BACKLIST

More great fiction from the Warhammer worlds

• THE LEGEND OF SIGMAR •
Graham McNeill
BOOK ONE: Heldenhammer
BOOK TWO: Empire
BOOK THREE: God King

• THE RISE OF NAGASH •
Mike Lee
BOOK ONE: Nagash the Sorcerer
BOOK TWO: Nagash the Unbroken
BOOK THREE: Nagash Immortal

• VAMPIRE WARS: THE VON CARSTEIN TRILOGY •
Steven Savile
BOOK ONE: Inheritance
BOOK TWO: Dominion
BOOK THREE: Retribution

• THE SUNDERING •
Gav Thorpe
BOOK ONE: Malekith
BOOK TWO: Shadow King
BOOK THREE: Caledor

• CHAMPIONS OF CHAOS •
Darius Hinks, S P Cawkwell & Ben Counter
BOOK ONE: Sigvald
BOOK TWO: Valkia the Bloody
BOOK THREE: Van Horstmann

• THE WAR OF VENGEANCE •
Nick Kyme, Chris Wraight & C L Werner
BOOK ONE: The Great Betrayal
BOOK TWO: Master of Dragons
BOOK THREE: The Curse of the Phoenix Crown

• MATHIAS THULMANN: WITCH HUNTER •
C L Werner
BOOK ONE: Witch Hunter
BOOK TWO: Witch Finder
BOOK THREE: Witch Killer

• ULRIKA THE VAMPIRE •
Nathan Long
BOOK ONE: Bloodborn
BOOK TWO: Bloodforged
BOOK THREE: Bloodsworn

• MASTERS OF STONE AND STEEL •
Gav Thorpe and Nick Kyme
BOOK ONE: The Doom of Dragonback
BOOK TWO: Grudge Bearer
BOOK THREE: Oathbreaker
BOOK FOUR: Honourkeeper

• THE TYRION & TECLIS OMNIBUS •
William King
BOOK ONE: Blood of Aenarion
BOOK TWO: Sword of Caledor
BOOK THREE: Bane of Malekith

~ THE AGE OF SIGMAR ~

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 1
An omnibus by various authors

THE REALMGATE WARS: VOLUME 2
An omnibus by various authors

LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF SIGMAR
Includes the novels Fyreslayers, Skaven Pestilens and Sylvaneth
Various authors

• HALLOWED KNIGHTS •
BOOK ONE: Plague Garden
BOOK TWO: Black Pyramid

EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
Josh Reynolds

OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner

NAGASH: THE UNDYING KING
Josh Reynolds

NEFERATA: MORTARCH OF BLOOD
David Annandale

SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds

CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth

THE TAINTED HEART
C L Werner

SHADESPIRE: THE MIRRORED CITY
Josh Reynolds

BLACKTALON: FIRST MARK
Andy Clark

REALMSLAYER
An audio drama by David Guymer

CONTENTS

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer

Map

DRAGONSLAYER

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

BEASTSLAYER

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

VAMPIRESLAYER

Book One

One

Two

Three

Four

Book Two

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Book Three

Nine

Ten

Eleven

THE TILEAN’S TALISMAN

A CASK OF WYNTERS

PROPHECY

LORD OF UNDEATH

THE TWO CROWNS OF RAS KARIM

A Gotrek & Felix Gazetteer

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods’

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.

DRAGONSLAYER

William King

‘As we flew back from the lost citadel of Karag Dum, I was excited by the prospect of seeing Ulrika again and by the thought of resting for a while after our adventures. Little did I realise that our perils were just beginning, and that we would soon encounter enemies both old and new, as well as one of the mightiest monsters it has ever been my misfortune to meet.’

— My Travels With Gotrek, Vol III
by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)

PROLOGUE

NIGHT OF THE SKAVEN

Soon, thought Grey Seer Thanquol, my brave warriors will attack.

Thanquol rubbed his paws together with glee. Soon all his planning and bargaining would pay off. Soon he would have his revenge on the dwarf, Gotrek Gurnisson, and his loathsome human henchman, Felix Jaeger. Soon they would regret forever that they had meddled in the plans of so mighty a sorcerer. Soon he would send them screaming and begging for mercy to their well-deserved deaths. Soon.

All around him, he heard his forces moving into position. Rank upon rank of awesome skaven warriors, the very cream of ratman soldiery, moved through the dark. Their pink eyes glittered in the gloom; their long tails lashed with suppressed killing lust; their fangs glistened with saliva. Just behind him, his monstrous bodyguard, a huge rat-ogre, the third to bear the name Boneripper, grunted with bloodlust.

The rat-ogre was bigger than any human, more than twice as tall and ten times as heavy. Its head was a terrifying combination of rat and wolf. Its red eyes burned with insane rage. Its monstrous talons were extruded from its stubby fingers. Its long, worm-like tail lashed the air furiously. This new rat-ogre, a replacement for the one slain by Felix Jaeger at the Battle of the Lonely Tower, had cost Thanquol a small fortune in warptokens. It was not the only thing that had cost Thanquol during his recent visit to Clan Moulder’s huge burrow at Hell Pit. He had been forced to pledge more than half his personal fortune and a share in the spoils of the coming victory to the warped rulers of the clan in return for their support in this new venture. Still, thought Thanquol, it was an immaterial consideration. The rewards of his inevitable victory would more than recompense him for his outlay. Of that he was utterly certain.

He considered the force that had been rushed to this out of the way place in response to his brilliant scheming. Not only were there Stormvermin and clanrat warriors in the livery of Clan Moulder, there were rat-ogres and packs of huge rats goaded on by beastmasters as well. His army numbered almost a thousand.

With such a force Thanquol felt certain that victory was assured. Particularly since their opponents were mere humans. How could they stand against the true inheritors of the world, the progeny of the Horned Rat himself? The answer was simple: they could not. It made Thanquol’s tail stiffen with pride when he contemplated the scale of the victory that would soon be his.

Thanquol sniffed the air with his long, rat-like snout. His whiskers twitched excitedly. Perhaps it was the proximity of the Chaos Wastes he sensed and the presence of a great motherlode of warpstone, the very essence of magical power. Once more he wondered at the stupidity of the Council of Thirteen’s edict prohibiting skaven armies from entering those daemon-haunted lands. Surely the loss of a few skavenslaves would be more than compensated for by the vast trove of warpstone they could garner? Granted, in the past the Wastes had swallowed entire armies of ratmen whole, but surely that was no justification for the Council’s timidity?

Thanquol felt sure that under his leadership, or at least with his guidance from afar – for, in truth, there was no sense in risking the loss of a skaven of his towering intellect – a verminhoste would succeed in such a mission.

And there were alternatives. If he possessed the airship that those accursed dwarfs had built for Gurnisson and Jaeger, and which his doltish lackey, Lurk Snitchtongue, had so far utterly failed to capture, he could use it to prospect for warpstone in the Wastes. He lashed his tail in frustration for a moment when he considered the imbecilic incompetence of Lurk, then wrung his paws together gloatingly as he thought about the aerial vessel. There were no ends to the uses he could put the thing to once it was his.

It would swiftly transport the grey seer and his bodyguard anywhere in the Old World. It would deliver troops behind enemy lines. It would be used as a prototype to build an aerial fleet and with such an armada Thanquol, and – he loyally hastened to add – through him the Council, would conquer the world.

Of course, first he had to get his paws on the airship, which brought his attention firmly back to matters at hand. Through the spyglass he could make out the fortified mansion inhabited by the dwarf’s Kislevite allies. It was typical of the fortified manor houses built by the human clans in this area. It was surrounded by a high palisade and a ditch, and within the house itself was a rugged structure of stone and logs. The windows were narrow, mere arrow slits in many cases. The doors and gates were massive and strong. It was built to resist an attack by the monstrous creatures so common here, close to the Chaos Wastes. Inside there were stables, for the humans here dearly loved their horses. Thanquol had never understood this. He thought the beasts good only for eating.

The mansion was typical in all respects except one, he noted gleefully. Outside the main building was a massive wooden tower topped with a metal platform. Save for the material from which it was built, it was identical in all respects to the docking tower Thanquol had seen at the Lonely Tower before the airship had sailed off to avoid falling into his clutches. Doubtless this was the place where the airship had stopped en route northwards into the Wastes. Refuelling or reprovisioning obviously. To Thanquol’s keen mind that implied there was a limit to the vehicle’s range. That was worth knowing. But why here? Why so close to the Chaos Wastes?

Briefly Thanquol considered what this might mean. Why had the dwarfs, particularly the accursed Trollslayer Gotrek Gurnisson, decided to take such a valuable device into the Wastes? If only that dullard, Lurk, had managed to find out. If only he had reported back as he had been instructed. Thanquol was not in the least surprised that he had not. It was ever his fate to be served by buffoons who lived only to spoil his ingenious plans. Thanquol often suspected that these catspaws were foisted upon him by the machinations of his devious enemies back in Skavenblight. The intricacies of skaven politics were endless and mazy, and a leader of Thanquol’s genius had many jealous rivals so filled with envy that they would stop at nothing to drag him down.

Doubtless once Gurnisson was in Thanquol’s clutches he could be made to reveal his mission by various cunning methods of persuasion known to the grey seer. And if he could not, Gurnisson’s henchman, that wicked human Felix Jaeger, could be made to talk. Actually, thought Thanquol, he would probably be the easier of the two. It was not that Thanquol feared a confrontation with the demented one-eyed dwarf, not in the slightest. He was, he knew, in all respects fearless, and not in any way, shape or form scared of a mindlessly violent brute like Gotrek Gurnisson. He had proven this time and time again in his encounters with the Slayer. It was just that it would take less effort to make Jaeger talk.

Come to think of it though, Thanquol was forced to admit, Jaeger himself could be stupidly stubborn about such matters. Perhaps it would be easier simply to capture a few prisoners from the mansion below and interrogate them about the dwarf’s purpose. Surely they must be privy to the secret. After all, how could the stunties have gone to all the trouble to build the tower down there in the midst of this forsaken steppe, and not have revealed their mission to their human allies? He must make sure that his allies captured a few of the humans for questioning. In fact, he would give the order at once.

Thanquol tittered at the thought. Whatever plan the dwarfs had, it must be an important one for them to spend so much time and effort, and to risk the airship, to implement it. Perhaps they sought gold or magical treasures in the Wastes. Knowing dwarfs as he did, Thanquol thought this was the most likely explanation. And, as soon as his incredibly brilliant plan was implemented, whatever treasures his enemies had garnered would be gripped firmly in Thanquol’s mighty taloned paw.

He reviewed his scheme in his mind. So simple, yet so devious. So direct and yet so cloaked in subterfuge. So clever and yet so foolproof, as all great skaven plans must be to avoid being fouled up by witless underlings. Truly it was proof, as if any were needed, of the singular genius that was Thanquol’s. Step by logical step he reviewed it.

First, they would capture the mansion. Then when the airship returned as it assuredly would, they would take the dwarfs by surprise once it docked. Before they could fly off, using superior skaven sorcery, a special spell that Thanquol had prepared for just this moment, they would immobilise the ship. Then nothing would remain for them to do except reap the rewards of victory.

Of course, there were a few things that could go wrong. Thanquol prided himself that part of his genius was his ability to deal with the unexpected. With any skaven force there was the chance that lackeys would mess things up. And there was a slight possibility that the dwarfs might destroy their airship rather than let it fall into skaven paws. Such things had happened in the past, for dwarfs were a foolishly proud and insanely stubborn race. And there was the ever-so-slight chance that they would fly back by a different route.

Thanquol shivered. All his divinatory skills told him that this was a near impossibility. He had read his own droppings having eaten only of fermented warpstone-spiced curd for thirteen whole hours, suffering the most dreadful flatulence as he proved his devotion to the Horned Rat in this approved manner. The sanctified excreta had assured him that his plan could not fail and that he would encounter the dwarfs here. Of course, as with all prophecies, there was a certain margin of error that had to be taken into account, but nevertheless Thanquol felt that his vast experience in scrying had stood him in good stead. Other, lesser seers might allow their wits to be clouded by their own desires and hopes, but he had read the signs with the rigorous impartiality that was one of the signs of his unfailing genius.

He felt sure that the accursed Gurnisson would return from the Wastes. Frankly he doubted that anything could prevent it. Thanquol could read the omens and he knew that the dwarf carried a mighty doom upon his shoulders. It was the sort of destiny that could only be overcome by the possessor of an even mightier one. Naturally Grey Seer Thanquol knew that he was such an individual. Still, it would not pay to underestimate the Slayer.

In his warpstone-induced dreams, Thanquol had seen many a strange vision as he sought signs of his enemies’ whereabouts. He had seen a mighty fortress buried deep beneath a mountain, and a struggle with a daemon of truly terrifying power, a being of such surpassing and baleful might that Thanquol was loath to think about it. He pushed the thought aside.

The dwarf would return, bringing the airship with him. It was his destiny to fall before the titanic intellect of Thanquol. No lesser doom could stay him.

Thanquol noticed that the Moulder clawleaders were watching him. He cursed under his breath.

‘What are your instructions, Grey Seer Thanquol?’ rumbled the most massive of them. ‘What do you require of us?’

‘My orders,’ said Thanquol emphatically, ‘are that you and your skaven are to proceed at once with the plan. Take the mansion and keep as many of the humans alive as possible, for questioning. Pay particular attention to preserving breeders and their runts. The manthings become particularly malleable when you threaten them.’

‘We would preserve them anyway, Grey Seer Thanquol. For our experiments.’

Thanquol tilted his head to one side to consider the clawleader’s words. What did the Moulder mean? Was his clan considering some new program of breeding, one that involved mutating humans? That was worth knowing. The skaven seemed to realise that he had let something slip, for he turned his back on Thanquol and lumbered down the hill to instruct his troops. Excitement filled Thanquol.

In five minutes the attack would begin.

Ulrika Magdova stood on the battlements of the mansion and gazed towards the distant mountains. She was a tall woman, garbed in the leather armour of a Kislevite warrior. Her hair was short and ash blonde, her face broad and oddly beautiful. Her hands played with the hilt of her sword.

Behind the mountains the aurora blazed brightly in the sky. The scintillating light of the Chaos Wastes at night illuminated the peaks from behind. They were huge saw-toothed fangs belonging to a distant monster that intended to devour the world.

At that moment, she was wondering whether the monster had swallowed Felix Jaeger and his companions. There had been no word or sign from them in weeks, and not all the divinations of the sorcerer, Max Schreiber, had succeeded in revealing anything about their fate. Ulrika wondered whether she would ever see Felix again. She wondered whether she even wanted to.

It was not that she wanted him dead. Far from it. She desired his safe return with all her heart. It was just that his presence was so... unsettling. She was more attracted to him than she should be. He was, after all, a landless adventurer from the Empire, a self-confessed criminal and revolutionary. She was the daughter and heir of a March Boyar, one of those nobles who guarded the northern boundary of Kislev from the creatures of the Chaos Wastes. It was her duty to marry according to her father’s wishes, to cement alliances with neighbours, to keep the blood of her clan strong and pure.

Idiot, she told herself. Why does that even matter? It was a simple bedding down with a man you liked and wanted. You’ve done it before and you will do it again. It was not uncommon or disapproved of here in Kislev, where life was short and often ended in violence; where people took what pleasure they could, when they could find it. Why does the fact you slept with a landless adventurer matter at all? There is no future to it. Yet she had thought of little else since he departed. Typical of the man, really, that he should inflict such confusion on her and then depart, the gods alone knew where.

He had his reasons, she knew. Felix Jaeger was sworn to accompany the Slayer Gotrek Gurnisson on his death quest however long that took, and however much it might end in his own death. Ulrika came from a culture that respected oaths, as only a barely civilised people, who enforced their own laws with the sword, could do. Here on the marches there were none of the lawyers and written contracts so common in the Empire. Here you did what you swore to do, or brought shame on yourself and your family.

And look what that oath had done to the foolish man. It had carried him away on that great dwarf flying machine into the Chaos Wastes in search of the lost dwarf city of Karag Dum. Ulrika had wanted to beg him not to go, to stay with her, but she was too proud to speak, and she had feared that he might refuse – and that would have been a shame she was unwilling to endure.

She kept her gaze on the mountains as if by staring hard at them, she might be able to see through the rock to what lay behind. And anyway, she had no idea how he felt about her. Perhaps it was just a one-night thing for him. Men were like that, she knew. They could promise you the world in the evening, and not even have a kind word come dawn.

She smiled. She doubted that Felix would be at a loss for a kind word, or any words at all. That was what she liked about him. He was good with words in a way her dour folk were not. It was a gift she envied him, if truth be told, for she was not good at saying how she felt. And in his own strange way, she felt that Jaeger was a good man. He could fight when that was called for, but it was not his whole life, the way it was for the men around whom she had grown up.

There were times when she thought that he was not hard enough, and there had been times when he surprised her with just how cold and ruthless he could be. Certainly only a dangerous man could be an associate of Gotrek Gurnisson’s. From what the dwarfs who had built the tower had told her, the Slayer was already a dark legend among his people.

She shook her head. This was getting her nowhere. She had her duties to perform. She was her father’s heir, and she was needed here to ride the borders, to lead the riders, a duty she fulfilled as ably as any man, and better than most.

Footsteps sounded nearby. She turned her head to see Max Schreiber walking along the parapet towards her.

‘Can’t sleep?’ he asked, smiling. ‘I could mix you a potion.’

‘Checking the sentries,’ she said. ‘It’s my duty.’

She looked at the magician. He was tall and dark with a scholar’s pallor and wide eyes. Recently he had taken to cultivating a goatee beard, which suited him. He was wearing the formal garb of a magician of his college, long flowing robes of gold over a jerkin of green, and yellow britches. An odd-looking skullcap perched on his head. A handsome man, she thought, but one who made her uneasy, and not just in the unsettling way good-looking men sometimes did. Here was one who truly stood apart from most of humanity, by virtue of the power in him, and the training that let him wield it. She did not quite trust him, which was the way she reckoned most of humanity felt about magicians in general. You always wondered about them – could they read your mind, bind you to their will with a spell, ensnare you in illusions? And you feared to say such things aloud or even to think them in their presence just in case they could, and they took offence.

Schreiber himself had never given her any reason to doubt his benevolence. It was just...

‘You were wondering about the airship,’ he said.

‘Are you a mind reader, then?’

‘No. Just a student of human nature. When I hear a young woman sigh and see that she is looking north into the Wastes, I can put two and two together. And I’ve seen you and Felix together. You make a good couple.’

‘I think you presume too much.’

‘Perhaps.’ He smiled; a little sadly, she thought. ‘Herr Jaeger is a lucky man.’

‘What’s lucky about having to cross the Chaos Wastes?’

‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’

‘I am not a mind reader either, Herr Schreiber, so how can I know what you mean if you do not say it?’

‘Why do you dislike me, Ulrika?’

‘I don’t dislike you.’

‘You do not seem to approve of me.’

‘It’s just you are...’

‘A sorcerer?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled a little sadly. ‘I am used to it. People do not tend to trust us or like us much either. It was not that long ago that they stopped persecuting us in the Empire.’

‘They still burn witches here, sometimes. Warlocks too. I am sure some of my people here would like to do that to you.’

‘I have noticed.’

‘We are close to the Chaos Wastes here. People are suspicious. I would not take it personally if I were you.’

He shook his head ruefully, and his sad smile widened. Ulrika realised that, given the chance, she could actually like the man. ‘I don’t see how I could take being burned at the stake other than personally.’

‘You have a point.’

‘Thank you,’ he said with a faint trace of irony. Suddenly he cocked his head to one side. He seemed to be listening.

‘What is it?’ Ulrika asked. She felt suddenly afraid.

‘Hush! I think there is something out there.’ He closed his eyes and his face went slack. She sensed the play of power around him. Through his shuttered eyelids she saw a glowing light, as if his eyeballs had become tiny suns that could shine through flesh. The muscles on his jaw tightened. He muttered words in the arcane tongue under his breath.

His eyes snapped open. She could see the light in them fading, like the embers of a dying fire. He reached out and touched her on the arm. His grip was surprisingly strong for a scholar. ‘Remain calm,’ he said. ‘Show nothing on your face. There are things out there and we must get away from this parapet.’

‘We must give the alarm.’

‘We will give no alarms if we are shot by a sharpshooter,’ he said softly.

‘Who could hit us in this light?’

‘Trust me,’ he said guiding her along the parapet. ‘Walk normally and then climb up the ladder into the watchtower.’

‘What is going on?’ Ulrika asked. The urgency in the magician’s voice had communicated itself to her.

‘There are skaven out there. The ratmen followers of Chaos.’

‘How do you know?’ she asked and then cursed herself. She already knew the answer. He was a magician. She altered the question slightly to cover her mistake. ‘That they are skaven, I mean.’

‘I have studied the minions of Chaos extensively,’ he said, in his quiet voice. Ulrika knew that his calm tone was meant to reassure her, to keep her calm. It annoyed her slightly that he thought she would need such treatment. If he noticed he gave no sign. ‘It’s why the dwarfs hired me, after all.’

They had reached the ladder. ‘Climb. I will follow you in a moment. As soon as you are in the tower sound the alarm bell. We don’t have much time.’

Despite her mistrust of him, she never doubted that he was serious. In this, at least, she had perfect faith in Schreiber. Out of the corner of her eyes, she thought she detected a faint scuttling mass, as of quickly moving creatures coming close. As she swung out onto the ladder she had a crawling feeling between her shoulder blades. She imagined that she was being targeted with a bow or a crossbow or one of those strange sorcerous weapons Felix had told her the skaven used. She felt cold sweat start to run down her back. She was amazed by Schreiber’s courage. The whole time, he stood there like a man engaged in a casual conversation, keeping up a flow of quiet chatter. Only once she was well up the ladder did he begin his own ascent.

She scampered up as quickly as she could and as soon as her feet hit the deck of the tower she reached out and grabbed the pull of the great bell. She tugged it with all her strength. The clear chiming tone rang out through the night. She knew it could be heard all across the manor, from the deepest cellars to the highest chambers.

‘Awake!’ she shouted. ‘Enemies are without!’

No sooner had the bell’s tolling started to fade than she heard a great feral roaring in the distance. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the skaven were out there. Warriors were already starting to tumble from the manor house, weapons held ready. She saw her father’s massive form emerge into the darkness. A partially buckled cuirass was around his chest and one of his body servants helped him adjust the straps as he roared orders to the men.

‘Oleg – take your section and man the parapet. Standa – I want archers on all four walls till we see what direction the attack is coming from. Marta! Gather all the servant girls and draw water from the wells in case of fire. Get bandages and unguents ready for the wounded! Come on! Look lively!’

Ulrika was glad her father was there. He was a veteran of a thousand battles along this dangerous border. His very presence was heartening to all his followers as well as to her.

She glanced out of the watchtower and saw the horde approaching them. There were hundreds of skaven, advancing like a furry tide across the cleared ground. She wondered if her father had enough men in the manor to hold them. Somehow she doubted it. There had been reports of more and more Chaos followers coming and going through the passes. Most of the troops of riders were patrolling the border with Chaos. It had been their misfortune, or perhaps a tribute to skaven cunning, that they had been attacked when so many of their riders were abroad.

As she drew her sword, she wondered if she would ever see Felix again. Then the first wave of skaven hit the wall, and she had time to think of nothing else except fighting for her life.

ONE

THE RETURN

Felix Jaeger looked down from the bridge of the Spirit of Grungni. He was a tall man, blond of hair, broad of shoulder, narrow of hip. His face was tanned and worry lines radiated out from his eyes that really should not have been etched on the face of one so young. But then, as Felix would have been the first to admit, he was a man who in his time had endured more than his share of worries.

His hands were braced on the great wheel of the airship as he made a course correction, steering the mighty vessel directly towards where he believed the pass out of the Chaos Wastes should lie. His hand still hurt from the burns he had taken wielding the Hammer of Firebeard. He was grateful to be able to grasp anything at all. He had been lucky. The dwarf healing salve had helped a good deal.

His keen eyes scanned the tormented land below him, watching the arid semi-desert scroll along beneath the Spirit of Grungni. In the distance, he thought he could make out a rising dust cloud.

He shivered. Whatever was making it, it was not friendly. Nothing here was.

He looked at the compass but he knew it was not always reliable in the Wastes. Several times he had seen the lodestone needle rotate around in a circle under the influence of evil magic. Fortunately they were now nearing the edge of the cursed land, where the oddly-coloured storm clouds did not always obscure the sky, and the stars were often visible by night and sometimes in the dim light of day. These gave him something to navigate by. Several times they had drifted far off course until they had found a star to navigate by, which had added days to their travel time.

Felix exhaled loudly. He was bone weary. He was no longer glad now that Malakai Makaisson had taught him how to fly the vessel – although it gave him something to do, and kept his mind from worrying about things he could not control.

The nose came round sluggishly, which was not surprising. The Spirit of Grungni was loaded to capacity and then some. The survivors of the dwarf community of Karag Dum, those who had been left alive after the last fatal confrontation with the daemonic bloodthirster and its minions, filled every cabin and spare cranny on the airship. The hold bulged with the treasures they had taken from the lost citadel. Felix wondered how Hargrim and his people would take to their new life beyond the Wastes.

The drone of the engines was loud as they struggled to drive the ship into the wind. Felix cursed, for it seemed that the very elements conspired against them on their journey out of the Wastes. He half-suspected evil magic. There were dozens of mages sworn to serve the Dark Powers down there, and it was easy to imagine one of them whistling up a wind to slow the airship down, or a storm to drive it into the ground. The Spirit of Grungni was protected against the direct effects of magic but there was really nothing anyone except another magician could do against such indirect methods.

Felix strove to push such thoughts aside, to think of happier things. He wondered what Ulrika was doing just now, whether she missed him, or even thought about him at all. Perhaps she had forgotten all about him. Perhaps he had just been a brief fling for her. Any such thoughts were driven from his head by the sound of loud cursing from behind him.

Gotrek Gurnisson entered the bridge of the airship and made his presence felt in no uncertain terms. He stomped around the command deck, glaring at the apprentice engineers, and casting irate glances through the crystal windows as if half-expecting to see an enemy flying towards them. Considering that a mere few days ago Gotrek had been near death from the wounds he had taken in his battle with the Bloodthirster of Khorne, the dwarf had made a remarkable recovery. He still did not look well. His massive chest was swathed in bandages. His huge red dyed crest of hair poked out of a turban of similar bandages wrapped around his head. The same cloth obscured the eyepatch that normally covered his empty left socket. One of his arms was bound in a sling but he still managed to carry his massive axe in his right hand. Considering Felix would struggle to lift the weapon with both hands, it was an impressive feat.

Actually, the fact that the Slayer was up and about at all was a testimony to the ruggedness of the dwarf physique. Felix knew that if he, or any other man, had suffered the wounds Gotrek had, he would have been bedridden for months, if he could have survived at all.

‘Feeling better?’ Felix asked. Gotrek’s cursing had already given him an answer to that question.

‘I feel as if I have been trampled on by a herd of donkeys, manling.’

‘An improvement then?’

‘Yes. Yesterday I felt like I had lost a head-butting contest with Snorri Nosebiter.’

‘Well, you’re lucky to be alive at all. That’s what Borek says.’

‘What’s lucky about it, manling? If I had fallen in combat with that accursed daemon I would have atoned for my misdeeds, and you would be composing my death saga. As it is, I have to listen to Snorri Nosebiter snoring and boasting about how many beastmen he slew. Believe me, there are some fates that are worse than death.’

Felix raised an eyebrow. He knew the dwarf well enough now to understand when he was making a joke. Oddly enough, given the fact that his avowed purpose in life was to find a heroic death in battle, Gotrek did not sound all that sorry to still be alive. Felix suspected that he actually detected a note of sour pleasure in the Slayer’s voice, though he thought it diplomatic not to point this out. Instead he said, ‘But if you had fallen, none of the folk of Karag Dum would have escaped, the Hammer of Firebeard would have fallen into the hands of the Chaos worshippers, and the Great Bloodthirster would have had his revenge on the race of dwarfs. Surely that is something to be thankful for?’

‘You might have a point there, manling.’

‘You know I do. And we did help Borek prove his theory about the location of Karag Dum. We did find the lost city, and we did recover the sacred hammer.’

‘There’s no need to belabour the point.’

‘And we did thwart the powers of darkness, and get a fair haul of gold and–’

‘I said–’

‘Felix Jaeger does have a point, Gotrek, son of Gurni,’ said a deep mellow voice. Felix glanced back to see that the ancient dwarf scholar, Borek, had also entered the bridge. He was stooped almost double with age and he had to use a stick to help him walk but there was a vitality about him, and an excitement, that Felix had never seen before. He was filled with life and triumph. Their success at Karag Dum, if you could call taking part in a battle that had left most of the dwarf population of the city dead a success, had given meaning to his entire life. They had recovered Firebeard’s hammer and would restore it to the dwarf people. Felix knew that Borek thought they had performed a mighty feat of valour. He himself was not so sure. Beside the scholar was his nephew, Varek, who had accompanied Felix and Gotrek and Snorri into the lost city, and had recorded their deeds. Varek’s glasses glittered in the light filtering onto the command deck. He smiled at Felix and the Slayer cheerily.

As well he might, thought Felix. Not many dwarfs could claim to have survived an encounter with a daemon of Chaos.

Just behind them stood Hargrim, the son of Thangrim Firebeard, his beard dyed as black as his clothing as he mourned his father. Now his father was gone, he was the leader of the folk of Karag Dum. His face was as grim as death. His eyes were sad as only those of a dwarf who had lost father and home at the same time could be.

He noticed the look Borek gave him. It was not really a look suited to an ancient whose white beard dragged along the floor. It held an element of reverence that made Felix uncomfortable. Since his return from Karag Dum most of the dwarfs on the airship had been giving him that look. He had lifted Firebeard’s hammer and invoked its power in the battle with the great daemon. Apparently he was the first and only human in history since the time of the man-god Sigmar to have performed such a feat, and they now regarded him as blessed by their gods. Felix did not feel particularly blessed. Just invoking the hammer’s power had almost killed him. And fighting the daemon was a feat he hoped never to have to repeat in his life.

‘Look down there!’ said Felix to distract them. His keen eyes had caught sight of movement in the Wastes from the edge of the vast dust cloud. By all the gods, it was huge. If it were being made by a force of men, Felix would have suspected the presence of an army. Here in the Chaos Wastes, who knew what it signified?

As they closed with it, he could see a group of figures, made tiny by the airship’s altitude, riding across the land, a massive cloud of polychromatic dust rising in their wake.

Borek peered down through his pince-nez glasses. ‘What is it? Tell me! My eyes are not so good.’

‘It’s a trail of dust,’ Gotrek said. ‘There are riders down there. A lot of them.’

‘I would say several hundred. Black-armoured Chaos knights. Heading south, the same direction we are.’

‘Your eyes are better than mine, manling. I’ll take your word for it.’

‘That’s the tenth party we have seen since we left Karag Dum. All heading in the same direction.’ Slowly something became evident to Felix. He felt his heartbeat start to pound, and his mouth go dry. They were passing over the heart of the dust cloud now, and he could see many more figures. Thousands of them, perhaps tens of thousands. He thought he could make out the misshapen figures of beastmen, and other more disturbing things. It was apparent that the Chaos worshippers they had seen earlier were either stragglers from, or the rearguard of, a much mightier force. One that was heading directly into the lands of men.

‘By Grungni, it’s an army on the march,’ he heard Varek say. The young dwarf had a spyglass pressed to his face and was looking through it intently. ‘This is larger than the force that besieged Karag Dum. What is going on?’

‘I fear the Powers of Chaos are planning a new incursion into the lands of men,’ Hargrim said. ‘No place will be safe for my people.’

Felix felt a thrill of fear. The last thing anybody in the human lands wanted was a full-scale invasion by the followers of the Ruinous Powers. They were numberless and powerful, and Felix suspected, after what he had seen in these Wastes, that only their constant internecine fighting kept them from sweeping away human civilisation.

‘Good. I could use a decent fight,’ Gotrek said.

‘I would have thought you’d had enough of that recently,’ Felix said sourly.

‘There’s never enough fighting for a Slayer, Felix Jaeger,’ said Borek. ‘You should know that by now.’

‘Unfortunately I do.’ A new worry entered Felix’s mind, one he knew he had been trying to keep out all day. ‘If they invade, the Chaos hordes will come through the Axebite Pass.’

‘What of it, manling?’

‘Ivan Straghov’s mansion is right in their path.’

‘Then we had best hurry on and warn them, hadn’t we?’

Excitement and tension filled Felix’s mind. They were through the pass. The land of Kislev lay before them. In hours he would see Ulrika again. He felt more nervous than he cared to admit. As nervous as he had ever been before a battle, perhaps more so. He wondered if she would be as pleased to see him as he was going to be to see her. He wondered what she would say, what he would say, what she would be wearing. He shook his head. He knew he was behaving like a schoolboy with a crush, yet he could not help himself. It had been a long time since he had felt this way about anyone. Not since the death of Kirsten at Fort von Diehl, which seemed like years ago. It was a pity that he had to be bringing such bad tidings.

He placed the spyglass to his eye and scanned the horizon, hoping for a first glimpse of the mansion, and was rewarded with a view of what he thought was the mooring tower. Soon, he thought, soon.

‘Looking forward to being back?’ said a voice from beside him. Felix looked down at Varek. The young dwarf was looking at him with something uncomfortably like hero worship. Felix had no idea why. Varek had shared in all the perils of the descent into Karag Dum Felix had faced and had done his part to bring their quest to a successful conclusion. There was no reason for him to idolise Felix but it was apparent that he did. Varek wore a leather helmet and flying goggles. Makaisson had been teaching him how to fly a gyrocopter on the return trip. He had just come back from a flight, Felix realised.

‘Course young Felix is,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. ‘Even Snorri can see that. He’s going to see his lady friend.’

Snorri winked across at Felix knowingly. It was not a reassuring sight. Even bandaged as he was, Snorri Nosebiter was the only dwarf Felix had ever met who was more terrifying than Gotrek in appearance, and the wounds he had taken at Karag Dum had not improved his looks.

Like Gotrek, Snorri was a member of the Slayer cult, sworn to seek heroic death in battle. Like Gotrek his squat ape-like body was covered in tattoos. Unlike Gotrek, however, he had three nails driven directly into his shaven head. This was in place of the crest of hair that most Slayers had. Snorri was not the brightest of dwarfs but, for a Slayer, he was friendly.

Felix focussed the spyglass on the approaching manor house. There was something odd about it. At first he could not work out what, but slowly he started to put his finger on it. There were not enough people in the fields around it. In fact there was no one. There should have been serfs, carts, workhorses, soldiers, sentries, riders coming and going with messages. He ran his gaze across the horizon to make sure he was right. His heart was beating faster. His palms felt suddenly sweaty. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was wrong. Had the forces of Chaos already been here?

He breathed a prayer to Sigmar that nothing had happened to Ulrika, and then added one for her father and the rest of the people on the estate, but he was not sure his prayer was going to be answered. Looking closely at the mansion he could see signs of a disaster.

It looked as if the gate had been forced with a battering ram. There were signs of burning on the stone walls. Whole sections of the palisade had collapsed. It all reminded him sickeningly of the aftermath of the massacre at Fort von Diehl.

‘No, not again,’ he muttered.

‘What is it, manling? What do you see?’ Gotrek asked.

Felix did not answer. The only thing that gave him hope was the fact that he could not see any bodies. And he was not at all sure that it was a hopeful sign. There were no signs of life at all. No signs of a battle except the damage to the buildings and fortifications. Surely, he thought, there would be corpses, or at least signs of burial. Frantically he scanned the area for a funeral pyre or a mass grave. Perhaps that mound over there was new.

‘What do you see, manling?’ Gotrek asked again. There was a note of menace in his voice now.

‘The mansion has been attacked,’ he said. He was not sure how he managed to keep his voice steady but he did. ‘And it looks like everyone has simply vanished.’

‘Into thin air?’

‘It looks like it.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Gotrek said. ‘It smells of a trap.’

Felix was forced to agree with the Slayer’s assessment. There was a wrongness about the situation down there that he did not like in the least. On the other hand, he desperately needed to find out what had happened to Ulrika. Let her be alive, he prayed.

The airship moved ever closer to the deserted-looking mansion.

Grey Seer Thanquol gazed at the approaching airship through the eyepiece of his periscope. As always, he was more impressed than he cared to admit by the dwarfs’ creation. That such a massive vessel could fly hinted at a magic greater than his own. Yet he knew it was not magic that kept the huge vessel aloft, but the dwarfs’ arcane technology.

He began to chew on some carefully hoarded pieces of powdered warpstone, knowing soon he would need all the sorcerous strength it could grant him. He felt a little weak. Last night his magical duel with the human wizard had taken nearly all his strength. It had almost upset all of his carefully laid plans. Who would have expected the humans to have such a strong mage in their midst? Still, in the end, Thanquol had triumphed, as was only inevitable. The power of a true servant of the Horned Rat would always overcome the feeble magic of mankind, just as the righteous skaven warriors had finally succeeded in taking the human keep. It filled Thanquol’s heart with pride to think they had managed it even though they had only outnumbered the humans ten to one. It was a fitting tribute to the genius of his leadership that victory was his in the teeth of such odds.

They had even taken some prisoners, who would doubtless serve as suitable subjects for Clan Moulder’s experiments once this expedition was over. It pained Thanquol to think that they had not had enough time yet to really interrogate their captives. There was nothing he found more relaxing than breaking a few terrified humans to his will. In particular he was pleased to have the human wizard in his clutches. The man had been knocked unconscious by magical backlash when attempting to dispel Thanquol’s last spell. Once he was conscious and Thanquol had the time, he would torture the man for the secret of his spells.

They had even managed to capture a few breeders, which was an unexpected bonus. The survivors were imprisoned in the cellars except for the youngest and, Thanquol guessed, the most attractive of the breeders whom he thought he might be able to use to lure Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson into a trap.

Even the timing of the airship’s arrival seemed to favour him. It was getting dark and that would help cover the ambushing troops waiting in the building and the cellars to erupt on the dwarfs. It occurred to Thanquol as he viewed the oncoming airship that Lurk could still be alive, and perhaps he might be able to contact him. That being the case, Thanquol thought, it was worth the attempt. It might prove very useful to have an agent alive and about Thanquol’s business up there.

He decided he’d better make the attempt.

Lurk’s head was splitting. It was not unusual these days. In the recent past he had endured more suffering than any skaven in the history of the world. It was so unfair. He had not asked to stow away on this accursed airship. He had not asked for these changes to come over his body. Doubtless it was the warpstone, he thought, and those lightning bolts that had hit the airship what seemed like an age ago. They had caused the changes. He had heard of similar changes coming over grey seers after prolonged consumption of the stuff, and the Horned Rat alone knew how much warpstone dust he had breathed in since the foolish dwarfs had taken their stupid airship out over the Wastes.

If only he had stayed below in the cupola, where it was safe. Where the air was filtered by screens, there was plenty of food and human and dwarf magic protected you from the effects of Chaos. Alas that had not proved possible. His thirteen-times-be-damned master, Grey Seer Thanquol, had insisted on regular reports and it was impossible for his sorcery to touch his lackey while he was within the protected area. So Lurk had to leave the protection of the gondola to please his accursed master. Thus had Lurk come to be exposed to the mutating dust in the first place. And now, with the cupola full to bursting with stunties, it was all but impossible for Lurk to hide down there. It would only have been a matter of time before he was detected, and he doubted that even a skaven of his prodigious potency could overcome so many dwarf warriors.

He did not know what was worse – the pain in his head or the hunger that burned in his belly. He could not remember ever being so ravenous, not even after battle, when every skaven was most in need of sustenance. The hunger had come on him with the changes in his body. He was huge now, and muscular, in a way he had never been before. He had muscles like a rat-ogre and his tail was like a length of steel cable. His body was probably twice its previous size and his talons were like daggers. Knobs of horn, similar to the ones on Grey Seer Thanquol’s cranium, had started to protrude from his skull. Was he becoming a grey seer, Lurk wondered? Or was this a sign of some other blessing from the Horned Rat? Right at this moment, Lurk did not feel particularly blessed. Right now he was feeling tired and hungry and sorry for himself. He was filled with the justifiable caution in the face of his enemies that some mistakenly called fear. And there was this strange buzzing in his head. A buzzing that seemed to take the form of words.

Lurk! You dolt! Is that you?

Lurk wondered whether this was a hallucination brought on by starvation, or whether the horrors he had endured had finally driven him mad. Still, there was something strangely familiar about the voice, an annoying arrogance and a contempt for everyone but its owner.

Lurk! Answer me! I know you are there! I can sense you!

Lurk’s paws strayed to the amulet Grey Seer Thanquol had given him. Was it possible, he asked? After all these long days, that Thanquol had managed to re-establish contact?

I can see the airship, you oaf! And I can feel your feeble mind. If you do not answer me, I shall consume your pathetic soul, and feed your festering carcass to Boneripper.

The first faint flicker of rebellion flared in Lurk’s brain. Who was Grey Seer Thanquol to speak to him in such a manner after all he had endured? Had Thanquol ever ventured into the Chaos Wastes? Had Thanquol ever travelled so far in such a dangerous and experimental vehicle? Had Thanquol ever been exposed to warpstone dust and mutated in such an uncontrollable fashion? Just let him try and feed me to Boneripper, Lurk thought, as the rage built up in his mind. I will tear the creature limb from limb, consume its flesh, crack its bones for marrow and spit the gristle at you, mighty Grey Seer Thanquol. You see if I don’t.

But what he did was reach out and touch the crystal. ‘Mightiest of masters,’ he chittered. ‘Can it really be you? Has your omnipotent sorcery finally succeeded in overcoming the dire obstacles placed in its way by those wicked dwarfs and re-established contact with your faithful Lurk?’

Yes, idiot, it has!

The baleful thought blasted through the ether and lodged itself in Lurk’s brain. Lurk was amazed that his mouth and forebrain could mouth such gross and insincere flattery while his hindbrain and entire spirit festered with rebellion. He knew that given a chance he would kill Thanquol, and the world would be none the worse for it. The grey seer was mad and incompetent. He deserved to die and be replaced by someone better. Someone not unlike Lurk, in fact. He knew now that it was not only his body that the warpstone had altered but his mind and spirit. He had become smarter and his eyes had been opened to many things. He knew now he was cleverer than Thanquol, and could lead far better, if given a chance. For the moment though, he decided that prudent skaven caution was the best course.

‘Where are you, mightiest of masters?’

I am below you in the human fortress, waiting to spring a trap on those stunted fools. Now report to me! Where have you been? Why have you not responded to my potent spells of communication?

Because they never reached me, you overbearing clod, thought Lurk. ‘Perhaps my feeble brain was incapable of encompassing such potent sorceries, most masterful of mages,’ he replied.

Report! Are there many dwarfs on the airship? Is it damaged? Where have you been? Do you have many treasures on board?

What is this mad skaven on about? Treasures? What treasures could there possibly be? Grey Seer Thanquol had no idea what had been going on up here, that much was obvious. Did he think that Lurk had the run of the airship? That the dwarfs gave him a cheery greeting and an answer to all his questions? His disrespect for Thanquol increased with every passing moment. His mouth said: ‘Which question should I answer first, wisest of leaders?’

Answer as you will but answer quick-quick! We may not have much time before...

‘Before what, most perspicacious of potentates?’

Never mind. Just be ready to act when I give the order.

‘As always, most commanding of commanders.’

If he closed his eyes, Lurk could visualise Grey Seer Thanquol standing before him, red orbs gleaming with mad knowledge, the froth of the warpstone snuff to which he was addicted clinging to his lips. Lurk wished the grey seer was here right now so that he could reach out and wring his scrawny neck. He flexed his talons in anticipation.

Soon the airship will dock and our trap will be sprung! Prepare to spread as much chaos and confusion among the stunties as you can, but be careful not to damage the airship!

Prepare to get myself killed furthering your crazed schemes, you mean. Lurk had no intention of endangering his life for the greater glory of Grey Seer Thanquol. It occurred to him that he had done this quite often enough already without adding to the tally of misdeeds that Thanquol owed him for. ‘Of course, master. I live to obey,’ he said.

Good-good! See that you do and you will be well rewarded! Fail me and–

‘Say no more, most persuasive of pontificators. I will not fail you.’

Now answer my questions! Are there many dwarfs on board?

Lurk answered the catechism, being careful to overstate the strength of the dwarfs in every respect. It was as well to have your excuses prepared in advance with Grey Seer Thanquol. It was something he had learned from the master himself.

Felix peered down at the mansion. It was as bad as he had feared. There was no sign of life. No! Wait! What was that? Was it movement at the window? He focussed the spyglass on it but by the time he had done so it was gone.

‘I suppose we had better go down and investigate,’ said Gotrek testily, pulling the sling from his arm and flexing the muscles experimentally.

‘What if it’s a trap?’ Felix asked.

‘What’s your point, manling? What if it is a trap?’

Felix considered his words carefully. The Slayer was still determined to seek his doom, that much was obvious. But for once Felix was keen to accompany him. He needed to find out what had happened here. He desperately needed to know what had become of Ulrika. And her people, he added as a guilty afterthought, though he admitted to himself there was only one person down there whose fate he really cared about.

‘We’ll go down together,’ Felix said.

‘Snorri will come with you,’ said Snorri.

‘I think the rest of us should stay with the airship,’ Borek said. ‘No sense in risking everything and everyone at this late stage.’

The old scholar at least had the grace to look embarrassed as he said it. Not that Felix blamed him. If he had been in command of the ship he would have forbade any of the crew except the Slayers to go down. And the only reason he would not have forbade them was because he would have known it was useless to give them orders anyway.

‘We’ll dock at the tower,’ he said. ‘And you can make your way down. At least the thing is still standing, and it looks completely undamaged too. That’s a stroke of luck.’

‘Is it?’ Felix asked, drawing his dragon-hilted sword. ‘I wonder if luck has anything to do with it.’

Grey Seer Thanquol chuckled malevolently. It was all coming together perfectly. All the pawns were in position. He had even managed to recontact that imbecile Lurk. Perhaps the little runt might still prove to be of some use, Thanquol thought, though he did not have high hopes. Lurk had not proven to be that great a minion in the past. Still, you could never tell.

He looked at the blond-furred breeder he had ordered brought up from the cellar. He guessed she was attractive by the strange standards of the humans, and you never knew, he might be able to use her as a negotiating chip. Human males were strangely protective of their breeders, the Horned Rat alone knew why.

He showed her his fangs menacingly, and to his surprise she showed neither fear nor awe. Instead she spat on his face. Thanquol licked away the spittle with his long pink tongue and flexed his claws menacingly. Once again, the breeder surprised him. She reached for the hilt of the sword that was no longer scabbarded at her waist, and Thanquol was suddenly glad it was not there. It seemed that this breeder might actually be dangerous.

‘Be very quiet!’ he chittered softly and menacingly. ‘Or your life will be forfeit. Grey Seer Thanquol has spoken.’

If she recognised his name she gave no sign. ‘It’s always nice to know the name of the rat you intend to kill,’ she said.

Thanquol opened his eyes a fraction and let her see the power burning there. This time she did quail a little, as almost anyone would when confronted by the supernatural glow.

‘Do not be stupid, breeder. Kill me you will not. Live you only at my pleasure. Die you will if you annoy me.’

‘You are the skaven sorcerer of whom Felix spoke,’ she murmured to herself, so low that Thanquol almost did not hear. Almost.

‘Know you the accursed Felix Jaeger?’ he demanded.

She seemed to realise her mistake for her mouth snapped shut, and she said nothing more. Thanquol bared his fangs in a grin. ‘Interesting. Very-very.’

He turned this knowledge over in his head, wondering what he might do with it, wondering what the nature of the relationship between this breeder and Felix Jaeger was. Had they mated? A possibility. Humans always seemed to be in heat. It was their way. Did they have runts? No. Not enough time. Thanquol cursed. If only he had found this out earlier, he might have been able to do something with the knowledge. Now, he no longer had the time. He needed to prepare his mind for the great spell of binding.

‘Boneripper!’ he commanded. ‘Watch this breeder. Do not let her escape.’

He sensed other eyes on him, and noticed the nearest Moulder clawleader was watching him closely. How much of the exchange between Thanquol and the breeder had he followed, Thanquol wondered? Not that it mattered. There would be time soon enough to get to the bottom of all this. His enemies were almost within his grasp.

Felix watched as the airship nosed into position near the tower. The dwarfs dropped their grapnels then pulled the ship gently into place. The boarding ramp was extended between the tower and the ship. Felix drew his dragon-hilted sword and got ready to make the long descent to the ground below. He was nervous. He sensed evil eyes watching him. Just your imagination, he told himself, but he knew it was not.

‘Ready, manling?’ Gotrek asked.

‘As I’ll ever be.’

‘Snorri’s ready too,’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

‘Then let’s go.’

As they strode across the ramp, Felix was once more uncomfortably aware of how it flexed beneath their weight and how high up they were. The wind whipped his long red cloak and tugged at his hair. It was cold and chill as only a wind from the northern steppes could be.

Gotrek and Snorri would have looked almost comical, swathed as they were in bandages, had they not been so serious. Felix doubted that anybody in his right mind would laugh at two Slayers when this mood was upon them. He did not feel much like laughing himself. He could not help but notice that both Gotrek and Snorri were moving slowly and favouring their wounded sides. He hoped nothing was down there to attack them. When fully fit he knew Gotrek was a match for just about anything that walked on two legs, and nearly anything on four, but right now he was heavily wounded, and that would count sorely against him if there was fighting.

‘I’ll go first,’ Felix said, moving to the ladder. He doubted that the elevator cage would work right now, and anyway he did not want to be caught in it if they were attacked. It was too much like a death trap.

‘In your dreams, manling,’ Gotrek said.

‘Snorri has a doom to find too,’ said Snorri. ‘Your job is to record it, young Felix.’

‘I only agreed to do that for Gotrek,’ Felix said touchily.

‘Well, if Snorri happens to be there when I find mine, you can surely give him a few lines, manling.’

Felix looked at the ground below. He was fairly certain he saw movement within the windows of the manor. ‘Is there anybody alive down there?’ he shouted. There was no sense in being subtle. Any enemies would already have seen and heard the Spirit of Grungni arrive.

‘There certainly is, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘I can hear them.’

‘Snorri smells skaven,’ said Snorri.

‘Great,’ Felix said. ‘That’s just what we needed.’

‘I’m glad you think so, young Felix,’ said Snorri. ‘Snorri thinks so too.’

‘I have a few scores to settle with those ratmen,’ Gotrek said.

‘I’m pretty sure they have a few to settle with us, Gotrek,’ said Felix. After Nuln, he was sure that the skaven would not be in the slightest disposed to talk with them. That was for sure. He forced himself to keep climbing down.

Lurk padded through the great balloon. He knew the airship had come to a halt. He had heard the engine noise fade and die. He had felt the ship shudder as it nudged against something, felt the faint sideways movement as it was tied up. He knew it was time to be about his business. His business, not Grey Seer Thanquol’s. He knew that if ever he was to escape from this accursed vessel full of stunties there would never be a better time than during Thanquol’s attack. That would keep the crew busy while Lurk made his getaway. There would be time to make his excuses to Thanquol later. Lurk poised himself in readiness to spring into action.

Ulrika watched the small figures step out onto the platform above. One of them, she could see, was Felix. Her heart sank. She had not felt this bad since the skaven assault force had swarmed over the walls and began slaughtering her people. She consoled herself with the thought that she had at least killed half a dozen of the scuttling monsters before she was clubbed down from behind.

Not that it had made much difference; there had been just too many of the things. Still, she calculated that her force had taken out a good half of the skaven. She felt sick with worry. All day she had been locked up in the cellars, part of her home turned into a cell, not knowing whether her father or her friends were still alive and now she was being forced to watch while this gloating, horned-headed albino sorcerer stood ready to ambush Felix and his crew. She had no hopes that they could drive off the ratmen. There were not enough of them aboard the airship to withstand the chittering hordes.

She looked around and wished she still had her weapons. Not that she fancied her chances much against the huge rat-ogre that acted as Grey Seer Thanquol’s bodyguard even fully armed but she might have stood some chance. As it was, there was no hope at all. She wished she possessed Max Schreiber’s sorcerous powers, then it would not have mattered if she was armed or not. What havoc the mage had wrought last night before being blasted by some spell of the mad ratman before her. Schreiber alone must have killed fifty of the skaven.

Such thoughts were getting her nowhere. If wishes were horses we’d all ride chargers, as her father used to say. There had to be something she could do, some way she could warn Felix and the others and still escape. She thought about it. Even if there was no escape she could still warn them. She was the hard daughter of a hard land. If her life was forfeit then so be it.

She glanced around at the hall and the seething sea of rat-like faces. It was a pity they were the last thing she was going to see in this life, she thought, as she hesitated for a moment, then opened her mouth and prepared to shout a warning.

Grey Seer Thanquol felt the power surge within him. His moment was almost here. Gurnisson, Jaeger and the beautiful, beautiful airship were almost within his grasp.

He reached into his pouch and found the necessary components. A piece of magnetised warpstone. A sliver of rune-encrusted metal. The thirteen-sided amulet inscribed with the thirteen fatal runes sof utter power. He had everything he needed. He was ready to begin. There would be no escape for his enemies this time. He was certain of that.

He flexed his paws, reached out with his spirit, drew power from the winds of magic and prepared to unleash his spell.

TWO

AMBUSH AT STRAGHOV MANSION

Felix looked down. He was not happy. Of the many things he hated and feared in this life, skaven came close to the top of the list. He had loathed the vile vermin ever since he and the Slayer had first encountered them in the sewers of Nuln. What was worse, the awful creatures seemed to have dogged their footsteps ever since, even assaulting the Lonely Tower before their expedition to the Chaos Wastes. Who would have thought they would have shown up here, though? The northernmost provinces of Kislev were a long way from anywhere. Was the reach of the Horned Rat so long?

Still, why should he be surprised by anything in this life? It sometimes seemed to him that he and the Slayer were the most unlucky creatures ever to walk the face of the world. Everywhere they went, they encountered the servants of Chaos. Everywhere they went, they met with disaster and destruction. Another, worse, thought pushed that idea from his mind. Was it possible that Ulrika was alive and down there in the clutches of the ratmen? It was something that did not bear thinking about.

‘Should we go on down?’ Felix asked. They were half way down the ladder, on the fifth platform.

‘Why not?’ Gotrek replied. ‘You wanted to find out what happened to the Kislevites.’

‘Under the circumstances, I’m pretty sure I can guess.’

‘Guessing isn’t good enough, manling. There may be some humans alive down there, and they granted us fire and shelter.’

‘Fire and shelter and a bucket of vodka for Snorri,’ added Snorri helpfully.

‘That settles it then,’ Felix said sourly. ‘I’ll gladly sell my life for a bucket of vodka.’

Felix knew he was just grumbling for the sake of form. Even if the two Slayers had not been there, he liked to think he would continue anyway to find out the fate of Ulrika and her family. Flanked by Gotrek and Snorri there was no turning back. He consoled himself with the thought that if there were skaven down there, a lot of them were going to die.

Unless they have some of those terrible sharpshooters, Felix thought. Or even some with crossbows. Easiest thing in the world to pick us off from a distance. Or maybe not. Not in this light. Not with all these wooden crossbars around. And Snorri and Gotrek were short; they would not make good targets. Of course, that left one obvious target for any sniping. He tried to push the thought from his mind as he put his weight on the rungs of the ladder once more.

A glow surrounded Grey Seer Thanquol. For a moment Ulrika stood frozen, wondering what new horror the skaven sorcerer was about to unleash. The aura of power that surrounded the creature was almost overwhelming. The skaven raised two objects it had taken from its pouch and began chanting something in its own high-pitched tongue. All skaven eyes in the room were upon it. The rat-ogre growled as it sensed the gathering of power. Ulrika decided that it did not matter what the skaven was up to. This was her best chance to do something. Whatever wickedness Thanquol was about to commit, she would put a stop to it.

She sprang forward and sent her booted foot crashing into Grey Seer Thanquol’s groin. The skaven gave a squeal of pain and bent over double, dropping his sorcerous adjuncts. A strange smell of musk suddenly filled the air. The rat-ogre roared and reached for her. She dived forward, below its outstretched claws. They missed her by inches as she passed between its columnar legs and headed for the door.

The skaven shrieked in confusion. Ulrika threw the bar on the door and dashed into the next chamber. The rat-ogre bellowed its rage behind her. She saw a surprised skaven in front of her. Desperation gave her strength. She punched it on the snout. It shrieked in pain and dropped its sword. Ulrika stamped on its lower paw, and while it hopped away reached down to pick up its scimitar. It wasn’t quite what she was used to, but she felt better with a weapon in her hand.

She looked around: to her left were the stairs down into the cellars where her people were imprisoned, to the right was a long corridor full of skaven. No choice as to direction then. With luck she might be able to free a few of her folk. Failing that a narrow corridor was a much better place to make a last stand than an open hallway.

Under the circumstances, she had no choice at all.

‘What was that?’ Felix asked, hearing a distant roar that was all too familiar. It came hot on the heels of a high-pitched squeal of pain.

‘Sounds like one of those big rat monsters to me,’ said Gotrek. ‘Whatever it is, it’s mine.’

‘Can Snorri have one too?’ asked Snorri plaintively.

‘You can have mine,’ Felix said, pausing on the lowest platform and getting ready to fight.

‘Thank you, young Felix,’ said Snorri. He sounded grateful.

Grey Seer Thanquol clutched his tender bits and cursed. That foolish breeder would pay for this indignity, he swore. She had dared to lay her filthy paws on the greatest of skaven sorcerers. Worse yet, she had interrupted him just as he was about to unleash his spell, the one that would make the ambush foolproof, a spell of compelling potency that would bind the airship until he released it.

Not to worry, there was still time. The element of surprise was still his.

Only at that moment, as the tears of agony cleared from his eyes, did he realise the full outrageous folly of his underlings. They had mistaken his scream of pain for the signal to attack and had come surging out of the buildings to attack Gotrek Gurnisson, Felix Jaeger and the other Slayer.

Would these minions never learn to follow orders? Thanquol wailed.

Then he realised that the worst had come to pass. Seeing the horde of ratmen surging towards the base of the tower, the cowardly dwarfs had already cast off. Even as he watched, the airship was gaining height above the battlefield. Perhaps it would escape before he could use his magic. It was an awful thought.

Thanquol swore that the human breeder was really, really going to pay when he got his paws on her. Right now, though, he had another problem. He had to take charge of this attack before it became a complete fiasco.

Lurk Snitchtongue felt the airship suddenly gain altitude. He heard the engines roar. His keen ears could hear the dwarfish bellow of orders through the speaking tubes in the ship. Just for a moment, he wished that he understood that foul guttural tongue, but then he realised that he did not have to. It was quite obvious what had happened. The dwarfs had spotted the ambush Grey Seer Thanquol had set for them, and were busy escaping from it. Just one more proof, if any were needed, of Thanquol’s gross incompetence.

Not that it would do Lurk much good. He was still stuck on the ship and his chance of escape was all but gone. He could hear dwarfs clambering up the ladders within the gasbag to reach the turrets mounted on top of the airship. It seemed that they were preparing themselves for a fight.

Unreasoning rage filled Lurk’s brain for a moment, threatening to swamp every rational thought. He would clamber up there and tear them limb from limb and then he would feast on their warm bleeding flesh. He would cave in their skulls then scoop out their brains to make a tasty morsel to satisfy his hunger. He would stick his snout in their entrails and suck out their intestines while they squealed in pain.

Just as quickly, prudent skaven caution returned and resumed command. Perhaps it would be better to clamber up and see if there was any way he could take advantage of the situation. Certainly it was pointless going down into the cupola. There were just too many dwarfs down there even for a skaven of Lurk’s surpassing might. Even in his tormented state he could remember only too well how deadly Gotrek Gurnisson’s axe was.

Quickly he scurried to the ladder and began to pull himself up it.

‘Here they come,’ shouted Gotrek.

There’s no need to sound so pleased about it, thought Felix, but he kept the thought to himself. He knew he was soon going to need all his strength for fighting. A mass of tightly packed skaven warriors had erupted from the manor house, swords raised, mouths frothing. It was like something out of a particularly nasty nightmare. Any hopes that he might have had for Ulrika’s survival vanished immediately. At least he could avenge her, he thought. A fair number of skaven were going to die in the next few minutes.

The tower shivered. Fearing the worst, Felix looked up. His fears were confirmed. The airship’s engines roared to life as it slowly reversed away. Any thought of retreat to the Spirit of Grungni could be abandoned.

Thanks, lads, thought Felix. Just what I needed to make my day complete.

‘Come on up and die!’ Gotrek roared.

‘Snorri’s got a present for you,’ yelled Snorri, brandishing his axe with one hand and his hammer in the other.

Felix settled himself behind one of the support struts, hoping to get some cover from any missile weapons the skaven might care to deploy. The mass of ratmen warriors had reached the foot of the tower now. Some swarmed up the ladder, others clambered up the legs of the structure itself. There were far too many of them to count, and as he watched Felix saw the monstrous form of a rat-ogre emerge from the manor house. Given the number of close calls he had endured with these monsters in the past, the sight did not reassure him.

‘Not going to be much of a fight, this,’ Gotrek complained.

‘Easy,’ said Snorri.

Felix wished he shared the confidence of these two maniacs. His stomach churned with the fear he always felt before a fight. He wanted nothing more now than to get to grips with the foe, to end this waiting. Part of him even considered jumping down into the mass of skaven but he knew it would be suicide. The fall was too long and he would be surrounded from all sides and dragged down.

The first furry snout poked up the ladder. Gotrek split it with one stroke of his axe. Black blood splattered his bandages. The skaven dropped down, knocking away the others on the ladder. It started to dawn on Felix that actually, as long as they stayed here, they would have quite a good chance of surviving. Not too many of the skaven could get at them at once, and most of them would be in the uncomfortable position of having to raise themselves onto the platform, leaving themselves vulnerable for vital moments as they did so.

‘This is too easy,’ Gotrek said.

‘Snorri thinks we should climb down and start killing properly,’ said Snorri.

Don’t you dare, thought Felix, noticing that pink eyes were glaring at him as a skaven pulled itself up the metal strut. He lashed out at it, but in desperation it leapt forward, fangs bared, going right for his throat.

In a heartbeat he was too busy trying to stay alive to think about the precariousness of their situation.

Varek raced through the corridors of the Spirit of Grungni. Swiftly he entered the hangar deck. The gyrocopters were waiting. He clambered into a cockpit, and worked the crank of the ignition. The engine roared to life. Wind hit Varek’s face as the rotors began to spin. Dwarf engineers were already opening the doors at the back of the gondola. One by one the gyrocopters rumbled forward and dropped into the night. He was glad they had used the time flying over the Chaos Wastes to unpack and assemble the crated flying machines. It looked like they would all be needed now. Varek felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as his own copter dropped away from the airship, then the rotors above him churned the air and he began to gain altitude. He reached down into the satchel beside him and began to fumble for a bomb.

This was almost as exciting as the trip into Karag Dum, he thought.

Ulrika raced down the stairs. A skaven turned to look at her, snarling. She split its skull with one stroke of the stolen sword. Its surprised companion growled at her. A strange acrid stink filled the air. She noticed that the creature was venting some sort of musk from glands near its tail. She struck out at it. Sparks flashed as its blade parried her own. There was a screech of metal on metal as she slid her sword down its blade. The guards of the two weapons met. She twisted her sword, disarming her foe. It leapt back, screeching for mercy. She gave it none.

‘What’s going on out there?’ she heard a mighty voice bellow. She almost cried with relief at its familiarity.

‘Father – is that you?’ She was already throwing the door open.

‘Ulrika,’ said her father, Ivan, reaching out to grasp her in a fierce hug. His bushy beard tickled her face. She saw a dozen more ragged and beaten looking men in the cellar. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The airship has come back. The skaven are trying to ambush it,’ she gasped out.

‘How many of the others are left alive?’

‘I don’t know. I think there are more prisoners down here in the cellars.’

Ivan reached down and picked up the sword of one of the skaven guards. He tossed it to his tall, thin, cadaverous-looking lieutenant, Oleg, and then picked up the sword belonging to the other skaven. His other favourite, Standa, short, burly and high-cheek boned, looked disappointed that there was no blade for him. ‘Filthy weapons but they’ll have to do.’

‘What shall we do?’ Ulrika asked.

‘Free as many prisoners as we can find. Kill as many skaven as we can. Use the weapons to arm our warriors, then fight or escape depending on the situation.’

‘That’s a pretty sketchy plan,’ she said, smiling.

‘Sorry, daughter, but it’s the best I can manage under the circumstances.’

‘It’ll have to do.’

Grey Seer Thanquol gnawed on his lower lip as he watched his warriors swarming up the tower. He could see that things were not going well. His brave skaven had the advantage in numbers but their foes’ position was a strong one. Gotrek Gurnisson held his ground above the ladder, and chopped anything that came at him. The other Slayer and Felix Jaeger roved around the platform killing any ratman who climbed up the outside of the tower. Thanquol was torn between aiding his troops and preventing the Spirit of Grungni from escaping.

He stood there undecided for a moment, and then decided to stick as close to the original plan as possible. After all, it was a mighty scheme of his own devising and it should still work despite the incompetence of his lackeys. He opened his mouth and began to chant the words of his spell.

The winds of magic howled in his ears as he drew their energies to him. Pure pleasure surged through him as the power of the warpstone filled him.

Felix ducked a blow from a skaven sword and slashed at the ratman attacking him. The skaven leapt back, claws scrabbling on the metal surface of the tower as it realised how close to the edge it was. Felix cursed. He had hoped that in its panic the creature would jump straight off. Well, he could always give it some assistance. He sprang forward, barrelling into it with all his weight. The skaven was much lighter than he and was sent tumbling back through the air, over the edge of the platform. And good riddance, thought Felix before he noticed that the thing had managed to grab a support strut with its tail and was dangling there upside down.

Smiling nastily Felix chopped at the creature’s long hairless tail. The tail parted and the skaven shrieked something in its incomprehensible tongue as it dropped to its doom. Felix had time for one brief snarl of satisfaction before the pitter-patter of paws on metal warned him that another skaven was behind him.

He whirled, sword raised to face his foe.

Lurk poked his snout up through the hatchway. He looked around. Dwarfs had taken up position behind the strange looking guns that filled the rotating turrets on top of the airship. He had seen enough of Clan Skryre’s engines to know that those guns would probably rip him apart if he tried to attack them. While he was a mighty and invincible skaven warrior there was no sense in courting needless death. There was nothing for him up here.

There was a roaring sound from below him, and suddenly some sort of flying machine rose into view over the airship. Lurk ducked as it whizzed directly above his head. Here was powerful sorcery, he thought, looking at the small vehicle. If only he had known what it was earlier, maybe he could have stolen it and escaped.

‘Oi! What’s that?’ he heard one of the dwarfs shout.

May the Horned Rat consume their souls, the dwarfs had spotted him! He ducked back out of sight, scuttling down the ladder, wondering what to do next. Perhaps he could go and hide among the nacelles of gas that filled the balloon. No. Pointless. Sooner or later they would seek him out in sufficient numbers to ensure his death. While this would almost certainly fulfil Grey Seer Thanquol’s dictum that he create a distraction on the airship, it would do him no good whatsoever. If he was going to help Thanquol to victory he wanted to be alive to claim his share of the credit for the triumph.

Not that Thanquol would allow anyone to share in that, a small sour part of his brain quibbled.

He kept dropping until he reached the bottom of the gasbag. He saw a dwarf face peering up at him from the hatch that led down into the airship proper. Whichever way he looked there were foes. Nothing for it, then, but to fight. It would not have been his first choice of action but it looked like he had run out of options.

He bared his fangs and reached out with his claws. The terrified dwarf ducked back into the gondola, pulling the hatch shut behind him. A surge of pain passed through Lurk. He realised his tail had been caught in the heavy hatch.

Someone, he decided, was going to pay for that.

Ulrika fumbled her way through the darkened cellars. The stink of skaven mingled with scents familiar from her childhood, all but overlaying the smell of too many people cramped into too small a space. She was glad though. It meant a lot of her folk were still alive, more than she had dared hope for. They were locked in with the vodka barrels and in the holding cellars from which the hungry skaven horde had emptied the provisions.

She wished she had a lantern. She wished she had more weapons. She pushed those thoughts aside. It was pointless wishing for things she could not have. She was going to have to work with what she did have. She listened. Even through the tightly packed earth she could hear the sounds of fighting. She could hear the roar of the rat-ogre, the squeals of wounded skaven and the sound of something else.

It sounded like explosions. What was going on up there? Had the skaven sorcerer unleashed some foul spell? She gave the door of the last cellar a push and confronted two cowering skaven. They obviously had been set here for a special purpose, and that purpose was immediately obvious. One of them held a knife at the throat of Max Schreiber. Max was unconscious, his beautiful golden robes ripped and filthy. The other skaven, a huge black-furred monster rose to meet her.

‘Prepare to die, foolish breeder,’ it chittered, in poorly accented Reikspeil.

Felix saw that things were beginning to turn against them. Despite their best efforts more and more skaven were gaining the platform. Slowed by their wounds, Snorri and Gotrek were not fighting as well as they normally would. With only three of them they could not cover all the possible means of getting on to the platform. There were four pylons, one at each corner of the tower, and the central ladder. While they managed to guard three, two were always clear for the skaven and as more and more of them forced their way onto the platform, they could not even hold those successfully.

He looked around. Wounded or not, the Slayers were wreaking awful havoc. The platform floor was sticky with blood and spilled entrails. It was increasingly hard to keep a firm footing in the mess. He dreaded the fact that at any moment he might lose his balance and go slithering over the edge. Here and there in the dimming light he could see bodies that had literally been broken apart by the Slayers’ axes. Bones and lungs and internal organs had all flopped into the light.

In one swift flash of terrible insight it struck Felix that they were differently arranged from human entrails, and that it was a dreadful thing that he had seen enough opened corpses to know this. A flicker of movement sent his peripheral vision to Gotrek. The Slayer stood on top of a pile of mangled bodies. He held one skaven in the air at arm’s length, throttling it, while his axe described a huge half-circle holding the skaven’s comrades at bay. Black skaven blood soiled Gotrek’s bandages. Froth blew from his lips. He howled like a madman, drowning out the frightened chittering war cries and the screams of his opponents. Nearby Snorri lashed out with his two weapons, chopping and smashing like a demented butcher in a hellish abattoir. He smiled as he fought, obviously enjoying the mayhem and uncaring as to the nearness of death.

The stink was abominable. There was the wet fur reek of skaven, the odd musky scent they emitted when frightened, the smell of excrement and torn bodies and blood. At any other time, it would have made Felix want to be sick but right now he found it oddly exhilarating. As always when death was close his senses were almost intolerably keen and he found himself savouring every moment.

A mighty roaring filled his ears. He was suddenly aware of flashes from the base of the tower and the movement of large ominous shadows above him. He risked a glance up and saw a gyrocopter had been catapulted from the airship and was soaring above them. He had a brief glimpse of the mad face of Malakai Makaisson at its controls, as the insane engineer rained bombs down at the foot of the tower. He heard the anguished, fearful screaming of the skaven massed there. The tower itself shook as if kicked by a giant, and Felix had to fight to keep his footing amid the gore.

He offered up a prayer to Sigmar that the bombs didn’t send the whole towering structure crashing to the earth, burying them all in a chaos of smashed wooden beams.

Did Makaisson have any idea what he was doing, Felix wondered? Did he care? Looking down Felix could see that he was causing terrible casualties among the skaven. Broken ratman bodies were hurled skywards. Some were torn completely to bits by the force of the explosions. Others lay on the ground, limbless, bleeding and shrieking. It was a wonder that the skaven could hold their ground in the teeth of so ferocious an assault. Felix realised that more bombs were cascading down, this time from the airship. One hit the tower near him, fuse spluttering. For a horrible moment, he felt that his time had come, that he was about to be blown into a thousand tiny fragments of flesh. He froze on the spot for an instant but then courage and mobility returned and he kicked the bomb off the platform.

He saw it disappear, sparks trailing from its flickering fuse, into the crowd below. A heartbeat later a terrible explosion blasted through the skaven.

That was too close, thought Felix. He shook his fist in the air and shouted, ‘Watch what you’re doing, you stupid bastard!’

It was all too much for the skaven down below. They scattered in all directions, unable to face the death crashing down on them from above any more. A glow from the door of the mansion attracted Felix’s attention. He saw a familiar form illuminated by it. Astonishment almost paralysed him. He recognised the skaven sorcerer. It was Grey Seer Thanquol, who had led the attack on Nuln, and whom Felix had last seen fleeing from the ballroom of the Elector Countess’s palace.

How had he got here, Felix wondered? Had the creature come all this way simply to get revenge? Was it possible that the grey seer had been behind the attack on the Lonely Tower?

From the swirling energy around the figure he could tell that the grey seer was about to cast a spell.

What new madness was this?

Lurk stood on the edge of the cupola. The whole hellish scene was visible below, illuminated by flashes of light from the bombs. He saw his luckless kin torn apart by the violent blasts and felt thoroughly and profoundly glad that he was not down there with them. The relief evaporated when he realised the precariousness of his own position. If he did not get off the airship soon he would be caught by the dwarfs and overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. He needed to get away now but he could see no way to do it.

Except one. The airship was moving close to the tower again. It was just possible that he could leap from the top of the cupola and land on the tower. It was dangerous, and if he mis-timed his leap or missed his footing he would be sent plunging to his doom. On the other hand, if he stayed here his death was certain, and any chance was better than no chance at all.

Lurk screwed his courage to the sticking point. He felt his muscles tense, his heart rate accelerate, his musk glands tighten.

Any second now he was going to do it.

Ulrika ducked below the black-furred skaven’s swipe and slashed back. The creature bounded away from her counter-blow and bumped into the skaven with its blade at Schreiber’s neck, sending it flying. Ulrika realised that the ratman probably had orders to kill the wizard at the first sign of any trouble. It would make sense. On his own, a conscious Schreiber could wreak as much havoc as a troop of cavalry. Wizards had that kind of power.

She realised that she would have to do her best to save his life, and quickly. She sprang forward while the skaven were still entangled, and split the skull of the huge black beast with one powerful stroke. Its corpse flopped to the earth, trapping its smaller fellow. Taking advantage of the fact, she buried her sword in the still living skaven’s throat and then kicked it a couple of times for good measure.

After ensuring both were dead, she turned to Schreiber. He was bruised and his hair and eyebrows looked singed but a quick check told her his heart was still beating, a fact for which she was profoundly thankful. Gently she shook him, knowing it was risky to treat an injured man in such a way, and yet needing him to be awake and helping her. He groaned and mumbled and his eyes flickered open. Slowly she saw consciousness return. He smiled through bruised lips.

‘I am too sore to be dead,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s pleasant to re-enter the world of the living and be greeted by such a beautiful face.’

‘There’s no time for flattery, Max Schreiber. The skaven are still here and upstairs a battle rages. We need your help.’

‘Tis always the way,’ he grumbled, pulling himself slowly and painfully to his feet. He brushed himself down, disgusted at seeing how soiled his golden robes were. ‘No one wants to know a wizard... until they have a problem. Then it’s different.’

‘Herr Schreiber, have your wounds rendered you insane?’

‘No, Ulrika. I’m just attempting to lighten the situation with a joke. You’re a lovely woman, but if I may say so your sense of humour is not your strong point.’

‘Just get on with it, Max.’

‘And thank you for saving me. I owe you for it.’

‘You owe me nothing. Just get out there and start casting spells – like you did the other night.’

He nodded and then a sudden serious expression flashed across his face. ‘The grey seer is gathering its powers, and they are immense. I have never felt the winds of magic swirl and flow so turbulently. I wonder what new evil it is up to.’

Grey Seer Thanquol felt the power surging within him. It was like a snake in his belly, in his chest, fighting to get out. He had consumed an enormous amount of warpstone, enough to have caused lesser skaven mages to explode or devolve into primordial ooze but he was Thanquol. He was the greatest of the grey seers, the mightiest of mages, the supreme sorcerer of the skaven people. Nothing was beyond his powers. Nothing.

Control yourself, he thought. Think. Think. He knew only too well the feeling of extreme self-confidence that filled the habitual warpstone user at such moments as this. Indeed, he believed that most skaven sorcerers had moments of utter grandiosity mere heartbeats before the warpstone led them to their final doom. He was not going to be one of them. It was true that like all grey seers, he had a healthy regard for his own abilities but he was not going to allow the potent raw Chaos stuff to drown out his sense of self-preservation. A sense that was, at this very moment, asserting itself and letting him know that he needed to cast the spell and vent the power now, before it consumed him. It was difficult to do so with so much raw sorcerous energy coursing through his veins and the ecstasy of unlimited power bubbling in his brain, but he knew that he must do it or his doom was certain.

Slowly he forced himself to recite the words of the potent incantation he had devised. One by one he reconstructed the intricate maze of paw gestures that would focus the magic. As he moved his arm, streamers of pure magical energy followed his talons, as if he were slashing holes in the very substance of reality, which in a way, he supposed, he was. He moved his arms in ever-wider gestures; he shrieked the potent syllables of the incantation ever louder. As he did so, a nimbus of light played round his body. Raw magical energy began to leak from his eyes, his snout, his muzzle and the lower extremities of his body. He felt the power roiling back and forth in his gut like acid and knew that he was involved in a race against time, that if he did not complete his spell soon, the power would rip him apart. The part of his mind that was not caught up in the complex mystic geometry of the spell swore that never, ever again would he consume so much warpstone.

He rushed through the last potent syllables of the incantation and made the final paw gestures. Slowly at first a writhing mass of green tendrils extended themselves from his body. Then one by one, the filaments reached out and up, seeking the airship. Thanquol felt his whole body tingle with vibrant energy as they did so. His fur stood on end and his tail was fully extended. His whole body was uncannily sensitive. The faintest kiss of air on his fur felt like someone was rubbing him down with a wire brush. It was painful and yet not unpleasant. He forced himself to concentrate once more, to see each tentacle of energy as an extension of himself, a thing that he could control, that he could feel through as if it were his paw tips.

He extended the web of his power. The spell was a giant claw with which he could grasp the airship and immobilise it. Now those foolish dwarfs would learn the folly of opposing Grey Seer Thanquol, mightiest of mages, master of all magics. He would take their puny airship and crush it. He would smash it to pieces and cast it to earth. He would...

No! What was he thinking? That was the warpstone dust speaking. He would merely immobilise the airship and let his minions take it. Yes. That was it. Concentrate, he told himself. Don’t lose sight of the goal now that it is almost within your grasp.

His questing fingers of power touched the airship’s cupola. Thanquol shrieked. He felt as if he had been scorched. What wickedness was this? What evil sorcery was at work here? He watched the streamers of green light retreat from the airship at his command. Of course, the airship was protected against Chaos magic. It needed to have been since it had flown across the Wastes. Gingerly Thanquol sent the streamers flickering back again. He knew he had time. What seemed like minutes to him in his exalted state were mere heartbeats to others. His questing tendrils played over the cupola and retreated. It was no use trying to grasp the airship there. It was well protected. He extended his reach to the gasbag. Success! It was not shielded. No! Correction. Parts of it were. The bits that held turrets. Suddenly as he ran his power over the lower part of the gasbag he sensed a familiar, and yet somehow subtly changed presence. It was Lurk! He detached one streamer of energy to grasp his wayward minion, catching him in mid-leap. The rest he continued to weave around the unshielded parts of the gasbag, anchoring the airship in place.

No! What was happening! Why was he starting to rise from the ground! This was not supposed to... Wait! He had it. Thanquol alone could not anchor the airship. His weight was insubstantial compared to the mass of the flying ship. A moment’s consideration told him exactly what he needed to do to bind himself to the earth.

As quick as thought he created more streamers of warpstone energy and sent them burrowing deep into the ground, questing downwards like the roots of some sorcerously swift growing plant. Now he was locked in place. Now he had the leverage to pit himself against the airship’s engines. He exerted his power once more.

Instantly he felt himself being drawn back to earth again, and the airship with him. This was more like it. He was a giant! He was a god! With his magic he was going to pull the Spirit of Grungni right out of the sky. He had it hooked like a fish on a line, and now all he needed to do was reel it in. There was nothing any of those pitiful fools could do to stop him.

Extending his power to the fullest, he slowly but surely began to pull the airship to the ground.

Felix watched in astonishment as a mass of shimmering streamers of light surged up from the doorway of the mansion, curling round the tower like serpents until eventually they engulfed the airship. For a moment, the fighting stopped and all eyes were drawn upwards to watch the sorcerous spectacle. For an instant the lights touched the cupola and withdrew, but only for a moment were they thwarted. Almost immediately they encircled the gasbag of the balloon. Felix could see the skin of its surface flex and he wondered whether the skaven intended to rip the bag asunder and destroy the airship.

Seconds later it became apparent that this was not the grey seer’s plan. Felix’s mouth gaped in astonishment as slowly but surely the Spirit of Grungni was drawn downwards towards the ground. The skaven had ceased to retreat, so awe-stricken were they by this display of the grey seer’s powers. It looked all too possible that the airship was going to be captured.

It seemed as if the airship, and with it the proceeds of the expedition to Karag Dum, was doomed.

THREE

BATTLE!

Ulrika and Max Schreiber raced through the cellars. All around her were the freed prisoners. Some were armed with weapons taken from dead skaven guards, others were arming themselves with cudgels made from broken chairs, old tools and kitchen knives. Ulrika was not reassured.

‘How many?’ she asked her father.

‘About thirty who can fight. About fifty all told.’

‘So few?’

‘So few.’

‘Do you think our patrols will return in time?‘

‘We must not count on it.’

‘What is going on above?’

‘You would know better than I, daughter. I have been down here all this time.’

‘Mighty magics are being unleashed,’ Max Schreiber said. ‘I fear the skaven are going to capture the airship. I suspect that may have been their plan all along.’

‘They must be stopped.’

‘How? We could not stop them last night when we held the walls and had a hundred armed men. How can we do so now?’

‘We must find a way, daughter.’

Max Schreiber smiled. ‘We have an advantage now that we did not have last night.’

‘And what’s that?’ asked Ulrika.

‘They will not be expecting us.’

‘By Taal, Max Schreiber, you have a gift for looking on the bright side,’ boomed Ivan.

‘Let’s go up and see what we can do. At least in the confusion there may be a chance to escape.’

‘There will be no escape, Max Schreiber. This is my ancestral home. I will not abandon it to some stinking, gods-poxed ratmen.’

‘I can see why you get on so well with the dwarfs,’ said Max Schreiber. ‘You’re all as stubborn as hell.’

Felix Jaeger watched in awe as the grey seer dragged the Spirit of Grungni earthwards. One small skaven was engaged in a contest of strength with an enormous vessel and he was winning. The dwarfs were not going to be beaten quietly though. The engines of the airship roared and Felix could tell from the angle of the fins that whoever was at the controls was trying to get the ship up. The streamers of energy left a glittering after-image on his field of vision. It was an incredible display of magical power, one of the greatest he had ever seen.

‘Best get down there and kill that skaven magician,’ said Gotrek.

‘A good plan,’ said Snorri.

An idiotic plan, Felix thought. All we have to do is fight our way through a small skaven army and confront a sorcerer who is capable of plucking an airship from the sky. On the other hand, he could think of nothing better himself. The airship represented their best hope of escape and if it were captured or destroyed, they were doomed.

‘Let’s get on with it then,’ Felix said with no great enthusiasm.

Now is the moment of my triumph, thought Grey Seer Thanquol. Now all skaven will bow before my genius. Now the Council of Thirteen must recognise my accomplishments. He felt capable of reaching up and pulling the moons from the sky and the stars from the heavens. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. Morrslieb, the lesser moon, was said to be made of a gigantic chunk of warpstone. If he could grasp it, then...

No. Best stick to the matter at hand. First he would capture the airship then he would seize Morrslieb. And if he could not reach it with his spells perhaps he could fly there in the airship. Fully formed, a plan of awful majesty appeared in Thanquol’s mind. He could use the airship to fly to the moon and mine all the warpstone he would ever need. It would be an achievement unsurpassed in all the annals of skavendom, and surely his reward must be a place at the Council table. At the very least. Perhaps the whole Council would bow before him, and recognise him as the greatest of all servants of the Horned Rat. Such was the magnificence of his vision that for a moment, Thanquol was lost in contemplation. Only when he felt the strands of his power slipping away was he drawn back to reality by the realisation that first he would have to land his fish before any of it would be possible. He threw himself back into the struggle with renewed ferocity.

Lurk was not happy. In mid-leap he had been caught by one of those huge streamers of energy and tossed all over the sky in a deranged frenzy of movement. He had long known how potent the grey seer was but never till now had he shown such full evidence of his might. Was this some sort of revenge by Grey Seer Thanquol for his disloyal thoughts? Had Thanquol been aware of Lurk’s ideas concerning him all along? Did he plan to end Lurk’s torment by dashing him into the ground?

‘No-no, master!’ he gibbered. ‘Spare your loyalest of servants. I will serve you faithfully all of my days. Blast those other foul vermin. They hate you. I do not. I have always done my best for you!’

If Thanquol heard Lurk’s earnest prayers, there was no sign. Filled with fear, Lurk watched the ground rise to meet him.

Ulrika put her sword through the back of the skaven cowering in the hall, and went to the window to look at the source of the eerie glow. She had never seen anything like it. The horn-headed skaven mage floated in the air about twenty strides above the ground. It was anchored to the earth by hundreds of streamers of light, and with hundreds of others it was drawing the straining airship down.

Beneath it, hundreds of skaven muzzles pointed at the sky. They stood frozen in awe, watching their master at work. Beside her she heard Max Schreiber mutter, ‘By Sigmar, how does it contain all that power and not explode? It must be consuming pure warpstone, and yet it still has not died.’

‘What?’ she asked.

‘That thing out there is filled with the raw stuff of Chaos. It is using it to power its spell. It should not be possible for any mortal thing to be doing this but it is. I have no idea how.’

‘Perhaps it would be better if you applied your mind to the idea of killing it,’ Ulrika suggested.

‘I am not sure I have the strength.’

‘Then things do not look good.’

‘You have a gift for understatement, my dear.’

Felix watched Gotrek descend the ladder. With one arm the Slayer held the rungs, with the other he wielded his axe like a club, dropping it down on the skulls of any skaven below him. By sheer ferocity Gotrek managed to reach the bottom and clear a space around the base of the ladder. Moments later Snorri joined him. Seeing no other option, Felix began his own descent.

A roar from above him told him that the gyrocopter had returned for another pass. Felix watched a bomb hurtle towards the hovering grey seer. The fuse timing, always a tricky thing at best, was not good, and the bomb went hurtling past Thanquol to explode amidst the skaven. Once more aware of their peril, they tried frantically to hurl themselves aside only to be blown asunder by the dwarf explosive.

Felix shuddered, thinking just how easy it would be for one of those bombs to go astray and catch himself, Gotrek and Snorri in the blast. It did not bear thinking about. Instead he threw himself forward hacking desperately to right and left, trying his best to smash a path through the massed ranks of skaven to the place where Grey Seer Thanquol hovered. Although what he was going to do when he got there eluded him.

Grey Seer Thanquol opened his mouth and roared with only slightly crazed laughter. His senses had expanded with his power. He saw himself as a towering giant looking down on the insects below him. His spirit form was as large as the airship with which he grappled. He was a being of awesome proportions. Surely, he thought, this must be how the Horned Rat felt when he gazed down into the world of mortals. Perhaps it was an omen, a harbinger of things to come. Perhaps there would be no limits to Thanquol’s destiny. Perhaps he could stride where no skaven had strode before and scale the very peaks of godhood. Certainly at this moment, with the warpstone coursing through his veins, it all seemed possible. There was nothing he could not do.

He was the master of this situation now. Nothing was going to stop him. Not even his accursed nemesis, Gotrek Gurnisson, or his devious henchman, Felix Jaeger. Finally after all these long months of effort he was going to achieve complete victory over them. How sweet that feeling was!

Wait! What was that? He glanced down and saw the gyrocopter flash past. He noticed the bomb that just missed him and exploded among his troops, sending their souls spiralling upwards to join the Horned Rat. How dare they attack the Horned Rat’s chosen emissary on earth? He would show them. Quick as thought he reached out with his tentacles of power and swatted the gyrocopter like a man might swat a fly. Unfortunately he was a tad too slow to catch the fast moving craft and his blow missed.

Only incidentally did he become aware of something sticking to one of his tentacles. Of course. It was that rascal, Lurk. Briefly, Thanquol considered smashing his errant henchman into the ground as a punishment for his failures but then, through the psychic link that allowed him to perceive through his energy streams, he became aware of the gratifying way Lurk was swearing eternal obedience to him, and more, he was suddenly aware of the changes that had overtaken his minion, of the warpstone coursing through his body, and the way it had been altered. This was something worth investigating. He took a moment to place Lurk not too gently on the ground and returned to his efforts to swat the gyrocopter.

It proved frustratingly elusive. Still, he thought, the sheer satisfaction of smashing it would be its own reward.

Felix watched in horror as streamers of light impacted on the gyrocopter. The small flying machine began to break up, its parts tumbling headlong through the air, to smash into the ground killing more skaven. A huge cloud of steam and smoke erupted from the broken vehicle’s engine. It was followed by a massive explosion, the blast of which sent him tumbling headlong. He guessed that the stock of bombs on the gyrocopter had just gone off. Skaven screams told him the dwarf pilot was not the only casualty.

Overhead the other gyrocopters flashed. One down, three to go, thought Felix.

‘What do we do?’ Ulrika asked. ‘You’re the magician. This is your field.’

‘There is no way any mortal form can contain that amount of power for any great length of time. It’s possible that its owner will be consumed by it. It’s also possible that the power contained within whatever it is he is eating will be exhausted, and he will lose his strength. If he weakens I might be able to disrupt his spell. Other than that...’

‘You are saying that we should do nothing?’

‘I am saying that we should wait, Ulrika. There is nothing to be gained by attacking the thing headlong. Look at the way it smashed that gyrocopter. It could easily do the same to us.’

Ah, that was good, thought Grey Seer Thanquol. He felt a monstrous surge of pleasure from destroying that dwarf flyer even at the cost of some dozens of his followers’ lives. They were after all expendable. Most skaven were. He was simply glad he wasn’t one of them.

