ‘When do you think the offices of Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel open up?’

Gotrek laughed and they turned towards Wolfenburg, leaving Star Hall and its secrets to burn.

THE CONTEST

Jordan Ellinger

The common room of the coach house went silent after Felix entered. Gore covered his Sudenland cloak and mud, stained by half-clotted arterial blood, was plastered to his chain shirt. Four or five men, as hard as army rations, glared at him as he combed travel dust out of his blond locks with a clawed hand.

‘Out of the way, manling,’ mumbled Gotrek as he pushed his way towards the bar. He paid the other men no mind and heaved himself onto a stool. The innkeeper, cut from the same cloth as his clientele, cleaned a tankard with sausage-like fingers. ‘Ale,’ said the Slayer, pointing at a spot on the bar in front of him.

Felix glanced nervously at the men as he joined Gotrek. They watched, steely-eyed, as he took his place. ‘Do you have somewhere I could clean up?’ he asked as the innkeeper plunked a tankard in front of the Slayer.

The innkeeper snorted. Then he glanced over Felix’s right shoulder and returned to his spot at the end of the bar without saying a word.

‘Ye been in some trouble, blondie?’ asked a rough voice behind him.

Felix turned around. One of the men stood far too close for comfort.

‘We were ambushed by bandits in the hills outside town,’ he offered.

One of the men stood abruptly, fists slamming down on the table.

‘Me cousin’s in them hills.’

Alarmed, Felix’s hand fell to the pommel of his sword. ‘Gotrek…’ he said warily. As he began to rise, a hand slammed into his chest, knocking him back onto his stool.

Gotrek’s tankard thunked down on the bar, empty. He flashed the innkeeper a quick signal as he rose, indicating that he wouldn’t be long and expected to see it full when he returned. Then he turned his attention to the ruffians. ‘Care to try that on a dwarf?’

The big man seemed to swell, but he was interrupted by the innkeeper before he could explode. ‘Not inside city limits, Boxen. The sheriff’ll be called, and t’will be the gaol for the five of ye.’

‘We have no quarrel with you,’ said Felix. ‘My friend and I want to enjoy a few ales and then we’ll be on our way.’

Boxen’s thin lips cracked into a smile. ‘Oh, the dwarf likes a drink, does ’e?’

‘More than a man with two coppers in his pocket loves your mother,’ said Gotrek, cracking a yellow-toothed smile.

Boxen darkened, and his words came out in a growl ‘Tells ye what. We’ll all drink with ye. The dwarf matches us pint for pint and we’ll leave ye in peace.’

‘And if we lose?’ asked Felix cautiously.

‘Then we take ye outside the walls and bash yer heads in.’

‘Done!’ roared Gotrek, slamming his axe into the bar, where it stood, handle quivering. ‘Bring us a keg, barkeep!’

The way Boxen’s eyes gleamed sent shivers up Felix’s spine. ‘I don’t think–’

‘The day a human outdrinks me is the day I hang up my axe, manling,’ bellowed Gotrek as the innkeeper rolled a barrel out of the back room and tapped it. He filled six tankards and placed them on a central table. Boxen and his men took their places and Gotrek and Felix sat opposite.

Nobly, Boxen downed the first pint, and then turned it upside down on the table in front of him. Gotrek snatched up the next pint and let the beer flow down his throat in record time, leaving only a smear of froth on his red beard, which he cleaned off with his tongue.

Instead of taking another pint, Boxen offered it to one of his men, who smiled wickedly and then downed it slowly. As soon as the empty tankard hit the table, Boxen indicated with a wave that Gotrek should drink again.

‘Hold on,’ said Felix. ‘It’s not his turn yet.’

‘Like hell it’s not,’ said Boxen. ‘The dwarf ’ad to match “us” pint for pint. We drank two tankards – ’e needs to drink again.’

‘But there are five of you,’ said Felix, struggling to keep the whine out of his voice. Gotrek’s ability to hold his drink was legendary even among dwarfs, but there was surely no way he could outdrink five ruffians like these.

‘They should have brought eight,’ grunted Gotrek as he downed another pint. He gasped, and then set down the empty tankard.

Pint after pint disappeared, and soon the innkeeper had to tap another keg. Cups were filled without being washed and men too drunk to stumble to the jakes simply found a corner to relieve themselves in, their waste soaking the sawdust that covered the floor. If the innkeeper had any objections then they were silenced by a look from Boxen.

The night was halfway done when the first of the men could not be roused from his chair. Boxen cursed loudly and kicked at him, but succeeded only in knocking the drunk into a patch of wet sawdust.

‘More,’ Gotrek shouted incoherently. He picked up the keg itself and knocked loose the spigot, letting the last few drops of ale drip into his mouth before slamming it down as if it was a huge tankard.

Two more kegs disappeared over the next hour, and with them more of Boxen’s men. A skinny, rat-faced man with a peeling, sunburnt face simply collapsed where he stood – his head hit the edge of the table hard and spurted red blood. Boxen ignored him, looking blearily at the Slayer instead.

‘Yer… inhuman,’ he slurred.

Gotrek answered without looking up from his pint. ‘No. In-dwarf-an!’

He gurgled happily at his own wordplay, and then reached for a tankard. It was empty. He glared at it angrily and fumbled for another barrel. There were none. ‘More booze!’ he roared.

The innkeeper appeared. ‘We’re done. Between you lot, you’ve drank half as much again as one o’ the prince’s regiments. We’re empty.’

Felix breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps they’d be able to walk away without things turning into a brawl for once. ‘Well then, gentlemen, it seems–’

Before he finished his sentence, a wooden keg flew through the air and smashed into a black-haired lout too drunk to dodge away.

Felix sighed and turned around. Gotrek stood before him, swaying slightly. ‘What?’ he said with a shrug. ‘If I can’t get a drink, at least I’ll get a fight.’

With that, Gotrek shoved Felix out of the way of a poorly aimed tankard and launched himself at Boxen. There was a clatter of breaking furniture, and someone took a glass bottle to the face.

Felix shook his head as he regained his feet. Get away without a brawl? Not likely. Not while Gotrek was drunk…

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Josh Reynolds’ extensive Black Library back catalogue includes the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix, and three Horus Heresy audio dramas featuring the Blackshields. His Warhammer 40,000 work includes the Space Marine Conquests novel Apocalypse, Lukas the Trickster and the Fabius Bile novels. He has written many stories set in the Age of Sigmar, including the novels Shadespire: The Mirrored City, Soul Wars, Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows, the Hallowed Knights novels Plague Garden and Black Pyramid, and Nagash: The Undying King. He has written the Warhammer Horror novel Dark Harvest, and novella ‘The Beast in the Trenches’, featured in the portmanteau novel The Wicked and the Damned. He has recently penned the Necromunda novel Kal Jerico: Sinner’s Bounty. He lives and works in Sheffield.

Jordan Ellinger is the author of the Gotrek and Felix novella The Reckoning as well as numerous short stories for Black Library. A first place winner in the Writers of the Future contest and a Clarion West graduate, his work can be seen in numerous anthologies across the science fiction and fantasy genres. When he is not writing, he is a freelance editor.

Frank Cavallo has written a number of short stories for Black Library, including ‘Leechlord’ and ‘The Talon of Khorne’. He was born and raised in New Jersey, went to school in Boston and now lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he works by day as a criminal defence attorney.

David Guymer’s work for Warhammer Age of Sigmar includes the novels Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods and The Court of the Blind King, the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fist of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned and the Gotrek audio dramas Realmslayer and Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World. For The Horus Heresy he has written the novella Dreadwing, and the Primarchs novels Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa and Lion El’Jonson: Lord of the First. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the two Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.

An extract from Ghoulslayer.