He shook his head as a new problem struck him. During the moments that he had chased the flyer, he had let go of the Spirit of Grungni. It was heading skyward once more at a great rate of knots. Thanquol reached out with his tentacles of power, determined that he would soon put a stop to that.

No sooner had he grasped the airship once more than he became aware of another challenge. Gotrek Gurnisson, Felix Jaeger and that other accursed Slayer were on the ground and moving towards him. Of course, he was in the air above them but even so he was a little worried. Just the proximity of the Slayer was enough to get on Thanquol’s sensitive nerves. He hated that vile creature with a passion.

Now he had the means to end that threat once and for all. What he could do with the gyrocopter he could surely do to one solitary Slayer. Grinning daemonically, he prepared to smash Gotrek Gurnisson into the dirt.

Felix watched the wave of power come towards them. Dozens of streamers of greenish energy raced forward like the tide, smashing aside the screaming skaven between Gotrek and Thanquol. Felix had no doubt whatsoever what would happen when that energy reached them, it was going to be the end of him. He almost closed his eyes, knowing that his doom was moments away but at the last second, determined to see the death that was his, he forced himself to watch.

Now, thought Grey Seer Thanquol, bringing his powers to bear on Gotrek Gurnisson. Now you die!

Felix saw the leading streamers reach Gotrek. As they did so the Slayer brought his axe round in a great arc. The runes on its edges blazed ever brighter where they came into contact with the grey seer’s spell. A smell of ozone filled the air. The streamers flew apart in a cloud of sparks, having met with an ancient magic stronger than they. Felix offered up a prayer to Sigmar and whatever other gods might be listening. The remaining streamers withdrew, coiling upwards and backwards away from Gotrek like a cobra about to strike. Felix knew the Slayer had bought them only a moment’s respite.

Thanquol felt as if his fingertips were on fire. Of course, it was only the destruction of his spell that he was sensing but the sensation was similar. He cursed the dwarf. He might have guessed that it would not have been so easy to effect his doom. Still, perhaps if the Slayer was invulnerable, his henchman would not prove to be. He could at least destroy Felix Jaeger.

Felix saw the streamers of light part and begin to flow around Gotrek. To his horror he realised that they were aimed at him, and there was nothing he could do about it. The skaven sorcerer obviously intended to see him dead. The spell rushed onwards, a dozen tendrils moving to the right and left of Gotrek, surging directly towards Felix. At least, thought Felix, the skaven mage was killing more of his own warriors. The way they fell to bits as the energy scythed through them did not bode well for his own fate.

Ulrika watched what was happening with her heart in her mouth. She saw Gotrek repulse the grey seer’s attack and for a moment thought it might be enough. Then she saw that Thanquol intended to attack Felix.

‘Can’t you do something?’ she asked Max Schreiber.

‘In a moment I will try a counter spell. I think I understand what the grey seer is doing now and I might be able to pick apart the weave of it.’

‘Felix doesn’t have a moment,’ Ulrika said, knowing it was already too late.

Felix steeled himself to meet death. This was not quite the way he expected it but then it was said that death never came by the route you thought it would. He braced himself, preparing his muscles for one last futile leap to safety. He doubted there was any way he could avoid the spell. It was all over. The tide of dazzling light hurtled towards him. He fought down the urge to scream.

This was more like it, thought Grey Seer Thanquol, certain that this time at least he was about to kill one of his sworn enemies. That would teach Felix Jaeger to oppose the might of Thanquol. But just before he could crush Jaeger like the insect he was, the Slayer struck once more, lashing out quicker than the eye could follow, first to his left, then to his right, severing the energy bands with that awful axe. Thanquol shrieked with pain. It was like having his own tail cut off.

Worse yet, he felt the warpstone-induced power within him start to stutter and fade. Not now, he thought. No. Not now. Not with triumph so close. But unfortunately, it was so. The energy was already starting to drain out of him. It looked as if the airship was going to escape.

Well at least, he thought, my minions will destroy those upstarts, Jaeger and Gurnisson. Even as he thought it a peculiar sinking sensation struck him. Why is the ground coming closer, he wondered?

‘Now,’ Ulrika heard Max Schreiber mutter, and then the mage began to move his hands and incant in some language she did not understand. As she watched a complex structure of light began to take shape in the space in front of the magician, and then with a gesture of his hand he sent it spinning out towards the grey seer. When it struck Thanquol the glow around the skaven sorcerer faded and he went tumbling headlong to the earth.

‘Now would be a good time to attack,’ Max suggested to her. She did not need to be told a second time.

‘Let’s go!’ she shouted and raced out of the mansion, plunging into the surprised skaven from behind. Roaring with battle-lust the Kislevite survivors followed her.

Felix watched in surprise as the glow faded around the grey seer and he began to sink to the earth. He ducked the swing of a skaven warrior and gritted his teeth as he parried a second one. The shock of the impact passed up his arm. He braced himself and slashed downwards cleaving the skaven’s skull in two, then whirled to strike the other, slashing it across the throat. Ahead of him Gotrek and Snorri hacked a bloody path towards the skaven mage. They were determined that nothing was going to stop them this time. Bombs continued to rain down from above, dropped by the now freed airship and the circling gyrocopters.

Every time a bomb hit the ground Felix flinched. He half expected one of them to go off near him, and for his body to be torn apart. He heard a voice shouting at the stupid dwarfs to stop bombing them, and he was surprised to discover that it was his own. He hoped that some time soon somebody up there would realise what was happening on the ground and cease the barrage. Felix doubted that Gotrek’s heroic doom encompassed being torn limb from limb by his comrades’ explosives. Still Felix had seen worse and stupider things happen in battle, and right now, all was chaos round about them.

Slashing around him with renewed vigour Felix hacked his way through the skaven force.

It just wasn’t fair, thought Grey Seer Thanquol. Just when victory was within his grasp it had been snatched away by the incompetence of his lackeys, and the inferior quality of warpstone sent to him by those cretins back in Skavenblight. Why was he doomed to be constantly thwarted in this manner? He was a good and faithful servant to the skaven cause. He was devout in his prayers to the Horned Rat. He asked so little. What was the problem?

He lay exhausted on the ground, prostrated by the sudden failure of his warpstone-induced power, and by the unweaving of his spell. Slowly but surely, the full implications of this sunk in. Somewhere out there was a mage potent enough to undo his work, a mage who was undoubtedly fresh and not drained of energy by his selfless efforts to protect his ungrateful minions, a mage who even now might be planning the destruction of Thanquol while he was vulnerable. The thought made Thanquol’s glands tighten with the urge to squirt the musk of fear. This was not a fitting reward for his long service to the Horned Rat and the Council of Thirteen, he decided.

Suddenly he became aware of another and even more terrifying threat. Off to his right, he could hear the bestial bellowing of Gotrek Gurnisson, as the Slayer smashed his way through the skaven troops. Doubtless the dwarf had nothing more in his tiny mind than an unjustifiable desire to exterminate Thanquol and rob the world of his genius. And doubtless the dwarf’s henchman, Felix Jaeger, would be there to gloat at Thanquol’s demise.

What was he to do?

As if he did not have enough reasons to focus his mind on departure, Thanquol heard the sounds of human war-cries from behind him. Where had these new forces come from? Had human reinforcements arrived during the fight? Was this some work of the enemy mage? It mattered not.

With the terrifying onslaught of bombs from above, the blood-curdling prospect of combat with Gotrek Gurnisson to the fore, and the attack of this massive new force from behind, Thanquol could see only one option open to him. He would heroically elude capture by this overwhelming force of enemies, and return to exact his revenge another day.

Mustering the last remnants of his powers, he muttered the words of the spell of escape. It would only carry him a few hundred strides out of the fray but this would be enough. From there he would begin his tactical withdrawal.

‘Where has that accursed mage got to?’ Felix heard Gotrek growl. Felix had no answer. They had reached the spot where he would have sworn he had seen the grey seer fall, and there was nothing there except a faint brimstone aroma in the air. Unreasonably annoyed, Gotrek slaughtered two skaven simultaneously with a stroke of his axe and turned around to look at the monstrous form of the rat-ogre as it approached.

‘Mine!’ he roared.

‘Snorri’s!’ shouted Snorri.

‘Race you for it,’ answered Gotrek and rushed forward.

Get on with it, thought Felix as he looked around him. There was a sudden lull in the battle. The strange stink that he had come to associate with frightened skaven attacked his nostrils. He supposed he could not blame them. Their leader had vanished. They were being ripped apart by bombs, assaulted by two of the most vicious Slayers in the world, and ambushed from behind simultaneously. Felix could understand their demoralisation. He doubted that any human force would be less afraid.

Still that did not mean that the peril had passed. The skaven still massively outnumbered their foes, and if given time to realise it, they would return to the fray and quite possibly win. Right now was the moment to seize the advantage and hopefully turn the tide of battle.

He looked around and saw the rat-ogre flanked on one side by Gotrek and the other by Snorri go down under a blizzard of blows. It toppled like a falling oak. If the sight of that did not help them rout the skaven force, nothing would. Shouting a battle-cry, he charged forward. Gotrek and Snorri accompanied him.

Suddenly from up ahead he thought he heard the sound of human war-cries, of one familiar voice shouting orders and encouragement to the troops. His heart leapt. Surely he was hallucinating. There was only one way to find out.

Lurk stopped gnawing the flesh of the dead skaven. His hunger momentarily assuaged, he could give his attention back to matters at hand. Behind him he could hear the squeal of terrified skaven, the triumphant shouts of the humans, and the berserker roars of dwarf Slayers. He could tell the battle was lost. It was as certain as the ache in his bones from hitting the ground. Of course, he knew that if it were not for the pain of his injuries, he could turn the tide of battle by his intervention. Unfortunately his bruises, and could that possibly be a sprained ankle, prevented it.

From out of the gloom, beams of golden light scythed into the skaven, slashing them down. It looked like their enemies had sorcerous resources too.

Definitely lost, he thought to himself. Definitely time to go. He picked himself up, glanced around to make sure that no one had noticed him, and scuttled off into the night.

Moving through the carnage of the battlefield Felix caught sight of a familiar figure. His heart leapt. Ulrika was alive. Thinking of nothing else, he moved towards her through the mass of skaven. All around him ratmen turned and fled. They had learned to fear his flashing blade and his proximity to the two Slayers. His mere presence at this moment seemed enough to unnerve them. There was little doubt in his mind that the ratmen were beaten. They milled around looking for a way out, their formation broken, their discipline gone. The loss of their leader and the surprise onslaught from their former captives had been enough to rout them. Now it was only a matter of staying alive while they fled.

‘Ulrika!’ he shouted, but she did not hear him. At that moment, a huge black-furred skaven leapt at her. Terrified that he was about to lose her just when he had found her at last, Felix raced forward to intervene. He need not have bothered. Ulrika parried the ratman’s blow, and put a stop-thrust through its heart. Gurgling in pain, the skaven tumbled forward onto its knees, and then sprawled headlong in the dirt, surrounded by a rapidly spreading pool of its own lifeblood.

Ulrika caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye, and whirled ready to attack. For a long tense moment she and Felix faced each other. Neither moved. Neither said anything. Then simultaneously they both smiled, then made to move together. Unable to stop himself, uncaring of the danger, Felix caught her in his arms. Their lips met. Their bodies strained against each other.

Surrounded by the howling madness of battle, they stood like they were the only two people in the world.

Max Schreiber looked around him. He was tired. As much from the magic he had just wrought as from the reaction to the beating he had taken last night. His limbs felt heavy with fatigue. Not even as an apprentice when he had maintained many a days-long vigil in the service of his master had he ever felt so worn out. Still, victory was theirs. The skaven were routed, and even though they still had numerical superiority, he doubted they would return. They were not by nature courageous creatures and it took them a long time to get over defeats.

Max liked to think of himself as a scholar, not a warrior, but he felt satisfied with what he had done here. He had taken a stand against the forces of Chaos and he had helped turn them back. Part of him found the experience far more satisfying than casting protective spells on the homes and vehicles of his clients. He began to understand the thrill of battle he had always read about. He smiled sourly as he caught sight of Felix and Ulrika kissing.

It appeared that for a sheltered scholar he was getting a crash course in all manner of emotional turmoil. He felt jealousy gnaw away at him, and he knew that not all of his magic could root it out.

He was more than a little attracted to Ulrika. For the past few days he had felt himself in the grip of passion. He really should have left the mansion days ago but had stayed on under the pretence of waiting for the Spirit of Grungni’s return. Seeing the way that Ulrika looked at Felix he guessed that there was little chance of her responding to his ardour.

Unless, the most unworthy thought struck him, something were to happen to Felix Jaeger. Surprised at his own savagery he sent a hail of golden beams slashing into the retreating skaven.

They died in a most gratifying way.

Silence came suddenly. The battle was over. The dead lay in piles around the mansion. The Spirit of Grungni hovered overhead, nuzzling the docking tower like a horse being hitched to a post. The skaven were defeated.

It was late. Felix felt tired but elated. He held Ulrika’s hand as if he feared she would vanish if he let go of it, and she did not seem at all inclined to lose his grip. All his forebodings on the trip back now seemed senseless and futile phantoms. She was as glad to see him as he was to see her, and he could not begin to express how happy that made him. Instead he could only stand and gaze stupidly into her eyes. Words just would not come. Fortunately, she seemed content with that.

Snorri stomped over. ‘Good fight that,’ he said. Black blood crusted his bandages and he bled from dozens of new small cuts but he seemed happy with his lot.

‘Call that a fight?’ Gotrek said. ‘I’ve had more dangerous haircuts.’

‘I wouldn’t want to meet your barber,’ Felix said.

‘Felix made a joke,’ said Snorri. ‘Snorri thinks it’s funny.’

‘Let’s get some beer,’ Gotrek said. ‘Nothing like a bit of light exercise to work up a thirst.’

‘Snorri wants a bucket of vodka,’ said Snorri. ‘And Snorri shall have it.’

Dwarfs had started to climb down the docking tower where the Spirit of Grungni was moored. Soon a small contingent of them were helping the Kislevites pile up the bodies for burning.

Felix thought this was as good a time as any for he and Ulrika to retire to their chamber. She agreed.

‘I never thought I would see you again,’ Ulrika said.

The dawn was beautiful. Golden beams of sunlight slanted down and caught the endless sea of grass around them. Birds sang. It was so calm that if it were not for the faint smell of burned flesh in the air, Felix would have found it difficult to believe that any battle had taken place the previous evening.

‘There were times when I thought I would never see you again. A lot of them,’ he replied.

‘Was it bad?’

‘Very.’

‘In the Wastes?’

‘In the Wastes and in Karag Dum. You would not believe me if I told you what we found there.’

‘Try me.’

‘All right,’ he said, gathering her close in his arms.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said, then kissed him.

‘It will do for the moment,’ he said, pulling her down into the long grass.

‘Yes,’ she replied.

Afterwards, as they lay naked on his old woollen cloak, she leaned on her elbow and began to tickle his face with an ear of grass. ‘What was it like in the Chaos Wastes?’

‘Do we really have to talk about it?’

‘Not if you don’t want to.’

He considered for a time before replying. ‘It is a terrible place. Like the dream of insane gods.’

‘That’s not very specific.’

‘More than you would think. It changes seemingly at random. Landscapes shimmer and shift...’

‘Sounds like mirages in the desert.’

‘Perhaps. But there are things there... Huge idols large as hills, ruined cities that no man has ever heard of, that might just have dropped from the sky. Endless hordes of monsters, and black-armoured men, all of them dedicated to...’

‘What is it? Why do you fall silent.’

‘They are coming here. We saw them from the airship. A horde of them. More than I could count, and they are merely the outriders of an even vaster host.’

‘Why haven’t you mentioned this before?’

‘Because I was so happy to see you, and because I am sure Borek has told your father by now.’

Ulrika sat up straight and stared at the horizon. It did not escape Felix’s notice that she was looking northward, to the mountains beyond which lay the Wastes of Chaos. He sensed a change in her mood, a new watchful quality that had something of fear in it.

‘The forces of Darkness have come this way before. We live on their borders. These are the marchlands. We have fought with them and triumphed in the past.’

‘Not against the force that is coming. This will be like the great Chaos Incursion of two centuries ago, in the time of Magnus the Pious.’

She frowned. ‘You are sure?’

‘I have seen it with my own eyes.’

‘Why now? Why in our time?’ He thought he detected a hint of fear in her voice.

‘I am sure Magnus asked himself the same question.’

‘That is not an answer, Felix.’ Now there was a note of exasperation. A frown marred her brow. A corresponding annoyance welled up in him.

‘I am not a prophet, Ulrika, I am just a man. I cannot answer these questions. I only know that it fits with what I have seen in other places...’

‘What other places?’ Her words were sharp. He did not like her tone.

‘In the Empire, the cultists multiply. The worshippers of Chaos are in every city. Beastmen fill the forests. The number of changelings, of mutated ones, is increasing with every month. Wicked magicians prosper. I sometimes think that the doomsayers are right, and that the end of the world is coming.’

‘Those are not cheerful words,’ she said reaching out and grasping his hand with feverish strength.

‘These are not cheerful times.’ He reached out and stroked her cheek. ‘We should go back soon. Find out what the others have been saying.’

She smiled wanly and bent forward to kiss his brow. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said suddenly.

‘Me too,’ said Felix.

Max Schreiber listened to what the dwarfs were saying with growing dismay. Their descriptions of the oncoming Chaos horde chilled him to the bone. The pictures they painted in his mind had even managed to drive out the jealousy he had felt this morning when he saw Felix and Ulrika ride off together.

He had read descriptions of such things from the time of the great war against Chaos two hundred years ago. He did not doubt that this was a force of similar size. For a long time now, he had suspected that such a thing would happen. He had studied the ways of Chaos for too long not to know its power was on the increase. He looked at the dwarfs’ faces. They might well have been chiselled from stone. The matter-of-fact way in which they told of their descent into Karag Dum and their battle with the thing they had found there made him look on the Slayers with new respect.

And despite his jealousy of Felix Jaeger he had to admit the man was brave as well as lucky. Max did not think he himself could have faced the thing the dwarfs described with quite the equanimity Jaeger had. He could understand why the dwarfs spoke of him with respect. The thing they had fought was obviously a Greater Daemon of Chaos. He wondered if the dwarfs had any idea of how lucky they had been to survive such an encounter. Not that they had actually succeeded in slaying it, Max knew. Such creatures could not be destroyed by mortals. All that they had done was banish its physical form. It would take on another sooner or later, and return to this plane to seek vengeance. If it could not find Gotrek Gurnisson or Felix Jaeger alive it would seek out their descendants and heirs. Such was the manner of the things.

There were times when Max Schreiber wished he had not studied this subject so long and so hard. Being privy to such knowledge often gave him nightmares. Still, it had been his choice; he had set his feet on this path long ago, and he had been given many opportunities to turn back. He had chosen not to. Ever since he had watched his family butchered by beastmen as a child, he had hated Chaos and all its works. He was sworn to oppose it in any way he could, and that meant learning its ways. Long ago when he had first started his studies as a mage he had encountered those who were of like mind. They needed to be warned of what was coming from the north. The world needed to be warned.

Ivan obviously agreed. ‘If what you are saying is true–’

‘You doubt my word?’ Gotrek Gurnisson said.

‘It is not that I doubt it my friend, it’s just that part of me would rather not believe it. The tide of Chaos you are describing could sweep away the world.’

‘Yes,’ said Borek. ‘It could.’

‘Except the dwarfholds,’ Gotrek said stoutly.

‘Even those would fall in the end,’ Borek said. ‘Remember Karag Dum.’

Gotrek smiled sourly. ‘I don’t see how I could forget it.’

‘I must send word to the Ice Queen,’ said Ivan. ‘The Tzarina must be warned. The armies of Kislev must be mustered.’

‘Aye,’ said Borek. ‘But what about you? You cannot remain here. This manor could not resist the massed might of Chaos.’

‘I will summon my riders and head south to Praag. That will be where our forces will meet. However, I must ask a boon of you...’

Max Schreiber leaned forward interestedly. ‘So must I,’ he said. Ivan looked up and indicated that he should speak first. It was a measure of the respect the Kislevite held for him since he had used his magic on their behalf.

‘I must ask passage south with you on the airship if that is possible. There are those I must inform about these events.’

‘The Elector Count of Middenheim, perhaps?’ Borek said.

‘Among others. I am sure that in the face of this threat I can prevail upon him to send aid to Kislev. If nothing else the Knights of the White Wolf will respond.’

‘The Spirit of Grungni is already full almost beyond capacity,’ Borek said. Max tilted his head to show he understood.

‘That is a pity, old friend,’ Ivan said, ‘for I too wished to ask the same boon. I want to send a messenger to the Ice Queen and to be sure your craft is faster than the swiftest rider ever could be.’

‘I am sure we could find space,’ Borek said. ‘If need be we can always find space.’

‘Good – I wish to send my daughter Ulrika and two bodyguards. Oleg and Standa will go with her.’

They all looked at the old boyar. It was plain from the bleak expression on his face that he had a stronger reason for this than merely warning the Ice Queen. It was clear that he wished to send his beloved daughter out of harm’s way, at least for a short time. Max was profoundly grateful that the old man cared enough to do this thing.

‘It shall be so,’ Borek said.

Grey Seer Thanquol felt dreadful. His head ached. His body felt as if stormvermin had worked it over with clubs – not that any skaven would dare to do such a thing to him, of course. Worst of all was the sense of failure that gnawed at his bowels. He was not quite sure how they had done it, but he was sure that somehow Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger had contrived to thwart him yet again. Their malefic powers sometimes seemed unlimited. And of course there was always the worthlessness of his underlings to be considered.

Not that the masters of Clan Moulder were likely to accept this. He was sure he had seen at least one of his clawleaders scurry away in the mad aftermath of the battle. Doubtless he would poison the minds of his stupid kinsfolk with lies about Thanquol. It was true that a small army of Clan Moulder troops had been lost in the attempt to seize the airship, but Thanquol was not to blame for the inferior quality of his troops. And it was equally true that he had failed to capture the airship as he had promised. But only the most biassed of churls could blame Thanquol for the deviousness of the Slayer and his minions. Of course, he suspected that the Moulder skaven possessed exactly the amount of bias required to make these poorly informed judgements, and it was all too possible that if he were to return to Hell Pit an accident might befall him. There were no limits to the wickedness of his enemies.

A familiar black depression, the consequence of too much warpstone used too suddenly, settled on him. The enmity of Moulder was only one part of the problem that faced him now. Another was how to get back to friendly skaven territory across a hundred leagues of plain. He knew from bitter experience that Kislevite horse archers were deadly marksmen and it would only take one arrow to end even so brilliant a career as his. What was particularly worrying was that his supply of warpstone was depleted and his sorcerous powers were at a low ebb. In many ways the situation was as dire as any he had ever faced in his long and incredibly successful career as a grey seer.

What could he do? He knew that there must be some skaven survivors out here on the plain but he was not at all sure that seeking them out was a good idea. They were, after all, the house troops of Clan Moulder and it was conceivable that their misguided minds might hold a grudge against him because of the failure of the plan. Certainly there were many problems here, and even a mind as keen as Thanquol’s quailed when he contemplated the difficulties which loomed before him.

A strange smell made his whiskers twitch. It was oddly familiar and yet subtly distorted. He heard something massive moving through the long grass. Something that might conceivably be the size of a rat-ogre. Had Boneripper survived? It did not smell like him. Swiftly Thanquol summoned the remnants of his power. Whatever it was it would not find him defenceless.

Suddenly a monstrous apparition loomed over Grey Seer Thanquol. It was as large as a rat-ogre. It had a horned head, and a large spiked tail. For a brief moment, Thanquol feared he might be facing the Horned Rat itself, come to make him give an account of himself. He felt his musk glands tighten as the thing opened its mouth to speak.

‘Grey Seer Thanquol, it is I, the humblest of your servants, Lurk.’

‘Lurk! What happened to you?’

‘It is a long story, mightiest of masters. Perhaps I should tell it to you as we march.’

Lurk’s voice had deepened and though his words were respectful, there was a hungry glint in his eye that Thanquol did not like at all.

Not at all.

FOUR

STORM TOSSED

From the rear observation deck of the Spirit of Grungni, Felix watched the mansion fall away behind them. Sadness filled him. Ivan Straghov’s house was a place where he had been happy, before he set off for the Chaos Wastes, and now he doubted that he would ever see it again.

Already the Kislevites were assembling to begin the long ride south. A troop of horsemen had arrived as they debated their plans; they had rounded up mounts that had fled from the skaven attack, and managed to provide horses for most of the survivors. It was agreed that a dozen or so scouts would remain at the mansion for as long as possible to tell the other troops what had happened as they arrived. After that, Ivan and the others figured that any troops abroad when the Chaos horde arrived would soon work out what had happened for themselves and would act accordingly. It was not much of a plan, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances.

Felix turned and looked at Ulrika. Her face showed a strange mixture of emotions. She had not been happy to be dispatched south by airship to inform the Tzarina of their plight, while the others had to ride. She had wanted to share the dangers of her clan’s warriors. Felix thought it was possible that if he had not been on the airship, she might not have agreed at all. Certainly he felt that he had helped persuade her to come. So had Max Schreiber.

Felix looked over at the magician. He liked Max but recently he had noticed the strange looks the man was giving him when he was with Ulrika. Was it possible he was jealous? It was easy enough to believe. She was very beautiful and Max had been around the mansion while he had been away in the Chaos Wastes. Who knows what might have happened then? Felix smiled sourly. It sounded like he was feeling more than a little jealous himself.

He consoled himself with the thought that the worst was behind them, at least for a while. They had managed to escape from the Wastes with their lives intact, and they had survived the skaven ambush. From here it was a straight run south to the capital of Kislev, and then on to Karaz-a-Karak where Borek intended to present the survivors of Karag Dum and some of its treasures to the High King of the Dwarfs. Felix wondered what Gotrek really thought of that.

As far as Felix knew the Slayer had been banished from the great underground city, never to return. Felix was not sure whether the exile was self-imposed or a penalty for the Slayer’s misdeeds. It had never seemed politic to ask. Gotrek insisted on remaining in Kislev and helping against the Chaos hordes. Felix certainly hoped so. Ivan had pointed out that, as a former engineer, he would be more useful helping prepare the defences to resist a siege. They would get off the airship with Ulrika and her bodyguards.

Whatever the reason, Felix was glad. He wanted to stay with Ulrika and he certainly didn’t want the Slayer reminding him of the oath he had sworn to follow him and record his doom. There would be time enough for that later, he did not doubt. With that monstrous army heading south, a mighty struggle was in the offing. There would be plenty of opportunity for Gotrek to find his heroic death.

He reached out and took Ulrika’s hand and squeezed her fingers. She turned and smiled at him wanly. It was obvious that her thoughts were with those tiny figures slowly receding into the distance below. She turned and gazed back, like someone trying to memorise a scene and remember people she feared she might never see again.

In the wan northern daylight, Grey Seer Thanquol studied Lurk closely. He hated to admit it but he was both impressed and intimidated. His lackey looked like he could take on a rat-ogre and win. He was more than twice Thanquol’s height and possibly ten times his mass. His claws looked strong as steel and the massive knob of horned bone at the end of his tail looked potent as a mace. Right at this moment, Thanquol rather regretted all the insults he had heaped on Lurk in the past. He was not sure that in his current state of depletion he could summon the magical energies needed to destroy Lurk. Under the circumstances, craftiness and diplomacy, two of Thanquol’s greatest gifts, seemed like the most appropriate measures.

‘Lurk! I am glad you have returned. Good-good! Together we must bring news of the failure of Clan Moulder’s ill-conceived attack on the human fort to the attention of the Council of Thirteen.’

Lurk looked at him with reddishly glowing and strangely forbidding eyes. When he opened his mouth to speak he revealed huge sharp tusks. Thanquol fought down the urge to squirt the musk of fear.

‘Yes-yes, most majestic of masters,’ Lurk growled in a voice much deeper than the one Thanquol remembered. Thanquol almost let out a sigh of relief. On their long march through the night, Lurk had been strangely surly. At least now this huge warpstone-altered skaven seemed tractable. That was good. He would be able to protect Thanquol from many of the dangers on the route. And who knew? It was certainly possible that studying his mutated form might reveal many secrets, including how to create more of his kind. Dissection revealed many things. However, thought Thanquol, shifting uncomfortably before that unblinking stare, such matters could wait until they had escaped the immediate danger.

‘These open spaces crawl with horse soldiers,’ Thanquol said. ‘The traitors of Moulder will also be out in force. We must use intelligence and cunning to escape our enemies and fulfil our mission.’

‘As you say, most persuasive of potentates.’ Was there a hint of irony in Lurk’s voice, Thanquol wondered? Was it possible his lackey was mocking him? Was that a gleam of hunger in his eyes? Thanquol did not like that look at all. Nor did he like the way in which Lurk was sidling closer. It reminded him uncomfortably of a cat stalking its prey. Lurk licked his lips hungrily.

With vast effort, Thanquol mustered his power. A flickering glow appeared around his paw. Lurk stopped his approach and froze on the spot. He bobbed his head servilely. Thanquol looked at him wondering whether it might not be a good idea to blast him on the spot, and get it over with. Had he possessed his full magical energies he would have done so without hesitation but now he was not sure whether it was a good idea. He did not want to use what little power he had unnecessarily. There were too many threats around him. Lurk watched him warily. He gave the impression of being poised to spring at the slightest provocation. Thanquol had seen that look before in other skaven. He knew it only too well.

‘We will head northwards first. Towards the mountains. Our enemies will not expect that. Then we will circle round the edge of the plain till we come upon an entrance to the Underway.’

‘A good plan, most benevolent of benefactors.’

‘Then let us be away. Quick-quick! I will take the leader’s place in the rear.’

Lurk did not seem to object. Looking at his broad back, Thanquol continued to wonder whether this was such a good idea. It was a long way to the mountains on foot, and a longer way yet back to the heartlands of skaven civilisation. Would he be better off travelling with Lurk or should he blast the monster in the back right now? As if sensing his thoughts, Lurk cast him a grim look over his shoulder. Thanquol controlled the urge to squirt the musk of fear.

Perhaps it would be best just to wait and see, he thought.

Max Schreiber walked through the airship. It was more difficult than he remembered from his journey to Kislev. Every inch of corridor was filled with packing cases shifted from the hold to make room for the refugees from Karag Dum. Crew members were sleeping on bedrolls in the corridor. It could not be pleasant lying on those riveted cast iron floors. There was very little comfort on the whole ship.

Max was uncomfortable from keeping in a semi-crouch the whole time. The airship had been built for dwarfs which meant that for him the ceilings were far too low. Movement sometimes seemed like an excruciating new form of torture. Of course, most of this trip had turned out to be that.

He still ached from the after-effects of the battle, and his heart felt heavy with jealousy over Felix and Ulrika. He had, of course, refused when the dwarfs had placed him in the same cabin as the two lovers. It had been tactless of them to offer, but then he was used to that from the members of the Elder Race. For a people who prided themselves on having been civilised when humanity was still wearing skins, they could be remarkably uncouth when it came to the subtleties of relationships. Not like the elves, Max thought. Of course, it would have been tactless for him to point this out. Most dwarfs hated the Eldest Race with a passion Max found incomprehensible.

Don’t be so negative, he told himself. Look on the bright side. You helped win a victory over the skaven the night before last, and you saved some lives with your magic. You even healed Gotrek and Snorri of the worst of their wounds. You have done good work here. You should be proud.

He paused and looked around for a moment. He wondered about the monster the dwarfs claimed to have spotted on the airship during the battle at the village. He did not doubt they had seen something but perhaps it was an illusion or some minor daemon summoned by the skaven seer. The creature was certainly powerful enough to be capable of such magic. Max considered himself very lucky to have survived that particular encounter. Another thing to be grateful for.

It was amazing, he thought. As an apprentice, secure in his ignorant pride, he had thought that nothing could threaten him once he became a mage. It seemed that most of his career in the arcane arts had consisted of discovering that the world was full of beings more potent than himself.

Another set of illusions shattered. How many had there been now? Let’s see – one of his idle fantasies as a youth had been the thought that one day he would learn spells that could compel a woman to love him. He did indeed know such spells now, as well as half a dozen others that would command obedience in all but the most strong-willed. Of course now he was bound by the most sacred of oaths not to use such spells except in defence of the Empire and humanity. Such were the responsibilities that came with power.

The world was a more complicated place than he had ever believed as a lad. He knew he would be putting his immortal soul in peril if he ever used such spells now. The road to damnation was paved not with good intentions but with desires gratified by evil means.

Still, there were times when it had crossed his mind that damnation might not be too high a price for the love of a woman like Ulrika. Swiftly he pushed that thought aside. The snares of Chaos are subtle, he thought, and very, very numerous. He was one of those who should know. His secret masters had taught him that. Look on the bright side, he told himself, and stop thinking such dark thoughts.

Despite all his formidable training, he could not.

Ulrika wondered what was going on. All of a sudden her life seemed to have changed utterly. She had returned from Middenheim scant weeks ago and now she had fled her home, perhaps forever. It did not seem possible that things could change so swiftly.

A few days ago she had fervently wished for Felix’s return and dreaded it. Now it had happened and it had made her life more complicated than she would have thought possible. Of course, she was glad to see him, too glad in many ways. She knew that the only reason she had allowed herself to be persuaded to board the airship and warn the Ice Queen was because he was aboard, and she could not bear the thought of parting with him so soon after they had been reunited.

And at the same time, it made her feel guilty and angry. She was a warrior of her people, and warriors did not shirk their duties simply because they were smitten. She wished now she had remained with her father. That would have been the right thing to do, and she knew it. Her place was at his side.

These complex emotions were infuriating and she knew they were making her withdrawn and sometimes unpleasant. And there were other complications. She had seen the way Max Schreiber looked at her. Men had looked at her that way before. She did not find it unpleasant, but she knew that though she liked Max she did not want more than friendship from him. She hoped she could make him understand that. If not, things might turn nasty. She knew some men got that way when they were rejected. Just to make things worse, Max was a wizard. Who knew what he was capable of? Well, that was a worry for the future. She pushed it to one side, one of those things that might never come to pass, worthless to consider until it did.

The question right now was the man standing beside her, holding her hand. Now that Felix was back all the other problems had come back to haunt her. He was a landless wanderer and they were going to the court of the Tzarina. He was oath-bound to follow Gotrek and record his doom. And he was different since he had come back from the Wastes. Quieter and grimmer. Perhaps the Wastes could change a man in more subtle ways than mutation.

And how much did she really know about him? She told herself that these were things that should not make a difference to her feelings, but she knew in her secret heart that they did.

In the distance, she watched storm clouds gathering. They looked different from this altitude but no less menacing. There’s a storm coming from the north, she thought, from the Chaos Wastes. The thought filled her heart with fear.

Snorri looked northwards at the gathering clouds. Big storm coming, Snorri could tell. Something to do with the size and the blackness of the clouds and the faint flicker of lightning in the distance. Yes. Big storm coming. Not that Snorri cared. Right at this moment, Snorri was drunk. He had consumed more than a bucket of potato vodka and he was feeling a little the worse for it. That was common these days. Snorri knew he was drinking too much. But then again, Snorri told himself, that was not really possible.

Snorri drank to forget. Snorri had become so good at it that he had forgot what he was drinking to forget. Either that or all those blows to the head he had taken during his career as a Slayer had done it. Right now, he should drink more. It would help him to stay forgetful, just in case.

He knew that whatever it was he was trying to forget was bad. He knew that he had done something that he must atone for, suffered a grief or shame so great that the only thing he could do to expunge it was to seek death in a heroic fashion and thus earn back his good name for himself and his clan. He wondered what it was.

In the corner of his mind, images flickered. A wife, children, little ones, all dead. Had he killed them? He did not think so. Was he responsible for their deaths? The stab of pain in his chest told him yes, Snorri probably was. He had been drunk then too? Yes, he had.

He took another swig from his bucket and offered it to Gotrek. Gotrek shook his head. He rubbed his eyepatch with the knuckles of one big fist and kept his gaze fixed on the clouds.

The storm was definitely getting closer. It was coming from the north to overtake the ship, Snorri could feel it in his bones. The thought occurred to him that it might be sent by the Chaos sorcerers as revenge for what they had done at Karag Dum. He shared the idea with Gotrek but Gotrek just grunted.

Snorri wasn’t offended. Even by Slayer standards, Gotrek Gurnisson was grim. Snorri knew he had reason to be. He had once known why Gotrek had shaved his head. He felt sure of it. But too much vodka or too many blows to Snorri’s head had knocked the knowledge out again. It was the way, he thought.

Snorri felt bone-deep aches. Amazing how well he had healed, all things considered. That human magician’s spell was potent. Still, it could not get rid of all the pain. Snorri had taken a lot of punishment in the past few weeks, been in a lot of fights.

But that was all right. He liked fights. More even than vodka, or good dwarf beer, the madness of battle helped him stay forgetful. In combat he could lose sight of who he was and what he once might have been. He knew this was something he shared with Gotrek. He took another swig and watched the wall of blackness coming closer. Worst storm he had ever seen, he supposed. Worse even than the one the airship had endured in the Wastes.

A vision of the Spirit of Grungni smashed to the ground by the force of the storm, lying broken and burned out on the ground filled Snorri’s mind. He realised he didn’t care. He didn’t care much about anything any more. He was a walking corpse now. His life had burned out long ago. At this moment, it did not matter whether the doom he found was a heroic one, as long as it was a doom. Even as he thought this, part of Snorri rebelled. It seemed too much like a betrayal of himself, and of his dead. And still part of him felt that way. He wondered if Gotrek ever felt the same.

Snorri knew it was just another of those things he would never ask. He offered the bucket to Gotrek again. This time the other Slayer took it.

Bad storm coming, Snorri thought. Worst Snorri has ever seen.

The rising wind ruffled Lurk’s fur. His stomach growled almost as loudly as a rat-ogre. He felt as if a whole nest of runts were in his belly trying to eat their way out of his stomach. He could not ever recall being this hungry.

Overhead, black clouds boiled. Huge strokes of lightning burst through the darkness giving the scene a hellish flickering illumination. The rain drove into his face, almost blinding him. He had lost the scent of Grey Seer Thanquol, and wondered if the mage were still behind him in the darkness.

The high grass rippled and flowed like the waters of a great ocean. The blades slashed at him like soft impotent swords. He did not like this. He did not like this at all. He wanted to be anywhere but here. He wanted to be in some safe burrow of solid stone, not under this roiling turbulent ever-changing sky.

Silently he cursed Thanquol. The grey seer was, and ever had been, the source of all the misery in Lurk’s life. He wished he had taken the opportunity to spring on him when he had the chance. He was sure Thanquol’s magic could not have been all that potent then. The grey seer had looked exhausted, as if the efforts of the previous evening had drained him of all power. He knew that his new altered form had been more than capable of overwhelming his former master. He would have liked nothing more than to burrow his snout in the grey seer’s belly and eat his intestines, preferably while Thanquol lived.

And yet, despite his gnawing hunger, he had not done so. He had to face that fact. He was not entirely sure why. Part of it was simple force of habit, part of it was justifiable skaven caution in the face of Thanquol’s magic, and part of it was natural skaven cunning. He knew that if he just bided his time a suitable opportunity would arise to exact his revenge with far less risk to his own precious hide.

After all, with a skaven as cunning as Thanquol, you could never be sure whether he was really as weak as he was pretending. It was better to be safe than sorry.

Or so he had thought. But now this hideous storm had arisen, and it felt like it would blow away their entire world. Worse, he could sense a strange taint to it, the faint mephitic odour of warpstone. This storm was coming straight from the Wastes. Which no doubt accounted for the odd multi-coloured aspect of the lightning. He turned to ask Thanquol what they should do.

The grey seer was just standing there, eyes wide, mouth open, breathing in the storm winds like a skavenslave gulping down fungusberry wine. It was as if this storm had been made for him. Lurk shivered with fear. Perhaps he could put off his revenge a little longer. After all, he had waited long enough. What difference could a few more minutes, or hours, or days, or even weeks make?

If only he were not so damned hungry. He looked at Thanquol, measuring every ounce of his flesh. Thanquol saw his look and a faint flickering aura of power snaked around his claws. Now was not the right moment for vengeance, Lurk thought. But soon, very soon.

Felix felt the airship shake.

‘What was that?’ Ulrika asked. She didn’t sound afraid. She never did but he could feel her body shiver where it lay against his.

‘The wind,’ he said. The Spirit of Grungni suddenly bucked like a ship on a storm-tossed sea. She clutched tight against him. Felix felt his own heart jump into his mouth. This was not a pleasant sensation but he had experienced its like before in the Chaos Wastes. Come to think of it, so had she. There had been a storm on their first flight between Middenheim and Kislev. He reached out to stroke her hair, and touch her warm and naked body.

‘It’s nothing to worry about. I’ve been through worse in the Chaos Wastes.’

A keening sound echoed down the corridor and through the chambers. The whole ship vibrated. ‘Just the metal of the ship. It’s under strain,’ he said, trying to remember all the reassuring phrases that Malakai had taught him. He was surprised at how calm he sounded. He only wished he felt that way. The ship shuddered like a live thing. The two lovers held each other in the darkened cabin. Both were waiting for disaster to strike.

Max Schreiber made his way onto the control deck. Things did not look good. He could see nothing through the monstrous black clouds ahead of them save the occasional flicker of a lightning flash. The whole ship shivered. The engines howled like lost souls as they strained to propel the Spirit of Grungni against the enormous currents of air.

On the bright side, at least Malakai Makaisson was at the controls. Of all the potential pilots of the ship, Max had most faith in him.

‘Tisnae as bad as it looks,’ Makaisson said. As always his thick guttural accent and odd dialect confused Max. Makaisson was not the easiest of dwarfs to understand.

‘I’m glad you are feeling so confident, Herr Makaisson,’ said Max. He glanced around. Aside from the Slayer engineer, every other face on the command deck was a picture of worry. Makaisson played with the earflap of his peculiar leather flying helmet, which had been cut at the top to let his Slayer’s crest show through. He adjusted the goggles which sat on top of his head then he looked up at Max and grinned. It was not a reassuring grin. Makaisson did not look sane at the best of times, and at the moment he looked positively crazy.

‘Nithin tae worry aboot! Ah’ve got the ship turned oot o’ the wind. We’ll joost rin afore the storm till it runs oot o’ force. Nithin tae it.’

Actually, Makaisson‘s words sounded suspiciously sensible, as they often did if you listened to them closely. Max pictured the airship running before the wind just like a sailing ship could. The storm would just make it fly faster. As long as the gasbag remained untorn they should be safe. Just as he was feeling slightly reassured the Spirit of Grungni leapt upwards like a horse clearing a fence. Max was forced to grab the edge of one of the command seats just to stay upright.

‘A wee bit o’ turbulence, man. Dinnae cack yer breeks!’

‘Is it just me or is the storm dying down?’ Ulrika asked. Felix had been wondering that himself for some time. Hours had passed since the storm had overtaken them, and they had been among the longest hours of Felix’s life. The Spirit of Grungni had never felt quite so unsafe. At any moment he had felt like the whole thing might just break apart, and they would all be sent tumbling to their deaths. Somehow the presence of Ulrika had just made the whole thing worse. The prospect of his own death was not one that he particularly enjoyed, but the thought of the girl in his arms dying at the same time, and there being nothing he could do about, was just awful.

‘I think it is,’ he said eventually. He was fairly sure he was telling the truth too. The airship seemed to have slowed a little. The rain no longer beat quite so strongly against the windows. The lightning flashes had become less frequent. Perhaps the worst had indeed passed.

Ulrika buried her head on his shoulder. He held her close and offered up a prayer to Sigmar that they would be spared.

Max Schreiber looked at the speed gauge on the control console. The Spirit of Grungni was definitely slowing – a sign, according to Makaisson, that the tailwind was less strong. Max wasn’t entirely sure what the dwarf meant, but he thought he got the general idea. He was duly grateful that the gods had spared them.

‘Ah telt ye, didn’t ah?’ said Makaisson,’ but wud yese listen? Naw! Ah sade this airship can tak far worse than this but ye ah kent better, didn’t ye? Aye, well who was right, that’s what ah ask ye, noo?’

‘You were, Herr Makaisson, no question,’ Max said, and he was grateful that the dwarf had been. He was even grateful that the Slayer had known exactly what to do to save his ship. Perhaps his reputation for causing disasters was not entirely deserved. Ahead of them something huge loomed out of the storm dark gloom.

‘What’s that?’ Max asked.

‘It’s a bloody mountain, ya eedjeet. Help me turn this damn wheel.’

Desperately Max added his weight to Makaisson‘s as they tried to change course. Slowly, too slowly, the Spirit of Grungni began to turn.

Snorri woke up. His head was sore and he had to admit his hangover was bad. The whole floor seemed to be tilting and that normally was an effect he usually only got when he was very drunk. Then it dawned on him that maybe it wasn’t his hangover. He was on an airship, after all. Maybe the whole thing was tilting? And what was that scraping noise? It sounded like the whole cupola was running along rock. Had they landed? If so, why were they bumping along in this atrocious manner? And why were all those voices in the distance screaming? He looked over at Gotrek. The other Slayer was peering grimly out into the gloom.

‘I knew that idiot Makaisson was going to get us all killed,’ Gotrek said.

Through the rapidly parting storm clouds Snorri could see mountain peaks all around them. The grinding sound continued. He knew they were scraping rock. Under the circumstances there was only one thing to do. He took another long swig of vodka and waited for the end to come.

Max Schreiber felt the whole hull of the cupola grind against the mountainside. He prayed feverishly that it would stay intact. On the bright side at least the gasbag was still alright. Just a few more moments and they would be clear. If only the airship would hold together a bit longer. He offered up a prayer to all the gods for their aid.

FIVE

AN AERIAL ENCOUNTER

The grinding of the hull suddenly ceased. Max felt a momentary surge of relief. The airship was aloft again. They were off the side of the mountain. Makaisson shouted into the speaking tube, ‘Ah want reports from the ship. What’s the damage? Hoo are the enjuns? Ony holes in the cupola or gasbag? An’ ah want ye tae jump tae it, ya bamsticks!’

He pulled control levers and the engine noise died. The airship was still moving, propelled by the wind, but its speed had fallen away to almost nothing. It seemed that the storm had passed them by. Max looked at the Slayer engineer. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Whaur tae start is the problem! Ah think the enjuns might be a wee bit damaged fae bein’ dragged alang the mountainside. Joost a theory mind, but ye can see hoo it wood be possible. An’ then there’s the wee fact that ah hae nae idea whaur we are.’

‘We’re in the Worlds Edge Mountains, obviously,’ Max said. ‘That was the only range in a hundred leagues and we were blown south. I don’t see Chaos Wastes below us.’

‘Gae the big man a prize!’ jeered Malakai. ‘Ah ken we’re in the Worlds Edge Mountains. Ah’m a dwarf, am’t ah? Ah ken a mountain range when ah see yin. Ah joost don’t know whaur exactly we are in it.’

Max looked at Malakai. The dwarf was upset. Malakai Makaisson was the best-tempered Slayer Max had ever met, and such a display of anger was quite unusual for him. Max was starting to wonder if they were in more trouble than he had imagined.

‘I don’t see how that’s such a big problem.’

‘Then let me explain. If we’ve took serious damage then we’re no in ony great shape. Daen repairs in the middle oh naewhaur, way nae proper spares is no gannae be easy. So we might be in for a bit o’ a wak hame. Can ye see the problem noo?’

Max suddenly understood why Malakai Makaisson was so upset. He was distraught by the prospect of abandoning his beloved airship. Max could understand that. He was not exactly thrilled by the idea himself. The Worlds Edge Mountains were huge and filled with marauding tribes of orcs and other monstrous creatures, as well as by countless savage beasts.

‘I think there might be another problem,’ said one of the apprentice engineers tugging at Makaisson’s shoulder.

‘Great! An’ joost whit exactly might that be?’

‘That!’ said the other dwarf pointing.

Max glanced in the direction of the dwarf’s pointing finger. His eyes went wide. His jaw dropped open. His heartbeat sounded like a drum in his ear. ‘Gods preserve us,’ he breathed.

‘Ah dinnae think they can!’ said Makaisson. ‘No fae that!’

‘Well, we’re still alive,’ said Felix, rising into a crouch and drawing on his britches.

‘I’m glad of that,’ said Ulrika. Felix smiled, suddenly looking years younger.

‘Me too.’ He pulled on his boots and shirt and strapped on his sword. ‘I’ll just go and see what’s happening.’

The sound of boots hammering on the metal floor of the corridor was suddenly loud in his ear.

‘Manling, get your sword!’ he heard Gotrek shout, as a heavy fist banged on the door.

‘Snorri thinks that’s a good idea too,’ he heard Snorri add.

‘What in Sigmar’s name is going on?’ he asked.

‘You’ll see for yourself in a minute.’

Max Schreiber looked through the window of the command deck in astonishment. He could not quite believe what he was seeing but that did not stop the sight of it from filling him with terror.

It was a dragon, and not just any dragon, but quite possibly the largest one he had ever heard of. Not that he was an expert on this particular subject. This was the first and, he quite sincerely hoped, the last he would ever see.

At first, when he saw it in the distance, he had thought it was just a particularly large bird. But it flew oddly for a bird, and as it came closer, he began to get some sense of the scale of the thing compared to its surroundings. It was far too big to be any bird he had ever heard of, including the war eagles of the elves which were large enough to carry a full grown warrior on their back.

As it came closer he began to see that the shape was wrong for a bird too. It was too long, and the wings were structured like those of a bat, rather than a bird.

As it came closer still, he noted the long-lizard like body, the enormous snake-like tail, the serpentine neck supporting the massive head. He saw the colours were like no bird that had ever flown save perhaps in the Chaos Wastes. The general colouration of the scaly leathery skin was red but there were glowing highlights in it that blazed all the colours of the rainbow. A massive shield of bone surrounded the monstrous head. A double row of razor-sharp spines ran down the long back.

On the command deck pandemonium reigned. Malakai Makaisson shouted orders into the speaking trumpet while all the time throwing the control levers forward to the maximum extent. Engines roared like daemons as the airship picked up speed.

‘Gunners tae yer stations!’ bellowed Makaisson. ‘Ah want every gyrocopter oot there, and ah want it noo!’

Max wondered what good they would do. He felt paralysed with fear as the dragon came effortlessly closer. He had never seen such a large living thing. From nose to tail it must have been as long as the gasbag of the airship. It looked like it could lift a bull in each of its claws. This was something to freeze the heart of even a Slayer.

All around him he could hear the sound of running feet as dwarfs raced to obey Makaisson’s orders. The ship echoed with panicked exclamations and oaths as the dwarfs began to realise what they were facing. Given the fact that these were the survivors of Karag Dum, long inured to horror, it was a tribute to quite how fearsome the dragon actually was that it could stir terror in their hearts.

Varek clambered into the cockpit of the gyrocopter. A dragon, he thought, elated as well as terrified. He had seen a dragon, one of the creatures of legend. One of the eldest of beasts. It was another wonder he had witnessed on this trip, another thing to note down in his book. If he survived, he thought, as the engine roared to life, and the gyrocopter made ready for take-off.

Max felt rooted to the spot. If someone had told him at that moment he must cast a spell or die, he knew he would be dead. His mind was blank. He could not work magic if his life depended on it. The dragon opened its mouth and roared. The sound echoed like thunder through the mountains. Small flames lapped the sword-sized teeth as it did so. As it came ever closer, Max realised one cause of the horror. What he had thought were small jewels inset in its skin and glittering in the sun were in fact tiny shards of warpstone. He shuddered to think what exposure to that dreaded substance must be doing to the dragon. Mutation and madness were its lot at the very least. Perhaps that accounted for the creature’s size, and its odd appearance.

At this range he could see long tendrils of flesh surrounded the mouth and long stalk-like antennae protruded from its brows just above the eyes. Here and there massive pustules blistered the scaly hide. The thing had definitely felt the touch of Chaos. Was it possible it had been brought here by the storm, blown all the way from the Wastes by the force of those daemonic winds? He did not know. He licked his dry lips. He did not want to find out.

The dragon was almost alongside them now, flying parallel with the airship like a whale sculling alongside a cargo vessel. It had yet to attack but Max did not doubt that it was hostile. It was toying with them like a cat might toy with a mouse.

This close he could make out the details of its enormous head. Its eyes glowed yellow, the pupils blazing red suns. A malign intelligence glittered in their depths. A cloud of poisonous-looking gas billowed from its nostrils and mouth, where occasionally small flames lapped forth.

Gods, the thing was big enough to swallow a horse in one gulp. Those claws could shred the gasbag like a man might tear a piece of parchment. If it breathed there was every chance that the gasbag might catch fire and who knew what might happen then. Max shuddered when he considered that the engines of the Spirit of Grungni were powered by black stuff. It was one of the most inflammable substances known to alchemical science. There were just far too many things that could go wrong here.

He heard more engines roar as gyrocopter after gyrocopter dropped from the hangar decks of the airship. After the battle at the manor house there were only three left. As far as Max was concerned they would probably cause as much trouble to the dragon as gnats would to a wolf. He could not see any way they could survive this encounter.

Even as he watched the first of the gyrocopters curved into view, heading directly at the dragon. A roaring as of a thousand muskets firing at once told him that the organ gun turrets on top of the gasbags and the bottom of the cupola had opened fire. A line of explosions in the dragon’s flesh showed where their shots had struck home.

The dragon roared its wrath. Its long snaky neck curved to bring the open jaws directly into line with the airship. Max fought down the urge to shriek as a cloud of flames and warpstone gas flashed towards them.

The wind whipped against Varek’s face. He was filled with exultation and a sense of speed. He whooped wildly as the gyrocopter arced around and up towards the dragon. He felt as if he was being pressed into his seat by a giant fist. He had never felt so alive. He thought he understood one of the secrets of the Slayers now, why they constantly sought out death. This was existence on the very edge, and it was sweet. Ahead of him the huge monster loomed ever larger. Fear clutched at Varek’s bowels as he felt its burning gaze fall on him. He fought it down, and made ready to attack.

Felix heard the sound of the turrets opening fire above them. What was it? What could be attacking them here so far above the ground? It had to be something flying, and something that could move fast to overhaul them. At any moment he expected the firing to stop. He had once seen a demonstration of an organ gun being fired by the Imperial military during the Emperor’s day parade back in Altdorf. The thing had ripped apart a small wooden fortification. Nothing could possibly resist the concentrated fire of half a dozen of them, could it?

Gotrek and Snorri had already clambered up the ladder and through the hatch of the gondola. Felix pulled himself up, more swiftly than any dwarf. For a brief moment he was on top of the gondola itself, and he caught sight of what was being fired at. He had a flickering impression of a long reptilian shape, large as the airship, winged like a bat, then the acrid smoke of the organ guns billowed into his line of sight and cut off his view. By all the gods, could it be a dragon, he wondered? Had he really just seen what he thought he had? He most sincerely hoped not.

Snorri and Gotrek continued on up the ladder. It was made of flexible metal hawsers and ran all the way through the gasbag to the top of the airship. It was designed to give access to the turrets up there, and to let the crew into the gasbag to effect repairs.

It was cold up here, and the sting of the wind brought tears to Felix’s eyes until he pulled himself inside the gasbag. Now all around he could see hundreds of smaller gasbags. He knew Makaisson had designed them so that even if the outer skin of the balloon was pierced not all the lift gas could escape at once. According to the dwarf, over half of these nacelles would have to be burst before the Spirit of Grungni would begin to lose altitude.

Suddenly he felt the temperature rise dramatically. He became aware that flames were flickering below him and there was a terrible stench that reminded him of sewage and warpstone. What was happening?

‘Dragonbreath!’ he heard Gotrek roar.

I am going to die, Felix thought.

Max almost screamed as the cloud of burning gas enveloped the airship. He pictured the gasbag catching fire and the whole vessel being blown apart in an apocalyptic blast of heat and flame. For one brief moment, he knew that he was dead. He closed his eyes, took a terrified breath and waited for the inevitable burst of agony that would tell him his life was over. A heartbeat passed, then another and he was still alive. He felt the airship tilt, and then knew it was a false reprieve. He reached out to steady himself instinctively, shocked to find he was still alive.

He opened his eyes, looked around and saw Makaisson still furiously tugging at the controls. The airship was heading upwards, climbing steeply. He looked around to see the dragon below them, spreading its wings, beginning a long lazy spiral upwards. Around it the three gyrocopters flitted like mosquitoes.

‘We’re still alive,’ Max said.

‘Weel spotted!’ said Makaisson. ‘Cannae pit much past you, big man, can we?’

‘How? Why aren’t we burned to death? Why didn’t the gasbag catch fire?’

‘Taks mare than a brief scorching to heat metal, as ye would ken if ye ever worked iron, so the cupola didnae melt. We were a wee bit luckier wie the gasbag. Had the explodin’ problem wi’ ma last airship, so this time ah treated the gasbag an’ the nacelles wi’ a flameproof alchemical mix. Joost as well, really.’

‘Makaisson, I don’t care what others say about you, I think you’re a genius.’

‘Thanks, ah think,’ Makaisson said. He made a small adjustment to the controls. ‘By the way, whit exactly dae others say aboot me? No that ah care, ye ken.’

Felix emerged on the top of the airship. A metal dorsal spine ran along the top of the gasbag. From it, nets hung over the gasbag itself so that the brave and the foolhardy could climb over. Along the spine were organ gun turrets. A small handrail, set at the right height for dwarfs, ran along the spine. Felix grabbed it and hauled himself into the open. The wind tugged at his hair, and brought tears to his eyes. It roared in his ears when it wasn’t drowned out by the thunder of the organ guns. He could see Gotrek and Snorri shout and wave their fists at the dragon but he couldn’t hear a word they were saying. Probably just as well, really; it most likely wasn’t anything sensible.

He shook his head, knowing that he was deliberately trying to distract himself from the awesome sight below. It was indeed a dragon, rising through the clouds. Beneath it he could see the streams and valleys of what he assumed must be the Worlds Edge Mountains. Gyrocopters buzzed around the mighty beast.

For a moment, he thought how few men had ever been privileged to witness such a sight, but it dawned on him that right now he would cheerfully swap the privilege to be on the ground and as far away from that huge creature as was humanly possible.

He could see that the gyrocopters were using their steamjets on the dragon, but ineffectually. A creature which burned internally with the fires of Chaos was unlikely to be hurt by a scalding jet of superheated water. Maybe if they tried blasting it directly down the creature’s throat it might extinguish the fire but he doubted it. The bombs being lobbed by the pilots were proving just as ineffectual at the moment. Against such a swiftly moving target, it was difficult to judge distances and set the fuse time correctly. Even as Felix watched he saw bombs explode harmlessly in the air around the dragon. Then with a swift move the dragon turned and breathed on the nearest gyrocopter. It exploded as suddenly and explosively as one of the bombs but on a much more massive scale. Felix offered up a prayer for the soul of the pilot tumbling to the earth in a blazing pyre.

The dragon flexed its wings and began to gain altitude, moving swiftly in pursuit of the Spirit of Grungni. There was a lull in the firing as the gunners waited for it to come within range again.

‘It’s mine,’ he heard Gotrek say.

‘It’s Snorri’s,’ Snorri replied.

‘I think there’s enough to go around,’ Felix said, reaching for the hilt of his sword. ‘No need to fight over... Ow!’

He drew his hand away from the hilt of his blade as if it had been scorched. It hadn’t been but when he touched the dragon-headed hilt of the blade he had felt a strange tingling, and a surge of energy the like of which he had never felt before. It was not an unpleasant sensation merely an unexpected one. He reached out to grasp the sword again, half thinking he had imagined the whole thing, but no sooner had he done so than the sensation returned, redoubled.

An odd warmth spread through his hand, up his arm and through his body. He felt good. Any lingering fear he might have had of the dragon vanished. He felt exultation, power and strength pour into him. He found that he was quite looking forward to the dragon getting within striking distance.

The part of him that was an objective observer wondered if he had gone insane. There was nothing good whatsoever about a dragon getting within a hundred leagues of him, nor of this fragile gasbag, and the cupola suspended below it. He knew that some external power must be at work here, some sorcery. Was it possible that Max Schreiber had cast a spell without him knowing it? If so, why had he not noticed any change in Gotrek or Snorri? It made no sense for the magician to cast a spell on him and not the two Slayers, who were a good deal tougher than he.

The dragon swelled in Felix’s field of vision, and a sense of expectation filled him. It was definitely coming from the sword, he felt. Holding the blade before him he could see the runes blazing along its length with a strength and a brightness he had never seen before. It was as if they had been inscribed in fire.

He wondered about this. He had never known much about the history of this blade, the one sought by the Templar Aldred all those months ago in the ruins of Karak Eight Peaks. He had always known it was magical. It kept its edge like no blade he had ever known, and had never taken a nick in all his many battles. He had thought that was the limit of the enchantment on it.

Looking at it now, and examining the way it was behaving in the presence of that great dragon below them, it seemed that perhaps the hilt of the sword was more than mere decoration. Perhaps it was expressive of the purpose of the sword. From nowhere but the blade itself, it seemed, came the knowledge he was right.

He joined the Slayers in shouting abuse at the dragon, surprised at his own temerity. Normally, he would never in a million years have dared draw the attention of so powerful a beast to himself in such a way, but it seemed the influence of the sword was affecting him greatly. He could tell by the astonished looks Gotrek and Snorri were giving him that they were just as surprised as he was.

Wings beating the air furiously, the dragon rose to the attack. The gyrocopters rose in its wake, though the part of Felix that was still capable of sane thought wondered what they could do to so baleful a creature.

Through the porthole of the cabin, Ulrika watched the battle below with a growing sense of helplessness. There was nothing she could do to affect the outcome of this struggle. She did not have the skills to man any of the weapons or fly the ship. She doubted that she could nick the fearsome beast even if she could get within striking distance of it. And to make matters worse, they were thousands of strides above the surface of the earth. There was no way to hide or flee even if she wanted to.

No. She refused to sit here and be helpless. There must be something she could do. There was only one thing she could think of, so she did it. She snatched up the short powerful horn bow she used for horseback archery, strapped the quiver of arrows over her shoulder and set off to find a place she could shoot from.

Max Schreiber was glad to feel the terror pass. It seemed that the overwhelming power of the dragon to inspire fear in him had been dispelled by something. He was not sure quite what, but somewhere close by he felt a surge of magical energy, pulsing like a beacon. Whatever it was, it was very strong. Was it possible there was another sorcerer on the airship? It did not seem likely. Dwarfs were not known for their proficiency in the magical arts, and he knew that neither Felix nor Ulrika nor either of her two bodyguards were mages. It must be something else.

Whatever it was, he was grateful. His mind was clear, and he felt capable of drawing on the winds of magic once more. He reached deep down into the well of his soul and drew upon his power. In his mind he began to review his most potent spells. Perhaps there was something he could do to affect the outcome of the battle after all. Perhaps.

Looking out of the windows of the command deck at the awesome form of the dragon, he doubted it.

Felix watched the dragon come ever closer. He thought he could hear its mighty wing-beats even above the roar of the organ guns. He was impressed by the sheer size of the thing. He did not think he had ever been this close to so large a living creature. It made part of him feel insignificant, puny, despicable.

And another part of him thirsted for it to come within striking distance, to reach a place where he could engage it in combat. Felix considered this, and realised that whatever it was that wanted the battle, it wasn’t him, it was an external influence. It was something coming from his sword that was making him brandish his blade and shout challenges. While he was glad for the relief from fear, he also resented it. He was the master of his actions, not some ancient semi-sentient weapon. He forced himself to shut his mouth. By an effort of will he brought his sword down and held it in the guard position.

It was difficult but he managed it. The blade fought against him, writhing in his hand like a serpent. In a way he felt like he was drunk, not quite responsible for his actions. It took all his willpower just to keep quiet and hold still but he did so, and the more he did so, the more he felt the strange urges subside. Either he was his own master again or the sword was conserving its energies for the greater struggle.

‘Come taste axeblade,’ Gotrek bellowed.

‘And have a bit of Snorri’s hammer for afters,’ shouted Snorri. Felix watched silently. The creature was almost upon them. He was close enough to smell the Chaos poison on its breath.

The whole hull echoed as if struck by a giant hammer. The force of the impact almost forced Ulrika from the ladder. She felt the cupola surge and swing, and she knew that one of those giant claws must have impacted on the airship. Her heart leapt into her mouth. A vivid picture of the gondola becoming separated from the gasbag and plunging earthwards to its doom filled her mind. Quickly she pushed it away, and resumed her climb. If she was going to die, she wanted to die fighting.

Max rolled along the floor of the command deck, tossed about like a child’s plaything by the force of the impact. He felt the cupola sway as the dragon’s claws smashed into the side of the airship. The whole interior of the vessel vibrated like a drum as the huge reptile’s wings beat against it in a flurry of blows. In his mind’s eye, he saw the dragon clutching at the airship like a tiger on the neck of its prey. It was not a reassuring image.

He looked up and saw Makaisson wrestling with the controls. The dwarf cursed loudly, ‘Bloody overgrown lizard! Tryin’ to eat us alive, so it is. Bloody stupid critter if ye ask me. It cannae eat solid steel. Can it? Well, can it?’

In his heart, Max was not so sure. He did know that the dragon did not need to be able to consume them to destroy them. A few more blows like that would pull the gondola loose and then they would all be dead.

Varek was really excited. He had thought that nothing could top his descent into the bowels of Karag Dum with the Slayers and Felix but this was close to proving him wrong. Aerial combat with a dragon, he thought. What a chapter this would be in his book. He lifted the portable organ gun Makaisson had given him. He decided it was time to get a few good shots at the dragon.

Felix felt the deck sway beneath his feet at the impact. The dragon’s claws had smashed into the side of the airship. The sound of shrieking metal filled his ears as the hull gave way under the force of the blow. The dragon’s long neck snaked up. It took a bite from the gasbag, lifting away a huge patch of the outer skin. Nacelles exploded in its mouth. Felix shuddered, wondering how much of this punishment the ship could take. A sweep of the enormous tail curled right round the gondola and came down on one of the organ guns, flattening it and the gunner. The wreckage of the turret went plummeting into space, tumbling to earth far far below.

Things were not looking good. The whole hull creaked when the dragon rested its weight on it. The dragon extended its long scaly neck and suddenly its head was looming over Felix.

Gotrek and Snorri rushed forward. Snorri’s axe lashed out and bounced from the dragon’s hide. His hammer had no discernible effect. Gotrek’s axe on the other hand bit home, cleaving the armoured skin and drawing blood. The dragon bellowed with rage. Its enormous head swung round to regard the Slayer balefully. Felix saw the malign intelligence in the creature’s eyes and knew that the dragon planned to revenge itself on the tiny creature that had hurt it.

It opened its mouth. The fires of hell burned within its jaws. Felix thought the creature looked almost as if it were smiling. Some strange impulse compelled him to throw himself between Gotrek and the dragon just as it breathed. He fought back the desire to scream as a wall of flame hurtled towards him.

Max chanted the words of the spell, drawing more and more magical energy to him. He knew he was only going to get one chance at this and he wanted to make the best use of it. Even if the dragon destroyed them, it gave him slight satisfaction to think that he would hurt it.

As the words tumbled from his mouth, he felt the winds of magic swirl about him. Responding to the arcane properties of the mantra, golden magic was drawn to him. His gestures shaped it, moulded it, the way a potter moulds clay. Beneath his hands and the force of his mind and words, a huge bolt of energy took shape. When the surge of energy was almost too great to hold, he made the final gesture and sent it spiralling towards the dragon.

A massive beam of gold light smashed outwards, passing harmlessly through the crystal of the window, before impacting on the dragon’s flesh and boring inwards towards its heart.

Ulrika pulled herself out of the hatchway on the top of the gasbag. She was just in time to see Felix jump between Gotrek and the dragon as it breathed. She knew in that moment that he was going to die.

‘No!’ she shouted. At the same time, responding without thought, her body was already bringing the bow up to the firing position, nocking the arrow, and bringing it to bear on the dragon’s eye.

Varek pulled back on the control stick with one hand, and blasted away with the portable organ gun with the other. It had very little effect. He could see scales being blasted out of the dragon’s hide but it was like using buckshot on a curtain wall. It might be uncomfortable for the dragon, but he was not going to do any real harm. Perhaps his book was going to end here, he thought. Perhaps this was where the story stopped.

Felix could not quite believe what happened next. As the flame flashed down at him, he brought the sword up to parry. It was a pointless futile gesture, made more from force of habit than from any hope of being able to save himself. And something happened. The runes on the blade blazed brighter. The blaze of heat and pain did not come. Some sorcerous force protected him.

He felt enormous pressure on him, as if he was pushing against the current of a river. For a moment, he felt as if he was going to be blown right off the top of the gasbag but he braced himself and held his ground. Slowly he forced himself forward, moving to strike the dragon. The blade pulsed brighter in anticipation of the blow.

Ulrika unleashed the arrow. It flew straight and true towards the dragon’s eye, but at the last second the creature moved and the arrow buried itself in one of the strange tendrils descending from the monster’s brow. The creature’s roar of hatred was deafening.

The dragon Skjalandir was frustrated. This was not going as he had planned. This strange vessel was putting up a fight. There was a sorcerer on board directing spells at him. That dwarf’s axe was as potent a weapon as any he had seen in his two thousand years of existence, and as for the sword that puny human was carrying, it almost worried him. It glittered with an ancient malice directed at all of his kind.

Rage and hatred filled him. He was easily angered now. He knew it. He had changed since those two identical albino sorcerers had woken him from his long sleep. He feared he knew why too. The one with the golden staff had driven warpstone charms into his flesh. The one with the ebony staff had wound him round with charms he had been too drowsy to resist. There was something of the memory of their arcane ritual that filled him with fear as well as anger. He remembered the name of a dark god, the Changer, ringing through his lair. He remembered the way the mages had spurned his great hoard. He knew he had been trapped in some sort of spell of their making, and he knew his mind was clouded and there was nothing he could do about it.

The axe bit home again, burying itself in the tendons of his neck. It was like an ant bite to Skjalandir. Painful, irritating, but hardly fatal. The same applied to the spell attacking his flanks, and the stings of those tiny guns. Really there was nothing these little creatures could do that would actually harm him. It was time to end this farce.

Skjalandir considered his options. He could breathe on the gasbag structure above the metal gondola. When he had slashed it, he had detected the thousands of smaller nacelles inside. His draconic mind was quite clever enough to grasp that these were what kept the ship aloft. If they could be made to catch fire...

Would the spell the sword had woven to protect its wielder against his breath protect the inanimate structure? Skjalandir doubted it. He would teach these dwarf interlopers to invade his realm, befoul his hunting grounds with their machines. He would kill them as he had killed all the other dwarfs who had come against him. He would destroy this vessel the way he had destroyed the towns surrounding his lair and there was nothing they could do to stop him.

Or perhaps he should continue to strike at the metal gondola. If he separated it from the gasbag all of those within would plummet to their doom. Then he could pick off the creatures on the gasbag at his leisure. Something within his warpstone-tormented mind preferred the latter option. It was more cruel.

He was aware of the other gyrocopters moving closer. Let them. Their steam breath could not harm him, and their pathetic explosive eggs would barely scratch his armour. That’s if they dared use their weapons so close to the airship. They were much more likely to harm their own vessel than to hurt Skjalandir.

Max felt the surge of magical energy above him. A protective spell, he guessed, and not cast by a mortal wizard. All wizards had their own magical signature, as distinctive as a voice. It could be recognised by a fellow worker of the mystic arts unless disguised. A skilled practitioner, like Max, could even tell the race and usually the sex of a caster from it most of the time, but for this one he had no clue. A device or a rune perhaps, and yet there was the hint of some sort of alien intelligence behind it.

Not that he was likely to find out now, Max thought. He had realised moments after he had unleashed his spell that he was fooling himself if he thought he was really going to harm the dragon. He could hurt it, cause it pain, but he could no more kill it than a bee sting could kill an elephant. The creature was too large and powerful and there was too much magic woven into its very nature for Max to be able to really harm it.

Another thing more powerful than I, he thought wryly. I seem to be meeting a lot of them lately.

His mind flickered through the routines of the escape spell, but he doubted it would do much good. It probably couldn’t carry him all the way to the ground and even if it could he still would be travelling with all his current velocity in the direction he was currently moving. If he got to earth he would be travelling at the same speed and in the same direction as the Spirit of Grungni, and would most likely smash into a rock or a tree or some other obstacle.

And he was not sure he wanted to leave. Ulrika was on this ship and he did not want to abandon her. While she still lived, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Felix looked up at the dragon. He felt as if it were taunting him. It was flying just out of striking distance and ignoring the challenges roared by Gotrek and Snorri. He knew that it wanted them to know it could destroy them at will. It was toying with them. It appeared that everything he had ever read about the malice and cruelty of dragons was true.

He felt a brief surge of despair. After all this, was it going to end this way? It hardly seemed fair that after all the many adventures he had survived he was going to meet his doom during a chance encounter in the Worlds Edge Mountains. Then again, who knew when the day of their death would come? Everyone’s luck ran out eventually, and recently he had begun to suspect that he had had more than his fair share. He was only sorry that Ulrika was here – and that he was not with her at this final moment.

He glanced over at Gotrek to see how the Slayer was behaving now that his last moments were upon him. Fittingly enough, Felix decided. The dwarf was waving his axe and bellowing threats at the dragon. Snorri was egging him on.

From the corner of his eye, Felix saw something looping upwards to gain height above the dragon and then come crashing down like a swooping hawk.

Varek grasped the controls of his gyrocopter and gnawed his beard in frustration. He had done his best to slay the dragon but it ignored his organ gun and he could not hit it with his bombs. Now it was about to destroy the Spirit of Grungni.

Worse than that, aboard the airship was the lost treasure of Karag Dum and the Hammer of Firebeard, one of the legendary weapons of his people. If the Spirit of Grungni was destroyed the hammer might be lost once more, perhaps this time forever. Varek was proud of his part in this expedition, proud of being part of the airship’s crew, and prouder yet he had taken part in the expedition that had returned this ancient rune-weapon to his people. If they failed now, he knew that he would have to shave his head and become a Slayer to atone for his failure. He knew he could not live with the knowledge that they had come so far, suffered so much, and yet had failed at the last. He knew it would eat away at him for the rest of his life.

And a heartbeat after that the thought struck him, he knew the answer to his problem. If he became a Slayer he would need to seek his doom in combat against the mightiest of monsters. Before him was one of the mightiest. He would never find another so great, of that he was sure. He had a weapon that might kill it too, although at the cost of his life. Still, it was a mighty deed. A doom that would cause his name to live forever in the annals of his people and bring eternal glory to his clan and his ancestors. With a single action he could become a Dragon Slayer, and save the lives of all his fellows. Not wanting to give himself a chance to reconsider his decision, he acted immediately. He wrenched the control stick of his gyrocopter, jammed the throttle to full and aimed straight for the dragon before him.

The rotor blades hit first biting, great chunks out of the dragon’s flesh, then the nose rotors chopped in too. The sudden smashing impact ripped the engine apart, and a massive explosion smashed through Varek’s body.

His last regret before darkness took him was that he would never live to complete his book.

Felix watched the gyrocopter flash down on the dragon. At the last moment he got a glimpse of a familiar face. Varek, he thought, don’t do it! Even if his thought could have influenced Varek’s decision it was too late. The gyrocopter smashed into the dragon. Its rotor blades carved out great chunks of dragon flesh. The force of the impact smashed the dragon down and away from the airship. Moments later there was a massive explosion as the gyrocopter and its cargo of explosives ignited. A fireball enveloped the dragon as it fell. Felix could see no way anything could survive. He was wrong.

The dragon tumbled headlong towards the ground’s hungry embrace. Felix thought that any second it was going to smash into the ground but it did not. At the last moment, its wings snapped open, and its headlong fall stopped. As Felix watched it began to move upwards once more. At first he feared it was unharmed and coming for them again, but then to his relief he saw that its flight was wobbly and that it was heading off into the distance.

Grief tugged at his heart. He could not believe Varek was gone. The young dwarf had been a companion on one of his most dangerous adventures and suddenly he was just not there any more. Death’s claw had reached out and taken him. It was unjust, he decided, looking over at Gotrek and Snorri to see how the Slayers were taking it.

Gotrek wore a look of sorrow and respect and something else that Felix could not quite recognise. ‘A good death,’ he said slowly and painfully.

‘A great death,’ said Snorri. ‘He will be remembered.’

‘He will be avenged,’ Gotrek said and Felix knew he meant it.

Agony coursing through his ancient body, Skjalandir dropped away from the airship. In all his long life he had never felt such pain. It was no satisfaction that the creature who had inflicted the wound had died in the moment he struck. This was not good. Best return to his lair and heal. There would be time enough to seek revenge on these accursed creatures.

SIX

A HERO’S WELCOME

Felix stood on the command deck of the Spirit of Grungni. He could tell just by studying the gauges that things were bad. There was no response from about half the dials and the engines. Even from here, just the two remaining motors sounded terrible.

Makaisson limped through the door. Felix had never seen the engineer look so angry.

‘Bad?’ he asked.

‘Ah’ll say it bloody is. We’re lucky to still be up here. The suspension cables haddin’ the gondola tae the gasbag wir near frayed through in three places. Ah hae the lads makin’ some repairs but its joost jury-rig stuff. Matter o’ time before it ah goes horribly wrang.’

‘Doesn’t sound good,’ Felix said. This seemed to goad Makaisson to further fury.

‘Gasbag’s ripped! Twa o’ the injuns arnae workin’ right. Hulls broken in aboot twenty places! We’ve lost a turret and ah but yin on the gyros. Bloody hell. Ah tell ye. If it’s the last thing ah dae, ah’m gannae make that dragon pay for this. It’ll rue the day it ever attacked ma airship.’

Felix winced. He was sure that Makaisson meant what he said, but he could not see how he was going to fulfil his vow. They had hit the dragon with everything they had, and it had still flown away to its lair. Felix was not even sure they had driven it off. He had a feeling that it had let them go because it suited it. They had about as much chance of killing the dragon as Felix had of becoming emperor, he reckoned.

Old Borek limped onto the command deck. He looked more ancient than ever. His stick moved feebly, like that of a blind man, fumbling to find his way. His long beard dragged along the floor. He seemed to be at the end of his strength. The loss of his nephew had hit him hard.

‘I’m sorry about Varek,’ Felix said. ‘He was a fine dwarf.’

Borek looked up at him and smiled sadly.

‘He was, Felix Jaeger. He was. I should never have let him come on this expedition. I should never have let him leave the Lonely Tower but he wanted to come so badly...’

Felix remembered Varek’s courage in the depths of Karag Dum. His habit of jotting everything down in his great book. His sometimes annoying cheerfulness. His embarrassing hero worship of himself and Gotrek. His short sightedness. His light, slightly pedantic voice. It was difficult to believe that he would never see or hear the young dwarf again. He was surprised. It had been a long time since a death had affected him this badly.

‘He was a guid laddie,’ Makaisson said. ‘Ah probably shouldnae hae let him tak me intae teachin’ him to fly the gyro.’

‘If you hadn’t, my friend, I suspect none of us would be here right now.’

‘Aye – yer right. The laddie wis a hero.’

‘I am the last of my line now,’ Borek said. Felix saw two drops of water running down the old dwarf’s cheeks. Were they really tears? He looked away to spare the scholar embarrassment.

‘Well dinnae you worry! We’ll get the basturd that killed him. It’s joost gone right to the heid of my very ane list o’ grudges.’

Borek just looked away and shook his head in sorrow.

Max Schreiber stood on the rear observation deck, looking out through the cracked crystal of the window. It must have been shattered some time during the struggle with the dragon, but he was not sure how or when. The whole airship looked dreadful. Internal fixtures had come loose. The cargo crates and treasure chests had been tossed around during the fight, damaging themselves and anything they had hit. Two of the crew had been crushed to death. Twelve others had needed healing by Max’s magic.

He could tell that the airship was badly damaged just from the sick drone of the engines and the lack of headway they were making. Compared to their previous progress this was a snail’s pace. He wondered if they would ever get where they needed to go. It seemed that this flight had been dogged by one accident after the other. It was almost as if they were cursed. Perhaps Makaisson’s reputation for disaster was not so ill-deserved after all.

He watched the mountain valleys drift by below them. They were following the path of a stream that descended towards the lowlands. He guessed that the torrent of waterfalls would be beautiful if you were down there, but he knew he would never find out. He would probably never see these places again. Enjoy the view, he told himself. Make the most of this while you’re here. You will never come this way again. Somehow the cheery teachings of his mentors in the Golden Brotherhood seemed just a little precious in the aftermath of the battle with the dragon. And yet part of him knew that the words were true. He should enjoy the moment and he should be glad. The fight had shown him just how fragile life could be, and just how quickly it could end. Look at poor Varek and the dozen or so other casualties of the fight.

The engines stuttered for a moment, then fell silent. For an instant he felt the Spirit of Grungni drift like a rudderless boat on a river. Please, Sigmar, he prayed, aid us. Don’t let this happen now. He feared in his heart that the powerless airship might drift into a mountain side or that more of the gas nacelles would burst and they might drop to earth. In the valley below he saw a tiny group of figures moving along at speed. He was not sure but he thought he caught a hint of green.

‘Orcs,’ he heard Ulrika say from close by. He looked over, surprised.

‘Your eyes are better than mine,’ he said.

‘I’ve spent my life looking along the shaft of an arrow, not reading books by candlelight,’ she said. ‘And I long ago learned to recognise orcs at a great distance. Anyone who lives on the plains of Kislev dies swiftly if they do not.’

‘Are the greenskins so fearsome then?’ he asked. He already knew the answer, he just wanted to hear her voice.

‘Bad as Chaos warriors in their own way. Even more savage and they don’t know when they’re dead. I’ve seen an orc with two arrows through its heart and half its head cleaved away chop down half a dozen warriors before it died.’

‘So have I,’ Gotrek Gurnisson said. Max looked over at the Slayer. His massive form filled the hatchway leading into the observation deck. He moved surprisingly quietly for one so massive. Max had not heard him arrive either. ‘But a good axe will kill them all in the end.’

Max was relieved to hear the engines start up again. They began to move forward once more.

‘Wherever we’re going I hope we get there soon,’ he said.

‘We’ll have to wait till night and fix our position by the stars,’ Gotrek said. ‘Then we’ll have a better idea.’

Max wondered if the airship would even make it to nightfall. He had seen some of the ripped hawser cables. It was a miracle they were still here.

‘You’re very quiet,’ Ulrika said. Felix nodded and drew his cloak tighter about him. It was cold up atop the gasbag and the wind’s bite was cruel. They stood on the dorsal spine of the airship watching the two moons rise over the mountains. It was a sight of strange and intense beauty.

‘I was thinking about Varek. I never really knew him and now he’s gone.’

‘Death comes to everyone,’ she said. Felix looked at her. He wondered if he’d ever get used to the strong streak of fatalism in her. He supposed being brought up on the plains of North Kislev you got used to death early. He had not quite been so hardened before he set foot on the adventurer’s path. Being brought up the son of a rich merchant in Altdorf, the capital of the Empire, had left him quite sheltered. The only death he had really been aware of was that of his mother, when he was nine years old. He had been too young to really understand it.

‘I was wondering what he would have done differently today if he had got up knowing this was his last day in the world. To tell the truth, I was wondering what I would have done under the circumstances.’

‘Have you come to any conclusions?’

‘I might have told you that I loved you.’ Felix was surprised to hear himself say the words. He knew he had wanted to say them for a while but had been afraid to. He wasn’t sure why. She was silent for a long time. He wondered if she had heard him.

‘I might have told you the same thing,’ she said eventually. He felt a strange kick in his stomach when she said the words. He turned and looked away into the distance. He felt as close to her at that moment as he ever had to anybody.

‘Might?’ he asked.

She smiled too and nodded.

‘Might.’

They moved a little apart but their hands drifted together and their fingers interlocked. Overhead the stars glittered like specks of ice. The Spirit of Grungni ploughed on through the night.

Max looked through the spyglass at the stars. ‘You’re right,’ He said. ‘That’s the polar star, and that is the Fang of the Wolf.’

Makaisson was already making a notation on his chart. He moved the callipers from the point that indicated their position to a red dot. ‘Then the nearest place we can seek repairs is Slayer Keep,’ he said.

‘Slayer Keep?’ Max enquired.

‘Karak Kadrin. The city of the Slayer King. Tis a grim wee place.’

‘With a name like that I wasn’t expecting something from a Detlef Sierck comedy.’

‘Will dae joost as weel as onywhaur else, so it will.’

‘I’m sure it will, Malakai. You’re the expert.’

‘Aye that ah am.’

Makaisson bellowed orders into the speaking tube. Slowly, like a dying whale, the Spirit of Grungni responded, taking a new line through the mountains towards the city of the Slayer King.

Felix and Ulrika stood on the command deck of the Spirit of Grungni. Ahead of them, dour and foreboding in the clear light of a mountain morning, lay Slayer Keep. It was a massive fortress carved from the very rock of the mountain peak. Its buildings had not so much been built as carved from the bare rock. Only the outer walls differed. They were built from massive chunks of lichen-encrusted stone. The stonework looked old as the mountains.

Kadrin Peak itself was not the highest of the local mountains by any means, but it stood apart from all its surroundings, dominating a massive valley between two chains of higher, grander mountains. A river ran below it. Borek had told Felix that once a forest had filled the valley, but that it had long ago been chopped down to feed the furnaces of Slayer Keep. Below the city were some of the deepest, darkest and most dangerous mines in all the dwarf realms. There were seams of coal and iron down there that had been worked since before the foundation of the Empire. They provided the raw materials for Kadrin steel, famous through the dwarf realms and the lands of men for making the finest of axe blades. Clouds of dark polluted smoke hung over the city.

Felix did not think he had ever seen a more forbidding place. It was a grim fortress of crudely cut stone. Knowing the pride that dwarfs took in their masonry, Felix could only guess that the crudeness of the architecture was a statement of some sort. Karak Kadrin spoke of squat primitive power. It was a castle designed to be defended. A place meant to endure siege. An outpost in a place of infinite danger. He did not like the look of it particularly.

Already he could see warriors gathering on the walls. Various war engines were being brought to bear upon them. Ballistae, catapults and other things the purpose of which he could only guess were all being swivelled towards them. Even though Borek had insisted on draping rune banners from below the Spirit of Grungni, the occupants of Slayer Keep were treating them as a potential threat. Felix could see the sense in that. Had the airship appeared over any city of the Empire it would have caused similar consternation, even if it was flying the colours of Karl Franz himself.

As Felix watched, the last gyrocopter whisked past the airship and sped towards the city. It was a machine that would be recognised by any dwarf, and it carried a message for Ungrimm Ironfist, the Slayer King himself. Makaisson threw the engines of the Spirit of Grungni into reverse and they hovered just out of ballista range waiting for permission to land.

‘A grim place,’ Felix said to Ulrika. She nodded agreement to him. They had been strangely shy of each other since their conversation last night. He could not speak for her, but he was relatively new to all of this. He had felt no strong emotional attachment to anyone since the death of Kirsten at Fort von Diehl.

‘As well it might be, Felix Jaeger,’ Borek said from his chair. He looked up at Felix with rheumy old eyes, from which all the spark of triumph had vanished. ‘If you knew its history, you would understand more. Slayer Keep has endured more sieges than any other dwarfhold, and it is the home of the Cult of Slayers, and the Shrine of Grimnir, who is the most bloodthirsty of all our Ancestor Gods.’

‘You say Grimnir is bloodthirsty.’ Ulrika asked. ‘Does he accept living sacrifices then?’

‘Only the lives of his Slayers. He takes their death in payment for their sins. And their hair.’

Borek must have noticed the startled look pass across Felix’s face, for he added, ‘Most Slayers take their vow before the great altar of Grimnir down there, that is where they shave their heads, then they burn their hair in the great furnace. Outside is the street of skin artists, where they have their first tattoos inked into their flesh.’

‘Did Gotrek take his vow there?’ Ulrika asked. Felix tilted his head. The question had crossed his mind too.

‘I don’t believe so. To my knowledge he has never set foot in this city before, though I do not know all of his deeds.’

‘Then is he really a Slayer?’ asked Ulrika. Borek smiled.

‘It does not matter where a dwarf takes the oath and shaves his head. He is a Slayer when it is done. Many choose to take the oath at Grimnir’s shrine for the sake of form. They have their names carved on the great pillar in the temple and that way all will know of their passing from life.’

‘But they’re not yet dead,’ Ulrika said.

‘Not yet. But to family and friends, to clan and hearth, a dwarf is dead the moment he takes the oath. It may be that Gotrek chose you as a rememberer, Felix Jaeger, because he had not yet had his name carved on the pillar of woe.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ said Felix.

‘No one would know of his deed had he fallen in a far place with no dwarfs to witness it. A rememberer would bring word of his doom to us, and see his name carved on the pillar.’

‘That is not what he asked me to do.’

Borek smiled sourly. ‘The son of Gurni was never conventional even before he became a Slayer. Once he greatly craved renown. I think in a way he still does.’

Felix was about to ask more when he was interrupted by a dull roaring noise from the distance.

‘What is that?’ he asked. ‘Are we being attacked?’

The sour smile widened on Borek’s face. ‘I would guess that the Slayer King has received word of our quest’s success. That is cheering you hear.’

And indeed it was, thought Felix, as the battered airship half-drifted over the dwarf city. Looking down all he could see was a seething ocean of dwarf faces, looking up. He could hear roaring and chanting. Drums beat, mighty horns sounded. Banners and flags were draped from every window of the city. Felix wondered where they found space to house all those dwarfs. The fortress city did not look large enough to be home to all of them. Then he remembered that like the great ice mountains floating in the Sea of Claws, most of a dwarfhold was hidden from sight, leaving only their smallest portion visible on the surface.

Below them he saw an enormous structure, squat and massive, with a massive sculpture of two crossed axes inset in its roof. Strange runes were set on the stonework that reminded Felix of those he had seen blazing on Gotrek’s axe. He guessed they held some mystical significance for dwarfs.

He looked at Ulrika and smiled. It was the first time in his life he could ever remember being welcomed as a hero anywhere.

Grey Seer Thanquol looked at Lurk. Lurk glared back at the magician with loathing in his eyes. Thanquol’s magic had brought down a grazing elk. Lurk had consumed most of it before Thanquol had even buried his snout in the flesh. He was not best pleased.