Gotrek was snoring, attacking the night with brutal barks. Even asleep he was savage, hammering Maleneth’s skull with every snort. The sound rattled through the Slayer’s chest and shook the chain linking his ear to his nose. The brazier in his rune-axe was still smouldering, but the light had faded from his filthy muscles. He shifted, as though about to speak, let out a ripe belch and then lay still again. He had drunk for hours, downing ale like water, before finally collapsing next to an outhouse, surrounded by the corpses of brigands who had had the ill-conceived idea of trying to rob him. There was no dawn in this particular corner of Shyish, but even the endless gloom could not hide the rune buried in Gotrek’s chest. A great slab of burnished power. The tie that bound her to him. The face of a god, glaring from his ribs, demanding that she hold her nerve.

She stepped gracefully through the dead, as though gliding through a ballroom, scattering flies and gore, a dagger held lightly in each hand. The Stormcast Eternal had gone, scouring Klemp for news of his own kind, and she was alone with the Slayer.

The heart-shaped silver amulet at her throat flickered, revealing the vial of blood at its core. Now. This is your chance.

Maleneth ignored the voice, creeping closer to the Slayer, wincing at his stench. He was grotesque. A graceless lump of scarred muscle, bristling with porcine hair and covered in knotted tattoos. Even by the low standards of the duardin race he was primitive – like a hog that had learned to stand and carry an axe. He was shorter than the brigands he had carved his bed from, but twice their width and built like a barn. The stale, sweet smell of beer shrouded the bodies, mixing with Gotrek’s belches and stinging Maleneth’s eyes. She could see the dregs glistening in his matted beard as she leant closer, keeping her eyes fixed on the rune. The rune stared back.

Despite her loathing she hesitated, knives trembling, inches from his body.

The amulet around her neck flickered again. Coward.

That was enough to spur her on. Her dead mistress was right. Klemp would soon be rubble, just like all the other towns they had passed through. The whole region was in uproar. And when the fighting started, who knew where the Slayer would end up? Once he was in one of his rages there was no way of predicting what he would do next. It was a miracle she had stayed with him this far. This might be her last chance. The Slayer’s skin was like iron, though. She would need to punch the blade home with all her strength to get the poison into his bloodstream. She tightened her grip and leant back to strike.

‘Maleneth.’ The voice echoed down the alley, heavy with warning.

She whirled around, blades lowered.

Trachos’ armour glimmered as he limped through the darkness, sparks flickering from his ruined leg plate. He was wearing his expressionless helmet, but she could tell by the way he moved, careful and slow, that he understood what she was planning. His head kicked to one side and light crackled from his mouth grille. He gripped the metal, holding it still, but the damage went deeper than the mask. All that god-wrought armour had done nothing to protect his mind.

He stopped near the corpses, staring at her, lights flickering behind his faceplate.

He remained silent, but the way he raised his warhammers spoke clearly enough. That rune is mine.

They stood like that for a long moment, glaring at each other across Gotrek’s snorting bulk.

Trachos came closer, his metal boots crunching through broken weapons and shattered armour. The sky had grown paler, outlining him, and she saw how confidently he gripped the warhammers. Damaged or not, he was still a Stormcast Eternal. A scion of the thunder god. He was several feet taller than a normal man and, even broken, his plate armour made a fearsome sight.

Maleneth stepped through the pile of bodies, readying herself. She had always known this moment would come. They could not both claim the rune. There was a rent in Trachos’ leg armour from his left knee to his left boot. It had been there when he first approached Maleneth months ago, wandering out of the hills like a deranged prophet. He was in desperate need of medicine, or repairs, or whatever help Stormcast Eternals received when they returned to the Celestial Realm. Every step he took was difficult, and his Azyrite armour sparked whenever he moved. She smiled. Usually, such a warrior would be a test for even her skills, but in this state he should be easy prey. There would be blood for Khaine this night.

Maleneth dragged one of her blades across a vial at her belt. The crystal broke in silence, but she could smell the venom as it spilled across the metal.

Trachos dropped into a crouch, hammers raised.

The two warriors tensed, preparing to strike.

‘Grungni’s arse beard!’ cried Gotrek, lurching to his feet and grabbing his rune-axe. ‘Don’t you people know when you’re beaten?’

He swayed, obviously confused, still drunk, piercing the night with his one, scowling eye, trying to focus, trying to spot an opponent. Seeing none, he turned to Maleneth.

‘Aelf! Point me to the simpletons.’

Maleneth lowered her weapons and Trachos did the same. The chance was gone. She shook her head. ‘All dead.’ She backed away from Trachos with a warning glare.

Gotrek’s face was locked in a thunderous scowl and his skin was as grey as the corpses. He kicked one of them. ‘Lightweights. They could barely swing a sword. Even splitting skulls is no fun in your stinking realm.’

Trachos’ hands trembled as he slid his hammers back into his belt. ‘This is no realm of mine.’

‘Nor mine,’ said Maleneth, looking around at the peculiar hell Gotrek had led them to. The sky was the colour of old pewter, dull, bleak and riveted with stars. The stars did not shine but radiated a pitiless black. Points of absolute darkness surrounded by purple coronas, wounds in the sky, dripping fingers of pitch. And the town was equally grim. Crooked, ramshackle huts made of warped, colourless driftwood. There were panicked shouts in the distance and the sound of vehicles being hastily loaded. Columns of smoke stretched across the sky, signalling the approach of another army. They looked like claw marks on dead skin.

Gotrek muttered a duardin curse and picked his way through the corpses. ‘Where’s the ale?’

‘You drank it,’ replied Trachos.

The Slayer frowned and scratched his shaven head, causing his enormous, grease-slicked mohawk to tremble. Then he glared at the ground, his massive shoulders drooping and the haft of his greataxe hanging loosely in his grip. He whispered to himself, shaking his head, and Maleneth wondered what he was thinking. Was he remembering his home? The world he claimed was so superior to the Mortal Realms? She suspected most of his thoughts concerned his past. What else did he have? There was something tragic about him, she decided. He was like a fossil, revived by cruel necromancy and abandoned in a world where no one knew his face.

‘You’re right,’ said Gotrek, looking up with a sudden smile. ‘We need more ale.’

Maleneth shook her head in disbelief. She and Trachos were glaring at him. Anyone else would feel their hatred like a physical blow, but the Slayer was oblivious. He waved them back down the alley, away from the outbuilding, humming cheerfully to himself as he headed out onto the main street.

They stumbled into a chaotic scene. There were wicker cages rattling against every lintel and doorframe – hundreds of them, the size of a human head and crammed with teeth, skin and bones. Alongside the offerings to Nagash there were wooden eight-pointed stars, hastily hammered together and painted in gaudy colours. Braziers spewed clouds of blue embers across wooden icons that had been painted with the faces of daemons and saints. And all of this jostled happily against yellow hammer-shaped idols that had been scored with an approximation of Azyrite runes. Every corner revealed some desperate attempt to appease a god. And through this carnival of colours and shapes, people were rushing in every direction, hurling belongings from windows and clambering into carts. There was a cold wind whipping through the streets that seemed heavy with portent. Men and women howled at each other, arguing while their children fought in the dust, like a premonition of the violence about to be visited on the town. For weeks, seers across the region had been wracked by agonising prophecies. Some sprouted mouths in their armpits and spewed torrents of bile, others were visited by horrific, sanity-flaying visions, and some had found their voices replaced by a bestial, guttural language they could no more understand than silence. Whatever the nature of their visitation, all of them agreed on one thing – death was coming to the region. Most people had taken that as a cue to flee, but Gotrek, still furious at not finding Nagash, had decided to stay, relishing the coming fight as a distraction if nothing else.

As Gotrek swaggered onto the wind-lashed street, he almost collided with an enormous beast that was being led through the crowds – an armour-clad mammoth, draped in furs and sacks and scraping tracks through the dirt with its tusks. Dozens of fur-clad nomads were crowded into its howdah, and more were swarming round it, driving it on with sticks and insults, trying to goad more speed out of the plodding creature.

Gotrek halted, glaring at the nomads, and Maleneth guessed immediately what had annoyed him. She hated to admit it, but she was starting to understand him. He was brutal and heartless in many respects, but there were a few things that seemed to offend his primitive sensibilities. The sight of a wild creature bound into servitude was one of them. For a moment, she thought he might accost the nomads, but then he shook his head and marched on, barging through the traders and making for the largest building on the street, muttering into his beard.