Granted, he needed far less meat than his mutated henchman, and he could not have eaten one hundredth of what Lurk had anyway, but that was not the point. It was the disrespect that galled him. He was a grey seer. Lurk was a lowly warrior even if he was now a huge and powerful mutant. He should have waited till after Thanquol ate his fill before beginning this disgusting orgy of consumption, and he should have asked Thanquol’s leave to eat. He was, after all, a mere lackey.

Briefly Thanquol considered pointing this out. Very briefly. Lurk was now far more physically powerful than Thanquol. The seer’s full magical power had yet to come back after the battle, and he had only the smallest piece of warpstone left to augment his energies. He wanted to save it for an emergency.

No, he decided. It was merely prudent skaven caution to avoid a confrontation with Lurk at this moment. He knew he was physically no match for the great brute. But then again, he consoled himself, what did that matter? As a feeble and skinny runt he had used his gigantic intellect to exact vengeance on skaven far larger and stronger than he. The same thing would happen here eventually, of that he was certain. Also, the thought had crossed his mind that the more Lurk ate now, the less likely he would be tempted to kill and eat Thanquol later. The grey seer had seen some of the hungry glances his minion had been shooting at him. They were in no sense reassuring.

‘Where are we, most knowledgeable of navigators?’ Lurk asked. Thanquol wondered if he detected just a hint of irony in Lurk’s tone. He dismissed the thought instantly. Lurk was far too stupid to mock his master.

‘We are coming ever nearer to our destination,’ Thanquol replied with his best oracular vagueness.

‘And where exactly is that, most sagacious of seers?’

‘Cease this relentless badgering, Lurk. If it was in your best interests to know our whereabouts, reveal them to you I would. Let me worry about such matters. You just continue to eat!’

There, thought Thanquol, that showed Lurk. And it gave him some time to think, which was good. For, if the truth be told, Thanquol had no idea where they were. In the storm they had wandered aimlessly. The driving rain had obscured everything more than a few tail lengths from view. He guessed that they were on course, for the mountains were still ahead of them. Once there it should simply mean following the path southwards until they came upon a gateway to the Underways. If worst came to worst, Thanquol knew he could always use some of his power to cast a divination spell. Come to think of it, it might be worth telling Lurk that. It might prevent the massive dolt from braining Thanquol while he slept.

Thanquol considered sneaking off while Lurk rested, and making his own way back. Two things prevented it. He suspected that he might be safer with the mutant here on the plains. The Kislevites would doubtless attack the larger of them first on the mistaken assumption that it was the most dangerous. The second reason was that Thanquol suspected Lurk might well be able to track him down. His senses were as keen as any skaven Thanquol had ever known. And in that case sneaking off would only leave Thanquol with the onerous task of explaining his business. For Lurk in his new impudent state might take exception to such behaviour on the grey seer’s part. Prudent skaven caution argued for staying with Lurk at least for the moment.

Once this was over, though, Thanquol swore, things would be different. He would exact a vengeance on Lurk that would be spoken of in terrified whispers by future generations. That would teach him to heap such indignities on the head of a grey seer.

All except the skeleton crew of the Spirit of Grungni were ushered towards the palace of the Slayer King. An honour guard of warriors clashed their axes upon their shields. Hargrim and the other survivors of Karag Dum had looked stunned at the sheer scale of their welcome. They had once believed themselves the only dwarfs left in the world. Now they knew differently. Felix felt proud to be there. The cheers of the crowds still rang in his ears. He could recall dwarf children running into the street to touch the hem of his cloak so that they could tell their descendants they had done so. Until they had pushed their way through the massed cheering throng, Felix had no idea of the scale of their deed or what it really meant to the dwarf people.

His association with Gotrek, characterised as it was mostly by outlawry and failure, had in no way prepared him for this. It was like being a king. Perhaps this is how Emperor Karl Franz felt every time he rode though Altdorf, Felix thought, and turned and beamed at Ulrika. She smiled up at him proudly. It seemed she too had no idea of what the Spirit of Grungni had accomplished until this moment.

Looking at his companions, Felix felt happier than he had in a long time. The acclaim even seemed to have raised the spirits of Borek and Makaisson, and since Varek’s death these two had looked as thoroughly miserable as any dwarfs Felix had ever seen, which was saying something.

Only Gotrek looked glum. His expression was as sour as that of a man sucking on a lemon. He glared at the crowd from under his bristling brows with his one good eye, and paused only to occasionally spit at an onlooker who came too close to touching his axe.

‘Why so gloomy?’ Felix asked. Gotrek shot him a glare that would have daunted anybody else. ‘I want to know for the telling of your tale,’ Felix added.

‘Tis of no consequence,’ Gotrek said. ‘And it would not do to mention it in my death poem.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

Gotrek sucked his few remaining teeth, spat on the ground, and worked his thumb into the empty socket below his eyepatch. Felix thought he was not going to reply, but then a shame-faced look passed across the Slayer’s face. ‘I was thinking that if I had died slaying the daemon, it would have been the mightiest doom ever achieved by a Slayer. A laughable, empty vanity, manling, but it crossed my mind.’

Felix did not know what to say so he kept quiet. Ulrika looked at Gotrek, astonished, as if she had never considered the dwarf capable of such an admission. ‘Well, I am glad you’re still alive, and that you brought Felix back.’

To Felix’s astonishment the Slayer laughed. He looked as if he was going to clap Ulrika on the back but caught himself, and forced himself to look grim once more. He glared at the ground, as if embarrassed. At that moment, Felix caught some indication of how much this approbation really meant to the Slayer, how much it actually meant to him to be cheered by his people, and just how well he was hiding it.

I’m happy for him, thought Felix; he has little enough in his life to give him joy.

The Slayer King was a morose-looking dwarf, squat and powerful like all his race, his hair cut in the distinctive crested fashion favoured by the Cult of Grimnir. His features were massive and his nose was long and beaky. His eyes glittered with a maniacal intelligence. His voice when he spoke was resonant and powerful. ‘Greetings, Borek Forkbeard. Greetings, Gotrek, son of Gurni. Greetings Snorri Nosebiter. Greetings Malakai, son of Makai.’

Felix feared the Slayer King was going to greet them all by name, and his fears proved well-founded. He did so.

‘You have performed a deed of great renown, all of you. Not in all the long years since I ascended my father’s throne have I heard of such heroism. The return of Firebeard’s hammer is a blessing beyond measure to the kingdom of the dwarfs, and all the kin of Grungni have cause to thank you this day. If there is any boon I can grant you, you have but to name it and–’

‘Aye, there is,’ said Makaisson.

The Slayer King paused and eyed Makaisson balefully. He was just getting into his oratorical stride and obviously had not anticipated any interruptions just yet. Felix wondered if all dwarf kings were so long-winded.

‘You have but to tell me, and if it’s in my power–’

‘Ah want a workshop and the service of twenty blacksmiths, and ah want to ken everythin’ you can fin oot aboot a big beast o’ a dragon that dwells aboot fifty leagues northwest o’ here...’

A gasp passed around the room. ‘That would be Skjalandir, the ancient firedrake. Why?’ enquired the Slayer King, obviously shocked to brevity.

‘Ah’m gannae kill the basturd,’ Makaisson said. ‘Stone deid!’

‘And I’m going to help him,’ Gotrek said.

‘Snorri Nosebiter will too,’ said Snorri. A huge roar of applause passed through the chamber.

‘Truly you are stalwart examples to Slayers the world over,’ said the Slayer King. ‘You have no sooner returned from one mighty deed than you show willing to start another...’

Listening to this madness, it struck Felix that there was a larger issue here which should be addressed. While the Slayers were excited about the prospect of facing the dragon once more, a massive Chaos army was on the move. In the great scheme of things he was sure it posed a larger threat to the world than a single dragon ever would. He thought he saw an opportunity here to make a difference, and to help Ulrika’s people and his own.

‘There is another thing worth mentioning,’ Felix spoke up. All eyes in the chamber turned to him. He felt suddenly selfconscious. He was well aware that not all the dwarfs looking at him were pleased that a human was daring to speak in the throne room of their king.

‘And what is that, Felix Jaeger?’ asked the Slayer King.

‘A huge Chaos army approaches from the north.’

‘Does it pursue you?’ the Slayer King asked. Felix paused for a moment to think about this. It was something he had never considered. Had their deeds in Karag Dum been the start of all this, the pebble that caused the avalanche? He doubted it. The whole idea was too far fetched.

‘No. I do not think so.’

‘Then why is it a problem? I can see that if–’

‘Because soon it will enter Kislev, and if it is not stopped there, it will thrust onwards into the lands of dwarfs and men.’

‘Surely that is a bridge that will be crossed when we come to it?’

Felix could see that this was going to be the old, old story. The forces of Darkness were someone else’s problem. Men and dwarfs would not unite their forces until after it was too late. The enemy would be dealt with only once it became an immediate threat. In the meantime others could fight and die facing it. Felix realised he was being unfair but he felt a little angry. He had learned enough about dwarfs not to let his anger show. They became unbearably stubborn in any form of conflict.

‘I suppose all the glory of facing it will belong to the people of Kislev and their Imperial allies then,’ he said calmly. A quiet came over the room, and he knew he had their full undivided attention. ‘I mentioned it only because this dwarfhold is known as Slayer Keep, and when the Chaos force arrives there will be many mighty monsters to slay and dreadful foes to face.’

A murmur went around the room. Felix knew that his words would be passed around the city swiftly. Even if the king offered no aid, he felt sure that many Slayers would go to Kislev in the hope of achieving a mighty death. To make his point absolutely clearly, he added,. ‘It would be a great and memorable doom to fall in such a battle. After all, who does not remember those heroes who fell in defence of Praag during the last great war against Chaos?’

Ungrimm Ironfist’s reply surprised Felix. ‘That was but a short time ago as dwarfs reckon such things, Felix Jaeger, but your point is well taken. I will think upon what you have said.’

Of course, Felix thought, dwarfs live longer than men, and their records stretch back further. To them two centuries was not so long ago. Old Borek there had actually been alive during the last great Chaos incursion. Borek’s rheumy eyes caught Felix’s glance and seemed to be aware of what he was thinking. The old dwarf leaned forward on his staff and spoke.

‘Felix Jaeger speaks to good purpose, your majesty. I can indeed recall the last war with Chaos and it was a dreadful thing. If another such conflict is in the offing we had best prepare now, make new alliances and stand by the old ones. For those of us who have but recently been in the Wastes have seen this foe at first hand and know how terrible it is.’

The Slayer King nodded. Borek continued to speak. ‘It may be that the Hammer of Firebeard was returned to us at this time by the will of the Ancestor Gods to aid us in the coming battle. Perhaps all of this is part of a greater design than we can comprehend.’

‘I will seek guidance at the Temple of Grimnir,’ said the Slayer King. ‘It may well be that what you say is true.’

Felix felt grateful to the old dwarf for his wisdom and understanding.

‘That’s aw very weil,’ Makaisson said. ‘Ah still want that dragon deid. Ah would like to use your engineering shops and your forges. Ah think ah hae an idea o’ hoo tae dae it.’

‘Whatever you require shall be provided, Malakai Makaisson, and my own personal engineers shall be put at your service.’

Makaisson did not look quite so happy at this, Felix thought. He guessed that the prospect of sharing his new designs with the king’s engineers did not thrill him. Like many a dwarf engineer, Makaisson preferred to keep his secrets, Felix guessed. On the other hand, he could not turn down the king’s offer with good grace and still expect aid. Makaisson seemed to have come to the same conclusion.

‘Aye, weel, that’ll dae fine.’

Felix and Ulrika inspected their chamber. It was spartan in the style he had come to expect at Karak Kadrin, but at least the bed and other furnishings were built on a human scale. It was obvious this place was designed for human emissaries and equally obvious that it had not been used in some time. The air smelled a little musty. Instead of blankets a mass of furs covered the bed.

‘I thought that was never going to end,’ Ulrika said. ‘Dwarfs can be very long-winded when they want to be.’

Felix agreed. ‘True. Still this was an important thing for them. In some ways I suppose it would be as if one of the Runefangs had been lost and returned to the Empire. Probably more so. Firebeard’s hammer appears to have religious significance to them.’

‘Everything seems to,’ Ulrika said. There was an undertone of antagonism to her words. She seemed to be wanting to disagree with him, and he with her. They had been this way ever since their talk that night on the Spirit of Grungni. Felix guessed they were both nervous about what the future held for them. He reached out and stroked her cheek. She caught his hand and turned it palm up to kiss it.

‘What is going to happen to us, Felix?’ she asked suddenly.

Felix looked at her. He was wondering that himself. All through this long day there had been a strange tension between them, an undertone of anger that he did not quite understand. What was there to be so nervous about? They had survived the trip here, lived through an encounter with a dragon, and the near destruction of the airship. Why were they behaving so now?

He looked down at her beautiful face. She had never seemed so lovely. He searched for an answer to her question within himself. Perhaps it was the very fact that they were safe that was causing them this stress. Now, at least for the moment, there were no external threats to distract them, nothing to keep them from the question that was now being asked. What was to become of them?

Their lives were so uncertain. A massive Chaos army approached from the north. Perhaps it was the harbinger of the end of the world. Somewhere far to the north her father and his riders might even now be facing the oncoming horde. Gotrek, Malakai and Snorri Nosebiter seemed determined to go and face the dragon. Ulrika had been charged with a mission to the Ice Queen. She almost certainly would have no home to go back to. And what could he offer her?

He was not rich. He had been disowned by his family and then rejected their offer of reconciliation. He was merely a landless wanderer bound to record the Slayer’s doom. Worse than that, he was starting to suspect that it was his own doom too. He and Gotrek had travelled so far and survived so much that their destinies seemed intertwined. He could almost believe that the Slayer was destined to perform some world-shaking deed and it was his duty to witness it.

He realised that the silence had stretched for many heartbeats and he still had not answered her, that he had no answer to give. ‘I do not know,’ he said softly, ‘and I wish I did.’

‘So do I,’ she said. ‘So do I.’

She leaned forward and kissed him, and they fell entwined onto the bed.

Max Schreiber stalked the streets of Karak Kadrin, knowing that he had found what he was looking for. Around him the buildings were higher, the doorways taller. In the narrow alleyways, he could hear human voices mingling with the deeper tones of the dwarfs. Men and women of the Empire looked at him from the open fronts of shops. They sat among their goods. Some looked at him speculatively, seeing him for what he was. Others shouted invitations to him to come in and study their wares. Max smiled. Even in these remote mountains, in this citadel of the Elder Race, there was a small human quarter. Men and dwarfs were bound by many ancient ties of faith and alliance, but none were more ancient than the bonds of trade. He had known that even here, in this distant highland city, he would find merchants, and with them a way of communicating with his order and his allies. He reached inside his robes and found the letter he had written and closed with his own rune. He smiled, feeling the magic he had woven into it. No one but a member of his order would be able to open the letter without the script vanishing like mist in the morning sun.

Just in case, though, he had written the message in code which he hoped was readable only to one of his fellows. In the letter he had put all he knew of the Spirit of Grungni’s journey and the oncoming Chaos army. He mentioned the increased skaven activity along the border and he described in detail his encounter with the grey seer and the spells that it had unleashed. In this way, he thought, even if something happened to him, those who came after would be better prepared to deal with the ratman threat. In a way it was a testament to his life as well as a report to his superiors in the order of the Golden Hammer. He knew his report was timely. It had been a long time since any member of the ancient society had ventured as far north as Max had, and even knowing what he did about the Powers of Chaos, he had been shocked by what he had seen and heard. The arm of Chaos had grown long, and Kislev itself was threatened. And Kislev was the bulwark of the Empire against the incursions of Chaos. If it fell, then the hordes of Darkness could drive deep into the lands of men. And he did not doubt that many traitors would rise up to aid them, and the monsters and mutants of the woods would emerge and...

Max knew only too well how frail the Empire was, and how easily it might fall into darkness. It was what his order had been formed to guard against. He knew that he must send a warning. He hoped to deliver it himself in person, but the future was never certain, and who knew what might happen to him? This letter was a safeguard against ill-chance. Even if he were to die, he hoped his warning and his knowledge would find its way into the right hands.

He paused in front of a tavern, bearing the sign of the Emperor’s Griffon. He knew that he needed to find traders returning to the lands of men, preferably some who were heading all the way to Middenheim. This was a place he had been told he might find some. He took a deep breath and entered the beery warmth of the tavern’s interior.

As he entered the place fell silent. He knew he had been recognised as one of the men who had arrived on the airship. He glanced around and smiled. Immediately someone offered to buy him a drink. He smiled his acceptance and prepared himself to answer a thousand questions.

Hopefully, after that, he would find someone to deliver his message.

Felix looked out of the chamber window. It was small and circular, and covered with thick well-made glass. Through it, he could see a fine view of the mountains opposite. Behind him, he heard Ulrika stir on the bed.

‘I must be leaving soon,’ she said. Felix nodded, wondering what business she had here in the Slayer King’s palace.

‘Where are you going?’

‘The court of the Ice Queen.’ He continued to gaze at the mountain opposite, noticing the crown of clouds around its peak. Suddenly the meaning of her words sank in, and he swung around to look at her.

‘Right now?’ he asked, his heart sinking.

‘Now is as good a time as any. I have a message to deliver to my queen.’

‘You can’t,’ Felix said. Her posture stiffened. Her face became a controlled mask.

‘What do you mean by that? Who are you to tell me what I can or cannot do?’

‘I am not trying to tell you what to do.’ Felix knew that she was right. He had meant to tell her she could not go, he did not want her to, but at the same time he also knew he had no power over her. He searched for a way to retrieve the situation. ‘I was just saying you don’t know the way.’

‘I dare say I can find out. Someone here must know the way back to human lands.’ She sounded unreasonably angry. Once again, Felix suspected she was trying to pick a fight. ‘The king will know for sure, and there must be libraries with maps. Perhaps he can arrange a guide.’

‘Why not wait until the Spirit of Grungni is repaired. It will surely get you there much quicker than your own two feet. And a lot more safely.’

‘In the way it got us here safely you mean?’

‘Yes. No. I mean, once it’s repaired it can cross these mountains a hundred times as swiftly as a man or woman on foot.’

‘Maybe, but how long will that take? And who says I must go afoot? Surely there must be some horses in this city.’

‘Dwarfs are not famous for their cavalry,’ he told her.

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

‘I am not being sarcastic. They don’t use horses much save to draw carts, and as pit ponies.’

‘There are human traders here.’

‘We are in the mountains. They most likely use mules, if anything.’

‘You have an answer for everything, don’t you?’

Where did this anger come from, Felix wondered? Why were they both so prickly? He was confused. This was not like the stories he had read, the plays he had seen. There were emotions here lurking below the surface, like pike in a pond. Emotions that did not seem logically connected with their words or with their relationship, and which he knew were somehow part of it. How could he be attracted to this woman, care for her, and still be so annoyed by her attitude? How could she feel the same way about him? Somewhere he felt there was a gap between his image of love and the reality of it, and it was not something he had been prepared for by books and poems.

‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘I don’t. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you.’

He hoped his expression of concern might pacify her a little but it did not. ‘Something bad has already happened,’ she said. ‘It’s happening to the entire world.’

Felix could not fault her reasoning there. He felt the same way. He reached out to pull her close, but she backed away. Unreasoningly annoyed, he turned and walked away himself. The door made a satisfying slamming noise behind him, but already he felt weak, and foolish and guilty.

Max poured another goblet of wine for his newfound companions. If they had noticed that he had slowed his own drinking they did not seem to care. Boris Blackshield and his brother, Hef, were hard drinking men, and weren’t too picky about who paid the tab. After all, as Boris was quick to point out, with the Manflayer loose in the mountains, and the dragon burning the vales, who knew whether you would be alive tomorrow? He seemed proud of the fact that he and his brother blew all of their pay as caravan guards as soon as they hit town, and would leave again with nothing in their purses save their fire-making flints. After all, it just meant that any orc that killed them wouldn’t make a profit on the transaction.

Max didn’t really care. Their caravan master had already retired to his chamber but before he did so he had agreed to deliver Max’s message to a certain address in the Ulrikstrasse in Middenheim, on the understanding that he would receive several gold coins for his trouble. Seeing the glint in the merchant’s eye, Max did not doubt it would be delivered. The Ulrikstrasse was only two streets away from the market to which the merchant was bound, and two gold pieces was a hefty reward for a short step. Max knew he most likely should have left after concluding the bargain, but when he had heard men discussing the road to the dwarf city he had decided to stay. After all, he might have to walk home, if the Spirit of Grungni could not be repaired, and it did no harm to find out a bit about one’s route. Unfortunately, what he heard was more than a little discouraging.

‘Tell me about this Manflayer again,’ he said to Hef.

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Humour me, and assume I do.’

‘Big orc chieftain, he is, and a bad one. Likes to skin his enemies alive and make his tent from their cured flesh. They say he’s assembling an army of greenskins in the mountains, and intends to drive the dwarfs out of their cities.’

‘That doesn’t seem very likely. This is the strongest fortress I have ever seen...’

‘Except Middenheim,’ Boris said drunkenly.

‘Except Middenheim,’ Max agreed gently. ‘Surely no mere orc warlord could take it.’

‘You can never tell with orcs,’ said Hef. ‘They’re sneaky and clever savages and they say this one has a shaman behind him, a shaman with powerful magic.’

Max felt a prickling of professional interest. ‘I’d like to hear about this shaman.’

‘Don’t know much,’ Hef said. ‘Just heard tales from the survivors of the caravans they attacked.’

‘Not that there’s many of them,’ said Boris. ‘And all of them was fast runners. Who takes the word of yellow-bellies?’

‘Just tell me what you heard,’ Max said persuasively and poured more wine.

‘They say he speaks with the old orc gods,’ said Boris.

‘And that the gods listen,’ added Hef.

‘The gods listen to everyone who prays to them,’ said Max. ‘I don’t imagine that orc gods are much different from ours.’

‘The difference is that the orc gods answer this shaman’s prayers. They say he can tumble cliffs with a howl and smash the walls of forts with a wave of his hand.’

‘Maybe he’ll do it to the walls of this city,’ said Hef.

Max doubted it. The dwarfs had worked runes into their walls that were as potent as any defensive spell known to man, and more powerful than most. It would take more than some howling spellshouter to tumble them down. Max was possessed of a great deal of knowledge about defensive magic, and he doubted that he could protect this city any better if he had a hundred good apprentices and twenty years to work in. It wasn’t places like Karak Kadrin that were at risk, he knew. It was the small villages and trader towns along the way.

In any case, though, what he was hearing wasn’t good. There were dragons in the mountains and orc warbands gathering. In the north, a Chaos horde advanced, and he had seen for himself that the skaven were active once more. It looked like all those seers prophesying dark times a-coming had the right of it. The world was in a bad way, he thought. Maybe he should drink some more wine. He fought down the urge.

‘Tell me about the dragon,’ he said.

‘It’s big and it’s bad and it’s burned most of the villages between here and the eastern lands.’

‘That’s all you know?’

‘It’s an old beast or so I’ve heard, slept for centuries until something woke it.’

‘Woke it?’

‘Aye. They say two hundred years ago it took up residence in a cave on Dragon Mountain, ravaged the land and then just as suddenly vanished. Some thought it had died. It seems now it was only sleeping. They say dragons can do that. Sleep for centuries.’

‘Very old dragons do that,’ said Max. ‘So I’ve read.’

‘You can read?’ asked Boris.

‘Aye. Have some more wine.’

The sellswords drank and talked but Max was not listening too closely any more. Could the dragon really have slept for all this time? And if so, what had wakened it? Maybe it’s just the coming of Chaos, he thought. Maybe it’s just a sign of the times.

Or perhaps it was something else entirely. There was a pattern emerging here, he felt sure of it. He sensed something dark and evil at work.

The forge blazed brightly. The heat was sweltering. Felix noticed it as soon as he walked into the chamber. He halted for a moment and took a deep breath. His anger had burned down now and he felt more guilty than ever. Perhaps he should go back and speak to Ulrika and patch things up. Part of him wanted to do that and part of him fought stubbornly against it. The latter part won. Anyway, he had come here to find something out, and he might as well continue.

He glanced around, looking for Makaisson. Amid the heat and fumes, it was difficult to be sure if he was there. There were many dwarfs present working bellows, hammering cherry-hot metal into new shapes, working with odd engines the purpose of which Felix could not even begin to guess at. All of them were moving with the sort of purposefulness that only dwarfs with a mission could muster.

‘Where’s Makaisson?’ he asked, reaching out and grabbing the shoulder of the nearest passing dwarf. The squat muscular figure jerked a thumb in the direction of one of the other doorways and continued on his way.

Felix moved through the workroom and ducked his head as he entered the chamber beyond. Makaisson was there all right, bending low over a table containing plans and schematics marked with what Felix recognised as the runes used by the Engineers Guild. He looked up as the man came in, sucked his teeth and said, ‘Aye, weel, whaut can ah dae for ye, young Felix?’

‘I was wondering when the Spirit of Grungni will be ready to leave.’

‘A couple o’ weeks maest likely. Plenty o’ time to get this stuff sorted oot and gae that bloody dragon a guid seein’ tae.’

‘You’re not serious,’ said Felix, although he knew the Slayer Engineer was most likely all too serious. He had hoped the airship would be repaired soon and could carry Ulrika all the way to the court of the Ice Queen. He had hoped that it might take him with her.

‘Ah am so. That big lizard damn near smashed ma airship, and he killed pare young Varek. That’s a grudge tae its credit that ah’ll soon be settlin’, believe you me.’

‘How? We barely scratched the thing.’

‘Aye, well, ah hae a few thoughts aboot that, don’t ye worry. There’s a few wee engines ah’ve haud the idea o’ for years, and right noo, ah think is as guid a time as ony to be buildin’ them.’

‘What good can any weapons do against a thing as mighty as Skjalandir?’

‘Ah would hae thocht that by noo ye’s hae mare faith in ma machines, Felix Jaeger.’

‘I do have faith in your skill, Malakai, but–’

‘Well, ah don’t suppose ah can blame ye. It was a bloody big beastie richt enough. Even so it can still be killed with the right weapon. Any livin’ thing can.’

‘So what are you building?’ Felix asked, glancing over at the plans. Malakai moved between him and the spread sheets of parchment. Like all dwarf engineers, Felix guessed he could be more than a little touchy when it came to sharing his designs with the world. A very secretive people, the dwarfs.

Makaisson looked up at him for a moment then grinned. ‘Tak a look if ye want,’ he said, stepping aside, ‘Though ah doobt ye’ll be able to make hade nor tail o’ them.’

Felix looked down and saw that the dwarf was right. The blue papers were covered in squiggles. To some of the lines were attached runic symbols, to others there were none. It was like looking at a scroll inscribed by a particularly demented astrologer.

‘You’re right. I have no idea what these are,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

Makaisson rubbed his meaty hands together in satisfaction. ‘Ye’ll find oot soon enough, don’t ye worry. Noo, oot ye go, young Felix. Ah hae got a lot o’ work tae dae, and no all that much time to dae it in.’

With that he shooed Felix out of the workshop and into the street. Felix trudged back towards the palace. It was time to bring Ulrika the news. Somehow he just knew she wasn’t going to be pleased.

SEVEN

PREPARATIONS

Felix looked around the tavern blearily. He did not care for it. The Iron Door was a haunt of lowlifes – Slayers, tunnel fighters, renegade engineers, outcast mercenaries and others. It had the reputation for being the nastiest hellhole in the city of the Slayer King, which was saying something. For all that, he noticed, the scarred and surly dwarfs were giving their table a wide berth. Felix was quite glad of it. He was now the only human present, and he did not doubt that if he had not been in the company of Gotrek and Snorri, he would have been in deep trouble.

He knew he was drunk. It seemed that in the past few days he had done very little except drink. While Ulrika studied maps and made ready to depart, Borek and Max scoured the libraries for more information on the dragon and Malakai built his machines, he and the Slayers had done little else but throw down ale. And why not? There was nothing else to do. His fights with Ulrika had gotten worse, and the prospect of heading out to the Dragon Mountain did not fill him with good cheer. Why not get drunk? Why not enjoy himself?

Where was Max? The wizard had disappeared again. He had only stayed long enough to drink a few goblets of wine and tell them what he had found out. The things he had said were enough to drive any man to drink. Skjalandir was old and powerful. He had awoken a few months ago and in that time he had already driven most of the dwarfs out of the high valleys and burned down most of the towns. A force of mercenaries hired by villagers had never returned nor had any of the many Slayers who had set out to kill him. It was feared that one day soon the monster would attack Karak Kadrin. No one had any idea what would happen then, but they all knew it would be bad. So why not get drunk? Ulrika might not approve, but so what? As she had pointed out, he could not tell her what to do so why should he let her order him about? He would get drunk if he wanted to, no matter how much she sulked.

And now he was drunk, gloriously so. They all were: Gotrek, Snorri Nosebiter, and himself. He was perhaps a trifle less inebriated than the others but it was touch and go. He had not drunk a quarter of what the Slayers had drunk but dwarf ale was stronger by far than human ale, and he did not have their tolerance for it.

The tavern was full. All around were the seediest dwarf warriors Felix had seen since they had fought their way through the halls of Karag Dum. As he considered this, he realised that they were being watched.

The stranger lurked in a shadowy alcove of the tavern. His features were in shadow but Felix could see from his outline that he had the towering crested haircut that was the mark of a Slayer. He seemed to become aware of Felix’s eyes upon him and a head poked out of the shadows. Felix saw a narrow-featured dwarf with mean eyes and a close-cropped beard. His crest was dyed grey and was shorter than Gotrek’s. He was lean and quite skinny for a dwarf and his jaws worked constantly as if he were chewing something. Tattoos covered his face and bare arms in odd patterns. He sauntered closer to their table. Felix could see he had a long dagger strapped to his leg and a short handled pick slung over his shoulder. His britches and vest were black, his sleeveless shirt grey.

‘Hear you’re going looking for a dragon,’ the stranger said. His voice was low, and the words seemed to come out of the corner of his mouth. He eyed the trio at the table stealthily.

‘What of it?’ asked Gotrek.

‘Dragons have gold.’

‘So I’ve heard. What is it to you?’

‘Skjalandir has a big hoard. Should do anyway. That old firedrake has terrorised these mountains for nigh on a thousand years.’

‘It’s not its gold I’m interested in, it’s its life. I mean to kill the thing or die in the attempt,’ Gotrek said.

‘Not if Snorri Nosebiter gets there first,’ said Snorri.

‘Quite so. I understand exactly. And a mighty death it would be for a Slayer too. I mean to try it myself.’

‘Can’t stop you,’ said Gotrek. ‘Just don’t get in my way.’

‘Fair enough. Mind if I sit and sup with you a while?’

‘As long as you can pay for your own beer,’ said Gotrek.

‘I can do that and buy a round for you all too,’ said the newcomer.

Gotrek’s and Snorri’s eyes widened. Felix gathered this was uncharacteristic behaviour for a dwarf.

‘Steg, called by some the Light-fingered, at your service.’

‘A thief,’ Gotrek said tactlessly.

‘Once, to my shame,’ said Steg. ‘But I’m a Slayer now.’

‘You got caught!’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

‘Aye, in the treasure chamber of the Vorgrund clan with the amber necklace in my hands.’ The other Slayers looked at him with interest.

‘I’m surprised the Vorgrunds didn’t cut your knackers off.’

‘They intended to. First they threw me into their dungeon but I picked the locks and escaped. There was a hidden passageway out of their citadel. Of course, there was the shame of being caught and unmasked so I became a Slayer.’

‘The shame of being caught!’ Gotrek spluttered. Felix was not surprised at Gotrek’s outrage. He had always contrived to give the impression that dwarfs had higher standards of honesty than humans. Steg seemed to contradict this, although Felix thought the thief seemed a bit odd by dwarf standards. There was an almost boastful quality to the way he spoke, that was completely at odds with the reticence of Gotrek and Snorri. He was not entirely sane, Felix thought. On the other hand, how many Slayers were?

‘Aye. Once I was unmasked no one would speak to me, my clan ostracised me, my betrothed disowned me, which seemed particularly unfair because I only wanted the necklace as a marriage gift for her.’

Gotrek glared at Steg. Snorri looked on in unabashed amazement. Steg was confessing to the most heinous of all dwarf crimes, shamelessly and in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice. If Steg noticed he did not give any sign. ‘So it was off to the Shrine of Grimnir for a haircut and a beard trim.’

‘You don’t seem particularly ashamed,’ Felix said. Steg looked at him.

‘Young human, I am a locksmith by trade, and a thief by compulsion. I am ashamed because I brought dishonour on my clan, and because through my lack of skill I was caught. I seek to atone for my crime by death but before I die, I intend restitution to those I have wronged. Since I spent the gold I took I will take my recompense from my share of the dragon’s hoard.’

Felix looked at him sidelong. He wondered how sincere Steg was. Perhaps he suffered from gold fever and merely wanted to be near the treasure. Perhaps he was not really a Slayer at all but merely intended to accompany them and steal the treasure. Who could tell? Gotrek seemed a little mollified by Steg’s explanation though. He no longer looked as if he wanted to take his axe to the self-confessed thief’s skull. Felix found himself interested in Steg’s tale.

‘You are a locksmith? I have heard dwarf locksmiths are prodigiously skilled.’

‘Aye, we are. I think that was another reason I took to crime. The challenge of it. I wanted to prove myself superior to all other locksmiths by overcoming their creations.’

Gotrek snorted. ‘There are some things of which it is better not to speak.’

‘Snorri thinks he will have another beer.’

‘Felix thinks he will be staggering back to the palace,’ said Felix.

‘Be careful of your purse,’ Steg said. Felix smiled and patted his belt – to discover it was not there.

Steg extended a large hand which contained it. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Old habits die hard.’

Ulrika sat in the library of the Slayer King. The lanterns flickered eerily illuminating the rows and rows of shelves and pigeonholes containing scrolls, leather-bound books, maps and other documents. The Slayer King’s library was surprisingly well furnished. Most of the books were unreadable to her, being written in dwarf runes, but there was a good selection of human volumes and many, many maps of the mountains. These were executed with far more detail and precision than human maps. Dwarfs, it seemed, were sticklers for detail.

On the low dwarf crafted table in front of her was spread out a map of the mountains, the latest product of the king’s scribes, showing the area around the city for all of a hundred leagues. Little pictographs indicated towns and villages and it was easy to understand their meanings. A gold axe indicated a gold mine. A red axe might be coal or iron. A boat indicated a port where rafts or ships might go down river. Major trails were marked in thick red lines, lesser ones in thinner ones. What looked like perilous portage routes through mountains were lines of red dots. Crossed swords indicated a battle site. An orc’s head most likely marked the lair of some greenskin tribe.

Looking at the map she could see that Peak Pass ran down to the lowlands of the eastern Empire. The way was clear but from there it was a long circuitous route to the court of the Ice Queen. The fastest way north to Kislev lay along the Old High Road to Karak Ungor, and then down the River Urskoy to Kislev city. Unfortunately the dragon symbol lay athwart what had been a major trade route on the older maps, forcing the thick red line to wind a tortuous path through the peaks far longer than it had once been.

It looked as if Felix was right, she thought sourly. It might be quicker to wait until the airship was repaired. Assuming it could get past the dragon, it would be much faster, and judging by the number of orc symbols on the map, possibly much safer. Looking at the map, she could tell the swiftest way would actually be to go with the Slayers along the Karak Ungor High Road.

Perhaps she simply wanted to believe that, so they could stay together for a little bit longer. It was annoying and frustrating – and saddening too. It was one of the things that put such a strain on their relationship. She wanted to be with him, and this desire made her want to shirk her duty to her father and nation. She knew she should take her father’s message to Kislev. And yet she resented her duty for taking her away from Felix, just as she resented him for tearing her from her duty.

She was not sure what she felt about him any more. While they had been separated, she had daydreamed about his return constantly, but his return had changed things. He was not a fantasy figure any more but a real person, and one whom she could find quite annoying at times, with his cleverness and air of sophistication. He had grown up in the capital of the civilised world, after all, and she was the daughter of a border noble of a semi-barbarous land. She had not realised what a difference that could make. His allusions to poets and plays and books went right over her head, and made her feel stupid sometimes. He lacked the straightforward honour code of her people, and he had travelled so far and seen so much in his life that it was intimidating. At the court in Middenheim she had felt dowdy and out of place among all the sophisticated ladies. He made her feel that way sometimes too.

More than that, she felt threatened by the intimacy that had grown between them so strongly and so quickly. All of her life she had been in control of her emotions. She had been raised to be a warrior, to fight as well as any man, to be like the son her father had really wanted. That and her position as heir had kept an emotional distance between her and any man. She was not sure whether she wanted that gap closed.

And then there was his drinking. Ulrika had grown up around hard drinking men but in Kislev, it was a thing reserved for festivals and feasts. It was too dangerous a place for anyone to risk sottishness more than a few times in a year. Since they had reached the city Felix had got drunk every day. It was worrying.

She shook her head. This was not like her. This was the first time she had ever felt this way. To worry so about what a man thought about her, and what she thought about a man. In the past, she had taken lovers according to the easy codes of her people’s nobility, for evenings of pleasure. She had never felt any deep emotional connection or any unease whatsoever. But then again, she had understood those men, and what she expected of them, and they of her. She was not sure she understood Felix at all. And she was not sure she could see a future for them either.

Not that it mattered anyway, she thought wryly. With the Chaos horde advancing, and the dangers of the road ahead, there most likely would not be a future anyway, so it seemed pointless to worry. She thrust the thoughts aside and returned to her study of the map, looking for the best route towards her goal. It did seem like accompanying the Slayers was the best way.

She heard the door open and footsteps enter the library. The footsteps were human, and not Felix’s light tread. She looked up and saw Max. He gazed at her and winked.

‘So I am not the only one burning the midnight oil,’ he said.

She nodded, wondering what he was thinking. From the look in his eyes it seemed perfectly possible that he had come here because he knew she was here. At her father’s mansion house, he had always been bumping into her, as if by accident. There was also a smell of alcohol on his breath.

‘What are you doing here, Max?’ she asked. His smile widened.

‘I am taking this opportunity to study in a dwarf king’s library. They preserve many old books, you know, ones that are rare in the Empire. Some translated from dwarfish by human scribes.’

‘I never knew that there were humans who could read dwarfish.’

‘Reading is not counted a great gift among the Kislevites,’ he said. Ulrika could hear the irony in his tone. It reminded her of Felix, and she felt a small surge of anger. Unaware of this, Max continued to speak. ‘Among the citizens of the Empire it is different. Some there can not only read, they can read dwarf runes.’

‘I thought it was a secret tongue the dwarfs kept to themselves.’

‘It is now. It was not always so. Once dwarfs and men were closer, and in the time of Sigmar Heldenhammer, many were taught the dwarf tongue. Dwarf runes may have formed the basis of the first human alphabets. Certainly, according to the Unfinished Book, Sigmar could speak with dwarfs in their native tongue.’

‘Sigmar was a god.’

‘He took human form, and his first priests could speak dwarfish too. They passed it on to those who came after. It is still used by many scholars of the church.’

‘You are saying that there are humans who can speak dwarfish?’

‘The ancient version of the tongue, which is not too dissimilar to modern dwarfish. They are a very conservative people, the Elder Race, and not that much has changed in their language over the past two thousand, five hundred years. If you can speak the old version of the tongue, you can make yourself understood in the modern version. And you can most likely read it.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I am a scholar as well as a magician, and like many scholars I studied in the temples when I was young. Also, a magician these days needs a working knowledge of theology and liturgy if he is not to fall foul of witch hunters. The temples are still not fond of us. There are often times when we need to be able to prove that we are god-fearing men.’

Ulrika remembered the superstitions of her own folk and the hatred that many of the followers of Ulric had borne mages when she was in Middenheim.

She could see some sense in his words. ‘And are you a god-fearing man, Max Schreiber? Or is your soul in peril?’

‘I am more godly than you could guess, Ulrika Magdova. I have been an enemy of Chaos all my life, no matter what the witch hunters might think.’

‘You do not need to convince me of that, Max. I saw you fight against the skaven.’

He moved closer and sat down opposite her. She could definitely smell the wine on his breath. ‘You are contemplating a journey, I see. Going hunting for dragons, are you?’

‘No. I am trying to find a way to Kislev, to bring my father’s warning to my people. The Tzarina must know about this impending invasion.’

‘You are not going with the dwarfs then? Felix is, isn’t he?’

‘Felix is sworn to accompany Gotrek. I would not ask him to break an oath.’

Ulrika was not quite sure what to make of the expression that moved across Max’s face. In the dim light it was hard to tell if he was surprised, pleased, alarmed or a little of all these things. ‘I thought you two were inseparable,’ he said eventually.

‘We are bed companions, nothing more,’ Ulrika knew it wasn’t true even as she said it, but it was close enough to the reality of the situation so that she did not feel like a liar. Max winced. Was he jealous or was it something else?

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘It’s just that Kislevite women seem a little more forthright on... matters of the heart than men of the Empire are used to.’

‘We are honest.’

‘No question of that. It just took me by surprise that is all. In the Empire a lady does not talk of such things.’

Ulrika looked at him. ‘They certainly do such things, though. I spent quite enough time in the court at Middenheim to see that. At least we Kislevite women are not hypocrites!’

To her surprise Max laughed. ‘Yes. It’s true. You have a point.’

‘There is no need to talk down to me.’

‘I am not doing that.’ His tone changed. ‘How do you intend to get to Kislev? On foot?’

‘By horse, if we can find any in this place.’

‘How many of you? Will you be hiring bodyguards?’

‘I have Oleg and Standa and I have my own good sword. What need have I of any more?’

‘The way between here and Kislev is long and hard and full of peril.’ He paused for a minute as if considering something. ‘Perhaps you could use another sword on the route, and more than a sword, a magician.’

‘Are you offering your services?’ Ulrika felt suddenly uneasy. She was not at all sure that she wanted Max riding with her, potent mage though he was.

‘Yes.’

‘I will think on it.’

‘You will need me,’ he said confidently. ‘There are orcs in those mountains, and they have a shaman with them. It takes magic to fight magic.’

‘I have said I will think on it,’ she said, and rose to leave. Max bowed goodnight to her. As she reached the door, she felt him gazing at her. He opened his mouth to speak.

‘I love you,’ he said suddenly.

‘You’re drunk,’ she said and swept out of the door. Even as she did so, she heard him say, ‘True, but that doesn’t make any difference.’

As she walked through the corridor, she realised she had come to a decision. She would travel with Felix and Gotrek along the High Road to the Urskoy turning; assuming they survived the trip she would make her way north with Oleg and Standa. She felt as if a weight had lifted from her shoulders. She looked forward to seeing Felix and to sharing a bed. They had been apart a lot recently, and she felt some responsibility for that. She would try and make things up.

Max stood in the library, feeling foolish. The effects of the wine he had taken earlier in the Emperor’s Griffon had not worn off, and had left his tongue loose. Part of him was glad he had said what he had, and another part was deeply embarrassed by the rebuff. He realised that a lifetime of studying magic in musty old books had in no way prepared him for dealing with a living woman. He felt like he had said the wrong thing right from the beginning of the conversation.

This was dreadful. He would have to get a grip on himself. He was a master mage of the Golden College and a secret brother of the ancient order of the Golden Hammer. He was not some callow student of the mysteries. He could not afford to lose control of himself in this or any other way. With his powers, disasters could easily happen. He was only too aware of tales of mages who had wreaked terrible havoc whilst drunk. Not that he was going to. He was too clever for that. He would never try using his powers while inebriated. Not for any reason.

It was dark in here, though. Not enough light to see by. He moved his fingers through the familiar intricate pattern and felt the winds of magic answer. A sphere of softly glowing yellowish light sprang into being around his hand. He rolled it off, and left it to hover in mid-air in the centre of the chamber. Its light flickered erratically as if something were affecting his control of the magic. Perhaps it was the old dwarf protective runes. Perhaps it was something else. He was not going to worry about it now.

He shook his head and looked at the map Ulrika had been studying. It was not difficult to see the story it told. The dragon’s awakening had certainly stirred things up in this part of the Worlds Edge Mountains. Orc tribes were everywhere. Towns had been destroyed. Trade routes were being blocked. He could easily imagine the cascade of troubles.

The dragon awakes and begins destroying human and dwarf towns and eating their flocks. This leads to the trade routes and mountain passes being less well-defended. Orcs and other nastier creatures take advantage of the anarchy to increase their own power. The caravan routes lengthen, sellswords increase their hiring price because of the danger. The cost of goods rises here in the mountains and in the human towns of the Ostermark. The ripples of this one event move out across hundreds of leagues, affecting the lives of thousands of people who will never even see a dragon and may even believe it is only a myth.

Max wondered how often similar chains of events affected the human realms. Doubtless far more than he would ever learn of. It seemed all too likely though that enough of them occurring at once might cause the collapse of the Empire. For one thing, looking at this map, it was difficult to see how the dwarfs might move an army quickly through the mountains if the dragon and the orcs decided to oppose them. Even if they wanted to aid the Kislevites against the marching legions of Chaos, they might not be able to.

Of course, there was always the Spirit of Grungni. The airship would allow the movement of many warriors very quickly. Perhaps that would be the answer. If the mighty machine could be repaired. Even then, the dragon had almost destroyed it once. Perhaps it might try again and succeed. Max shook his head. He knew he was simply trying to distract himself from his hopeless passion for Ulrika.

Or was it so hopeless? It appeared that all was not well between her and Felix. Perhaps he might get his chance yet, particularly if she and Herr Jaeger were not travelling together, and he was with her. Who knew what might happen then? He allowed the surge of hope to fade. Just because she and Felix might be falling out did not mean that she would go with him. He felt almost like laughing.

Here he was, sworn to oppose Chaos, with the largest incursion of the forces of Darkness in two centuries about to occur, and all he could think about was this one girl. Somehow, he would have to get his sense of proportion back. He walked over to the shelves and studied the books.

There was indeed a fair number of volumes here, including some copies of the Book of Grudges for Karak Kadrin that dated back well over 3,000 years. The earlier entries were in the almost pure ancient dwarfish he had learned as a youth. He flipped through the pages, and was soon slumped in the chair, snoring, with the old tales of treachery, betrayal and gloom slipping from his hand.

Felix staggered back into the room he shared with Ulrika. He was none too steady on his feet and his efforts at moving quietly seemed to be failing horribly. Already he had kicked over a chamber pot, and sent his sword tumbling to the floor with a loud metallic clatter. Despite her stillness on the bed, he knew Ulrika was awake. He wondered how long she had been waiting for him.

‘So you’re drunk as well,’ she said. She sounded angry.

‘You’ve been drinking,’ said Felix stupidly. ‘I thought you were going to the king’s library to plan your route home.’

‘No. Max was drinking.’

‘You were drinking with Herr Schreiber.’ Felix wondered at how much sullen jealousy managed to creep into his voice during that one sentence.

‘No. I was in the library and he came in drunk.’

‘And what did you do then?’

‘We talked.’

‘About what?’

‘About the dwarfish language, as if it were any of your business.’

‘You’ve suddenly developed an interest in dwarfish?’

‘The maps and books in the library are mostly written in it.’

‘That makes a certain amount of sense,’ said Felix with unsubtle irony. He began to strip off his clothes and get ready for bed.

‘You can be a nasty man, Felix Jaeger.’

‘Apparently. And Herr Schreiber isn’t?’

‘At least Max offered to accompany me to Kislev.’

Felix felt his stomach twist. He had not realised that her words could affect him so much. He threw himself down on the bed beside her, and glanced over. In the darkness her expression was impossible to read. Judging by her voice, she sounded upset. He paused to consider what to say. The silence stretched, a vast empty desert that threatened to swallow anything he could say.

‘I would go with you to Kislev,’ he said eventually.

‘What about the dragon?’

‘After it is slain...’

‘Ah, after it is slain, you will go...’

‘I have sworn an oath, and I know what you Kislevites think of oathbreakers.’

The silence stretched once more. She did not say anything more. Felix considered what to say next, but the beer surged through his brain, and the tentacles of alcohol-induced sleep dragged him down into the sea of slumber.

When he awoke in the morning, Ulrika was gone.

From the battlements above the courtyard of the Slayer King’s palace, Max watched the morning sun rise over the mountains. His mouth felt dry. His head ached. His stomach churned. He had not gotten drunk like that since he had been a student, many years ago. He felt vaguely embarrassed and ashamed. In part he knew it was simply the effects of the hangover. In part though, it was the knowledge that he had spoken to Ulrika about something that he should have best kept to himself. In part too he was annoyed at himself for getting drunk. It was a bad thing for a master magician to do. He shuddered when he realised he had been using spells, even such simple ones as casting light globes, while being inebriated. Magic was a tricky and dangerous thing at the best of times, without the added complications of booze. He remembered what his old tutor Jared had to say on the subject. A drunken magician is a foolish magician, and a foolish magician is soon a dead magician.

He knew it should not have happened, but he knew also he had his reasons. He was a mage. He was aware of his state of mind. He took a deep breath, and counted silently and slowly to five as he did so. He held the breath in for a count of ten, and then let it out slowly for a count of twenty. As he did so, he sought to empty his mind, as his tutors had taught him.

At first it would not come. The sickness in his stomach and the dizziness in his head prevented him from managing it. Another danger of drinking, he thought. If an enemy were to attack me now, I would have difficulty protecting myself. He cursed, knowing that such thoughts were themselves a sign that he was failing to perform even this elementary magical exercise. He continued, concentrating on his breathing, trying to feel calm and relaxed, trying to let the tension flow from his muscles.

Slowly, the exercise began to take effect. His thoughts became quieter and slower. His pains seemed to fade a little. Tension oozed from him. At the edge of his mind, he became aware of the tug of the currents of magic. Colours began to swirl in his mind, reds and greens and a predominant gold. He became aware of himself as an empty vessel, into which the power was starting to flow. The magic softly soaked his pains away; his mind began to feel cleaner and clearer and filled with a golden light. A sense of renewal filled him. The touch of magic was like the effects of some of the narcotic drugs he had experimented with under the supervision of his masters. It made him feel full of energy and almost euphoric in a low-key way. His senses were keener. He was aware of the wind’s gentle caress on his skin, the faint tickling sensation caused by his woollen robes. The heat in the stones under his fingers. He could hear the faint voices of dwarfs in the depths of the castle that he had only been subliminally aware of before. The light was brighter and his vision clearer.

Other senses than the five that mankind normally used clicked in. He could sense the flow of magic all around him, and the faint emanations of living things. He could feel the power of the runes that the dwarfs had bound into their buildings, and the way they channelled primal energies in magical defence. He knew that he could reach out in a manner inexplicable to normal mortals and begin to mould those energies to his will. For a moment, he felt utterly and completely alive, and filled with a gladness that he was sure no non-magician would ever understand.

He achieved emptiness and held it for a few moments, and then as he exhaled began to think again, reviewing his life with a new insight and clarity.

He could see now that he had gotten drunk as a response to the way things had been running out of control in his life. He had undergone a lot of things recently that were alien to the normal routine of his quiet scholarly life. He had been involved in a battle, and fought a sorcerous duel with a mage far mightier than himself. He could easily have died both in that duel, and in the battles with the skaven. He had fallen in love, passionately and uncontrollably and much to his own surprise. Perhaps he had been more vulnerable to it, out in the wilds of Kislev, far from his homelands, and waiting tensely for the return of the airship. True, Ulrika was a lovely woman, but he had known lovelier, and not fallen hard for them. Anyway, it did not matter what the reasons were, the simple fact was that it had happened and had affected him. He had been jealous, and desperate and filled with an anger he had only been barely aware of, and it had driven him to behave badly, and feel temptations he had never known before. He knew that the whole business was a threat to his peace of mind, and in some ways to his soul. His desire for the woman had led him to contemplate dark paths that should have remained closed to him and consider things he should never have given thought to. Last night he had even gone so far as to get drunk and use his magic. He was lucky he had been too drunk to work some of the spells he knew, ones that could bind others to his will.

He closed his eyes and considered the secret knowledge he had gained with such cost. Slaanesh, he thought. To the ignorant, he was the dark god of unspeakable pleasures, a master of daemons, whose pleasure-crazed worshippers engaged in orgies of dreadful excess. And such things did happen, as Max well knew. But this was not the only threat Slaanesh represented. He was the god of the temptations of the flesh, subtle and deadly. He could lure even the wisest onto the road of ruin through the urge to gratify their desires. Max knew that Slaanesh could ruin a man in many ways, through the urge to drink, or take drugs or to bed women. He knew that, in a way, what had happened to him last night was something he had to take seriously, for it was the first step on the path to perdition, if he followed up on it.

It was a thing he knew he must not do. He was sworn to oppose Chaos and not to serve it, that was why he had studied so long and so hard. He knew that he must forswear Ulrika and drink and all the other temptations that might lead him astray, or the consequences would be terrible. But even as he resolved this, part of him whispered that it did not want to do it, and his new insight showed him what might be another truth.

Perhaps he had studied the works of Chaos for so long for a less pure reason, not because he hated it, and wished to oppose it, but because he was fascinated by it. Perhaps he had merely been fooling himself all along.

Even as he told himself that this thought too was but one of the snares of Slaanesh, he was all too aware that it was, at least in part, the truth.

Felix wandered out into the street. He had no idea where to find Ulrika but according to the sentries she, Oleg and Standa had left the palace earlier in the morning and headed off in the direction of the fairground that had sprung up around the Spirit of Grungni in the valley outside the city. This made sense. She would be looking for horses to continue her journey and the market there would be as good a place as any to buy them.

As he headed downhill, he noticed that a young dwarf of unusual appearance was looking at him. The dwarf was garbed in furs, and his head was covered in a pinkish fuzz that made it look as if it had recently been shaved. He had an axe slung over one shoulder. Noticing Felix was watching him, he began to move forward and fell into step beside him.

‘You are Felix Jaeger!’ The dwarf’s voice was even lower than usual for a dwarf’s and boomed out loudly. As Felix looked he saw that on the dwarf’s arms were an intricate series of tattoos, depicting huge, bleeding monsters. An inscription in dwarf runes ran under them. Seeing that Felix had noticed them, the dwarf flexed his arms proudly causing the muscle to ripple and the tattoo to expand.

‘You’ve noticed my tattoos, I see! The inscription reads “Born to Die!”’

‘Yes. Very impressive,’ said Felix. He lengthened his stride, and soon the dwarf was almost running to keep pace. He had no wish to be rude but he was in a hurry to find Ulrika and apologise for his behaviour of the previous evening. If the youth noticed his brusqueness, he gave no sign.

‘Ulli, son of Ulli, at your service, and your clan’s,’ said the dwarf. He tried bowing as he moved and almost tripped.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Felix said, hoping the dwarf would take the hint and leave him alone. His hangover was not making him feel sociable.

‘You are a comrade of Gotrek Gurnisson’s, aren’t you? You have held the Hammer of Firebeard in your hand?’ There was a note of awe in the youth’s voice as he spoke. Felix was not sure whether it was for Gotrek or for the hammer. He stopped and gazed down at Ulli.

‘Yes. What of it?’

‘I don’t like your tone of voice, human! Do you want to fight me?’

Felix looked at the youth. He was muscular in the apish way that dwarfs often were, but he was nowhere near as fearsome as Gotrek or Snorri Nosebiter. Still, there was no sense in getting into a fight for no reason, particularly not with a Slayer. ‘No. I do not want to fight you,’ Felix said patiently.

‘Good! I would not want to soil my axe with human blood!’

‘There’s no need to shout,’ Felix said quietly.

‘Do not tell me how to speak!’ roared the dwarf. Instinctively Felix’s hand went to the hilt of his blade. The young Slayer seemed to flinch back a little.

‘I am not telling you how to speak,’ Felix said as politely as he could manage. ‘I am merely asking you to calm down a little.’

‘I am a Slayer! I am not meant to be calm! I am sworn to die in battle against terrible monsters!’

Felix grimaced sourly. He had heard such lines before from Gotrek but somehow they didn’t seem quite so convincing coming from Ulli Ullisson. ‘You’ve probably noticed that I am not a terrible monster,’ he said.

‘Are you mocking me?’

‘As if I would.’

‘Good! I demand the respect a Slayer deserves from your sort!’

‘And what sort would that be?’ Felix asked softly. A dangerous edge had entered his voice. He was getting a little tired of being badgered by this boastful lout. Ulli seemed to notice it, and flinched back again.

‘Humans! The younger race! The men of the Empire!’

A crowd of dwarfs was gathering to watch the confrontation. He could hear them muttering to each other in dwarfish. Some of the spectators were nudging each other with their elbows and pointing to him. He heard his own name mentioned several times. It seemed he was quite a well-known figure around the town. ‘Is there something I can do for you, Ulli Ullisson?’

‘Is it true you intend to hunt down the dragon, Skjalandir?’

‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

‘I seek a glorious death.’

‘Join the queue,’ Felix said softly.

‘What?’ roared Ulli.

‘That’s nothing new,’ Felix said. ‘Do you intend to accompany us on our quest?’

‘I intend to go in search of the dragon with or without you! Still, if you are asking for my protection, I will grant it!’

‘I am not. Good morning to you,’ said Felix, and turned and strode away. He did not look back but he could hear Ulli blustering loudly behind him.

‘We are lost, aren’t we, most perspicacious of pathfinders?’

Grey Seer Thanquol did not like the way Lurk said this. There was an undertone of menace, combined with a hint of disbelief in Thanquol’s abilities that boded ill for future dealings with his henchman. Thanquol’s head hurt. He had run out of warpstone snuff two days ago and it was not helping matters. He felt a terrible craving for it. Maybe he could just nibble a little of his stash of warpstone. No! He knew he must preserve the pure stuff for an emergency. He would need its power then.

‘Are we lost?’ Lurk asked again.

‘No! No!’ chittered Thanquol with what he hoped was utter confidence. ‘Such are my powers of scrying that we are exactly where we need to be!’

‘And where exactly is that?’

‘Are you questioning me, Lurk Snitchtongue?’

‘Expressing an interest I am.’

Thanquol gazed at the horizon. The glittering peaks that marked the border with the Chaos Wastes seemed a lot closer. Was he being betrayed by his desire for warpstone, he wondered? Had the mysterious lure of those lost lands affected his sense of direction? Or was it simply that this constant badgering by Lurk’s inane questioning was beginning to affect his judgement? Perhaps a little of both, he decided.

And of course the weather was not helping either. When it was not raining, it was misty. When it was not misty, it was so bright that it hurt their sensitive skaven eyes and forced them to burrow into the earth rather than risk being spotted. Unwilling as he normally was to admit that humans might be superior to skaven in anything, Thanquol had to admit that a man on horseback was much more likely to spot them before they spotted him. There seemed to be no happy medium. The rains were awful. They drove in hard and reduced visibility to almost zero. They left his fur sodden and deadened his sense of smell. It was as if the very elements conspired with his enemies to undermine Thanquol’s sanity.

Actually, he was surprised that he had not considered this before. It seemed all too likely that this atrocious weather was the product of some enemy’s spell. Thanquol could think of several candidates. One thing was certain, he swore, when he returned to skaven civilisation, he was going to make someone suffer for the discomfort he had endured. And one candidate for his certain vengeance was no more than a few tail lengths away from him.

Lurk had become less and less endurable as their journey progressed. When he was not being insolent, he was hungry and cast alarmingly voracious looks at his rightful master. When he was not doing that he was asking foolish questions, and actually appeared to be implying that he had no faith in the grey seer’s judgement. Thanquol would show him whose judgement was faulty soon enough, he vowed. He was not prepared to put up with insolence from underlings forever.

‘You have not answered my question, most scintillating of seers,’ said Lurk. Thanquol glared at him until he noticed that Lurk was not looking back but instead was staring off over Thanquol’s shoulders. Thanquol bared his teeth in a snarl. That was the oldest trick in the book. He was not going to turn around and let Lurk spring on his back. Did Snitchtongue take him for the merest runt?

‘What are you looking at?’ Thanquol asked.

‘Why not use your awesome powers of divination, and find out for yourself?’ suggested Lurk. ‘Perhaps you could ascertain what that monstrous cloud on the horizon portends and whether it has anything to do with the way the earth shakes beneath our paws.’

At first Thanquol suspected that Lurk was mocking him till he realised that the ground was indeed vibrating. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder and noticed that there was a massive cloud stretching all the way to the horizon, obscuring everything, even the mountain peaks.

‘Some strange mystical phenomenon,’ he suggested.

‘More like an army on the march, it looks to me, mightiest of masters. And a very large one too.’ Lurk could not quite keep the fear from his voice. Thanquol could not exactly blame him. If that cloud was indeed being raised by an army, it was the largest one Thanquol had ever heard of.

Thanquol shuddered. There was little they could do except wait and hide.

Ulrika looked around the fairground that had sprung up around the airship where it lay outside the town walls. Hundreds of dwarfs surrounded the enclosure and looked at the mighty vessel in awe. Fire eaters and jugglers moved through the crowd. Pie vendors sold their wares from trays around their neck. Alemongers carried massive pitchers of foaming beer through the crowd, dispensing the brew to anyone with a few coppers to spare. A dwarf on stilts towered high over her and shouted jokes to the crowd. Ballad singers rumbled out fanciful tales of the great airship’s voyage in the common speech.

She was disappointed. The horse market had proven to be nothing of the sort. It sold only pit ponies, mules and nags that no true Kislevite would be seen dead riding, beasts that would never survive the long trip north. It seemed, annoyingly enough, that once more Felix had been proven right. Dwarfs were not famous for their cavalry nor for their knowledge of horseflesh. She gritted her teeth. She was not going to allow the thought of the man to annoy her today. She did not want to give way to her anger. Last night she had been ready to make up with him, until he had proven himself a drunken sot. Now he would have to apologise to her.

She had never seen quite so many dwarfs from so close up before. There must be hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, most of them at least partially inebriated. They were all bent on celebrating in their own dour way. It seemed that the return of the Hammer of Firebeard was an event of great significance to them. Not that it appeared they needed any excuse to get drunk. In this they were like Kislev men. The alesellers were doing good business, but then so were the smiths and weaponsellers. It seemed that the dwarfs liked to haggle, and buy and sell almost as much as they liked to drink.

‘You’re a pretty lass,’ said a deep, rumbling voice close to Ulrika’s elbow. She looked down to see a dwarf standing there. He was squat, muscular and repulsively ugly. His nose had been mashed and a huge hairy wart stood on the end of it. His head had been shaved and a tufted crest of dyed hair rose above it. Huge gold rings dangled from his ears.

‘And you’re a Slayer.’

‘As clever as ye are pretty, I see. Do you fancy a turn in the bushes?’ The dwarf gestured insinuatingly at the nearest clump of greenery. It took Ulrika a few moments to work out his meaning. When she did she did not know whether to be angry or amused. Oleg and Standa had reached for their blades. She quelled them with a glance. She was quite capable of handling this situation on her own.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’ll soon change your mind if you do. There’s no a lass ever regretted straddling Bjorni Bjornisson.’

This time Ulrika did laugh. If the Slayer was offended, he gave no sign. ‘If ye change yer mind, let me know.’

‘I’ll be sure to do that,’ she said, and turned to go.

‘You know Gotrek Gurnisson,’ said the Slayer. ‘And Felix Jaeger?’

That stopped her. ‘Yes.’

‘They’re going hunting for dragons, so I hear.’

‘You hear correctly.’

‘I might join them I think. We’ll be seeing more of each other, bonnie lass.’

The Slayer turned and walked away. Astonished, Ulrika followed him with her gaze. The last she saw of him, he was disappearing into the crowd, arm in arm with two rouged and none-too-young looking human wenches.

‘Never seen anything like that before,’ Standa said, a look of discomfort showing on his moon face. Oleg tugged his long, drooping moustaches in agreement.

‘You’ll see a lot stranger things before we’re done travelling, I’ll warrant,’ said Ulrika. ‘Now, let’s get going. We might as well get back to the palace. We’ll find no horses here.’

She was still not sure she believed what she had just seen herself. That was surely the strangest Slayer she had ever encountered.

The Spirit of Grungni lay at rest. Even to Felix’s hungover eyes it was an impressive sight. The massive airship lay in an open field beyond Karak Kadrin. The area was roped off to keep the crowd at bay and surrounded by dwarf soldiers to prevent any interlopers getting too close. The gondola actually rested on the ground anchored by ropes held by hooks driven deep into the ground like tentpegs. More ropes arced up and over the gasbag, running through the guardrails that ran along the top of the dirigible and coming down the other side. Even over the voices of the crowd of spectators Felix could hear the ropes creak as the airship shifted slightly. The spectacle reminded Felix of an old story he had once read of a sleeping giant who had been trapped in his slumber, ensnared in a webwork of ropes, pinned to the earth and unable to move.

Felix had been looking for Ulrika, but like everyone else he was getting distracted by the circus surrounding the airship. He smiled to himself. He had become so accustomed to the Spirit of Grungni on the quest for Karag Dum that he had forgotten just how impressive the massive airship was. The onlookers had not. They had come to gape at it, the way they might at some captive dragon.

The guards recognised Felix as he forced his way into the roped-off enclosure, and let him pass. He heard his name murmured by the spectators as he moved closer to the Spirit of Grungni. It was strange to be recognised.

Dwarfs swarmed over the fuselage of the airship, painting the gasbag with a pitch-like substance which sealed the rips and tears. Felix knew it was made from some alchemical formula known only to Makaisson and his apprentices. Blacksmiths and artificers worked on the engines and the dented cupola, banging away with hammers, twisting nuts into place with huge spanners. The clangour was deafening. Looking through the portholes, he could see more dwarfs inside. It looked like the repairs were proceeding apace. Borek Forkbeard leaned on his stick and watched the work in progress. He looked sadder and older than ever but a smile crossed his face when he noticed Felix approach.

‘Have you seen Ulrika?’ the young warrior asked

‘I thought I saw her and her guards heading back up to the city.’

Felix clamped down on his disappointment. He did not feel like going back to the palace right now. Maybe he should have some ale. It might help his hangover. He considered this briefly and decided against it. It probably wouldn’t help, and he’d need his wits about him when he saw Ulrika again.

‘How is it going?’ Felix asked. Borek nodded his head. An unlit pipe was clenched between his teeth. Felix knew it was there from force of habit. He would not light it so close to the gasbag.

‘Slowly. Makaisson was here yesterday and said it may be some weeks before the airship is ready.’

‘Why is he not here himself? Surely he should be supervising this.’

‘His apprentices know all that is needful or so he claims. The crew were well trained before we set out. We knew he might not be alive to oversee any repairs that were needed.’

From his expression, Felix could tell that the old dwarf was thinking of someone else who was not here to witness this, his nephew. The scholar continued, ‘Makaisson is obsessed with slaying the dragon. He gets like that. He has locked himself up in his workshop and is building weapons to kill the beast. He refuses food and drink, and only came to see the repairs being done yesterday because I banged on his door for an hour.’

Felix looked at him. ‘Do you think even Makaisson can come up with something that will destroy Skjalandir?’

Borek shrugged. ‘If anyone can, he can. He is a genius. In a dozen centuries the dwarf realms have not cast up an engineer as brilliant as he.’

‘A pity then that he has become a Slayer.’

‘Aye; he might have changed the world otherwise. If his theories had been accepted. If the Engineers Guild had not hounded him. As it is, his name will go down in history anyway. Creating this airship was a deed worthy of the Ancestors. Piloting it to Karag Dum means his name will live forever, even if he does not.’

‘Was the deed really so notable?’

‘More than you can imagine. Your name will live as long as the mountains too, Felix Jaeger. Your part in the slaying of the daemon, and the recovery of the Hammer of Firebeard will see to that.’

Felix found this a strange thought. He was not sure how he felt about the knowledge that his name would be recalled in centuries to come, in a time long after he was dead. He did not want to think of dying just yet. It was not a thought he found pleasant.

‘Where is the hammer now?’

‘It is in the shrine of Grimnir. Hurgrim has left it there for the time being.’

A thought struck Felix. Curiosity overcame him.

‘One day I would like to see the inside of the shrine.’

‘It is not usual for humans to be allowed to view the inside of Grimnir’s sanctum.’ Borek paused for a moment. ‘But you are the Hammerbearer, and the gods have looked on you with favour, so I suppose an exception could be made in your case.’

‘I would like that,’ said Felix. If he ever was going to write up the tale of Gotrek’s adventures, it might be important. Perhaps seeing the inside of the shrine would give him some insight into the dwarf personality.

‘Thank you,’ Felix said. ‘I will go now.’

‘May the Ancestor Gods watch over you, Felix Jaeger.’

‘And you,’ Felix said, striding away.

Grey Seer Thanquol watched the dust cloud come ever closer. It billowed to the sky. It was as if all the grass of the plain had caught fire and was sending smoke plumes skyward. The ground vibrated. He could feel the thunder of hundreds of hooves against the earth. His nose twitched. He could smell warpstone in small quantities, and cold steel and flesh, human-like and yet not human. His mystical senses told him that powerful magic was present. He and Lurk exchanged scared looks, animosity temporarily fading as they confronted a threat to their common well-being.

Almost. Thanquol briefly considered running and leaving Lurk to face whatever it was that rushed towards them. What held him in place was the knowledge that it would probably be pointless. Instinct told him that there were so many foes coming towards them, that a few of them could overcome Lurk, and others would still have time to seek him out. Being with Lurk at least offered the possibility of some protection. At moments of stress like these, when the urge to squirt the musk of fear filled him, the scent of another ratman reassured even a skaven as independent as Grey Seer Thanquol.

‘Horse warriors, most perceptive of potentates?’ rumbled Lurk.

Thanquol shook his horned head and bared his fangs. His mouth felt dry. His heart pounded within his chest. He fought the urge to begin stuffing the last of the powdered warpstone into his mouth.

‘No. Others. Not humans.’

‘From the north? From the Wastes?’

‘Yes! Yes! Black-armoured warriors. Altered beasts. Other things.’

‘You have seen this? The Horned Rat has granted you a vision?’

Not in the strictest sense, Thanquol thought, but it served no purpose to let Lurk know, so he maintained a significant silence as he peered into the cloud. The dust made his pink eyes water and his nose twitch. His musk glands felt tight and he lashed his tail to try and dispel the tension. Lurk let out a low threatening growl. Thanquol glared into the advancing dust cloud trying to see into it.

Forms moved within the cloud. Massive, dark shapes that emerged slowly from the gloom and resolved themselves into riders. Thanquol had seen many of the mounted warriors the foolish humans called knights when he had served the Council of Thirteen in Bretonnia. The horsemen reminded him of those, save that their armour was made all of black iron with brass rondels. It was more intricate than any human armour Thanquol had ever seen before. Daemonic faces, twisted runes, arcane symbols: all seemed to have been moulded into the steel by some sorcerous technique.

One warrior had a gaping mawed daemonic face set in his chest plate. His helm echoed the daemon’s features and glowing red eyes glared out from behind his visor. Another wore armour covered in monstrous spikes and clutched a similarly spiked mace, shaped like a shrieking human head, in one armoured fist. A third’s armour glowed with an eerie yellow light, pulsing softly as if in time to his heartbeat. Behind them came other riders garbed in armour just as fantastically elaborate.

Their weapons were also of black steel set with fiery runes. They carried swords and maces, lances and morning stars. Their shields showed the symbol of Tzeentch, the Great Mutator, one of the four Ruinous Powers. The horses were huge, far bigger than normal human steeds. They needed to be to carry their massive armoured riders, and the weight of the impossibly intricate, segmented barding. Like their riders, the steeds’ eyes glowed with baleful internal fires. It was as if the gates of Hell had opened and these awful spectres had ridden straight out.

The Chaos warriors were a terrifying sight, and what was even more frightening was the fact that Thanquol knew they were but the outriders of a vast horde. What had those fiends, Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson done, Thanquol wondered? He did not doubt for a moment that the onset of this monstrous army was somehow connected with their mission into the Chaos Wastes. It was just like them to stir up a hornets’ nest of malefic forces and then run, leaving others in the path. May the Horned Rat devour their souls, Thanquol cursed.

With a terrified howl, Lurk threw himself headlong on the ground and abased himself. Thanquol cursed him too, and fought the urge to repeat Lurk’s action himself. His mind raced. If he prostrated himself before these bloodthirsty madmen, they would most likely simply ride over him, trampling the greatest skaven mind of this age into a bloody husk. Thanquol knew that would never do. He needed to keep all his wits about him if he wanted to survive.

Dramatically he threw his arms wide and let a nimbus of power play around his claws. The leading horse reared but its rider kept it under control and dropped his weapon into the attack position. Thanquol desperately controlled his musk glands as they sought to void themselves. He raised his chin high and let them see his horned head, his white fur, his magnificent lashing tail. He felt his power surge within him, and knew that if worst came to the worst he would take a few of these Tzeentch worshippers with him to greet the Horned Rat in the Thirteenth Level of the Abyss.

‘Halt!’ he shouted in the common tongue of humans in his most impressive oracular voice. ‘I bring you greetings from the Council of Thirteen, lordly rulers of all skavendom.’

If the Chaos warriors were impressed, they gave no sign of it. Instead, one of them touched spurs to the flanks of his mount, dropped his lance and thundered forward, obviously intent on skewering the grey seer.

Everything seemed to slow as the armoured warrior advanced. The spearpoint looked very sharp. Thanquol wondered if his last moment had come.

‘Wait! Wait!’ shrieked Grey Seer Thanquol. ‘Don’t kill me. You are making a grave error. I bring tidings from the Council of Thirteen. They wish to make obeisance to your all-conquering army!’

Thanquol thought his doom was upon him. He summoned his power to attempt the escape spell that would cast him across the warp. He was not sure he had the time or the energy, but it seemed like his only slim hope. The glittering lance point came ever closer. It looked sharp as Felix Jaeger’s sword and ten times as deadly. Just before it pierced his body, the lancer raised his weapon and let out a bellow of mocking malevolent laughter.

‘You wish to ally with us?’

‘Yes! Yes!’

‘Or you wish to surrender to us?’

‘Yes! Yes!’

‘Which is it? Or is it both?’

‘Both!’ Thanquol had squirted the musk of fear, but it did not matter right now. What was important was that he preserve his life and his genius for the benefit of the skaven nation. Once he had gotten through the next few difficult moments, he would go about the business of turning the tables on these arrogant dullards. At the moment though preserving his skin took the highest priority.

‘Why should we spare you?’

‘We have mighty armies! We can aid you in crushing mankind! We have knowledge of the human cities and human dispositions! We know many things!’

‘Perhaps you could spare this mutant’s life and keep it as a jester!’ roared the creature with the daemon’s face on its breastplate. Thanquol forced himself to bob his head in an appeasing manner, although inwardly he seethed and swore vengeance on the speaker as soon as the moment was right. If there was as much warpstone nearby as he suspected that moment would come soon.

‘Or maybe we should nail it to our banners as a warning to the rest of its kind. I have met skaven before. I have fought with them. A nasty treacherous bunch they were too.’

‘Doubtless they were renegades,’ said Thanquol thinking quickly. ‘True skaven always keep faith with their allies.’

‘That’s a good joke,’ said daemon face. ‘You shall be our jester!’

‘This one is a grey seer,’ said a Chaos warrior carrying a massive banner depicting a flayed human brandishing a sword. ‘It is possible that it does speak for the Thirteen.’

‘So?’

‘Perhaps we should spare it! Perhaps the warlord or his pet sorcerers should interrogate it!’

Listen to this one, Thanquol prayed. He shows common sense. And doubtless the horde’s leader would have the wisdom to negotiate with a grey seer.

‘And we can always offer his soul to Tzeentch afterwards. The seers are said to be magicians and our mighty lord might appreciate such a tasty morsel!’

What have I let myself in for, Grey Seer Thanquol asked himself? Perhaps he should have tried the escape spell but before he knew it, the lancer had stopped, snatched him up and thrown him across his saddle like a sack of wheat. The others had surrounded Lurk and were herding him forwards with their weapons.

In heartbeats they were on their way into the heart of the oncoming Chaos horde. Thanquol’s heart raced with fear, and his empty musk-glands hurt from the strain of trying to squirt. It was not a reassuring feeling.

Felix entered the inner sanctum of the Temple of Grimnir. His fame had obviously proceeded him. The priests had made no fuss about letting him in. They had simply seemed surprised that any man should want to enter the place. It was dark and gloomy in here after the huge fire that burned bright in the entrance hall, and it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the dimness.

The enormously thick stone walls muffled all sound. The air smelled of incense and the acrid odour of burned hair. This inner sanctum was empty save for a few old dwarfs in plain robes of red. They carried no weapons; their beards were long and bound with clips that showed the sign of two crossed axes. They seemed to do little else but pray and tend the enormous fire that burned constantly in a pit in the antechamber.

Felix looked around. The ceiling would be considered low in a human temple but it was still three times his own height. Enormous stone sarcophagi lined the walls. Each was as tall as a man and carved to represent a dwarf lying flat on his back, a weapon clutched to his chest. These were the tombs of the Slayer Kings, Felix knew. For many generations the royal family of Karak Kadrin had been buried here.

The centre of the room was dominated by a massive altar over which loomed a statue of a mighty dwarf warrior with an axe held in each hand, standing with his foot on the neck of a dragon. The figure depicted was recognisably a Slayer. His beard was short. A massive crest towered over his head. A dwarf knelt before the altar, murmuring quiet prayers.

On the altar rested the Hammer of Firebeard. Just looking at it, Felix felt a spasm of pain pass through his fingers. He could still remember carrying it into battle against the great Bloodthirster of Karag Dum. Mortal man had not been meant to wield such a weapon, and he paid the price for it in agony. Sometimes, in the still small hours of the night, he wondered about this. Why, of all the men in the world, had the hammer allowed him to wield it? He was no hero. He had not even wanted to be there in Karag Dum, and he could have lived his entire life quite happily without ever seeing a Great Daemon of Chaos, let alone fighting one.

The Slayer rose to his feet and turned from the altar abruptly, not in the way a man would leave a shrine sacred to his god, but in the manner of a warrior who had been given a command by his general and goes at once to carry it out. As he passed, he looked at Felix. His face showed no surprise at seeing a human there in one of the most sacred sites of his people. Looking at him, Felix thought the dwarf possessed the bleakest eyes he had ever seen. His face might have been chiselled from granite. His features had a primitive massiveness to them of the sort sometimes seen in ancient druidical statues. His head had been recently shaved, save for a tiny strip of hair that might one day grow into a crest. His beard had been reduced to mere stubble.

Felix made the sign of the hammer and advanced on the altar. There was no particular sign of the presence of the dwarf god. The altar was a massive structure carved of solid stone. The hammer appeared to be just a massive warhammer whose head bore the same dwarf runes as the altar itself. Had Felix himself not held the hammer and felt its power, he would have thought it only an impressive weapon and not some holy relic.

Once again, he asked himself why he was here. What had he hoped to gain by visiting the shrine? Some insight into the dwarfs, perhaps? A glimpse of the peculiar psychology that caused so many of them to shave their heads and set out to seek their dooms? It was a hard thing for him to understand, and he could not quite picture himself or any other man doing such a thing.

Or perhaps he could. Men did self-destructive things all the time. They drank to excess and performed feats of foolish bravado. They became addicted to witchweed and weirdroot. They joined the cults of the Dark Gods of Chaos. They fought duels for the most petty and pointless of reasons. Felix sometimes recognised a perverse and self-destructive urge in himself. Perhaps dwarfs just possessed this to a greater degree, and, in typical dwarf fashion, formalised it more. Perhaps here he might look upon their god and understand why they did this.

He advanced to the front of the altar and knelt at the foot of the statue. The statue itself showed all the dwarf genius for stonework. It was carved to a level of detail that no human sculptor would have the patience or the skill to master. Borek had told him that this statue had been laboured over by five generations of master craftsmen, almost a thousand years as humans reckoned time.

Felix inspected it closely, as if it held the key to some great mystery, as if by studying it he might come to understand what drove Slayers to do what they did. If the statue knew the answer to his questions, it kept an obstinate silence about it. Felix smiled sadly, thinking there was nothing here but old stonework. If these walls were permeated with the essence of millennia of sacrifice, as the dwarfs claimed, Felix could get no sense of it. What had he expected? He was a human, and the dwarf gods showed little enough interest in their own race, so why should they pay any attention to him?

Still, he was in a holy place, and it would do no harm to risk a prayer while he was here. He could think of nothing to ask for, save that the old god grant Gotrek the brave doom he sought, and keep Felix alive to record it. For a moment, as his hands instinctively made the sign of the hammer, Felix thought he sensed something. A deepening of the silence in the place, a keenness coming over his senses, a sense of the presence of something ancient, vast and potent. He gazed up on the blank features of Grimnir once more but they were unchanged. The stern but empty eye sockets in the helm still looked out on the world without pity or understanding.

Felix shook his head. Perhaps it all had been in his imagination. Best mention this to no one. He rose to his feet and almost reached out to touch the hammer for one last time, but as he did so his fingers began to tingle and he remembered all too vividly the pain of bearing the weapon. Perhaps that was the sign he waited for, he thought sourly. Or perhaps it was simply given to a man like him to bear a weapon like that only once in his life, and only for the mightiest of purposes. He did not know.

It made him think of his strange experience with the sword and the dragon. He had wanted to talk Max about it, but things had been touchy between himself and the magician. He suspected they were both jealous of each other over Ulrika. Felix resolved that when the opportunity arose he would discuss it. He did not look back as he left the shrine and stepped out into the street. It was time to get back to the palace. He knew they would be leaving the city soon.

EIGHT

INTO THE MOUNTAINS

Felix marched wearily along the mountain path. His chainmail shirt felt heavy and strange, now that he was wearing it again for the first time in days. He was glad to have it though. There were orcs in these mountains and he wanted all the protection he could get.

Ahead of him were Oleg and Standa. They flanked Ulrika, who was conspicuously ignoring him. She had accepted his apology for his drunkenness but now she was sulking again. Well, at least she had decided to come with him as far as the turn-off to Urskoy. All of the Kislevites wore leather armour and carried bows. They scanned the mountainside warily even though Peak Pass was supposedly safe territory. He guessed that just being in the mountains made them nervous. Their homes were the flat plains of Kislev, after all, and they were more used to being on horseback than afoot.

Walking just behind them, leaning on a heavy oaken staff, was Max Schreiber. Max looked a dapper figure in the new robes of golden and yellow brocade he’d had tailored back in the city. He looked ill at ease here, and kept studying the path as if expecting an ambush any moment. Felix understood his fear all too well. The rumours back in Karak Kadrin spoke not only of the dragon but of orcs and goblins in the mountains. Felix had fought greenskins before and did not relish the prospect of another encounter with them.

He cast a glance back over his shoulder for reassurance. He was astonished to see that they had gathered companions as they had left the city. Four new Slayers had joined the party. Steg had joined them, as he had said he would back in the Iron Door. He had been lurking at the main gate of Karak Kadrin as they left. Ulli, the boastful young Slayer, had fallen in step with them a few hundred strides along the road. A repulsively ugly dwarf called Bjorni Bjornisson had greeted Ulrika with a knowing leer and begged permission to join them. When no one had answered he seemed to take it for granted and tagged along. Half a league later they had overtaken the hammer-wielding dwarf Felix had seen in the Temple of Grimnir. He seemed to know who they were and lengthened his stride to keep up.

Gotrek strode along, scowling grimly. His axe was slung over his shoulder and he appeared to be doing his best to ignore his comrades. Snorri Nosebiter chuckled as Bjorni Bjornisson bawled out the ninety-seventh verse of some bawdy song which involved a Slayer, a troll and a convent full of Shallyite nuns among other things. Bjorni was singing in the common tongue so they might all have the benefit of his humour. Felix was astonished by the imagination he showed. He doubted that half the things the Slayer sang were even physically possible.

Behind them rode Malakai. He drove a cart full of mysterious equipment which he refused to let anybody see. As the cart bounced along the rutted road, Felix could hear the clatter of metal on metal, so he knew that the engineer’s days at the forge had produced something, though he had no idea what. Every so often the dwarf flexed the reins and the two small pit ponies pulled the heavy cart a little harder.

Felix smiled sourly. It was his suggestion that the Kislevites should try riding the ponies, the only horseflesh available in the city of the Slayer King, that had put him in the doghouse with Ulrika this time. She had not wanted to see the joke. He guessed that she was already embarrassed enough by having to accompany the Slayers after all, and his comment had been all that it took to goad her to fury. This insight had come rather too late to do him any good.

Behind the wagon came Steg, who Felix occasionally saw sneaking peeks at the wagon whenever they stopped. It was only the presence of the last two Slayers, Ulli and the silent newcomer, that kept him from investigating. Felix did not know which was worse, Bjorni’s singing or Ulli’s incessant boasting. At least the last dwarf, the nameless one, was quiet. There was that to be thankful for.

He supposed there were other things to be grateful for as well. It was a beautiful day. The mountain air was fresh and pure. The sky was clear and blue with not a cloud in sight. Mountain flowers bloomed along the side of the pass. Had it not been for their eventual destination Felix might almost have enjoyed the walk. In his career as Gotrek’s henchman he had been in far less prepossessing places.

Here the Peak Pass was wide and easy to travel. It descended into the plains of the eastern Empire and joined the trade road through the province of Osterland. The path was wide and paved with cracked flagstones that testified to the length of time dwarfs had been using the route. Felix would have liked to follow this path back down into the lands of men, but his oath to follow Gotrek and his desire to be with Ulrika compelled him to do otherwise.

Soon they would turn northwards to take the Old High Road to Karak Ungor, into the valleys haunted by the dragon and by man-hating orcs. He did his best to forget this and concentrate on his surroundings. Copses of pine trees darkened the mountain sides. Smoke rose from where dwarf charcoal burners were at work. Here and there along higher trails herds of goats and sheep were watched over by dwarf shepherds. It was a wonder to Felix to see members of the Elder Race engaged in such mundane professions.

He always thought of them as Slayers and engineers and diggers of tunnels. To him, as to most men, dwarfs were miners, dwellers in deep tunnels, makers of fine weapons. It was hard now, despite the evidence of his own eyes, to dispel that image. Still, he supposed like everyone else, the Elder Race had to eat, and there certainly were dwarf brewers, butchers and bakers. He had seen evidence of this with his own eyes back in Karak Kadrin. He supposed his own experience with dwarfs had up till now been limited to the more exotic types the mountain people produced: Slayers, scholars, engineers, priests. He had never visited a fully functioning dwarf city, only the tiny colony that dwelled amid the ruins of Karag Eight Peaks, and the enormous desolate labyrinth of Karag Dum. The huge industrial complex at the Lonely Tower that had produced the Spirit of Grungni was far from typical, he knew. It was a secret kept even from the majority of the Elder Race.

He flexed his shoulders to settle his pack more comfortably. He had considered asking Malakai if he could put it on the cart, but had decided against it for two reasons. The Slayer engineer was touchy enough at the moment, and he wanted to have all his stuff on him if for some reason he got separated from the rest of the party. He had learned enough in his years of adventuring to be prepared for the worst.

He shook his head, realising that he was simply trying to distract himself from thinking about Ulrika. He knew that if she was being unreasonable, he was too, and he was damned if he could find any reason for it. He just seemed unduly sensitive to her behaviour. It was as if everything she did had a magnified effect on it. What, in any other human being, he would have dismissed as a minor foible, somehow became in her a major flaw. Words, which from anyone else would have been simply a joke, became subtle insults and putdowns, to be brooded over and analysed in depth. The fact that Max was walking closer to her than he was became a threat, and made him unreasonably jealous. Part of him knew that this undue sensitivity was because he was in love, and that perhaps her odd behaviour came about for a similar reason. But part of him went ahead and acted on his own unreasonable impulses anyway. This was something the love poets never mentioned, and he felt annoyed by it. Perhaps it meant that he was not really in love with her after all.

Or perhaps the love poets simplified things, to make them neater and to turn them into better stories. And perhaps they were not being dishonest either. Memory played tricks. He remembered his first love Kirsten fondly, had forgotten most of the bad things about their relationship and idolised the good ones. Yet he knew that he and Kirsten had had bad days, and had argued and had simply not wanted to talk to each other. It was only human. And he had cared about her in spite of the bad things that sometimes happened between them. Sometimes he suspected it was easier and more pleasant to live with the memories of a past love than it was to be involved in a new one. After all, he could edit his memories the way he had once edited his poems, selecting the good parts, polishing them till they shone. Reality always had flaws. Bellies rumbled when you made love. Words that should be spoken sometimes never are. Real people were contradictory, annoying and sometimes selfish. Just like he was, he reminded himself.

He knew that Ulrika was being unreasonable. He knew that he was in the right. He knew that he should wait for her to come and apologise. His pride demanded it, and so did this strange near subliminal anger. Yet somehow he found his legs carrying himself forward to her side, and his lips murmuring an apology, and his hand reaching out to take hers and squeeze her fingers.

And just as strangely as everything else, he found that this made him, if not happy, at least content.

The camp fire burned. Felix helped himself to another slice of waybread and spiced dwarf sausage. He looked across at Ulrika and smiled. She smiled back. They had made their peace that day, at least for a little while. Max Schreiber was a shadowy form on the far side of the flames. He sat cross-legged on the ground, breathing deeply, seemingly engaged in some mystical exercise. Felix did not know why but he felt certain that despite the fact he appeared to be asleep Max was well aware of all that went on around him. Oleg and Standa kept guard a few paces off, facing out into the darkness so as not to ruin their night vision. Feeling the wine he had drunk earlier go right to his bladder, Felix excused himself and got up to make water.

On his return he paused to observe the dwarfs for a moment. Makaisson sat glaring into the flames, while his fingers toyed idly with the innards of some small clockwork device. Beside the engineer sat Bjorni, Ulli and the silent dwarf. As Felix passed Bjorni summoned up the courage to do what Felix had wanted to do all day.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked the stranger.

‘Grimme,’ answered the newcomer, and his tone and his features were more than enough to prevent any further questions. Bjorni decided that this just made him a better audience.

‘Well, Grimme, you might have heard stories about me and the three elf maidens. It’s not true. Well not entirely true. There were only two of them, and only one was elven, well half-elven actually, and I didn’t find that out till later, though the pointy ears should have been a giveaway but she was wearing a head scarf you see. And I was drunk, and all cats are grey in the dark and...’

If Grimme heard he gave no sign. He simply continued to stare morosely into the fire. Felix tried to tune Bjorni out. He and Ulli seemed to have become soul mates. They at least provided each other with an audience for their endless boasting. Bjorni had an interminable source of anecdotes about his love life. Ulli talked of nothing except the fights he had been in, and the battles he was going to win.