Maleneth struggled to keep up as the Slayer booted the door open and plunged into the gloomy interior of the Muffled Drum. Despite the scenes of panic outside, Klemp’s only inn was crowded with languorous, dazed patrons – people so far gone they lacked the sense to try to save their own skin, calling the prophecies scaremongering nonsense. There were more nomads, wearing the same filthy furs as the travellers outside, but there was also a bewildering array of other creeds and races – humans from every corner of the Amethyst Princedoms and beyond. Maleneth saw hulking savages from the east, as heavily tattooed as Gotrek and looking just as uncouth. There were waif-like pilgrims, dressed in sackcloth and wearing charcoal eye makeup that had been smeared by the beer they were lying in. In one corner there was a party of duardin, dispossessed travellers, hunched over their drinks and eyeing Gotrek from under battered crested helmets.

Gotrek made a point of ignoring the duardin and stormed straight across the room to the bar, where a tall, fierce-looking woman was looming over one of her customers, shaking him back and forth until coins fell from his grip and rattled across the bar.

‘Next time,’ she snarled, ‘it’s your guts I’ll spill.’

The man fell away from her, collapsing in a shocked heap on the floor before scrabbling away on all fours as Gotrek strode past him and approached the woman.

‘Still no good,’ said the Slayer, looking up at her.

She shook her head in disbelief, then leant across the bar and stared down at him, peering at his impressive gut. ‘You drank all of it?’

Gotrek pounded a fist against his stomach and belched. ‘For all the good it did me.’

The woman looked at Maleneth as she reached the bar. ‘He drank it all?’

Maleneth nodded, grudgingly, annoyed to notice that the landlady looked impressed.

Gotrek studied the bottles behind the woman. ‘Got anything stronger?’

She stared at him. ‘Are you with them?’ she asked, nodding at the party of duardin.

Gotrek kept studying the drinks, ignoring the question. The only sign of a response was a slight tightening of his jaw.

She shrugged, taking a bottle from the shelf and placing it before him. It was the shape of an elongated teardrop and it was clearly ancient – a plump dollop of green, murky glass covered in dust and ash. There were fragments of something suspended in the liquid.

Gotrek grabbed the bottle and held it towards a fire that was crackling by the bar, squinting at the whirling sediment.

The woman grabbed one of his tree-trunk biceps. ‘It’s not cheap.’

Gotrek threw some coins at her, then continued eyeing the drink.

He jammed the cork into the bottle with his fat, dirty thumb, and a heady stink filled the room.

Maleneth coughed and put a hand to her face.

Gotrek sniffed the bottle and grimaced. ‘It’s not Bugman’s.’

‘Don’t drink it then,’ said Maleneth, remembering what had happened the last time the Slayer got drunk. There was no way they would leave Klemp intact if Gotrek picked a fight just as an army came over the horizon.

He gave her a warning glare.

‘What about Nagash?’ she said, the first thing that came to mind.

His scowl grew even more fierce, but he did not put the bottle to his lips.

‘You dragged us all this way to find him.’ Maleneth looked over at Trachos. He was standing a few feet away, watching the exchange, but as usual he seemed oblivious, locked in his own personal hell. Realising the Stormcast would be no help, she turned back to Gotrek. ‘And now, just as his armies are about to reach us, you’re going to drink yourself into a stupor. You could miss the very chance you’ve been looking for. The chance to face him. Or whatever it is you were hoping to achieve.’

Gotrek glowered. ‘He’s not here. Gods don’t have the balls to lead from the front. Nagash will be hiding somewhere, like the rest of them.’ He drank deeply from the bottle, holding Maleneth’s gaze.

Then he paused for breath, threw more coins on the bar and took the bottle to one of the benches that lined the room. The wood groaned as he sat.

There was an elderly man sitting at the bench, and he watched with interest as Gotrek drank more of the foul-smelling stuff. He was tall and slender, sitting stiff-backed and proud, and as he sipped his drink he moved with the precise, delicate movements of an ascetic. Unlike everyone else in the Muffled Drum, he was immaculately dressed. His tunic, cloak and trousers were embroidered with golden thread, and his receding, slicked-back hair was so adorned with beads and semi-precious stones that it resembled a skullcap.