‘...and then I said, bring me a donkey,’ Bjorni said. ‘You should have seen the look on her face...’

Felix glanced over at the other Slayers to see how they were taking it. Grimme simply glared bleakly into the fire, lost in some inner world of misery and torment. Felix wanted to talk to him but he knew his attentions would not be welcome.

Steg sat beneath the wagon, whittling a piece of wood with his knife, seemingly unaware of the casual glances Makaisson directed at him occasionally. Beyond the wagon, Snorri Nosebiter and Gotrek kept watch. Felix walked over to see how it was going.

‘There is a stranger coming,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. ‘Snorri can smell him.’

Gotrek grunted. ‘I have known that for the last five minutes. It is a dwarf that comes and one we’ll soon be having words with.’

Felix knew better than to question Gotrek or ask how he knew what he did. Over the years he had developed a tremendous respect for the keenness of the Slayer’s senses. In the dark and wild places of the world, the dwarf was at home in a way a man could never be.

Felix glanced over in the direction Gotrek indicated with a jerk of his thumb. There was something moving out there. In the light of the two moons Felix could see two shadowy outlines. As they came closer, he could hear the clip-clop of hooves on stone.

As the stranger approached Felix saw that it was a dwarf leading a mule.

‘Greetings, strangers,’ he said. ‘Can an old prospector share your fire?’

‘Aye, you can,’ Gotrek said. ‘If you tell us your name.’

‘I am Malgrim, son of Hurni, of clan Magrest. Who might you be?’

‘I am Gotrek, son of Gurni.’

‘Snorri Nosebiter.’

The prospector was within sword’s reach now. Felix could see he was a typical dwarf, short but broad. He wore some sort of hooded jerkin which covered his head, and his long beard reached almost to his knees. He had a pickaxe in one hand, and by the way he held it Felix guessed he was proficient at using it as a weapon. There was a shovel slung over the pack on the mule’s back, along with the sort of mesh pans prospectors used to filter gold from river water. The dwarf’s face was seamed and his eyes were wary. They went a trifle wider when he saw that Gotrek and Snorri were Slayers, and wider still when he saw that Felix was a human.

‘Two Slayers travelling with a man of the Empire,’ he said. ‘I am sure there is a tale there.’

Felix accompanied the dwarfs back to the fire. Malgrim looked at the five Slayers and then at Gotrek and Snorri. ‘I had not heard the kinfolk mustered for war,’ he said. ‘No battle-banners have passed among the mountain clans.’

‘There is no mustering,’ Gotrek said and slumped down beside the fire.

Felix realised that Malgrim thought the only reason so many Slayers could have assembled was to answer a call to battle.

‘A pity,’ said Malgrim, ‘for there is great need. The orcs of the mountains assemble for battle. Ugrek Manflayer has organised all the tribes under his banner.’

Felix shivered. Even in distant Altdorf, he had heard tales of the Manflayer. His name was used to terrify naughty children. He was said to be a gigantic orc who skinned his captives alive and used their hides to make his clothing. Felix had always considered the tale merely a legend, but the prospector sounded convinced of his existence, and he did not seem like a dwarf who merely recounted traveller’s tales for the sake of it.

To Felix’s surprise it was Max Schreiber who spoke next. ‘There are tales of a greenskin shaman in the mountains. He is said to have powerful magic. I heard he too follows the Manflayer.’

‘Well, if they get in our way, we’ll show them what their innards look like!’ bellowed Ulli. ‘We are on our way to slay the dragon Skjalandir.’

The prospector glanced around him and slowly nodded his head, as if understanding were dawning. ‘I had wondered what would bring seven Slayers into the mountains when no battle-banners fly. It is a mighty death indeed that you seek for the dragon will give you one. Since his reawakening he has scoured the High Valleys and made of the Manling Vales a desolation. Still, I wonder if you will even catch sight of him for the greenskins are numerous and there are human bandits in the hills too.’

‘Things are grim in the mountains,’ Felix said. If Malgrim heard the irony in his voice he gave no sign.

‘Aye. There were always wild hill men but they have been joined by desperate folk driven from their farms by the depredations of the orcs and the firedrake. Life is short and cheap in the heights right now. Even more so than usual.’

‘Why does Ungrimm Ironfist not gather his army and restore the peace?’ said Felix.

Malgrim’s laughter was joined by the other dwarfs. ‘It is Ungrimm’s duty to keep Peak Pass clear, and prevent the orc hordes of the east from passing through into the lands of men. If he was to desert this vale with his force and the greenskins got word of it, then an orc horde would soon be rampaging through your Empire’s eastern provinces.’

‘Why is that important to the dwarfs? Why should they care whether Osterland is invaded?’

Malgrim looked shocked. ‘There are binding oaths and treaties of friendship between our peoples. Humans may forget the old ties, but the kinfolk do not. As our ancestors swore so shall we do.’

‘Aye, tis so!’ bellowed Ulli.

‘Also,’ Malgrim added, ‘this pass is ours. We will not allow the greenskins free passage through it.’

Felix could see that all of this was simply a long-winded way of saying that the dwarfs would not send forces to clear out the High Peak Road. As he considered the prospector’s words another thought struck him. If the Elder Race felt this way, why would they even consider sending troops to aid the Kislevites? Simple reflection gave him the answer. The threat of Chaos was of an order of magnitude greater than mere greenskin tribes raiding into human and dwarf lands. If the northlands fell before the onslaught of the hordes then all the southlands would fall soon afterwards. At least, he hoped the dwarfs thought this way. There was little hope of help if they did not.

‘I say we stop and slaughter some greenskins on our way to face the dragon!’ said Ulli.

‘You can if ye want tae,’ Makaisson said. ‘Ah hae business wae that big beastie and it wullnae wait.’

‘The greenskins will still be there after the dragon is dealt with. That’s if any of us are alive to care,’ Bjorni said.

‘If any orcs get in our way we will kill them,’ Gotrek said. ‘Otherwise we go to kill the dragon.’

‘Snorri thinks that’s a fine plan,’ said Snorri Nosebiter, then added wistfully, ‘still, Snorri wouldn’t mind slaughtering a few greenies.’

‘It’s late,’ Gotrek said. ‘Those who aren’t on guard should get some sleep.’

The prospector nodded and laid himself down by the fire. Felix returned to where Ulrika and the other humans were sitting.

‘What was that all about?’ Ulrika asked.

‘The Slayers can’t decide whether we should cleanse the mountains of orcs or dragons first.’

‘Why not do both?’ asked Oleg ironically.

‘Hush!’ Felix said. ‘They might hear you.’

All around great bonfires blazed. From nearby Thanquol could hear the disquieting roars of beastmen and the thunder of huge drums. He could smell tens of thousands of beastmen nearby and thousands of the black armoured Chaos warriors. He knew then that he was in the encampment of the largest army he had encountered since he himself had commanded the massive skaven force that attacked Nuln. He also suspected that in terms of sheer raw power this monstrous force completely outclassed even that mighty skaven horde. He knew enough of the followers of Chaos to understand that one for one they were more than a match for all but the most puissant of skaven.

All around he could smell warpstone, and his magician’s senses told him that the winds of magic blew strong around this army. It was worrying, for he knew that this force possessed not only mere physical might, but a terrible magical potency as well. He knew that even at the peak of his powers he would be hard pressed to overcome the sorcerers gathered here, and he was far from the unassailable height of his awesome abilities.

He could tell just from the flow of energies around him that his captors were approaching the heart of the horde, the nexus around which all this energy flowed. As they came closer he sensed the presence of mighty beings, creatures of a potency he had not encountered since he stood before the Council of Thirteen themselves.

At the heart of the camp was a great gathering of armoured Chaos warriors. Their steeds roamed nearby as the masters squatted beside camp fires that burned yellow and green and other colours that spoke of magical origin. They talked to each other in their debased tongue and Thanquol could tell just from their tone that they were boasting of conquests to come. Just looking at them filled his heart with fear and tightened his musk glands. He glanced around, suddenly grateful that Lurk was there. The presence of another skaven was somehow reassuring even to Grey Seer Thanquol in the centre of this awful force.

Ahead of them, he was sure they would find the war leaders of the horde. He sensed their presence before he saw them, and when they came into view he knew his impressions were correct.

A huge armoured figure lounged in a massive throne of crystal that pulsed with subdued yellows and greens. The throne floated a fingerbreadth over the ground. Using his sorcerer’s senses Thanquol could see that both the man and his seat were permeated with the energies of Chaos. Across his knees was a massive two-handed broadsword covered in yellowish glowing runes. Thanquol did not have to be told that the weapon was enwrapped with the mightiest of killing magics. He could see this for himself, just as he could see that the armour was designed to act not merely as a shield against weapons but against sorcery too. The man’s armour was golden with greenish rondels and inscribed with runes that Thanquol knew were sacred to Tzeentch.

Flanking the throne were two figures. They were lean and vulturish, unarmoured and swathed in huge cloaks whose folds gave them a resemblance to wings. Their skin had an albino whiteness that was close to the grey seer’s own. Looking closely at their thin, hungry features and hellishly glowing eyes Thanquol could see that they were twins, identical in all ways except one. The one on the general’s right hand side held a gold sheathed staff in his right hand. The one on the left held a staff of ebony and silver in his left hand. The hand which held the gold-sheathed staff had long talon-like nails of gold. The talons of the left-hand wizard were encased in silver. That the two were potent sorcerers was immediately obvious to Thanquol. Unwilling as he was to concede that any save the Council of Thirteen might be stronger than he in the use of magic, he knew that he would need to consume prodigious amounts of warpstone to overcome either one of these two in sorcerous battle. If they worked together, he feared to consider the powers they might wield.

The Chaos warlord glared balefully down at Thanquol. The grey seer at once prostrated himself, and said, ‘I bring greetings, mighty warlord, from the Council of Thirteen.’

‘Your masters knew of our coming then, grey seer?’ said the warlord. Thanquol thought it better to lie than to admit the truth. He sensed tendrils of mystical energy coming from the two wizards who flanked the warlord. Immediately he masked his thoughts as best he could. Since he was a grey seer, he knew this was very well indeed.

‘They sensed a mighty gathering of forces and sent me northwards to investigate.’

Well, it could almost be true, thought Thanquol. ‘Alone and unaccompanied. That is most unusual,’ said the magus with the gold staff.

‘I am accompanied by my bodyguard, Lurk Snitchtongue, and protected by my own mighty magic. What need have I of any other protection?’ Thanquol said, a hint of his old arrogance returning.

‘What need indeed,’ said the sorcerer with the ebony staff. Thanquol noticed the hint of mockery in his voice and vowed that one day he would make the magician pay for it. How dare this hairless ape make light of the greatest sorcerer in skavendom. ‘Tis true your bodyguard shows signs of the blessings of our lord Tzeentch. The Great Mutator has touched him. He has the favour of the Changer of the Ways.’

Thanquol glared over at Lurk, who preened himself visibly at these words. Black rage ate at the grey seer’s bowels. Thanquol wondered if Lurk had been consorting with the followers of the Chaos Powers while he was in the Wastes. That would explain the changes in him, for sure. If this were the case he would be made to pay for his apostasy to the Horned Rat. Another score to settle, Thanquol told himself. Assuming he survived this encounter, which at the moment looked by no means certain.

‘You lead this great host?’ Thanquol asked, out of politeness.

‘I am Arek Daemonclaw,’ said the Chaos warrior, ‘Chosen of Tzeentch. These are Kelmain Blackstaff and Lhoigor Goldenrod, my spellcrafters.’

‘I thank you for this information, mighty one,’ Thanquol said diplomatically. ‘I am Grey Seer Thanquol and I abase myself a thousand times before you and offer you the alliance of the Council of Thirteen.’

Thanquol knew he was being a little premature here but he was determined to say anything he needed to get himself out of this trap. ‘We have no need of alliances, Grey Seer Thanquol. What you see here is but the vanguard of a greater host. The Powers march forth to claim the lands of men once more. Those who do not abase themselves before the Powers of Ruin, and most especially my master Tzeentch, will be destroyed. This world will be cleansed and remade in the image we desire and all the false gods and their followers will be swept away.’

There was something in Arek’s voice that compelled belief. His words almost convinced even Thanquol, but the grey seer was too wily a sorcerer and too well schooled in the ways of magic not to recognise a potent spell when he encountered one. He dismissed the hypnotic compulsion in the voice by an effort of will. A glance at Lurk told him that his henchman was making no such effort. He looked at Arek enthralled.

Thanquol could understand why. Lurk was ensnared by the Gift of Tzeentch the warlord was using, and his feeble mind was enthralled by the dark visions of conquest that hovered behind the Chaos warrior’s words. He had even raised his head from the dirt to hear them better. The two sorcerers looked down at him with mocking interest. Thanquol concentrated on matters at hand, deciding he had best find out what was going on, while his enemies seemed in the mood to answer his questions.

‘All four of the Powers march then?’

‘Aye. Tis the way. When one makes a move, the others must respond, lest they lose some advantage.’

That made sense to a skaven as astute as Thanquol. It was exactly the way the clans of his own race manoeuvred back in Skavenblight. He sensed that he was beginning to understand what was happening here, and might even be able to use it to his advantage. Perhaps he could even see the reason why these Chaos worshippers had spared him.

‘There are advantages to be gained in alliances,’ he said. ‘My own god is mighty and has great powers. My people possess vast armies.’

‘Your god is weaker than ours, Grey Seer Thanquol, but his aid might prove useful. Your armies might join our own in time. Certainly, we are the only ones who will make this offer. The followers of Khorne are too brutish. The followers of Nurgle care only for the spreading of their foul plagues, and the followers of Slaanesh are too wrapped up in their own pursuit of pleasure to consider aught but that.’

‘I will convey your words to the Council of Thirteen and explain all that you have said to them.’ Thanquol mouthed the empty words expertly, still worrying about what had been done to Lurk.

‘See that you do, Grey Seer Thanquol, and your rewards will be great.’

‘I thank you mighty warlord.’ Suddenly a thought struck Thanquol. He doubted that his request would be granted but he could see no harm in asking. ‘I sense the substance known as warpstone is carried by your army.’

‘It is one of our master’s greatest gifts and is used in sorcery and in the making of weapons.’

‘We too use it for such purposes, which I take as a sign of our common purpose,’ said Thanquol, pleased with his own eloquence.

‘Do you wish some?’ asked the sorcerer with the golden staff. Thanquol could not quite believe his luck. He licked his lips greedily.

‘Yes-yes!’ he said.

‘Then you shall have it.’ The sorcerer flexed his fingers and the air in front of him glowed. Particles of greenish dust flowed together forming a ball the size of Thanquol’s fist. With another gesture the mage sent it spinning towards the grey seer. Thanquol knew instantly what it was, and snatched it out of the air. His paw tingled as he closed it around a sphere of the purest warpstone he had ever encountered. Hastily he pushed it into his pouch. He could not believe the fools had just handed him the key to so much power. Some inner instinct, which he had long ago learned to trust, told him to be careful. Perhaps all of this was merely a trap. Still, he could not quite see what the Chaos worshippers had to gain. He was already in their power.

‘An enclave of your kind is near,’ Arek said. ‘The place called Hell Pit. I will instruct my riders to escort you there. See that you bear our words to your rulers, Grey Seer Thanquol, and speak fairly of us.’

‘Rest assured I will,’ Thanquol said, offering up a silent prayer to the Horned Rat thanking him for his deliverance. It looked like he and Lurk were going to get away from the horde with their lives.

The suspicious part of him, which had kept him alive so long, told him that it wasn’t going to be quite that easy.

Felix watched as Malgrim rolled up his blankets and placed them in the pack on the mule’s back. The dwarf looked at them and then shook his head.

‘I’d tell you all to be careful, but it would be daft to say that to seven Slayers and a rememberer, so I’ll just thank you for the use of your fire, your food and your company.’

‘Have you any news of the road ahead?’ Felix asked.

‘Aye,’ said the prospector. ‘About a day’s march ahead, you’ll find the village of Gelt. It’s an odd place, a meeting place for prospectors, and a trading post for the mountain-folk. There’s a deep mine there still. And an inn. I suggest you take advantage of it, for you’ll be seeing the last friendly faces you’re going to see for a while.’

Malgrim paused and considered his next words. ‘That’s if the orcs haven’t razed the place to the ground.’

NINE

AN ORCISH ENCOUNTER

Felix strode down the path into the small valley. He was pleased to see that Gelt still stood. It was a placid enough looking little settlement, if you discounted the high stone walls, topped with a wooden palisade, and the guard towers that loomed above the walls. It had been built on a knob of rock rising in the middle of the valley. From his vantage point on the trail above the village, Felix could see smoke drifting upwards through holes cut in the turf roofed stone cottages. There was a large central structure he took to be the inn. On a ledge above the village was what he first took to be another watchtower and eventually realised was the fortified entrance to the mine. A gravel path ran all the way down the hillside to the gates of the town.

Judging from the size of the place several hundred people lived there, and by the look of the fortifications, it would be a hard place to take by storm. He could see humans and dwarfs walking the stony streets in about equal numbers.

‘Looks like a safe enough place,’ he said aloud, as much to reassure himself as for the sake of speaking.

‘Aye, manling, providing the attackers don’t have siege engines,’ said Gotrek.

‘Or powerful sorcery,’ said Max Schreiber.

‘Or aren’t mounted on flying monsters,’ added Ulrika.

Felix glanced around at his companions. ‘Sorry I spoke,’ he said eventually. ‘I hate to destroy your cheery mood.’

‘Snorri is looking forward to a drop of ale,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. ‘Old Hargrim said the Broken Pickaxe brews the best ale in the mountains.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ Gotrek said. ‘Let’s get down there.’

‘Don’t worry, Felix Jaeger,’ Ulli said. ‘No orc would dare attack Gelt while I am there.’

‘Wonder if they have any bar girls?’ Bjorni said. ‘I could use a little company.’

‘Maybe there’ll be a game of chance,’ said Steg. ‘I brought my own special dice.’

Grimme merely shook his head, sucked his teeth, and marched stolidly down the hill. At the rear, Standa and Oleg glanced over their shoulders. They had their strung bows held ready in their hands, but there was no perceptible threat.

‘Go on,’ Felix said. ‘We should be safe for this evening, at least.’

‘If the dragon doesn’t come get us,’ Oleg said.

‘Look on the bright side,’ Felix said. Misgivings and forebodings aside, everybody looked a little happier once they were past the dwarf sentries on the gate.

The Broken Pickaxe had a large common room. A roaring fire served to keep out the chill of the mountain night. Felix glanced around at the crowd. Their party was attracting a lot of attention, which wasn’t surprising when you considered it. How often did these people see seven Slayers travelling in the company of five humans?

The crowd itself was an unusual one. It seemed to consist of an equal mix of humans and dwarfs. Most of the dwarfs had the pale faces and scrubbed clean look of miners after work. The humans were a more mixed bunch. Some of the tougher looking ones wore the warm leather garments favoured by high mountain prospectors. Others looked like peddlers and shopkeepers. None of them looked exactly prosperous, but none looked starved either.

A silence had spread across the room as the Slayers took up one long table. This close to Karak Kadrin no one was going to be stupid enough to object. All of them knew exactly what the Slayers were and what they were capable of when annoyed. Felix had joined Ulrika, Max and the two bodyguards at the table next to the Slayers. Some semblance of normal business was restored when Gotrek called for ale, an order swiftly seconded by Snorri Nosebiter and Malakai Makaisson.

A fat, prosperous looking dwarf with a balding head, rosy cheeks and a long greying beard brought the ale over himself. Judging by the proprietorial air he cast over the place, he was obviously the owner of the inn.

‘You’ll be wanting rooms for the night?’ he asked.

‘The Slayers will sleep in the common room,’ Gotrek said. ‘The humans might want their own chambers.’

‘We do,’ said Ulrika, glancing over at Felix. Max noticed this and looked away, adding, ‘I’ll take a room to myself.’

‘Me and Standa will stay in the common room,’ Oleg said tugging morosely at his moustache. Standa beamed approval of his comrade’s decision. Ulrika agreed.

‘I’ll see the best rooms are aired and the beds turned out. There’s a nip in the air, so you’ll be wanting a fire, no doubt?’

Felix could imagine that the bill was increasing with every word, but so what, he thought. This might be his last chance of a comfortable bed in this life, so why stint tonight?

‘Why not?’

‘And you’ll be wanting food too, no doubt?’

‘Aye. Bring us the stew we smell, and bread and cheese,’ said Ulli.

‘And more ale,’ added Snorri. ‘Snorri has a thirst.’

‘And you’ll be paying for the rooms and the food now, will you?’

The innkeeper was obviously taking no chances with their absconding without paying, even if they were Slayers. Possibly even because they were Slayers. After all, they were dwarfs who had somehow failed to abide by the normal dwarf code of honour. Malakai Makaisson dug into his purse and gold changed hands. Felix could not see how much but the innkeeper’s eyes widened, and he became particularly jovial. It looked like Malakai thought the same way as Felix did about staying in the inn.

‘And that’ll keep the beers comin’ ah nicht,’ said Malakai. ‘And ah’ll be sleeping in the wagon so there’s no need to clear me a space in the common room.’

Steg looked a little disgruntled by that, but after a sip of the ale, his expression became slightly more contented.

‘That it will,’ said the innkeeper and bellowed instructions to his staff. Bjorni’s eyes widened as a busty barmaid approached. Within seconds, he was slapping her rump, and whispering in her ear. If the barmaid was offended she gave no sign.

Felix sampled a drop of the ale, and nodded. ‘Malgrim was right,’ he said. ‘This is fine ale.’

‘It’s not bad,’ allowed Gotrek, which for the Slayer was high praise indeed.

Now that he had been paid, the innkeeper seemed more inclined to be sociable. ‘And you’ll be taking the High Road to Radasdorp then?’

‘If it’s on the way to the dragon’s mountain we will,’ bellowed Ulli, obviously taking a great deal of pleasure from the buzz of conversation this started.

‘So it’s the dragon you’re after,’ said the innkeeper.

‘Aye,’ Malakai said. ‘We’re gannae kill the great big scaly beastie!’

‘It’s been tried before,’ said the innkeeper. Felix looked over, his interest suddenly piqued.

‘By whom?’ he asked.

‘Half a dozen Slayers have passed through here in the past couple of years – not all at once mind,’ said the innkeeper. ‘None of them ever came back.’

‘The orcs probably ate them,’ bellowed one of the humans.

‘Or skinned them,’ added another man ominously.

‘Aye,’ said an ancient looking miner. ‘That’d be likely enough. One of the Slayers was found skinned alive and nailed to a tree by the roadside. They reckon the Manflayer is using his hide for a new pair of boots now.’

‘Another’s head was found on a spike up near the Mirnek Pass. The crows was pecking his eyes out so they was.’

‘And there was one of those human knights, on a big black charger,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Said he had a magic sword and a dragon-killing lance.’

‘He never came back either,’ one of the dwarfs said gloomily.

‘Most likely the orcs got him too,’ said the first man who spoke.

‘Or the human bandits. Henrik Richter is a nasty piece of work,’ said the innkeeper. Seeing Felix’s enquiring glance, he said, ‘He’s the local bandit chief these days. He’s been forging the human bands into a small army. Since the Manflayer came the humans have needed it to survive. They say there’ll be war for control of the high country between those two soon. I can believe it.’

‘It sounds like the High Road has become very dangerous,’ Felix said.

‘This was never the safest of places to live,’ said the innkeeper. ‘But ever since the dragon came back it’s got downright dangerous. I reckon it’s only a matter of time before it attacks Gelt. It’s said to have destroyed all the other towns along the High Road now.’

‘You mean we could just wait here and it will come to us?’ Felix asked hopefully.

‘Aye. Most likely.’

‘Ah dinnae hae time tae waste. I want that beastie deid, and ah want it soon.’

‘There’s more glory in seeking it out!’ shouted Ulli. ‘And if any greenskin or any human tries to stop us, they’ll get a blow from my axe.’

‘Och, if any of them try to stop us, ah hae a nasty wee surprise for them,’ Malakai said. Felix did not doubt that was true. He had seen ample evidence of the Engineer’s genius at devising weapons. Of course, most of Malakai’s weapons were experimental and subject to malfunction. Some of them might prove as dangerous to their wielders as to any foe.

‘And what might that be?’ asked a large burly man who looked more like a mercenary than a prospector.

‘Onybody that’s interested can attack us and find oot,’ said Malakai with a hint of satisfaction. Felix was now really curious about what the engineer had up his sleeve.

‘There are plenty here in the mountains who will take you up on that,’ said the man with a sneer. Felix wondered if this fool was tired of living. It was not wise to sneer at any Slayer, even one as relatively even tempered as Malakai was.

‘They’re mare than welcome tae,’ was all the engineer said in response, and returned to glugging down his beer.

The innkeeper said, ‘You pay no attention to Peter. He is a surly chap at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. He used to make a living selling all along the High Road. Now there’s damn few left to sell to. The dragon’s seen to that.’

‘We’ll change that!’ bellowed Ulli. His boast was met with laughter from the other tables. For some reason, the dwarfs present refused to take the young Slayer as seriously as the others. Ulli did not seem to mind as long as he was the centre of attention. ‘You may laugh but you’ll see. You won’t mock us after the dragon is dead.’

‘You’ll be dead as well,’ shouted someone and the others laughed.

‘What of it,’ shouted Ulli. ‘Everybody dies.’

‘Some sooner than others,’ said Peter.

Bjorni had the barmaid on his knee now. She was running her fingers through his beard while he looked up at her with a lascivious leer. A moment later the woman was tumbled off his knee by a huge man with a scarred face and massive hands. He was without a doubt one of the bouncers.

‘Leave Essie alone,’ he said, his voice flat and menacing.

‘Let it be, Otto,’ said the innkeeper. ‘You know this always happens.’

‘What is that to you?’ asked Bjorni innocently.

‘She’s my wife.’

Felix groaned aloud. He had seen women like Essie before when he and Gotrek worked the taverns of Nuln. Women married to large violent men who thrived on their jealous attention. He couldn’t understand why they did it, but they did. The bouncer looked over at him.

‘What are you whining about, boy?’ he said. Felix looked up at him. The man was big. Perhaps a head taller than he was, and broad in proportion. His arms looked almost as large as Gotrek’s.

‘Some ale went down the wrong way.’

‘Watch it or I’ll take that tankard and stick it up your...’

Felix looked at him, and started to rise from his seat, but it was already too late. Bjorni had taken his fist and whacked Otto between the legs while the bouncer wasn’t looking. The big man groaned and bent double, and as he went over Bjorni took his tankard and smacked him hard on the head. Otto’s eyes crossed and he slumped forward unconscious.

‘Not the first jealous husband I’ve had to deal with,’ said Bjorni tugging lasciviously at the wart on his nose. ‘Now, love, what say you and me find a quiet corner and...’

The girl was bent down over Otto and shrieking. ‘Otto, what has that brute done to you?’

‘He’ll be all right in the morning,’ Bjorni said. ‘Now how about we go behind the woodshed. There’s a big gold piece in it for you if–’

‘Go to hell,’ said Essie.

Bjorni shrugged and sat down again. ‘Another ale, landlord. My jar is suddenly empty.’

The innkeeper was looking at the Slayers warily again. Still, with his biggest bouncer down, and the newcomers not seeming about to start any more trouble, he decided it was best to humour them.

‘More ale, it is,’ he said.

‘I’ll help you carry him upstairs,’ said Steg to Essie, moving over to the slumped body and making as if to pick him up.

‘Don’t bother,’ said the girl. ‘I don’t need any of your help.’

Steg shrugged and dropped the body once more. Felix wondered if he was the only one to notice that the bouncer’s purse was suddenly missing from his belt.

‘I think I’ll just go for a walk,’ said Steg.

‘Ah think ah’ll go with ye,’ Malakai said. ‘It’s aboot time for me to turn in anyway.’

If Steg was disappointed at missing the opportunity to search Makaisson’s wagon, he did not show it.

‘Time for bed,’ Felix said, looking over at Ulrika to see if she agreed with him. She nodded and they made their way up the stairs.

Grund Hugenose of the Broken Nose tribe looked down on the village. His orc eyes were much keener than any human’s, and even by the dim light of the two moons he could make out all he needed. From his vantage point, he could see the wagon in the courtyard. It told him that someone would be leaving the small fortified outpost soon. That meant manflesh, and steel weapons, and maybe gold and rotgut booze. He slipped back from the cliff edge, and headed up the trail.

There was no need to tell the Manflayer about this, he decided. It was a small party and the spoils would be barely enough for him and the lads. He would get his warband together, and make sure that whatever was on that wagon would be his before the next night’s stars shone.

Felix awoke to the sound of metal ringing against metal outside the inn. He threw open the shutters and looked out to see what was going on. From the racket he half expected to see half a dozen orcs swordfighting with Templars in the courtyard but the source of the noise was not immediately evident. After a moment or two of looking he noticed that the back of Malakai Makaisson’s cart was bouncing up and down, and that the covered wagon was where all the row was coming from.

‘What is it, Felix?’ Ulrika asked.

‘Don’t know,’ he said, ‘but it looks like Malakai is up to something.’

‘If it’s important we’ll find out soon enough. Now come back to bed,’ she said. Glancing back at her naked form he did not have to be asked twice.

Felix’s legs ached from the strain of the constant uphill walking. His feet were sore from slamming down on the hard rocks of the High Road. He drew his red cloak of Sudenland wool tight around his shoulder, glad of it now. Despite the brightness of the sun, it was chilly in these mountain heights and getting chillier. A cold breeze blew down the valleys, and ruffled his hair with invisible fingers.

He smiled at Ulrika. They were getting on better today, as they usually did after the nights they slept together. She smiled back warmly. Felix could tell she was as tired as he, if not more so, but was determined to show no sign of it. Felix felt a certain sympathy for her. She had grown up on the flat plains of Kislev and had even less experience than he of mountain walking. He at least had travelled among the peaks before he had fallen in with Gotrek. Oleg and Standa were quite visibly faltering. Their breath came in gasps, and every now and again, one or the other would bend over almost double, legs spread wide, hands resting on thighs, heads bowed as they attempted to catch their breaths.

Of all the humans, Max Schreiber showed the least sign of fatigue, which surprised Felix no end. He had gotten used to thinking of the wizard as a sedentary scholar, and yet he had taken to the hills as if born to them. He leaned on his high staff and spoke encouragingly to Oleg then put his hand on the Kislevite’s shoulder. Felix could have sworn he saw a spark of energy pass between the two men, and then Oleg rose to his full height, and began to walk with renewed vigour. Perhaps that was Max’s secret, Felix decided, maybe he was using his magic to give him strength while they walked, and maybe he had used it to lend some of that strength to Oleg.

Whatever it was, it was effective, Felix thought. Max seemed almost at home here as the dwarfs, and, until today, Felix would have thought that impossible for any human. The dwarfs were unbelievably cheery, considering they were Slayers and bound on a mission that most likely meant their deaths. They strode along tirelessly, taking the steepest of gradients with no apparent effort, sometimes deviating from the path, and scrambling easily up near vertical slopes apparently just for the sheer joy of it.

Only Malakai did not do so. He stayed with his cart at all times, goading his ponies when they balked on the steep inclines, keeping a beady eye on their surroundings and most especially on Steg, whenever the suspected thief strayed close to the cart. Gotrek and Snorri led the way. Felix could see them at the head of the column, cresting the nearest ridge, where the pathway wound ever higher and further up slope.

‘It is beautiful, is it not?’ said Ulrika. Felix glanced around, knowing what she meant. The mountains had a strange barren loveliness that seemed like a reward for making the effort of walking among them. On either side loomed the great grey flanks of mountains, spotted here and there by the green of woods and scrub brush. High above them glittered the snowline, and the chill proud peaks. Boulders rose from the mountainside, and occasionally blocked the path. Felix guessed that this was where stones had been dislodged and rolled downslope.

Far below them, he could see Gelt. Through a pass between two nearby mountains the trail wound down to a cold clear lake.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Though not nearly as beautiful as you.’

She shook her head. ‘You are a shameless flatterer, Felix Jaeger.’

‘It is not flattery. It is merely the truth.’

She turned and looked away for a moment, and her smile took on a strange sad quality. ‘What am I going to do without you?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I have never met a man who makes me feel like you do.’

Felix knew she meant it as compliment but felt embarrassed nonetheless. ‘Is that good or bad?’

‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I do know it is confusing.’

He struggled for a reply, and could not find exactly the right words to say what he felt. He was almost glad when he heard Gotrek bellow, ‘Looks like trouble ahead!’

Felix and Ulrika made their way to the crest of the ridge. The path ran on, descending into a small valley before passing once more over a series of ridges that rose like giant frozen waves to the horizon. Gotrek and Snorri stood on the ridge, silhouetted against the skyline.

A quick glance showed Felix exactly what Gotrek meant. Hurrying along the path towards them were a group of greenskin warriors. Felix tried counting them, but there were too many and they were too tightly packed for him to be very successful in his efforts. He gave up somewhere over twenty.

‘There are fifty-four of them,’ Ulrika said.

‘Your eyes are better than mine.’

‘Either that or my counting skills are.’ He knew she was attempting a joke but he could hear the strain in her voice.

Oleg and Standa got into position beside them. They had already strung their bows. Ulrika began to ready hers. Max took up a position beside them, leaning on his staff with both hands. ‘It seems we are outnumbered,’ he said eventually.

‘They are only greenskins,’ said Snorri. ‘No need to worry.’

‘They outnumber us more than four to one,’ Max said. ‘That causes me just a little concern.’

‘One dwarf is worth ten orcs!’ boomed Ulli.

‘Particularly in bed,’ Bjorni said with a leer.

‘Don’t you ever think of anything else?’ Felix asked.

‘Sometimes I think about fighting,’ Bjorni said. ‘And I think now is as good a time as any to dwell on that.’

‘Aye,’ Gotrek said. ‘That it is. We’ll meet them here, and let them come up at us. I would normally take the battle to them but it would be a pity to fall to an orc scimitar when there’s a dragon in these mountains.’

‘Sound thinking,’ Felix said ironically. Behind him he could hear Malakai Makaisson’s cart rumbling slowly up the hill. Felix sincerely hoped that Malakai had the weapons he had been promising and that they worked.

‘Snorri thinks we should just charge them,’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

‘I think Gotrek’s plan is better,’ Ulli said. Felix wondered if he heard just a little fear in the boastful dwarf’s voice. It would not surprise him. Emptiest vessels make the loudest noise, his father had always claimed. And he should know, thought Felix, for his father was a very loud man.

‘I wonder if they have any gold,’ said Steg. ‘You can never tell. If they’ve just robbed a prospector they might have.’ He became aware of the looks the others were giving him and shrugged affably. ‘You never know. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘I’m more concerned as to whether they have any bows,’ said Gotrek. ‘Being pin-cushioned by greenskin arrows is no death for a Slayer.’

‘I might be able to do something about that,’ said Max Schreiber. ‘If the winds of magic are strong enough, and there’s no shaman down there.’

‘Doesn’t look like there is,’ Gotrek said. ‘If there was, he would be dancing around and chanting nonsense to his gods.’

The orcs were maybe four hundred paces below them now. Just out of arrow range but closing fast. Felix could hear their savage guttural war-cries. They brandished their weapons menacingly.

‘Maybe we could turn back,’ Ulli said. Felix glanced over at him. He looked pale, and a little shaken.

‘That might not be a bad idea,’ Gotrek said. Felix looked at Gotrek curiously. In all their long association, this was the first time he had ever heard the Slayer evince a desire to retreat. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because there are some more greenskins to kill down there.’

Felix looked back in the direction they had come. Orcs and other smaller creatures were pouring down the slopes behind them. It appeared their line of retreat was cut off.

‘This is not looking good,’ said Felix. He noticed that some of the smaller greenskins were mounted on huge spider-like creatures. Just the sight of those savage steeds made his flesh crawl. They were coming on with terrible speed. He began to think that perhaps the Slayers had been overconfident proceeding into the mountains in such a pitifully small party.

‘For them, manling,’ Gotrek said. ‘For them.’

‘I wished I shared your confidence,’ Felix said.

‘Ah’ll deal wae this bunch,’ Malakai said. ‘You see tae the yins in front o’ ye.’

‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ Felix said.

‘Ye can bet on it,’ Malakai said. With one hand he pulled a lever and the canvas cover of the wagon dropped away. Revealed was an odd looking multi-barrelled gun, mounted on a tripod. Felix had seen a smaller version of the weapon before, and knew what it was capable of. Malakai pulled the brake lever of the wagon, locking it in position on the far side of the hill.

The spider riders to the rear had begun their advance up the hill. Felix watched as Malakai sighted down the barrel of his weapon and clutched the trigger guards tight. Felix risked a glance at the other side of the hill. The orcs had begun their climb, shouting confidently as they came. Felix knew that if their foes had any idea of what was waiting for them at the top of the hill, they would not be so confident. Still, he wondered, would it be enough?

Ulrika, Standa and Oleg had begun to fire their short composite bows. Arrows whooshed away downhill, and impaled three of the leading orcs. Two went down, one with an arrow through his eye, another with one through his throat. The third kept coming despite the feathered shaft embedded in his breast.

In response to the arrow fire, the greenskins began to spread out so they would not be quite so tightly packed together and not make such good targets. Savage they might be, Felix thought, but they were not stupid. At this moment, he wished he had learned to use a bow. In his youth he had been given some training with duelling pistols, but none in archery. It was not the mark of the gentleman his father had hoped to turn him into. Right at this moment it would have been very useful though. Apparently the orcs agreed, several of them had unslung bows from their backs and begun to string them. It looked like an archery duel was about to break out. All around him, the Slayers bellowed taunts at the greenskins, mocking them, and brandishing their weapons.

Gotrek raised his axe above his head, and bellowed, ‘Come on up and die!’

‘Snorri wants to fight!’ shouted Snorri Nosebiter.

‘I slept with your mothers,’ Bjorni shouted, then fell quiet, as the other dwarfs all stared at him. ‘Well, needs must when daemons drive,’ he muttered at last. As the dwarfs hurled insults, Ulrika and the Kislevites kept up a steady stream of arrow fire at the orcs. Three more fell but the rest howled angry war-cries and kept on coming.

Suddenly a sound like thunder erupted behind them. Felix looked back to see that Malakai Makaisson had activated his gun. Flames flickered as flint strikers struck home. The barrels rotated and death roared forth from the weapon. As Felix watched one of the spiders crumpled in the middle, its body torn asunder, its legs twitching feebly. Malakai moved the gun slightly on its tripod and the arc of fire changed. A second spider crumpled and then a third.

Unfortunately, the roar of the gun spooked the ponies. It was either that or the sight of the unnaturally huge spiders coming towards them. They began to rear and buck and lash out with their hind legs, kicking at the cart and wrestling with their harness in a desperate attempt to get free. One of the kicks smashed into the brake lever, knocking the mechanism loose and snapping it in two. Another flurry of blows sent the cart rumbling downslope. Slowly at first, and then moving ever faster, it picked up speed. Felix considered racing after it and trying to stop it, but swiftly realised that it was futile. There was no way a man of ordinary strength could bring the careening vehicle to a halt.

If Malakai Makaisson was dismayed he gave no sign of it. He shouted a dwarf warcry and kept firing, mowing down another spider rider. The last two moved to intercept him.

‘Beware, manling,’ Felix heard Gotrek say, and twisted his head to look at the oncoming orcs once more. Half a dozen of them had managed to get their bows ready and were returning fire at the hilltop. Felix flinched as arrows blurred towards him, then suddenly Max Schreiber raised his hands and finished whatever spell he had been muttering. A glowing sphere of golden light sprang up around the hilltop. The arrows struck its shimmering translucent surface and caught fire, disintegrating harmlessly in a shower of sparks.

The advancing orcs halted in confusion, dismayed by this display of sorcerous power. The Kislevites kept the stream of arrows coming, taking down two more orcs. Felix guessed that they had taken perhaps ten of the orcs out of the combat now. Still, that left more than enough to overwhelm the hilltop. A crunching sound behind him drew his attention again. He looked back.

Through the shimmering haze he saw that one of the spider riders had got in the way of the cart and had been crushed under its heavy ironshod wheels. The last one was torn to shreds by a burst of fire from the organ gun. Malakai continued to rumble downhill into the horde of goblin troops. Felix could see them looking up at the oncoming Slayer with wide-eyed panic. Malakai continued to bellow and roar challenges as he raced towards the small greenskins.

A shout from the front drew Felix’s attention back there. The orcs had overcome their dismay swiftly enough and continued their advance. Realising the futility of their efforts the greenskin archers had put away their bows, drawn their heavy black iron scimitars, and now rushed to join their comrades. Felix hastily judged the distance and readied his own dragon-hilted sword.

‘I reckon you’ve time for one more shot, and then you’d better get your blades out,’ he told Ulrika.

A faint smile curved her lips, as she drew the bowstring to her cheek and loosed. ‘You don’t say,’ she said as another orc dropped. From behind them came the sound of explosions. What was Malakai up to, Felix wondered? He dared not look and see the first of the onrushing orcs were almost within striking distance. Ulrika fired once more at almost point blank range, and then hastily dropped her bow and drew her sword. Felix stepped forward, ready to interpose himself between her and anyone who might strike at her before her weapon was out.

The sound of Max’s chanting altered, and the sphere of golden light collapsed inwards, tendrils of energy congealing into a far smaller sphere about the size of a man’s head that hovered just in front of Max. Another gesture shattered the sphere and sent bolts of golden light raining down onto the orcs. In an instant the whole front row was felled by the blaze of magical energy. Felix saw one orc sink to its knees, the whole front of its chest ripped away, its ribs visible through the smoking hole in its armour.

‘Right, lads,’ Gotrek said. ‘Let’s get stuck in!’

It was all the encouragement the Slayers needed. All six of them raced forward at the discouraged orcs who stood gawping at them, the momentum of their charge lost in the face of Max’s magical onslaught. Even as Felix watched, Gotrek stormed in amidst the orcs. His axe rose and fell in a bloody arc, smashing through one orc to bury itself in the chest of another. With a brutal twist, the Slayer pulled it free and sliced about him, the mighty mystical blade transformed into a whirlwind of death in his hands.

Snorri raced in behind him, axe and hammer held at the ready. He lashed about him with mighty strokes, uncaring of his own life. Each of his blows downed an orc reducing them to lifeless husks in an instant. The other Slayers joined them, forming a wedge that cleaved through the orcs, like a ship sailing through a sea of green blood. Felix watched in awe at the destruction the dwarfs wreaked. He doubted that a company of knights could have created more havoc than the Slayers had in those few brief instants.

Bjorni head-butted one orc and as it drew back, he lashed out with his axe, severing its head. Laughing like a maniac, he stamped on the foot of another, kneed it in the groin and then drove his axe into its chest before it could recover. Pale-faced Ulli moved alongside him using his own axe two-handed, hewing at his foes like a woodcutter chopping a trunk. Felix could see he was far less skilled than the other dwarfs but his strokes were nonetheless effective, powered as they were by his mighty dwarf muscles.

Steg lurked at the rear, lashing out with his pickaxe at any orc who threatened to get round his comrades. His eyes darted everywhere, as if looking for loot, but not even his greed could get the better of him in the middle of this swirling, turbulent melee. Grimme fought off to the right on his own, and the carnage he created was appalling. He used his huge hammer two-handed but with a speed that rivalled Gotrek’s. One mighty blow reduced an orc’s skull to jelly. A second sideways stroke knocked a greenskin head clean off, sending it flying a hundred strides down the slope.

A company of men would have routed in instants under the fury of the Slayers’ attack, but these orcs were made of sterner stuff. For a moment only they wavered, and then they threw themselves into the fray with a berserker bravery that almost matched their foes’. They swarmed in over the dwarfs, seeking to overcome them with sheer weight of numbers. A few of them, noticing the humans who stood waiting on the hilltop, swept past the Slayers and charged. Felix considered the position for an instant. Would it be better to wait or charge? Here, they had the advantage of position. If they charged they would have the advantage of momentum.

A glance told him that the orcs did not seem to be too winded by their uphill run. He reached his decision instantly.

‘Let’s go!’ he shouted, and ran forward. Ulrika and her bodyguards followed.

‘Stay close. Watch each other’s backs!’ Ulrika cried. Felix was glad she had thought of it. It was the one advantage they might have in the midst of the chaos that surrounded them.

Moving downslope added to his speed. He selected the largest of the onrushing orcs as his target and raised his blade high. At the last second, he brought his blade down, ducked under the orc’s stroke and with a backward slice chopped it across the spine. He felt bone crunch and leather give way under the impact of his razor-sharp blade and then the orc dropped, its legs no longer obeying it. Standa kicked it in the head as he passed, and the orc grunted and lay still.

Felix was lost in the madness of battle. He ducked and dodged, parried and struck, thrusting out with his blade into the tightly packed mass of bodies. Sweat almost blinded him, blood splattered his face and arms. The howls and screams of his foes almost deafened him. The shock of each parry almost tore his blade from his numb fingers.

He lashed out to left and right, trying always to keep Ulrika in view, lest a foe strike her down unawares. He saw her fighting with her long Kislevite sword. She moved through the fray like some warrior goddess. If she could not match the orcs for strength, she made up for it in speed. Battle madness seemed to overtake her. Felix had fought her once in play, but had never really witnessed her fight in earnest. Some primordial rage seemed to fill her, and transformed her into an engine of destruction. She danced through the battle like a flame, whirling and cutting, and leaving a trail of death in her wake. Behind her Oleg and Standa fought like men possessed, guarding her flanks. They lacked her skill and speed, but fought with the deadly competence of veterans.

Out of the corner of his eye, Felix caught a flicker of golden light. He glimpsed Max moving through the orcs. His whole body was surrounded by a flicker of yellowish light which seemed to deflect blows. Whenever his staff struck an orc there was a flash of utter brilliance and the smell of burning meat filled the air. Felix knew that the mage’s enchanted weapon was burning through whatever it touched. The moment passed. Another orc attacked and Felix was hard pressed to defend himself. He backed away up the hill, frantically trying to keep his balance as he parried, desperately hoping that he would not trip over some unseen obstruction, like a boulder or an orc corpse. His foe was a massive orc, a head taller than he, and half again as broad. Its long ape-like arms gave it greater reach. Its red eyes were filled with hate and bloodlust, and spittle and foam erupted from its mouth, drenching the tusk-like teeth that protruded from its lower jaw. It looked like it fully intended to kill Felix then eat him. It was very strong and very fast, and for a sickening instant Felix doubted his own ability to stop it.

From some dark depth of his mind bubbled up the realisation that if he fell here, he would never get his chance to confront the dragon. As if in answer to this, he felt new strength flow into him from the sword. The tidal wave of energy drove back fatigue and fear. He blocked the orc’s blow easily, catching its blade with his own, and holding it with ease, as if the orc did not outweigh him by ten stone. He saw a look of shock twist across the orc’s face, as it registered this feat by its relatively puny foe.

Then time seemed to slow for Felix. He moved at normal speed but everything around him moved at half its usual pace. He drew his blade back from the orc and before it had time to respond separated its head from its shoulders. He strode forward into the fray once more, killing as he went.

In an instant the orcs realised they were overmatched. One of them turned to run and, in a heartbeat, all of his surviving brethren came to the same decision. As they chose to flee the dwarfs cut them down. As they ran the Slayers and their human companions followed. The short-legged dwarfs were soon outdistanced but the humans managed to keep up and chop down a few more from behind.

Still, there were too many to overtake and kill them all, and Felix realised that if they kept on the orcs might regroup and overwhelm the humans. He shouted for Ulrika and her bodyguards to halt and reluctantly they obeyed. The orcs kept running.

From behind the ridge top came the sound of another explosion. Felix could see a cloud of black smoke rising skyward. Instantly the thought came to him that Malakai Makaisson was down there somewhere, fighting alone against a horde of goblins.

‘We’ve got to get back and help Malakai,’ he said, and saw understanding pass across Ulrika’s face. She nodded and turned at once, Standa and Oleg following her. Felix cursed under his breath as the strain of running up hill told on his legs. His clothes were already saturated with sweat and wet with blood. His muscles ached from the strain of the fight. Yet he forced himself to keep up with the Kislevites.

He saw that the Slayers had already turned and were racing across the ridge top in the direction of the other battle. He rushed onwards as they vanished out of sight, feeling confident that as they had vanquished the savage orcs, the goblins were likely to prove far less of a threat. Then the thought of those giant spiders entered his mind, and his feelings of confidence vanished.

Silhouetted on the ridge-line, Max Schreiber raised his staff high. A nimbus of yellowish light flickered around him, but it was less bright than it had been and Felix knew instinctively that Max had exhausted a great deal of his strength. Even so, he swirled his staff around his head, and as he did so, the tip seemed to catch fire. Angry golden light blazed brighter and brighter with each rotation of the staff, as if it were a firebrand catching alight in the motion. Finally, having gathered sufficient power, Max unleashed it, sending a torrent of energy vanishing downslope. The spell was answered by the highpitched, piping screams of dying goblins.

Felix crested the ridge ahead of Ulrika and her bodyguards, and looked down on a scene of appalling carnage. The Engineer’s cart had cut a bloody swathe through the goblin horde’s ranks. The huge spiders were crushed or blown apart. Many small goblin bodies lay still on the ground, testament to the terrifying power of the organ gun. Malakai himself stood precariously atop the cart which had crashed to a halt in a depression by the side of the road. He tossed black bombs into the massed goblins.

The greenskins huddled together, kept at bay by the power of the explosives, as they tried to gather their courage and assault the inventor. Now it looked as if Max’s spell and the sudden advent of six Slayers was enough to daunt them completely. They turned and fled back the way they came. Seeing their departure, Felix decided that he had had enough of slaughter for one day, and slowed from a run to a walk. Ulrika and the Kislevites swept past him, and moved to join the Slayers below.

Felix let them. He knew they would never catch the greenskins now.

Grund ran as hard as he ever had in his life. He liked a fight as much as the next orc but those stunties had just been too much. He had never seen anyone fight like that dwarf with the magic axe save Ugrek himself. He knew that if he wanted revenge he would have to tell the Manflayer his tale. Ugrek would get the lads together then, and they would all come down and stomp those stunties. Grund hoped the warboss was still camped at Bloody Fist knoll. It was less than a day away, a lot less if Grund kept up this pace. Thinking about the stunty with the axe, he decided that might not be such a bad idea.

Felix passed the corpse of a goblin. Smoke rose from the body along with the smell of scorched flesh. It looked like the greenskin had died as a result of Max’s spell. There was no mark on the body, no hole that would have marked the passage of organ gun shell or shrapnel from a bomb. When he looked closely, he saw that the small humanoid’s eyes had exploded in their sockets, splattering jelly across its face. It was not a pretty sight but then again, few corpses ever were.

He walked to another of the creatures that lay sprawled face down in the dirt, and turned it over with his boot. It was not very large. Its body was no bigger than that of a child of ten. Its legs were very short in proportion to the length of its torso and the arms very long. Its head was big for its body. The creature wore a sort of hooded leather tunic, dyed bright yellow, and a sickly green. In death the hood had fallen back to reveal its face.

The features were twisted and malevolent and cunning. The nose was as long and as thin as a carrot, the mouth filled with sharp, rat-like teeth. The thing that struck him most was the creature’s hands. They were gnarled and strong, with large knuckles and very long, very dextrous-looking fingers. Something about them made Felix think of stranglers, and he knew that he would not have liked to find those hands wrapped round his throat.

In death, though, the creature looked curiously pathetic. There was something infinitely sad about its small, still form. He mentioned this to Ulrika who stood nearby watching him. She looked at him with blank incomprehension.

‘It’s dead,’ she said. ‘And that’s good. For it would have killed us if it had got the chance.’

‘You’re right,’ Felix said but still somehow he felt something like shame when he looked down on the small corpse.

Felix walked over to where Malakai Makaisson stood atop his cart. The engineer glared down truculently and Felix soon saw why. One of the wagon’s wheels had come off, and the buckboard had fallen open spilling the engineer’s tools and equipment into the dirt. At least Malakai himself did not look too hurt, although his fingers were black and his face was smudged with soot or oil.

‘Are you alright?’ Felix asked.

‘Aye. Niver better! It’ll tak mare than these sleekit wee beasties tae dae fur me, don’t you worry. It’s ma stuff ah’m worried aboot. Ah hope this crash hisnae damaged it ony.’

‘I’ll help you gather it up,’ Felix offered.

‘Dinnae you bother. Ah hae ma ane system fur this. Ah’ll sort it oot masel.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Felix said.

He strode over to where Gotrek and Snorri stood side by side, inspecting the hills into which the goblins had fled.

‘Snorri reckons we’ve seen the last of them,’ said Snorri.

Gotrek spat on the ground, and shook his head truculently. ‘Then you should leave the thinking to others, Snorri Nosebiter. For they’ll be back as soon as they find their brethren. And there will be more of them next time. You can bet gold on it.’

Felix was forced to agree. Some instinct told him that they had not heard the last of the greenskins, not by a long chalk. Behind him came the sound of hammering, as Malakai Makaisson proceeded to repair his wagon.

‘We’ll kill them all then,’ Ulli said. Felix could see that his face was still pale, and his fingers shook where they gripped his axe. Still, he had acquitted himself well enough in the battle.

‘In a brothel in Nuln they had what they claimed were goblin girls,’ said Bjorni reflectively. ‘They weren’t though. They were just human lassies with their faces painted green and their teeth filed.’

‘I could have lived my whole life cheerfully without ever finding that out,’ Felix said.

‘Well you’d be missing something then,’ Bjorni said with his repulsive leer.

Felix turned and walked away.

TEN

ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD

It was dawn. The fire was dead, reduced to a black pit of ash and cinders. Stuffing a hunk of rubbery cheese into his mouth, biting on sour dwarf waybread and washing it all down with flat ale, Felix watched as the dwarfs and the Kislevites broke camp.

Ulrika smiled at him. He reached out and squeezed her hand, and was glad to feel the pressure returned. Over Ulrika’s shoulder he could see Bjorni giving him a wink. The dwarf leered repulsively then grabbed his left biceps with his right hand and made a pumping gesture. Felix looked away. Malakai had fixed his wagon, packing away some of his components in wooden crates, leaving a bunch of things that looked suspiciously like weapons within easy reach. The ponies had returned after a couple of hours of wandering the previous evening, and were now standing docile in their harnesses.

The other Slayers had their weapons to hand and their packs over their backs and looked ready for trouble. Oleg and Standa had their bows ready. Only Max Schreiber looked out of sorts. He seemed pale and drawn and more than a little tired. A bemused, somewhat thoughtful expression marked his face. He stood taller. He had in some subtle way altered, and Felix was not quite sure how.

‘Let’s go,’ shouted Gotrek. ‘We’re still a long way from the Dragon Vale.’

Malakai jerked the reins. The Slayers fell into marching step. Far off, in the distance, Felix could see small clouds.

Max Schreiber felt exhausted. He had used a lot of power yesterday in the battle with the greenskins.

He had not slept well. Jealousy gnawed at him while Felix and Ulrika lay together under blankets on the far side of the fire. That and the snoring of the dwarfs had not made for a restful night. Eventually, after hours of staring at the cold glitter of the stars, he had managed to get to sleep. Mere moments later, it seemed, Snorri was kicking him awake. He felt like he had not slept at all. His eyed seemed glued together and he ached. Still, all things considered, he did not feel quite as bad as he had expected, and he wondered why.

He took a deep breath and tested the winds of magic. They blew weakly this day, he knew, but, even so, touching them sent a tingling through his veins, and renewed his energy. He closed his eyes and probed his own being. He felt depleted, and at the same time, curiously elated.

He knew also that the expenditure of power in yesterday’s battle had done him good, in some as yet undefined way. Sometimes, he knew, using his arts was the only way to improve them. He had gained no new insights he could think of during the battle yesterday, yet he knew he had gained something. He had managed to handle the flow of the magical winds with more fluency than he ever had before, and he had delved deeper into the well of his soul than at any time in the past. He knew his power was increasing.

In the past few weeks he had been called on several times to use his powers as he never had before. In combat with the skaven, with the dragon and yesterday with the orcs. He had used the power under pressures and stresses, the like of which he rarely encountered before in his scholarly life. It seemed to be having some profound effect on him.

As he grasped at the winds of magic and drew them to himself, he knew he was now a vessel of energies greater than any he had ever held. His senses seemed keener. His grasp of the flows of magic was stronger. His magical vision had grown more perceptive.

He was now aware in a way he had not been before of the play of awesome energies through the runes of Gotrek’s axe, and of the less strong, but nonetheless still potent, magic that permeated the blade Felix carried. He sensed that both weapons had been forged with a purpose, and he could almost grasp what those purposes were. He knew Gotrek’s axe had been forged to be baneful to Chaos.

And yesterday, when Felix had drawn his blade, he had become briefly aware that it possessed something like sentience. Max wondered whether Felix knew. Most likely, yes. It would be almost impossible to bear a weapon like that for any time, and not be aware of it. Unless of course the weapon itself had concealed its power and its purpose. He decided that it was something he should talk with Felix about when he got the chance.

It was something the young man should be warned about.

Grund abased himself before Ugrek Manflayer. To be more precise, he abased himself before Ugrek Manflayer’s tent. It offended Grund’s orcish sensibilities to throw himself on the ground before anyone or anything, but with the Manflayer it paid to be careful. He was very touchy, and his temper was a thing that put fear even into orcs. That and his habit of skinning his enemies and eating bits of them while they still lived.

Ugrek’s bodyguards grunted with barely suppressed sniggers at the Broken Nose chieftain’s discomfiture. Let them, he thought. He had seen them humiliated often enough by their boss. They silenced themselves instantly when the entrance flap opened and Ugrek emerged from his tent of human skin. Grund shivered. The shaman Ixix was with the big chief and that was never good. The little runt was even madder than Ugrek and claimed to speak with the gods in his dreams. Grund supposed it must be true. Why else would the mighty Manflayer listen to a wizened little runt like the goblin?

‘Wot is it?’ Ugrek asked. Grund looked up at him. Ugrek was the largest orc in the world, Grund was sure of it. He was nearly a head taller than any other orc in the mountains, and far stronger. In one hand he carried his magical cleaver, in the other he held a big axe. His armour had to be made special-like by the captured human smith that Ugrek kept chained to his tentpole. His helmet had two huge horns protruding from it. His eyes were a healthy red.

Grund quickly explained what had happened. Much to his surprise, Ugrek looked at the shaman and then starting laughing. Ixix began to giggle too. He laughed so hard he had to wipe his nose on his snot-encrusted cloak. Grund didn’t think he saw anything funny in the situation but he laughed anyway, just to be on the safe side. It never hurt to humour the big boss. Soon the bodyguards joined in. Once they were all howling with mirth, Ugrek silenced them with a gesture of his fist. He looked down at the shaman.

‘It’s the dream for sure,’ said Ixix. ‘The gods spoke true. They are going to kill the dragon and then you are going to kill them. You will have a magic axe to match your magic cleaver, and you’ll have all the dragon’s treasure too.’

‘I will be the greatest orc war leader in the world?’ asked Ugrek.

‘You will be the greatest orc war leader in the world.’

‘Send out word!’ Ugrek bellowed. ‘Summon the tribes. We go to the Dragon Vale. We’ve got some stunties to kill.’

Just as everybody ran to obey his orders, Ugrek stopped them again. He was like that. ‘And tell every last one of your boys to leave the stunties alone till they get there too. They are mine. I am going to kill them and eat their hearts.’

Ulrika marched along through the mountains. She was not unhappy, but she was not happy either. She wondered what was happening between her and Felix. There were times when she felt certain that she loved him, and there were times when she felt equally certain that she felt nothing at all. It was odd how the passion came and went. Sometimes, as in the moment last night when they had sat by the fire and held hands, she felt they were connected deeply, as if by strong magic. And there were times, like this morning, as they marched forward under these brooding clouds when his merest glance could goad her to fury, and the look of stupid devotion she sometimes caught in his eye made her want to slap him in the face. At times like that it was almost as if he were a different man from the one who lay beside her in the night, as if he were a stranger who somehow had invaded her life.

She thought about that for a moment, and corrected herself. No. Sometimes, she felt like she was a different person, that something within her had changed in a way that she did not understand herself. He was the source of a spectrum of emotions that both enthralled and frightened her in a way no feelings ever had before. She feared to lose him, but she felt like running away from him. Somehow, in some strange way, he had gained power over her life, and she both hated this and wondered at it.

She glanced up at the turbulent clouds and felt that in some ways they reflected her own inner turmoil.

‘Best get ready,’ Gotrek said from behind her. ‘Looks like it’s going to rain hard.’

Grey Seer Thanquol looked up at the gates of Hell Pit. The walls of the monstrous crater loomed above him. Poisonous-looking lichen covered the gnarled rock. Ahead of him, carved to resemble a monstrous rat-like head with gaping jaws, was the entrance to the lair of Clan Moulder. The black iron gates of the portcullis were its teeth and skaven heads peaked out from its eye sockets. In the distance Thanquol could hear the bellowing of beasts and sense the presence of a brain-numbing amount of warpstone. The sky overhead glittered with strange colours, as clouds of chemicals rose from the chimneys within the crater to pollute the air all around.

The thunder of hooves told Thanquol that the riders of Chaos had departed behind him. A tingling of his flesh told him that whatever spell had enwrapped them had departed with them. Thanquol felt certain that the spell was simply one to warp time and enhance their speed, allowing them to cover the distance between the horde and Hell Pit in a quarter of the time it would normally have taken. At least he hoped that was what it was. As far as he could tell, he had suffered no ill-effects from the magic nor had it affected him permanently.

He breathed a prayer to the Horned Rat, almost grateful for his delivery. The followers of Tzeentch had been as good as their word, and delivered him unharmed to this citadel of skavendom. Thanquol paused only for a moment to wonder why. The followers of the Lord of Change were famed for their cunning, not their mercy. Still, he reflected, they most likely had been impressed by his incredible eloquence. Thanquol knew that no matter how cunning they might be, they could not match wits with a grey seer. He knew that once again he had overcome his enemies by the sheer power of his intelligence.

He was uneasy. He wished that they had not brought him here of all places. He would have preferred any other stronghold than Hell Pit. Any port in a storm, Thanquol thought. And at least now he had great tidings to deliver. Surely, in the face of the threat of Chaos, the elders of Clan Moulder would see the sense of making a common cause with Thanquol.

He kicked Lurk up the posterior. ‘Rise-rise! Get up lazy beast! Now is no time for resting!’

Lurk glared up at him with hate-filled eyes. Foam frothed around his lips. His chest rose and fell like bellows. He had been hard pressed to keep up with the Chaos steeds that had carried his master, but, suspecting that to fall behind would mean his death, he had somehow managed to force his battered body to keep up. Whatever spell the Chaos sorcerers had cast had affected him too. He had not been left behind in spite of their supernatural pace.

Thanquol was aware of red skaven eyes glaring down at him from above the huge carved gate. He knew that weapons were being brought to bear on him, and that reinforcements were being hastily summoned to augment the guards within.

From high above a skaven voice chittered: ‘Who is there? What is your business with Clan Moulder?’

Thanquol drew himself up to his full height and tilted back his head so that his horns were fully visible. He knew the guard would recognise the mark of the Horned Rat’s favour. He gave them a few heartbeats to appreciate it, then boomed out in his most impressive oratorical voice, ‘It is Grey Seer Thanquol come bearing important tidings for your masters.’

‘Are you Thanquol or Thanquol’s ghost?’ a tremulous voice came back. ‘Grey Seer Thanquol is dead. Killed by the dwarfs and their human allies at the battle of the horse soldiers’ burrow.’

Always, always, this idiocy to contend with, thought Thanquol unhappily. ‘Do I look dead, foolish vermin? Open this gate and take me to your masters or I will unleash a spell of grievous deadliness to consume your bones!’

He let a glow of pale warpfire build up around his hand to show that he meant what he said. In truth, he was certain that the protective magics woven into the crater’s walls would most likely be able to withstand even his most potent sorceries, but how could a mere sentry know this?

‘I must consult with my masters. Wait! Wait!’ Thanquol was not sure whether the guard skaven meant to stay his spell or simply wait outside the gate. It did not matter. He knew that as soon as someone in authority was summoned he would be allowed inside.

Now all he had to do was consider what he was going to say. He needed to work out what would be advantageous to tell the Moulders and what was needful to keep from them. Such things could wait, he told himself. Suddenly, confidence filled him. He knew that a skaven of his supreme intellect would have no trouble outwitting the dullards of Moulder, just as he had easily out-thought the followers of Tzeentch.

Still, he was troubled. Even for a skaven of his superlative abilities, escaping the clutches of the Chaos horde had seemed a little too easy.

Felix stared along the valley. He was amazed by how quickly things changed in the mountains. This morning it had been bright and sunny, clear as a summer’s day on the plains of Kislev. Now it was dreary and cold, with a chilliness to the wind that reminded him of snow and winter. The clouds were low and dark. In the distance he could see the flicker of lightning strokes, and hear the faraway boom of thunder.

The mountains themselves had changed appearance just as dramatically. At dawn they had been bright, clean titans, almost hospitable-seeming. Now they loomed large, dark and forbidding in the dreary light. The further peaks were obscured by more cloud. He felt his own mood darkening. The change in the weather had added to the ominous, oppressive atmosphere caused by knowing that they were coming ever closer to the dragon’s lair.

Ulrika had moved to the head of the column and was scouting alongside Standa and Oleg. It made a certain amount of sense. She had by far the keenest eyes in the party and would be able to perceive a threat before anyone else. At least, such had been her logic. Felix felt that it was just as much to get away from him. She had become remote and withdrawn again, and ignored all his attempts at conversation. He was fast coming to the conclusion that he would never understand women, or at the very least never understand her.

He became aware that Max Schreiber had fallen into step beside him. The mage’s face wore a curious look, at once exalted, yet indrawn. His first impressions this morning had been correct, Felix thought. There was something different about Max now. He looked even more like a sorcerer than ever he had before. Felix tried to tell himself that it was because now he was simply more aware of the power the mage wielded, but he knew it was more than this. A distinct change had come over the magician in the past few days. Now, more than ever, he seemed like a figure of hidden might.

‘Felix, may I ask you a few questions about the sword you bear?’

‘Why?’

‘I am interested in it. It seems to me to be an artifact of considerable power, and it seems to be... awakening.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I have sensed changes in it. The weapon harbours some sort of sentience, and it is gaining in strength.’

Felix thought about the burst of power he had received in the battle yesterday, and the way the blade had shielded him from dragonfire on the Spirit of Grungni. He had long known the weapon possessed magical qualities but not until recently had it exhibited anything like these powers. In the past it had simply been a blade that never lost its edge, with runes that glowed mysteriously under certain circumstances.

‘Do you think that it is dangerous in any way?’ he asked nervously. Max shrugged. A frown marred his fine features.

‘I do not know. All magical weapons are in some way perilous. They are repositories of power that can sometimes affect their wielders in unpredictable ways. Sentient weapons are the most perilous of all, for they can warp the minds and souls of those who carry them.’

Felix felt his flesh crawl at the magician’s words. He did not doubt that they were true. He fought down the instinctive urge to draw the blade and simply cast it away that rose up in him. ‘Are you saying that the blade might be able to control me?’

‘It is unlikely, unless it is particularly potent, and you are particularly weak-minded, which, I hasten to add, you do not appear to be. It might be able to affect your thinking a little, or take partial control in moments of stress. A weapon of the type I suspect this is could not control you, if you decided not to let it. At least, I hope not.’

‘You are starting to worry me, Max.’

‘That is not my intention. Could I ask how you came by the weapon?’

Felix considered this for a moment. ‘It belonged to the Templar Aldred of the Order of the Fiery Heart. I took it from him after he died.’

Even as he said the words, Felix realised that this was both true and untrue. The blade had belonged to Aldred only for moments, when he had snatched it up from the hoard of the Chaos troll in Karag Eight Peaks. The Templar had come seeking the blade; it had not belonged to him. And yet, it felt like it did, or at least it felt like it belonged to his order. Felix had on many occasions felt as if he were merely the temporary custodian of the blade and he had fully intended to return it when the time was right. He mentioned all of these thoughts to Max. The magician looked thoughtful.

‘It seems to me that the blade has been influencing your thoughts for a long time, albeit subtly. It also sounds like you have been unconsciously resisting its influence, which is both normal and instinctive when it comes to magic.’

‘Why would this blade be trying to influence me?’

‘Perhaps there is a geas attached to it. Or perhaps it is one of those weapons which possesses a single overriding purpose. Maybe it was forged with the destruction of a particular foe or type of foe in mind. Have you ever thought that this might be the case?’

‘I suspect you already know the answer.’

‘Just looking at the workmanship of the hilt is a clue, I would say. I would guess that the blade started to show changes after we encountered the dragon.’

‘You would be right.’ Felix told the mage of the way the blade had protected him from dragonfire, and of the way it had intervened in the previous day’s battle when he had felt he might not survive to confront the beast. Max listened intently until after Felix had finished then said, ‘I think your blade was forged to be a bane to dragons.’

‘Do you mean you think it will give me the power to kill Skjalandir?’

‘I don’t know. I think it could hurt Skjalandir in a way that a normal blade could not but I don’t think it will guarantee you could kill him. There are plenty of examples from history of heroes armed with the most potent magical weapons failing to kill the great drakes. Even Sigmar only wounded the Great Wyrm, Abraxas.’

‘You are not reassuring me, Max,’ Felix said. ‘I thought for a moment I was about to become the hero of some mighty tale.’

‘Truthfully, Felix, judging by your deeds you and Gotrek are already that. I am a magician, not a prophet or a seer, but I do not think it is entirely by chance that your sword, Gotrek’s axe, Malakai’s weapons and even my own self are here. I suspect the workings of fate. If I were a more vain and a more devout man, I would see the hand of the gods.’

‘I find that difficult to imagine,’ Felix said. ‘I find it easier to believe that Gotrek and I live under the curse of the gods.’

‘You are too cynical, Herr Jaeger.’

‘If you had seen what I have seen, you would be cynical too,’ said Felix.

Max looked at Felix, as if trying to weigh how serious he was. After a moment, he glanced away.

‘Gotrek was right,’ he said. ‘It’s going to rain. Hard.’

The track descended into a long valley that might almost have been in the lowlands of the eastern Empire. Trees covered the slopes of the valley sides. Dry-stone walls turned the hills into a patchwork of overgrown fields. Here and there, patches of wild flowers bloomed. Felix caught the distinctive scent of wildberry and summer-thorn roses. Houses were visible among the walls, and at first glance, a stranger might easily have taken the place as inhabited.

A second glance would convince them otherwise, Felix thought. The grey unmortared walls, built like the dykes themselves, were scorched and blackened as if by fire. The sod roofs of many had caved in. Weeds had overgrown the kitchen gardens. There were no signs of domesticated beasts anywhere. Just the occasional dog, gone feral, which looked at them with hungry eyes and then slunk away.

‘Dragon work,’ Ulli said.

‘Or the work of reavers,’ Gotrek said, gesturing to a patch of white bones bleaching in the long grass. Felix walked over to them and discovered grass growing through the eye sockets of a human skull. A rusty blade lay near at hand, and by pushing the grass aside, he discovered the rotting remains of a leather cuirass. It looked like it had been chewed, perhaps by hungry dogs.

Even as he studied the remains, he felt cold wetness on his hair and on his face. The dark clouds above had finally made good on their promise of rain.

‘We can shelter amid these ruins,’ Max said. ‘Part of the roof is still intact, and we can rig a tarpaulin over the rest of it.’

‘Why not just creep into the back of the wagon?’ suggested Steg, with a glint in his eye.

‘Over ma deid boadie!’ Malakai said. Something in Steg’s appearance suggested that he might not be averse to that idea.

‘I don’t suppose the ruins will be haunted,’ boomed Ulli. He looked a little pale and nervous once more.

‘You’re not afraid of ghosts?’ Bjorni asked. ‘Are you?’

‘I fear nothing!’ Ulli said. ‘But only a fool tempts the wrath of the spirits of the dead.’

‘I suppose that means we should send Snorri in,’ Bjorni said nastily.

‘Snorri thinks that’s a good idea,’ said Snorri, oblivious to the insult. ‘Snorri isn’t afraid of ghosts.’

‘There are no ghosts in this place, or if there are they are the ghosts of mewling men, and what need have we to fear them,’ Gotrek said and stomped after Snorri.

‘Might as well get in out of the rain,’ Felix said, and looked around to see if the Kislevites agreed with them.

‘Ah’ll joost stay wae ma wagon,’ said Malakai Makaisson, glaring at Steg from under his beetling brows.

Steg shook his head, and disappeared inside. He was smirking to himself. For the first time it occurred to Felix that Steg might actually enjoy tormenting the engineer – and that in some perverse way, Malakai took pleasure in being tormented. He shrugged. If the Slayers wanted to indulge in such petty bickering it was no business of his.

The rain drummed down on the roof of the cottage. It was a typical peasant dwelling: one large room which had once been inhabited by humans, their dogs and their cattle. Rain puddled in the middle of the packed earth floor under the hole in the roof. Rats scuttled about amid the remains of the furniture. Despite the damp, Snorri had managed to get a fire crackling over by the chimney, and the not unpleasant smell of wood smoke filled the room. More clouds of smoke drifted across the chamber, mingling with the weed fumes from the Slayers’ pipes. All of the Slayers save Ulli had produced them, and were puffing away in the morose silence that passed as companionability among dwarfs.

Listening to the rain, Felix found time to be glad that the goblins had not attacked them in the middle of the storm. He wondered how Malakai’s gunpowder weapons would have functioned then. Not well, he guessed. He prayed that it was a fine day when they finally confronted the dragon. That made him think of the sword. He drew it from the scabbard and began to inspect the blade, studying it with an intensity he had never used before.

It was a well-made weapon. From the dragon’s head on the pommel to the runes on the blade it gave every indication of high quality. The steel of the blade gleamed. The edges were razor sharp despite the fact he had never taken a whetstone to them. The runes caught the firelight, but, at that moment, appeared merely decorative. There was no hint of any sorcerous power lurking within the blade, and, looking at it, Felix found it hard to believe that there could be. The weapon seemed so prosaic that, were it not for his memories of its power, he would have thought it merely another rich man’s blade, not some mystical weapon. Then again, Firebeard’s hammer had looked the same way back in the Temple of Grimnir, and Felix knew exactly how potent it was.

‘You look thoughtful,’ Ulrika said. Felix looked up at her. She had been standing in the doorway not moments before, staring out into the rain.

‘And you look lovely,’ he said.

‘Always ready with flattery,’ she said, but there was no hostility in her tone. ‘What were you thinking about?’

‘I was thinking about this sword, and how I found it, and about the dragon.’ Without meaning to, he found himself telling her of the quest to Karag Eight Peaks, of how he and Gotrek and Albrecht and the others had fought their way into the dark tunnels beneath the mountains, and had slain the Chaos troll. He told her of the spirits of the dwarf kings who had appeared before them, and of how they had left the treasures of the lost city in the tomb and he spoke of the eerie grandeur of the ancient dwarf city. It was only when he noticed that silence had fallen over the chamber that he realised that all the dwarfs were listening to him. Suddenly embarrassed, he stopped, but Snorri looked over at him and said, ‘Go on, young Felix. Snorri likes a tale as much as the next dwarf and yours is a good one.’

The other dwarfs nodded acquiescence, so Felix spoke on, telling of battles with Chaos warriors in the woods of the Empire, and encounters with evil cultists in the cities of men. He talked of the battle with the skaven amid the blazing buildings of Nuln, and of the long voyage across the Chaos Wastes in search of the lost dwarfhold of Karag Dum. It was dark by the time he finished, and the silence in the chamber had intensified. He realised that at some time during his speech the rain had stopped.

He looked up, and at that moment the smoke cloud which filled the room billowed under the impact of the night breeze, the same breeze that parted the storm clouds. Through the gap he caught a glimpse of the cold sky. Two moons hovered there. The larger one shone silver, sending a chill light down to bathe the land. The lesser moon glowed greenishly, and the aura that surrounded it obscured the stars. He was certain that its glow was brighter than ever he had seen it before, brighter even than on that unholy Geheimnisnacht when he and Gotrek had fought with the worshippers of Slaanesh. He knew then, in the innermost recesses of his soul, that the power of Chaos was growing in proportion to the moon’s glow, and that however long he lived, that moon was going to grow brighter until its light eclipsed its larger sibling. He was suddenly dreadfully afraid.

If any of the dwarfs noticed they gave no sign. Eventually, Bjorni spoke, ‘By Grungni, Grimnir and Valaya, Felix Jaeger, you have seen more of the ancient holy places of the dwarfs than many of the dwarfs. I do not know whether you have been blessed or cursed, but I believe that somehow the gods look on you with favour. Why else would you have been chosen to wield the Hammer of Firebeard?’

All the other dwarfs except Gotrek nodded their agreement. Felix noted that some time during his tale-telling Gotrek had vanished outside. He could hear the Slayer talking to Malakai Makaisson now that he had stopped speaking himself. Bjorni glanced around, a feverish light illuminating his ugly face. He spat into the fire, rubbed his hands and spoke:

‘Tis a night for tale-telling so I’ll give you a yarn. Some of you may have heard the awful rumours about the night I met two elf maidens in a tavern in Marienberg. I want to tell you that the story is not true. Well, not entirely true. It happened like this...’

The groans and jeers of the other dwarfs threatened for a moment to cut him off but he continued unabashed. Felix looked over at Ulrika. ‘Shall we take a walk?’ he asked.

She nodded agreement.

The smell of damp and rain-soaked earth assaulted Felix’s nostrils. He looked around warily. They had walked a long way from the cottage and the fire. Perhaps too far for safety in these perilous mountains. Still, he sensed that they had both wanted to be alone, to speak freely, far from the dwarfs. This was the one way they could have some privacy. He was willing to risk the danger, if only for a few minutes.

Ulrika’s hand felt warm in his. He noticed that her fingers were calloused from blade-work. Her hair smelled faintly of sweat. As did her clothes. It was not a romantic scent but it was hers, and he liked it. He glanced at her face, admiring the profile. She was most certainly beautiful, and at that moment looked thoughtful.

‘Felix, what is to become of us?’ she asked.

He considered her question for a moment, knowing he was no closer to an answer than he had been in Karak Kadrin. After a while he spoke.

‘I will go with the Slayers to face the dragon. You will go on to Kislev and carry your father’s warning to the Ice Queen. If I survive I will seek you out.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then most likely we will go to Praag or wherever the armies muster to fight the Chaos hordes.’ He glanced up at the greenly glowing moon, and shivered. ‘And then perhaps we will die.’

‘I do not think I want to die,’ she said softly. It sounded as if it came as a revelation to her. Perhaps it did. He knew she was born and bred on the plains of northern Kislev, where duty and death were things children were taught as soon as they were old enough to understand their meanings.

‘No one does.’

‘I have been given a holy trust by my father. I am to bear word of his need to our liege lady. And yet I find myself thinking of... abandoning my duty and running away, of finding a place to hide for a while to laugh and love and live. I find myself thinking this and I am horrified. What would my father think? What would the spirits of my ancestors think?’

‘What do you think?’

‘If I were to run away, would you go with me?’

Felix looked at her. At that moment, he forgot about his oath to Gotrek, about the destiny that Max Schreiber had talked of, about his own dreams and illusions of heroism. ‘Yes. Do you want to go?’

She was silent for a long moment, and he could see the struggle written on her face. A tear trickled down her cheek, and he almost reached out to wipe it away. Something kept him from doing it. He felt that at that moment, their two lives were hanging in the balance, and that perhaps she could change their destinies with a single word. He looked into her eyes, and saw a spirit at war, and thought, she truly does love me. He was going to speak, but at that moment she turned away. He did not move his hand. The silence lengthened. ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I do not know you and I do not know myself any more. You are a fool, Felix Jaeger, and you have made a fool of me. I will go with you to face the dragon.’

She turned and fled away from him back towards the ruined cottage, running as if all the fiends of Chaos were at her heels. Felix wondered what had happened, and realised that he did not have a clue.

Felix returned to find a stranger by the fire. He was a tall, scarred man, garbed in leather. A wide-brimmed leather hat shaded his face. A longsword lay scabbarded by his side. A bundle of cloth, tied to the end of a staff pushed into the earthen floor and the lute the stranger plucked idly with his fingers marked him as a wandering minstrel.

No one was showing the slightest interest, but the stranger did not seem too bothered. He looked only too grateful for the fire, and companions to share it with. Felix wasn’t really all that interested in him. He wanted to talk with Ulrika but she had already cast herself down on the far side of the fire, and lay between her bodyguards, seemingly determined to pretend he was not there. Felix felt obscurely hurt. His pride was wounded. If that’s what she wants, he thought, then let her get on with it. He wanted some time to think about what she had said anyway.

‘Who are you?’ he asked the stranger, none too politely. The stranger regarded him pleasantly enough.

‘Johan Gatz is my name, friend. What is yours?’

‘Felix Jaeger.’

‘You are a companion to these Slayers?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s common enough to see men and dwarfs travelling together in these mountains. It is less common to see three Kislevites, a sorcerer, a man of the Empire and a gang of Slayers journeying as a group. Have you joined together for protection on the road, or is there a tale here I might sing of?’

‘That depends on what type of songs you sing,’ Felix said.

‘All sorts.’

‘As I told you earlier, we’re going to kill the dragon,’ bellowed Ulli boastfully. Johan Gatz winced and raised an eyebrow. ‘And you are accompanying these Slayers on their death quest? Your friends here have told me all manner of tales about you and Gotrek there. You’ve led interesting lives.’

‘Apparently so.’ Felix did not know why he was offended by the man’s curiosity but he was. It was quite common for minstrels to be inquisitive. Their stock in trade was quite often as much news and gossip as it was songs and music. The dwarfs seemed none too bothered by him, but there was something about the man that rubbed Felix the wrong way. He tried telling himself that he was being unfair, that he was just upset by his conversation with Ulrika, but there was something about the man that made him suspicious.

‘How came you to be wandering through these mountains?’ Felix asked. ‘I would have thought this a dangerous region for a man to travel in alone.’

‘A minstrel may travel anywhere he pleases. Even the most savage brigand will not slay a penniless player when he can have a song for free.’

‘I had not heard orcs and goblins were so appreciative of strolling players.’

‘I am a fast runner,’ said Johan Gatz with an easy smile. ‘Though in truth, I must confess that I am somewhat alarmed by what I have found here.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. The last time I passed this way was several years ago. The High Road then was lined with towns and villages where a man could earn his bread and some coin. The region was not so wild and lawless. There were neither orcs nor bandits here then. Had I known what I know now, I would not have come back this way but would have stayed in Ostmark regardless of the competition there.’

‘It might have been wiser.’

‘Aye, that it might. Hindsight is always wise sight, as my dear old mother used to say.’

‘You say that even the most desperate bandits will leave a minstrel alone. Have you met any?’

‘I have met some who might have been, though they let me be.’

‘Have you heard aught of Henrik Richter? He is said to be the king of the bandits hereabouts.’

Johan Gatz laughed out loud. ‘Then he rules a pretty poor kingdom as far as I can see. I have seen no great armies of bandits nor have I heard anything of this bandit king although I confess that now that you mention him, it might be a good idea for a song.’

‘I have never met any bandits quite so romantic as the ones you hear about in minstrels’ songs,’ Felix said. ‘None I have ever met robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, or fought unjust landowners for the rights of the downtrodden. The ones I met only wanted to separate my head from my shoulders and my purse from my belt.’

‘You have met many bandits then, Herr Jaeger?’ asked Johan Gatz with an odd gleam in his eye.

‘A few,’ replied Felix.

‘Then you must be a hardier man than you seem, to still be alive. You do not sound like a mercenary or a swordsman, if I may say so.’

‘Hardy enough,’ Felix said, sensing a subtle insult in the man’s words.

‘Felix Jaeger is one of the mightiest men Snorri Nosebiter has ever known,’ said Snorri from the far side of the fire. Felix looked over at him in surprise. He had not thought he had made quite such a good impression on the Slayer. Nor had he been aware that the Slayer had been listening quite so closely to the conversation. ‘Of course, that is not saying much,’ added Snorri quickly to general laughter from the dwarfs.

Felix shrugged and gave his attention back to the minstrel. ‘We go to slay the dragon,’ he said. ‘There should be a song in it, if you care to accompany us.’

‘I like living,’ said the minstrel. ‘But should you survive the experience, seek me out and I will make a song of the tale. It will probably make me famous.’

He paused for a moment, and considered his words. ‘Do you honestly think you have a chance of surviving? Can you even make it to the mountain, if what you tell me of orcs and goblins and human bandits is true?’

‘We have already put a warband of greenskins to flight,’ Felix said, knowing that he was boasting, but needled by the minstrel’s tone. Once again Johan Gatz raised an eyebrow.

‘Twelve of you did that?’

‘One is a wizard. The Slayers are mighty. Malakai Makaisson is an excellent weapons engineer.’

‘You use dwarf armaments then, gatling canons and such?’

Felix nodded. The minstrel laughed gleefully.

‘It seems you are not going about your dragon-slaying in the orthodox manner then. No white horses, no lances, no magical weapons.’

‘We are too,’ said Snorri. ‘Gotrek’s axe is magical. He killed a bloody big daemon with it. Snorri saw him. And Felix’s sword is magic too. You can tell by the runes if you look closely.’

Felix wondered if Snorri had been eavesdropping on his conversation with Max Schreiber or whether he really could tell by the runes. In either case, Felix wished he had not said anything about the weapons in front of this inquisitive stranger. He had the feeling that he himself had already said too much. He did not know why but he was starting to trust Johan Gatz less and less, and he had not trusted him very much to begin with.

‘It seems I have underestimated you,’ said the minstrel. ‘Your expedition seems remarkably well-prepared. I can almost pity any bandits you run into.’

‘It’s late,’ Felix said. ‘I need to get some sleep.’

‘That seems wise,’ said the stranger mockingly. ‘After all you have a busy few days ahead of you.’

Felix threw himself down on the far side of the fire. He took a last glance at the minstrel, and was not surprised to see the man watching him closely. He was surprised to see Max Schreiber was looking suspiciously at Gatz. It seemed he, too, had his suspicions about the man.

Felix wondered if he would wake up in the night with his throat cut, and then decided that it was unlikely. Anybody who tried it with all the Slayers around was in for a very short life afterwards.

Not that it would be much consolation if he himself were dead, Felix thought, as he dropped into a restless slumber.

Johan Gatz cursed. The gods had spat on him again. When he had noticed the wagon, he had hoped to find a small merchant caravan with maybe a few bodyguards down here. He had not expected a gang of Slayers and this bunch of heavily armed humans. He was particularly annoyed by the presence of the wizard. There was no sense in trying to slip out and give the signal that would bring Henrik and the lads down from the mountainside. The wizard was watching him too closely, and the dwarfs were as suspicious as they were surly.

It was only to be expected, he supposed. Luck had not been with Henrik Richter’s gang recently. Things hadn’t really gone right since the dragon had arrived, and the orcs moved in along the High Road. Once there had been rich pickings along this trail, at least rich enough for a smallish band of former mercenaries and cut-throats. With all the extra mouths to feed, things were not so good. Johan cursed the necessity of taking in the human refugees from the destroyed villages, but there had been no other way. They had needed extra swords just to hold their own citadel against the orcs.

He supposed he should thank Sigmar for small mercies though. At least none of the travellers had questioned his disguise as a wandering minstrel, although that hard eyed man, Jaeger, had seemed suspicious. Taking this lot out was not going to be an easy proposition, he could tell. It wasn’t going to be a case of offering an unsuspecting sentry a drugged drink, slitting his throat, and then summoning the boys with a lantern. These laddies were hard, and he did not want to try anything tricky with a magician watching. Anyway, he had always heard that dwarfs could smell poison and his own experience had confirmed this.

He felt certain that confident as this bunch might be, Henrik Richter and his bandit crew could overcome them. At least they could if Henrik assembled his whole army in one spot. They might even be able to do it with the fifty or so men that Henrik had in the foothills above. ‘Might’ being the operative word. This gang looked tough, and even if Henrik and the boys could overcome them, they would probably take an unacceptable number of the lads to hell with them. On the whole it would probably be best to leave them alone.

There was not going to be any profit in this night’s work, he could tell. On the other hand other possibilities suggested themselves. Perhaps he could offer the Slayers an alliance against the orcs. He knew that the stunties hated the greenskins even more than he did. Probably wouldn’t work, he thought. They were Slayers and on their way to fight a dragon, and Johan was familiar enough with the ways of dwarfs to know that getting between a stunty and a hoard of gold was a sure way to get boot prints on your chest.

It was then that the idea struck him. This was a well-equipped expedition. Perhaps the Slayers could kill the dragon. Perhaps not. But there was always the possibility that they could, or wound it badly enough so that it might be slaughtered by an army of men. If that were the case...

Skjalandir had a big hoard of treasure, that was for sure. Dragons always did. That being the case, the way to profit from this might be to follow these maniacs and see what happened. Even if they won, they would most likely be weakened enough by the battle for Henrik and the boys to overcome them. And if they lost, maybe they would weaken the dragon. It was an idea he would put to Henrik tomorrow. He was sure his cousin would grasp its significance at once.

Johan licked his lips at the thought of the dragon’s hoard of treasure. He was certain that his share would be more than enough to buy him a little tavern in Nuln and let him leave the dangerous profession of banditry aside. Perhaps things were looking up, he told himself, and drifted into dreams of mountains of gold.

Grey Seer Thanquol glared around the great antechamber of the Tower of Moulder. He was furious and he was filled with fear. Since his arrival at Hell Pit he had been kept waiting. Clanrat warriors in the distinctive livery of the Masters had shown him and Lurk to this huge room and then abandoned them there. He wondered why he had been brought here. He had never been allowed into the inner citadel of the Moulders before. Previously all his business with them had been conducted in the cavernous chambers in the crater walls that the clan used for all its business transactions. He was not sure whether it was a good sign or a bad sign that he had been brought here. Being right at the heart of the city made him feel exceedingly nervous. He reached out and touched the winds of magic, just to reassure himself. The power of dark magic was strong here. It was hardly surprising, given how close they were to the Chaos Wastes and how much warpstone dust was in the air, but it was reassuring.

Once again he inspected his surroundings, searching for the hidden peepholes he felt certain were there. It was not in the least likely that any skaven clan would allow a stranger to stand unobserved in the heart of their fortress, and Clan Moulder were possibly the most devious and suspicious of all the ratman clans.

Thanquol wandered over to the window and stared balefully out at the benighted city. It was not made from glass but from some translucent leathery substance whose scent reminded him of flesh. It was a disturbing reminder that the raw material on which Clan Moulder’s prowess and fortune was based was nothing less than the stuff of life itself.

He looked down on an eerie cityscape. Huge towers that reminded him of the tusks of some enormous beast dominated the inside of the crater. From their towering tips emerged clouds of glowing smoke: livid green, ruby, cobalt blue and all manner of other toxic shades. The pillars of smoke rose to contribute to the huge cloud of pollution that eternally hovered above the crater and sometimes descended to create thickly obscuring fog. Thanquol could tell from the faint eerie glitter that the smoke contained trapped particles of warpstone. Part of him was outraged by this flagrant waste, part of him was awestruck by the display of sheer wealth. He had no idea what was taking place within those towers but the cacophony of screams, howls and bestial roars told him that it was not pleasant.

Among the towers lay other buildings, constructed in a distinctly un-skavenish manner. The buildings were huge tents of decaying leathery flesh, thrown over massive skeletons of twisted bone. They had an odd look that suggested huge ticks or beetles frozen in place by some strange magic. These were the barracks within which the slaves and soldiers of the clans dwelt. The streets below teemed with skaven, and he realised that it was possible that Hell Pit was a ratman city second only to Skavenblight in population.

Here and there, amid the wide streets, were greenishly glowing lakes of polluted water, reputedly still contaminated by the warpstone starfall that had created the vast crater. Far away, he could see the glitter of thousands of lights, windows in the crater wall. It was rumoured that the whole wall had been burrowed out into an endless labyrinth of tunnels and artificial caves to provide burrows and laboratories for the clan. Even as Thanquol watched, a huge door opened in the crater side, and a massive creature emerged. At this distance, in the dark, Thanquol could not make out all the details, but something about the creature suggested a cave rat grown to the size of a mastodon with a howdah on its back.

Across the night sky flickered forms that Thanquol at first took to be bats, but which he swiftly realised were too big. The simplest explanation was that they were mutant bats grown to massive size, but one of them veered closer to the tower, and he realised that it was a skaven with bat-like membranes under its arms. Part of Thanquol felt horror at this blasphemy. Had not the Horned Rat created the skaven in his own image? Was not tampering with shape of the highest of all creatures the supreme sacrilege? Thanquol had always known the Moulders were mad. He had just never realised quite how insane they really were.

Still, it was a brilliant madness, in its way. Even he had to concede that. In this barren place far from the true centre of skaven civilisation, Clan Moulder had done things that even Thanquol had never dreamed of. He wondered if the Council of Thirteen were aware of quite how much the clan had achieved. Surely, he thought, there must be some way he could use all of this to his advantage.

He glanced around the room once again. Here, too, was evidence of the mad genius of Clan Moulder. The leather-covered thrones and couches appeared to be incredibly torpid living things. Every time Thanquol looked back, they had changed position ever so slightly, in a manner at once maddening and slightly sinister. The grey seer suspected that the whole room was designed to make visitors uneasy and put them off-balance in any confrontation with the builders. Finally, Thanquol found what he was looking for. High above in the ceiling amid the warpstone-powered globes of the chandelier, he saw a cluster of eyes. They swayed slightly as they observed him, and then, reacting to the fact he had noticed them, they withdrew into the ceiling, vanishing from sight.

As if this was a signal the door to the chamber opened like a set of great jaws, and the enormously fat figure of Izak Grottle waddled in. A living table covered in bone bowls and translucent fleshy plates followed him.

‘Greetings, in the name of Moulder, Grey Seer Thanquol,’ rumbled Grottle in his unnaturally deep voice. ‘Greetings indeed. It is good to see you once more.’

Thanquol doubted that his old rival was pleased to see him. Grottle had tried to betray Thanquol many times when the grey seer had led the army against Nuln. There was bad blood between them, and Thanquol had sworn he would one day have vengeance on Grottle. He did not doubt that, if the opportunity arose, the Moulder would try to do away with him. He knew he would have to be careful.

Grottle slumped into one of the thrones. Its leathery fur moulded itself to his shape, expanding outwards to make room for his fat rump, then enfolding him in an unnatural manner. Its legs flexed slightly as if with strain, and Thanquol would have sworn he heard it emit a slight grunt. After a moment, the chair’s back started to ripple as if it were massaging its occupant. Grottle leaned forward and helped himself to a small broiled rat from the table which had manoeuvred itself into position in front of him.

‘So, Grey Seer Thanquol, you have returned bearing the spoils of your attack on the horse-humans’ burrow that you promised my Clanlords. You have come to report success in your acquisition of the dwarf airship and have brought the secrets of its construction to share with my overlords. You have come bearing tidings of the whereabouts of the Moulder troops who accompanied you on your quest.’

Grottle forced the rat whole down his throat and then smiled wickedly. He knew that Thanquol had brought no such pleasant tidings. It occurred to the grey seer that Grottle was enjoying this.

‘Not exactly,’ Thanquol said, twitching his tail uneasily. Grottle helped himself to another morsel.

‘Not exactly,’ he muttered to himself, in an almost gloating tone. ‘Not exactly. This is not good news, Grey Seer Thanquol. This is not good at all. Clan Moulder lent you the services of several hundred of its finest troops, and many, many of our deadliest beasts, on the understanding that we would share the spoils of your success. At the very least, you will be able to return our warriors and our beasts to us then.’

Thanquol knew that Grottle knew that he could do no such thing. The fat monster was simply toying with him, now that he had the grey seer in his power. He wondered if Grottle would dare do away with him. Thanquol was, after all, one of the chosen of the Horned Rat and a favoured emissary of the Council of Thirteen. Surely, not even this ravenous beast would dare harm him. Considered reflection told Thanquol that this was unfortunately not the case.

At this moment there was nobody save the Moulders and Lurk who knew of his whereabouts. He had set off in utmost secrecy, hoping to acquire the airship for himself and return to present himself in triumph to the Council. If anything happened to him now, it would be as if he had simply vanished from the face of the earth. Thanquol’s fur rose at the sheer unfairness of it. He had come here in good faith to warn the Moulders of the peril of the approaching Chaos horde, and they were prepared to assassinate him over some petty debt they felt he owed them. He glared at Grottle, and swore that whatever happened he would make this fat fool pay for his insolence. He was still capable of blasting his enemies into their component atoms. Grottle had entered this chamber at his peril. As if sensing the change in Thanquol’s mood Grottle looked up at him and growled. It was a fearsome sound, and Thanquol remembered that, for all his enormous bulk, the Moulder could be alarmingly swift and terrifyingly strong in battle. He let his anger subside a little, but remained prepared to instantly summon his powers in his own defence.

‘The troops have not returned?’ said Thanquol, affecting surprise.

‘A very few,’ allowed Grottle, spearing another morsel with one of his claws, transferring it to his mouth and gulping it down. ‘They brought confused tales of a battle, and sorcery and a massacre of skaven. There were suggestions of incompetent leadership, Grey Seer Thanquol. Very incompetent leadership.’

‘I left command of the military side of the venture to the Moulders,’ said Thanquol quickly, knowing that in a sense it was true. It was not his fault that the Moulder leaders were incapable of implementing his brilliant plans. ‘I would not presume to judge their efficiency.’

Grottle shook his head, as if Thanquol were a particularly slow runt who had failed to understand his meaning. ‘You were in overall command, I believe, Grey Seer Thanquol. You were responsible for the success of the mission. You gave many assurances to the Clanlords of Moulder. They are... disappointed. Most disappointed.’

Thanquol’s tail stiffened in outrage. He bared his fangs angrily. A nimbus of light winked into being around his fingers as he prepared to unleash his most destructive spell.

‘Before you do anything too hasty, Grey Seer Thanquol, please consider this,’ Grottle said. ‘After the debacle at Nuln, I do not rank quite so highly within my clan as I once did. You might say I am in disgrace. You might also say that my Clanlords consider me expendable, which is why they have delegated me to have this conversation with you. You might further want to consider that you are in the heart of Clan Moulder’s greatest citadel. Within call are thousands upon thousands of clanrat warriors. Not to mention a virtually limitless supply of altered beasts. Anyone so foolish as to attack a member of the clan, and then try to escape from this place, would not get more than a hundred strides. I mention this knowing that you are too wise to attempt any such thing. Far too wise.’

Thanquol ground his teeth in frustration. Grottle’s threat was clear. Also implicit in the statement was the fact that no one would care if he took Grottle hostage and tried to negotiate a way out. He was almost embarrassed to admit that he had not even considered trying it. Grottle continued to speak. His deep voice sounded mild, gentle even. ‘To tell the truth, I was surprised that you came here. I would not have expected it after the... embarrassment with the airship. Why did you come?’

‘I bring appalling tidings, and a warning for the masters of Moulder.’

‘And what would that be?’ Grottle asked disinterestedly. He sucked something from his extended talon. His claws looked alarmingly sharp, Thanquol noted.

‘A Chaos horde, limitless in numbers and boundless in power, makes its way southwards. It seems the servants of the four Powers are leaving the Wastes and coming south as they did generations ago.’

‘This is grave news. If true.’

‘It is true. I swear it by the Thirteen Secret Names of the Horned Rat. I have seen the host with my own eyes, smelled it with my own snout. Lurk and I barely escaped it with our lives.’

Thanquol thought it best not to mention that the followers of Tzeentch had let him go. He wanted to give Grottle no excuse to think that he might be a spy or a traitor to the skaven cause. He knew there were many jealous ratmen who would be only too keen to give such an interpretation to events, despite the inherent ludicrousness of the idea. Despite the fact that Thanquol’s name was a byword for devotion to the skaven cause, he was wise enough to know that he had enemies who would give a twisted interpretation to even his most innocent act. He prayed that Lurk would remember this too.

‘This is terrible news then. What do you propose that we should do?’

‘Muster your armies, make ready to defend Hell Pit against an invasion by the forces of Chaos. It might happen.’

‘And if it does not?’

‘Then muster your armies anyway. Surely the horde will sow terror and alarm along its path. In the coming war there will be many opportunities to advance the skaven cause.’

Even as his words carried him away, Thanquol could see they were true. The Chaos horde was going to attack the human kingdom. Whatever the outcome, the struggle would surely weaken even the victorious side. All the skaven had to do was wait and new opportunities would inevitably fall into their outstretched paw. ‘The Council of Thirteen must be notified at once.’

Grottle yawned and rose from his chair. ‘You may be right, Grey Seer Thanquol. I will report your words to my masters. They will decide what to do next.’

Thanquol could not believe it. He had just handed this fat fool information of the utmost importance, and he could not see the urgency of the situation. Thanquol considered blasting him out of sheer frustration. He restrained himself, knowing that he would have to get word to the Council. Armies would have to be assembled. Plans would have to be made. He knew that there was no one better equipped to lead such a force than himself. In his excitement he almost forgot about the airship. In the coming war there would be countless opportunities to cover himself in glory and advance his position in the eyes of the Thirteen. The Horned Rat had surely blessed him once more. Once again he was in the right place at the right time.

Grottle paused at the entrance to the chamber. ‘By the way, Grey Seer Thanquol, until this matter is resolved, you are the guest of my clan. We will see to your safety. We will make sure your needs are met. You are, after all, a very special guest. I am sure you understand my meaning.’

Thanquol’s heart sank. He knew exactly what Izak Grottle meant. He knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was the prisoner of Clan Moulder.

ELEVEN

INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH

Felix looked down on the entrance to the Dragon Vale. He had not seen a scene of such surpassing bleakness since they left the Chaos Wastes. Around the shores of a small lake lay a collection of burned out ruins that had once been a town. All the houses, watchtowers and farms that had once surrounded the town had been equally devastated. The fields were overgrown, and here and there what could only be bones glittered whitely amid the long grass. In some ways this was worse than the Wastes, for it was obvious that the lands below had once been as thriving and prosperous as they were now desolate.

At the far end of the valley stood a great barren peak, rising above the slopes of the foothills. There was something especially horrible about this mountain. It had a sense of presence, of menace. Just by looking at its greyish sides, you could tell that there was something dreadful lurking there.

Felix tried to tell himself that it was just his imagination. Supplied with the knowledge that they were within sight of the dragon’s lair, his mind was working overtime, conjuring up an atmosphere of gloom and destruction.

Even as he tried to reassure himself he knew he was right. There was something horrible about this place. No birds sang. The wind that blew down the valley was mournful. The clouds hung low and oppressive in the sky. At any moment, Felix feared to look up and see a huge winged shape descending out of them.

It had been a long march. Almost three days had passed since their encounter with Johan Gatz, and during that time his suspicions about the supposed minstrel had increased. There had been times when Ulrika had thought she had seen men watching them from the hills. Times when he himself had caught sight of greenskins moving along the high slopes parallel to them. It looked as if they were being watched by at least two factions as they had moved through the mountains.

At least the watchers had proved wary. They had stayed well out of bowshot and vanished as soon as the Slayers made the first signs of pursuit. By the time they got to the spot where the greenskins had been, the orcs had vanished. It seemed that the fate of their earlier attackers had taught any would-be ambushers a lesson. Either that or they were waiting for something. Felix could not guess what. Perhaps now they had entered the Dragon Vale, they would be left alone. Or perhaps the greenskins were simply waiting for the dragon to slay the interlopers, then they would descend and despoil the bodies. If the dragon left anything to despoil. Felix wasn’t feeling any too cheerful about the outcome of their quest. It was all too easy to believe that every last one of them would die in this place.

He squared his shoulders and smiled experimentally, hoping this would change his mood. If that were the case, he told himself, at least Gotrek would achieve his long-sought doom. He glanced over at Ulrika and any cheery thoughts evaporated. They had barely spoken on the trip here. Actually, she had spoken more to Max Schreiber than to Felix. It was obvious that she was purposefully avoiding him.

In a way he did not blame her. What future was there for them now? They would most likely die within the next few days. And even if by some miracle they survived the encounter with the dragon, they would soon have to face the horde of Chaos rampaging down into Kislev. He was not even sure how he felt about her himself. He was hurt by the way she treated him, and felt absurdly and exaggeratedly sensitive to her behaviour. At times during the march, he had been more concerned by the way she avoided looking at him, or the way she talked to Max, than he was with the possibility that he might soon be slaughtered by the dragon.

Max, at least, looked cheery. He smiled as he joked with Ulrika. Felix’s stomach churned as he saw her smile back. He was jealous and guilty and there was nothing he could do about it.

Oleg and Standa refused to look at him too. He was certain it was nothing personal, they were simply standing by Ulrika as was their duty. They could not take his side even if they wanted to. Felix cursed to himself. Even by the excruciating standards of the treks he had endured with Gotrek, this was a miserable journey.

‘There’s a dragon about here somewhere!’ bellowed Ulli. ‘I can smell him.’

The other Slayers looked at the youth with a mixture of contempt, amusement and irritation. ‘Does your keen nose tell you how soon we will encounter it?’ asked Gotrek sarcastically. Ulli fell silent.

‘I reckon we’ll be at the dragon mount inside a day,’ said Bjorni. ‘We’ll see it then.’

‘I wonder how much treasure it has?’ Steg said. Felix looked at him uneasily. He could see the gleam of gold fever in the dwarf’s eyes. It was not a reassuring sight. Dwarfs had been known to do many dishonourable things under its influence. It seemed he was not the only one who recognised it.

‘Dinnae you worry yersel aboot the dragon’s gold,’ said Malakai. ‘You joost keep thinkin’ about the big beastie itself.’

Grimme glared at Steg. Steg looked at his feet. He seemed almost embarrassed.

‘There’s something else down there,’ Gotrek said. ‘I can smell it. And it’s not a dragon.’

Felix had a lot more faith in Gotrek’s nose than he had in Ulli’s. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Gotrek said. ‘But whatever it is, you can bet it won’t be friendly.’

‘Now there’s a surprise,’ muttered Felix.

‘Who be ye?’ asked the madwoman as they entered the ruined town. She stood outside the remains of an inn. Like all the buildings in the town it was built from stone. Now it spoke only of the dragon’s capacity for destruction. Its walls were scorched and caked with soot from the burning of its timbers. In places the stones had melted and run, a testimony to the heat of the dragon’s breath.

Felix looked at her. Her face was filthy and her clothing reeked. She was garbed in tattered rags. A blackened scarf held her matted hair out of her eyes. More rags were wrapped around her feet. A huge claw-like nail emerged from the cloth bandaged around her left foot. Just from looking into her eyes, Felix could tell that she and sanity had parted company a long time ago.

The dwarfs looked at her warily. Gotrek had warned them they were being watched minutes ago, and they had all readied weapons. It was difficult to see what threat she could be to such a heavily armed party unless she were some sort of witch. Felix glanced over at Max. As if reading his thoughts, the sorcerer looked at the woman and shook his head.

‘We are travellers, passing through,’ Felix said. ‘Who are you?’

‘I had a name once. I had a man. I had babies. This was my home.’ A wild gesture indicated the burned out shell of the tavern. ‘No more. Now I wait. Now you travel and you travel to meet death.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Death dwells on your road. He dwells in a cave in the mountains. Death came here and devoured my family, my friends and my children. Death will come again for me soon.’

Felix felt an uncomfortable sympathy for the old woman. She had seen her whole life destroyed by the dragon and had retreated into madness. Here was another of the creature’s victims, like poor Varek. ‘It was the dragon who killed your loved ones,’ he said eventually.

‘Death is the dragon. The dragon is death,’ she said and let out a high pitched cackling laugh. ‘And round here death has many servants and many worshippers. As you shall soon find out. As the others did.’

‘What others?’

‘Other dwarfs with big axes and bad haircuts. Mighty men mounted on chargers and armed with lances. Men of violence who came seeking death’s hoard. All of them bones now, scattered along the road to death’s cave.’

Felix knew she was referring to some of the Slayers who had preceded them. He wondered about the knights though, and this troop of mercenaries who had apparently come seeking the dragon’s treasure. It seemed Skjalandir had visited destruction on them all.

‘Tell me about these mercenaries,’ Felix said. ‘Who were they?’

‘They came seeking death’s gold. They had swords and shields and axes. They had great engines of destruction and wizards to cast spells. They climbed death’s mountain. Death took them. Death gulped down their flesh and spat out their bones. He let a few of them flee and then hunted them down, flying after them on his leathery pinions. Listening to their screams as the shadow of his mighty wings fell across them. In the end, death took them all, but not before he had made them suffer.’

‘The dragon played with them,’ Max Schreiber said ominously.

‘Death is not kind,’ said the woman. ‘Death will come for us all. Some he lets live so that they might worship him. Some he punishes for their disobedience of his will. Death is a terrible, angry god. Best you turn back, strangers, while you yet may.’

‘Are you saying some of the surviving townspeople worship the dragon? Do you?’

‘Some there are who still dwell here, who kill newcomers and offer them up as sacrifices to death. I say they are fools. What need has death of their offerings? Death takes what he wishes, and one day he will take their lives as well.’

Wonderful, thought Felix. Not only do we have the dragon, the greenskins and the bandits to worry about, we have some crazed survivors who worship the beast as a god.

‘Thank you for your words. Do you need anything?’ Felix asked. ‘Food? Water? Money?’

The madwoman shook her head, then turned and limped away into the ruins. Felix felt he ought to do something. Perhaps call her back or offer her their protection, then he realised how ludicrous the idea was. They might well not be able to protect themselves, and the safest place for her to be was well away from them.

‘Let her go,’ said Max Schreiber.

Felix watched her walk away. Part of him thought he might be safer if he did the same.

The road wound along the shores of the lake. The waters were calm and still, and reflected the surrounding mountains like a mirror. Occasionally, the wind stirred up some waves and sent them to break on the beach. It was the only sound Felix could hear other than the moaning of the wind, and the creak of the wheels of Malakai’s wagon. All around the landscape was bleak and desolate. There were many signs of human habitation – bothies, cottages, shepherds’ huts – but all of them looked abandoned or destroyed. Felix tried to imagine what the valley must have been like when it was inhabited. Sheep must have grazed along these hills. Woodcutters must have worked amid the copses of firs. Lovers must have walked hand in hand along the water’s edge. Doubtless fishing boats had dragged their nets through the lake. Felix had seen the stone pylons that had once supported the burned out pier back in the town. He had seen the blackened hulks of ships overturned in the water, scorched by dragonfire, holed by dragon claws.

It was cold now. He tugged his red Sudenland wool cloak tight around him to fight off the chill. Bjorni broke out into a raucous and bawdy ballad about a troll and a tavern keeper’s daughter. His voice boomed out, disturbing the eerie silence. Felix knew that Bjorni was singing to lighten their gloomy mood, but even so, wished that he would not. It seemed somehow unwise to challenge the brooding silence, to draw attention to themselves in any way. To do so invited destruction to descend on them as it had done on the inhabitants of the valley.

Perhaps, thought Felix, that’s what Bjorni wanted. He was a Slayer after all, and heroic death was his avowed goal. As if in answer to Bjorni’s song there was a distant roar, low-pitched, bestial and threatening. It echoed through the mountains like thunder. It was unnaturally loud and terrifying, and on hearing it Bjorni fell silent. Felix stared at the horizon, convinced that in moments the dragon would be on them. His hand went to the hilt of his sword, and immediately a tingling warmth passed through him. He looked all around, but there was no sign of the dragon save the echo of its voice.

He looked at Ulrika and then Gotrek and saw an unease written on both their faces that mirrored his own. He exchanged glances with the rest of the party and noticed that they were all pallid and withdrawn. For long moments, the silence dragged on. They held their breaths waiting to see what would happen. After a minute or so, Bjorni began to sing again, very quietly at first but his voice gathering strength with every word. He was not singing a bawdy tale this time, but something else, some old dwarf hymn or warsong that resonated through the valley. Soon Malakai joined in, and then Ulli and then Steg. One by one all the dwarfs save Gotrek and Grimme added their voices, then Max Schreiber did as well. Soon Felix found himself humming along.

There was something reassuring about the singing, as if by doing it, they challenged the dragon and reaffirmed their own courage. As he fell into step with the others, Felix felt his courage return, and he marched along with a lighter heart than he had felt in many a day.

Ahead of him, he could see the place where the path left the road, and wound its way up the side of Dragon Mountain.

The clouds were lower. They billowed through the gaps in the surrounding peaks, extending mist-like tentacles to embrace the Dragon Mountain. Visibility decreased. The air became even more chilly. The sense of oppression deepened.

Out of the mist loomed a small manor house. It looked as if it had once belonged to a wealthy family, perhaps some mountain nobleman. As such, Felix realised, it must have been one of the first places to be destroyed when the dragon awoke from its long sleep. Half the walls were tumbled down. Felix found it all too easy to imagine them being crushed by the weight of the dragon’s mighty body ploughing through them.

In his mind’s eye, he immediately conjured up a picture of what it must have been like to be inside the building with the mighty beast rampaging outside. He could almost smell the thatched roof on fire, feel the heat crackling in his face, the smoke making his eyes water. In his daydream he heard the ear-shattering bellows, the crunch of claws on stone, the shrieks of the dying, the unanswered prayers for mercy. Then finally, he envisioned the unnatural sight of the wall bulging inward, the stones cracking, toppling, giving way, and, in the last moment before fiery death, a glimpse of the dragon’s hideous visage, the glare of its huge eyes.

So vivid was the image and so frightening, that he began to wonder if the dragon’s mere presence had cast some sort of wicked spell on the place, cursing any who passed to experience the last moments of its doomed victims. He tried telling himself that it was just the mist, the memory of the dragon’s roars, and his own impressionable mind that had conjured up the image. Or, perhaps, the image had been created by the sword, responding to the dragon’s presence. Certainly he could feel a trickle of energy passing from the blade into his own body. Somehow that did not reassure him.

His legs ached from the long uphill march. He felt cold and lonely and more than a little depressed. He felt in his heart a certainty of impending death that was only slightly relieved by the magical warmth emanating from his sword. The encounter with the madwoman that morning remained with him, and the memory of her words disturbed him. He did indeed feel the closeness of death at this moment, and he realised that he had retreated into himself to avoid confronting it. The others appeared to have done the same. The singing had ceased the moment they had set foot on the path to the dragon’s lair. All of the party of adventurers seemed to want to be alone with their thoughts and their prayers.

Felix considered his life. It seemed likely to be much shorter than he would have wanted it to be. He did not consider it particularly wasted though. In his travels with Gotrek he had seen many things, met many people, and even, perhaps, done some good by combating the forces of darkness. He had done some extraordinary things, like flown in an airship, and seen the Chaos Wastes. He had fought with daemons and monsters, and talked with mages and nobles. He had witnessed rituals of magic and depravity, and feats of heroism. He had known a few good women. He had fought duels.

Still there were things he had not done, and things he wanted to do. He had not completed the tale of Gotrek’s deeds, or even fairly begun it. He had not reconciled himself with his father and family. He had not even settled things between himself and Ulrika. Of all of them, that at least was possible at this moment, he thought.

With the shadow of imminent death now hanging well and truly over them, it seemed pointless to be jealous, or to worry about what she had been laughing about with Max, or even whether they would ever truly be lovers again. He felt at that moment that he wanted simply to show her some affection, make some human gesture of trust and understanding, connect for what might be the last time. Even if she rejected him or refused to speak to him, he wanted to at least make the effort.

He lengthened his stride and walked up the trail to overtake her. He fell into step beside her, reached out to touch her shoulder gently and get her attention.

‘What?’ she said. Her tone was not friendly, but it was not unfriendly either. Suddenly, he was filled with odd emotion, a mixture of anger and need and pity and something else. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, and exactly the words needed to say it, and yet it was difficult just to speak them.

‘This might be the last chance we ever have to speak to each other,’ he said eventually.

‘Yes. So?’

‘Why are you making this so difficult?’

‘You are the one who wanted to talk to me.’

He took a breath to calm himself, and tried to remember his good intentions of just a few minutes before. Eventually he forced his lips to move.

‘I just wanted to say that I loved you.’

She looked at him, but said nothing back. He waited for a response for a moment, slowly feeling the weight of hurt and rejection build up within him. Still she said nothing.

Then, suddenly, the dragon’s enormous roar filled the air again. The earth beneath their feet seemed to vibrate with it.

‘I think we’re getting close,’ said Ulli.

The pathway led up over the brow of the hill, and then sloped down to the right. Felix could see that they had entered a long, barren valley. The air smelled foul, and an acrid chemical stench mingled with the mist. It smelled more like the outside of a tannery than a mountain valley. Even the grass of the slopes in this place had a scorched yellowish look to it. It was as if the malign presence of the dragon had leaked into the earth itself, corrupting it.

Felix realised that he had seen something like this before, in the Chaos Wastes. It was almost like the effects of warpstone.

Malakai halted his wagon and began to search about within it. One after another he produced a selection of devices which he strapped to his chest. Felix recognised some of them. One was a portable gatling gun of the sort Varek had carried into Karag Dum. Others were large bombs he clipped to his harness. The last was a long hollow tube into which he loaded a large projectile before slinging it over his shoulder.

‘Ah’m ready to pay the beastie a wee visit noo,’ he said, moving down the slope. Gotrek nodded his agreement and ran his thumb along the blade of his axe, producing a bead of blood.

‘Come out, dragon!’ he bellowed. ‘My axe thirsts.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ Felix muttered quietly.

Gotrek walked down the path, shoulder to shoulder with Malakai.

‘Snorri thinks this will be a good fight,’ said Snorri Nosebiter, and hefting his weapons set off after them.

‘I wonder if there are any sheep around here. I could use a little relaxation,’ Bjorni said, then shrugged and strode downslope. Grimme went with him. This left only the humans, Steg and Ulli standing at the hilltop.

‘I suppose somebody ought to guard the cart,’ Ulli said. He looked a little shame-faced. Not that Felix blamed him. He was not too keen to go and face the dragon himself.

‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Steg said. ‘There must be lots of valuable stuff here.’

Ulli and Steg looked at each other. They both looked more and more embarrassed.

‘I thought Slayers were supposed to seek a heroic death,’ Felix said.

‘Me too,’ agreed Ulrika.

Ulli gazed at his feet. Steg stared at the sky. Both of them looked very afraid.

Felix shook his head, then he strode into the valley of the dragon. Ulrika and her bodyguards followed, bows held at the ready. Max gave Ulli and Steg a look that was somewhere between sympathy and contempt, and then strode into the valley.

To his horror, Felix realised that something was crunching underfoot. Looking down he could see that he was walking on sticks of something brittle and black. It took him a moment to realise that they were fire-scorched bones.

‘Well, I guess we know what happened to the other folks who came here,’ he whispered. He wanted to be able to talk loudly and bravely but there was something in the air that compelled him to quietness.

‘Yes,’ Ulrika said, then added, ‘I don’t think we always knew.’

She sounded as if she thought his comment was idiotic. Which in a way, he supposed, it was. He took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. His fingers tightened on the hilt of his sword, and new strength and determination flowed into him. Felix felt as if he ought to resent the usurpation of his body and his will to the sword’s purpose, but actually he was grateful for it. He wondered if he would even have been able to contemplate approaching the great beast if he were not carrying the weapon. He was astounded by the bravery of Ulrika and her henchmen, who did not even have to be here, and who did not have the power of a magical sword to encourage them.

He thought his courage had been tested before in his encounter with the Bloodthirster beneath Karag Dum, but in some ways this was worse. In the ancient dwarf city there had been no possibility of escape. He had been trapped along with the dwarfs. There had been nothing else to do but stand and fight. He did not have to be here.

There was nothing stopping him from running away, or going back to join Ulli and Steg. There was no army of Chaos warriors blocking the way back, as there had been in Karag Dum. He was not entombed deep beneath the earth. He knew that in some ways he was not even bound by his oath to follow Gotrek any more. Only the other night, he had offered to run away with Ulrika in spite of it. And yet, here he was advancing into the mist, marching towards a dragon’s lair, apparently of his own free will.

It was not that simple though. He was still bound by a whole complex pattern of events, dependencies and emotions. He did still feel some loyalty to Gotrek. He did not want to look like a coward in front of Ulrika and the others. He did not want to destroy his own image of himself. He knew he despised Ulli and Steg for their cowardice, even though he understood their emotions all too well. He did not want to be like them. He did not want Ulrika and Max and the others thinking of him in the same way.

And there was no easy retreat. The hills were still full of orcs and bandits and there was no way back for one man on his own, even accompanied by two cowardly dwarfs. He wondered if Ulli and Steg had realised this. And he suspected that, beneath all his feelings, the power of the sword he held was at work on him, nudging him in the direction it wanted him to go.

Felix wondered if the others were in a similar quandary, if they too felt the same complex mix of emotions that he did. From their grim expressions, it was hard to tell. Every face was a mask of self-control. Every hand was steady.

Not wanting to, and yet somehow compelled to do it, Felix continued to put one foot in front of the other, certain that every step took him closer to death.

Max could sense the dragon up ahead, as surely as he could feel the winds of magic. It was an ominous powerful presence that made him want to quiver with fear. He had read about the aura of dragons, of how they inspired fear in even the boldest heart, and, having experienced it once, he had thought that he was prepared for it. He was wrong.

He felt that at any moment the great beast might spring out and end his life with a snap of its jaws. This must be how a bird feels, when it senses the nearness of a cat, he thought. To distract himself, he reached out his senses and grasped at the winds of magic, preparing himself to lash out with a spell at the smallest warning. He had already woven his subtlest and most potent protective spells upon himself and his comrades. He wondered if they had even noticed.

He was also aware that other powers were at work here. The ominous blade that Felix Jaeger bore was beginning to blaze with power. To Max’s wizardly eyes it glowed like a beacon. Max could sense the sentience in it was beginning to activate its own spells. Had he not been absolutely certain that the blade was as determined as they to put an end to the dragon, Max would have woven counter spells.

Even as he thought this Max wondered why he was so certain as to the sword’s purpose. Was it possible that the blade was affecting his own mind, and making him believe this? He doubted it. He felt that he would have sensed any such encroachment on his mind. He inspected his own mental defences, searching for a breach, just in case, and found none. Then again, any spell of sufficient subtlety to affect his mind would almost certainly leave him thinking that any way.

He almost laughed. Here he was worrying about a relatively minor possibility when ahead of him he sensed a dragon, with a dragon’s magic and a dragon’s incredible power. What did it matter what the sword was up to? It was not the only magical weapon here. There was Gotrek’s awesome axe, a thing that carried a power within it an order of magnitude greater than Felix’s sword, a weapon capable of banishing greater daemons.

The more Max thought about these events the more he believed there was a pattern to them. Malakai Makaisson was here, also armed with the deadliest devices dwarf steel-craft was capable of building, and he was here too, his magic having reached new heights of potency on the journey. Surely such things could not be accidents. Perhaps the benevolent powers who stood guard over the world had brought them here for a reason.

Max found himself smiling quietly. This was a dangerous line of thinking. Warriors and wizards who thought themselves specially protected by the gods usually found themselves in an early grave. Perhaps they died serving the god’s purposes, perhaps not. The higher powers were rarely open with their human followers, and not necessarily kind to them, either.

If he was honest, he was here because Ulrika was here, and he wanted to protect her. It was a foolish and romantic notion for a wizard, but it was the truth. If that led to his death, then so be it...

He took another breath. Along with the winds of magic, he sensed rottenness and corruption. This was not the simple stink of evil. It was like the smell of gangrenous flesh he had sometimes scented in a hospice during his apprenticeship in healing magic. A faint hope stirred within him.

Perhaps the dragon had been more badly wounded in its attack on the airship than they had thought. For a moment, his heart lightened then realism reasserted itself. Even if the creature was badly hurt, it was not necessarily a good sign.

Dragons, like most beasts, were always at their most dangerous when wounded.

Ulrika held her bow ready. She was not sure exactly what a single arrow could do against a monster as mighty as the dragon, but she was determined to at least try. She had already given instructions to Standa and Oleg to do the same as she intended to do: aim for the eyes. No matter how well armoured the creature’s body might be, its eyes must still be vulnerable. At least she hoped this was the case. She could not see how they could be armoured.

She clung to this thought for reassurance. This was a dreadful place. It stank of death and illness. The bones of the dragon’s previous victims lay all around, wrapped in rusting chainmail and mouldering leather, sightless eye-sockets staring towards the heavens. It seemed like hundreds had tried to kill the beast before them, and none of them had succeeded.

For the hundredth time she wondered why she was here. She could have left the Slayers, and tried to make her way north along the High Road. She could even have left Karak Kadrin by the long westerly route. She had not and there were times when she regretted it. Taking a different route would have meant leaving Felix and she had not been prepared to do that. More fool she.

She felt as if she had deserted her duty to her father and her kinsfolk for a stranger. And for what? She had thought she loved him, but, if this was love, it was not like anything the bards sung of. It was fury and irritation, and an insane sensitivity to the least little thing. It was fear, of loss and of having. It was feeling that you had stopped being yourself and were becoming a stranger to the person you had been. It was this powerful brutish force that made you think about a man even though you would not talk to him and even as you walked into a dragon’s lair.

She wished he had not agreed to go with her the other night, and she was glad he had, even if it would make him an oathbreaker. She wondered whether they could have slipped away and made it through the mountains into obscurity and a life together. And she knew it was an illusion. They were not the sort of people who could have done that. She could not, in the end, abandon family and duty.

She looked over and saw that Max was smiling, and wondered what the magician could find here to smile about. He was a strange man, but a good one. He could not help it if the gods had gifted him with strange powers. He seemed to at least want to do his best to use them for good, and he had been a true friend to her and the rest of them. She was certain that the only reason he was here was because of her, and she was touched by that, though she thought it was foolish of him to be taking a path that most likely would lead to his death because of love. On the other hand, he was being no more foolish than she.

Up ahead, she saw the Slayers had stopped. They stood before a huge cave mouth. The stink of rot and putrefaction was stronger here, as if they were coming close to its source. They stood now at the mouth of Skjalandir’s lair. Where was the dragon, she wondered?

Ulli watched Steg rummaging through the back of Malakai Makaisson’s wagon. A look of shame and embarrassment crossed his face. He tugged his beard. He kicked a stone. He felt dreadful. He had always known he was a coward. He had fled from his first battle and been ostracised by his clan. He had sought to atone for it by becoming a Slayer. He had thought that Grimnir might smile on him, and grant him the courage to find death. The god had not done so. In fact it looked like his shame was going to be increased. Who had ever heard of a Slayer who was a coward?

‘Found anything interesting in there?’ he asked, just to make conversation.

‘Lots of gear. Lots of tools,’ Steg said. ‘Probably weapons. I don’t know how to put them together. Must be worth a fortune but I don’t know how to use them.’

He sounded angry and disappointed. Ulli wondered if he had really thought to make his fortune by stealing the engineer’s devices. He had been wondering that since the start of the trip. Not that he would have minded right now. The engineer’s weapons had certainly routed those goblins. With them, they might have stood a chance of getting back. Without them, they probably did not.

He glanced back down slope. To his surprise the mist had started to lift. Through it, he thought he saw humanoid shapes, greenskins, coming ever closer. His heart sank. He knew now there was most likely no escape.

He felt something hardening within him. This was hopeless. There was no way back. Whichever way he looked there was only death. Perhaps Grimnir had answered his prayers after all. He came to a decision and climbed up onto the back of the cart. He saw that in the cases Steg had rummaged through were a collection of the black spherical bombs that Malakai was so fond of. They would do. He picked up a blanket and, using it as a sack, quickly filled it with bombs. Steg meanwhile had noticed the orcs.

‘Looks like we’ve got company,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ said Ulli. ‘I’d stay and kill them, but the dragon is bigger. It’s a better ending for a Slayer.’

Steg shrugged. ‘Aye, you’re right. And it most likely has gold too.’

‘Let’s be away then.’

Together they raced down into the Dragon Vale. Ulli hoped that if they hurried they might catch up with the others. He was not sure exactly why, but he felt it might be better to die in company.

The mouth of the dragon’s cave loomed before them. Felix guessed that the roof must be nearly five times his own height. He peered in, half-expecting to catch a glimpse of a huge reptilian head in the heartbeat before its fiery breath incinerated him. He saw nothing save that the cave extended deep into the earth. In the shadowy gloom, he could make out stalactites and stalagmites. For a moment, the cave itself seemed to be the maw of an enormous monster, but then common sense reasserted itself.

‘I can’t see any dragon,’ he said.

‘It’s in there. I can smell it,’ Gotrek said. ‘It’s down in the dark, cowering. We’ll just have to go in and get it.’

Gotrek’s description of the dragon’s behaviour struck Felix as being unrealistic. He doubted very much that the dragon felt any fear of them at all. It probably just hadn’t noticed them.

‘We’ll need light,’ he said. ‘It’s too dark to see down there.’

Max gestured and a sphere of golden fire hovered in the air above him. He gestured again and the sphere split into five smaller spheres, one of which moved to hover over each of the humans. Felix gathered that Max already knew the dwarfs did not need nearly as much light to see by as men did.

‘I guess we’re not going to be sneaking up on the dragon anyway,’ Felix said. He looked at the others. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

As they descended into the darkness, Felix was glad of the magical light. It hovered just behind his head and gave him enough illumination to see by. It was an absolute necessity in this place. The floor of the cavern was rough, and descended steeply into the gloom. Rocks protruded from the floor at intervals. He did not doubt that if he had tried to feel his way forward in the dark, he might easily have fallen and broken his neck.

The way followed many branching paths but it was always obvious, from the smell, and the trail of slimy blood that lay before them, in which direction they would find the dragon. Felix was glad of the marked trail too. This was not one cave, he realised, but a vast underground labyrinth in which it would be all too easy to get lost.

An enormous roar echoed through the caverns. The winding corridors amplified it to the point where it was almost deafening. Felix’s ears rang. He had no idea where the dragon might be. Once, judging from the intensity of the sound, he would have thought it was close, but his experiences in the tunnels of dwarf cities had taught him that noises could be deceptive. In a way this was worse. The uncertainty filled him with dread.

Around him the others were shadowy figures. The humans were outlined by the sorcerous spheres. The dwarfs were near invisible as they moved through the gloom. He could see their silhouettes, and hear their voices, but nothing more. The smell of corruption was getting worse. He put his hand over his mouth and nostrils to keep from gagging.

Behind him, he could hear the noise of running feet. He turned to see Ulli and Steg moving down the corridor. He noticed that Ulli had a huge sack thrown over his shoulder.

‘I’m glad you could join us after all,’ Felix said sardonically. ‘You’re not too late for the action.’

‘We didn’t have much choice,’ Ulli said, looking more than somewhat embarrassed. ‘A whole tribe of greenskins has shown up outside.’

‘The way back is cut off,’ added Steg.

‘Wonderful,’ Felix said. ‘Just what I needed to hear.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Snorri. ‘We’ll get them on the way out.’

The cave became a long high tunnel. Shadows danced away from the glowing globes. The trail led on deeper into the earth. Somewhere off in the distance they could hear running water. The walls were damp, and covered in slick greenish moss. Suddenly the bellowing stopped.

‘Och, the beastie must hae smelled us,’ said Malakai. ‘Ah dinnae doot it kens we’re here.’

‘Snorri thinks that’s just fine,’ said Snorri. ‘Snorri wouldn’t want to take unfair advantage.’

‘The creature must die,’ Gotrek said. ‘The dwarf folk have a mighty grudge against it.’

‘Aye,’ Grimme said. ‘That they have. So have I.’

Everyone looked at him in surprise. It was the first time he had ever spoken to them. His voice was quiet and sad and sour. He met their gazes evenly. Hatred and sorrow were etched upon his face. ‘The beast killed my whole clan. I was in the lands of men trading or I would have died with them. I have come back bearing this grudge. I will either kill the beast, or die expunging the shame of failing to die with my clan.’

‘The beastie will die,’ Malakai said. ‘It owes me for what it did tae ma lovely airship.’

‘The dragon must pay for the death of Varek,’ said Snorri.

‘We’ll make it,’ Bjorni said.

‘Are you going to stand here all day boasting?’ Gotrek said. ‘I have better things to do.’

‘Let’s go,’ Malakai said.

Ahead they could hear the roar of water, and see something glittering.

‘Gold,’ Steg said, lengthening his stride, apparently unconcerned now with his personal safety.

‘Or the glitter of dragon scales,’ Max said. ‘Be prepared to fight.’

As they moved closer, Felix could see a great cavern looming ahead of them. It was a monstrous chamber, as vast as the interior of the Temple of Sigmar in Altdorf. At one end was a waterfall, which tumbled into a large pool. The wetness of the spray moistened Felix’s face, even at this distance. The air stank of rotting flesh.

Around the chamber’s edge ran several ledges large enough to hold a man. The tunnel on which they walked ran into a crude ramp, smoothed by the passage of the dragon’s massive body over the years. Here and there lay the bones of men and beasts and monsters. There was indeed treasure glittering in the cavern, great mounds of it, silver and copper and gold and jewellery all mingled together. It held the eye for mere moments though before it was drawn to the creature that dominated the huge space.

In the centre of the chamber lay the dragon, the largest living thing Felix had ever seen, or hoped to see.

It was the size of a small hill, an enormous mass of muscle and sinew and scale. Its leathery wings were wrapped tight around its body. Its long tail was tipped with a great razor-edged paddle-blade of flesh. Double rows of serrated spines, each as large as a tall man, ran down its spine. Even as Felix watched the monstrous serpentine neck uncurled as the dragon lifted its head to see who disturbed its slumber. It glanced down at them with baleful, hate-filled eyes. Felix could see pain and madness in the gaze. Part of him wanted to flee, but from the blade in his hand came a flow of strength and calm and courage.

Even the dwarfs were daunted by those evil eyes, Felix could tell. Behind him, he heard Ulli and Bjorni and Steg whimper. Even Snorri let out a groan of despair. Only Gotrek, Malakai and Grimme stood their ground with no show of fear. Felix could sense Max and the Kislevites would turn tail at the slightest provocation. He did not blame them. The dragon was as large as the Spirit of Grungni. Its mouth was a massive tooth-filled chasm which could easily swallow a man whole. Flame flickered from its nostrils along with clouds of acrid chemical smoke.

‘Hold fast,’ Felix said, surprised at how calm he sounded. Once again, he felt the power of the sword at work. ‘Ulrika, Oleg, Standa, get up on the ledges and start shooting for the eyes, the throat or any vulnerable spot you can think of. Max, can your magic protect us from the flames?’

‘Aye. I hope so. For a time, at least.’

‘Then do so!’ A note of command entered Felix’s voice and he was amazed to see them jump to obey. Something else struck him. The dragon was moving slowly, dragging its left side. Hope surged through Felix. He thought he understood what had happened.

‘It’s wounded,’ he said. ‘It still hasn’t recovered from Varek crashing the gyrocopter into it.’

The dragon reared unsteadily, spreading its wings for balance. Its huge shadow flowed over the wall behind it, but that was not what held Felix’s attention. He could see now that he was right. There was a massive wound in the beast’s side, which festered greenly. This was the source of the stink in the air. Varek had hurt the creature far more than he had ever believed possible.

‘Try firing arrows at the wound in its side,’ Felix shouted. ‘The scales have fallen away there.’

Ulrika and the two Kislevite bowmen were already running along the ledges, spreading out and taking cover behind the stalagmites. Max raised his staff and a wave of power flowed out of him, setting the air shimmering.

‘Charge!’ roared Gotrek. All of the Slayers except Malakai raced forward. Without quite understanding why Felix did the same. The dragon moved to meet them, the earth shaking beneath its ponderous tread. Its roars were deafening. Its head looped forward on its neck and it breathed a sheet of flame. Felix raised his sword to parry it as he had done on the airship but there was no need. The shimmering protective field cast by Max held the flames at bay.

From the corner of his eye, Felix noticed that Steg was not running towards the dragon, but towards the largest pile of loot. He dived into it like a swimmer plunging into water and shrieked, ‘Gold! Lovely gold! It’s all mine.’

He’s mad, Felix thought. Even as the dragon loomed over them, Steg tossed handfuls of coins ecstatically into the air, shouting, ‘Mine! All mine!’

From behind Felix came a weird spluttering hissing noise. Something flashed past overhead, trailing fire. It exploded in the dragon’s wounded side, sending great chunks of flesh hurtling outwards, and exposing bone and inner organs. The dragon let out a fearsome roar that was somewhere between a bellow and a scream. As he closed with the creature, Felix could hear the air hissing out of the dragon’s lungs through the hole in its chest.

The mighty creature reared upwards, its wings flexing as it did so. The movement drove the stench of rotting flesh towards its attackers in an almost overpowering wave. Felix fought to keep from gagging, and looked up in wonder. He did not think he had ever imagined a living thing quite so large. It loomed over him like a walking tower. There was something unnatural about it, as if a building had grown legs and started walking around. It was so tall that its head almost touched the ceiling of the cavern, and that was almost twenty times the height of a man.

How can we possibly overcome this, he thought, as awe threatened to paralyse him? It did not seem possible that human or dwarf valour could prevail against such a thing. It was just too big. They were like mice trying to overcome a grown man. Even as these thoughts surged through Felix’s mind, Gotrek reached the dragon’s foot.

Felix’s numbed mind noted that the talons of the creature’s paw were almost the size of the Slayer. If this dismayed Gotrek, he gave no sign of it. His axe flashed through a thunderous arc and bit into the dragon’s leg at about the spot the ankle would have been in a human. The mighty blade parted scales and flesh. Greenish blood spurted steaming from the wound. The dragon bellowed its rage and pain once more then bent forward, its head coming down with the speed of a striking serpent, its huge jaws opening and threatening to take Gotrek with one gulp.

Felix wondered if the moment of the Slayer’s doom had finally arrived.

Desperately Ulrika tried to get a bead on the dragon’s eye. It should not be difficult, she told herself. The orb was larger than the targets she had used for archery practice ever since childhood. Of course, those targets had not moved around at enormous speed, nor had they been attached to something quite as overwhelmingly fearsome as a dragon. Part of her did not want to fire for fear of attracting the creature’s attention. And, in archery practice, there was not the distraction of having Felix and the Slayers fighting with the target either.

Stay calm, she told herself. Breathe easily. It does not matter how large the beast is. It does not matter what it is doing. It is just another target. You can hit it easily enough. You have hit birds in flight. This should not be so difficult as that.

Time seemed to slow. Her mind emptied and calmed. She drew back the arrow. With what seemed to her incredible slowness, the dragon’s head started to descend. She compensated for the movement, aimed at where the eye should be when the arrow reached it, and then released.

The arrow flew straight and true. She prayed to Taal that it would find its mark.

An arrow flashed out of nowhere and hit the dragon in the eye, just before the head reached Gotrek. The Slayer threw himself to one side, and the dragon’s jaws snapped shut on empty air. The dragon’s own motion, and Gotrek’s hamstringing blow, combined to overbalance the creature. It tumbled forward, headlong. Felix cursed, realising that it was going to land on him. Screams from Ulli and Steg told him that they had realised that they, too, were in the path of its descent.

The dragon’s wings flapped instinctively, slowing its fall. Felix felt the wind flutter his cloak and threw himself to one side. Ulli did the same. For some reason, Steg refused to move. ‘You can’t have my gold,’ he shouted, swinging his pick up to strike at the dragon, even as the huge body landed on him. Felix heard the squelch as he only just rolled clear.

Felix saw that Malakai was stuffing something into the metal tube he carried once more. As the dragon started to rise, he finished the operation and swung the cylinder into position on his shoulder. The dragon stretched its neck towards him, and as it did so, Malakai pulled some sort of trigger on the front of the tube. Sparks flew from the back of the tube and another projectile flashed forth and sped straight towards the dragon’s mouth. It reminded Felix of the fireworks he had seen unleashed at Altdorf to celebrate the Emperor’s birthday. No firework had ever exploded with quite such violence though. The force of the explosion loosened several of the dragon’s man-sized fangs, and tore a hole in the top of the creature’s mouth. How could anything survive such punishment, Felix wondered.

It had its terrible festering wound. It had a huge hole ripped in its chest. It had an arrow sticking from its eye. It had blood seeping from its ankle where Gotrek had hamstrung it. And yet it still refused to die. It lashed around in a frenzy. Its tail cracked the air like a whip. Its wings drummed like thunder. It lashed out with a claw that would have flattened Malakai like a swatted fly, had not the engineer thrown himself flat below it. As the dragon rose for another blow, Felix saw the flattened form of Steg was still attached to its chest. His pick was driven between the creature’s scales, and even in death his hand still clutched the weapon’s shaft. The force of the impact had embedded bits of gold in his skin and armour. In death, he glittered.

Gotrek’s warcry rang out and Felix saw that the Slayer was at the dragon’s rear, chopping at its tail with the axe. Each blow carved great chunks out of the dragon’s flesh. Snorri had joined the fray and battered away with axe and hammer. Felix could not see whether his blows were having any effect.

A flash of gold light told Felix that Max had cast a spell. A bolt of uncanny power flashed at the dragon’s other eye. The eyeball sizzled and popped and now the dragon was blinded. Grimme raced forward as its head swooped low, and ran almost into the creature’s mouth. His hammer smashed through a great arc, and pulped scale and flesh beneath it.

The dragon breathed, and even from where he stood Felix could feel the heat. Grimme was too close to its source for any protective spell to intervene. His armour and hair caught alight. His crest became a sizzling flame. His flesh blackened and then ran like liquid, so fierce was the heat. He did not even have time to scream, then he was gone. The dragon sprawled forward on all fours once more, emitting the fiery jet at its tormentors.

Outrage flared within Felix’s brain at the sight of this horrible death. The flames continued to flicker outwards, scouring the ledges on which the Kislevites stood. Max’s magical barrier flickered but held, but Felix could see that it was starting to collapse. He had no idea how much longer the wizard could hold it for. Once the shimmering spell shield went down, Ulrika and Max and the archers would suffer the same fate as Grimme. Just the thought of that happening triggered something within Felix’s brain. Power flowed out of the sword. Without even realising what he was doing, he found himself running forward towards the mighty beast. His path took him up a pile of treasure and a flying leap took him right on top of the dragon’s skull.

If the blinded dragon felt his presence it gave no sign. He stood upright atop its head. The runes on the blade blazed bright with deadly magic. He summoned all his strength and drove the blade downwards, even as he felt the dragon rear up beneath him.

The deadly spells woven into it by its ancient creators enabled the blade to pass through scale and flesh. There was resistance as the enchanted steel met the bones of the skull. Felix leaned forward with all his weight. The blade twisted in his hands, aiding him. In a moment, the weapon was through and its deadly runes were lodged in the dragon’s brain.

The dragon gave one last deadly bellow, and its whole body spasmed reflexively. Felix felt a sickening sense of acceleration as its neck uncoiled and the ground receded below him. He was almost thrown clear. Knowing the drop would kill him, Felix held onto the embedded blade with all his strength. Then the dragon began to topple backwards.

This was not such a good idea, thought Felix, as the ground rose to meet him once more.

TWELVE

THE BATTLE

Felix fell. He knew that he had moments to live. There was nothing in his mind save fear and a sick sense of vertigo as he dropped. No noble thoughts. No last memories of life. Just the thought that he had made an error. One strange image burned itself into his brain. The sorcerous sphere still followed him, keeping pace effortlessly. It occurred to him that perhaps he could reach out and grab it. The magic that allowed it to fly might slow his fall.

Desperately he grabbed for it, but it remained out of his reach. His sword fell from his hands. He twisted desperately, straining with every fibre of his being to grab the light but it eluded him. He cursed and then there was the impact.

Death was not quite what he expected. There was pain. There was darkness. There was a sense of air being expelled from his lungs. There was a sense of being pushed downwards by an enormous force. He was not sure though that he should feel quite so wet. Blood, he thought irrationally. His body had split open on impact. That was the wetness he felt.

Then the wet stuff filled his mouth and started to trickle down his throat. He could not breathe.

I am not dead yet then, he thought. Maybe my lungs are filling with blood like those poor devils I saw dying of poison gas in Nuln.

Panic filled him. This was worse than a nightmare. It was horrible knowing that these were his last few seconds of life and that there was nothing he could do about it.

Then he noticed there were bubbles all around him. The light was still above him. Was he hallucinating, he wondered? Instinctively he grasped that something important was going on here. He had missed something. Then it came to him. He was not dead. He was in water. He must have been catapulted into the pool at the far end of the cave by the force of the dragon’s last spasm. There was still a chance that he might live. He breathed out, expelling the water from his mouth, trying desperately not to breathe any more in.

But it was only a chance, he realised. The force pushing him down was not a product of his imagination. It was the pressure from the tons of water falling into the pool, driving him downwards with enormous force. He tried kicking upwards but it was useless. There was nothing he could do against such power.

For a moment he felt despair. He had merely exchanged one death for another. He was not going to be killed by the monster or by the fall, he was going to drown. His lungs were almost empty. In its need for air, his desperate body sought to betray him. It took a huge effort not to breathe in the water.

Fierce resolution filled him. He had not come so far and survived an encounter with a dragon in order to be killed by a waterfall. There had to be something he could do. He relaxed and let the pressure drive him downwards. His face hit rock. His mouth almost opened reflexively to scream but he held it shut by force of will. His lungs felt like they were bursting.

Be calm, he told himself. Think. He noticed that he was starting to drift to one side. The current had hit the rocky floor of the pool and was being deflected. He allowed it to carry him, and the pressure from above eased.

Darkness hovered at the edge of his vision. He was on the verge of blacking out. Just keep going, he told himself. Don’t give up. The worst is past.

He struck out for the surface and noticed that the glowing sphere still followed him. That was good; it gave him some light to see by.

His chainmail shirt felt like it was made of lead. The weight of it tugged at him, pulling him down. He considered stopping and trying to pull it off, but knew that he would just be wasting precious time and air. He had to keep going.

Stroke by stroke, with all the effort of a man pulling himself up a mountainside, Felix swam for the surface. His limbs felt like lead. He could barely see. His lungs were about to explode. Still he swam onwards and upwards. Until at last, just as he was certain he could endure no more, his head broke the surface, and he breathed in a lungful of pure fresh air. He was certain he had never tasted anything so sweet.

Felix pulled himself over the edge of the pool. Water puddled at his feet. His clothes were sodden. He saw that the dwarfs and Ulrika were running towards him. Despite the age he felt he had been underwater, he realised that only moments had passed since he killed the dragon. Its huge corpse lay flopping and twitching on the ground nearby, its movements scattering gold coins everywhere.

Ulrika raced up. Tears streamed down her face. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she said as she embraced him.

‘I feel like I ought to be,’ he murmured, pulling her close and feeling the warm weight of her body against his.

The dwarfs gathered round to congratulate him.

‘Aye, well, we’re rich,’ said Malakai, looking at the dragon’s hoard.

‘Except that we can’t carry more than a small part of this treasure,’ Max said.

‘And there’s a small army of greenskins outside,’ Ulli said. ‘What are we going to do about them?’

‘Kill them,’ Gotrek said. ‘Or die trying. We’ve failed to achieve our dooms here. The gods have provided us with another.’

‘I’ve had enough of seeking death for one day,’ Felix said.

‘You’re a dragon slayer now,’ Bjorni said. ‘Surely you’re not scared of a few greenskins.’

‘I would like to live to enjoy my triumph,’ Felix said sourly.

He looked around. Oleg and Standa were still with them, and more or less unmarked. Gotrek and Snorri appeared unharmed. Ulli looked almost exultant having survived his encounter with Skjalandir. Bjorni contemplated the dragon’s hoard in wonder.

Their casualties had been surprisingly few. They had been very lucky.

Varek had done them more of a favour than they had ever guessed when he gave his life to drive the dragon off. The wound he had inflicted on it had weakened the monster enough for them to kill it. If anyone deserved the title ‘dragon slayer’ it was Varek.

He walked over and picked up his sword. It no longer felt particularly magical. All power seemed gone from it. It was just a fine blade once more. No hint of its fell purpose remained.

Still, it was a good weapon, and he was used to it. He stuck it back in its scabbard.

Felix wondered if he should suggest burying the dead, but Steg was lost beneath the body of the fallen dragon and Grimme was charred to a crisp. It hardly seemed worth the effort. Particularly since the orcs might soon be arriving. He mentioned this to the others.

‘Perhaps we can find another way out,’ suggested Max. ‘These tunnels must lead somewhere.’

‘They might be an endless maze,’ Ulrika said. ‘We could get lost and wander till we die.’

‘No dwarf ever got lost underground,’ Bjorni said. The other Slayers nodded their agreement.

‘Be that as it may,’ Felix said, ‘there might not be another way out.’

‘The manling has the right of it,’ Gotrek said. ‘And what’s more, no Slayer ever ran from a mass of goblins.’

Thinking of the less than totally courageous behaviour exhibited by some of their company, Felix wondered if that were true. Now did not seem like a good time to air his doubts however. Instead he said, ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Snorri thinks we should go up to the surface and kill them,’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

Are these maniacs really going to talk us all into going up to the surface and getting killed, wondered Felix? It seemed all too likely.

‘What if they kill us all?’ Max asked. ‘Are you really going to leave all this treasure here for them to take?’

Thank you, Max, thought Felix. You just mentioned the only thing that might influence a gang of dwarf Slayers in a situation like this.

‘They will not pass us,’ said Snorri. ‘We shall stand on a wall of corpses and throw them back!’

‘Let’s just assume you don’t,’ Max said. ‘All of this treasure will go to enrich the orcs. They could use it to buy weapons, and attack dwarf lands.’

‘No dwarf would ever sell them weapons.’

‘Alas, some humans might,’ said Max. The dwarfs nodded their heads sagely at the thought of such human treachery.

‘You hae a point,’ said Malakai. ‘If ah had some blastin’ pooder ah could rig this ceiling’ tae collapse. But ah dinnae!’

‘I brought a sack of your bombs from the cart,’ Ulli said.

‘Guid lad!’ said Malakai beaming broadly. The smile faded just as quickly as the thought of someone fumbling around amongst his treasures occurred to him. Felix could read it on his face.

‘It’s a bit early to be thinking of such things,’ Bjorni said. ‘Surely we should head up to the cave mouth and take a look.’

‘Best be careful, then,’ Max said. ‘While they think the dragon is still alive I doubt that they will come in. If they see you up there, they might think we killed it, and come looking for us.’

‘But we did kill the dragon,’ said Snorri, obviously confused.

‘We will all head up,’ Gotrek said. ‘Except Malakai and Ulli. You can stay here and rig the tunnel to blow.’

‘Right ye are,’ Malakai said cheerfully.

Why do I think this is going to end in disaster, thought Felix, as he squelched back up the tunnel, shivering in his sodden clothes?

Felix crawled forward to the lip of the cave mouth. Ulrika crawled alongside him. The two of them had been selected since they had the best eyesight. Max had doused his light spell so that it would not attract attention to them.

The stone was wet and cold under his hands. Felix wished he had something dry to wear. The mist had cleared away; a bright sun beamed cheerfully down. Carefully he poked his head forward and gazed down into the valley. One look told him the worst had happened.

Instead of one army, there were two. On one side of the valley was a horde of orcs and goblins. They were drawn up in crude battle formation. Massive orcs stood in the centre armed with crude scimitars and round, spike-bossed shields. Masses of goblin archers scuttled about between the ranks. Off to one side were some orc riders mounted on huge battle boars. Their grunts and squeals were audible up the valley. A strange device had been set up on the brow of the hill. It resembled the catapults that Felix had used as a boy, only it was large enough to throw a boulder rather than a small stone. Beside it were several oddly attired goblins, wearing pointed spiked helmets, flapping odd bat-winged attachments fixed to their arms. Spider riders scuttled along the brow of the hill. On the back of one was mounted what must be some sort of shaman. He brandished a skull-tipped staff in the air and chanted encouragement to his troops. The greenskin force must be almost a thousand strong, Felix realised. He was glad the Slayers had not simply rushed out to meet it. There were too many greenskins down there for them to overcome.

Facing the orcs across the valley were hundreds of armed men. There were ranks of halberdiers, and rows upon rows of crossbowmen. One or two of the leaders were mounted on horseback. There were some wild highlanders with massive two-handed swords. None of the men were well armoured but they were much better disciplined than the orcs. Even if they were outnumbered they still had a chance. Particularly if they held the high ground, Felix thought, and let the greenskins come at them.

This must be the bandit army of Henrik Richter, Felix realised. What had brought him here? What strange chance had caused these two forces to meet outside the dragon’s cave?

He heard Ulrika gasp. ‘Look there! To the right of the human army,’ she whispered.

Felix instantly saw what she meant. He recognised the figure of Johan Gatz, the minstrel. Felix felt his suspicions had been justified. The man had been a spy for the bandits. They must have followed us. Both armies must have. The orcs probably wanted revenge for the slaughter we wreaked. The men probably came to see if they could hijack the treasure, if we slew the dragon.

But why were they drawn up in battle array now, and what were they waiting for?

Johan Gatz cursed. This was not going according to plan. Henrik had assembled the army and brought it here along the high mountain passes as he had asked. The scouts that always watched for sign of the dragon stirring had seen nothing of it since it had flown back from the north well over a week ago. One of them who had witnessed its arrival had even claimed it looked wounded. That fitted with the story the dwarfs had told him. The same men had seen the dwarfs enter the caves this morning, and they had yet to come out. He wondered if they had actually succeeded in killing the beast. It seemed unlikely – the valley was littered with the bones of those who had tried, but there had been something about that bunch which had compelled him to think they might do it.

Either they were the most convincing braggarts Johan had ever heard, or they were something special. Johan knew himself to be a sound judge of character, and they had convinced him. More than that, the names of Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger were not unfamiliar to him. On his travels he had heard tales of a pair answering to their description, and if even a tenth part of those tales were true, they were not people to take lightly. Some of the lads had seen the airship pass over the valleys too, so that had confirmed their story of the Spirit of Grungni. All in all, he had judged it worth taking the chance of bringing the whole gang here to rob them of the treasure if they should manage to kill Skjalandir. Henrik had thought it worth the risk too.

What they had not counted on was the orcs coming up with the same plan, and being there as well. The idea had been to lie low and wait and see whether the dwarfs came out of the caves. That had gone out the window when the greenskins were spotted. The troops had mustered in plain sight. There was too much bad blood between men and orcs for either side to do differently. It was sheerest stupidity and bad luck, Johan thought.

If they had known the orcs were going to do this, they could have let the greenskins attack the Slayers and then ambushed them afterwards. But all they had gotten were reports of orcs shadowing the Slayers en route, and they did that to every caravan they spotted going through the mountains. Who would have guessed they would assemble their whole force? Now they all stood in the open like idiots, neither side willing to back down in front of the other. Johan shuddered to think of what might happen if the dwarfs did not kill the dragon, and it emerged from the cave. Maybe there were enough warriors assembled here to kill the beast. Even if there were, the casualties would be appalling. Johan considered legging it, but there was no way he could slip away without being noticed.

What could have gotten the greenskins so stirred up, he wondered?

Ugrek Manflayer glared across at the hated human foes. For the hundredth time he considered ordering his warriors to charge. It would be good to feel human blood flow and human flesh part under his blade. It would be good to break bones and crack skulls. It would be good to kill, he thought. The need to give in to his violent nature was almost overwhelming. Almost.

Ugrek had not risen to be boss of all the orc tribes of the Big Mountains by giving way to his impulses. By orc standards he possessed a great deal of patience and so much cunning that some suspected him of having goblin blood. If anyone still harboured those suspicions they no longer grunted them; he had killed and eaten all those who had muttered such things. He pushed the distracting memories to the back of his mind. He needed to think. There was always the possibility that the shaman’s dreams were wrong, and the dwarfs might not succeed in killing the beast. He knew that if the dragon emerged from its lair, it would not do for his lads and the pinkskins to be rucking. That would make them all easy meat for the monster, and Ugrek had no intention of providing anybody with a meal any time soon.

And if the shaman was right, then the dwarf with the big axe would soon come out. Ever since he had heard Grund’s tales of the slaughter the dwarf had wreaked with that blade, Ugrek had known it must be his. With such a weapon, and the dragon’s treasure, he could forge a horde that would sweep through the human lands like an avalanche. Orcs would muster from across the land to follow him, and kill and loot in his name.

It annoyed him that these humans had got in the way of his destiny. It annoyed him so much that he almost gave the order to attack anyway. Just bad luck that they were here, he thought. Their bad luck. More meat for his troops, he thought. That made him wonder what dragonflesh tasted like. He guessed he would find out soon enough if the shaman’s dreams were true.

They always had been in the past. Why not this time?

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Felix. His explanation of the situation outside had not been well received. The Slayers were silent. Max looked thoughtful. The Kislevites looked worried.

‘If we wait there will be a battle,’ Max said. ‘I don’t see how it can be avoided.’

‘Maybe they’ll send scouts to investigate the caves,’ suggested Ulrika. ‘It’s only a matter of time before one side or the other plucks up the courage to investigate.’

‘In either case, our goose is cooked,’ Felix said. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any way out, unless we wait for the battle and try to sneak away then.’

‘I will not sneak away, manling,’ Gotrek said.

‘If there’s a battle, Snorri wants to be part of it,’ added Snorri Nosebiter.

‘I suspect you’ll get your wish,’ Felix said.

‘Everybody has to die sometime,’ said Ulli. He seemed to have acquired the proper Slayer attitude of brute stubborn stupidity since the fight with the dragon. Either that or he was in shock.

‘I was hoping to die a long time from now in my bed,’ Felix said.

‘I wanted to die in bed once too. Identical twins it was,’ said Bjorni. ‘I thought nothing could improve on that.’

The other dwarfs looked at him in disgust. ‘You’re all just jealous,’ he said eventually.

‘Enough of this,’ Gotrek said. ‘It’s time for an ending.’

He strode up to the mouth of the cave and raised his axe above his head, holding the shaft in both hands.

‘We’ve killed the dragon!’ he shouted. ‘If you want its treasure, you’re going to have to get it over my dead body.’

For a moment, all was silence then there was a roar of voices. A moment after that Gotrek leapt back as a hail of arrows rained down where he stood. Felix noticed that some were black-fletched, some white. He wondered which had been fired by humans, which by orcs.

‘I suppose being pin-cushioned with arrows is no death for a Slayer,’ Felix said. Gotrek glared at him.

‘You’ll see what is a suitable death for a Slayer soon enough, manling.’

‘I fear you are correct,’ Felix said and readied his blade.

‘That’s torn it,’ muttered Johan Gatz, perching himself on one of the boulders strewn across the hillside. The dwarf’s appearance had thrown the orcs into turmoil. The leading ranks obviously didn’t understand a word of what Gotrek had said, but had correctly assumed their hereditary enemy was taunting them. They wouldn’t have been orcs if they had stood for this. The nearest greenskin archers opened fire on the Slayer. The closest unit of orcs began to lumber up the hill.

What surprised Johan the most was that some of the humans had fired as well. That was a waste of arrows. He supposed the lads must be on edge from waiting. A shout from the front ranks of the humans told him exactly how on edge they were. A group of halberdiers had rushed forward to take the orcs moving towards the cave in the flank.

It was the pebble that started an avalanche. The boar riders charged straight at the nearest unit of men. Hooves churned the thin mountain soil. Enormous droppings spurted from their rear as the creatures grew excited. The mountain clan’s men, never the most disciplined of warriors and always eager to prove their bravery, rushed downslope. As they did so, some sort of drug-crazed goblin, using a chain to swing a massive iron ball almost as large as it was, broke out of the greenskin ranks and ploughed through them. In less than a minute all was a chaos of hacking, chopping, howling warriors.

Johan Gatz watched them, thinking that as soon as the opportunity arose, he was out of here.

Felix heard the crash of weapon on weapon, the screams of dying men, the guttural chanting of the orcs, the howled war cries of men. ‘What in the name of Sigmar is going on down there?’ he asked.

‘Sounds like a battle,’ Max said sardonically.

‘Your powers of observation astonish me.’

Felix crept cautiously forward to take a look, mindful of the arrows that had almost skewered Gotrek earlier. He looked down and saw that the valley had erupted into a maelstrom of combat. Man and orc and goblin were locked in battle. Most of the human units had managed to restrain themselves from charging and held the higher ground against the more numerous orcs and goblins. As he watched he saw a rank of halberdiers repulse a charge by a gang of hulking green-skinned warriors. Both sides were taking awful casualties. The humans pursued the retreating orcs and were themselves caught in the flanks by a gang of crazed goblin warriors. Even as Felix watched the men vanished beneath a tide of tiny humanoids only half their size.

A strange twanging noise attracted his attention and he glanced over to see one of the oddly garbed goblins clambering onto the giant catapult. The cable was drawn back by a team of sweating lackeys, and then suddenly unleashed. The goblin was ejected into the air and went swooping off towards the human position. It moved its be-winged arms, as if believing it could somehow control its flight, and screamed ecstatically as it flew. Perhaps it did manage to control its direction, for it descended on top of one of the human leaders, impaling him with the spike of its helmet. The impact must have broken its neck, for it did not rise after that. It was an impressive tribute to either its fanaticism or its stupidity that it would give its life like that.

Suddenly other matters urgently required Felix’s attention. One group of orcs had broken out of the general ruck and were racing up the hill towards him. He rose into a crouch and backed into the cave.

‘They’re coming,’ he shouted.

Ugrek spat on the corpse of his dead foe. So much for waiting, he thought. So much for patience. So much for planning. One shout from that accursed dwarf and those stupid Broken Nose bastards had charged in like orc boys at their first battle. He would crack a few heads and eat a few brains for that once this battle was done. By the great green-skinned gods, he would. He glanced around. It wasn’t all bad tidings. He thought that his lads could rout these humans easily enough. And then he would have the axe and the dragon’s treasure. It wasn’t going to be such a bad day after all. He shouted to his bodyguard and began to make his way across the battlefield towards the mouth of the dragon’s cave.

He was going to take the axe from the stunty’s cold dead hands, he thought. And then he was going to eat his fingers.

Johan could see the battle was finely balanced. The greenskins had the numbers, and their odd weapons and tactics were taking a toll. Those ball-wielding drugged crazed fanatics left a path of red ruin behind them until they collapsed from exhaustion or got entangled in their chains. The flyers had killed more than one brave horseman. The sheer strength and ferocity of the orcs was amazing to watch. He saw one that had to be literally hacked to pieces before it stopped fighting. They did not seem to feel pain as men did.

On the other hand, the humans were better disciplined. They had mostly managed to keep to their ranks and hold the higher ground. The crossbowmen were taking a heavy toll on the lightly armoured orcs and goblins. Even a few of those horrid giant spiders had fallen to them. If only they had a few cannons or even one of those organ guns. Or a squadron of heavy cavalry. With one charge they could have broken the orc ranks. Might as well wish for Sigmar to arrive with the host of the righteous dead, Johan thought. They did not have any knights. They were just going to have to win with what they had.

He wasn’t certain this was possible. At least some of the orcs were distracted by attempting to get at the dwarfs in the cave. And it looked like the orc chieftain, the great Ugrek himself, was trying to cut his way up there. Johan decided that he wouldn’t want to be up there when the Manflayer arrived. Not for all the gold in the dragon’s hoard.

Felix chopped down the last orc. He was breathing hard, and blood mingled with the water that saturated his clothes. Some of it was his own. He glanced around the cave mouth. Dead orcs lay everywhere. Gotrek and Snorri had done their usual bloody work. Between them they must have put paid to at least ten of the greenskins. Five lay blasted and smoking, a testimony to the deadliness of Max Schreiber’s magic. Three more lay with arrows sprouting from their breasts. Felix himself had accounted for three. He guessed the others had killed about a dozen.

They had taken casualties themselves. Standa was dead, his skull split by an orc scimitar. Bjorni had taken a nasty wound. Felix watched Max mutter some kind of healing spell that knitted the flesh together, then wrap a torn piece of his cloak around it. Bjorni looked as pale as a corpse; he had lost a lot of blood. Ulrika and Oleg moved among the bodies, retrieving arrows to replenish their quivers.

About thirty dead orcs, he estimated. It wasn’t enough. There were hundreds more greenskins out there, and almost as many desperate men, all of whom would doubtless want their share of the dragon’s treasure. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe they should offer to split it with the humans in return for their assistance. Good idea, he thought. Now all he had to do was get it to the human leader. And then wait for the inevitable treachery if they survived the fight.

Footsteps sounded from behind them. He saw Malakai and Ulli coming up the corridor. The engineer was bent almost double. In one hand he held a black bomb. He was dribbling powder from it onto the ground. Felix knew what he was doing. A spark would ignite that powder. The powder would act as a fuse. The fuse would detonate whatever cache of explosives they had left back there.

‘It’s din,’ said Malakai. ‘Black powder’s in place. If it looks like the orcs are going to over-run us, ah’ll set fire tae this pooder, an’ boom the whole tunnel comes doon. Then let’s see them get the dragon’s treasure wie a whole mountain o’ rock on tap o’ it.’

Felix shivered. He hoped it would not come to this. If it did, it would mean that he and Ulrika would be dead along with all the rest of them. It was not a reassuring thought. He walked over to the woman. It was time for them to talk.

Ugrek chopped down another human, thumped one of his own bodyguards who had accidentally blundered into him, and continued to hew his way up the hill. His mighty blade dripped with blood. His axe was smeared with gore. He bellowed instructions and encouragement to his followers, certain that victory would soon be his. Heartened by his presence the lads fought on with redoubled fury, cutting down the pinkskins by the dozen. Ugrek could smell victory.

Johan ducked back behind the rock. A random arrow had come close to ending his life and he did not feel like exposing himself to death at the moment. He glanced up and to his astonishment saw a tiny goblin, his eyes glazed in some sort of trance, go flying overhead. From its arms extended some sort of bat-like artificial wings. On its head was a sharp spiked helmet. Johan could have sworn it was shouting: ‘Wheee!’

This was madness, he thought. The orcs were mad, the goblins were mad, his comrades were mad and he was mad for staying here when he could be running. Unfortunately he found the whole scene dreadfully fascinating.

Off at the valley mouth two units of orcs had blundered into each other in their eagerness to get at the men. Now they fought each other with the same ferocious savagery they had wanted to vent on their human foes. Maybe they were from different tribes or clans, Johan thought.

Or maybe it was true what he had heard: when an orc’s battle lust was up, it would fight with anyone.

A change rippled over the battlefield. He sensed arcane powers at work. His hair stood on end. Something drew his eye to the goblin shaman the way iron filings were drawn to a magnet.

The shaman’s cloak billowed behind him. His spider had reared, raising its four forelegs as if in salute. A yellow glow blazed from the goblin’s eyes. A swirling green light flickered on the end of its staff. Streamers of greenish ectoplasm swirled outwards from its tip. When the magic energy touched an orc or a goblin, the recipient’s eyes glowed reddishly, their muscles swelled like great cables, foam erupted from their mouth and they fought like berserkers. At each point this happened the battle started to turn against the humans.

Perhaps the shaman’s uncanny powers would turn the tide, Johan thought.

‘Magic is being unleashed on the battlefield,’ Max said. ‘I think the shaman has invoked the power of the orc gods.’

‘I wish the gods would aid us,’ muttered Felix, surveying the rent in his chainmail and the agonising red cut on his side the wizard was healing. Golden light flowed from the mage’s hand, and where it touched his body the area first went extremely hot and then numbingly cold. It took all Felix’s willpower to keep from screaming. After a moment, the chill passed and sank to a dull ache. He looked down and saw the flap of skin peeled away by an orc scimitar blow had knitted together. He could still remember the agonising pain and the satisfied look on the face of the orc who had chopped at him. He had turned just too late to parry the stroke. His own blow had beheaded his attacker. It had given him a certain satisfaction knowing that he had killed the brute he thought had killed him. It was a miracle he had not been killed. He had managed to keep fighting until the greenskins were repelled and Max could heal him.

‘The gods gave us courage to stand our ground, manling, and weapons to cleave our foes. What else do we need?’ Gotrek said.

‘An army of Sigmarite Templars would be good,’ Felix said. ‘I prefer my divine aid to take tangible form.’

Gotrek merely grunted and returned his attention to the cave mouth. Snorri stood at the edge gazing down.

‘Good fight coming,’ he said. ‘Some big orcs and a shaman on a spider. The spider is Snorri’s.’

‘You can have him,’ Gotrek said. ‘The chieftain is mine.’

Bjorni shook his head. ‘I heard somewhere that female spiders eat their partners when mating. I’ve met some women who did that too.’

‘Don’t you ever think of anything else?’ Ulli asked.

‘Only when I’m fighting,’ Bjorni said. ‘And sometimes not even then.’

Max finished his spell. Felix thanked him and stood up.

‘You’ll feel real pain in a few hours, but the spell should keep you going till then. You won’t be up for much fighting though. Unless...’

Felix knew what Max was thinking. Unless the orcs swarm in, and I’ll have to fight anyway. In a few hours it wouldn’t matter since they would be dead anyway. The last wave had left Oleg dying slowly from a stomach wound that not even Max’s magic could cure. That could so easily have been me, he thought. If the orc’s blow had slightly more power behind it. If my mail had not deflected it just enough.

The man’s groans and prayers filled the chamber, and worked on Felix’s nerves like poison. It would be a mercy to kill him, he thought, and a mercy to the rest of us to silence him.

He shivered. He was becoming as bad as Gotrek and the rest of the dwarfs. Worse. None of them would have suggested such a thing.

Painfully he went over to where Ulrika sat beside the dying man, holding his hand. He noticed that both of them were silent now. Oleg’s skin looked waxy. His moustache drooped. A small amount of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said softly. ‘He is dead.’

Suddenly Felix felt terribly guilty.

Ugrek led the lads right up the hill. He chopped down a few of the Broken Noses that were in his way, just to teach them not to do it again, and halted twenty strides away from the cave mouth. He turned for a moment to look back, and saw with some satisfaction that his lads were about to win the battle. The shaman’s magic had helped. Filled with the spirit of the gods, his warriors were fighting as if possessed.

The spider had borne its mystic master all the way to where Ugrek stood. No one had interfered with it. It regarded Ugrek with beady intelligent malign eyes, and the warboss wondered whether it was true, and Ixix had bound the spirit of his former shamanic master into it. Not that it mattered. If he gave Ugrek any lip, he would die like anyone else. The shaman was gibbering and pointing at something excitedly. Ugrek looked to see what it was.

In the distance he saw a small dot approaching. From its size, he would have thought it was the dragon, but the dwarfs claimed to have killed it. It would be just like a stunty to lie about such a thing, and let the dragon escape by another exit. It was too late to worry about such things now, he decided.

‘Right, lads,’ he bellowed. ‘Into the cave. Kill the stunties. Grab the treasure. Leave the axe for me!’

Having explained his plan, he implemented it instantly.

Felix watched the inexorable tide of greenskins roll up the hill and knew he was going to die. These were the largest, fiercest orcs he had ever seen, and their leader made them look weak and mild-mannered. He was huge, half again as big as a normal orc, and he bore a cleaver in one hand, and an axe in the other. His cloak of manskin billowed behind him. His tusks dripped with saliva. His voice boomed out over the battle. Felix noticed that he was looking back at something and looked to see what it was.

From beside him, he heard Ulrika gasp.

‘It looks like we might be saved.‘

‘Aye, if we can hold on long enough,’ he said sourly.

‘Who said anything about holding on?’ Gotrek asked. ‘I say we charge!’

‘Snorri agrees,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. ‘Snorri is going to kill that spider.’

The Slayers plunged downhill to meet the astonished orcs. There was a mighty crash as weapons met and the killing became fast and furious.

Johan felt a shadow fall on him, and looked up. Was this more goblin sorcery, he wondered, seeing the vast shape that filled the sky overhead? No. It did not look like greenskin work although there was certainly powerful magic here. To tell the truth, it looked more like dwarf work. It had runes on the side and it flew the banners of the Slayer King.

This must be the airship the Slayers had told him about, Johan realised. It was certainly impressive. Even as he watched, spluttering black bombs began to fall into the middle of the battle. The explosions tore through greenskin and human ranks indiscriminately. Judging from the way they fell, the dwarfs were trying to aim for the orcs and goblins, but not very hard. It was an impossible task anyway. The two sides were too intermingled for any sort of precision shooting.

A roaring noise announced the entry of another dwarf weapon into the battle. From turrets on the underside of the cupola, gatling cannons roared to life. Shells ripped man and goblin apart with ease. Johan had seen enough. It was time to be going. Maybe he could grab a horse.

The sound of explosions and the roar of gatling cannons told Felix that the Spirit of Grungni was doing its bloody work. His prayer had been answered, it seemed. The dwarfs must have finished repairing the airship and come looking for them. Judging by the new weapons bristling on its sides, they had come prepared to fight the dragon too. Felix knew that even if he died here, he would be avenged.

Screams from nearby drew his attention back to the melee. He watched as Gotrek tore through Ugrek Manflayer’s bodyguard. The dwarf killed a foe with every stroke. Snorri was right beside him. True to his word he was aiming for the spider and its rider. Felix wanted to rush down into the melee and aid them, but he was tired and the pain of his wound would make it impossible to fight. No, he would stay here and record Gotrek’s doom if it came to him, and hope that the airship arrived in time.

Snorri had reached the spider now. It came for him, huge mandibles dripping poison. Snorri ducked its bite, rolled under its belly, and chopped upwards. Felix heard the spider’s evil scream and watched it sag in the middle. Snorri rolled out from behind it and lashed out at its rider, but the shaman leapt from his seat to avoid the blow, and scuttled away. Powerful he might be, but he did not have the nerve to face the Slayer.

Ulrika calmly nocked her bow and fired, nocked her bow and fired. With every shot an orc fell. The death of her bodyguards seemed to have goaded her into a calm, silent killing rage. Malakai stood next to her, his rocket tube over his shoulder. He took careful aim and pulled the trigger. Sparks flew from the rear of the tube and the rocket whizzed forth tearing through the orc ranks, killing half a dozen. Malakai threw down his weapon.

‘Last rocket,’ he explained, unslinging his portable gatling cannon and starting to blaze away. Bjorni and Ulli fought back to back against the huge orcs. They used their opponents’ size against them expertly, ducking between legs, moving through the press of bodies, hacking and chopping as they went. Felix felt useless and wished he could join in.

Then he saw that Gotrek had fought his way to the orc chieftain.

Ugrek confronted the dwarf with the axe. Good. It saved him hunting the stunty down and killing him. He bellowed a challenge and glared down at the dwarf. Surprisingly the Slayer did not flinch, which was unusual. Ugrek had never met anything on two legs that did not back away when confronted by his massive form. This made him slightly uneasy. Still it did not matter. He was twice the dwarf’s size and three times his weight. He was the toughest orc who had ever lived. He was going to kill this stunty.

He lashed out with his cleaver. Surprisingly, the dwarf wasn’t there. That was unusual too. Ugrek knew he was fast for an orc. No one had ever been able to match his eye-blurring speed before. The dwarf struck back. That was good too. Ugrek liked it when his food put up a bit of a fight. It made things more interesting.

Sparks flashed as their blades met. The power of the Slayer’s blow took Ugrek off guard. He was driven back by the force of the impact. The dwarf was strong. That was good too. Ugrek would gain some of that strength when he ate his heart. He lashed out with his axe. The dwarf ducked beneath it and aimed a counter blow at Ugrek’s legs. Ugrek leapt above it, and brought both weapons down at once, knowing there was no way the dwarf could avoid them both.

The dwarf did not try. Instead, he used his axe two-handed and caught both blows in the haft of the weapon. The force of the impact drove him to his knees. He rolled backwards and away, coming to his feet easily. Ugrek was enjoying this. Already the dwarf had lasted longer than any foe Ugrek had ever faced, and he was showing no signs of running out of fight. Ugrek had always believed that you could measure an orc by the strength of his enemies, and when he killed this Slayer, all orcs would know that Ugrek was mighty indeed. The thought gave him some satisfaction.

The dwarf came at him, beard bristling, a mad light in his eye. He unleashed a hail of blows at Ugrek, each faster and more powerful than the last. It slowly dawned on Ugrek as he parried desperately that the dwarf had not really been trying before. Being knocked down by Ugrek had goaded him to make a mighty effort. Ugrek was forced to admit that the Slayer was almost as mighty as he was. This was even better. More than ever Ugrek looked forward to eating his heart.

His arms ached a little from parrying the dwarf’s blows. It felt like his hand had been nicked. This was unusual. He had never met a foe that had done that before. The Slayer aimed another blow at him and Ugrek raised his cleaver to parry. At the last moment, he realised his cleaver wasn’t there. In fact, his hand wasn’t there either. The pain he had felt was it being separated from his wrist. By the gods, that axe was sharp. He must have it, he thought.

It was the last thought to pass through his brain before the axe descended, bringing eternal darkness with it.

Felix watched Gotrek finish the orc chieftain. The bodyguards looked panicky, their morale already undermined by the flight of the shaman, the havoc wreaked by the dwarfs, and the screaming of their comrades behind them. A few turned and looked back to see the airship. It was the last straw. They must have thought the dwarf gods had come to punish them. First one then another turned and began to flee. Felix looked down to see that the battle had turned into a general rout. Orcs and goblins and humans all intermixed, and no longer fighting, streamed out of the valley in all directions. The relentless death toll inflicted by the Spirit of Grungni was too much for them.

‘I do believe we might survive this,’ Felix said to Ulrika, then wondered at the look of horror on her face. He turned to see what she was pointing at. A stream of fire was already receding into the depths of the mountain. Malakai’s rocket tube lay near at hand. Instantly Felix realised what had happened. A spark from the weapon had ignited the detonating powder.

Could they possibly get down there and put it out, Felix asked himself? He knew he would not be able to, not in his wounded condition. And he would not ask Max or Ulrika to try something he was not willing to do. He had no idea how powerful the explosives down there were, or what the possible consequences of an explosion might be.

‘We’d best get out of here,’ he said and tried to move forward only to discover his legs weren’t working properly. He fell forward onto his face. His wound must have been worse than he thought.

‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘Save yourselves!’

He felt himself being lifted up by Ulrika and Max and they carried him down the slope towards the dwarfs.

‘Prepare yourselves,’ he heard Max say. ‘The tunnel’s about to go up!’

As one the dwarfs threw themselves flat on the ground. Felix felt the earth shake. There was a great blast of fire and heat from behind him, and the sound of rocks collapsing and stone grinding against stone.

‘There goes a king’s ransom,’ he heard Ulli mutter, then the sound of dwarf cursing filled the air.

EPILOGUE

Felix opened his eyes and saw the steel ceiling of the Spirit of Grungni. Borek and Ulrika stooped over him. He could tell by the rocking of the chamber that the airship was in motion.

‘I’m alive, then,’ he said.

‘Only just,’ Borek said. The wrinkles of his ancient face crinkled benevolently as he smiled. ‘There was some infection in your wounds. I am surprised that you are alive at all, with what Ulrika here has told me of your adventures. Slaying a dragon is not something most men live through.’

Felix felt embarrassed as well as pleased. ‘I am glad to see you. I see you managed to repair the airship.’

‘Malakai left very specific instructions.’

‘Is he well?’

‘He and all the others. Although they are all disappointed about the treasure.’

‘Is it lost then?’

‘Nothing buried below the earth is ever lost to dwarfs,’ said Borek. ‘It will take years to excavate all of the rock but we will get it eventually.’

Felix fell silent for a moment, thinking of the bodies of Steg and Grimme. They had received a more thorough burial than anything he could ever have given them. It was an alarming thought that he could have all too easily been buried with them. He reached out and took Ulrika’s hand.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Max says you’ll be up and about by the time we reach our destination.’

‘Where are we going?’ Felix asked, fearing he already knew.

‘Praag,’ she said simply.

He shivered, knowing the greatest Chaos army assembled in two centuries would soon be there too.

BEASTSLAYER

William King

‘Our battle with the dragon Skjalandir left me incapacitated for many days. The events of the particular few weeks that follow it are mercifully vague. I know we brought word of the arrival of the Chaos horde to the Tzarina of Kislev. I know we flew on to the city of Praag where my companion and his dwarf compatriots thought they would meet their dooms. I know we were welcomed in the City of Heroes by the duke himself, who turned out to be a distant cousin of my fair companion, Ulrika. Of the detail of these matters, however, I remember very little, possibly because they are overwhelmed in my memory by the apocalyptic events that were to follow them.