When Gotrek lowered the half-empty bottle onto the table, the man leant over and whispered, ‘You have business with the necromancer?’

The drink had clearly not affected Gotrek yet. His hand shot out with surprising speed and locked around the man’s scrawny neck.

‘Who wants to know?’

A strange noise came from the man’s chest. It might have been laughter.

Gotrek cursed. Rather than grabbing skin and bone, his hand had passed through the man’s neck and was left holding a fistful of ash. The powder tumbled through his fingers as he snatched back his hand. He glared at the man.

For a fraction of a second, the old man had no neck, just a landslide of fine dust tumbling from his lower jaw onto his shoulders. It looked like sand in an hourglass. Then the dust solidified, and the man’s neck reappeared. He stroked his greasy hair and looked at Gotrek, his eyes glittering and unfocused, as though he were looking into smoke.

Gotrek’s cheeks flushed with rage and he gripped the haft of his greataxe. ‘What are you? A spirit? In my day we burned the restless dead.’

‘I’m quite well rested, thank you,’ said the man, with a vague smile.

Maleneth and Trachos approached the table.

‘What are you?’ demanded Maleneth.

The man ignored her question, studying the rune in Gotrek’s chest and the barbs on Maleneth’s tight-fitting leathers. Then he looked at the shattered gilded sigmarite of Trachos’ war gear. ‘You don’t look like servants of the Great Necromancer.’

‘But you do,’ said Gotrek, taking another swig from the green bottle. ‘Why don’t you…’ He hesitated, looking at the bottle with a surprised expression, rolling his head loosely on his shoulders. ‘Actually, this isn’t bad.’

He looked over at the landlady and gave her a nod of approval.

To Maleneth’s disbelief, the ridiculous woman blushed.

‘Like you, fyreslayer, I kneel to no god,’ said the man, looking at Gotrek with an expression that was hard to read.

‘I’m not a fyreslayer, and you’re nothing like me.’ Gotrek stood up and started away from the table. He stumbled and had to grip the bench to steady himself. ‘This is good.’ He sat back down, and the bench gave another groan.

‘Why do you wish to reach Nagash if you don’t serve him?’ asked the stranger.

‘What are you?’ repeated Maleneth, gripping her knife handles. ‘Are you human?’

‘I’m Kurin,’ he replied, holding out a hand.

Maleneth eyed it suspiciously.

Gotrek had closed his eyes, leaning back against the wall, and when he opened them again, he had to blink repeatedly to focus.

‘You’re drunk,’ muttered Maleneth.

Gotrek grinned. ‘And you’re ugly. But tomorrow I’ll be ugly and you’ll still be…’ His words trailed off and he shook his head, frowning. ‘No, wait… I mean, tomorrow I’ll be ugly and you’ll still be drunk.’ He shook his head, muttering to himself, trying to remember the joke he had cracked every day for the last week.

‘I belong to an order of magisters called the hush,’ said the man, ignoring Gotrek’s rambling. ‘Shrivers, as some used to call us.’

‘I’ve never heard of you,’ replied Maleneth, eyeing the man with suspicion. There were a lot of people who would like to get their hands on the rune in Gotrek’s chest. Perhaps it was no accident that Kurin was in the Muffled Drum at this particular moment.

‘Not many have,’ said Kurin. ‘Our skills are no longer in much demand.’

‘Skills?’

He held out his hand again, draping it before Maleneth in such a languid, aloof manner that she wondered if he was expecting her to kiss it. Then he flipped his hand around so it was palm up.

Maleneth, Gotrek and Trachos all leant closer, watching in surprise as the lines of his palm rose from his hand, spiralling up into the air like fine trails of smoke.

‘Touch them,’ he said.

Maleneth shook her head, and the other two leant back.