‘What happened in those following weeks caused me to plumb new depths of horror and despair. In my entire long and sorry career as the Trollslayer’s amanuensis, I have found myself in few more desperate places. Even today, I shudder when I recall the madness and turmoil of those dreadful days…’

— From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol IV. by Herr Felix Jaeger
(Altdorf Press, 2505)

ONE

Felix Jaeger looked northwards from the gate tower high above the outer wall of Praag. As if for reassurance, his hands rested atop the carved head of one of the huge sculptures that gave the Gate of Gargoyles its name. From his high vantage point, he had a perfectly clear view for leagues. Only the long snaky curve of the river looping off to the west broke the monotony of the endless plains surrounding the city.

In the distance he could see the smoke of burning villages. It was war coming closer and it would reach the city in less than a day. He shivered and drew his tattered red cloak around his tall, lean form although it was not cold yet. If truth be told it was unnaturally hot. These last days of autumn had been warmer in Kislev than many a summer in his homeland, the Empire.

It was the first time in his life he had ever prayed for the onset of snow. Winter was deadly here, an untiring ally who slaughtered the foes of Kislev, or so the locals claimed. Lord Winter was their greatest general, worth a legion of armed men. He wondered whether he would live to see winter’s arrival. Even Lord Winter might prove powerless against the Chaos warriors and their evil magic.

The warriors of the advancing army out there were not mere mortals, but worshippers of Chaos fresh from the Northern Wastes. Of all the foolish things he had done in his career as Gotrek Gurnisson’s henchman, putting himself in the way of the armies of the Dark Powers was conceivably the most foolish.

Felix had barely recovered from wounds taken in the battle with the dragon Skjalandir, and the orcish armies that had tried to take the dragon’s treasure. The wizard Max Schreiber had healed him and had done the work well, but still Felix was not sure that he felt as strong as he had before. He hoped he could wield his sword with his customary skill when the Chaos warriors came. He would need to. If he could not, he would die. Most likely he would die anyway. The black-armoured riders and their brutal followers were not famous for their mercy. They were unrelentingly savage and lived only to kill and conquer in the name of the daemonic powers they worshipped. Even the massively thick walls of Praag would not hold them back for long. If those wicked warriors failed, then the dark magic of their sorcerous allies would surely succeed.

Not for the first time, Felix wondered exactly what he was doing here, standing on the chilly walls of a fortified city, hundreds of leagues from home. He could be in Altdorf right now, sitting in the offices of the family business, haggling with wool traders and counting gold. Instead he was readying himself to face the greatest invasion the world had seen in two hundred years, since the time when Magnus the Pious had driven back the legions of the damned, and reunited the Empire. He glanced over at his companion.

As ever it was impossible to tell what the Slayer was thinking. The dwarf looked even more brutish and sullen than usual. He was short, the tip of the crest of red-dyed hair that rose above his tattooed and shaven head barely reached Felix’s chest, but he was more than twice as broad as the man. In one hand he held an axe that Felix would have struggled to lift with both his hands, and Felix was a strong man. The Slayer shook his head, and the gold chain that ran from ear to nostril jingled. He knuckled the patch that covered his empty eye socket, and spat over the wall.

‘They will be here by nightfall, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘Or my father was an orc.’

‘You think so? The scouts say they are burning the villages as they come. Surely so great a horde could not move so quickly?’

Felix had a better idea of the size of the horde than almost any man in Kislev. He had flown over it in the airship, Spirit of Grungni, when he and the Slayer and their dwarf companions had returned from the lost city of Karag Dum. It seemed half a lifetime ago but was scant months in the past. Felix shook his head, amazed at how much his life had changed in that month, more than at any time since he had sworn his oath to follow the Slayer and record his doom in an epic poem.

In that time, he had ridden in a flying ship, visited a buried dwarf city in the blighted wastes of Chaos, fought with daemons, and dragons and orcs and beastmen. He had fallen in love and pursued a troubled affair with the Kislevite noblewoman Ulrika Magdova. He had almost died of wounds. He had journeyed to the court of the Ice Queen, the Tzarina Katarin, bringing word of the enemy army to that fearsome ruler, and then he had come here with Gotrek and the others to help resist the invasion. It seemed as if he had barely time to catch his breath, and now he was caught up in a full-scale war with the assembled powers of Darkness.

He wondered again at his reasons for being here. Certainly he still held to his oath to Gotrek. And Ulrika was here, waiting to see if her father and his men would make it to Praag before the Chaos horde. Felix knew she was going to be disappointed there.

He brushed a lock of long blond hair from his eyes, then shielded them with his hand. In the distance he thought he could make out flashes of eerie red and gold light. Sorcery, he thought. The daemon worshippers are using their forbidden magic. He shivered again, thinking that perhaps it would be better to be in the counting house back in Altdorf.

He could not quite bring himself to believe it though. He knew he had become accustomed to a life of adventure. Even before his travels with Gotrek, life in the capital had seemed unbearably dull. He knew that no matter how often he thought a little dullness might improve his life, he could not go back to being what he had once been. Not that there was much chance of that anyway. He was in disgrace for killing a fellow student at the university in a duel. And he and Gotrek were wanted by the law for their part in the window tax riots.

‘Do you think that the Kislevites are the only ones who have scouts, manling?’ Gotrek asked. ‘The Chaos warriors will have outriders too. Not even they are mad enough to ride without them. They will be here soon.’

Felix did not like to speculate on what the followers of the Dark Powers were mad enough to do. To him it seemed madness enough to want to worship daemons anyway. Who could tell what else they were capable of? On the other hand, when it came to making war, it did not matter how crazed they were. They were as deadly as any other army, far more so than most. In this, the Slayer was most likely right. He said so. Gotrek sucked his blackened teeth.

‘Tis late in the year for an army to be marching,’ he said. ‘The warlords must be confident they can take Praag before winter sets in. Either that or they don’t care.’

‘Thanks,’ said Felix sourly. ‘Always look at the bright side, don’t you?’

Gotrek cocked his head to one side, and spat over the wall. ‘They must be planning some trick.’

‘Maybe they have magic. Maybe the prophets of doom back there in the city are right. Maybe winter will not come this year. It is unseasonably warm.’

The words came out quickly and with less calm than he would have liked. He knew he was half hoping the Slayer would contradict him. After all, the dwarf had more experience of this than he did.

Gotrek grinned, showing the blackened stumps of most of his teeth. ‘Now who is looking on the bright side, manling?’

Sombre silence fell between them. Felix scanned the horizon. Dust and smoke clouds continued to rise. Way off in the distance, he could swear he heard the sound of horns, the clash of weapons, the screams of dying men. Only your imagination, he told himself.

Down below them, workers slaved away driving more sharpened stakes into the great pit that now lined the base of the walls. Behind them, more labourers reinforced the outer wall of the city with buttresses. Gotrek had done more than his share of supervising them. Under normal circumstances, Felix would have been hard put to believe these massive fortifications needed any augmenting. The walls of Praag were ten times as high as a man and so wide you could drive a wagon along the top. Towers bristling with siege engines spiked the walls every hundred paces or so. Felix could smell the acrid reek of alchemical fire coming from some of the towers. He shivered to think there was a weapon nearly as dangerous to its user as any enemy, but so desperate were the Kislevites that their alchemists guild had been producing it night and day since news of the invasion arrived. They were preparing containers of it for the siege engines.

To their credit, Felix thought, the Praagers and their duke had taken the news seriously. They had done everything in their power to reinforce the strength of a fortress city many thought impregnable. These monstrous outer walls were but the first line of defence. Within the city was another wall, higher and even more formidable, and above that, on a massive spike of rock jutting out of the endless plains, loomed the titanic fortress that was at once the citadel and the duke’s palace.

Felix glanced back over his shoulder. That citadel was a thing to give anyone nightmares and did as much as anything to maintain the reputation of Praag as a haunted city. Its walls were as strong as those of any Imperial fortress but they had been carved with many strange figures. Leering monstrous heads emerged from the stone. Massive tormented figures supported buttresses. Titanic dragon heads tipped tower tops. It was a work of art created by an insane sculptor. What sort of mind could have conceived and executed such a design, Felix wondered?

After the citadel, the whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs of the rest of the city came as a relief. Even they looked strange and foreboding to Felix. The roofs were higher and steeply sloped, doubtless to let the snows of Lord Winter slide more easily off them. The temple spires were topped by minarets and onion domes. This was not the architecture of the Empire. The sight as much as the guttural accents of the soldiers around them told Felix that he was a long way from home. He felt like an outsider here. The strangeness of the city allowed his mind to give credence to the tales of horror about the place.

It was said that ever since the last siege of Praag, when the city had been sacked by the forces of Chaos, that the place had been haunted, that all manner of eerie things happened here. It was said that on certain nights when Morrslieb was full that the spirits of the dead walked the streets and that sometimes the stones of the buildings could become animated. New statues could emerge from the stone. New gargoyles appeared where none had been before. Under normal circumstances, Felix would have found this hard to believe, but there was something about the atmosphere here that told him that there was at least some truth in these old tales. Swiftly he looked away from the city.

In the fields covering the vast plain around the city, peasants still worked, gathering their crops from the long strips of cultivated land, driving their beasts towards the city. There was a sense of feverish industry down there, of folk frantically gathering the last meagre scraps of the harvest. They worked as if their efforts might make the difference between life and death. Felix supposed it was true. If a siege came – no, when a siege came – every last bite of food would be precious. These Kislevites knew that. They had spent their entire lives here on the borderlands between the lands of men, and the lands occupied by the powers of Darkness.

Felix wondered if any peasants in the Empire could have remained so calmly at work. He doubted it. Most likely they would be long gone, their fields abandoned, their crops left to rot. Parts of the Empire were a long way from the war against Chaos, and Kislev stood as a bulwark between the nearest provinces and the eternal enemy. Some in the Empire doubted the very existence of the Chaos warriors. It was a luxury that was not available here.

Another glance around reassured him a little. Huge cauldrons for the burning oil were already in position along the walkways. Massive ballistae bristled from towers along the walls. Felix doubted that any army the Empire had ever mustered could take the city but the horde approaching was far from an ordinary mortal army. He knew it contained monsters and beastmen and evil magicians as well as crazed warriors gifted by the Dark Powers. Where the armies of Chaos rode, evil magic, plague and festering corruption were ever their allies.

Worse yet, Felix knew that within the city itself the approaching enemy most likely had powerful allies. The worshippers of Chaos were numerous and not all of them were mutants or wore the ornate black armour of the Chaos warrior. Some of those workmen there might be plotting to open the gates one dark night. One of those noble captains might well be plotting to poison his own men or lead them into an ambush. From his own experience, Felix knew that such things were far from uncommon. He pushed the gloomy thoughts aside. Now was not a good time to be thinking them.

He looked down at his hand and was surprised to see how steady it was. He had changed since he and the Slayer had started their wanderings. There was a time when simply knowing what was out there on the plain burning those little towns would have turned his bowels to water. Now he was capable of standing here and discussing it calmly with the dwarf. Maybe it’s not the Chaos worshippers who are mad. Maybe it’s me.

His keen blue eyes picked up a disturbance on the horizon. Dust clouds, he thought. Men riding fast and coming closer. He glanced up at the guard tower overlooking the gate. Up there were hawk-eyed men with telescopes. One of them lifted a horn to his lips and blew a long blast. It was echoed by calls from other towers.

As soon as the call sounded, bells began to ring deeper in the city. The workmen down below calmly picked up their tools and made their way to the gates. Out in the fields, the peasants gathered the last turnips into their baskets, hoisted them and turned towards the gates. The speed of the people driving their flocks into the city increased perceptibly. From behind him, Felix could hear the sound of armed men racing for the walls.

‘This duke might be mad, but there’s nothing wrong with the efficiency of his guard,’ Felix said, and then wished he hadn’t. Questioning the sanity of the ruler of a city at war was not a sensible thing, even if he was only repeating what most people said. What was acceptable in war and what was acceptable in peace were two different things.

‘If you say so, manling,’ said Gotrek. He did not sound very impressed, but then he never was by anything human. The elder race were like that. They would never admit that there was anything today that was not worse than it had been two thousand years ago. A very insular, backward-looking proud people, thought Felix.

Soldiers swarmed past them onto the walls. Most of them carried bows, a few of the higher ranks brandished swords as they shouted orders. All of them were garbed in the winged lion tabards that were the symbol of Praag. The same sign blazed on a hundred banners about them. An officer came rushing up to them, looking as if he was about to order them to leave. One look at Gotrek convinced him otherwise. No one knew who the Slayer really was, but it was well known that he and his companion had come to Praag on that mighty flying ship bringing word of the invasion and orders from the Ice Queen herself. Felix had heard rumours that Gotrek and the other Slayers were emissaries from Karak Kadrin, the vanguard of a mighty horde of dwarfs come to aid Kislev in its hour of need. Felix fervently hoped it was true. From what he had seen of their enemies, the northerners were going to need all the help they could get.

He wondered when the Spirit of Grungni would return, and what aid it would bring with it. Malakai Makaisson’s airship was a mighty weapon but he was not sure what it could do against the army that was coming against them. Malakai had promised to return bearing soldiers but it was not really up to him. He was a Slayer and an engineer, not a king. Help would only come from the dwarfs if their rulers sent it. Or maybe not, Felix thought. In Karak Kadrin there were hundreds of Slayers. The members of that death-seeking cult would most likely come whether ordered to or not. After all, where else were they more likely to find a heroic death than here in Kislev? If anything could atone for whatever sins had turned them into Slayers, surely falling in battle with the hordes of Chaos could.

Felix looked around to see if there were any of the other dwarfs present. None were that he could see. Snorri and Ulli and Bjorni were most likely still in the White Bear, throwing as much ale down their throats as they could manage while regaling each other with complaints about the weakness of human beer. Old Borek, the loremaster, had gone back to Kadrin with Malakai Makaisson. He still mourned the loss of his nephew, Varek. Felix did not blame him. There were times when he missed the quiet young scholar himself. It was a pity Varek had given his life saving the airship from the dragon Skjalandir. Better him than you, part of him thought. Shame filled him. He knew he should not think such things.

The dust clouds grew larger. Felix made out mounted men. To each rider’s back was attached a feathered pole that looked like a bird’s wing. Felix had no idea of the deeper significance of this emblem but he knew that it was the mark of the elite Kislevite cavalry. At this moment, they did not look very elite. He could see that they looked battered and weary. If there had been a battle he would wager that they had come out on the losing side. Behind them he could see other riders, garbed in black armour, mounted on black steeds. He did not need Gotrek’s muttered oath to tell him what they were. He too had fought Chaos warriors in his time.

Even as he spat out another curse, Gotrek moved towards the stairway. If the daemon worshippers reached the gate, he intended to be there to meet them. Felix followed him, loosening his sword in his scabbard. He did not know whether to be disappointed or glad that it showed no signs of mystical energy about to be unleashed. It appeared that the weapon had fulfilled its purpose when he had used it to slay the dragon. From behind him, he heard warriors roaring battle cries and challenges and encouragement to the winged lancers. It appeared that they too had realised who pursued their countrymen.

As he reached the bottom of the tower, he saw more winged lancers riding out through the gate. He had to huddle in the doorway at the foot of the stairwell to avoid being ridden down. As the horsemen raced by, he saw their faces were grim. He could understand – the prospect of facing Chaos warriors was not one he relished himself.

As soon as the riders passed, the peasants started to stream in again. Felix found himself pushing against a tide of sweaty, dirty bodies. If it had not been for the presence of the Slayer ahead of him, he probably would have been swept back into the city by the crush. As it was the crowd parted around the Slayer like a stream swirling round a rock. Felix followed the eddy out across the packed earth bridge over the ditch surrounding the city walls and then ran. A few strides brought him abreast of the Slayer and he slowed his pace.

‘No need to run so hard. It looks like the battle will come to us,’ he said. It was true. The approaching Kislevites raced ahead of their pursuers, heading for the gates. The Kislevite reinforcements were spreading out into a long line, readying themselves to charge. Their change of formation swiftly blocked Felix’s view of the action. He could still hear screams and war cries and the sounds of blades impacting on flesh from ahead of him. Perhaps, he thought, this is not such a good idea. Waiting to meet a charging cavalryman on open ground did not seem like a very clever plan. He wondered if he should mention this to Gotrek. Probably not. The Slayer had redoubled his efforts to get to the battle.

Ahead of them, the first of the fleeing cavalrymen had passed around those who came to relieve them. Felix could see the fear written on their faces. They galloped like men who had seen the gates of hell open behind them. Given how tough Felix knew Kislevite cavalrymen to be, this was not a reassuring thought. Anything that could make winged lancers break and run was most likely something to dismay the bravest. He glanced back over his shoulders at the walls lined with warriors. He was surprised how small a distance they had come from the city, and how much ground the pursuit had covered while he and Gotrek descended from the tower. It was all too possible that if the cavalry ahead of them broke and ran then the Chaos warriors might make it through the gates. Felix suddenly realised that he had no idea of how many of them there really were. He did not think it was likely that they could take the city, but perhaps they might be able to hold the gates until reinforcements came. Stranger things had happened in times of war. Anyway, it would not be good for morale if the daemon worshippers set foot in the city so early in the siege.

Ahead of them the captain of the riders gave the order to charge. Felix watched horses rear and then race towards their foe. War cries split the air. Moments later came the clash of lance on shield. He saw sparks fly, heard metal spear-tip screech against armour. Screams and bestial roars filled his ears. One man was tossed from his saddle. Horses reared. Ahead of them, men died. Just as suddenly, the Kislevites were broken. The lightly armoured lancers were no match for the heavily armoured Chaos warriors.

Knowledge of this did not affect Gotrek’s determination to be part of the combat. With a mighty roar, he threw himself forward, diving into the battle like a swimmer leaping from rocks into dangerous water. Felix followed, knowing that his own chances of surviving the fray would be greatly increased if he stayed close to the Slayer. A black-armoured figure broke through the mass, cleaving the skull of a Kislevite rider with a massive ebony rune sword, and came racing towards them. Gotrek laughed and bellowed a challenge in dwarfish. The rider seemed to understand and touched spurs to the armoured flanks of his mount, goading it directly at the Slayer.

In the brief moments it took the rider to close the gap between them, time seemed to stretch for Felix. Everything appeared to happen with acute slowness, like in a nightmare. He picked out the elaborate metalwork on the Chaos warrior’s armour, depicting the snarling heads of beastmen and daemons. He saw the strange evil runes blazing along its blade, and the ruddy molten glow from inside its elaborate bat-winged helmet that illuminated the space where eyes should have been. Small jets of sorcerous flame emerged from his steed’s nostrils, reminding Felix all too uncomfortably of the dragon he had so recently faced. Its eyes glowed red.

The Chaos warrior raced towards them. Felix did not think he had ever seen a horse that looked quite so big. It looked more like a moving hill of muscle than a riding beast. He could see enormous sinews contract and twist beneath its night-dark skin as it raced towards them. Small clouds of dust erupted from under its hooves. Sparks flew where its black-iron shoes struck pebbles. Somehow, Felix found his blade already in his hand. He felt all the strength was draining out of him, but he had been in enough battles to know that this was an illusion. He knew that when the time came, he would move as quickly and forcefully as he needed to. At least he hoped he would.

Gotrek stood slightly ahead of him, axe raised high, glaring fearlessly at their oncoming foe. The rider laughed contemptuously as he saw the two of them attempt to bar his way. His horse thundered closer. Bloody foam erupted from its lips. Its yellow teeth were stained red, and Felix could see that they were not horse’s teeth, they were sharp like the fangs of wolves. He did not know why that surprised him. He had seen far stranger mutations among the followers of Chaos. As the rider swept closer, he leaned sideways in his saddle in order to make a better strike against Gotrek. The Slayer stood still as a statue, waiting. At least, Felix hoped he was waiting. He had never known Gotrek to freeze in battle but there was a first time for everything.

At the last second before impact, the Slayer moved. He lashed out with his axe. A blow, swift and irresistible as a thunderbolt, struck the Chaos steed’s legs. The beast tumbled, blood fountaining from its sheared limbs. Its rider cartwheeled from the saddle and skidded across the hard-packed earth to land at Felix’s feet with a crash like an earthquake hitting an ironmonger’s shop. Almost without thinking, Felix lashed out with his blade, driving it into the man’s throat, smashing through the chainmail links that covered the flesh between helmet and breastplate. The Chaos warrior gurgled. Bloody froth bubbled through the hole in the armour. Felix withdrew his sword and chopped again, severing head from torso. He passed the fallen steed, feeling no sadness. The mount might be a dumb beast, but then again it might not. Some such creatures were preternaturally intelligent. All were fell foes.

He and Gotrek raced further into the battle. It was like being caught in a whirlwind of flesh. All around them, horses reared and pawed at each other. Lancers stabbed at armoured cultists. Men fought with unrestrained savagery. Gotrek moved with deadly power, lashing out to left and right, killing everything that got in his path. Felix moved behind him, watching the Slayer’s back, stabbing at anyone who tried to encircle him. Within heartbeats, they stood behind a barrier of dead horseflesh and dying men. Felix heard more war cries from behind them and knew that soldiers were emerging from the city to join the fray. The clatter of hooves told him that some of the winged lancers had rallied and were coming back to join the fight. Within moments, the balance of the battle had changed, and the Chaos warriors were in retreat with the Kislevites in pursuit. From the walls behind them came the sound of cheering.

Felix found himself looking up at one young Kislevite noble, mounted on a fine white steed. His hair and eyebrows were almost as white as his horse. His eyes were a chilly blue. The man’s armour was heavier and more costly than that of any mere trooper. The gold-hilted blade he wielded in his right hand spoke of considerable wealth. Felix thought he recognised him from his brief audience with the duke. It was the ruler’s brother Villem.

‘Not many men would have left the safety of the city to face a charge from the accursed ones,’ he said, stroking the long pale moustache that drooped down past his chin. It was a fashion among young Kislevite nobles. ‘It seems we owe you for more than bringing a warning from our fair ruler, the tzarina.’

‘I am not a man,’ said Gotrek. ‘As any fool can plainly see, I am a dwarf.’ The warriors around the noblemen flinched and brought their weapons to the ready position. Good, thought Felix, it’s not enough that we have enemies outside the city. Let’s have some inside too. To his surprise, the newcomer merely laughed. Felix had heard that the duke’s brother, like most of the ruling family, was mad. Apparently the madness went as far as tolerating behaviour that others might have taken as grievous insults. Whatever the reason, Felix was grateful for it. ‘I had heard that the elder race were proud and touchy, and Slayers most of all,’ he said.

‘No Slayer has anything to be proud of,’ said Gotrek.

‘As you say,’ said the stranger, although his jocular tone implied that he did not quite believe it. ‘Let all here bear witness that, I, Villem, of the House of Kozinski, am grateful to you for your bravery, and would see it rewarded.’

‘The only reward I require is a place in the forefront of the coming battle.’

‘That should be easy enough to arrange, my friend.’

Felix prayed that the Slayer would not make some sort of sarcastic remark. After all, this was no mere noble; Gotrek was halfway to picking a fight with the brother of the ruling duke.

‘I shall make sure my brother and liege hears of your brave deeds.’

‘Thank you, milord,’ Felix said.

‘No, it is I who should thank you. You are an Empire man. Not many would come all this way to fight and perhaps die in defence of our lands. Such bravery should be rewarded.’

Felix looked up at him. Villem seemed a fair-spoken and pleasant-looking young man, but Felix had learned to mistrust noblemen, no matter how polite they were. Now did not seem like a good time to say this, however. Rumour had it that Villem could be a particularly unpleasant enemy.

‘All we wanted was a good fight,’ Gotrek said, disgruntled. ‘And one thing’s certain. We didn’t get it here.’

‘Wait a few more days, my friend,’ said Villem. ‘Then the fighting will be as hot and hard as any could wish, even a Slayer.’ The noble’s entourage nodded their agreement. Felix saw no reason to doubt his words either. Gotrek merely spat on the ground and glared into the distance, looking at the plumes of smoke rising on the horizon.

‘Bring them on,’ he said.

Villem laughed easily. ‘It is good that at least one warrior in the city is keen to face the foe,’ he said. ‘You are an inspiration to us all, Gotrek, son of Gurni.’

‘Just what I’ve always wanted,’ Gotrek said sourly. If he noticed the barbed glances of the nobleman’s lackeys, he gave no sign. The Slayer barely showed any respect for the rulers of his own people; he showed none whatsoever for humans.

Felix wondered whether this was a trait that was going to get them both killed one day. He felt like apologising for the Slayer’s attitude but he knew that Gotrek would more than likely just contradict him anyway, so he kept his mouth shut and prayed that Villem was as tolerant as he appeared to be.

The nobleman gave no sign of taking offence, which was good, Felix decided, considering there were thousands of soldiers sworn to the defence of his person and city within easy call.

‘I must go now, but you will be welcome at the palace, should you decide to visit,’ he said, sweeping away.

‘That’s an invitation I will be sure to take up,’ Gotrek muttered sarcastically to his departing back.

One of the advisors turned and glared at him. There was murder in the man’s eyes.

I wonder who will kill us quicker, Felix thought, the Kislevites or the Chaos worshippers?

TWO

The White Boar was crowded. The air stank of beer, stale sweat and pipeweed smoke. The bellowed conversation of drunks and the boasting of newly arrived warriors threatened to deafen Felix. He was not complaining. Right at this moment, he needed the cheery warmth of the tavern to help him forget the sight of the Chaos warriors. In some ways they were even more frightening in retrospect than they had been at the time.

He could not deny to himself that they were there now, outside the city. He had seen them, fought them. It was one thing to imagine their presence, to know that soon you would have to fight them. It was another thing entirely to know with certainty that a vast army of the evil warriors was approaching the city.

He glanced around wondering if Ulrika were present. Part of him hoped that she was not. Recently they had returned to their old pattern of fighting bitterly and making up passionately. The making up was just fine, but Felix felt like he could live without the conflicts. There was going to be enough of that in his life soon anyway, without it being present in his love life. Right now, all he wanted was some peace and quiet before the inevitable storm.

At the same time, part of him was disappointed that she was not there. Was she with Max again, he wondered? And if so, was this just some attempt to make him jealous or was there something more serious going on? He smiled ruefully. If it was the former, he had to admit that it was working. On the other hand, he could not really say that was what she was doing. Ulrika was not particularly guileful. Still, she was a woman, and Felix sometimes thought that women did these things almost by instinct. Now was not the time for worrying about it, he decided. Now was the time for drinking.

As he had suspected, Snorri Nosebiter and the other dwarfs were present, and all of them looked far from sober. It was quite possible they had been drinking ever since they got up this morning. Dwarfs took beer the way fish took water. Snorri was a massive dwarf, even more frightening-looking than Gotrek. His nose had been broken and reset countless times, and one of his ears had been ripped clean off. His head was shaven and three painted nails had been driven right into his skull. Felix wasn’t sure how this had been done without infection setting in, but it had. Right at this moment, Snorri was arm wrestling with another dwarf Slayer and it looked as if he was winning.

Snorri’s opponent was a young dwarf who seemed to shout rather than speak. His head was completely shaved to show his new tattoos and his beard had been clipped so close there was only stubble. Felix doubted that Ulli’s had ever been very long anyway. He could probably grow a better beard himself.

Nearby another Slayer, quite possibly the ugliest dwarf Felix had ever seen, bounced a tavern wench upon his knees, apparently unaware that all the men and not a few of the dwarfs were glaring at him. Felix was amazed that the girl would even touch someone so repulsive. Bjorni had a truly gruesome collection of warts on his face, and together with his missing teeth they made him as repellent as any gargoyle. Noticing that Felix was looking at him, he gave him a wink and a leer and then placed his head between the bargirl’s breasts and rubbed his beard backwards and forwards. She giggled. Felix looked away. Bjorni was incorrigible.

Looking around, Felix could see a group of massive men, armoured in heavy plate, with cloaks of white wolfskin hanging around their shoulders. They sat at their own table and bellowed drinking songs as they threw back jack after jack of ale. One of them caught Felix’s eye and glared at him. Felix shrugged and looked away. He was no keener on White Wolf templars than they were on anybody who did not follow Ulric. A bunch of fanatic bigots, was Felix’s opinion, but he knew enough to keep it to himself. Nasty as they might be, they were deadly warriors, and with the huge Chaos army approaching every blade was going to be needed. He could not afford to be too choosy about the men he fought alongside. Hopefully, they would soon come to the same realisation.

There were many others present: Kislevite horse soldiers, mercenaries from all over the Empire and beyond. He thought he heard the babble of Tilean voices and the slurred accent of Bretonnia. It seemed that there were warriors present from all over the Old World. He wondered how they had got here so quickly. It hardly seemed possible that the rumour of war had reached the Empire, and yet…

He told himself not to be so foolish. These men had not come here because of the invasion. They had come because this was the wild frontier and there was always work for hired blades so close to the Chaos Wastes. Most of them were probably caravan guards or attached to the private armies of some Kislevite noble. Looking across at one haughty, well-dressed man surrounded by burly thugs, Felix felt sure that some of them were bodyguards to travelling nobles from his own land. Why were they here, he wondered? Who knew? There were always wealthy men who liked to travel and scholars and mages in search of new knowledge. Most of them came from the ruling classes. Who else had the money to pursue such interests? He tried to dismiss the idea that some of these men could be spies for the Chaos cults. He knew that it was all too likely, but he did not want to deal with the thought right now.

Eventually, just when he had about given up, he saw the face he wanted to see. Ulrika Magdova entered the tavern, her face a mask of worry. Even so she was still beautiful. Tall, slender yet as strong as steel, her ash blonde hair cut short. Her clear blue eyes fixed on his own and she gave him a tight-lipped smile. Ignoring the leers of the mercenaries she walked straight over to him. He took her hand and pulled her to him, feeling only the slightest resistance. Not a good sign. Ulrika was one of the most unpredictable women he had ever met, hard when he expected her to be soft, soft when he thought she would be hard. He had almost given up trying to understand her, but at least, at this moment, he thought he had some idea of what troubled her.

‘Still no word?’ he enquired, using as gentle a tone as he could muster.

‘None,’ she said in a voice that was flat and purposefully devoid of emotion. He knew that she had been doing the rounds of the guardhouses and taverns, and various noble relatives, hoping for some word of her father. She had not seen or heard from Ivan Petrovich Straghov since they had boarded the Spirit of Grungni and headed south. It was not a good sign. Even allowing for the vast distances that separated the Marchlands from Praag, the old boyar should have been here by now. Unless something terrible had happened.

‘I am sure he is all right,’ Felix said. He tried to make his tone comforting. ‘He is a hardy man, and he had over fifty lancers with him. He will make it through if anyone can.’

‘I know. I know. It’s just… I have heard what the outriders have been saying about the size of the Chaos army. They liken it to a plague of locusts. No force such as this has emerged from the Wastes in two centuries. This one may be even larger than the one that faced Magnus the Pious and Tzar Alexander.’

‘That will just make it easier to avoid.’

‘You don’t know my father, Felix. He is not a man to run from a fight. He may have done something foolish.’ She glanced around, tight-lipped. He sat down on the nearest chair, put his arm around her waist and drew her down onto his knee.

‘I am sure he would not. Have a drink. That might help calm your nerves.’

She gave him an angry glare. ‘You have been drinking too much since we got here.’

It was the old argument. She always brought it up. Compared to most of the people they travelled with, he hardly drank at all. Of course, most of them were dwarfs, so perhaps that did not mean too much.

‘Well, I have not been drinking today,’ he said. ‘I have been at the Gate of Gargoyles, fighting.’

She looked at him slantwise. ‘I saw wounded being taken from there to the Temple of Shallya for healing. They say a thousand Chaos warriors attacked.’

‘More like twenty. Outriders. The horde has not arrived yet.’ Felix raised his hand and gestured for a barmaid. The woman sauntered over and put down two jacks of ale on the table without being asked, then moved on. Felix lifted his to his lips and took a sip. It tasted sour compared to what he was used to. Goat’s water, Snorri called it. Felix suspected that he knew enough to make the comparison exact. Snorri would drink anything.

Ulrika lifted a jack and slugged some back herself. He would never quite get used to this. Kislevite noblewomen drank as hard as any of their menfolk. When they drank at all.

‘You were at the gate?’ a man asked from the next table.

‘Yes,’ Felix replied.

‘They say you could see the army of Darkness from the gate. They say it is ten thousand strong. Twice ten thousand strong.’ The man was drunk and rambling.

‘It does not matter,’ said a swarthy man with the drooping moustaches of a Kislevite horse soldier. ‘They will break against the walls of Praag as they did two hundred years ago!’

That brought a roar of approval from the surrounding tables. This was the sort of talk men liked to hear in taverns on the night before a battle. Felix had seen too many real battles to think it would be like the books and poems he had read as a lad. On the other hand, these men looked the same, and still they talked as if they were in a story. Maybe they were just whistling in the dark. Maybe just trying to keep their spirits up. If they had seen what Felix had seen flying back from the Chaos Wastes they would not sound so cheery at this moment. He tried to push those depressing thoughts aside.

‘I don’t know,’ a thin weasel-faced man said from the doorway. ‘My caravan just got in, and we faced beastmen and Chaos riders on the way here. They were tough. Even if they were Chaos spawn they were tough. Never seen anything that died so hard as those beastmen.’

Felix was inclined to believe it. A glance at Ulrika told him so was she, but the warriors in the tavern wanted none of it.

‘What sort of Chaos-loving talk is that?’ a huge, fat man demanded, slamming a chicken leg down on the tabletop. ‘Beastmen and Chaos riders die just as quick as any other living thing – if you stick two feet of good Imperial steel in them!’

More roars of approval. More laughter. More boasts about how many of the enemy were going to die in the days to come. More talk of how they would all be heroes in the song of the siege of Praag. Felix looked around again. He could see that there were plenty who disagreed with these sentiments. Many men looked worried, and they were the sort of men who looked as if they knew there was something to be worried about. Hard-faced men, wearing well-worn armour and carrying weapons they appeared to know how to use. Felix knew that the sort of boasting he was hearing was stupid, but he did not want to contradict it. He did not want to be the one to bring the spirits of all these people down. The weasel-faced man was apparently having second thoughts too. A city soon to be under siege by the powers of Darkness was no place to be suspected of being a Chaos worshipper.

‘Aye, you’re right,’ he said. ‘They died quick enough when me and my boys stuck steel in them.’ Even so he still could not manage to get much enthusiasm into his voice. Felix looked at him sympathetically. It was obvious this man had faced beastmen before and knew what he was talking about. It was just that no one wanted to listen. By the way Ulrika was shaking her head, he could tell that she agreed with the weasel-faced man.

‘Soft southerners don’t know what they are talking about,’ she muttered. ‘A gor would eat that fat pig like he’s gobbling down that chicken.’

Felix smiled sourly. For him the folk of Kislev were a byword for hardiness, a people who lived in a dangerous land of constant warfare. It never occurred to him that they might look down on each other. Of course, Ulrika had grown up on the northern marches, the very boundary of human territory and Chaos. If anyone in this room knew about such things it was her. She rose smoothly from his knee. ‘I am going upstairs. To our room.’

Her tone made it obvious that he was supposed to follow. Under the circumstances, given a choice between doing that and staying downstairs to listen to this chatter of war, it seemed like the sensible thing to do.

Ivan Petrovich Straghov stared off into the distance. He was a big man and he had once been fat. The past few weeks had burned most of that off him. They had been weeks spent in the saddle, snatching sleep and meals where he could, fighting desperate battles against overwhelming numbers of beastmen, and retreating at the last second so that he could fight another day. He tried to tell himself he was harrying the flanks of the Chaos army, slowing its advance, giving its generals something to worry about to their rear. He suspected that his attacks worried that mighty force the way a flea’s bites worried a mastodon.

He rubbed the bandage around his head. The wound itched again. He supposed he had nothing to complain about. If the beastman had been just a fraction stronger or his parry just a split second slower, his brains would have been decorating the monster’s axe. The healing salves seemed to have done their work though, and there appeared to be no infection. He felt a bit feverish sometimes, that was all.

He glanced around at his riders. Thirty men, all veterans. He had started out with over fifty, survivors of the skaven attack on his mansion, and he had gathered over a hundred lancers more on the ride south. He had sent fifty to escort the women and wagons, heading south-west away from the main track to Praag. Hopefully that way some of his people would escape the advance of the horde. The rest he had led into battle, harrying the invaders in the time-honoured Kislevite fashion. Hit and run raids, savage night attacks, swift ambushes. His men had done well. They must have killed well over three times the number of casualties they had taken, but it was not enough. It was a drop of water in that great ocean of Chaos filth. The Wastes must be emptied, he thought. Who would have guessed so many could dwell in that pitiless land?

Like all his people, he had studied the old records of the ancient wars against Chaos. He knew the ballads and epic poems by heart. The Deed of Magnus had spoken of an army as numberless as the blades of grass on the great northern plain. He had always thought the poets had exaggerated. Now, he suspected that perhaps they had underestimated.

You’re getting old, he told himself, to let such thoughts fill your head when you have a horse beneath you, a lance in your hand and a foe before you. There could be no such defeatist thoughts now. Too many men depended on him. He glanced around, and saw determination on every face. He was proud. These were not men who would give up. He knew they would follow him to the gates of hell itself if he asked. They were a finely honed blade. All he needed to do was wield them well, point them in the right direction, and they would do what he asked or die trying. Most likely the latter. He pushed that thought aside.

He was glad Ulrika was not here. He hoped she was somewhere safe now. He hoped she had delivered his warning to the Ice Queen and had sense enough to remain behind in the capital. Most likely not though. She had always been wilful, just like her mother, and, if he was honest, just like him. She had most likely followed that young Felix Jaeger, and since he followed Gotrek Gurnisson that meant she had most likely marched straight into trouble again. All he could do was pray to the gods to watch over her and hope Ulric was not too busy to listen to an old man’s prayers.

‘We go south,’ he said in his most determined voice. ‘We’ll hit these blue-furred bastards as they try to cross the Urskoy and then head on. The Ice Queen must have sounded the assembly horn by now and be heading north to Praag. We’ll meet her there and drive the Chaos worshipping scum back to the desert from which they came.’

His men cheered raggedly, almost as if they believed his every word. Once again, he was proud of them. Like him they had seen the true size of the horde – and, like him, they must know it was invincible.

Max Schreiber looked out from the walls of Praag into the gloom. Out there, he knew, the greatest army assembled by the forces of Darkness in two hundred years was waiting, readying itself to sweep over the lands of humanity in a tide of blood and fire. Perhaps this time, the Chaos worshippers would succeed. The gods knew how close they had come in times past, far closer than most men alive today would believe possible. Every time in the past they had been pushed back, at high cost, but every time the Chaos Wastes had advanced a little further, and had not retreated. Every time the world had become a little more corrupt, the hidden followers of Darkness a little stronger.

Max knew about such things. He had spent most of life studying them when he had not been studying magic. He had sworn an oath to oppose the worshippers of the Ruinous Powers however he could when he had joined his secret brotherhood. At this exact moment, he was wondering whether that oath had led him to the place of his death. Looking out into the night he could see the vast cloud of dark magic hovering over that distant army. To his sorcerously trained senses, the currents of power flowing through it were evident. There were powerful mages at work out there, he knew, and they were mobilising forces that should have been too great for any mortal sorcerer to control.

Who said they were mortal, Max thought sourly? They did not have to be. Time flowed queerly in the Wastes, and one of the most common reasons men submitted themselves to the Darkness was that they sometimes granted immortality or something close to it. And not eternal life in some distant paradise where you went after death either, but real eternal youth in the flesh, in this world. Eternal life and power. Two things many men had no qualms about giving up their souls for.

Max knew too that they were fools. Nothing came without its price, particularly not power borrowed from the Dark Lords of Chaos. They were like money lenders who charged ruinous interest. You gave up your soul, a small intangible thing that many people truly did not believe existed, and by doing so, you gave up everything. You surrendered your life and your will to the Dark Ones. You ceased to be yourself. You ended up a mere puppet, dancing on the strings of powers far greater than yourself.

Or so Max had been taught. He had seen nothing to make him doubt it, but if ever there was a time to want to, he thought wryly, this was it. When your choice came down to painful death or eternal damnation, it did not seem like there was much to choose between them. Certainly the priests of Sigmar and Taal and Ulric and Morr had their texts, and could tell you what waited for you beyond the grave. Still, none of them seemed too keen to leave the flesh behind either no matter what paradise they were certain awaited them. Max was not an ignorant peasant. He did not necessarily believe that the magical powers priests wielded were granted to them by the gods. He had wielded too much power himself to believe that. The temples did not like the fact their long monopoly on magic had been broken. That was why they still persecuted wizards like Max when they could.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss his dark mood, trying to blame it on the presence of all that dark magic swirling in the distance. Here he was ready to disbelieve in the existence of the benevolent gods, yet he was all too willing to believe in the Powers of Chaos. He told himself that the gods existed and some of them aided mankind. He had best believe that, and keep his doubts to himself, or the witch hunters would come calling.

Such men were not at all thrilled by the fact he was a mage. It was not all that long ago that wizards had been burned at the stake as followers of Chaos and forced to practice their arts in secret. And there were plenty of people in the city who were still more than willing to do a little wizard-cooking. He could tell by the way people muttered at the sight of him in his long robes and staff.

Well, let them. In the days to come they would need his powers, and would be grateful for them whether they thought they came straight from hell or not. When a man was wounded unto death and his only hope was magic, they swiftly rethought their prejudices. Most men, anyway.

He gave his attention back to the currents of magic. He could sense power pulsing through the stones beneath him. Dwarf work or the work of the ancient priests, it did not really matter. The spells were strong, reinforced over centuries by people who knew how to work protective enchantments. Max was grateful for that. At least the city had some protection against evil magic. The same runes guarded the inner walls and something stronger still protected the citadel.

He doubted even a greater daemon of Chaos could pass through the spell walls surrounding Praag. Of course, he could not be absolutely certain. No mortal man really knew what the mightiest servants of the Darkness were capable of. They were strong beyond measure. Perhaps he would soon be measuring that strength. All he could do was pray that it was not the case.

An enormous amount of mystical power and energy had gone into shielding this place, and Max wondered why. By common consent it was an accursed spot. Any folk less stubborn that the Kislevites would have abandoned it long ago. Not them. This was the Hero City, symbol of their eternal struggle with the forces of Chaos; they would never give it up as long as one citizen still breathed.

He leaned on his staff and drew a deep breath into his lungs. The spellwalls would hold for as long as the walls themselves did. If the stones were cast down, he doubted that the magic they contained would endure. The real threat would be that. Siege engines could destroy the stonework and the spells they held would simply unravel. He wondered if the defenders around him had any idea of what horrors might ensue if that happened. Better if they did not really. There was no need to spread despair.

Max knew that despite the desperate nature of the situation, he was really only trying to distract himself from the real problem. Ulrika. He loved her desperately and to distraction, and he knew he could not have her. She was with Felix Jaeger and that seemed to be what she wanted. Of course there were times when the two of them weren’t happy together, which gave Max some hope if the two of them split up she might turn to him for comfort. It was depressing and not a little embarrassing that his hopes were so slight, but it was really all he could pray for.

It was ironic really. Here he was, a man privy to many of the darkest secrets of magic, a sorcerer capable of binding daemons and monsters, and he could not stop thinking about one woman. She bound him as strongly as any pentagram had ever bound a daemon, and she did not even seem aware of it. He had even confessed his infatuation to her one drunken night in Karak Kadrin, and she had ignored it, had treated him with nothing but friendliness ever since. In a way, it was humiliating.

He was a good-looking man, and a powerful one, modestly wealthy from his practice of sorcery. Many women had found him attractive although in his earlier years he had been too wrapped up in his studies and his pursuit of magical knowledge to pay them much attention. Now he had finally found one he wanted, and she would not even give him a second glance. Part of him was wise enough to wonder whether this was part of the attraction. Part of him wondered whether, if she had wanted him from the first, he would still have wanted her so badly. He knew enough of the human heart to know how perverse it could be.

Not that it mattered. He was hooked now, and he knew it. He spent as much time in daydreams of saving her life and earning her gratitude as he did in studying. He knew that it did not matter if the four great Powers of Chaos manifested themselves outside the city, he would remain here for as long as she did. It was annoying, for he felt himself to have reached a new plateau of power, and he knew he should be concentrating all his efforts into his studies. He was certain now that he was a match for any of his old masters when it came to sheer magical power, and he had come into his mastery while still young. Perhaps it was all the adventuring he had done recently, all the stress he had endured, all the spells he had cast under difficult circumstances, but he felt he had gained enormous strength in the past few months.

He shook his head wondering why he was spending so much time worrying about one woman while the whole world was on the verge of being shattered into pieces. Within the last season he had witnessed skaven attacks in the north, dragon raids in the mountains, orc tribes on the march. It seemed like a whole hornet’s nest of evil forces was being stirred up. Was there any connection between these things? Instinct and experience told him that there most likely was.

Grey Seer Thanquol glared around the chamber. He was outraged. How dare those Clan Moulder imbeciles accuse him of fomenting this absurd rebellion? If they were incapable of keeping their own slaves obedient, it was no fault of his. He stared around the chamber that was his prison, taking in the strange living furnishings that were the hallmarks of the clan that held him captive. There was the fur-covered chair that shaped itself to him when he crouched in it, and the bloated balloon-like creature that pissed fungusberry wine. There was the carpet that writhed like a living thing beneath his paws, and the odd windows of translucent membrane that opened when he clapped his paws. Most of the time. When the Moulders did not think he would try to escape.

Escape! The very suggestion annoyed him. He was a grey seer, one of the Chosen of the Horned Rat, second only to the Council of Thirteen itself in power and influence. He did not need to escape. He could come and go as he pleased without any need to explain himself to lesser beings. He lashed his tail and twitched his snout, then rubbed the curling goat horns protruding from the side of his head. That was the theory anyway. The Moulders did not seem to agree.

It was all that buffoon Lurk’s fault. Thanquol knew it. He was behind this. That obese monstrosity Izak Grottle had hinted as much during their last meeting. Somehow, showing a daemonic cunning Thanquol would never have suspected he possessed, his former minion had escaped from captivity and roused the skavenslaves to rebellion against their masters. Apparently, he claimed the mutations that had erupted from his twisted form during his sojourn in the Chaos Wastes were some sort of blessing from the Horned Rat, and that he was a prophet destined to lead the skaven race to even greater glories. Thanquol did not know what outraged him most: the thought of his own captivity or the fact that his worthless lackey was claiming authority greater even than that of a grey seer. Somehow it did not surprise him that even Lurk had managed to find enough dullards witless enough to believe such obvious lies here among the oafs of Moulder. A people whose leaders were foolish enough to imprison Grey Seer Thanquol were doubtless idiotic enough to believe anything.

The door parted, and a low chuckle announced the presence of Izak Grottle. Thanquol studied his old underling and rival from the fiasco at Nuln with a cold eye. There had never been any love lost between them, and Thanquol’s captivity had done little to improve the situation. The Moulder licked his snout with a long pinkish tongue before stuffing a small living thing into his mouth. The creature shrieked as it died. Grottle emitted a loud belch. Blood stained his fangs. It was a disconcerting sight even for a skaven as hardened as Thanquol. He did not think he could ever remember seeing a ratman quite as fat as Izak Grottle, nor one so sleekly full of himself.

‘Are you ready to confess your part in this nefarious scheme?’ Grottle asked. Thanquol glared at him. He considered summoning the winds of magic and blasting the fat skaven where he stood, but dismissed the idea. He needed to hoard his power the way a miser hoarded warp-tokens. He had no idea when he might need it to escape. If only that ball of strange warpstone the Chaos mages had given him had not mysteriously evaporated before the rebellions began, he would have had more than enough sorcerous energy to manage his escape. Sometimes, Thanquol wondered if there was some connection between the two events, but he had decided that would have meant he had been outsmarted by two humans, clearly an impossibility, so he had dismissed the ludicrous idea.

‘I told you I know nothing of any scheme,’ squeaked Thanquol angrily. Grottle waddled forward and slumped down on the living chair. Its legs flexed and it gave an anguished groan as it subsided under his weight. ‘This is nonsense. Nonsense. The Council of Thirteen will hear of this insolence. They brook no disrespect to one dispatched on their business.’

That was certainly true. Only a fool intervened in any affair sanctioned by the hidden masters of the skaven race. Unfortunately, it was obvious that Clan Moulder was full of fools.

‘And what exactly was this mission for the Council?’ asked Grottle, dismissing Thanquol’s anger the way he might ignore the angry complaints of a runt. ‘If you were on a mission in Moulder’s territory, why were not the Masters of Hell Pit informed?’

‘You know full well what my mission was. I was sent to claim the dwarf airship for the Council that they might study it, and learn its secrets.’

Well, it was almost the truth, Thanquol thought. He was a representative of the Council, and he had come north on his own initiative to try and capture the airship. And he would have succeeded too had it not been for the incompetence of his lackeys, and the intervention of that accursed pair, Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger. Why did those two always appear to thwart his best-laid plans?

‘So you claimed, but the elders sense something hidden at work here. Surely it is no coincidence that since you arrived there has been nothing but an uninterrupted series of disasters for Clan Moulder?’

‘Don’t blame me if you cannot keep your own slaves under control,’ chittered Thanquol testily. He lashed his tail and extended one of his claws menacingly to emphasise his point. Grottle did not flinch. Instead he scratched his long snout with one of his own much larger talons, and continued to speak as if Thanquol had not already answered him.

‘No sooner did you arrive than we lost a mighty force of our best stormvermin attacking the horsesoldiers’ burrow. Then a huge horde of Chaos warriors erupts from the North and starts laying waste to everything in its path. As if that were not bad enough, since your arrival none of our experiments has gone right, and during one of them, the strange mutant accompanying you breaks free and begins to organise our own lackeys against us. The elders feel that this cannot be coincidence.’

Thanquol considered the Moulder’s words. There did seem to be a sinister pattern there, which would appear to minds less enlightened than Thanquol’s own to implicate him in something. But he knew that for once in his long and intrigue-filled life he was not responsible. He had done nothing, had not even spoken to Lurk since they arrived in the great crater of Hell Pit.

He considered his words with care. ‘Perhaps your elders have done something to displease the Horned Rat. Perhaps he has withdrawn his favour from them.’

Grottle chuckled again. ‘This echoes rather too accurately what your partner has been telling our skavenslaves.’

Thanquol was outraged. How dare this fat fool suggest there might be anything like equality between himself and a mere skaven warrior? ‘Lurk Snitchtongue is not my partner. He is my minion.’

‘So, you admit that you are the mastermind behind this agitator then?’ Izak Grottle said, nodding his head as if this merely confirmed his suspicions.

Thanquol bit his tongue. He had walked right into that trap. What was going on here? Why was his mind so cloudy? Why did he lack his usual cunning? It was almost as if he were under some spell. His thoughts had been a bit muddy since his capture by the Chaos horde. An enchanter whose mind was less well protected than Thanquol knew his to be would have suspected he had been ensorcelled. Fortunately in Thanquol’s case this was an impossibility. No mere humans could possibly have warped his thoughts… could they?

‘No! No! My former lackey!’ he said. ‘I have nothing to do with this uprising.’

Grottle gave him a look that combined frank disbelief and culinary appraisal. Thanquol shuddered. Surely not even Izak Grottle would dare devour a grey seer? The massive skaven moved ever closer. Thanquol did not like the glint in his eye. But just as Grottle came within striking distance the door to the chamber opened and a group of wizened, ancient-looking skaven strode in. Instantly Grey Seer Thanquol and Izak Grottle threw themselves onto their bellies and abased themselves.

One of the ancient skaven’s voices rasped out. ‘Grey Seer Thanquol, get up! You have much to explain and little time to do so. Your former minion has brought our city to the brink of civil war, and we have need of your counsel in dealing with him.’

Thanquol trembled and tried to restrain himself from squirting the musk of fear. Then the ancient one’s words sank in. They needed his help. Their city seethed on the verge of anarchy. Here was a lever that might be used to open the doors of his prison, a key which he might use to get his freedom.

Suddenly, the situation seemed very promising.

THREE

Felix clambered to the top of the watchtower near the Gargoyle Gate. He was surprised no one tried to stop him. The guards recognised him from the fight at the gate, and his association with Gotrek, and they did not mind him being here. A gold crown slipped to their commander had ensured that.

Gotrek and Ulrika were right behind him. They were just as interested in the arrival of the Chaos horde as he was. Looking around he saw they were not the only ones. The flat landing at the tower’s top was packed with people, not all of them soldiers by any stretch of the imagination. He saw men in the thick sable furs favoured by merchants, and women in the heavy velvet gowns currently fashionable at the duke’s court. Felix did not feel too out of place. He had grown up around such people. His father was one of the wealthiest merchants in Altdorf. He could tell Ulrika felt the same way. She was the daughter of a noble. Gotrek did not give a damn about what anybody thought. Seeing that they behaved as if they had every right to be there, no one gave them a second glance.

Looking around he could see that there was a picnic hamper and wine. The fat merchant held a silver goblet in his hand. Felix shook his head. These people seemed determined to treat the arrival of their foe as if it were some sort of entertainment. Felix was not sure whether it was bravado or pure mule-headed stupidity.

‘By Ulric, look at that,’ he heard one fat man mutter. The man had a spyglass jammed to one eye. He did not sound as if he were being entertained. Glancing out over the rooftops Felix could see the cause of the man’s disquiet.

The Chaos horde covered the plains beyond Praag for as far as the eye could see. It was an inexorable black tide of steel and flesh flowing in to drown the world. In the lead were the riders, massive men mounted on monstrous black or red fleshed chargers. Those riders belonged in the haunted lands of the Chaos Wastes; it was a nightmare to see them here on the grasslands of Kislev. From the sea of armoured figures rose hundreds of rune-covered banners, cloth ensigns whipping in the breeze. Behind the riders were more heavily armoured infantry. And behind those were countless hideously mutated beastmen, foul creatures that walked upright like men but whose heads were horned, and who had the muzzles of animals. Scattered throughout the vast host were tens of thousands of barbarically clad men, feared marauders from the northern Wastes. He doubted that if every soldier in the Empire was mustered they could match the numbers of beastmen out there. Huge clouds of dust rose up where they marched, obscuring the more distant figures. Somehow Felix knew that if he could see them, the monsters would stretch to the horizon.

‘Could be worse,’ Ulrika said. All the wealthy folk on the tower top turned to look at her. Some shook their heads in disbelief.

‘And what would you know about it, my dear?’ said the fat merchant patronisingly. He sounded like he was suggesting that she should go home and play with her dolls. Gotrek grunted ominously. The guards shifted their attention to him, looking worried.

‘Far more than you, sir,’ replied Ulrika with bare civility. The merchant’s heavy-set bodyguards gave her a warning glance. Ulrika merely smiled coldly at them, and her hand toyed with the pommel of her sword. Neither of the two big men looked worried, which was not too bright. Felix had seen Ulrika fight with that blade and would have backed her against most men. ‘I am the daughter of Ivan Petrovich Straghov.’

‘The march boyar,’ said the fat man with more respect. His bodyguards relaxed a little, like attack dogs whose master has given them a sign not to attack just yet. ‘Perhaps you would care to explain what you mean. I am sure everyone here would give ear to a discourse from the daughter of the man who has guarded our frontier with the Chaos Wastes for the past twenty years.’

‘There are no daemons,’ she said, ‘No flamers. None of the more exotic monsters that sometimes come down from the Wastes to ravage and burn.’

‘Why is that?’ the merchant asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Ulrika said.

‘Perhaps I can explain,’ said a familiar voice. Felix turned to see that Max Schreiber had made his way to the roof. Was he following them, Felix wondered? It was fairly obvious that Max was enamoured of Ulrika, which was not good. Felix liked the man well enough but he was a little annoyed by his persistence in seeking Ulrika’s affections. Felix felt that soon he might have to say something. He wasn’t looking forward to the prospect. Having a wizard for an enemy was rarely a good thing, as Felix had found out to his cost in the past.

‘And who are you, sir?’

‘Max Schreiber, an Imperial wizard, formerly in the service of the Elector Count of Middenheim.’

If Max had announced that he was the chief baby eater at the court of the Lords of Chaos he could scarcely have got a colder response. Everyone glared at him suspiciously, as if he were in some way connected with the vast attacking army down below. Felix was torn between satisfaction at his rival’s discomfiture and sympathy for a man who had been his comrade on a dangerous quest. Max had obviously forgotten he was not in the Empire for a moment. Even there magicians were only tolerated, not popular. In Kislev, they still burned mages in the more isolated areas. If Max was embarrassed, he gave no sign of it. Felix supposed he was used to frosty receptions by now. The wizard kept speaking as if his audience were enthralled by his every word, which in a way, Felix supposed they were.

‘The winds of magic blow stronger and darker up by the Chaos Wastes. Many supernatural beings such as those of which Ulrika spoke need the presence of strong magic in order to manifest themselves for any length of time. The winds of magic, particularly those associated with Chaos, are much less strong this far south.’

‘So you are saying that we are safe from daemons at least,’ said the fat merchant. His words were almost a snarl.

‘No.’

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘I am saying the reason you can’t see them is because they have not been summoned yet. The winds of magic are strong enough here to support such beings only for a short time, say for the length of a battle. I have no doubt that there are Chaos sorcerers down there powerful enough to summon them.’

‘You seem very knowledgeable about these matters, young man,’ said one of the noblewomen, backing as far away from Max as possible.

‘Suspiciously so,’ said the fat merchant. Felix did not like the way the merchant’s men were staring at Max. It would not take much to drive these people to violence, he realised. And that would not do them much good either. If anything, Max was even more dangerous than Ulrika.

‘I have trained at the Imperial College of Magicians in Altdorf,’ said Max. ‘I am merely telling you what any competent magician can tell you about these things. If you are so suspicious of the art that you believe that I could be a follower of Chaos, then more fool you.’

Very good, Max, Felix thought. Very diplomatic. That will help solve everything won’t it? Felix wondered what had come over the magician. Did the presence of Ulrika really affect him so badly? Was he really so desperate to impress her? He seemed unable to think clearly when she was around. Normally he was a very mild mannered and diplomatic man. There were mutterings from the throng in the watchtower. Felix wondered if Max had any idea how close he was coming to provoking these people to violence. They were scared and afraid, and they were just looking for someone to vent their fear on.

And they had every right to be afraid, Felix realised. That army out there was enough to terrify any sane person witless. Felix had seen such forces before, when he had flown over the Chaos Wastes, but there was a huge difference between that, and knowing that he was in its path and that there was no escape. As he stood there, he felt a growing sense of claustrophobia. Until that very moment, the whole situation had seemed slightly unreal. In his mind, he had known what they faced, but emotionally it had not quite registered. Now, it was as if he felt the jaws of some great trap slamming shut round about him. Even as he watched, more and more Chaos warriors flowed into position around the city. Behind them came those endless ranks of beastmen.

He knew now he was trapped. There was no escape from Praag, unless the Spirit of Grungni returned, and even then it might not be possible to get away. There was no way out of Praag unless that mighty force down there was defeated, which meant, most likely, there was no way out of Praag alive. Judging from the spreading silence all around, he was not the only one to have come to this conclusion.

The fat merchant and his bodyguards stared at Max as if trying to decide what to do. They might want to burn him at the stake but he was a magician and none of them had any real idea of what he was capable of. He might be able to blast them to cinders with a wave of his hand or turn them into some sort of loathsome beast at a whim. Felix knew Max could do the former.

‘I ought to have you horsewhipped,’ said the fat merchant.

‘And how are you going to do that with your fat head separated from your shoulders?’ asked Gotrek. His tone was conversational but his expression was serious. Clearly he was no more pleased than Felix to have one of his comrades threatened. The merchant’s guards looked distinctly queasy now.

‘Why are you taking this Chaos lover’s side?’ stuttered the fat man.

‘Are you suggesting that I would side with any follower of the Dark Powers?’ Gotrek asked. His tone was dangerous now. The expression on the face of the merchant showed he understood he was a heartbeat away from death. Felix kept his hand on the hilt of his sword. He did not doubt that if Gotrek decided to kill the man, he would, and that the bodyguards would not be able to stop him. After that carnage would erupt on the tower top. The bodyguards obviously understood this too. They had started to back away. The merchant shot them a look that suggested their employment had just been terminated. Gotrek’s growl got his attention.

‘Of course not. None of the elder race would ever do such a thing.’ Gotrek gave him a cold smile that revealed the blackened stumps of his teeth. The merchant looked as if he wanted to try and squeeze past the Slayer and hurry down the stair but couldn’t quite summon the courage to do so.

At that moment a blare of trumpets and a thunderous roll of drums attracted everybody’s attention. A rider emerged from the throng of Chaos warriors. He was a huge man on the largest steed Felix had ever seen. His armour was incredibly ornate and blazed with magical runes whose internal illumination hurt the eye to look upon. He seemed almost to shimmer, like a mirage seen in the desert, yet there was a solid deadliness about his presence that made him seem all too real. In one hand he held a massive lance upon which was a banner depicting a monstrous claw holding a glowing sphere. In the other hand he brandished a mighty runesword. A big war-axe hung from the pommel of his saddle. Fierce-looking as that malevolent steed was it gave its rider no trouble whatsoever. The rider stopped just out of bowshot and spread wide his arms and the whole vast horde behind him fell silent.

‘He’s going to tell us that if we surrender he will spare our lives,’ said the fat man. He tried to make it sound like a sneer but at that moment he sounded as if he would gratefully accept such an offer. Felix felt much the same way.

The huge Chaos warrior turned his attention to the people crowding the towers and battlements of Praag. Felix shivered as that burning gaze passed over him. For a second he felt as if the man, if that was what he was, had looked right at him, and stared directly into his soul. He tried telling himself that it was impossible, but he was not certain. Who knew what those creatures down there were truly capable of?

‘I am Arek Daemonclaw,’ said the Chaos warrior. By some magical trick his voice carried clearly over the distance separating him from the walls. It was a powerful voice, suggesting one used to instant obedience to his every command, and there was something in it that compelled belief. Not sincerity, just raw certainty. ‘I have come to kill you all.’

Such was the force of that voice that a woman near to Felix screamed and fainted. The fat merchant moaned. Felix felt his hand tense around the pommel of his sword.

‘I will build a pile of skulls higher than those walls you cower behind, and I will offer up your souls to the gods of Chaos. The Time of Changes is here. The false dominion of your petty kings is over. Now the true rulers of the world will stand revealed. Think on this and tremble.’

He glared around one last time. ‘Now, prepare to die!’

Arek Daemonclaw brought his sword forward. As one the mighty Chaos horde advanced. Beastmen swarmed forward in their thousands. Some carried ladders. The defenders on the wall watched as if paralysed. Felix wondered if the Chaos worshipper had cast some sort of spell.

Inexorable as the tide, the beastmen advanced. Felix gave up trying to estimate how many of them there were. He had never seen so many monstrosities gathered in one place before. There were creatures with the heads of goats and rams attached to the bodies of massively muscled men. There were towering bull-headed monsters armed with axes that made Gotrek’s look small. There were leering abominations from the darkest pits of hell. They howled, cursed and chanted in their foul tongue as they advanced. Their red eyes glittered with unquenchable malice. There were so many of them, and they came on with such insensate fury, that he wondered how they were ever going to be stopped. Even the mighty walls of Praag seemed like a flimsy barrier when confronted with so much hatred and power. Fear filled Felix. He glanced around and saw it written on every other face.

Before the attackers were half way to the walls the city’s defenders responded. Catapults hurled huge boulders out into the oncoming ranks, smashing the spawn of Chaos to bloody pulp. Mages sent fireballs arcing outwards to explode among the tightly packed bodies. Thousands of arrows darkened the sky. The beastmen roared defiance, trampling their fallen comrades under their hooves in their determination to get within the walls of Praag. They brandished their weapons and bellowed challenges at the defenders. Even as they died, they howled obscene prayers to their dark gods. Felix felt sure they were crying out for vengeance.

The twang of mighty catapult arms surging forward filled the air. More beastmen died. Their masters looked on. From the Chaos army came answering balls of fire, and great glowing snakes of monstrous energy. Felix flinched when he saw them, knowing that dark magic was at work. A few of the others in the watchtower groaned, as if expecting death to descend upon them at any moment.

The fireballs disintegrated in a shower of sparks mere inches from the walls. The streamers of energy unravelled. The lightning bolts arced into the stonework causing no damage. The stink of sulphur and ozone filled the air. ‘What happened?’ Felix asked. ‘Why didn’t their magic work?’

‘The defensive enchantments in the walls held firm,’ said Max. ‘They cannot be penetrated by such spells as those.’

‘Then we are safe from magic at least,’ Felix said. Max nodded slowly.

‘Perhaps. As long as we stay within the walls, and none of their magicians get inside, and as long as no truly great magical powers are brought to bear. The spell walls of Praag are very strong but they are not unbreachable. I doubt master wizards cast those spells. They would know they were wasting their strength. Most likely those enchantments were the work of novices showing off.’

‘You’re not reassuring me, Max.’

‘I’m sorry, but there is little about this situation that is reassuring.’

The horde came on, racing forward, brandishing their weapons. The Chaos warriors watched calmly. Seemingly they were taking no part in this assault. Max looked at them. ‘Why are their warlords not attacking? Why is no one supporting those beastmen? This inaction worries me.’

‘They are not attacking because they do not expect this assault to succeed,’ Gotrek said. ‘This is not an assault. It is merely a test.’

Looking at those thousands of charging monsters, Felix muttered, ‘Some test.’

‘We shall see,’ Gotrek said. ‘I know nothing of spell walls but the stone walls of Praag are also strong.’

‘For human work,’ he added almost as an afterthought.

The beastmen reached the great pit at the foot of the walls and halted for a moment. The mass of their comrades rushing behind them drove the leaders forward once more, so that they stumbled into the stake-lined pit at the foot of the walls. Roaring and screaming, they died, but still their comrades advanced, until the pit was so filled with squirming bodies that the remainder of the force could trample over them and reach the base of the wall.

What sort of madmen would throw away so many lives just to achieve a path to the walls, Felix wondered? And that only for a test. A glance back at the rows of Chaos warriors sitting impassively on horseback gave him his answer. The madmen they faced. Now more than ever, he was worried. Suddenly desperate for a closer look at their foe he snatched the spyglass from the merchant’s hand and focused it upon Arek Daemonclaw. If the merchant had any objections to this a glance from Gotrek was enough to quell them.

Felix shivered as the Chaos warlord leapt into view. He was a massive figure in incredibly ornate armour. His eyes glowed balefully within his full-face helmet. Two massive horns curled from the lower part of the helmet, like the mandibles of some huge insect. The runes of Tzeentch, the Great Mutator, the Lord of Changes, blazed upon the warlord’s breastplate. His banner rippled in the wind. He was flanked on either side by two figures that grabbed Felix’s attention.

They were lean, vulture-like men, unarmoured and wrapped in huge cloaks whose folds gave them a resemblance to wings. Their skin was a pale corpse-like white. Odd runes were painted on their cheeks and foreheads that resembled those on the Chaos warrior’s armour. Their eyes glowed with a baleful red light. They were twins, identical in all ways except one. The one on the warlord’s right hand side held a golden staff in his right hand. The other twin bore a staff of ebony and silver in his left hand. The hand holding the gold-sheathed staff had long talon-like nails of gold. Silver encased the talons of the one on the left.

One glance at them was enough to tell Felix that these were sorcerers. They had an air of power about them that was indisputable. Even as Felix watched one of them leaned forward and whispered something into the ear of the warlord. The other smiled a sinister smile that revealed two prominent fang-like canine teeth.

Felix wondered what they were saying.

‘It goes badly,’ Kelmain Blackstaff said. ‘As we told you it would.’

Arek Daemonclaw glared out at his forces as they assaulted Praag, then he glared at the sorcerer. He was getting a little tired of his wizards’ admonitions. Had they not warned him against heading south so late in the summer? Had they not warned him against attacking Praag? Had they not advised him to join forces with the other great warlords instead of striking out on his own?

Recently they always had this aura of superior knowledge about them that Arek found intensely aggravating. Could they not see that the other warlords were treacherous fools? That taking Praag before winter set in would give his army a secure base of operations in the southlands? Late summer was the perfect time for a surprise attack since no one expected armies to move then. They had quite missed the point that it was impossible to keep from moving in that direction. Some instinct appeared to be driving every follower of the Great Powers south. Every seer and tribal shaman in the Wastes was prophesying that the Time of Changes had come. Every oracle that spoke claimed the four Great Powers were, for once, united in their determination to cleanse the lands of men. His wizards had not seen that if Arek had not come south his followers would have deserted him and flocked to the banners of some bolder chieftain. As it was marching now, his army was being swollen by tens of thousands of tribesmen and beastman, all answering a call that sounded deep in their souls.

Arek studied the mage. He could see the aura of power shimmer around the albino. It was one of the many gifts Tzeentch had granted him. Blackstaff was a mighty mage. Tzeentch had granted him powers greater than any mage save his twin but it was obvious he was no warrior. ‘It is a beginning.’

‘Aye, that it is,’ agreed Lhoigor Goldenrod, flexing his yellow talons. His giggle was high-pitched and irritating. Arek longed for the day when he would no longer need their services and could offer the mages’ souls up to his patron. ‘And what a beginning!’

Like his twin, he could not resist allowing just a hint of irony to show in his voice. Arek looked to see who had taken note of their exchange. Bubar Stinkbreath, the bloated follower of Nurgle, was watching them. His pustulent face showed no sign of having overheard anything, but then it wouldn’t. Bubar was as wily as he was diseased. Lothar Firefist, the chief follower of the Blood God in Arek’s army was too busy cheering on his fellow Khorne worshippers to pay any attention to what Arek and his wizards were saying. Most of the time, he could barely keep his contempt from showing anyway. Sirena Amberhair, the hermaphrodite warlord of Slaanesh, was licking her lips at the sight of the combat. It was hard to tell if she had noticed anything. She was nearly as crafty as Bubar, when not lost in the drug dreams the black lotus brought her.

Watching the beastmen charge forward to certain death, Arek felt nothing but contempt. Foul, idiotic, weak creatures, he thought. Brutish and stupid. Fit only to die in the service of their lords and masters. Plenty more where they came from at least. Tens of thousands of them were drifting down from the Wastes, drawn to Arek’s banner by the promise of plunder and carnage. Still, he thought, even such petty creatures can be the agents of destiny, even if they don’t know it.

One of the many differences between Arek and those brutes was that he knew who he was. He had always known even centuries ago, when he had a different name, and a different life, as a young lord in the Empire. He had known he was destined for greater things than other men. He had not let the fact he was not the eldest of his line stand in his way. He had made sure he had acquired the power he deserved. Poison, convenient accidents and sorcery had ensured he inherited all of his late and unlamented father’s estates. For a while that had been enough. He had riches, he had power, and he had women. But it had not been enough. Even then unconsciously he heard the call of greater things. His fate would not let him live as other men lived, or die like any mere mortal.

The sorcerer who had first seen to the disposal of a jealous brother had proven a rich source of other knowledge, of other boons. He was a weak man who had thought the worship of Chaos an easier path to the wealth and respect he craved than study and hardship. Still, weak as he was, he had served his purpose. His grimoires had revealed certain ancient truths to Arek. They had taught him that it was possible for certain worthy men to transcend mortality, to acquire almost limitless power, if only they would agree to serve the hidden Powers of Chaos, the powers which Arek now knew secretly ruled the universe. The man had been a fool but Arek still felt a certain gratitude to him.

It had taken Arek years to learn more. He had infiltrated certain hidden cults, fools who believed they knew the truth about the Powers of Chaos and who sought to advance themselves using its influence. Down the years, despite investigations by witch hunters, and secret wars with rival cults, Arek had slowly found out what he needed. He had learned that in order to find the power and longevity he needed to achieve his destiny, he would have to visit the Chaos Wastes, and dedicate himself to the Changer of the Ways at his shrine there.

It had been a long hard journey, but Arek knew now that it had to be, for the journey was a test, intended to weed out those not strong enough, or dedicated enough or clever enough to enjoy the blessings of the supreme lords of Chaos. Just as the cults had been a proving ground where only those who really sought for the knowledge they needed would ever find the truth. Of course, it had not seemed that way to him then, but over the years he had learned the truth for himself. A lesser man would not have survived the trials Arek had endured, but that was only just. Lesser men did not deserve the rewards that Arek had received.

At first he had not possessed the wisdom to see them as rewards. Then he had been horrified by what he had seen as the stigmata of Chaos appearing on his body. Now he knew the stigmata had been granted to him for a reason. He had always been vain of his personal appearance, had always revelled in the good looks that made him attractive to women. When his features started to melt and run, after the first warp storm he endured in the Wastes, he had thought that he would go mad. He had not been able to look at his reflection without shivering. It was a weakness of course, one that he had soon overcome.

And he had been rewarded. The Great Mutator had gifted him with increased insight and wisdom. Many of the hidden secrets of the universe had been revealed to him.

When he had found the hidden shrine to Tzeentch, buried deep in a crystal cave in the Mountains of Madness, he had been judged worthy to become a Chaos warrior. The black armour had been grafted to his body. Its gifts of increased strength and resilience had become his, and he had ridden out into the world to spread change and terror in the name of his master. He had joined a warband, and fought his way to leadership, for as all the great powers, Tzeentch liked to pit his worshippers against each other so that they could prove their worthiness for his favour.

Arek had been worthy indeed. He had led his followers to victory after victory, showing a deep shrewd grasp of the tactics needed for victory and the political insight needed to rise within the ranks of the chosen. In quick succession he had bested the bellowing Khornate warrior Belal, the foul disease-ridden champion of Nurgle, Klublub, and the decadent perfumed but deadly pleasure-knight of Slaanesh, Lady Silenfleur. He had made pilgrimages to all the sacred Tzeentchian sites within the Wastes, and acquired greater knowledge and magical power, as well as many runic refinements to his armour and weapons.

It was during this period that he had first encountered the twin wizards who were to be so instrumental to his rise to power, Kelmain Blackstaff and Lhoigor Goldenrod. They had first met in the caverns of Nul deep beneath the Mountains of Madness when Arek had made his offering of thirteen captured souls of champions of rival powers to Lord Tzeentch. During his vigil daemons had whispered many secrets to him, and the twins had helped him interpret those cryptic warnings. One of those secrets had brought them all here today. For he knew the reason why Skathloc had tried so hard to take the citadel of Praag, and what lay concealed there still.

The twins had recognised his great destiny and aligned themselves with him, lending him their sorcerous powers, advising him on matters magical and occasionally about other things. He had usually followed their advice, and since they never challenged his decisions, never disobeyed his orders, he had been happy to have them in his warband. Indeed, their powers of divination and prophecy had proven so accurate that he had found them to be his most useful servants.

They became good luck charms, in a way, for soon after they joined him, Arek began to enjoy even greater success than he had before. His forces swelled as beastmen and lesser champions swarmed to his banner. Their magic had helped him acquire the first of his fortresses within the Chaos Wastes when their spells had opened the gates to the Citadel of Ardun on the rocky crags above the Vale of Desolation. Of course, he had led the warriors within and had slain the Ancient of Ardun with his own hands but they had certainly been helpful.

They had been more than helpful when he retrieved his invincible armour from the Vaults of Ardun. They had somehow known the spells that would unlock the armour and then bind it to his body. Since that day, as they had prophesied, he had proven invulnerable to every weapon forged by mortal or daemon.

Their advice had helped him form his great coalition of the followers of Tzeentch. They had told him who was trustworthy and who was treacherous, and they seemed to have infallible noses for sniffing out those who plotted against him. It was they who warned him that his trusted lieutenant Mikal the Lion-Headed plotted to have him assassinated and overthrown. He had swiftly turned the tables on his treacherous follower when they were alone in his throne room, and Mikal sought to take him by surprise.

They had forewarned him of the great ambush planned for his forces at Khaine’s Defile, and allowed him to surprise those would-be ambushers in turn. Their spells had turned the sky red with magical energy and helped him win a victory against a force ten times the size of his own.

They had woven him around with spells that had made him invulnerable to sorcerous attack and that had allowed him victory even over daemons. Over the centuries they had helped him acquire the power and prestige that had eventually enabled him to forge this grand coalition consisting even of followers of the other three great powers. Arek knew that this was the final culmination of his destiny.

Over the long millennia very few warlords had the charisma, the military skill, the drive and the sheer ability to forge such a coalition. Skathloc Ironclaw had made the last one over two centuries ago, and Arek knew that he was the first man since then to have welded such a force together. True, at least three other warlords had forged forces of similar size and had now emerged from the Wastes, but in the end, it would be Arek who would prove triumphant. Victory here at Praag would give him the prestige to unite all of the Chaos worshippers behind him.

If everything went according to his plans, he would also be the last. For he intended to bring the entire world under the sway of his power, and extend the Chaos Wastes from pole to pole. He knew that given time he could do it.

The twins had certainly been useful, but it seemed now to Arek that their usefulness was coming to an end. They had resisted his plan to come south so soon. They had wanted him to wait longer, acquire even more force. They had muttered their usual cryptic warnings about the omens not being right. They had claimed that the paths of the Old Ones would soon be open, and there would be no need for these great marches. They had not seen that the assembled warleaders were already chafing at the bit, eager to be started and needing a campaign of conquest to keep them unified. For the first time since they had acknowledged his destiny to rule, Arek had found himself at odds with his pet wizards.

It was a situation that would swiftly be rectified. Powerful as they were, there were plenty more sorcerers willing to follow Tzeentch’s favoured champion. Once this city was taken, and the great campaign launched with a resounding victory that would weld his horde together, Arek vowed he would see to the troublesome wizards’ replacement.

Right now he returned his attention to the ongoing battle. The beastmen were falling in their thousands to the human war engines. It did not matter. Arek did not seriously believe they had any chance of taking the city. He merely wanted the defenders to realise the strength of the foe they faced, that he could afford to squander ten thousand such lackeys if he wanted to, and it would not put the slightest dent in the numbers of his horde. It would demoralise the defenders when they realised the sheer scale of the opposition they faced. In a prolonged siege it would affect the outcome significantly.

Besides, all of the attacking beastmen were followers of Khorne. They had been desperate for battle, and Arek doubted that he could restrain them or Lothar Firefist, the warlord who led them, much longer without them turning on the rest of the host. It was the main difficulty leading a coalition like this. Giving them a common foe was sometimes more important than mere military utility.

Even as he watched he saw that the attackers had reached the wall. Boiling oil splashed their fur, as the defenders upended cauldrons of it onto the beastmen. Ever-burning alchemical fire turned them into blazing humanoid torches. Even so a few ladders still reached the wall, and a few beastmen swarmed up them. For a moment it looked like some of them would succeed in clearing a space on the battlements and allow their brethren to swarm over. By sheer berserk fury, it looked like they might carry the day. That would be good, Arek decided.

Then he saw a dwarf and some humans appear from the base of one of the towers. A bolt of lightning danced along the walls, slaying beastmen. There was something about that dwarf, an aura of power, of destiny that was obvious to Arek’s altered vision. One of the men who followed him had the same aura, although to a lesser degree. With a shock Arek realised that he recognised the axe carried by the dwarf. He had seen it wielded once before, during the assault on the citadel of Karag Dum. It was a potent thing, woven round with baneful runes, and perhaps powerful enough to breach even Arek’s armour. The sight of it filled him with foreboding.

Perhaps he should consult with his pet wizards about this, Arek decided. He had a reason to let them live for just a little while longer.

Felix smashed his sword through the skull of the beastman, and looked around. The battlements were clear. All of the beastmen had either been cast down to the ground below, or were dead. He glanced over at Gotrek. The Slayer stood nearby covered in filth and matted gore, a sour expression on his face. He looked surprised and disappointed at finding himself still alive, hardly surprising since his avowed intention in life was to find a heroic death in battle. Nearby, Ulrika and Max Schreiber stood blinking in the gloom. Sweat ran down their faces. Ulrika looked as if she had been working in a butcher’s shop. Small clouds of smoke drifted up from Max’s hands. Felix was glad to see that they were all still alive.

It had been touch and go there for a while. Even given the huge numbers of beastmen in the assault, upon seeing the carnage wreaked on them by archers and siege engines, Felix had been surprised that any had reached the walls. It was a testimony to the sheer strength and ferocity of the Chaos worshippers that they had managed to do so. That they had come so close to sweeping over the outer walls on the first day of the battle was a scary thought. Even more terrifying was the memory of the sheer fury and utter lack of concern for their own safety with which they had thrown themselves forward.

From the faces of the defenders visible all around him, he could see that they were just as concerned as he was. They had not expected this. They had considered their city walls impregnable and with some justification. Archers looked out of every gap in the battlements. Beside them were well-armoured men-at-arms. Heated pots of boiling oil stood ready to be poured down on the attackers. Engines to lob pots of alchemical fire into the enemy stood on every tower top. And all of these preparations had proven barely sufficient. They had almost been swept away by the sheer fury of the attackers. Felix shuddered. If it was like this on the first day, what was it going to be like once the siege was in full swing, and the attackers had time to raise war engines, and bring foul sorcery to bear?

And there was still the possibility of treachery. Looking at the seething mass of Chaos worshippers out there, Felix didn’t even want to consider this. It was frightening enough having them outside the city. The prospect that some of them might already be within was a fearsome one.

Arek strode confidently into the magicians’ tent. It was quiet inside. Somehow all the roars and shouts and bellows of the horde were left behind as soon as he entered. The air stank of the hallucinogenic incense pouring from the brazier near the entrance. He looked around and noted all the massive chests and intricate paraphernalia of sorcery. He saw sandalwood caskets from far Cathay, and strange dragon-inscribed lanterns from legendary Nippon. The skeleton of a mastodon loomed in the darkness. Shadowy presences flickered just under the drooping canvas of the roof. Not for the first time, he wondered how Kelmain and Lhoigor fitted all of this stuff into their pavilion. It sometimes seemed to him that it was larger on the inside than it was on the outside. Arek supposed it was possible. They were after all mighty mages.

The twin sorcerers sat cross-legged, floating a hand’s breadth above an Arabyan carpet. Their eyes were closed. Pieces on the chessboard in front of them moved without a hand being laid on them. Arek glanced at the position. From where he stood it was obvious that the game was going to be a win for white. It always was when the twins played. They were so well matched that whoever held that slight advantage inevitably won. He reached down and moved the pieces through the combination that led to inevitable victory.

‘Why do you always do that?’ Kelmain asked, smiling sardonically.

‘I fail to understand why you play each other at all,’ Arek said. He had always found the twins’ good humour vaguely annoying. They seemed to share some secret that they did not want to tell the world, but which caused them great amusement. It was a testimony to their great power that they still lived. Men had died for a lot less than that in the Chaos Wastes.

‘One day we hope to establish which of us is the better player.’

‘How many games have you played now?’

‘Close on ten thousand.’

‘What’s the score?’

‘Kelmain’s victory, which you foresaw, puts him one ahead.’

Arek shook his head and surveyed the blazing auras of his pet sorcerers. There was mockery there for certain.

‘You did not come here to discuss our chess playing, fascinating as it doubtless is,’ said Lhoigor.

‘What do you require of us?’

‘What I always do – information, prophecy, knowledge.’

‘Tzeentch has granted us a great deal of the latter.’

‘Sometimes too much I think,’ Kelmain said.

Arek was in no mood for the mages’ banter. Swiftly he outlined what he had seen on the walls today. He spoke of his presentiment of danger. He asked the mages to grant him a vision.

‘Your forebodings are doubtless justified,’ Kelmain said.

‘Sometimes Lord Tzeentch chooses to send warnings in just this manner,’ Lhoigor added.

‘I require more specific information than this,’ said Arek.

‘Of course,’ Kelmain said.

‘You wish to learn more of this axe and its bearer,’ Lhoigor said.

‘Naturally.’

‘You wish us to invoke the name of the Lord of Change and ask him to grant you the boon of a vision,’ Lhoigor said. His voice had taken on the quality and rhythm of a priest intoning a ritual. Arek nodded.

Kelmain gestured and an enormous metal sphere floated over to the centre of the tent. It hovered over the table. Lhoigor passed his hand over it, and the sphere split into two halves. They floated away from the mages, revealing the gigantic crystal orb that had rested within. ‘Look into the Eye of the Lord, and gain wisdom then,’ he said.

Arek looked.

In the depths of the sphere he saw a flickering light, the merest pinpoint, a distant flame that grew brighter as he watched. In it he thought he caught sight of a swirling distant realm that he recognised from his most troubled dreams, a place that had appeared to him in visions before at sites sacred to Lord Tzeentch. It was a place where the sky constantly changed colour as ripples of red and green passed across the cloudless firmament, where huge winged shapes with the bodies of men and the heads of predatory birds pursued the souls of their victims over an endless landscape, a land in the centre of which his god sat enthroned.

He felt other presences with him now, which he recognised as the souls of his magicians. He could hear their voices, far off in the distance, chanting the words of eldritch incantations. He saw as from afar a scene in the primordial dawn of time. A massive dwarf who somehow seemed more than a dwarf forged an axe that he recognised. The ancient dwarf beat the blade on an anvil through which the power of magic flowed strongly, patiently inscribed runes of surpassing might to be the bane of daemons. At the final stages of the ritual he invoked protective spells and the scene shimmered and vanished.

He sensed us, said the voice of Kelmain in his mind.

Nonsense, brother, the spell he invoked wards out all external magic, including ours.

I suppose you are right.

Arek wondered what they were talking about, and who they were watching. The scene shimmered and shifted, and he saw a huge dwarf similar to the first bearing two axes, the one he had seen forged and another that was akin to it. His head was shaved, tattoos covered his skin. He fought endlessly against the hordes of Chaos in a world where the sky was the colour of blood, and the sorcerer’s moon, Morrslieb, glared down huge and baleful from the skies.

The first great incursion, Kelmain’s voice whispered.

When the Lords of Chaos first gained entrance to this world, added Lhoigor.

Arek saw the dwarf lead armies from the fortress cities of the dwarfs. He saw the endless doomed campaign waged against the armies of Darkness. He saw the axe-bearer eventually depart into the Wastes on a quest to deny the Lords of Chaos entry into his world. He saw him cast away the axe, before his final doomed battle with the daemonic hordes.

The scene shifted once more. A young dwarf retrieved the axe and bore it to the great citadel of Karag Dum far to the north. The spell walls of that vast city blocked any further vision for millennia. Then the tides of Chaos advanced once more, in a time that Arek recognised. He saw Karag Dum encircled by the Wastes, and laid siege to by a mighty host of beastmen and daemons. He saw the spell walls broached by a great bloodthirster of Khorne, and viewed inside the city. He saw the bloodthirster vanquished by a distant descendant of the original axe wielder, who died even as he defeated the mighty winged daemon. He saw the axe being picked up by the son of the king who headed out into the Chaos Wastes to bring aid to his people. Arek witnessed his quest’s failure and the young dwarf dying alone and far from home, fighting his final battle against an army of beastmen after taking refuge in a cave.

The vision shimmered. A convoy of strange armoured vehicles moved across the Wastes. Wagons encased in steel, powered by muscles of the dwarfs within them.

Some sort of expedition, brother, to find the city of Karag Dum.

Doomed, of course, came the reply.

Arek saw the wagons being destroyed one by one, and their crews turning back, until one alone continued onwards. Eventually even that steel wagon was attacked and crippled by beastmen, and from it emerged three dwarfs: one an ancient with his long beard braided into two forks, one a huge brutish and very dim-looking warrior, the third a dwarf of stern visage.

Gotrek Gurnisson, he heard Kelmain whisper.

Yes, brother, came the reply.

All three were armed and armoured with potent weapons, and shielded by runic talismans. They fought their way clear of their destroyed wagon and began the long trudge back towards their so-called civilisation.

A storm sprang up, dust clouds rising from the Wastes. The three were separated. The one named Gotrek took shelter in the cave, until the huge mutant beastman within discovered him. Chased deep into the caves, he found the body of the young prince and the axe. He picked it up, and a link was forged between him and the weapon. Armed with its ancient might, he slew the beastman, and rejoined his two companions.

Another transition. Mountains. Blue skies. A long valley. The dwarf known as Gotrek was there. He was larger, more muscular and somehow grimmer.

The axe changes its wielder, brother. See, how he has grown.

The Slayer entered the valley; he looked happy to be there. In the valley, a burned village and many dead dwarfs. The dwarf entered one stone house. Within was sprawled the wretched body of a dwarf woman and her small baby.

The dwarf bowed his head. Perhaps he wept.

A further change. The hall of a dwarf lord. Gotrek Gurnisson was there once more, arguing passionately with a long-bearded noble on a throne. There was a sneer on the noble’s lips. He spoke mockingly, it seemed, and then made a chopping gesture with his hand, perhaps forbidding Gotrek to do whatever it was he wished to do, perhaps even ordering his death.

The other dwarf shook his head and grinned darkly. The lord ordered his troops to seize the axe-bearer. It was a mistake. A vast brawl began. Soon everyone in the hall save Gotrek was dead or fled. Dwarf corpses were lying everywhere.

The dwarf took up a knife and hacked away at his hair. Soon his head was shaved bare, save for a small rough strip. He strode out into the world, to do whatever it was he had to do.

A vast human city. Perhaps Altdorf, the Imperial capital.

A tavern. A tall blond-haired man, clearly drunk, was sitting down at the table with the dwarf who was obviously as drunk as he. The dwarf was older now. His hair was a huge crest, dyed orange. Tattoos covered his shaven head. He was scarred and there was a cynical twist to his mouth. The tall man was obviously distressed by something. They talked. And as they spoke the human became more and more excited. They drank more. The dwarf took up a knife and the unlikely pair swore some sort of blood-brothership oath.

Scenes came now in quick succession. Crypts beneath the Imperial city. A magician performed a ritual of cosmic evil only to be interrupted by the pair. A small village in the wilds, terrorised by a winged daemon until the two of them ended its reign of terror. A forest at night; Morrslieb grinned down. The two did battle with mutants and cultists, eventually rescuing a small child from their clutches. A wagon train headed south, fighting goblins and undead monsters as it went. The pair were there always, fighting like devils. At the gate of a burning fort, the Slayer defeated a whole tribe of wolf riders, losing an eye in the process. Arek saw a ruined dwarf city and battles with monsters, and meetings with ghosts.

An accelerating succession of scenes blurred by. Encounters with mages and werewolves and wicked men. Buildings burned in another Imperial city as an army of ratmen stalked the streets. A massive airship crossed the Chaos Wastes and arrived at Karag Dum. The bloodthirster returned, only to be defeated once more by the pair of adventurers. They encountered a mighty dragon and slew it. They battled with an army of orcs and somehow survived.

As he watched, it became obvious to Arek that whatever else the pair are, they are heroes, and somehow it is their destiny to oppose Chaos. Or perhaps it is not their doom, but that of the axe. He cannot tell. It is something to discuss with his pet wizards.

Suddenly the cascade of visions stopped. One further change charged the air. A deep sense of foreboding filled Arek. The scene went black and he was confronted for the briefest of instants by a gigantic face whose features appeared to shimmer and change, sometimes resembling a bird-headed daemon, sometimes resembling an incredibly beautiful man with eyes of glowing light. He knew at once that he was gazing on Lord Tzeentch. The being smiled mockingly at him, and a last scene appeared before his eyes.

Buildings burned. Horned warriors clashed with humans in the street. He saw himself lying on the ground, his armour breached and broken, his headless corpse sprawled in the snow. All around were the mangled bodies of beastmen and Chaos warriors. He saw himself locked in combat with the dwarf. Arek found himself enthralled waiting for the moment of his inevitable triumph.

The scene went blank to be replaced by another. He saw the axe flashing in to sever his head.

A third moment of vision appalled him: Gotrek Gurnisson and his human companion standing over his corpse, wounded but triumphant, Arek’s severed head held in the man’s hand. Arek stared in shock at the picture, and it began to fade. He stood stunned in the centre of the wizards’ tent.

‘Your visions have done nothing to reassure me,’ he said eventually. Kelmain looked at Lhoigor. Once again Arek was uncomfortably aware that some sort of voiceless communication was taking place between them.

‘Such visions are not always accurate,’ Kelmain said eventually, stroking his pale temple with his golden nails.

‘Sometimes malicious daemons interfere for their own purposes. They have a strange sense of humour, our elder brothers,’ added Lhoigor.

‘Did you see what I saw?’ Arek asked.

‘We saw one of the dwarf ancestor gods making the axe. We saw much of its history. We saw the siege of Karag Dum. We saw Gotrek Gurnisson receive the axe. We saw… your death.’

‘How is that possible? I thought the Eye was supposed only to show the past.’

‘The Eye is a peculiar artefact. It can only reveal certain things–’ began Lhoigor.

‘It normally shows only the past,’ Kelmain interrupted. ‘Or what people think is the past.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Arek. Kelmain looked at Lhoigor. Arek knew they were trying to decide which of them would explain things to him.

‘The realm of Chaos from which all magic eventually flows is another plane roughly contiguous with this one–’ Lhoigor began.

‘It is composed entirely of energy–’ Kelmain interrupted again.

‘Which can be drawn on by those who are gifted,’ finished Lhoigor.

‘So?’ asked Arek.

‘There are links between the two planes. Strong emotions, hopes, dreams, fears, all stir the seething sea of energy which is the true realm of Chaos,’ Kelmain said.

‘Events that create those strong emotions can leave an impression on the plane of Chaos. Battles, murders and such like. So can dreams and fears. These impressions float around like–’

‘Like bubbles,’ Lhoigor said. ‘The Eye can draw those impressions to us, if invoked correctly. It takes an artefact of such power to sift through the swirling vortices of energy and select the ones the wielder wants.’

‘You are saying though that what we saw is not necessarily true.’

‘I believe most of it is true in the essentials. It may not be entirely accurate but it is accurate enough in most respects.’

‘What about the final vision?’

‘That might have been something you brought to the ritual yourself,’ said Kelmain.

‘A projection of your own hidden fears,’ Lhoigor added mockingly.

‘Or it might have been a warning sent by Lord Tzeentch, foretelling what will happen if you continue down this path.’

‘It is difficult to know. Such visions are always cryptic.’

‘So are your interpretations, it seems.’

‘We are only humble servants of our esteemed Lord,’ said Lhoigor. Arek was never sure whether he meant Tzeentch or himself when he spoke this way. He suspected the ambiguity was deliberate.

‘You know this dwarf,’ said Arek.

‘We know of him,’ Kelmain corrected. ‘He has inadvertently foiled some of our schemes in the past.’

‘We suspect he is, however unwittingly, a chosen champion of the enemies of our cause.’

‘Certainly, he has been warped by that potent weapon he carries.’

‘If the dwarf were dead that future can never happen,’ Arek said. ‘Without him to wield the axe, it cannot slay me.’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps the axe will find another wielder.’ Arek considered this for a moment then came to a decision. The dwarf would have to be eliminated, and that axe would need to vanish.

‘You have agents in the city?’

‘Many.’

‘See to it the dwarf and his human henchman die. See that the axe is lost and not found again soon.’

‘We shall do our best,’ Kelmain said, his mocking smile widening.

‘If the vision really came from Lord Tzeentch it would be blasphemy to try and interfere with the destiny he plans for you.’

‘Nonetheless do it.’

‘As you wish.’

FOUR

Ulrika glanced around the chamber in disgust. It was not her surroundings that she found intolerable, it was the people in them, or most of them anyway. The chamber was far more austerely furnished than anything she would have expected from a decadent southern noble. There were none of the elaborate carvings and gargoyles that covered the walls of so many of the buildings in the city, only weapons and banners.

The duke himself cut a fine martial figure as he sat upright on the polished wooden throne. He was a handsome slender man in early middle age. He had black hair going to grey. On his face, the long drooping moustaches favoured by the southern aristocracy actually looked fine. They made him look like one of the wild riders of Gospodar legend. He had a disconcerting intensity to his stare but Ulrika could see nothing to give credence to the rumours that he was mad.

Some people claimed that Duke Enrik’s tendency to see the worshippers of Chaos everywhere was a sign that he had inherited his father’s insanity. To Ulrika his support of witch hunters and constant persecution of mutants seemed only sensible precautions against the Great Enemy. Perhaps it was true. Perhaps decadent Imperial customs were taking root even here in the great citadels of Kislev. She smiled ironically at her thoughts. She herself was no better. Hadn’t she taken a decadent southerner for a lover? Hadn’t she taken advice from Max Schreiber, a wizard, a man who only a few months ago she would have been willing to bet was a worshipper of Chaos himself? No, she was in no position to criticise these people. She knew that intellectually. It was not going to stop her from doing it though.

Beside the prince’s throne was a large stove that radiated heat against the autumnal chill. A long-bearded chamberlain carrying a heavy wooden staff stood to the left of the ducal throne. Slightly in front of the throne stood two armoured giants of the ducal guard, each armed with a halberd, and a head taller than any other man in the room. Ten strides ahead of the throne was a rope barrier behind which waited petitioners. They were a motley crew, wealthy merchants, lesser nobles and a few ragged-looking men of indeterminate profession. They might have been wizards, or priests or professional agitators for all Ulrika knew.

Looking around at the others in the chamber, she wondered how Enrik put up with it. The behaviour of these people was enough to drive the sanest man crazy. At the front of the room were a group of men from the merchant’s guild protesting about the latest ducal command to freeze prices. It seemed that not even the presence of that vast Chaos horde outside the gates was to be allowed to interfere with a man’s right to seek the best price his goods might command. The fact that exercising that right might lead to starvation for the majority of the people and food riots did not appear to concern them. Ulrika recognised the fat man from the watchtower among the merchants. He seemed to have gotten over his fears now, and was far more concerned that he was not being allowed to sell his grain for ten times the price it had commanded a month ago. Merchants, thought Ulrika, with the warrior-nobles’ usual contempt for the rising middle class. They had no honour. Even with the city enmeshed in a life or death struggle they thought only of their own profits.

Duke Enrik seemed to share her opinion. ‘It seems to me,’ he said in his high-pitched voice, ‘that keeping our men in the field and our population content and supportive of their duke is far more important at this moment than the profits of the guild.’

‘But your grace–’ the fat merchant began.

‘And furthermore,’ the duke continued as if the merchant had never spoken, ‘it seems to me that the people who are most likely to think otherwise are Chaos worshippers and followers of the Dark Powers themselves.’

That shut the merchants up, Ulrika thought with some satisfaction. They could see the not-so-veiled threat as well as she.

The duke continued to speak in a slightly more reasonable tone of voice. ‘And after all, Osrik, what do profits matter if the city falls? Gold is only useful to those who are alive to spend it. If those beasts break into our noble city I am sure they will spare no one no matter how wealthy… except perhaps a few Chaos worshippers.’

The duke’s meaning was only too clear to the merchants now. Most were looking around shiftily, hoping only to make a graceful retreat from the chamber. The duke’s remark about gold only being useful to the living was not lost on them. It applied just as much to those hung as traitors as to those slain by Chaos warriors.

‘I am sure there are no Chaos worshippers here, brother,’ said Villem suavely. He looked up at his brother, winked and then turned and gave the merchants a friendly smile. The iron hand and the velvet glove, Ulrika saw. In a way it was sad. By temperament, Enrik was far more suited to be a hatchetman, and his brother a conciliator. It might have been better for the popularity of the ruling house if the two men’s positions had been reversed; that way the duke could have stood apart with his hands clean and been more popular. Still, it was not to be. Birth had made them what they were, and neither brother seemed uncomfortable with their roles, if roles they were. Perhaps the brothers were simply doing what came naturally. On the other hand, she had heard rumours about Villem too. He was something of a scholar, dabbled in alchemy and was said to read books brought all the way from the Empire. This would have made him a figure of suspicion to members of the old Kislevite aristocracy too.

The merchants nodded agreement. ‘Is there anything else you want to discuss?’ asked Enrik icily. The merchants shook their heads and were granted the ducal permission to withdraw. More petitioners approached the throne. Lesser nobles, by their garb, wanting the duke to settle some small dispute between them. Ulrika soon lost the point of the discussion and gave her attention to the audience chamber.

It was quite small, and the walls were covered in thick tapestries showing scenes from ancient battles. Depictions of the last Great War against Chaos were displayed prominently. There was Skathloc Ironclaw mounted on his mighty wyvern, Doomfang. There was Magnus the Pious, resplendent in his heavy plate mail, a halo of sanctity playing around his head, the great warhammer that was the mark of the Emperor held in one hand. There was the Tzar Alexander, a mortal god in his gilded armour. Beastmen leered from the thick woollen weaving. Noble knights and winged lancers rode to meet them. The Chaos moon glared balefully in the sky, looking larger than it had at any time in Ulrika’s lifetime save the last few weeks.

Not for the first time, she wished she had taken advantage of her relationship with the ducal family. They were distant cousins related by marriage, and she might have presumed on that for a private audience, but she had not. Her native sense of fairness forbade it. Her business was important to her, but not important enough to anyone else to interfere with matters of state. She had resolved to use the public audience time for it. After all, all she really wanted to do was learn if there was any news of her father. There was only a slim chance the duke might know something. She shivered and tried to keep her worry under control. Her father would be alright. He had lived through war and famine and plague for nearly half a century. He would survive this. He was indestructible. At least, she hoped he was. He was all the real family she had left in this world.

The sound of the duke’s voice being raised broke into her reverie. He had lost all patience with the nobles and was shouting at them as if they were naughty children in need of stern discipline. ‘And if either of you dare come here, and waste my time again, I will see you are both flogged and denied a place in the battle lines. Is that clear enough for you?’

Ulrika was shocked. These men might be petty and mean-spirited but they were nobles. It was most unusual for anyone to speak to them like that. Like all Kislevite nobles they would be touchy and they would have their own private armies and assassins. Such open rudeness was usually cause for a duel. One of the nobles pointed this out.

‘When this battle is over, Count Mikal, I will gladly give you satisfaction,’ sneered the duke, in a tone that left no doubt whom he thought would be the victor in any duel. ‘But right at this moment, in case you had not noticed, we have slightly more important things to concern us. Even more important than the question of which of you takes precedence in choosing their position on the outer wall. Still, if you wait long enough, those beastmen beyond the walls might make the question academic by lopping off your fool heads. That’s if I don’t have my guardsmen do it first. You may leave the ducal presence. Now!’

The anger in the duke’s voice was quite unfeigned, and Ulrika had no doubt that Enrik meant what he said. Even so, she thought, he was being foolish. In the days to come he would need the willing support of both those men and their troops. Villem also saw this, for after a quiet word in his brother’s ear, he hurried after the two to speak some conciliatory words to them. The chamberlain studied his list, stamped his staff on the ground and commanded two more men to stride forward.

They were big men, garbed in well-used armour, with long cowled cloaks and wolf-head amulets at their throats. On each of their gaunt faces was a look of blazing fanaticism. Without being told, and even before they spoke, Ulrika knew what they were. Witch hunters.

‘Your grace, there are depraved worshippers of the Dark Powers within the walls of Praag. We must make examples of them. Burning a few will set a good example for the citizens.’

‘And of course you know exactly who needs burning, Ulgo?’ The sneer was evident in the duke’s voice. Ulrika was surprised; Enrik had a reputation for being sympathetic to witch hunters, and a harsh enemy of Chaos. It was one of the few things that made him popular with his people. She watched closely. Perhaps he simply did not like these two. It was the second witch hunter who replied, and his voice was smooth and sophisticated, not unlike Felix’s, in fact.

‘We have taken the liberty of preparing a list, your grace,’ he said. The duke beckoned him forward, took the scroll from his outstretched hand, studied it for a moment and began to laugh.

‘Your grace finds something amusing?’ purred the man. There was a dangerous note in his voice. He was not someone used to being mocked.

‘Only you, Petr, could find half the hierarchy of the temple of Ulric to be heretics.’

‘Your grace, they do not prosecute the search for the dupes of Darkness with anything like sufficient zeal. Any priest of Ulric who behaves this way must be a traitor to the cause of humanity, and therefore a heretic.’

‘I am sure the Archprelate would disagree with your assessment, Petr. Which may be why he expelled you from the priesthood.’

‘My expulsion was the work of hidden heretics, your grace, who feared exposure to the shining light of truth, and who knew they must see me disgraced or be revealed as the foul spawn of daemons that they are. They–’

‘Enough, Petr!’ the duke said quietly but threateningly. ‘We are at war now, and I will explain this only once. I summoned you here to tell you something – not to listen to your ranting. So listen carefully, and listen well.

‘There will be no further persecution of those you deem heretics by you or your men… unless I command it! There will be no exhorting the populace to burn the homes of those you deem to be lacking in zeal… unless I give you permission! You and your private army of zealots will be useful in the coming fight, but I will not tolerate you taking the law into your own hands. If you disobey me on this I will have your head on a spike before you have time to speak. Do you understand me?’

‘But your grace–’

‘I said: do you understand me?’ The duke’s voice was cold and deadly.

Ulrika looked on, unsure of whether she approved or not. It was good that Enrik was taking a firm hand with any unruly elements of the population, particularly troublemakers like Ulgo and Petr appeared to be. Still these were powerful men, and their cause was just, and he should not have offended them by taking this high-handed tone. She began to understand why Enrik was not as popular as his brother.

‘Yes, your grace,’ said Petr. His tone was dangerously close to disrespectful. Ulrika began to suspect that the duke’s intervention here might be counter-productive. It was not unknown for witch hunters and their minions to go about their business masked.

‘You may go then,’ said the duke.

Ulrika was paying such close attention to the way the witch hunters departed that she almost missed her own name. Hastily she strode forward and made her obeisances.

‘Cousin,’ the duke said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I wish to know if there has been any word of my father, your grace.’

‘I regret to inform you there has been none. If any message is received I will have you informed at once. My chamberlain knows where to find you, I trust?’

‘Yes, your grace.’

‘Good. Then you may go.’

Ulrika flushed. Even by the standards of Kislevite nobility, this was a peremptory dismissal. She turned to leave. Anger ate her. When she felt a hand on her shoulder, she whirled, almost ready to do violence. She halted when she saw Villem smiling at her.

‘You must forgive the duke,’ he said. ‘He is not a patient man, and there have been many things to vex him recently. These are not easy times, for any of us.’

‘He is the ruler here. This is war. There is nothing to forgive.’

‘I am sure Enrik would agree with you, but still it is never good to forget the courtesies, particularly not when dealing with blood relatives. I am sorry we have not heard from your father. Still, there is always hope. Messenger pigeons go astray, and couriers have been known to go missing or get themselves killed. I would not despair. Looking at that horde out there, I doubt any messengers could have got through from the north in quite some time.’

Sensing the concern in Villem’s voice, Ulrika started to thaw a little. She already felt a bit better. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and meant it.

‘Please, think nothing of it. It is a pleasure to be of service. Don’t worry – we will pull through this. I understand you arrived with the dwarf Slayer and his companions, the wizard and the swordsman. Fascinating people and very heroic, I am sure. I would like you all to have dinner with me some evening here at the palace. I would like the opportunity to talk about that wonderful flying ship and get to know so fair a cousin better.’

Ulrika tried to picture Gotrek at table with this urbane man and could not. Felix and Max were a different matter however. ‘I would like that,’ she said.

‘I will see that an invitation is dispatched. Till then…’

Grey Seer Thanquol glared into his scrying crystal. He was feeling the strain. All around the elders of Moulder looked at him as if he were something good to eat. He forced himself to ignore this distraction and concentrate on working his sorcery. He let his mind descend into the trance he had first learned when barely out of runthood, and just beginning his apprenticeship as a grey seer. He let his spirit float free and gather the energies of dark magic and then he shunted them into the crystal.

As he did so, his point of view shifted. It was as if the crystal had been transformed into the eye of a watching god, an analogy that gave Thanquol a warm feeling in the base of his stomach. He saw his own body from above. He saw the grey-furred oddly mutated Moulder elders glaring at him, and he saw Izak Grottle looking on hungrily from the chamber’s edge. Grottle ran a long pink tongue over his yellowing fangs, and then began to gnaw his tail. It was a gesture that made Thanquol fear for his own safety. Still, there was nothing for it, he had volunteered for this. Helping the Moulders put down Lurk’s rebellion was the quickest and surest way of getting himself back into their good books, and the sooner he did that, the sooner he would be out of this death-trap. Hell Pit was the last place he wanted to be with that huge Chaos army on the march.

Even as the thought entered his mind, he cursed. The merest notion of the army instantly conjured a vivid image of it in his mind, and in his hyper-sensitised state this was enough to send the crystal vision racing outwards. The crater of Hell Pit was suddenly below him, monstrously fleshy buildings looming over the site of the ancient starfall. The streets filled with fighting skaven as Lurk’s followers warred with troops still loyal to Clan Moulder. Just for a heartbeat he had a glimpse of the brutal conflict and then his mind’s eye swung to bear on the huge dustcloud in the distance.

In an instant he was there, looking down on it. He saw rank upon serried rank of beastmen, a howling mass of fur-clad and near bestial humans, hundreds upon hundreds of black-armoured Chaos warriors mounted on their huge and deadly steeds. Beneath him marched monstrous creatures half gigantic humanoid, half dragon. Alongside them strolled mutated trolls. Flocks of bat-winged humanoids darkened the sky. It was a vast host and the worst thing about it was the fact that Thanquol knew that it was only part of the huge Chaos armies that were on the march. Something had certainly gotten the worshippers of the lesser powers worked up, and Thanquol had no great desire to find out what. Looking at this army through his scrying crystal was as close as he ever cared to get to it.

He growled, and forced himself to discipline. This was all very well, but it was nothing to do with his mission. He needed to know what Lurk was planning. He needed to find out some way to give the Moulders an advantage in the civil war that was tearing their fortified city apart before the oncoming horde managed to find a way to take advantage of the strife. He concentrated on Lurk. Immediately he had a sense of his treacherous former minion’s presence. The jewel Thanquol had forced upon Lurk long ago still served its function of linking them.

With the speed of thought, his point of view shifted. He was now in a vast chamber, looking down on a seething mass of determined and desperate-looking skaven. Most of them were not large. They were slaves, the lowest of the low in the hierarchy of skavendom, ratmen too weak and too stupid to claw their way to power like their betters. Their only strength lay in their numbers. Unfortunately those were great. Here and there throughout the crowd though were larger and better armed skaven. Thanquol did his best to quiet the rage that seethed within him. It was the skaven way. There were always those who changed sides whenever expediency dictated, aligning themselves with those they thought would come out on the winning side of any struggle. What alarmed Thanquol most was how many Moulders seemed to think this. There were even huge black-furred stormvermin in this crowd, and many warriors in the livery of the clan. Suddenly Thanquol understood why he was being given this chance to work his way back into favour with the elders. Somehow, impossible as it might seem, Lurk had managed to stage quite a successful little rebellion. More and more loyalist troops were swarming to his banner, and if the process continued their numbers would tip the balance of power in Lurk’s favour.

Briefly Grey Seer Thanquol paused to consider this. If so many were siding with his former minion, perhaps he should too. Or rather he should consider siding with those who were behind Lurk, for surely Lurk himself did not have the intelligence to be running the show. Somewhere out there a keen intelligence was masterminding this. Perhaps with suitable guidance from an experienced skaven like Thanquol, it could establish a new power base for itself and its loyal advisors here in Hell Pit.

Lurk stood on a high podium looking down on the masses. He was even bigger than Thanquol remembered. Now he was larger than a rat ogre by far, almost twice as tall as Felix Jaeger was, and far heavier. His long worm-like tail ended in a massive spiked club of bone. His eyes gleamed with red madness. Most frightening of all were the curling horns, so like Thanquol’s own, that protruded from the side of Lurk’s skull. It was true, he did bear an uncanny likeness to all the effigies of the Horned Rat that Thanquol had ever seen. Indeed he bore an uncanny likeness to the Horned Rat with whom Thanquol had communed in his initiation rituals. Could it be possible? Could the Rat God himself really have chosen Lurk as his emissary? Thanquol immediately dismissed the thought.

Impossible.

Lurk had begun to speak. ‘Oppressed skaven-brothers! Children of the Horned Rat! The hour of liberation is at hand. The Time of Changes is here.’

The Time of Changes? That was a familiar phrase. Thanquol wondered where he had heard it before.

‘The world is changing. The lowest shall become highest. The high shall be laid low. Thus my father, the Horned Rat has promised me.’

Thanquol’s heart almost stopped with outrage. His father? How dare that pitiful mutated excuse for a skaven make such blasphemous claims? The depths of his own feelings in this matter astonished Thanquol. Lurk was claiming a kinship to the greatest of gods even closer than that enjoyed by the grey seers. He was taking upon himself the mantle of a religious leader. Thanquol was surprised that the Horned Rat did not strike him down on the spot. Unless… No. It was impossible. There was no way that what Lurk claimed could be true.

‘Those of you who follow me will be rewarded big-big! Those who do not, or those who betray me, will be punished in ways that you cannot imagine. Except if you think about being peeled alive, over a very big, warpstone-fuelled bonfire while two clanrat torturers poke your musk glands with a red hot branding iron and then…’

Lurk went on to describe a range of tortures that were impressively imaginative and quite excruciating. Even at this distance Thanquol felt his musk glands tighten as he listened to the descriptions.

‘…up your back passage!’ finished Lurk.

Stunned silence ensued. Thanquol had to admit that Lurk appeared to have learned something from their long association. His oratory was certainly impressive, and succeeded in that most cherished of all skaven goals: inspiring fear in his minions.

‘Now, listen-listen!’ continued Lurk. ‘To succeed in our great crusade we must first take Hell Pit. To take Hell Pit we must seize control of the breeding vats and the council chambers as well as the warpstone refinery. To do this we will split our force into three.’

As Thanquol listened, Lurk outlined his plan. It was one of great boldness. It relied on speed, surprise and feints within feints. Thanquol knew he could barely have conceived of a better one himself, and that it would almost certainly succeed if Thanquol did not release its details to the elders of Moulder.

If.

Thanquol’s keen skaven mind considered his options. He knew there must be some way he could personally take advantage of the situation. Even as he did so, part of him wondered how or if his brutishly stupid minion could have come up with such a scheme. Surely so intricate and subtle a plan could not be Lurk’s own work? It could only be the work of an intellect almost as towering as Thanquol’s own. Thanquol began to consider how he could unearth the mastermind behind his minion.

Some vast treachery must be involved, he was certain. Who among his enemies was devious enough to subvert such a closely observed lackey as Lurk?

Lurk looked out at his followers and bathed in their adoration. It was only his due, he knew. Long years of hiding his light under a bushel, of failing to get the recognition that was rightfully his, were finally being made up for, and the taste was sweet. Lurk smiled, revealing his fangs and revelled in the cringing awe the gesture evoked. Surely this must be how his former so-called master, Grey Seer Thanquol, must have felt when he stood before the skaven army at Nuln. This was the feeling that in his secret heart every skaven craved.

Lurk filed the thought away for later consideration. He knew that with every day that passed he was becoming cleverer and cleverer. To his vastly powerful brain, it was obvious what was happening. As soon as his body had stopped mutating, his mind had started to. The process that had changed him from a small, but not unimpressive, skaven warrior, to a towering engine of destruction, was now starting to reshape his mind, changing him from an incredibly clever skaven to a being of god-like intellect.

To Lurk’s new greatly enhanced mind, this was a significant fact. His mind was being changed in the same way his body had been into a mirror-image of the Great Father of All Skavendom’s. And Lurk knew that this had happened for a reason. He knew it had happened because he was the chosen one, the one destined to be the new supreme leader of the skaven race, the being destined to lead them to a thousand-year reign of glory.

It was all so clear when you looked at it. It was obvious that the Horned Rat had chosen him for a reason. He knew that he was the Horned Rat’s anointed, his new prophet, the leader that all the skaven had been waiting for to unite them, and lead them to inevitable victory.

Of course, the visions helped. He had started having them back in the camp of the Chaos horde after he had spoken with those two strangely similar-looking human mages who had almost immediately recognised his near divinity. He remembered with something like fondness the way they had bowed before him in secret and then began chanting his praises in those almost hypnotic voices. He remembered how they had spoken to him respectfully, prevailing on him to continue to play the part of prisoner so that he could gain admittance to the citadels of his enemies and raise his own banner among them. They had told him that his mind was becoming stronger than any skaven’s just as his body had already become so. Soon, he thought, he would gain sorcerous powers greater than any grey seer’s, and then he would be the mightiest skaven who ever bestrode the face of this terrified world.

Even the foolish Moulders had recognised his uniqueness, his superiority. Had they not tried to imprison him within their vile alchemical laboratories? Had they not sought to learn the secrets of that which separated him from all other skaven?

He supposed he should thank them really. They had bathed him in those strange nutrient fluids and exposed him to ever greater amounts of warpstone dust. He could still remember how his flesh had tingled and his mind had gone blank. It was possible, but not really likely, that he had perhaps babbled and begged for mercy as they did so. He knew now that if he had, and he was not admitting to it, that it was merely a sign that his brainpower was increasing. Even then, he had known enough to deceive his enemies about his true nature and schemes, and lull them into a false sense of security, so that when the moment had come for him to effect his escape, he had been able to take his persecutors off-guard.

It was fortunate indeed that he had found the city already a seething cauldron of rebellion. Many of the skavenslaves believed that the increased size of the Chaos moon, Morrslieb, was a sign that something was about to happen. They believed the increasing number of warpstone meteors falling to earth in the region were a portent of mighty events to come. It had not taken much for him to convince them that he was the thing they portended, that his arrival was the event long foretold. They had swiftly flocked to his banner against the oppression of their Moulder masters. It was almost as if they had been forewarned, as if secret cabals had been preparing for just such an event for weeks. And why not, Lurk thought? He was the chosen of the Horned Rat; certainly there were those who must have been given foreknowledge of his coming.

At first he had been surprised that the grey seers had not prophesied his arrival, but his incredibly keen mind had soon provided him with the insight needed to understand what had happened. Contemplation of the nature of his former so-called master, Grey Seer Thanquol, had shown him the hideous truth. The grey seers were corrupt, they had failed the Horned Rat, and he had withdrawn his favour. They were no longer the true guardians of the skaven race. A new day had dawned, a new leader had emerged, one whose glorious reign would last a thousand years, at least. Today was the day of Lurk, once known as Snitchtongue, now known simply as Lurk the Magnificent.

Instantly he communicated this knowledge to the cabal of grovelling followers who surrounded him. Their worshipful squeaks of obeisance were music to his ears.

Today, Hell Pit, he thought – tomorrow the world!

FIVE

Felix looked down at the oncoming Chaos horde. It had grown no less terrifying in the last few days. It seemed to stretch as far as the horizon in every direction, and clouds of dust in the distance told of more and more troops arriving every day.

He raised the spyglass to his eye and studied the lines of the Chaos army. Their position was a strong one. Most of their camp was protected from attack by the curve of the river. Hordes of skin-clad barbarians worked frantically, erecting earthworks and excavating trenches facing the city. He could see lines of sharpened stakes jutting from the base of the earthen walls. The Chaos worshippers were taking no chances with the riders of Kislev sallying forth from Praag to engage them.

Over the past few days, hit and run raids by Kislevite horsemen had taken quite a toll on the attackers. A toll that was a mere drop in the ocean of their numbers but one that had been good for the morale of the defenders. Knowing many in the city shared the despair he felt at the sight of this massive force, Felix decided that those small victories were as important as food to the defenders.

What was worse was that, as the numbers of besiegers increased, the portents and omens had got worse. Apparitions were sighted nightly stalking the streets of the city. Last night in the White Boar, Felix had heard two drunken Tilean mercenaries describe how they had encountered the ghost of a headless woman in the street near their lodgings. Most outlanders had tried to dismiss it as a product of the cheap rotgut brandy the Tileans had been drinking, but the locals had merely nodded sagely and sadly and returned to their drinks. He supposed that a lifetime of familiarity with such apparitions might have helped inure the locals to their horror, but he knew he could never rest easy in a city where such things were relatively commonplace.

He wondered if the increasing number of apparitions had anything to do with the presence of the army outside the walls.

‘It might,’ said the familiar voice of Max Schreiber. Felix was surprised to realise he had spoken aloud. He was equally surprised to see Max here.

‘Max! What are you doing on the walls?’

‘Same thing as you, Felix. Looking at that army out there and wondering how we will survive this siege.’

Felix glanced around and was glad the nearest soldiers were five strides away. They might not have heard. Expressing such defeatist sentiments was not a popular thing to be heard doing in Praag these days. Felix shrugged. Max was the man doing the talking, not him.

‘You think these reports of apparitions in the streets are connected with that army out there?’

‘I am certain of it.’ A number of soldiers were looking on now. The conversation had all of their attention.

‘How? I thought I heard you say that the spell walls around the city are strong, and the power of Chaos cannot penetrate them.’

Max drew his gold and brown wizard’s robes tight around him. Today he had donned a strange pointed helmet-like hat, which towered over his head and made him look taller. The stubble on his face was beginning to look suspiciously like a beard. He leaned his full weight upon his staff, gazed thoughtfully out at the horde for a moment, and then spoke. ‘I said there was a connection. I did not say that those Dark worshippers out there were responsible.’

Felix looked at the wizard. Max was a friend, in his way, but he was still a magician, and they were sometimes inscrutable to mere mortals like him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean all of this is connected. The massive skaven attack on Nuln. The way Morrslieb has grown larger over the past years. The way the forces of Chaos are on the march. The increasing number of starfalls, mutations and magical mishaps. The way the ghosts are stirring in this city. It’s all part of the same thing.’

‘Are you saying the Powers of Chaos are behind all of these things, Max? You don’t have to be a great sorcerer to work that out.’

‘No, Felix. I mean that there’s a huge pattern here. It may be that there is some monstrous intelligence at work or it may be something different, something more akin to a natural phenomenon.’

‘I am not sure natural is the word I would choose to use under the circumstances.’

‘I mean something like the tides of the sea, or the turning of the seasons.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘Think of it this way, Felix. Magic is a force, like the wind or the rain or the tides. Sometimes it is strong. Sometimes it is weaker, but it is always there, just like the air we breathe. It permeates the world in which we live. Wizards call the flow of this energy the winds of magic.’

‘Yes. So?’

‘Perhaps there are seasons of magic like there are seasons of weather. Perhaps we are entering a season when the winds of magic blow stronger, and the power of magic increases. Perhaps that is what happened two hundred years ago.’

‘That’s a long season.’

‘Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Felix. You are a clever man. I know you understand an analogy when you hear one.’

Felix flinched at Max’s tone. He knew that the wizard was right. Perhaps his jealousy over Ulrika was making him want to pick an argument with the mage. ‘Fine. Go on,’ Felix said, a little sulkily.

‘The forces of Chaos are strongly associated with magic – perhaps their power waxes and wanes with these seasons. Perhaps this is the start of a time when they are stronger. And perhaps this same increase in energy is increasing the number of apparitions in Praag, and driving the skaven wild too.’

Felix considered the mage’s argument, turning it over in his mind. It was logical and it made a certain sense from whatever angle he looked at it, but that meant nothing. In the courtyards of Altdorf university Felix had heard learned scholars prove the most blatantly ludicrous theories through the rigorous application of logic. ‘It’s an interesting theory, Max, but I’ve heard other theories. There was a man outside the White Boar this morning shouting that this was the punishment of the gods for our sins, and that the end of the world was coming.’

Max smiled a little nastily. ‘These two theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive,’ he said. ‘What happened to this prophet?’

‘The town watch hit him over the head with clubs and dragged him away.’

‘My theory may not be quite so dangerous to your health in these times.’

‘It has that to recommend it, certainly,’ said Felix, turning his attention back to the Chaos horde. There seemed to be some sort of activity around the monstrous black pavilion that had been erected in the centre of the army.

From the hilltop, Ivan Petrovitch Straghov watched the horde of Chaos marauders march along the plain. March was the wrong word. It suggested a discipline that these wild tribesmen simply did not possess. Not that it mattered. They had the numbers, and they had their unshakeable faith in their dark gods. His long years as march boyar had given Ivan plenty of experience of their sort. These ones marched along under the banner of the Skinless Man.

‘There must be a thousand of them at least, Lord Ivan,’ muttered Petrov. Ivan turned and looked at his youngest lancer. The boy was barely more than fifteen but his eyes were those of a much older man. Dark shadows had gathered below them, and his face was creased by fatigue, too much riding and too little food.

‘Careful, lad. Remember a retreating man counts every foe twice. Let’s not make things out to be worse than they are.’ Ivan kept his voice cheerful and confident but he did not feel that way himself. It was possible that the boy’s estimate was a good one. It looked like the Wastes had disgorged their entire tainted population. For two days now Ivan and his men had been encountering their scouts, big fur-clad men who spoke a harsh tongue, their skins stained by the stigmata of early mutation or strange Chaos rune tattoos. It was not good to find so many of them so far south. They were not even part of the great Chaos army, Ivan guessed, just tribesmen driven by some dark inner urge to come south and plunder. Not that it mattered. There were enough to tell him something big was happening. In the past few days, he had encountered warriors bearing the tattoos of Scar Raiders, Ice Marauders and Blood Screamers. It looked like every tribe in the Wastes was heading south.

His riders took up position along the brow of the ridge. They were making themselves plainly visible, hoping to taunt the marauders into coming at them. In the centre of the barbarian mass, a white-haired ancient carrying a skull-tipped staff that marked him as a shaman exhorted the tribesmen to attack. Ivan waited confidently. While the Chaos worshippers wasted time ploughing up the slope, they would be subjected to a rain of arrows, and a host of flank attacks by the reserves Ivan had kept out of sight behind the hill. The tribesmen would most likely fall for it. Many of them would die. It was a small consolation to him, but it was one, knowing that he was making them pay in blood for every pace they marched into Kislev.

At that moment, the thunder of hooves behind them got Ivan’s attention. He turned to see two of his men escorting a blue-cloaked rider up the hill. Ivan smiled, recognising the tall white-haired man at once. It was Radek Lazlo, one of the Ice Queen’s couriers.

‘Well met, Radek!’ Ivan bellowed. ‘You’re just in time to see me and the lads kill some more Chaos scum.’

‘Much as I would enjoy that,’ said Radek, a cold smile twisting his thin lips, ‘I don’t have time. Neither do you. The Ice Queen commands your presence at Mikal’s Ford. The Gospodar Host is mustering there.’

Ivan considered the courier’s words. Mikal’s Ford was a week’s hard riding away but it was much closer than the Host would be if it had not received some warning of the impending invasion. That must mean that Ulrika had got through!

‘We will ride. What of you? Will you accompany us?’

‘No. I must keep moving through these lands bringing the word to any other march lords who I can find.’

Ivan shook his head wonderingly. Radek had been given a near suicidal task, riding alone through these over-run lands. ‘I can detail a lance of my lads to accompany you,’ he offered.

‘No. The tzarina needs every spear at the Ford. I tell you, Ivan, in all my years I have never seen anything like this.’

‘It gets worse,’ Ivan said. ‘We have come from the north. I swear it seems like the very gates of Hell have been opened. It will be the Great War all over again before we are done, mark my words.’

‘You’re not reassuring me, old friend,’ Radek said, casting his eye on the tribesmen advancing towards the hill. He could gauge the distance as well as any of Ivan’s men, and knew they still had some time left for their discussions.

‘Any word of my daughter?’

‘I saw her briefly at court. It was she who gave the Ice Queen word of the invasion. She arrived on that great flying ship of the dwarfs.’

Parental pride touched Ivan’s heart. ‘She rides with the Host then?’

Radek shook her head. ‘No, lord. She accompanied the dwarfs to Praag.’

‘That’s right in the path of the invasion. The Chaos worshippers always strike the great fortress there first.’

‘Aye, old friend, it is. But your path lies south now, to Mikal’s Ford and war. Do not worry. Doubtless the Ice Queen’s first move will be to relieve the city.’

Briefly love and duty warred within Ivan and he considered riding directly to Praag. His only child would be in danger there. Yet he knew there was little he could do to aid her, and there was no way his small force of lancers could do anything but die, if it encountered the main strength of the Chaos horde at the city. It made more sense to join the muster and then ride with the full armed might of Kislev to the rescue of the capital. Part of him feared, though, that even that mighty army would not be enough to defeat what they now faced.

He sighed quietly to himself, then gave the command to his warriors. ‘To Mikal’s Ford. We ride!’

As one, with disciplined precision the lancers and horse archers turned and trotted down the hill. Behind them the disappointed howling of the wild tribesmen sounded like the cries of hungry wolves.

Outside night gathered, bringing with it the chill. The streets were filled with marching men and drilling troops. Down here, the cellar was dark and warm and quiet. A single lantern illuminated the cowled and cloaked figures meeting in secret to discuss the fate of the city. The man known to his four fellow conspirators as Halek looked around, knowing that if he were found here by the witch hunters, not even his exalted position would save him. Death by fire would be the most merciful fate he could expect.

He told himself that there was no chance of that happening. He was within the home of one of the wealthiest merchants in Praag, doubtless one of the other masked men sitting around the table. Or perhaps not, perhaps it was simply one of the man’s servants. Only the High Priest of the Great Mutator, sitting at the head of the table, the man who had recruited them all, would know for certain.

Why am I here, he asked himself? How did it come to this? What started off as a search for knowledge had ended up with him sitting here surrounded by the enemies of Man. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was one of those enemies now. There were no excuses for what he had become, not here in Praag, probably not anywhere. He tried to reassure himself. At least he had picked the winning side.

It was obvious to any with eyes to see that there could only be one victor in the coming battle. The Powers of Chaos would prove too strong for Praag, just as they would prove too strong for the world. They were destined to inherit the earth. Chaos was like death or time; in the end it would always triumph, eroding its foes over the long years.

As the High Priest droned on with the opening invocations, Halek forced himself to control his thoughts. Such thinking was dangerous, close to madness. He was enough of a scholar to know that there had been setbacks, sometimes on the heels of great triumphs. It might not matter to the four Great Powers whether victory came now, or in several centuries, but it would matter to him. The penalty for failure now was death, or worse than death, since his masters were not kind to the souls of those who failed them. It was all very well convincing yourself of the inevitable victory of Chaos, but it was all rather pointless if you were not around to enjoy the fruits of that victory. He smiled behind his simple cloth mask. It helped to keep things in perspective.

Here in Praag just two centuries ago, mere weeks after the city had fallen, the forces of the so-called Ruinous Powers had been thrown back into the Wastes by the forces of Magnus the Pious. How his fellow Kislevites liked to boast about that. How truly characteristic of them, and how truly stupid. They could not take the long view, as he could. They could not see that it did not matter whether Chaos was thrown back once, or a hundred times. It always returned, and returned stronger. He knew that it was in part despair at this knowledge that had eventually made him decide to throw in his lot with Chaos. That and the fact that he had already gotten in too deep to get safely out. By the time he had realised that the society he had joined was not simply another secret fellowship devoted to the pursuit of alchemical and mystical knowledge, it had been too late. He knew his fellow cultists would kill him rather than let him go free. And there was nothing he could do to them without exposing himself to the world for what he was. It would have made no difference what he did. They were already too strong to be defeated. No, the best thing he could do was what he had done, stick with the cult of the Changer of Ways, and do his best to rise within it.

What heart would not leap at the prospect of sharing the spoils of that triumph? All his life, Halek, close to the seat of power but not on it, had coveted power. And temporal power was the least of what the Lord Tzeentch offered. The promises included so much more: life eternal, and not in some dull fairytale hereafter, but here and now in this sweet mortal realm. Power over the forces of magic. The ability to fulfil any and all of your desires, no matter how dark or depraved society deemed them to be.

Not that Halek was one of those weaklings drawn by that promise. He desired to serve the Lord Tzeentch for the simple reason that the god would reward him with knowledge and satisfy his curiosity about all things. And allow him to live through the coming end of the world as he knew it, he added sourly. All he had to do was betray those who loved and trusted him. He tried to control his bitterness. Those people would not love or trust him for one heartbeat if they knew he was here, or knew of the stigma of mutation that had started to appear on his body. There was no way he could conceal them for much longer. This invasion had come at the right time for him. Another few months and he would have had to flee the city anyway.

The prayers and invocations that would seal the chamber against prying sorcery ended, and the true business of the meeting proceeded. Halek looked at the other four men around the table, all swathed in their bulky robes, and listened to what they had to say.

‘The Time of Changes approaches, brothers,’ said the one known as Alrik, their leader. He had a coarse accent like a common merchant, but Halek knew that he was anything but a brutish commoner. His wits were keen, his intellect swift. If Halek had to guess, he would have said that Alrik was a man who the world had refused to acknowledge, who after what he would have called the accident of his lowly birth had found in Lord Tzeentch the way to advance himself.

‘Are all things in readiness?’ asked the one called Karl. Halek recognised the accents of the nobility there. Karl was of the same class as himself. He had often grumbled within hearing of the others about injustices done to him by the damn duke, and how he would make him pay. Karl was in this for vengeance. It was a simple understandable motive. Halek thought if Karl ever moved directly against the duke, he would kill him. He was not sure whether this was because he wanted to spare the duke or kill him himself. His relationship with the ruler had always been a complex one.

‘You would know as well as I, brothers,’ said Alrik. ‘If all your cells have done their work, we are ready.’

Each of the men here was in charge of his own cell of cultists, whose members were known only to him. It meant that, in the unlikely event of any of them falling into the clutches of witch hunters, they could only betray those people they knew from their own cells. It was ingenious, but then such was the way of Lord Tzeentch. Khorne, the Blood God, might rely on brute strength but the followers of the Changer of the Ways preferred to use their intelligence. All of them knew that one well-placed conspirator could be more dangerous than a hundred men with swords.

‘Mine certainly have,’ lisped the man called Victor. His accent was that of an outlander, Bretonnian perhaps. Or it might just be a cunning ruse, designed to keep anyone here from suspecting his true identity. Halek had known Victor long enough to understand how his devious mind worked. Victor was one of those who liked convoluted things for the sake of convolution. He liked to plot and scheme just for the sake of it. He was a natural follower of the Prince of Schemers.

‘Halek?’ the high priest asked.

‘The poison is ready. It can be distributed any night.’

‘Are you sure it is necessary for us to go over this?’ Damien said suspiciously. ‘It is surely for the best if all of us know only what we need to know.’

‘The Great Day approaches,’ Alrik said. ‘We cannot afford any of our people to be at cross-purposes.’

Halek smiled behind his mask. He understood what Alrik meant. It was not uncommon for their various groups to interfere in each other’s plots. Sometimes it was accidental. Sometimes it was not. He knew each of the men present spent as much time trying to keep tabs on the others as they did on Lord Tzeentch’s business. It was one of the hazards of what they did. All were rivals for their lord’s favour, just as much as they were enemies of society at large.

‘Must we bicker like this always,’ Halek said. ‘We all serve Lord Tzeentch. We are all trustworthy here.’ He was sure Alrik caught the irony in his voice. He was not so sure about the others.

‘Some of us are more diligent in our lord’s service than others, and more careful,’ Damien said nastily.

‘It could have happened to anybody,’ said Karl defensively, taking Damien’s remark personally. He was a fool, he should have just ignored the bait. Men like Damien thrived on any revealed weakness. ‘Even the clumsiest of witch hunters gets lucky sometimes.’

‘It’s funny how they always get lucky with members of your cell,’ said Damien. ‘We were lucky that we managed to silence our sister before she could speak. Perhaps next time our lord will not be so kind to us.’

Halek had ensured that Katrin had been silenced. He had not known that she was part of Karl’s cell, it had been simple caution that made him ensure that one brought to the duke’s dungeons who might really be a sister was silenced. Silence filled the chamber for a moment.

‘I have received word from outside of a task that needs to be carried out,’ Alrik said. All of them glanced at him with renewed interest. They knew what was meant by ‘outside’. The high priest had been in communication with the leader of the army out there. Halek would have given a lot to know how that communication had been achieved. Not by magic, he was sure, he had heard often enough that the spell walls of Praag were unbreachable, and he believed it to be true. Perhaps messengers came and went by secret ways, or by pigeon or bat, or perhaps those outside communicated through dreams. Halek dismissed this idle speculation, and listened to what Alrik had to say.

‘There are present in this city two warriors who have interfered in our lord’s plans before, albeit unknowingly. He would ensure that this does not happen again, and he would be certain that their previous interference is rewarded with death.’

Halek had a feeling he knew who was going to be mentioned, and he was not disappointed.

‘This pair, a dwarf and a man, are deadly foes, and they bear weapons of considerable power. More than that, they seem blessed by the other Powers, who are ranged against our master. He will reward any who slays them, and he will doubly reward any who present those weapons to him. Their names are Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger. It is your appointed task to see that they do not live out this week. Halek, I would like you to see to this personally, but should the opportunity arise to kill these men, any of you must take it.’

Halek pushed away his qualms. He had never much cared for murder but needs must when daemons drive. In a way, it was a pity. He had liked young Jaeger when he had met him but he was not going to allow that fact to stand in the way of his personal immortality. What could the pair possibly have done to arouse the enmity of their lord, he wondered?

The meeting degenerated, into petty political squabbles and discussions of logistics. Halek could not wait for it to end.

Arek leaned forward on his huge throne, his massive helmeted head rested on one iron gauntleted fist, which in turn rested on the arm of the throne. He was not in a good mood. The vision his mages had granted him, combined with his impatience for the siege to begin, had not put him in the best of tempers. He glared balefully down at the Champion of Nurgle, hating the man with a bitter passion. He had never cared for the festering followers of the Lord of Pestilence.

‘I tell you, great Warlord, it will work, or my name is not Bubar Stinkbreath. The magic of great Nurgle will give you certain victory.’ The man, if you could still apply that word to a human form that was a walking pestilence of buboes, sounded far too pleased with himself for Arek’s liking.

‘Our victory is already certain,’ Arek said. ‘That pitiful city cannot resist the might of my horde!’

‘Meaning no disrespect, great Warlord, but why throw away troops assaulting those huge walls when Nurgle’s way is so much easier and faster. Why not let plague slay your enemies and pestilence reduce their defence to nothing?’

Discontented rumblings filled the air. Bubar’s words had not pleased the other warleaders. All were keen to have some share in the glory of reducing Praag, a city which had long held a special place of enmity in the heart of every Chaos worshipper. If Bubar really could do what he claimed, their victory would be a hollow one, and any glory gained would be a sham. Still, Arek had to admit, the nasty-smelling, grossly obese man had a point. There was a world out there to be conquered. Why wait any longer than he had to, in order to take it?

In the distance he could hear the sound of sawing and hammering as the northern tribesmen began to build their enormous battering rams, weapons that might prove unnecessary if what Bubar claimed was true. Arek swatted away one of the flies that buzzed up from the plague worshipper and thought for a moment. In one ear Kelmain Blackstaff whispered. ‘Let him try it, great Warlord. What have you got to lose?’

What indeed? thought Arek. All the construction would continue as Bubar worked on his rituals. No time need be lost if the Nurgleite failed. And if he succeeded weeks might be gained. Those might be important weeks with winter fast approaching.

‘Very well, Bubar Stinkbreath. Conduct your rituals. Spread the plague.’

Bubar bowed. The buzzing of the cloud of flies surrounding him increased a hundredfold. ‘Thank you, great warlord. You will not regret this.’

‘See that I do not,’ Arek said as he rose from his throne and retired within his pavilion.

‘You’ve been here all day, manling,’ said Gotrek Gurnisson. He leaned on the wall and stared at the camp of the Chaos worshippers. Felix tore his gaze away from the assembled horde, and looked at the Slayer.

‘Yes. Did Max tell you I was here?’

‘Aye.’

‘What brings you here?’

‘I wanted to look upon our enemies and take their measure.’ Gotrek fell into moody silence. Felix glanced out into the gloom, and looked upon the horde once more. Just the sight of it filled him with many questions.

Where had all those warriors come from? He had always known that the Chaos Wastes were full of enemies but he had never guessed that they could have supported an army on anything like this scale. As well as horror, the army inspired a kind of appalling wonder. At this distance the sound of the horde was like the breaking of ocean waves. Occasionally chanting or the screams of tortured victims could be heard above the bellows of beastmen and the shouts of evil men.

Felix could see massive siege towers starting to rise in the enemy ranks. Hundreds of fur-clad barbarians swarmed over the huge black iron war engines, assembling them from parts brought on monster-drawn wagons. Massive scaffolds were erected around them. The engines looked more like statues of great daemons than siege machines. They were covered in hideous ironwork, leering daemonic faces. Rams like the fists of evil gods protruded from their bellies. These mighty towers looked as if they might overbear the walls. It was not a reassuring sight.

Massive catapults, long-armed trebuchets taller even than the towers, were starting to tower above the massed horde. Long low-wheeled rams lay beside them.

‘Somebody out there knows what they are doing,’ said Felix.

‘Aye, manling,’ replied Gotrek. ‘This is an attack long prepared for. This is not the work of some warlord who simply decided to come south with his followers.’

‘Even the host that faced Magnus the Pious was not this well-organised.’

‘No, but it was even more numerous, and the power of Chaos itself waxed stronger then. The raw stuff of the Wastes flowed over Praag and changed the very buildings and people.’

Felix considered this for a minute, and looked up at the moons. Morrslieb, the Chaos moon, was larger than ever. It shimmered with an evil greenish light. Who knew what was going to happen? Perhaps the full power of Chaos had not yet been sent forth. Perhaps this army, with all its hellish weaponry and evil soldiers, was but a foretaste of what was to come. In the dreadful light, looking on that vast host, it looked all too possible to Felix that the end of the world was coming.

Already in the streets, people whispered that the dread Lords of Chaos were soon going to manifest themselves. Not all the fury of the witch hunters had managed to quiet these rumours. This was not the only manifestation of religious mania. Zealots had begun to take to the streets scourging themselves with whips till the blood flowed down their backs in penance for their sins and the sins of mankind. Once Felix would have thought it was a kind of madness but now he wondered if there was any sane response to that huge army out there, and the evil it represented.

‘What’s that?’ Gotrek asked suddenly. Felix looked in the direction he pointed. A crowd of weary, ragged beggars was emerging from the body of the host. They were being driven forward by a group of obese men in soiled, cowled robes. The drivers leaned on huge skull-tipped staffs whose eyes glowed greenly in the gloom. Even from this distance, Felix caught a whiff of their foul scent and almost gagged. It was an odour of rot and corruption worse than anything he had encountered since he fought the plague monks of Clan Pestilens in the gardens of Morr in Nuln.

‘I don’t know,’ said Felix, ‘but I am willing to bet it’s nothing good.’

As the crowd of beggars approached, Felix could hear their pitiful weeping. Save us. Help us. Have mercy on us. The cries were heart rending, and never for a moment did Felix doubt their sincerity. Even as he watched the robed slave drivers began to back away, and the beggars raced towards the walls of Praag. Open the gates! Let us in! Don’t leave us in the hands of these daemon worshippers!

Even as they raced forward, their cries were answered but not in the way Felix would have expected. Archers on the walls opened fire. Arrows whined through the air, piercing the bodies of the leading fugitives. Some of them stopped and shrieked; others continued on, towards inevitable death from missile fire.

‘What are they doing?’ Felix asked, appalled.

‘It’s some devilish trick, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘These Kislevites are responding to it in the only way possible.’

He sounded as if he approved of the slaughter. Even as Felix watched the last of the fugitives was cut down. The only response from the Chaos host was cruel laughter. ‘What was that all about?’ Felix asked.

‘Doubtless tomorrow will reveal all,’ said Gotrek. ‘Come, it’s time to go and get a drink – if there’s any decent ale to be had in this city.

Tomorrow did indeed reveal what had happened. The bodies of the fugitives had swollen and turned black overnight. Through the spyglass Felix saw with horror that the bodies of the beggars were marked with the signs of disease. Massive blisters full of pus were raised off their skin. The smell was awful. Felix covered his nose. He did not know if there was any truth in the idea that plagues could be spread by their stench but he was not taking any chances.

‘The guards did the right thing,’ Gotrek said. ‘Letting those refugees in would have brought the plague here. This is Nurgle’s work. The followers of the Plague Lord did this.’

‘But that must mean they were probably just innocent peasants, captured when the Chaos horde advanced,’ Felix said with a shudder.

‘Aye,’ Gotrek replied darkly. ‘Most likely.’

‘This is a most ignoble way of fighting a war,’ said Felix.

‘Take your complaints to them, manling,’ said Gotrek pointing out into the sea of Chaos scum. ‘They are the ones doing it, not me.’

Felix could hear the anger in the dwarf’s voice. Gotrek was no happier about this than he was. Another thought occurred to him. The guards, too, must know that they shot down some of their innocent kinsfolk. It was all part of a simple ploy to help break down the morale of the defenders. And Felix knew that it would most likely work. Plague was a thing against which there was no defence.

‘What can we do?’ Felix asked.

‘I will get Snorri and some of the lads and we’ll haul the bodies away for burning.’

‘You might get the plague too then,’ said Felix.

‘Dwarfs don’t suffer human diseases, manling. We’re too tough for it.’

Felix sincerely hoped he was correct.

The White Boar was packed. The dwarfs all sat apart in one corner. No one was speaking to them, since they had come back from burning the bodies at the gate. No one wanted to take the chance of catching the plague. Felix, Max and Ulrika were the only people who would even take a table by them. If the dwarfs were offended, they gave no sign. Well, they were all Slayers, Felix thought, they probably didn’t see anything unusual in people avoiding them.

‘I can’t wait for the Chaos warriors to attack,’ bellowed Ulli. ‘I am going to kill at least a hundred of them.’

The other Slayers looked at the youth with mild incredulity. He did not seem to notice but just kept on boasting. ‘I will chop them to bits! Then I’ll jump up and down on the pieces.’

‘Snorri doesn’t see much point,’ said Snorri drunkenly. ‘They’ll be dead by then.’

‘You can never tell with Chaos worshippers!’ Ulli shouted. ‘They have all those magical powers.’

‘You’d be an expert on that,’ Gotrek said with heavy irony.

‘No! I just know what my old granddad used to say about Chaos worshippers. He was here in Praag. The last time they attacked.’

A murmur of disbelief rose from the other tables. Ulli’s shouts were too loud to be ignored by anyone in the bar. It wasn’t crowded enough for the general hubbub to drown him out.

‘Is that possible?’ Ulrika asked in a low voice. Felix nodded. It certainly was. Before he could say anything more, Max spoke eagerly.

‘Yes. Dwarfs live far longer than most humans. They are different from us. Even an average dwarf can live to be 250 years old quite easily. There are records of some dwarfs reaching 400, and legends of some of them living for over a millennium.’

‘I doubt any of those dwarfs will live to be two centuries old,’ Felix said sourly. ‘They are all Slayers.’

Max looked at Felix with a superior smile that he was starting to resent. ‘In that case, Felix,’ he said pedantically, ‘they will be the exception rather than the rule. I believe dwarfs suffer far less from disease than us, and the effects of ageing only appear to make them stronger and hardier for a long time. It is only in the very last stages of their lives that they begin to show any signs of decrepitude.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Felix, reaching over and squeezing Ulrika’s hand just to annoy him.

A frown passed over Max’s face. Ulrika withdrew her hand. It was Felix’s turn to be annoyed. He wondered if she understood what was going on, was even, perhaps, in some ways encouraging it. The frown vanished from Max’s brow.

‘You’ve heard of longbeards. They’re the toughest dwarf warriors,’ Max said. Perhaps it was the beer, but his tone was starting to annoy Felix unreasonably.

‘Believe me, I have travelled long enough with Gotrek to be more familiar with the nature of longbeards than most men.’

Max nodded, seeming to accept this. Felix noticed he wasn’t drinking. In fact, Felix had not seen him drink since they had left Karak Kadrin. ‘Would you like some wine, Max?’ he asked. ‘I can order you some. I’ll pay.’

‘No thanks,’ Max said. ‘I don’t drink any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘It interferes with my magical abilities.’

‘That’s a pity. Still, we’re going to need those abilities soon.’

‘We’re going to need every man who can wield a blade soon too. That army is not going to stand back forever.’

Suddenly the doors of the White Boar crashed open. A gang of very marked, very nasty-looking men entered. They were all wearing stained white tabards with the sign of an eye. White hoods were flung back from their faces. Their leader was a tall, gaunt fanatical-looking man.

‘Why is this licentiousness continuing?’ he bellowed. There was a brief silence and then some of the mercenaries at the tables started asking each other what ‘licentiousness’ meant. This only seemed to enrage the fanatic more.

‘The armies of Chaos stand beyond our gates. They are poised to sweep over the lands of men with fire and sword and yet here we find men drinking, whoring and gambling and engaging in every form of vice.’

As he spoke his burning eyes came to rest on Ulrika. Her face flushed. Her hand went to the hilt of her sword. Felix could understand. She did not like being mistaken for a tavern wench.

‘Get lost!’ Ulli bellowed.

‘Can’t you see Snorri has some serious drinking to do?’ shouted Snorri.

‘And I have a couple of these wenches to bounce,’ Bjorni added, a wicked leer contorting his repulsively ugly face.

‘Silence, subhuman scum!’ bellowed the witch hunter. ‘You are in league with the foul daemons beyond.’

Felix shook his head, knowing only too well what was about to happen. There was a brief appalled silence from the Slayers’ table. The dwarfs all glanced at one another as if unable to believe anyone would be stupid enough to insult them in this fashion. Felix could not quite believe anyone could be that stupid himself. Oh well, this loud-mouthed fanatic and his bully boys were going to learn the hard way.

‘I suggest you leave now,’ said Max rising from the table, and clutching his staff. It was obvious to all that he was a wizard. Being ordered to go by a mage was not a thing calculated to calm a Kislevite bigot, Felix judged. If anything, Max’s attempt to calm things was somewhat akin to trying to put out a fire by pouring oil on it.

‘Take this daemon-loving wretch outside and teach him a lesson,’ the witch hunter shouted. Felix wasn’t feeling too fond of Max at the moment but he was not about to let that happen. Max had been a comrade on many dangerous adventures. Felix stood up, and put his hand on his sword hilt too.

‘Why don’t you head out the main gate?’ he suggested softly. ‘You’ll find plenty of Chaos worshippers there. You’re rather too quick with your accusations in here for my liking.’

‘And who are you to speak so knowledgeably about the Darkness?’ asked the leader of the witch hunters. He looked closely at Felix and then at Gotrek. He seemed to recognise them. It was hardly surprising. They had become very well known since the fight at the gate. Still, there was something in this recognition that Felix did not like.

‘Who are you to be asking my name?’ countered Felix.

‘His name is Ulgo,’ Ulrika said softly. ‘I have seen him before.’

‘And why have you been spying on me, slut?’ asked Ulgo nastily. Something had hardened in the man’s attitude. He seemed determined to provoke a fight.

Felix was tired of this now. He was tired of these men who obviously did not have enough enemies to fight outside the city. ‘Get out!’ he said. ‘The laughter of the Dark Ones will be your only reward if you start a fight in here. We are all enemies of Chaos here.’

‘That remains to be proven,’ Ulgo pronounced with the blazing certainty of the fanatic. He drew his blade. ‘Take them outside and burn them,’ he told his men. The bully boys looked only too pleased with this order. They drew their weapons too.

‘If you are not out of here by the time I count to three, you will all die,’ said Gotrek. Even Felix was shocked by the menace in his voice. The Slayer was as angry as Felix had ever seen him, and was obviously not in the mood to put up with these fanatics. ‘One.’

‘You cannot tell me what to do, Chaos lover,’ said Ulgo, brandishing his blade menacingly.

‘Two,’ said Gotrek. He ran his thumb along the blade of his axe. A bead of bright red blood appeared. Looking at his squat muscular form, the witch hunters behind Ulgo began to get nervous. Ulgo obviously did not realise his peril. He strode forward to loom over Gotrek menacingly. His sword was drawn back to strike. Here was a man too foolish to live, thought Felix. One who was more used to intimidating people than to being intimidated.

‘Don’t think you frighten me, I’ll–’ Ulgo began to lunge forward.

‘Three.’

The axe flashed forward.

Ulgo’s head rolled on the floor. Blood spattered everywhere. Droplets of it landed in Felix’s beer.

Gotrek sprang lightly over the corpse and moved towards the doorway. The remaining witch hunters turned and fled. Deathly silence fell over the tavern.

‘You probably should not have done that,’ said Felix.

‘He interrupted my drinking, manling. And I gave him fair warning.’

‘I hope the city watch thinks the same way as you do.’

‘The city watch have better things to do.’ The Slayer stooped and picked up the corpse of the dead witch hunter. Effortlessly he threw it across his shoulders, and made his way to the door, kicking the head in front of him as he went. As he strode out into the darkness, Felix found himself thinking, there’s another one who does not care how many enemies he makes. Felix did not doubt that after this night they would have many enemies inside the city themselves. Witch hunters were not usually partial to those who killed their leaders. Gotrek returned.

‘It’s your round, Snorri,’ he said. ‘And hurry it up. Killing loudmouths is thirsty work.’

A barmaid had already thrown sawdust on the blood. Half a dozen customers departed, doubtless to make reports to whomever they thought would pay them most for the information. Once again, Felix found himself wondering why he had ever come to this place.

Gotrek slumped down at his table. ‘Interesting,’ he said.

‘What’s interesting?’ Felix asked.

‘The loudmouth’s head was not the only one in the street.’

‘What?’

‘It seems our daemon-worshipping friends outside the city are firing the severed heads of their prisoners over the walls. Corpses too.’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘Tomorrow will doubtless tell us more, manling. Right now I want my beer.’

Felix was getting a little sick of being told that tomorrow he would find out more, but there did not seem to be much he could do about it. He shook his head. He noticed that Max was giving him a troubled look.

‘What is it?’ Felix asked.

‘That witch hunter seemed in an awful hurry to pick a fight.’

‘That sort always is.’

‘Yes, but why with Gotrek?’

Felix could not answer that question.

SIX

The stink made Felix sick. He had seen plagues before. He had seen the horror of a city besieged before. In Nuln, the dead had fallen in the streets where they lay from diseases bred by the foul Plague Monks of Clan Pestilens. But he had never quite witnessed anything like this. It was as Gotrek said. The Chaos forces were firing corpses over the walls using those monstrous trebuchets and catapults they had built. The bodies fell from hundreds of feet, and, already bloated and rotten exploded on impact with the cobbles sending great belches of corpse gas and pus everywhere, leaving yellowing bones and skulls exposed to sight.

What manner of being could fight a war in this fashion, Felix wondered, as he made his way through the haunted streets towards the White Boar? In all his reading, he had never even seen hints of this foul tactic. Yet he knew it was an effective one. People were vomiting and retching at the sight of the corpses. Worse, some of them were starting to cough. Felix knew that this was just the first, and doubtless the least, symptom of what was to follow. Already rumours of plague were everywhere.

He glanced over at Ulrika. She too looked grim. Of course their surroundings would depress a drunken jester. Praag was not a cheerful city at the best of times. The architecture was sombre. Horned gargoyles clutched the eaves of buildings. Hideous leering faces were carved on the walls, mementoes of the long war fought two centuries ago against the forebears of the army that now waited outside the gate. And there was worse. There was an atmosphere of brooding gloom, that seemed to have intensified with the presence of the Chaos horde, that responded to it being there. Sometimes out of the corner of his eye, Felix thought he saw strange shapes moving in doorways, in alleyways, across roofs. Whenever he looked though, there was nothing there. He was left with the sense that something had just ducked out of sight, but he could never quite see what it was.

He smiled at Ulrika. She did not smile back. Her face was pale and drawn. She coughed. She was like the city, becoming gloomier by the day. It was like sharing a bed with a stranger these days. They did not seem to be able to find anything to talk about. They could not find much joy in anything. And yet, every time he thought about ending things, he could not. It was as if he were tied with invisible chains.

He understood she was worried. Under the circumstances who would not be? Both their lives were in danger. And, bad as it was for him, this must be harder for her. Her whole life had been uprooted. Her father was missing. Her country was invaded. She was threatened by plague and dark sorcery as well as with slaughter. It was not quite the same for him. He shook his head and almost laughed.

He was starting to realise how much he had changed during his wanderings with Gotrek. He was afraid, but his terror was a controlled thing, bubbling along just beneath the surface of his consciousness. The rest of his life was pretty much business as usual, as his father might have described it. Years of wandering had left him inured to hardship and hunger. The experience of dozens of dangerous adventures left him able to ignore the danger they were in until the very last moment. He had learned a little about pushing worries away until a time when they could be dealt with. Even the plague did not terrify him quite as much as it might once have done. He had survived plagues before, and somehow, he expected to survive this one as well.

In any case, he told himself, whether he worried about it or not, it would make little difference. If it was his destiny to die of plague, he would rather not know it, at least until he had to. Part of him knew that he was kidding himself. Deep in his brain part of him was all too aware of what was going on, and did worry about it, but right at this moment, he found he could ignore it.

‘Under the circumstances you seem unnaturally cheerful,’ said Ulrika.

They entered the main square, just outside the inner wall. This was still a place of business where dozens of merchant stalls could be found selling everything from leather goods to food. Only now soldiers of the ducal guard were doling out rations of corn to the poor, a leather cup the size of a small tankard going to each person. They carried it away in jugs, sacks, or rolled up bits of cloth. Felix could not help but notice that not all of those present looked poor. Some wore the clothes of artisans or merchants. The guard turned most of these away unless coin changed hands which it quite often did. Felix shrugged. Everybody had to eat. These people were most likely only doing their best for their families. Perhaps he should do the same. That was the way his father would look at these things, he thought.

‘It’s a lovely morning and we are still alive,’ he said. It was true too. The sky overhead was a perfect blue, almost untouched by cloud. The cool was more pleasant than the stifling blast of high summer. If you could ignore the stink of decomposing bodies it brought, the breeze was almost refreshing.

‘Make the most of it,’ said Ulrika, coughing. ‘Winter comes quickly here.’

‘You are a ray of sunshine today, aren’t you.’

‘It is our main hope,’ she said as if answering the question of a fool.

‘Why?’

‘Winter in Kislev is fierce. It is not a time to be outside the gates of a city. It is a time to be indoors, beside a fire, with plenty of provisions.’

There was something about her tone that goaded him, as he guessed she intended. ‘Perhaps Warlord Arek and his minions intend to be inside the walls by then, warming their hands on the burning buildings.’

‘Now who is not being cheerful?’

‘Watch out below!’ Felix leapt to one side to avoid being splattered by the contents of a chamber pot being emptied into the street. His leap almost carried him into a dung heap. He rocked back on his heels and nearly overbalanced. Ulrika caught him by the shoulder and laughed.

‘Perhaps you should have been a tumbler, or a clown,’ she suggested. Her tone was friendlier than it had been in days.

‘Perhaps,’ he said. They turned the corner and the apothecary’s shop was just ahead. Felix recognised it by the sign of the mortar and pestle hanging over the door. Even if he had not the long queue of glum-looking people outside would have been a give-away. The plague had made everybody worried about their health. Felix groaned. The last thing he wanted today was to be standing in a long line of folk waiting to be served.

‘Why can’t Max get his own herbs?’ he asked plaintively.

‘Max has other things to do. He needs to prepare his magic. To protect us all from the plague.’

‘I have other things to do as well.’

‘Like drink, you mean?’ Her tone told him she was not about to accept any argument. He was starting to wish he had never offered to accompany her on this errand. Still, after the events of last night it seemed like a good idea. The witch hunter’s friends might come back, looking for vengeance. Not that Gotrek or any of the other Slayers were too worried by the prospect.

So far, he had to admit that their attitude seemed well justified. The authorities did not appear at all bothered by the death of one man amid so many, and Ulgo’s companions had not come back seeking vengeance. But it was early days yet.

They joined the line of people outside the apothecary’s. All of them seemed to be coughing or scratching or somewhat the worse for wear. Felix hoped that they were not already going down to the plague magic. Somehow he knew that the plague was only the beginning of their troubles.

He wondered what new deviltry the Chaos worshippers were working on.

Arek inspected the walls. As far as he could see there were no changes. The defenders still waited, weapons ready. He could make out faint plumes of smoke rising from beneath the cauldrons of boiling oil. The ballistae were all manned. The catapults looked ready. The massive walls looked as if it would take the fist of a god to smash through them. In a way, he was glad. He wanted a battle. He wanted to crush his foes beneath the hooves of his steed. He wanted to ride in triumph through the gates of a conquered city. He did not want his inevitable victory to be the work of those festering fools who served the Plague god.

Be careful, he told himself. Victory is victory no matter how it is achieved, and you have a whole world to conquer. If Bubar Stinkbreath and his lackeys can deliver an easy conquest, why worry? There will be plenty more battles before this is through. Part of him, the part that craved the eye of Tzeentch to turn fully on him, rejected this idea, and wanted to deny any but himself part of the glory. Another part of him, the part that schemed eternally for his patron’s favour, weighed the options.

A victory for Bubar might alienate all the other warlords, and he needed their support. It might even give the Nurgleite ideas above his station, unlikely as that now seemed. And there was always the possibility of something going wrong. Plague was ever a treacherous weapon. It would not affect him, or the Chaos warriors or those sorcerers who enjoyed the favour of their powers, but it might kill large numbers of the tribesmen and beastmen if they were not careful. Bubar assured him that the protection of Lord Nurgle extended over the horde, but, perhaps, the Spewer of Vileness might withdraw his protection. After all, such things had happened in the past.

Arek considered all of this in a heartbeat. Best to attack now while Nurgle still extended his favour. After all, gods were notoriously temperamental and who knew when he might change his mind. And it might be a good idea to order Bubar to discontinue his spells now. Why give him time to brew a truly lethal plague?

Arek turned to Lhoigor and his twin. ‘The other plans are proceeding apace?’ he asked.

‘Yes, great one,’ replied Lhoigor almost sneering. ‘The runestones now almost ring the city and our acolytes are near enough ready to begin the ritual of power. Soon the stars will be aligned correctly and Morrslieb will reach the proper phase.’

Arek thought about this for a moment. ‘Well done, Bubar,’ he said. ‘I am sure that your plagues will weaken the defenders sufficiently for our purposes. You may discontinue your rituals.’

‘But, great one–’

‘I said you may discontinue your rituals. It’s time to give others their chance now.’ His tone brooked no disagreement. Bubar grovelled and withdrew.

‘Most wise,’ said Kelmain.

‘How long will your rituals take?’ Arek asked brusquely.

‘The stars must be right, master, and the moons in the proper conjunction. If you remember, that is why we advised…’

‘I said how long?’

‘The omens are auspicious now. If we begin immediately a great vortex may be completed within the week.’

‘See that it is so.’

‘As you wish, master.’ Arek wondered if he heard just a hint of rebellion in his minion’s voice.

Grey Seer Thanquol strode through the streets of Hell Pit. All around was howling madness. Skaven fought skaven. Moulder fought Moulder. Stormvermin hacked at clanrat warrior. Rat-ogre disembowelled skavenslave. Monsters, their handlers dead, ran wild in the streets killing and feasting where they could. Lurk had a lot to answer for, Thanquol thought. Not that these idiotic Moulders did not deserve it.

Still, things were bubbling along nicely. Careful reflection, and the fact that he was still in their power, had eventually decided Thanquol to reveal Lurk’s plans to the elders of the clan. Forewarned, they had been able to place their forces to the best advantage and were now slowly but surely gaining the upper hand. Thanquol’s reward had been to be released from captivity and given his own troop to lead in the fighting. It was not much of a reward really. He was expected to endanger his own precious pelt to secure the fiefdom of Clan Moulder. All things considered however, he had managed to look suitably grateful. Later there would be time to extract a reckoning for this indignity.

Burly stormvermin carrying his own personal banner hacked a path for him towards the great warpstone refinery. It was a dangerous place for him to be. Lurk’s army had managed to fight its way through stiff resistance and seize the massive structure. They had held it against all the Moulder counter-offensives. Under normal circumstances Thanquol would never have gone near it while the war raged but these were hardly normal circumstances. He knew that if he could fight his way into the refinery he could get his paws on a huge stock of purified warpstone, just the substance he needed and craved. The lack of it for the past few days was starting to give him terrible headaches and shaking spasms. The want of it made him feel weak.

And, of course, with it his sorcerous powers would once again be boundless. He was going to need that if he was ever to win his way free from these cursed northlands and make his way back to the security of Skavenblight. For many reasons, he needed the stuff, and he was going to make sure he got it.

A howling blood-mad pack of clanrats, red scarves tied around their foreheads in a way that marked their allegiance to Lurk, crashed into his bodyguard. Thanquol felt his musk glands tighten as they hacked down the clawleader of the stormvermin. A frothing beast chopped his way almost to Thanquol’s feet. Thanquol met him blade to blade and cut him down. He was only slightly helped by the fact that the clanrat had got his paws entangled in the ropes of a disembowelled stormvermin’s gut. Not that it mattered anyway. Thanquol was sure that he could have taken him in any sort of fight. It was just the Horned Rat’s way of showing that Grey Seer Thanquol was restored to his favour.

Lurk, thought Thanquol, when I get my paws on you, you are going to pay for this!

Things were not going very well, Lurk thought, peering down through the arched window of the refinery onto the battle in the streets below. He could make out the horned head of Grey Seer Thanquol as he fought his way forward. Things must be going badly indeed for his side, Lurk realised, if that cowardly monster had dared show his face. Lurk found it all very discouraging.

Things had been going so right, for a while. His worshippers, driven by sheer fanatic fury, had managed to overcome their oppressors, despite the uncanny knowledge the Moulders appeared to possess of his plans. Lurk knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this proved there were traitors among his followers. His swift execution of all his highest-ranking followers had somehow failed to restore morale as it should have, and the enemy still appeared to know his plans. The slaughter of a hundred more suspiciously co-operative followers had done nothing to halt this treachery, and inexplicably, even appeared to have had a deleterious effect on the morale of his worshippers.

Despite all of this, they had managed to hold on to most of their early gains, until defections back to the Moulder ranks had weakened the forces. Now it looked like all of Lurk’s mighty plans were crumbling. It looked like it would soon be time to bolt. Fortunately he had long since taken the precaution of snooping out the secret escape tunnels from the refinery and from the city. After all, it was just sound skaven common sense. He was not the first skaven in history to be let down by the inferior quality of those who followed him.

Yes, thought Lurk, it would soon be time to go. He who fights and scurries away lives to conquer another day. And perhaps there might be a place for him in that great army of conquest heading south.

Felix clutched the packet of herbs in his hand and looked at Ulrika worriedly. She was not looking well, he thought. Her face was even paler. Sweat beaded her brow, and she was starting to shiver.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. She shook her head.

‘I do not feel so well.’

‘We’d best get you home and to bed then.’

‘Always thinking of bed,’ she said, and tried to smile. If anything the feebleness of her smile made Felix fear the worst. Supporting her with one hand he strode out into the street. It was a long way back to the White Boar, and by the time they got there, Ulrika could barely walk.

‘It does not look good,’ Max said softly. Felix looked at Ulrika. She lay on the bed shivering, yet her brow felt red-hot. ‘She shows all the signs of the new plague.’

‘Are you sure?’ Felix asked. Suddenly all of the fighting and all his other problems seemed irrelevant. He realised that he did not want her to die.

‘I am not a physician, Felix, nor am I a priest of Shallya, but I do possess some skill at healing, and some understanding of what is at work here. This is not a natural disease. I have wrought some divining spells and the foul talons of the cult of Nurgle are at work here.’

‘Is there nothing you can do?’

‘I have already started. I have given her the herbal admixture, and as soon as you give me some peace, I will work the best healing spells I know.’

It dawned on Felix that he might well be interfering with Ulrika’s best chance of survival. ‘I will go,’ he said.

‘It would be for the best.’

Felix made his way towards the door of the small chamber he shared with Ulrika and opened it. As he did so, Max spoke.

‘Don’t worry, Felix, I will not let her die.’ He looked at the mage and saw the pain in his eyes. Understanding passed between them.

‘Thank you,’ he said and strode down into the crowded tavern.

The wine tasted bitter. The jests of the warriors failed to amuse him. Felix stared moodily into his goblet and pondered on the vagaries of fate.

Why had he been spared so far? Why had the plague not struck him down? Or was it only a matter of time before it did? Who could tell? He remembered that once a famous physician had told him that there were many factors involved in such things. Perhaps the strain of worrying about her father had made her more vulnerable than he. All that mattered was that she got better again.

Now all of their arguments and disagreements seemed trivial. Now he struggled to remember even a harsh word. Now all he could remember was the way she had looked the first time he had seen her in the Elector’s throne room in Middenheim. Unbidden a host of memories and images flickered through his mind. He remembered her riding alongside him one sunny morning in Kislev before he departed for the Chaos Wastes. He could picture her exactly: the wide cheekbones, the slight bump in her nose, the fine web of lines around her eyes as she smiled, the characteristic way she had of smoothing her hair. He could remember waking beside her on a dozen mornings, and the world seeming brighter for her presence. He remembered holding her hand as they walked through the peaks on their way to Dragon Mountain. Suddenly he wanted to go upstairs and demand that Max make her live. He knew that it would be counter-productive, that all he would achieve would be to interrupt Max as he wove his spells, possibly to the detriment of Ulrika’s chances of survival. He cursed the fact that there was nothing else he could do. Except pray. Maybe he should find a temple of Shallya and make an offering.

He glanced around wondering when the dwarfs would get back. They had headed for the walls hoping for a fight, and to see if they could be of any help shoring the defences. Now the horde had its own siege engines in place they had started to pound at the walls with more than just rotting corpses. Now they flung huge boulders, capable of crushing men and smashing stone. The battle had entered a new phase.

Suddenly he could not bear to be in this dark smoky common room any more. He wanted to be outside, on his own, in the relatively clean night air. Perhaps he could find a temple that was still open.

He rose and strode out through the swinging door, into the muddy street. Outside, it was dark and chill. The temperature had started to drop with astonishing swiftness. Overhead, Morrslieb glared down. A greenish glow surrounded it, and more than ever its blotched surface looked like a sinister leering face. It was as if one of the Dark Gods of Chaos had ascended into the sky and glared down on the helpless world.

A faint mist filled the streets and the tang of woodsmoke was in the air. Felix imagined that he could smell the stink of the horde outside, of overflowing latrines and cooking fires and unclean roasting meat. He told himself it was just his imagination turning the smell of nightsoil and local chimneys into something they were not, and lengthening his stride, walked off into the gathering gloom.

The cold night air made him feel almost sober. Now, more than ever, he understood why they called Praag the haunted city. By night the buildings looked fearful. The gargoyles clutching their sides looked almost alive, and every shadow seemed to whisper. All the old stories came back to him, of how the city had been rebuilt after the last siege, using stones corrupted by the taint of Chaos, of how the spirits of those slain by Skathloc Ironclaw’s horde could be seen stalking the streets on those anniversaries of the battle when the Chaos moon was full, of how sometimes men would suffer strange dreams that drove them mad. And there were other tales, of covens who gathered in dark cellars and sacrificed children for dreadful feasts.

Tonight, it all seemed dreadfully plausible. Tonight, the monstrous bulk of the city walls provided no comfort. Tonight, it felt like they were part of a huge trap, penning him in this fearful place. Tonight the citadel loomed over the city like some ogre’s tower. Even the lights on the huge inner wall looked threatening

He walked swiftly, his hand on the hilt of his sword, trying to avoid thinking of Ulrika and Max and the plague. He felt as helpless as a child. This was a situation in which he could do nothing. Ulrika’s fate was in Max’s hands, and the hands of the gods, and the powers had not seemed too kind of late.

The mist gathered around him, making the familiar streets seem strange. His own shadow loomed ahead of him like the outline of some spectral monster. Footsteps rang strangely in the damp darkness. The distant call of the night watchman counting the hours was anything but reassuring. Far off he could hear the drumming, and the howling and the noise of endless infernal labour coming from the Chaos horde.

His boots scuffed the cobbles, and he paused for a moment, thinking he heard stealthy footsteps behind him. He listened, but the sound had stopped, if indeed it was not something he had imagined. He waited for a moment anyway, knowing that sometimes, if he was patient, a pursuer might start moving again, and give himself away. Nothing.

Part of him half-hoped there was someone there. A fight would be just the thing to distract him from his dark thoughts, and let him work off the fear and tension and anger he felt. The more cautious part of his mind told him not to be stupid. He had no idea who his pursuers might be or how many of them there were. If he was being followed the best thing would be to head back to the White Boar. At least there he would find some comrades who could help him.

He heard a ringing of metal, as of a dagger being drawn. He froze back into the doorway. Footpads! Probably hungry men after some silver, hoping to find a drunk and part him from his money. If he had any sense, Felix knew, he would run, but now it was a little too late for that. He could hear the footsteps coming closer. And they belonged to more than one man.

‘I’m sure he went this way,’ he heard someone mutter. It was a high thin voice, and there was a note of complaint in it, as if the owner believed that the world were out to cheat him, and had just found another way.

‘Are you sure it was him?’ asked a second voice, deeper, gruffer.

Felix felt certain this man was the less intelligent of the two. His mind conjured up the picture of a hulking bruiser. His mouth suddenly felt dry. His heartbeat sounded loud in his ears.

‘Oh, it was him all right, I saw him when he came out of the inn. Tall skinny fellow, blond-haired like a lot of them Imperials. Red cloak. Dragon head hilt on his sword.’

Felix froze. That was a fairly good description of him. Was it possible that these men were looking for him specifically? Why? Were they witch hunters?

‘Jaeger – that’s his name.’ The two men were almost abreast of the doorway now. He could see that one of them was indeed a big man, massively built. The other was short and very broad. He looked fat but moved lightly all the same. ‘Felix Jaeger. Don’t know why his nibs wants him dead now. The Time of Changes is almost here. Most likely he’ll go down under a beastman axe in the not too distant future.’

‘Ours is not to reason why,’ said the larger man, the one with the deeper voice. ‘The high-ups want him and the dwarf dead, and that axe out of the way. It falls to us to see that orders is carried out. Let’s hope we do better than that fool witch hunter.’

Felix held held his breath. These men were not witch hunters. They sounded more like professional assassins or cult members. He was sure he had heard the phrase about the time of changes before, and in no wholesome context. Someone wanted Gotrek and him dead, and they wanted rid of the Slayer’s axe. He wondered why. More to the point, what was he going to do now? He did not fancy taking on this pair in hand-to-hand combat. Except perhaps with the advantage of surprise. Maybe he could spring from his hiding place and have his sword in one of their backs before they realised it. It hardly seemed fair or chivalrous but then these men probably weren’t going to ask him to joust either. Alternatively, he could try and follow them, and see where they had come from. That was not a particularly appealing idea either. After all, he had heard them and waited in ambush for them. Who was to say they could not do the same thing to him?

The easiest thing would be to simply wait for them to disappear down the street, and then head back to the inn. He could tell the Slayer what had happened. If it came to violence, he was certain that Gotrek could handle this pair or any dozen like them. Provided he had warning. That seemed like the best plan.

‘I tell you, Olaf, we missed him. He went into one of those doors back there.’ It was the big man speaking.

‘Nah, he couldn’t have. And why? Who’d he know in those buildings?’

The voices were coming closer again. It sounded as if the men were stopping for a moment to check the doorways as they went. Felix wondered if he could make a break for it. It was dark and misty so he reckoned he had a good chance. But if the men were faster runners than he, or knew the area better, or if one of them simply had a knife and made a lucky throw then things might go badly for him. They did not look like men he wanted to turn his back on. Perhaps he could shout for help. If the watch came these thugs would surely run.

If the watch came, he thought, and if these men did not have confederates nearby who were attracted to the noise. Calm yourself, Felix told himself. There are only two of them here for certain, don’t let your imagination populate the night with killers, or fear might keep you from doing anything. He felt the familiar sense of weakness in his limbs he always got before a fight and ignored it. His mind seemed to be working with great clarity now, ignoring his fear, considering his options.

If these two men were professional sell-swords, his chances were slim. Felix knew he was a good swordsman, but he was outnumbered, and if they were competent they would make the most of that advantage. All it would take would be one well-placed or lucky blow, and his life would be over. He would never see Ulrika again. Suddenly the threat of the Chaos army and all his other worries seemed to recede to a great distance, to become petty and unimportant. The necessary thing was simply to live through the next few minutes, then he would deal with any other problems life presented. Suddenly, living was desperately important to him. It did not matter whether the Chaos army swarmed across the wall in the next day or the next hour. He wanted that time, no matter how little it might prove to be, and these men wanted to rob him of it.

A clear, cold anger filled him. He was not going to let them do that. Not without a fight at least. If he needed to do murder here so be it. It was his life or theirs and he had no doubt whose was most important, at least to him. Slowly, knowing he would need to seize whatever small advantages he could, he unbuckled the clasp of his cloak and slipped it off, holding it wadded up in his right hand. As stealthily as he could he began to withdraw the blade from the scabbard, and he was grateful that the magical blade slid near silently out.

‘Hush!’ said the big man. ‘I thought I heard something.’

Best take him first, thought Felix. He is the more dangerous of the two.

‘Most likely a rat. The city’s full of them. Maybe there’ll be some of those ratmen. I heard they had problems with them down in Nuln. Damn. I wish Halek would do his own dirty work instead of sending us out on a night like this. I can almost smell winter.’

‘Be grateful to the Great One that you will be alive to see winter. Most in this city won’t.’

‘Well Felix Jaeger won’t be for sure if I get my hands on him. I intend to make sure he pays dearly for making me miss my kip. I could be in a warm bed with a warm whore in the Red Rose if it wasn’t for him.’

‘There’ll be time enough for that later. Once the business is done.’

‘Aye, if we don’t get sent out again after the dwarf. I heard he’s a right hard bastard.’

‘Poisoned knife will do for him same as anybody else,’ said the big man. He sounded like he was almost on top of Felix now. A shiver of fear passed through Felix at the mention of the word poison. These men weren’t taking any chances. He could not afford to either. Even the slightest slip might be his last. His knuckles tightened around his cloak. It was nearly time.

‘If it weren’t for this mist I would wait across from the inn and put a crossbow bolt into him,’ said the fat man.

‘And how would you do that without being noticed,’ asked the big man. His shadow was right in front of Felix now. ‘That’s just the sort of dumb idea that I would–’

Felix leapt from his concealment and tossed his cloak. It billowed outwards as he threw it and covered the big man’s head. Even as it entangled him, Felix struck, viper-fast. His blade passed right through the big man’s stomach and out of his back. Felix twisted the blade as he pulled it free. Poison, he thought, fuelled with desperate rage and fear. Try and use poison on me, would you? The big man’s scream rang through the night.

His partner might have been fat but he was fast. He lashed out almost instinctively and only a swift leap backwards got Felix out of the way of the knife. He could not be sure, but he thought he saw a smear of sticky black substance on the blade. The big man fell forward. His weight twisted the sword out of Felix’s grip. Damn, he thought. Things weren’t going quite according to plan. He backed off quickly, fumbling for his own dagger as he kept his eyes on the outline of the fat man. He didn’t want to risk even the slightest cut from that weapon.

‘Bastard! You’ve done for Sergei, by the looks of it. Well, don’t matter. Means I’ll stand higher in favour with his nibs when I bring back your head.’

Felix was grateful when his dagger cleared the scabbard. Now he had a chance, albeit a slim one. The fat man was holding the knife with a professional’s poise. Felix was a swordsman, and had little experience with anything but throwing knives. On the other hand, he thought, backing away from the assassin, he had killed two men with those and now might be a good time to try for a third.

He drew back his arm and made the toss. It was a tricky throw in the darkness against a shadowy moving target and even as he made the cast he knew it wasn’t going to work. All he had done was disarm himself. The man ducked, but Felix was in that heightened state of alertness where thought and action were almost one. Even as he realised his cast had gone astray some part of his mind, quicker than rational thought, had reacted. It had known the assassin would be distracted for a fraction of a second, which would give Felix an opening in which to attack.

He threw himself forward, bunching his fist and connecting a solid blow to the man’s chin. The pain in his hand was excruciating and he knew that in the morning he was going to suffer from bruised knuckles at the very least. Not that it mattered right now. If he survived he would worry about that tomorrow. The man grunted and swung upward with the knife. It was a professional’s blow, aimed in a short stabbing motion intended to bury the blade in Felix’s gut.

It was only the fact that he expected it that allowed Felix to block the blow, more by luck than judgement. Reaching down he caught the sell-sword’s wrist. It was thick and slippery with sweat and it took a near superhuman effort for Felix to stop the knife. The fat man was stronger than he looked and obviously experienced in close quarter combat. He twisted his knife arm, trying to break free and at the same time tried to knee Felix in the groin.