He shrugged. ‘We’re an ancient order. We ruled these kingdoms once, long before any of these ill-mannered barbarians who are currently trying to claim lordship. We are one with the dust. We share none of the failings of mankind – no doubts, no regrets, no grief, no shame. The sod is our flesh and the ground is our bed. It makes life simple. Mortal concerns do not bother us, so we have time to concentrate on more elevated matters.’

Gotrek managed to focus. ‘You don’t care about anything?’ He picked a shred of meat from his beard, stared at it, then ate it. ‘Doesn’t sound particularly “elevated”. Even I’ve managed that.’

Kurin smiled, his hand still outstretched, his skin still spinning a tiny storm. ‘I sense that you care about more than you would like to admit. But I can shrive you of your crimes. We are able to see into souls, Slayer – we see their value and we see what haunts them. Take my hand, tell me what drives you to drink so eagerly, and I will take the memory from you.’

Gotrek sneered, but then hesitated and stared at the man’s hand. ‘Take it from me?’

The Slayer had never told Maleneth much about his former life, but she knew he wished to atone for a past deed. He sought glorious death in battle as a kind of penance. Her pulse quickened. If Gotrek was able to forget the thing he wanted to atone for, he would stop charging headlong towards his own destruction. She could simply lead him, like an offering, back home to Azyr, with Blackhammer’s rune intact.

Kurin was still smiling. ‘Or, if you do not wish to be rid of your painful past, I can give you a chance at reconciliation. I can rouse your ghosts, Slayer. I can drag your shadows into the light. Is there someone you would wish to accuse? Or apologise to? My reach is long.’

‘A charlatan,’ sneered Maleneth. ‘I suppose you tell fortunes too. And how much does this all cost?’

‘No money. Just honesty. Nagash has persecuted my order for countless generations.’ Kurin waved vaguely, indicating the streets outside. ‘And left me surrounded by people so stupid they worship all the gods when they should worship none.’ He looked at the three of them in turn, with that half-smile still on his lips. ‘And now I hear you three are seeking him. While every other wretch in Klemp is snivelling to Nagash, you want to take him on. It’s a long time since I heard anything other than fear.’ He looked at the rune in Gotrek’s chest. ‘There is something different about you.’

Maleneth nodded. ‘So if we tell you why we’re seeking the necromancer, you’ll relieve Gotrek of his guilt?’

‘If that’s what he desires.’

The Slayer was still staring at Kurin’s hand, but Maleneth sensed that his mind had slipped back into the past again. His usually fierce expression was gone, and robbed of its normal ferocity, his face looked brutalised rather than brutal – a shocking mess of scars and buckled bone.

‘Do you?’ prompted Kurin, an odd gleam in his eye.

Gotrek was staring so hard Maleneth wondered if the drink had finally made him catatonic. Then he laughed and leant back, relaxing as he took another swig. ‘These realms are so damned subtle. I see what you’re doing, sorcerer – you would rob me of my past and leave me beaming like an idiot. You would have me forget my oath.’

Kurin frowned, confused, shaking his head, but before he could disagree, Gotrek continued.

‘There’s no solace for me, wizard. No absolution. No bloody shriving. Not until I find my doom.’ As the Slayer’s anger grew, his words became more slurred. ‘And, one way or another, the gods will give it to me.’

‘Gotrek,’ said Trachos. ‘We have no idea why he wants to know your business.’

Maleneth looked up in surprise. The Stormcast Eternal hardly ever spoke, and when he did, it rarely made sense.

Gotrek laughed and leant close to Kurin, waving dismissively at Trachos. ‘My friend here isn’t digging with a full shovel. He thinks I need to worry about you. If he knew half the things I’ve slain, he’d know I don’t need to worry about someone with brains for dust.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean dust for brains. You’re muddling my thinking, damn you. Keep out of my head. The past is the one place I’m still happy to go. I’ll thank you not to ruin it.’

Kurin nodded politely. ‘Of course. I hope I have not offended you.’

Gotrek stared at the table and shook his head. ‘Mind you, you’ve actually spoken the first sense I’ve heard since arriving in these realms. Gods are idiots. Worshipping gods is the pastime of idiots. You’re right.’ He waved clumsily at Maleneth and Trachos. ‘This pair think they can earn a place at the head of some glorious, divine host if they make a prize of me.’ He laughed. ‘Look at them, dreaming of being holy footstools.’

Kurin smiled sadly. ‘The curse of the devout. Praying so cheerfully to the cause of their pain.’

‘Aye to that.’ Gotrek’s tone was grim as he clanked his bottle against the old man’s drink. ‘The gods are good for nothing,’ he muttered. ‘Apart from catching my axe.’

Maleneth shook her head, not keen on how the old man was hanging on Gotrek’s every drunken word. ‘Trachos is right,’ she said. ‘We should keep our business to ourselves.’

‘Our business?’ cried Gotrek. He scrambled up onto the table and bellowed at the room. ‘It’s my bloody business, and I’ll share it with who I like!’

The buzz of conversation died away as everyone saw the crazed, oversized Slayer swaying on the table.

Maleneth put her head in her hands.

‘I’ve come here for Nagash!’ shouted Gotrek, brandishing his axe. ‘You cowardly whelps can run and hide all you like, but I’m going to find him and bury this useless blade in his useless skull.’ He slammed the axe down and it split the table in half, hurling drinks and leaving Gotrek sprawled on the floor.

There was an explosion of yells and curses as people leapt to their feet, grabbing weapons and hurling abuse at Gotrek, outraged by his accusation of cowardice.

A glowering mob formed around the Slayer as he climbed to his feet and retrieved his weapon.

Maleneth drew her knives and leapt to his side, still cursing under her breath. Trachos grabbed his hammers from his belt and stood at Gotrek’s other side. The trio made an unusual, impressive sight, and the drunks hesitated.

The duardin that had been watching Gotrek since he arrived rushed to stand with him, and Gotrek glared at them furiously.

‘Don’t come near me, you pathetic excuse for a dwarf,’ he snarled, rounding on the nearest of them.

There was a chorus of gasps as the mob staggered away from Gotrek, clutching their throats and choking. The veins beneath their skin suddenly knotted together and began writhing like serpents. Some of the men dropped to their knees, murmuring and whimpering as they tried to breathe, while others stumbled towards the door.

‘Wait!’ cried Kurin, wiping pieces of table from his robes as he stood and crossed the room. He was holding up one of his hands with a beneficent smile. The creases of his palm had risen up in a miniature tornado again, whirling and twisting between his fingers. ‘Lower your weapons, my friends. There is no need for discord. I’ll pay for any spillages.’

He closed his fist, and breath exploded from dozens of lungs as people managed to breathe again.

There were more disgruntled cries, but no one attacked. They looked at Kurin even more warily than they did Gotrek. As they crawled back to their seats, muttering and wheezing, it occurred to Maleneth that until Gotrek had sat beside him, Kurin had been completely alone at the bench. No one had dared sit near him.

‘You robbed me of a fight, wizard.’ Gotrek hefted his axe a little higher and gave Kurin a warning look. ‘And there’s precious little else to do in–’

‘I can reach Nagash,’ Kurin said, smiling.

Gotrek froze.

Kurin’s presence unnerved even the most hardened warriors in the room. As he walked slowly towards Gotrek, they backed away into the darkest corners of the inn. Maleneth had seen the same thing countless times. Few mortals were happy to risk the ire of a sorcerer.

Kurin nodded towards the street outside. ‘We can talk in my rooms.’ He carefully placed some coins on the bar and went to the door, waving for Gotrek to follow him.

The Slayer eyed him suspiciously, then shrugged and headed out into the gloom, Maleneth and Trachos rushing after him.

A Black Library Publication

‘The Contest’ first published in Black Library Advent Calender 2012.
‘Berthold’s Beard’ first published in Black Library Weekend Anthology 2012.
Road of Skulls and Lost Tales first published in 2013.
The Serpent Queen first published in 2014.
‘Marriage of Moment’ first published digitally in 2014.
First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Tomas Duchek.
Map by Nuala Kinrade.

Gotrek & Felix: The Fifth Omnibus © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2020. Gotrek & Felix: The Fifth Omnibus, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-80026-417-5

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o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.