Felix shifted his weight so that the knee jabbed his thigh, and then did the unexpected, he kept twisting away and pulled the man forward at the same time, using his own weight and motion against him. The man fell sprawling and landed face down in the muck and cobbles. A long agonised groan burst from his lips, then he spasmed and lay still. Half expecting it to be some sort of trick, Felix kicked him in the head. There was no response, but anger and fear drove Felix to kick him again and again. After a minute he realised that the man was not feigning anything. He turned him over and saw that he had fallen on his own knife. It had not been a bad fall by the look of it. The blade had gone in only partially. Under normal circumstances it would have only been a nick really, not a fatal wound, but the poison the man was using must have been a strong one, for it had certainly sent him headlong into the realm of Morr, or whatever daemon god he had followed.

Spitefully Felix hoped the Powers of Chaos would punish him for his failure, then sanity returned and he retrieved his knife, sword and cloak. Looking at it, he thought the cloak was ruined but it still wasn’t a good idea to leave it lying around near the scene of a killing. You never knew, it might be recognised as his. He wadded it up and moved off into the night, walking quickly and purposefully, and trying not to look like someone who had just killed two men.

Prayers at the temple of Shallya could wait till he had cleaned the blood from his hands, he reasoned. He had better warn Gotrek that hired killers were after them. Not that the Slayer was likely to care.

Max looked down at Ulrika as she lay on the bed. Her face was pale. Sweat poured from her brow. Her eyes were wide and unseeing. Strange red blotches marked her beautiful face. His magical senses told him that she was failing fast. Her life force was draining away; her spirit was becoming separated from her body. Max shook his head and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. It was difficult. He felt that if anything happened to her he would die.

Calm yourself, he thought. Now is not a good time to be thinking like a schoolboy. Now is a time to concentrate all your resources on being a magician. Don’t let your personal feelings interfere with what you need to do here. He took another calming breath, and repeated one of the chants he had learned in his early apprenticeship, a meaningless rhythmic verse intended to soothe the mind and calm the senses. He opened his mind to the winds of magic and felt them respond to his call.

Max had been trained extensively in protective magics. Of necessity these included healing spells and spells intended to counteract diseases. It was not an area he had specialised in though, and he knew that plagues in particular were a tricky thing to neutralise. Nurgle was strong and there were too many other factors that could affect the outcome.

Fortunately, most of the ones he was familiar with were in Ulrika’s favour. She was young and healthy and had everything to live for. She was not starving. Her surroundings were clean. She had been in good health previously. He hoped that these things would make the difference.

He closed his eyes and drew on the winds of magic. Instantly he sensed something wrong. There was far more dark magic about than there should be and it was getting stronger. Of all the types of energy that the winds of magic carried it was the worst, and carried with it the promise of corruption, mutation, and undeath. He had thought he was prepared for this. After all, the Chaos army outside was drawing heavily on the evil power, but just the sheer amount of dark magic present was almost overwhelming. The touch of it was sickening. He breathed out and expelled the energy as quickly as he could. By focusing his mind he could draw on the other sorts; for this he needed a mixture of gold and grey. It was harder to get at now with all the dark magic in the air, but he knew he could do it.

Slowly, carefully, making sure to avoid any touch of the taint of Darkness, he plaited together the power. Opening all of his mage senses he gazed down on Ulrika. He could still see her on the bed, but now he could also see her aura, the reflection of her spirit. Things did not look good. An unhealthy green surrounded her, and he sensed the taint of dark magic within her. That was hardly surprising since the plague was magically generated by the followers of Nurgle.

He began to speak the incantation that would let him expel that dark energy. The tendrils of power he wove around her slowly began to seep through her skin. She stirred in her sleep, moaning. Max kept the flow of power strong, joining the magical energy to her spirit, feeding her life force drawn partially from himself and partially from the winds of magic. For a moment he felt he was being sucked down into the dark whirlpool of death. He felt the tug of that infinite vacuum, and his own skin became cold and clammy. He poured more power into her, but it was like dropping water onto the sands of a desert.

He felt his own life draining away, and fought against it. This was one of the dangers of magical healing of this type. When the subject was close to death, the life of the healer was in equal peril. A small panicked part of his mind fought against the current, desiring him to break the contact and save himself. He refused to listen to it, and he refused to give in. Like a swimmer fighting against a powerful undertow, he struggled on, fighting for his own life and Ulrika’s. He offered up a prayer to Shallya, and found some more energy within him, then he realised that something within the woman herself had awoken and was helping him. Suddenly the moment of crisis was past. He no longer felt as if he was drowning. The constriction in his chest was gone.

That was the hard part, he told himself, knowing it was not quite true. He had stabilised her condition and he could keep it that way for as long as he provided the energy, but his power was not infinite, and he doubted he could maintain the link for as long as she needed to heal. Her body was going to need help. Slowly he extended the tendrils of power once more, feeling for the pockets of dark magical energy within her. One by one he struck at them, lancing them as a surgeon would lance a boil, expelling the dark magic from her. It emerged from her mouth and nostrils like a noxious cloud of dark green smoke.

Next, he sent the energy seeking out the tiny daemons of disease that infected her, entities so small that they were invisible to the naked eye but not to the sorcerous senses he was using. The tide of magic raced through her bloodstream and internal organs cleansing them. It was hard, tiring work requiring the highest level of concentration. Max already felt as tired as he had after his sorcerous duel with the skaven grey seer but he kept at it, kept his mind focused. It was a long time before he felt sure he had exterminated every one of the loathsome plague-bearing entities.

The final stage now, he thought wearily, drawing on the last of his energies. He sent out the command to sleep, to heal, and to replace the vital force that had been lost. Then having done it, he closed his eyes and offered up another prayer of thanks. He touched her brow. The fever had broken. The sweating was subsiding. He hoped he had done enough. There was no way to tell. Then he fell asleep in the chair beside the bed.

Felix found him there minutes later when he came in to get a new cloak and clothing. He had paused by the well outside to cast a bucket of water over himself and get the worst of the blood off. He doubted that any of the guards would come to the White Boar in search of the sell-swords’ killers but he was doing his best to cover his tracks. The jokes about rain that had greeted him when he entered he had countered with a tale of dumping a bucket of water over his head to sober himself up.

As he entered the room, he could tell from Ulrika’s breathing that she was starting to recover, and he thanked Shallya for her mercy. As quietly as he could, he changed his clothes and went back downstairs to see if he could find the dwarfs and warn them. Even as he entered the common room, he could hear Ulli and Bjorni bellowing out some old dwarf drinking song. Behind them came Gotrek and Snorri. None of the Slayers looked any too sober.

‘I was attacked,’ he said.

‘You don’t say, young Felix,’ replied Snorri. ‘Did we miss a good fight?’

He knew it would be a long time before he could get them to take this seriously.

SEVEN

Ivan Petrovich Straghov looked up and laughed. White flakes of snow mingled with the rain. The cold northern wind threatened to freeze his old bones. Good, he thought. It looks like winter will come early this year. The earlier the better. Blizzards would slow the army pouring out of the north. Frostbite would freeze fingers from hands. Exposed flesh would stick to metal. He doubted an army of any size could move through the Kislevite winter.

Slowly his good humour waned. Who knew what these Chaos worshipping bastards were capable of? Maybe they had magic to protect them. In any case, even if the marauding tribes were cut down by hunger, he did not doubt that the Chaos warriors and the beastmen would survive. He had encountered them before coming down out of the Troll Country in the depths of winter. The beastmen would most likely eat their human allies. The black-armoured warriors did not seem to need food or water or shelter, a trait they shared with their inhuman steeds.

He told himself not to be so gloomy. Every little helped, and if Lord Winter and his icy troops destroyed a few thousand of the daemon lovers he would be grateful. Right now, Kislev needed all the help it could get.

He urged his horse to greater efforts. It was only a couple of hours’ ride now to Mikal’s Ford and the Gospodar muster. He was looking forward to joining it. He did not doubt that if it descended on the Chaos horde, win or lose there would be a mighty killing.

Felix Jaeger raced across the battlements of Praag. Snow fell all around. Chill wind cut at his face. The monstrous siege engine crashed into the wall. The stones shook beneath the impact of the massive ram. Chains clanked as a huge ramp descended from the top of the tower. With a roar, fur-garbed tribesmen emerged. Their leader was a black-armoured Chaos warrior, seven feet tall, an enormous mace clamped in one hand, a huge broadsword held firmly in the other.

Even before the Chaos worshippers could move, Gotrek was among them, followed by Snorri and Bjorni. The dwarfs carved a path through the Chaos lovers straight at the leader. Felix was right behind them, Ulli at his side. The demoralised human defenders took heart and threw themselves back into the struggle.

Felix felt the ramp flex beneath the weight of the mass of warriors upon it. He hacked at the shield of one of the marauders and kicked another one off the ramp to fall to his doom in the spike-filled trench below. Ahead of him, he could hear Gotrek’s bellowed war cry as the Slayer chopped down the leader of the attackers and hacked his way through the followers. At times like this the dwarf seemed unstoppable, an ancient war god of his people returned to wreak havoc on their enemies.

Felix chopped and chopped again, and then realised that the whole enormous structure was shaking. ‘Back off,’ he shouted. ‘The whole thing is going to come down.’

Immediately he retreated to the wall, defending himself as he went. He parried the blow of a massive beastman and took off its hand with his counter-stroke. Even as he watched, he saw that the whole infernal engine was shaking and starting to lean to one side. Gotrek and the other Slayers were moving back now, reluctantly, having driven their prey back into the innards of the tower. Felix could smell burning, and saw flames beginning to leap up over the battlements. It seemed like the siege tower was on fire. How this had happened he had no idea. A spell, alchemical fire, burning oil, it did not matter. He was grateful for the respite.

There was a cheer from the defenders as the tower keeled over like a foundering ship and then crashed to the ground below. It died away as the watchers glared off into the distance and saw dozens more towers taking shape out there. This was hardly a victory, Felix realised, because this was hardly an assault. The tower had rolled forward with no support. It was obviously the work of a few crazed madmen desperate for glory, rather than part of a massive overall attack. Felix wondered what would happen when all of the towers rolled forward, supported by sorcery and those huge trebuchets. It did not bear thinking about.

Suddenly, he was very tired. He felt drained and exhausted and he slumped down with his back to the wall to snatch some rest. Gotrek stomped over. He left huge prints in the thin carpet of snow. Felix rubbed his hands together to warm them. Now that the fight was over the sweat was starting to cool on his body. He knew he would need to change out of these clothes soon or risk a fever or worse. He wondered at this snowfall. It seemed unnatural; by all accounts it was too early in the year for snow. The Kislevites had cheered it, claiming it was the work of Ulric, and that Lord Winter was fighting on their side. Felix was not so sure.

‘Hardly worth the effort today. We should have stayed in the White Boar and let your people get on with it.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ Felix gasped.

‘Killing a few beastmen is better than killing none at all.’

‘You may have a point there, but if it’s all the same to you, you can take my share in the future.’

‘Best get up, manling. We have business to be about this evening.’

‘Don’t think I have forgotten,’ said Felix. Privately, he wished he could.

‘This looks like my kind of place,’ Bjorni said with a cackle. He rubbed his hands together and made an obscene pumping motion with his arm. Small flakes of snow caught in his short beard. Felix wondered if it would ever stop. He had heard tales of the Kislev winter. Some said it started snowing at the end of the summer, and didn’t stop till spring. He hoped this was not true.

‘Somehow, I thought it might be,’ Felix muttered.

Just looking out of the alley mouth at the Red Rose made him glad Bjorni was there. It had not been hard to find, since it was one of the biggest whorehouses in the whole city. Judging by the way lights blazed within, it was doing a roaring business. It was hardly surprising really. With the Chaos horde outside everyone who could afford a little forgetfulness in the pleasures of the flesh was seeking it. The inclement weather didn’t seem to have discouraged any customers.

‘That’s not why we’re here,’ Gotrek said.

‘Speak for yourself,’ Bjorni replied cheerily. ‘I hear they have a halfling girl here who can–’

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Gotrek said dangerously. Bjorni fell to silent muttering.

‘I think I should do the talking,’ Felix said. ‘Why don’t you just get a drink, and stay within call, in case of trouble?’

‘Snorri thinks that’s a good idea, young Felix,’ said Snorri. The rest of the Slayers seemed to go along with this.

Felix wondered whether this was such a great plan. Showing up at the Red Rose at the same time as the four Slayers was not going to make him inconspicuous, but he felt a lot better going into the place knowing help was at hand. His encounter with Olaf and Sergei had not left him with any great desire to go into the joyhouse on his own. Still, it was the only lead on the two assassins they had at this moment, and he was keen to follow it up. Better to be the hunter than the hunted, he thought.

‘Right, you lot go in, and I’ll follow in a few minutes.’

‘Fair enough, manling.’ The Slayers stumped out of the alley, towards the joyhouse, Gotrek in the lead, Bjorni almost running beside him. If he had not known better, Felix might have sworn Ulli was blushing. Trick of the light, he thought.

Gotrek glared at the bouncers, who made way for him as he walked up to them. They obviously understood the dangers involved in trying to part four Slayers from their weapons in these troubled times. Lots of other people were going in with their swords anyway. Rough place, Felix decided, as the dwarfs disappeared inside. He gave them a few minutes, all the while praying that they did not start any trouble. He felt in his purse. He still had some gold left which was good, since he was going to have to spend it to find out what he needed to know.

Idly he speculated on whether Olaf and Sergei were Slaanesh worshippers. This looked like just the sort of place where the deranged followers of the Pleasure Daemon might hang out. He wished he knew more. Just enquiring about them might be enough to warn the people they were looking for, or it might trigger another attack if this place were some sort of secret temple. He told himself not to let his imagination run away with him. This was not a Detlief Sierck melodrama. There would be no hidden temples in this place. At least he hoped not.

He realised that he was just dragging this out now, not wanting to proceed. He took a deep breath, offered up a prayer to Sigmar that Ulrika never found out where he was this evening, as she lay recovering in their room, and strode forward. The bouncers didn’t give him a second look as he marched up the stairs and through the swing doors. A wave of warmth flowed over him. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sudden bright lights. Dozens of candles glowed in the massive chandeliers above. A small lantern illuminated every booth around the walls. It was still dim compared to daylight, but it was much brighter than the night he had just left behind.

The smell of beer and strong perfume struck him as soon as he entered. It looked like the Red Rose was packed to capacity this evening. There was barely enough room to stand. Good, he thought, less likely that anyone will try anything nasty. Then the thought of someone scratching him with a poison blade and walking away into the crowd struck him, and made his flesh creep. He told himself that it was the melting snow running from his hair that sent a chill down his spine, but he knew it was not true. He shouldered his way through the crowd towards the bar. As he did so a couple of heavily rouged women thrust themselves towards him.

‘Hello, handsome. Looking for a good time?’ one of them asked.

‘Maybe later,’ he replied, as one of them linked her arm with his. He tried shaking it off, but she just clung tighter. Oh well, he thought, and pushed on. A quick glance revealed that the Slayers were at a table near the bar which commanded a fine view of the massive staircase that ran up to the chambers above. A constant stream of drunken men and scantily clad women headed up and down the steps. A short stocky Kislevite rider barged into Felix and reeled past. Felix felt hands clutch at his belt, and was suddenly glad he had placed his purse inside his jerkin.

‘Buy a girl a drink?’ said the woman on his arm.

‘If we ever get to the bar,’ he replied, shoving forward again. Ahead of him a crowd of mercenaries gathered round a table where a young woman garbed like an Arabyan harem girl slowly removed her veils. She had an interesting selection of tattoos and piercings, Felix thought.

‘I have a ring like that, through my belly button,’ the girl said. ‘I’ll show it to you if you like… upstairs…’

‘Let’s get something to drink first,’ Felix said.

They got through to the bar. It was packed. Felix was forced to elbow his way between two big men in the tabards of Imperial halberdiers and ordered two beers.

‘I don’t want beer,’ the girl announced. ‘I want wine.’

‘Make that a Tilean red as well,’ Felix added. He was a bit annoyed now. He had hoped to make some enquiries among the bar staff concerning Olaf and Sergei, but it was obvious that things were way too busy right now to do any questioning. This was proving more difficult than he had thought already. On the plus side, nobody except the girl accompanying him appeared to be paying him the slightest attention. The place was so packed you’d have to be a Slayer or an elf prince to stand out in the crowd.

‘Let’s find a place to sit,’ Felix said. ‘I need a rest.’

‘Hope you’re not too tired, handsome.’

‘Spent most of this afternoon on the walls,’ he said. ‘It takes it out of a man.’

‘You don’t sound like a guardsman or one of the duke’s soldiers. You a mercenary?

‘Something like that.’

‘You either are or you aren’t.’

‘I got stuck here when the Chaos horde showed up.’

‘Caravan guard then?’

He nodded as they shouldered their way towards a booth. It seemed a better idea than telling her the truth. If anyone was looking for Felix Jaeger, the man who had arrived on the airship, the fewer here who knew who he was the better. Felix studied the woman. She was small, and he suspected she looked older than she really was. Her skin was pale, her hair curly and bright as gold. Her face, while pretty, had a worn-out look. Her features looked slightly puffy. Still, there was a quick, malicious intelligence in her eyes. Her smile was professional but pleasant. The hand working its way up his thigh was practised.

‘You don’t sound like a caravan guard. More like a priest or a clerk.’

‘You get a lot of priests in here, do you?’

‘You’d be surprised who we get in here. Elves, dwarfs, magicians, nobles… all sorts.’

‘Ever see a pair of tough lads called Olaf and Sergei?’ he asked, taking a chance that she might know something about his quarry. He put his hand down on hers. The creeping massage stopped. ‘One’s a big guy, craggy looking, and hard, very hard. The other looks fat but he’s quick on his feet and good with a knife.’

‘They friends of yours?’ she asked warily. The smile seemed fixed on her face now, frozen almost.

‘Not exactly.’

‘What’s the connection then?’

‘I’m looking for them.’

‘You want somebody hurt?’ The hesitant way she said it made it sound like she was going to say something other than hurt then thought the better of it. ‘I’m surprised – you look like someone who could do that yourself.’ Her fingers had started moving again. He immobilised her hand.

‘You know where I might find them?’

‘What’s it worth?’ An appraising glint appeared in her eye.

He showed her his purse, holding the mouth of it open so she could see the glitter of gold and the shimmer of silver.

‘Depends what you tell me.’

‘They were here last night.’

‘I know that much.’

‘They told Sasha they would be back, but they never returned. Probably went somewhere else. The Gilded Tree maybe.’

‘Sasha?’

‘Tall girl, black hair. She had a thing with them.’

‘Both?’

‘It takes all sorts.’

‘Where might I find Sasha? I would like to talk to her.’

‘If you spare me some of that coin I might find her for you. I might even persuade her to talk.’

‘Why might she need persuading?’

‘Your friends are bad men to cross.’

‘Then maybe you’d better remember something as well.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I am a bad man to cross too.’

‘I was starting to suspect that.’

‘Go get her, and if you bring her here, there’s gold in it for you.’

‘I’d rather have it now.’

‘I’m sure you would. Here’s silver to keep your interest.’

‘You already have my interest, handsome, but the silver’s always welcome.’

Felix watched her vanish into the crowd, not quite sure what he was getting into, but determined to proceed anyway. He really wanted to find out all he could about his attackers of the previous evening. He wasn’t hopeful but it was just possible that he might be able to find out who was behind them. Taking any chance to find that out, however slim, seemed preferable to waiting for a poison dagger in the back.

He took a sip of the beer, determined to stay sober. He might need all his wits about him soon. If the girl didn’t just run off with his money. Or if her friend didn’t just warn this Great One Olaf and Sergei had talked about. Damn, he wished he had bothered to find out her name. There was every chance that she would just take his money and never come back. Even as the thought occurred to him, he saw the golden-haired girl returning, alone.

‘She’ll talk to you, but she won’t do it here.’

‘Where then?’

‘Upstairs, where else? You’ll need to pay the house for the room and her time. That’s on top of what you owe her and me.’

‘Fine. Let’s go.’

Felix rose and followed her, still clutching one of the beers to make himself look inconspicuous. As he reached the stairs, he turned and looked at the Slayers. Gotrek met his gaze and nodded. Felix was reassured by his presence. He held up all five fingers of his free hand. He hoped Gotrek understood he meant five minutes. The Slayer nodded once more. Felix went on up the stairs, suddenly feeling all too vulnerable. If there was any sort of trap being laid here he could be dead in five minutes.

The room was large. On the walls was an interesting selection of whips and chains. The bed was well used. The girl on it looked the same way. She was tall and slim, but her eyes had an odd quality, the look of one not quite sane, or, more likely, addicted to weirdroot. She was dressed in nothing more than a thin shift.

Felix sniffed – the air smelled of stale sweat and other secretions, heavy perfume, and incense. The way his nose tingled and his throat felt tight told him that someone had been smoking weirdroot in here, mingled with something else, something he had no experience of. He moved over and opened a window. It looked down onto the street. It was a long drop. They were on the third floor of the cathouse.

‘If you’re looking to make a quick getaway that’s not the way,’ the girl said with an eerie high-pitched giggle. ‘All you’ll get is a broken neck. Believe me, it’s been tried before.’

Felix looked at her and then back at the little blonde. ‘You think I might need to make a quick getaway, do you?’

‘If you’re looking for Olaf and Sergei and they don’t like you, like Mona says, you might have no choice. You might sort of accidentally fall out.’

‘They’re bad men those pair,’ Felix said.

‘Yes, they are. Why are you interested? Mona said something about gold.’

‘Depends what you have to tell me. Depends on whether I believe what you say. Depends on a lot of things.’

‘You looking to waste our time. You one of those strange ones who just wants to talk to a girl. Or is this the lead-in to something weird?’

‘Nothing like that. I was just wondering why Olaf and Sergei might want to kill… a friend of mine.’

‘This friend – he sent you to straighten things out, did he?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You look the sort. First time I hear you speak I think you talk like a priest. Looking at you I think you might be like one of those templars, the holy boys who’d cut your throat quick as look at you.’

‘You have a lot of experience with templars, do you?’ Felix asked with a smile, thinking of the only one he had ever known, Aldred. He had certainly fitted that description.

‘You get all sorts in here, handsome,’ Mona said, looking at Felix’s purse meaningfully. She obviously wanted the money she had been promised.

‘I haven’t heard anything I wanted to know yet.’

‘If I tell you where Olaf and Sergei are, what will you do?’ asked Sasha. I’ll be very surprised, thought Felix, considering I left them dead in an alley last night.

‘Depends,’ he said.

‘On what?’

‘On whether I can persuade them to leave my friends alone.’

‘That might be difficult, unless you’re tougher than you look.’

‘I have friends who make me look like a priest of Shallya,’ said Felix, knowing he was speaking nothing less than the truth. The sincerity of his tone must have convinced them. The girl’s response surprised him. She burst into tears.

‘I told them they should never have got involved. I told them to leave well enough alone. They wouldn’t listen.’

Felix schooled his face to immobility, wondering exactly what the crying woman meant. Instinct told him to keep quiet, to just let her speak, to see what he could pick up. He stared at her as coldly as he could manage. He noticed that Mona had become fidgety, nervous, as if she did not like the direction the conversation was taking. It seemed that she too knew something. It looked like there was some truth in the aphorism his father used to spout crudely when drunk with his merchant friends: no place like a joyhouse when it comes to overhearing secrets. The girl was looking at him again, tears running down her face. It was hard to believe anybody could feel any tender emotion for two brutes like Olaf and Sergei, but she apparently did. Or maybe it was just the weirdroot, he told himself cynically. The girl looked at him, as if expecting some response. He decided to bluff this one out.

‘What exactly did they tell you about us?’ he asked, keeping his voice as soft and polite as possible. It was amazing how menacing he could sound under the right circumstances.

‘Not much. Not much. I don’t know much of anything recently. They talked about it sometimes when they thought I couldn’t hear, and it was some sort of joke with them. They had found some sort of new… patron, one who was giving them plenty of work, and who was going to give them all sorts of special rewards.’

‘By work, you mean…’

‘Muscle work. Silencing them that needed silenced. At first I thought it was the usual stuff, nobles settling grudges, merchants burning out rivals but then…’

‘Then what?’

‘They started acting weird, coming and going at strange hours. They talked about blackmailing some folks. Seems they thought they had something on some of the nobles.’

Felix looked at Mona. ‘You sure you want to hear the rest of this? There are some things that it’s not worth your life to overhear.’

She looked at him, then looked at the purse. She understood but greed was warring with fear, and it did not take him long to work out which one would win. He tossed her a gold coin.

‘I’ll wait for you downstairs,’ she said.

‘You do that.’ She opened the door and stepped outside.

‘What else did they tell you?’

‘They didn’t tell me anything.’

‘What else did you overhear then?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’

‘You ever see this new patron of theirs?’ Felix realised his speech patterns were starting to echo the girls’. ‘Did you ever see this new patron of theirs?’

‘Sometimes a big man would come in looking for them. A noble, I guess from his speech.’

‘Did you ever see him?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘He always wore a cloak with a cowl, kept a scarf wrapped round his face.’

‘Isn’t that a little unusual.’ To his surprise, she laughed.

‘Here? Gods, no! Plenty of folk, ’specially the nobs, don’t want folk to know they come here. They have wives, mistresses, rivals. You get that, don’t you?’

‘Know anything else about this man. Did they call him the Great One or something like that?’

Suddenly whatever fit had taken her seemed to pass, and she seemed to realise what she had been saying. ‘Olaf and Sergei would kill me if they knew I was telling you this.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about them, if I were you. They won’t be troubling anybody ever again.’

The girl’s eyes went wide. She looked as if she were about to scream. Felix put his hand over her mouth, and silenced her. She squirmed weakly as if she expected him to attack her, or carry her to the window and throw her out. Felix cursed. He had learned nothing from her he had not already guessed except that some unidentified patron had actually met them here at the Red Rose a few times.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I won’t hurt you. I just want answers to my questions and then I’ll go. Just don’t scream or do anything to attract attention, and there will be gold in this for you. Do you understand?’

She nodded. He wondered as to the wisdom of letting her go, but could see no other option. He could hardly carry her out into the corridor with her mouth covered. Even in the Red Rose that might attract the very eyes he wished to avoid. He uncovered her mouth. She breathed a bit more easily. It did not look like she was taking a breath to scream.

‘Anything else about this patron? A name? A meeting place? Anything?’

‘I know they followed him once, to see where he came from. Said he was a slippery customer but they were good at not being seen when they wanted to be.’

Not that good, thought Felix, remembering the previous evening. ‘Where did he go?’

‘The palace.’

Wonderful, thought Felix, just what I wanted to hear. He studied the girl, hoping for some sign that she was lying. He could not see any. She seemed sincere, and a little addled from the drugs once more.

‘Is that all?’ he asked.

‘I heard them mention a name once.’

‘Who?’

‘Halek.’

Felix began to wonder how much time had passed and whether Gotrek and the Slayers were about to come looking for him. That was the last thing he wanted under the circumstances. He took some gold from the pouch and tossed it to the girl.

‘Here, this is yours. If you see this man again, or hear anything else about him, ask for Felix Jaeger at the White Boar. There will be more gold in it for you.’

‘I’ll remember,’ she said, and turned and buried her face in the pillow. He could hear her sobbing as he went out the door.

‘I’m staying here,’ said Bjorni. ‘You can go if you like.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Gotrek said.

‘I think… I will stay too,’ Ulli said quietly, shuffling his feet with embarrassment.

‘It’s up to you, youth.’

Felix and Gotrek strode out into the street. Swiftly Felix outlined what he had learned. It seemed like even less than it had done at the time.

‘We’re no closer to finding this Great One behind those assassins than we were, manling.’

‘No. I wish I knew why they wanted us dead. Could it be some old enemy come back for revenge?’

‘We killed most of those.’

‘There’s a few left. Like that skaven grey seer, for example.’

‘I doubt that he could pass himself off as a noble and sneak into the palace, manling, no matter how potent his sorcery.’

‘He’s used human agents in the past.’

‘Aye, true enough.’

‘Or it may be connected with the Chaos horde out there.’

‘Seems more likely to me,’ said the Slayer, pausing for a moment to listen to the night.

‘You hear something?’

‘Footsteps, trying to be stealthy. Might be footpads.’ The Slayer raised his axe. Felix almost felt sorry for any would-be robbers that came on them out of the darkness. Almost. Then he remembered the assassins and their poisoned knives. He was suddenly glad of the chainmail shirt he was wearing. He held his breath for a moment, willing himself to silence. Two young men emerged from the mist, their faces masked, clubs held in their hands. They took one look at the Slayer, shrieked with fear, and turned and fled into the night. Gotrek shrugged and didn’t bother to pursue them. Felix felt that was wise.

‘If the girl was telling the truth then there’s a traitor in the palace, manling,’ said Gotrek conversationally.

‘What can we do about it? March up to the duke and tell him there may be a Chaos cultist in his employ. We’re sorry we don’t know who, he’ll just have to take our word for it. Or maybe we should start asking the staff about this Halek. It’s probably a false name anyway.’

The Slayer shrugged and turned to stalk along the street. The Chaos moon gleamed balefully in the sky. Felix could have sworn that the gargoyles on the buildings had started to move. A trick of the light he told himself, hurrying after the Slayer. At moments like this he wished that he was anywhere else than Praag. It was not a comfortable city to be in, even without a Chaos army outside its gates.

Max Schreiber got up and pulled the curtains fully closed over the shuttered windows, trying to block out the chilly draught. For a moment, through the gap in the shutters, he caught sight of the white snow-covered roof of the building opposite. He did not like it. It was too early in the year for snow. Something was affecting the weather. The fact that it was happening just as the Chaos horde approached could not be a coincidence.

He looked over at Ulrika, where she lay wrapped in a thick quilt. If this cold snap continued she would need more than one or a chill might undo all of Max’s work. Right now though, she slept the healthy sleep of someone recovering from an illness. The crisis was past, and really he was no longer needed here. He stood there anyway, looking at her sleeping form, and offered up a prayer of gratitude to Shallya for sparing her life. Even if she would never be his, he was glad she had survived. He walked over, stroked her head, and tiptoed quietly to the door.

He was as drained of energy as if he had walked for days without food, and he knew he needed to replenish his strength both physical and magical. He headed downstairs into the tavern. Men looked at him with new respect, wonder and even fear. Somehow word had got out that he had saved Ulrika from the plague. No one wanted to offend him now. After all, he might be able to save them if they went down with the disease.

Max knew that sooner or later this was going to cause problems. Much as he would have liked to, he simply did not have the strength to save so many people. Saving Ulrika had almost killed him, and he doubted there was anybody in the city he cared enough about to make him want to risk his life again. Of course, that was easy to think now, sitting here among these rough hard-faced men, but what if tomorrow some teary-eyed mother came to him and asked him to save her child? That was a plea he would find much harder to resist. Well, he would worry about that when it happened. There was no sense in borrowing trouble from tomorrow.

He ordered food from the serving wench, and some tea, and then returned to the room. He did not feel like facing the stares of the men in the common room, and he did not feel at all like drinking wine. He wanted a clear head and nothing to distort his powers. He wondered where Felix and the Slayer were. Out hunting for the man who sent those hired killers last night, most likely. Max wondered if there was anything he could do to help. Not likely at the moment. He needed to husband every iota of his strength until he recovered. Even then it was unlikely he could do much if the man they sought was a cultist. Such people were usually well protected against scrying spells. They needed to be.

Max wondered if assassins would come looking for him and Ulrika or whether it was just Felix and Gotrek they were after. Given the power of the Slayer’s axe, there might be some reason for getting rid of him, but what reason could there be for seeking out anybody else? Why even bother trying to understand the reasoning of the worshippers of Chaos, Max thought. Too much effort in that direction might end up warping your own mind. It had happened before, he knew. Those who tried to understand the ways of Chaos were often seduced by them. It was a thing he had been often warned against.

Even as these thoughts churned through his mind, he felt a sudden vast change in the winds of magic. If it had been the distant rumble of a thunderstorm it could not have been more obvious. He glanced out of the window and invoked his mage sight. At once, he saw his suspicions were correct. Great turbulent currents were starting to affect the massive cloud of dark magic above the Chaos army. Huge vortexes of magical energy swirled downwards into it, funnelling all that power somewhere. What was going on, he wondered? Nothing good, that was for certain.

There was a knock at the door. Max moved cautiously and checked the bar. It was still in place. ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

‘Are you Herr Schreiber?’ The voice was calm, and held a great deal of authority.

Max wondered who it was. Was this some sort of trap? He used some of his carefully husbanded power and risked a scrying spell. A vision of the man beyond the door flickered into his mind. He was a tall soldierly figure in a tabard that bore the winged lion of Praag. The chevrons that marked him as a sergeant-at-arms were on his sleeves. Two other soldiers waited with him. Max wondered whether the duke had sent these men. It was likely enough. Still, it would not be the first time Chaos cultists had impersonated those in authority. He wanted to take no risks with Ulrika in her weakened state.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I bear a summons from the duke.’ That at least appeared to be true. The man held a rolled-up piece of parchment in his hands. Still, how much did parchment cost, Max asked himself. He prepared a potent offensive spell in his mind, drawing the winds of magic to himself. If these men were assassins they would not find him unready.

He opened the door a crack. No knife was pushed through. The sergeant-at-arms looked at him oddly, as if his behaviour were somehow a little cracked. If the man were what he seemed, Max supposed it would seem that way to him.

‘I have a patient in here who may still carry the plague. It would be best if you passed me the message and waited downstairs,’ Max said. This was the moment of truth. If these men were hired killers now was the moment when they would attack.

He saw the sergeant’s face blanch, and the scroll was swiftly thrust through the crack in the door. ‘Right you are, sir,’ said the sergeant.

Max inspected the paper. It certainly looked authentic enough, and it bore a winged lion seal. He sensed no magical energies laid on it, so, as far as he could tell, it was not some sort of magical trap. Working on the theory that you could never be too careful he probed it with his mage senses, and came up with nothing. He shrugged, closed the door and cracked the seal.

Swiftly, he read the message within. It was a simple request for his presence at the palace. It was addressed to Herr Max Schreiber of the Imperial College of Magicians. It appeared that the ruling house of Kislev wished to hire his services. Most likely they wanted an extra healer on hand in case of plague, Max thought cynically.

He looked around at Ulrika. He did not want to leave her now with no one to protect her, but Praag was a city at war, under martial law; refusing a request by the ruler might be construed as treason. He studied the message once more. It did not say when he had to report to the palace, and the hour was certainly late. He considered this for a moment, looked over at Ulrika’s sleeping form, and decided that he would risk offending the duke. There would be time enough to go see him in the morning. He scribbled out a hasty reply, and went downstairs to hand it to the sergeant.

Grey Seer Thanquol looked around at the elders of Clan Moulder. He was enjoying himself now. Since the defeat of Lurk’s forces, they looked at him with new respect tempered by a healthy amount of fear. That was good.

In some ways this council chamber was a blasphemous echo of the Chamber of the Thirteen back in Skavenblight. The elders sat on a great rotunda roughly the shape of a horseshoe. There were thirteen of them, which was unsurprising, since that was one of the holy numbers of skaven cosmology. There were representatives of each of the Moulder clan-guilds, a group so interbred that it made even Thanquol’s mighty mind swim trying to understand the complexity of their relationships. He guessed that, as in Skavenblight, status was reflected by their representative’s position on the horseshoe: the closer to the centre and the further from the wings, the more powerful the skaven. The clan’s High Packmaster sat in the centre, at the fulcrum. Grey Seer Thanquol stood before him, in the space enclosed by the horseshoe, confronting thirteen pairs of fitfully gleaming red eyes. His paws rested on the rune of Clan Moulder tiled on the floor. He was not intimidated by his position. Not in the slightest. The faint tightening in his musk glands merely indicated excitement.

‘Your former minion has vanished, Grey Seer Thanquol,’ squeaked the High Packmaster. Thanquol saw notes being passed from paw to paw around the table edge. This was never a good sign.

‘The traitor Lurk has eluded Clan Moulder once more,’ sneered Thanquol, more to have something to say than for any other reason. ‘Why does this not surprise me?’

‘We had hoped that you would use your powers to locate him. Clan Moulder has a score to settle with that deviant creature.’

‘I have done my best,’ chittered Thanquol, ‘but he appears to have left the city.’

‘What has that got to do with it, grey seer?’

Thanquol watched the note slowly make its way from the outer left hand edge of the horseshoe to the centre. What information did it contain, he wondered, even as he spoke.

‘There are great disturbances in the flow of mystical energies,’ Thanquol said in his best oracular manner. This was true. In the past few days the winds of magic had blown stronger than ever before. Scrying through such a mage storm was like trying to see in a blizzard. Finding Lurk was all but impossible under the circumstances.

‘So? So?’

‘These disturbances interfere with my vision, and disrupt all forms of scrying.’

‘Have you given thought to what causes these disturbances? Could it be the powers behind the menace of Lurk?’

That was a disturbing thought, and all too likely. Not that Thanquol suspected the powers of Chaos would aid a creature as lowly as Lurk. It was more likely that this was some mystical phenomenon occurring simultaneously with the march of the Chaos horde. There was perhaps the vanishingly small possibility that the spellcasters of the horde were drawing energy from the Wastes to aid their magic. Even as the thought crossed Thanquol’s mind, he felt his musk glands tighten almost to bursting point. Just the chance that it might be so was terrifying. It spoke of a power almost beyond belief.

Of course, thought Thanquol, if there was a way to tap into that mystical energy before it reached the Chaos horde, the sorcerer who managed it would be powerful beyond belief.

Suddenly Thanquol knew it was imperative that he get out of Hell Pit and begin investigating that possibility. All he needed now was an excuse. At that point the note reached the High Packmaster and he opened it, read it and frowned.

‘We have received word from Skavenblight. You are to return there at once, and explain your actions to the Council of Thirteen, Grey Seer Thanquol. We will, of course, provide an escort to see you through these troubled lands.’

Normally the prospect of such a trip would have made Thanquol queasy with justifiable skaven caution. Now he almost looked forward to it.

‘I will depart at once!’ Thanquol declared.

He could tell the Moulders were puzzled, and not a little frightened, by his enthusiasm.

Felix wondered what was going on. His skin crawled. The hairs on the back of his neck had risen. There seemed to be a peculiar glow in the night sky, a shimmering over the army outside the city. He had sensed such things just before dark magic had been unleashed. It was not a feeling he enjoyed. Perhaps it had something to do with the early snowfall.

The White Boar was just ahead of them, lights blazing cheerily through the constant drift of snowflakes. Even as he watched three men in the uniforms of the ducal guard emerged. He fought down an urge to duck into an alley. Surely they had not come to investigate the deaths of Olaf and Sergei? Surely they could not be looking for him? Gotrek showed no sign of any concern whatsoever. He strode forward, ignoring the guardsmen as if they were not there.

The guardsmen obviously knew who he was, for they gave him a wide berth. As he walked past Felix heard the soldiers whispering about the day’s battle. It seemed their exploits on the walls were well known.

Fine, thought Felix. It might not do them much good to be the heroes of the hour, but every little helped. While they were useful fighters in the defence of the city, he doubted anyone would look too closely at their other activities.

He entered the tavern and immediately headed upstairs, leaving Gotrek to his solitary drinking in the bar.

‘How is she?’ Felix asked nervously. Max sat in the chair next to the bed. Felix was not sure how he felt about the wizard being here. He was at once jealous and grateful.

‘She will be fine,’ Max said softly. ‘She just needs rest and time to recover.’

‘How are you? Feeling any better?’

‘I’ve been less tired, but I’ll live. Find out anything interesting?’

Felix risked a look at Ulrika to make sure she was asleep and then explained where he had been and what he had learned.

‘It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing,’ Max said. ‘Did you really expect to uncover the name of the assassin’s master?’

‘No, but sometimes you get lucky. If you don’t try, you never get anywhere, and then we might as well all go back to waiting for a poisoned knife in the back some dark night. Can you think of anything?’

‘No. I am worried though. It’s not a reassuring thought that there may be traitors in the palace. I can’t say I am surprised though.’

‘Nor can I.’

‘Really? You say that with some authority, Felix.’

‘It won’t be the first time I have encountered traitors in high places.’ Max just looked at him. Without knowing why, Felix found himself telling the tale of his encounter with Fritz von Halstadt, chief of the Elector Countess Emmanuelle’s secret police, and an agent of the skaven. Max was a good listener, nodding and smiling and asking intelligent questions when he needed a point clarified.

‘You think the traitor might be just as highly placed?’ Max asked eventually.

‘No reason why he might not be even more highly placed. High birth is no guarantee that a man is not corrupt.’

‘I am sure many of our ruling class might violently disagree with that,’ said Max. ‘But I won’t. Even in Middenheim I saw evidence of that. I can remember…’

As Max spoke a look of pure fear passed across his face. His features went pale. His hands shook. He looked like he had just been struck by a thunderbolt.

‘What is it?’ asked Felix.

‘We must go to the wall! Now! Get the Slayer!’

EIGHT

The man called Halek stood on the topmost tower of the citadel and gazed off into the night. Below him he could see the snow-covered roofs of the inner town, the towering temple tops, the maze-like pattern of streets, and the enormous inner wall. The houses and tenements beyond that looked tiny in the distance. Only the massive outer wall appeared to have any substance. In the far distance, he could see out into the vast sea of campfires that surrounded the city, the silhouettes of the monstrous daemonic war-engines, dark metal leering out through their covering of snow. He could see other things now too.

His master had granted him a gift recently. He had been changed. His eyes could see more than mortal eyes now, could see the powers of his master, Tzeentch, Lord of Magic, as it ebbed and flowed around him. He knew that soon his eyes would start to change, and would show the stigmata of mutation, but it did not matter now. By the time any of the people around him realised he was one of the Gifted, it would be far too late to do anything about it. They, and their whole city, would be crushed beneath the iron heel of Chaos.

Halek knew he had to stop thinking like this. He knew that with the change he was becoming unduly sensitive to the currents of magic being summoned by the master magicians out there among the Chaos horde. He knew that it was starting to affect his mind. Soon it would not matter. Soon he would be free to revel in unfettered worship of his master, the Changer of Ways, but now things were at a delicate juncture, and might still go wrong. As he had so often reminded himself, there was no point in Chaos triumphing if he himself was not there to witness it. He did not want to risk exposure so soon before the glorious day when the Time of Changes arrived.

Part of him was still unsure whether he wished to see the triumph of Chaos at all. Part of him was still loyal to the city and the people and the duke. Part of him wished he had never attended that first meeting, never allowed himself to be seduced into the quest for forbidden knowledge. Too late now, he told himself, trying to submerge the side of himself that felt guilt and weariness and pain. Too late for anything except to play his planned part.

He tried to tell himself that the changes were for the better. He could feel his master’s gifts wakening within him, as they would soon be doing among all the chosen of the Old World. With his new sensitivity to the winds of magic had come the first hints of the ability to wield it. He could with an effort of will now shape the raw stuff of magic itself. To prove it to himself, he concentrated on making light appear around his hand. By dint of prodigious effort he made a faint nebulous glow appear about him. Astonishing, what it took most magicians years of study and intensive training to master was coming to him through nothing more than the force of his own will. If he could do this now, after only a few days, what else might be possible in a few years?

He glanced out into the distance, his attention suddenly caught by the vast skein of magic woven around the city. Tonight it blazed with astonishing brightness. Tonight as Morrslieb blazed down in all its glory, the final rituals were taking place to seal the circle around the city, and move the Great Scheme forward. He could see the webs of force shimmering through the lines of the Chaos army, running from sacred obelisk to sacred obelisk, as the sorcerers in the service of Tzeentch summoned the winds of magic and channelled them to their own purposes. Each of those great, carved standing stones had been brought down from the Chaos Wastes borne by hundreds of sanctified slaves. He could not yet guess what the purpose of them was, but he knew it must be mighty. When the time was right, he would know.

He forced his enraptured mind away from the contemplation of the infinite beauty of the magical weaving, and back to matters at hand. It was a pity Olaf and Sergei had failed in their assigned task. They had been good servants in their way, and he was sorry they would not be around to claim their rewards on the great day. Felix Jaeger must have been very lucky or very tough to survive that encounter, for the pair had been formidable killers. It was not a reassuring thought, for he had counted Jaeger as the less formidable of the pair it was his assigned task to see killed.

If it took this much effort to kill the man, it was going to take much more to get rid of the Slayer. Still, he knew with patience, persistence and a painstaking determination to learn from one’s mistakes, all setbacks could be overcome. He would just have to find another way forward, that was all. He felt sure that he would fulfil his part in the Great Scheme before too long. He always had before.

Right now there were other things to concern him. His agents must have poisoned the Watergate granary by now. It would be the first of many if all went well. He shuddered. He did not like doing these things. It went against all he had been brought up to believe. He did not like thinking of himself as a traitor. Even as this thought crossed his mind, he was granted a flash of insight. Part of him did feel guilty, it was true, but another part of him revelled in the wickedness of it all. He was taking his revenge for a lifetime of being in second place, for all those little slights that had been heaped on him. He was breaking free from the straightjacket of honour and responsibility. In a way it was a good thing. Then why do I feel like I stand on the brink of an abyss, he thought.

Even as he watched he sensed a change coming over the city in response to the flow of power in the distance. It sounded like a high-pitched keening wail. The sort of sound a soul in torment might make when plunged into Tzeentch’s deepest hells. What was going on, Halek wondered? Was this some part of the Great Scheme of which he had not been warned?

As they raced through the snow, shapes emerged from the gloom. At first, Felix could not believe his eyes. He thought he was just seeing gusts of snow, being driven into odd forms, but as he watched it became obvious that it was not so.

The outlines took on a misty nebulous substance that looked like the silhouettes of men but had the faces of souls in torment. They howled and wailed thinly, their spectral voices rising above the wind in a terrifying shriek. One of them came straight at Gotrek, gibbering insanely, long trails of faintly glowing ectoplasm swirling out behind it as it flowed through the air. The Slayer raised his axe, and his blow passed through the ghastly creature as if it were made of mist. As it did so, the creature lost coherence and dissolved into invisibility. All around them the wailing intensified, and a sense of terrible presence thickened.

Looking around him, Felix could see that thousands of the creatures swam through the air of the city, shrieking and howling and gibbering. One of them flashed directly at him. He raised his sword to block it, the way Gotrek had blocked his. As the creature came closer, he could see that it was almost transparent. It glowed green in the light of Morrslieb. Snowflakes passed through it, as if it were not really there. It did not seem quite real. As he watched he saw more and more of the things were emerging from the very stones of the city. What new Chaos-spawned evil was this, he wondered? What had the forces of Darkness unleashed this night?

With appalling speed the creature swerved around his blade. It reached out and clasped his face with its eldritchly glowing fingers. At the instant of contact a shock passed through Felix, potent as if he had been struck by lightning. The shock was not physical but emotional. It was a jolt of pure undiluted terror. Felix felt his blood run cold as fear entered his mind, and threatened to bury his mind under an avalanche of pure dread.

A flood of images flickered through his mind, threatening to drown his brain. He saw the city of Praag, oddly changed. He saw a vast Chaos army outside the gates, and a leering hungry face glowing in the moon. He saw a pitiful army of human defenders cut down by the warriors of evil. He saw the city razed and the army of Darkness move off leaving only the spirits of the restless dead. Later he saw the city rebuilt, and the eerie consciences of the slain seeping into its very stones, to be poisoned and corrupted by the warping energies that surrounded them.

Instantly he realised what the thing was. It was a ghost of one of those warriors who had fallen two centuries ago, in the Great War against Chaos. Once it had been a man like him, now it had been reduced to a near mindless hungry echo of what it once was. The fear it projected into him was its own fear, a thing that had consumed its consciousness over the long decades of imprisonment in the stones. It was an all-consuming horror that threatened to kill him with its sheer power. His heart raced until he felt it would burst. His nerve endings screamed. Something deep within his brain shrieked and gibbered in primal terror. He felt as if his mind would crumble under the sheer intensity of the feeling, and as sanity receded he felt tendrils of alien thought begin to invade his brain. He had a sense of a bottomless hunger, and a mindless lust to take on flesh once more, and slake desires that had not been gratified in centuries.

He knew something was trying to displace him from his own body, to force his spirit out so that it could possess his body and work evil. He knew that if it succeeded, he would become like it, a disembodied spirit slowly degenerating into a creature like this lost, mindless thing. Desperately, without knowing quite how, he fought back, seeking to push the thing out of him.

As he did so, he felt the fear begin to recede. His heartbeat slowed once more. His vision cleared. He saw the ghostly thing’s horrifically distorted face before him. It was a ghastly parody of a man’s, twisted with rage and a sickening desire for mortal flesh. Its mouth opened, distending far further than any human mouth, becoming so large it looked like it could swallow Felix’s head in a bite. He snarled back at it, and swung his blade. It passed through the creature. The runes on its blade glowed and the hideous thing fell apart into dozens of smaller component clouds that slowly dissipated. As they did so the near overwhelming terror vanished as if it had never been.

He glanced around and saw that Gotrek stood in the middle of a cloud of shrieking spectres, his axe destroying them before they could get close to him. Max was nearby, encased in a shield of golden light that prevented the creatures from getting close to him. As Felix watched, Max gestured and incanted and the sphere surrounding him expanded, racing outwards into the night. Where it touched a ghost the thing disintegrated, unable to resist whatever magic the wizard had unleashed. Felix envied Max his powers. In a moment, the street around them was clear of the monsters, as was the sky above. From houses around them, Felix could hear shrieks and insane gibbering. He guessed that not all of the inhabitants of the houses has been as successful as he had at resisting possession by the ghosts. At that moment, another fear almost as overwhelming as the one the spectre had inflicted on him filled his mind. He glared over at Max: ‘Ulrika – is she safe?’

Max’s face went pale then he closed his eyes and made a complex series of hand-gestures. Behind his eyelids, Felix could see a molten golden glow. It was not a reassuring sight. The fire within had only just started to die away as Max opened his eyes once more. ‘Do not worry. She is safe. The wards I left in place were more than enough to keep those creatures at bay.’

‘What in hell were those things?’ Felix asked, although he already knew the answer. He needed to hear his own voice just to prove to himself he was still human.

‘Ectoplasmic creatures, a psychic residue of the evil that once flowed over this city.’

‘Once more Max, in language I might understand.’

‘Ghosts, Felix. Spirits bound to the place of their death by the power of dark magic, and their own fears and hatreds. Praag is a haunted city.’

‘How did the Chaos warriors free them? I thought you said their magic could not penetrate the warding spells in the city walls.’

Max shook his head, and all the light died from his eyes. He looked over at Gotrek and Felix. Heavy footsteps came closer in the night. Felix held his sword at the ready. Gotrek shook his head, telling him the weapon would not be needed. Max seemed oblivious to the potential threat. He kept speaking in a loud slightly theatrical voice, reminding Felix for all the world of his former professors at the University of Altdorf.

‘Perhaps their magic has grown strong enough to pass through those spells. It is possible, but not likely. I do not think they are strong enough yet to manage that.’

‘Then what did this?’ As Felix watched glowing spheres of light began to expand outwards over other parts of the city. Felix did not need Max to tell him that other wizards were at work, doing exactly what Max had done.

‘I don’t think the Chaos horde freed these things exactly,’ said Max. ‘I think they were always here, always within the walls. I think that something the Chaos magicians have done woke them.’

‘And what might that have been?’

‘I don’t know, but I sensed a mighty movement of the winds of magic not a watch ago. The Chaos moon waxes. The powers of evil magic grow strong. Let us go to the walls and see for ourselves.’

Even as Max finished speaking, Snorri Nosebiter emerged from the gloom and the snow. ‘Funny ghostie things attacked Snorri. Stupid things kept hitting him. Nothing happened.’

‘You didn’t feel anything – fear, terror, pain?’ Felix asked.

‘No. Snorri didn’t feel any such things.’ Snorri sounded insulted by the very suggestion.

‘That’s because you need a brain to feel fear, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘Snorri doesn’t have one.’

Snorri beamed proudly at Gotrek’s words. He looked pleased as punch as they rushed on towards the walls.

A man emerged from the snow. His features were pale, corpse-like. His eyes glowed with the same spectral luminescence that had surrounded the ghosts. Max knew instantly that here was one of those foul beings taken flesh. Embedded as it was on tissue and sinew, it could not now be disintegrated by the magical energies that Max had used to dispel its brethren. He summoned his energies, but it was becoming more difficult. He was numbed by the cold, and drained by the magic he had already wrought. The thing chuckled evilly and reached for him with long, cold white fingers.

Before it could reach him, Felix leapt past Max and slammed his sword through the creature’s body. Blood seeped forth slowly, staining the snow. It was an unnatural response to so deep a wound, but the evil thing that had possessed the man was not giving up its life easily. The runes along Felix’s blade glowed dully. Max did not sense any of the ancient sentience that had emerged when they had confronted the dragon Skjalandir. If it was still within the blade, it remained dormant.

As the creature fell, a long wailing shriek emerged from its mouth, and white mist bubbled out. At first Max feared that the ghost was going to attempt to possess either Felix or himself, but it did not. Instead, it began to disintegrate and blow away in the wind.

‘Thank you,’ said Max, and meant it. He was suddenly grateful that Felix, Gotrek and Snorri were there. They might not have been people who he would have wanted to spend time with under normal circumstances, but when you were trapped in a snowbound haunted city under siege by the powers of Chaos, they were exactly the sort you wanted by your side.

They continued to move on towards the walls. Max feared what they would find there. Overhead Morrslieb glowed fearfully. Its light was brighter than that of its larger brother, Mannslieb. He was not sure why this was happening but he knew from his reading of history that it was always a portent of dreadful things. In truth, he did not need the alteration to the moon to let him know this. His mage senses told him the same thing. The currents of dark magic swirled visibly beyond the city walls, a mighty tide of evil energy being drawn there for a reason. And he was sure that the reason was not a good one.

All around he sensed the pulse of magic. Other wizards were at work, and most likely some of the priests as well, doing their best to contain the evil spirits that had been unleashed. Even as he thought this, he sensed something else, a flow of dark magical energy through the night. It was potent and evil, and it came from close by.

‘Gotrek! Felix! Turn right! Now! Beware! There is evil magic here!’

To their credit, the adventurers did not hesitate, or even question his instructions. They raced down the side street in the direction he had indicated with Snorri in their wake. As they did so, Max’s magically attuned eyes picked up a strange, many-coloured gleam from up ahead. The currents of dark magic made his hackles rise. He muttered an incantation to strengthen his protective spells and prepared himself for battle.

What new madness was this, wondered Felix, as they ran towards the massive structure? He recognised the building as one of the fortified grain depots in which the city’s foodstocks were stored. Normally the place was heavily guarded, but now the entrance was open and the way within clear. Where were the soldiers?

As he approached the arched doorway, he got his answer. They lay in the snow, with their throats cut, puddles of redness clotting all around them. Felix’s mind reeled. This was not possible. Armed soldiers did not stand and let their throats be cut when they had the will and the means to resist. There was only one answer. Evil sorcery was at work here. The gargoyles above the entrance seemed poised to spring on him as he passed beneath them. He let out a sigh of relief as he stepped inside and nothing happened. For a moment he was glad to be out of the bitter cold, but when he saw what waited within he felt suddenly sick.

More guardsmen had been slaughtered. Their throats had been cut, and their eyes were wide and staring. Their weapons lay near at hand, unstained by the blood of their foes, obviously unused. Again, Felix felt a sick certainty that evil magic was at work here. These men had put up no resistance, and they could not have been anything but wary. Not with those shrieking spectres howling on the wind earlier. Dozens of them had died here, and their enemies, whoever they were, had not taken a casualty.

In a moment, Gotrek and the others were around him. ‘They are here to destroy the food supplies,’ said Max.

‘Or poison them,’ said Gotrek. Felix nodded remembering Sergei and Olaf and their tainted blades. Their employer certainly had knowledge of wicked alchemy.

‘Snorri thinks we’d better stop them,’ said Snorri.

‘How?’ Felix asked, fighting to keep fear from his voice. ‘Three score of city guards didn’t manage to.’

‘I’m sure we’ll think of something, manling,’ said Gotrek running his thumb along the edge of his axe till a bright bead of blood blossomed forth. ‘They are down in the silos. I can hear them.’

‘Be wary,’ said Max. ‘They have strong magic. I can feel it.’

Gotrek looked at the corpses and snorted. ‘I didn’t need a wizard to tell me that.’

They crept forward into the gloom. Felix caught the odd musty smell of grain in the air. Dust tickled his throat and made his mouth feel dry. They passed massive chutes designed to carry the grain down into the huge storage pits. It was gloomy here. The only illumination was the faint glow surrounding Max. He had muted it as much as possible to avoid warning any enemies of their approach, leaving only enough to let Felix see by. Felix suspected that the wizard had no more need of the light than the dwarfs, and he was grateful to Max for his concern.

‘Do you think there is a connection?’ Felix asked.

‘Between what?’ Max asked.

‘The ghosts being unleashed, and now this raid on the grain stores?’

‘I don’t know. It’s more likely an accident that the ghosts were unleashed and this happened at the same time. I think the raids were timed to happen on the same night as whatever is happening outside the wall, but that does not mean they are connected either.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Chaos moon is full. Dark magic is at its most powerful on a night like this. This is a holy night to the followers of the Ruinous Powers. It might just be that a number of things are happening concurrently because of that.’

‘We can’t be certain.’

‘No. Maybe I am just hoping this is the case.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if it isn’t it means that the attackers outside our walls have some method of communicating with the worshippers of Chaos within them. And if they have, maybe they have a way of getting more than messages through.’

‘Not a reassuring thought.’

‘This invasion has obviously been long planned, Felix, by someone, or a group of people with diabolical intelligence. Who knows what other nasty surprises they have in store?’

Felix stood on the edge of a loading ramp, looking down into the silo. About fifteen feet below, knee-deep in grain, he could see figures. There were a dozen robed and masked men. Some of them held lanterns whilst others moved in the storage bin, adding liquid from large vials and stirring it in to the grain. Felix knew Gotrek had been right. This was poison. What sort of men were these, he wondered, who could plot to kill their fellow citizens while outside an army of monsters waited? He already had the answer he realised. They were followers of the dark powers of Chaos. They probably did not even consider what they were doing as treachery. Unfortunately for them, he did.

Seeing how few their numbers were reassured him somewhat. They had used sorcery and dark magic to overcome the guards but, hopefully, Max could counter that. Unless they were quite extraordinary fighting men, Gotrek and Snorri would prove more than a match for them. And Felix would cheerfully help in that slaughter. They were obviously overconfident and would be easy enough to take by surprise. They had not even posted sentries.

‘We were told not to kill the guards,’ grumbled one of the men below. ‘We were told but would you listen? No! When the higher-ups get word of this there will be trouble.’

‘Better safe than sorry, that’s what I say,’ said another voice in a self-justifying tone. It was a nasty voice, with a slimy insinuating quality to it, and Felix did not doubt for a moment that its owner had been the one to start the slaughter of the guards, and had enjoyed doing it. ‘Anyway, it’s a few less blades for our brethren outside the walls to worry about.’

‘Yes – but now everyone will know something happened here. This was supposed to be a surprise.’

‘Hurry it up,’ Felix heard a third voice say. This was the voice of a leader. ‘The blizzard won’t last forever, and the guard will be relieved in a couple of hours. We don’t have all night.’

It was almost reassuring, hearing human voices after the spectral things they had encountered outside. Their foes were living, breathing people, and Felix knew that if he cut one, he would bleed. Suddenly he was glad.

As so often happened to him, his earlier fear had passed to be replaced with a smouldering rage. He was angry at those men below for what they had done. It was bad enough that they had slaughtered the guards by stealth, but they were planning the murder of hundreds, maybe thousands more people. Felix knew that if their plan was allowed to succeed, he or Ulrika or any of these others could easily be among the victims. What they were doing was wicked and cowardly as well as treacherous, and it had to be stopped.

‘Looks like they’ve only managed to contaminate one bin so far,’ whispered Max.

‘Then let’s stop them before they do any more,’ Gotrek said. ‘Oi! What are you doing down there?’ he bellowed.

The masked cultists looked up. Felix could see feverish eyes gleaming. Several of them held knives or swords. One of them raised his hands, and began to incant. Without giving himself a chance to think, Felix launched himself into space, swinging his sword as he went. He landed near the Chaos sorcerer and split his skull with one blow. The impact of landing was cushioned by the soft grain in which he now stood almost up to his ankles.

The cultists yelled with dismay as Gotrek and Snorri dropped to join him. Gotrek’s axe lashed out chopping the nearest cultist in two. The return swipe clipped the top off another’s skull and sent brainstuff spurting over the grain. Snorri howled with glee as he lashed out with his axe and his hammer.

Felix’s assessment of the cultists had been correct. It took them a moment to recover, and in that time, Felix launched himself forward to stab another in the stomach. As he did so he discovered one of the disadvantages of their situation. The grain slithered around underfoot. It was like wading through a slippery type of quicksand. It at once sucked you down and made it very difficult to keep your balance if you moved.

‘Get them!’ one of the cultists shouted. ‘There’s only three of them.’

The Chaos worshippers moved to engage them, slipping as they moved too. Only the dwarfs showed no signs of losing their balance. Of course, it was easy for them, thought Felix, with their short legs and broad feet. They strode forward to meet the enemy, barely impeded by their footing at all.

Felix found himself trading blows with a big man, larger than himself, armed with a heavy broadsword. The man was slower than he was, and not nearly as skilled, and under normal circumstances, Felix would have dispatched him in an instant. As it was the difficulty of moving without falling over, and the way the grain sucked at his legs and slowed his movements, meant that he was having some difficulty. It increased when the man was joined by two of his fellows. Wonderful, thought Felix. Why can’t they go and fight with Gotrek instead of picking on me?

He parried one blow, barely turned another, and felt his arm being nicked by the edge of a sword. He prayed that the blade wasn’t poisoned, and tried to keep the thought from freezing him on the spot as he blocked another blow. The force of the impact threatened to send his blade flying from his numbed fingers. He almost overbalanced in the slippery grain.

From above came a searing flash of golden light. One of the men’s cowls caught fire, and the beam continued onwards, setting his hair alight and causing the flesh of his scalp to melt and run. As Felix watched his skull seemed to cave inwards, and his head sagged downwards as if made of melting clay. The man gave a horrible gurgling moan and collapsed. Another of Felix’s assailants glanced upwards to locate the source of this new threat. Felix took the opportunity to slide his sword blade under the man’s ribs, and send him headlong into Morr’s realm.

The last man shrieked and leapt at Felix but as he did so, Gotrek’s axe caught him on the back of his head, passed right through his torso and cleft him in twain. Felix glanced up and saw Max Schreiber standing there, a golden aura surrounding his right hand. Felix nodded his thanks and then glanced around the silo. It was like a scene from some hell of the Blood God’s. Parts of dismembered bodies lay everywhere. Blood seeped into the grain. The alembics of poison lay there, their contents gurgling outwards.

‘Snorri doesn’t fancy eating any bread made from this stuff,’ said Snorri.

For once in your life, Snorri, you just said something sensible, thought Felix.

‘What are we going to do?’ Felix asked worriedly. ‘Wait here until the guards come?’

He had enough experience of these things to know that the guards might just take one look at the carnage they had caused and haul them off to the duke’s cells. That’s if any guards were coming. They might well not be, in the aftermath of the ghosts of Praag being unleashed.

‘The question is whether this was the only granary being attacked,’ Max said. ‘The only reason these swine failed here is because we stopped them. If something similar is happening at every granary in the city…’

‘We should warn someone,’ Felix said.

‘Who? If there is a traitor in the palace.’

‘We should tell the duke in person. I doubt he’s the traitor, and, if he is, we have an even bigger problem.’

‘The duke would see me, I think,’ Max said. ‘He requested I attend his court earlier today. Of course, he would probably listen to Ulrika too, but she’s not up and about.’

‘He would listen to anyone who came here on the Spirit of Grungni,’ Felix said, thinking quickly.

‘Then let’s not waste any more time debating about it,’ said Gotrek. ‘Let’s go!’

The snow had stopped falling for the moment. The streets were eerily quiet beneath their blanket of white. The night air was cold and still. From somewhere off in the distance came a long high-pitched wail, and what sounded like a sob of grief. It seemed that the night’s evil was unending, thought Felix. Max stood frozen for a moment, in the attitude of a man listening to some barely perceptible noise. After a moment, he said, ‘The forces of dark magic are strong this night.’

‘Easy to see who’s the wizard here,’ Gotrek said sarcastically. ‘I don’t think we need you to tell us that.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Max said testily. ‘Why don’t you leave the divination to me, and I’ll leave the axe work to you?’

‘Sounds fair,’ said Snorri.

‘What did you mean exactly?’ Gotrek said.

‘There’s something big going on out there,’ said Max. There was no need to ask where out there was. They all knew he meant beyond the walls. ‘Some mighty arcane ritual. They are gathering all the winds of dark magic from the north, channelling them into a mighty storm of magic.’

‘To what end?’ Felix asked. ‘To overcome the city’s spell walls?’

‘Perhaps,’ Max said. ‘Or perhaps for some other reason.’

‘What might that be?’

‘Let me think about it.’

‘Then think while we move,’ said Gotrek. ‘Come on!’

As they rushed through the chilly winding streets, Max once more appreciated how cunningly Praag had been rebuilt. The city was a maze, designed to confuse any who did not know its layout already. Not that it would help much if invaders had cultist guides from within the walls. The guards at the gate of the inner wall let them pass easily enough, and they ran on up the massive stone outcrop on top of which the citadel rested.

Max was worried, more than he had been in his entire life. The full enormity of their situation was settling like a lead weight on his shoulders. He and Ulrika and the others were trapped here. Not only was the weight of foes without the walls near overwhelming, but also there were traitors within. Worse, the enemy army contained sorcerers more powerful than any Max had ever encountered, and they were, even now, engaged in some evil magical ritual the purpose of which he could not yet fathom.

Think, he told himself. What are they really doing? Gathering all the dark magical energy of an entire continent to them. Why? What can they achieve? They can power spells of enormous force. Or? Or, for a short time, they can raise the level of dark magical power in this area to that of the Chaos Wastes, or even higher. Suddenly, a sinking feeling settled in the pit of Max’s stomach. All of his studies pointed to one thing they could do with that energy.

‘I think they are going to raise an army of daemons,’ said Max.

Felix let out a low moan. Snorri gave what might have been a yip of glee. Gotrek smiled with grim mirth. ‘What makes you say that?’ Felix asked.

How could he explain this to them, he wondered? They were not sorcerers. They did not have the training or the knowledge that would let them appreciate the full enormity of the situation. He did. This was an area he had studied extensively. Daemons required the presence of enormous amounts of magical energy if they were to hold their forms in the mortal world for any length of time. Magic was to daemons what air was to humans or water to fishes. It was an element they needed to survive. Fortunately for humanity, in most areas of the world magic was relatively scarce and daemons could not be summoned for more than very short periods of time. Usually minutes, hours at most. Only in areas like the Chaos Wastes was there enough of the raw stuff of magic to enable them to permanently hold their forms. If the mages of the army out there could draw enough energy to Praag they could recreate those conditions. And once that was done, with all that energy loose, who knew what daemons were capable of? Not even the most powerful of the ancient wizards had any idea.

Max felt a chill worse than that of the night air pass into his very bones.

Ahead of them the citadel loomed out of the snow. It was huge, as large as any royal palace in the Empire, but, to Felix’s mind, there was something odd about it. It looked subtly wrong. The doors were too massive, the wings subtly out of proportion, as if the architect had been eating weirdroot when he had drawn the schematics, and then labourers had actually gone out and built what he imagined.

For all that it had a disturbing beauty. Monstrous gargoyles clutched the roof eaves. Huge ornately carved stone balconies jutted out from beneath the window arches. Massive monsters had been carved in such a way as to suggest that they were emerging from the living stone to do battle with the sculpted heroes who confronted them. A huge statue of Magnus the Pious loomed beside the main door raising his hammer so that it met the blade of Tzar Alexander that rose from the other side. These two heroes of the Great War against Chaos stood eternal guard on the entrance. Felix wondered if there was any truth to the legend that they would spring to life again to defend the city if the need arose. Somehow, he doubted it. If ever the hour of that dire necessity was at hand it was now, and the two stone warriors showed not the slightest inclination to spring to life and join battle with the hordes of Darkness. Felix did not blame them. They had probably got enough of that during their own lifetimes.

The statues should have been heartening, a reminder of the fact that men had triumphed over Chaos before, but they were not. Felix suddenly realised why the architecture of the place seemed so mad, and the decorations were so disturbing. The palace had been built by those who had seen such monsters and who had fought against them. It was as much a memorial to that struggle as the great statue of the unknown warriors facing it across the palace square. Perhaps his suspicions concerning the sanity of the builders were unfounded. Anyone who maintained enough grasp on reality to build anything after the Great War with Chaos was to be admired. Felix fervently hoped that some of the people here in Praag would be able to build something that their descendants could marvel at in two centuries. He fervently hoped that there would be descendants, and a world for them to live in.

The sentries at the gate crossed their halberds to deny the adventurers admittance. Felix could see that there were plenty more behind them. Hard-eyed suspicious men with a haunted look in their eyes. Hardly surprising under the circumstances. What had happened tonight was enough to make even the easiest going suspicious, and the guardsmen of Praag had never been famous for their tolerance.

‘State your business!’ said a tough-looking sergeant. ‘And be quick about it!’

‘I don’t like your tone,’ said Gotrek nastily, and raised his axe. Not now, thought Felix. We have enemies enough to worry about without getting into a brawl with the duke’s personal guard.

‘We bring a warning to the duke. There are traitors within the city. They sought to poison the Watergate granary.’

‘The granary is guarded by a score of men,’ said the sergeant. ‘They would never get past–’

‘There were a score of men,’ Gotrek sneered. ‘There’s a score less now.’

‘Dark magic was used to overcome them,’ said Max. The sergeant looked at the wizard. He appeared to recognise him.

‘You’re the mage from the White Boar. The one who was too busy to see his grace. You changed your mind.’

Now it was Max’s turn to sound testy. ‘Be grateful I did,’ he said, ‘and be grateful to these brave warriors, for otherwise one of these days you would all be eating poisoned bread.’

Max’s tone, and probably his reputation as a sorcerer, seemed to impress the sergeant. ‘Get the captain,’ he said. ‘You can explain all of this to him. Get inside. Ulric knows we can use all the wizards we can on a night like tonight.’

For the first time, Felix noticed the very real fear in the man’s voice. He like all the guards seemed strained to breaking point. It occurred to Felix that if the Chaos sorcerers had deliberately unleashed the ghosts to undermine morale in the city they could not have done a better job.

The duke looked tired, thought Max, and that tiredness had done nothing to improve his temper. Then again, all of them were the worse for wear. It had been a night to fray the nerves. Inwardly Max thanked the guard sergeant. The captain had been a reasonable and competent man, and he had listened to all they had to say, and sent them on to the duke’s chambers where the ruler and his council were in emergency session.

‘So glad you decided you could join us, Herr Schreiber,’ said the duke. There was heavy sarcasm in his voice.

A hard man to like, the Duke Enrik, thought Max. There was something in his abrupt manner that brought out the worst in people. Max prayed to Verena that Gotrek would hold his tongue and his temper. He knew there was little enough chance of it, but if he could get in first… ‘And nice of you to bring a retinue of armed bodyguards.’

Suddenly the duke smiled for the first time, and there was something almost likeable in his face. ‘A man could probably not find better ones on this continent, or so I have heard.’

He looked at the Slayers for an instant, and said in dwarfish: ‘Do you come to keep the ancient oaths of alliance?’

Max was startled. He doubted that there was anyone in the city save himself, a few scholars, the priests of Sigmar and the dwarfs themselves who could have made themselves understood in the old tongue of the elder race.

Enrik was making himself more than understood. He sounded positively fluent. It was a surprising achievement in a Kislevite ruler. Perhaps they were not all the barbarians Max had thought them to be.

‘Yes,’ Gotrek said in the Imperial tongue. ‘That we do.’

‘Then be welcome. What brings you here in the middle of the night?’

Swiftly Max outlined the events of the evening. The duke’s visage became darker and darker as he spoke. When Max finished he barked out orders that guards be sent to each of the granaries and all of the wells. Then he turned to them and said: ‘Foul deeds have been done this evening. We owe you a debt of gratitude for rooting out these traitors. I will think on your reward.’

‘The only reward I need is a row of Chaos worshippers ahead of me, and an axe in my hand.’

Enrik gave one of his rare smiles. ‘That should be easy enough to manage given our current situation.’

‘And you, Herr Schreiber, you appear to know more of these matters than all the mages and priests on my council. I wish you had revealed your gifts sooner – I would have offered you a place on my council.’

‘I would have been honoured,’ Max said in turn.

‘Then we must see that you are. Go now and sleep. I will speak with you again on the morrow.’

NINE

Grey Seer Thanquol stared out into the snow. He hated it. It got everywhere, melting and making his fur reek, turning his nose cold. The accursed stuff did not in any way, shape or form suit the skaven metabolism. He was miserable and ill. An icicle of snot hung from the end of his snout and he could not find the energy to break it off. For the hundredth time he longed for his nice warm burrow back in Skavenblight or at least for the security of the underways that he had left behind.

He glanced around. They had taken refuge from the blizzard in one of the deep, dark pine woods that provided the only relief from the monotony of the endless Kislevite plains. Snow made the branches droop and block out the light, giving a comforting dimness to the spot. Thanquol could hear hundreds of skaven paws softly crunching snow all around him. It was the only vaguely reassuring thing about the whole scene.

Part of him argued that it would be best for him to go back, that it would serve no purpose for him to remain here above ground in the freezing cold and dazzling whiteness. It would do skavenkind no good if he were to catch a chill and die. He desperately wanted to give in to this part of him but he could not. He needed to find out more about this huge surge of dark magic being drawn down from the north. To his mage senses the great current of dark magical energy was as visible as the snout in front of his face. It writhed across the sky, carrying within it an enormous charge of energy. Thanquol had not yet dared reach out and attempt to draw some of that power into himself. He suspected that if he did so he would come to the awareness of whatever powers had created that roaring river of power, and he was not sure he was quite ready for that encounter yet.

And there were other reasons to remain. His troops were here, scouting the land, looking for evidence of the forces of Chaos and their plans, and it was all too possible that if they encountered them without Thanquol’s decisive leadership to guide them, they would do something foolish that would get them destroyed. He doubted that Izak Grottle, who had been assigned to be his second in command, could handle the threat posed by the Chaos warriors. But if he did, he would doubtless use any credit gained from the exploit to try and undermine Thanquol’s authority.

Thanquol was having none of that. He was a past master of the politics of leading skaven armies, and he had a great deal of firsthand experience of Grottle’s treachery. Thanquol still suspected Grottle had a hand in the destruction of his master plan to conquer the city of Nuln. Perhaps he had even betrayed Thanquol’s infallible plan to the humans. What else could explain his survival when every other skaven leader in the great assault, save Thanquol, had been exterminated?

Besides, Thanquol was no longer sure even the underways were safe. Several times on the journey south they had encountered beastmen and mutant humanoids within the hidden tunnels. Thanquol was not sure how they could have got there. Was it possible that skaven traitors had shown them the hidden entrances? It seemed a far more plausible explanation than that they had simply stumbled into the secret cave mouths out of the snow. Thanquol dismissed Grottle’s inane suggestion from his mind. He had found that in all things, the simplest explanation was rarely the best. In real life all things were complexly inter-related, usually by the scheming of his enemies.

Still there were some good things about the situation. He had replenished his supply of powdered warpstone back in Hell Pit. Indeed, he had managed to convince the Moulders that given the nature of the emergency, he should have a whole sackful of the stuff. It was the best and purest powder he had ever found. Thanquol wondered if the Moulders were secretly sending their warriors into the Wastes to acquire it, or whether they had some other source. He decided that when all of this was over, he would make it his business to find out.

He took a pinch of the powder and immediately felt its tingling warmth pass out of his mouth and into his bloodstream. He felt alive once more, and could ignore the crippling cold. Using the faintest hint of a spell, he blasted the snot icicle from his nose and freed his body from the taint of fever. It was good to be using his power once more. It was even good, he admitted, to be surrounded by so many skaven warriors. His long trek across the plains of Kislev with only the treacherous Lurk for company and dubious protection had made him more aware of such things. It was a good thing to have so many of his furry kindred to stand between him and any approaching enemies.

He wished that Clan Moulder had provided a larger force. He was uneasy with only the few thousand warriors he had at his disposal. The fools had maintained that they needed the bulk of their troops to hold their ancestral citadel at Hell Pit. They were passing up the chance of rich pickings and great glory following in the wake of the Chaos horde and waiting for the opportunity to strike. A burst of warpstone-inspired confidence and contempt surged through Thanquol. As if preserving that worthless pile of rock could be worth more than protecting the life of the greatest of all skaven geniuses.

Izak Grottle glared at him red-eyed. Had it not been for the warpstone in his veins the look would have filled the grey seer with justifiable caution. As it was, he half wished that the obese Moulder warlord would provoke him so he could blast him. In fact, thought Thanquol, why wait for provocation? Why not just avenge himself on the fat monster?

As if reading his thoughts, Grottle bared his fangs in a menacing snarl, and then gestured to the hundreds of massive Moulder stormvermin who surrounded them. Why not, thought Thanquol? That was a good reason. He did not doubt that with his awesome magical powers he could blast hundreds of these worthless vermin into oblivion should they prove troublesome but he could not kill a whole army of them. Not unless he reached out and grasped that awesome flow of power in the sky. He was almost tempted to do it. For moments he stood there, tail lashing, fangs bared, matching Grottle glare for glare. The urge to draw on that power and slay became near overwhelming.

As quickly as it came, the warpstone-inspired fit passed and he shook his head. The red haze lifted from his mind. The desire to kill and maim subsided somewhat. He felt as if he had just thrown off some evil spell. For a moment, he had a brief intense awareness of something. All of his long training as a grey seer, and all his great experience of working magic, rushed forth to provide him with an extraordinary insight.

Something within the warpstone was responding to that current of Chaos magic, and he was responding to whatever it was that was in the warpstone. Just for an instant there he had almost lost control of himself, and destroyed a skaven force which, no matter how richly deserving of destruction, could still be used to serve his purposes. Worse than that, he had almost risked his own precious hide to do it.

He shivered and glared off into the distance. The world was changing. The Old Gods were putting forth their strength. They had somehow almost managed to influence even Grey Seer Thanquol. He knew that he would have to be very careful. He would not risk tapping into that river of power.

Not yet anyway.

‘What is going on out there?’ Felix asked, squinting out into the dawn light. Even as he watched the eerie glow around the menhirs and the war machines seemed to fade. He knew it was not gone; it had just faded to invisibility in the stronger light of the sun. Felix wondered how long that would last. Morrslieb was still a presence in the sky, a greenish smear of its light visible even through the grey clouds.

They stood once more on the great watchtower, overlooking the Gargoyle Gate. The walls below them were nearly ten strides thick. The tower was twenty times the height of a man, and bristled with ballistae and other siege engines. From somewhere a group of Imperial mercenaries had produced an organ gun and were manhandling it into position. It was hard work and the men were sweating profusely even on this wintery day. Felix drew his red Sudenland cloak tight about him and glanced over at the others. From somewhere the evil reek of alchemical fire rose to assault his nostrils.

Gotrek looked stern and sullen. Max looked disturbed. Ulrika looked wan but determined. The other Slayers looked hungover. ‘The army is massing to attack. Even Snorri can see that is obvious, young Felix,’ said Snorri.

‘I meant what was that glow? What foul magic is being used out there?’

Max clutched at the stones of the battlements with his gloved fingers. The duke had asked him to come here and report on the activities of the army. It seemed that from somewhere he had acquired the idea that Max was the most powerful and best qualified magician in the city. Felix suspected that this might even be true.

‘They are summoning daemons,’ Max said, ‘and a great deal of magical energy. I can only guess what they are going to do with them.’

‘And what would that guess be?’ Gotrek asked.

‘I would say that some of the daemons will be bound into those siege engines to move them, rather in the way you use steam to power your own war machines. I have read that such things are possible.’

‘Steam power has nothing to do with daemons,’ Gotrek said.

‘It was merely an analogy. I think the life force of the daemons will be used to allow those massive metal towers to move and use their weapons and perhaps do other things…’

‘Like what?’

‘Shield the occupants from magical attack.’

‘You said some of those daemons would be used for that. What about the others?’

‘They will materialise directly and be used as shock troops.’

Felix thought about the great bloodthirster at Karag Dum and shivered. He had hoped never to meet such a thing again in his life, and now they were facing the possibility of an army of them. He voiced his suspicions to Max who shook his head.

‘I doubt that will happen. Such creatures are so powerful that even the huge pool of magical energy out there could not support more than a few of them.’

Felix wondered at the equanimity with which Max said a few of them. One of those creatures had been almost enough to destroy an army. A few of them would be more than capable of overwhelming all of Praag. After all, they did not now have the Hammer of Firebeard to help them. Max carried on speaking, unaware of Felix’s dark thoughts.

‘Besides, I think our Chaos-loving friends out there have other uses for the power they are gathering.’

‘Such as what?’ Gotrek asked.

‘I think they will use it to overwhelm the defensive runes on part of the wall, then use their magic to cast down the towers and parapets so that their troops can come through.’

‘Have you any idea where they will do this?’ Felix asked.

‘Not until they actually make the attempt. I will be able to sense the flows of power then. Still I would say it’s a fair bet that it will happen where they mass their forces strongest.’

‘Unless that is just a feint,’ Gotrek said.

‘Look at that army out there, Slayer. It has no need of subtlety. It needs only its strength.’

For once even Gotrek seemed abashed and fell silent. After a few moments he looked up and grinned, showing his rotten teeth. ‘There will be good killing at this gate,’ he said.

‘That there will,’ Max said with no great enthusiasm.

‘We are all going to die!’ shouted the zealot. ‘The end of the world is here. From the north the daemons have come. Death rides with them. Plague rides with them. Hunger rides with them. All manner of filth and foulness and abomination ride with them.’

Felix thought that it was a measure of the change of mood in the city that the scrawny fanatic had managed to get such an attentive audience in the crowded market square. A few days previously he would have been roundly jeered by the Kislevites. Now, people were really listening to his words.

‘It is time to repent your sins, and cleanse your souls. Outside our gates the daemons wait. They have come because we were unworthy, because we betrayed the principles of our ancestors, and sank into licentiousness and debauchery. We have consorted with outlanders and failed to keep the true blood of Kislev pure.’

Felix frowned. The man had picked up a few more listeners. He could not be sure but he thought some of them were looking at him and Ulrika. He was, by his manner of speech, his clothing and his features marked as a non-Kislevite for sure. His nose was too long, his cheekbones were not high enough, and his features not flat enough. He was too tall to be mistaken for a citizen of Praag.

‘The duke has encouraged this. His has been a rule of iniquity where houses of ill-repute have flourished, where outlanders have soiled the native daughters of Kislev into wanton ways, where all manners of foreign vice have undermined the strength and manhood of our nation.’

‘He certainly has a bee in his bonnet about something,’ Max muttered. ‘Every lunatic in the city with an axe to grind seems to have come out today.’

It was certainly true, Felix thought, but not necessarily the most tactful thing to say under the circumstances, particularly not when some of the zealot’s friends and supporters were in earshot. He glanced around. In the crowd he thought he could make out some of the faces of the fanatics who Gotrek had chased out of the White Boar a few nights ago. At that moment, he wished the Slayer was with them, but he had chosen to go off drinking with the other dwarfs, leaving Felix and Ulrika to accompany Max back to the citadel.

‘Wizards are welcome in the palace now. Dabblers in dark sorcery. Weavers of wickedness, steeped in sin, depraved in demeanour, fiends of unspeakable foulness.’

Max made another mistake. He smiled, as if he could not take the whole thing quite seriously. The zealot was obviously working himself up to a pitch of fury, and he was carrying some of the crowd with him. He chose that moment to glance over at Max, resplendent in his gold brocade robes, leaning on his rune-carved staff.

We make the perfect tableau for him, don’t we, thought Felix? A wicked wizard and a pure Kislevite maid besmirched by a debauched outlander. He forced a nasty grin onto his own face, and moved his hand to the hilt of his sword. The crowd followed the zealot’s gaze and stared at them.

Felix could see pale frightened faces, pinched with hunger. These were scared people with an invincible-seeming foe outside their gate. Of course there would be a few of them just looking for something to vent their pent-up emotions on. It did not take Felix a lot of thought to work out who the most likely targets were going to be.

‘There in our midst stands one of that evil brotherhood, one of those depraved dabblers in Darkness who have brought doom down on us. See how he smirks at the success of his sinister schemes. Witness the wanton wickedness of the wild woman with him. Look on his lust-filled lewd–’

‘Perhaps you should use less alliteration,’ Max said, ‘and more thought.’

To Felix’s surprise, the wizard sounded completely calm, bored almost. There was perfect confidence in his manner. He seemed to feel no doubt in his ability to handle the crowd around them and it showed in his face. The crowd sensed this too, and drew back. The zealot did not like being mocked. His thin features twisted, spittle poured from his mouth. He stabbed an accusing finger at Max, as if by the force of his gesture he could make a hole appear in the magician’s chest.

‘You dare! You dare to speak! You should crawl on your knees and grovel in the dirt before these good people. You should abase yourself in abject apology for your vileness. You should beg their forgiveness. You and your doxy and your mercenary outlander bodyguard should–’

‘We should teach you a lesson for wasting the time of these good people! We should take you to the duke to explain your treacherous words. Our only desire is to help fight the forces of Darkness outside the walls. It seems yours is to spread dissension and discontent within them.’

Felix was surprised once more by the scorn and the power within Max’s words. The wizard was angry but it was a controlled anger that seemed to fuel his power. Without in any way changing his appearance Max had somehow become larger, and more threatening. The power within him, normally veiled, was suddenly visible. He had become quite as menacing in his own way as Gotrek was in his. Felix was impressed. He could tell the crowd were as well. They had moved backwards to leave a space between Max and the zealot.

The fanatic climbed down from his perch, drew his ragged robes about him, and strode towards the wizard. He was a small scrawny man, and Max was far taller and broader. Whatever other flaws the man might have, Felix thought, cowardice was not one of them. Out of the corner of his eye, Felix could see some of the bully boys from the White Boar were moving into flanking positions. He nudged Ulrika to alert her, but she was already watching alertly.

The small man strode right up to Max, his chin out, fists clenched. His eyes gleamed insanely. He stopped in front of the wizard and flexed his fingers as if considering strangling him. Max gazed back calmly.

‘The gods will smite you down for your sins,’ he said confidently.

‘If they felt that way, they would have done so before now,’ said Max with mocking reasonableness.

Swift as a snake the zealot reached within his robes and produced a dagger. He made as if to strike Max but before he could do so, a spark of power flashed from the magician to the blade. It glowed red hot in an instant. The zealot screamed as the weapon dropped from his scorched fingers.

The power within Max began to increase rapidly. He became a massive figure looming over the howling zealot like an angry god. He reached out gently and touched the man. Another spark of energy flowed out of him and propelled the fanatic twenty strides to lie, sprawled unconscious in the dirt.

The crowd muttered, at once awed and angered. Felix could understand their feeling. No matter how many times he had seen Max wield magic there was something deeply unsettling and frightening about it. It was all too possible that the crowd would either flee in panic or attack them in an overwhelming mass. The crowd of people stood glaring for a moment, undecided as to what to do.

‘Go home!’ shouted Ulrika. At that moment she sounded every inch the commanding Kislevite aristocrat. Her voice would have commanded instant obedience from a troop of winged lancers. ‘Go home and prepare yourself for war! Tomorrow the forces of Darkness will attack and we will need every able-bodied citizen to help defend the walls. Do not listen to fools like this whipped dog,’ she said, pointing to the unconscious zealot. ‘They might mean well but they cause only fear and falling out between those who on the morrow need to stand together. All of us here, even him, will be needed come the dawn. And we will need every weapon, even sorcery, to withstand the forces that march against us!’

The crowd responded as much to her as to the reasonableness of her words. Like Max, she was showing a new side, one he had never really seen before. When she spoke in that tone, she had presence, an aura of command that made people listen to her words, and, as was becoming obvious, obey. The crowd began to disperse save for a few who came forward to bow to her and Max, and wish them well in the coming struggle. Even the bully boy fanatics had drawn back, though whether from fear or respect, Felix could not be sure. To tell the truth, he did not care why, he was just glad that it was so.

No one else hindered them as they made their way towards the ancient heart of the city.

Arek Daemonclaw gazed down upon his warriors from the top of the highest siege tower. The air thrummed with energy. The great siege machines were coming to life, filled with the essence of bound daemons that would enable their enormous weight to rumble forward and crush the walls of Praag. He could feel the trapped creature’s energy seething beneath his armoured gauntlet, imprisoned by his sorcerers’ spells within the black iron walls of the tower.

All around him the vast horde moved with one purpose and one will, his purpose and his will. Soon he would smash the city before him, and offer up the souls of its citizens to his god. He vowed he would leave no stone standing. Never again would men build a city on this spot. Thus he would avenge the defeat of Chaos two centuries ago by the accursed Magnus the Pious. He was confident. The ring of standing stones around the city was channelling ever-greater amounts of dark magical energy to his army. Every day more and more warriors arrived from the Wastes drawn by the promise of blood and souls, death and glory, loot and slaughter. Massive beastmen, burly ogres, mighty black-armoured Chaos warriors, furious reavers and marauders from the northern tribes, all manner of twisted and mutated things were being drawn to his banner, following, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, the tide of power rushing down from the north.

Even as he watched a cloud of harpies rose in a flock and filled part of the sky over the army, their wings beating like a storm, their raucous wails and screams filling the air. They swept towards the city and were met with a cloud of arrows from the walls. Most fell short, a few found targets and the harpies wheeled and swirled away. It was not an attack; even the furious winged monsters knew their orders and would keep to them.

Arek was not entirely content. He knew that there were those within his army who plotted against him. It was no surprise. Such had been the way within Chaos armies since the dawn of time. It did not matter. There were always those who envied their betters and schemed against them. He knew that as long as his victory looked certain, the bulk of the army would remain loyal to him. They were all too filled with the prospect of smashing the hated city of Praag to risk pointless internecine strife.

There were other rumours that worried him a little more. Scouts had reported a human army approaching from the south-west. A pitiful thing, barely worthy to be called an army in comparison with his own mighty force, but it might prove troublesome if it appeared at the wrong time. Others had seen a force of the vicious ratmen the humans called skaven teeming down from the north. It appeared that Lhoigor and Kelmain’s cunning scheme to destroy the ratmen city had failed, and the beasts perhaps sought vengeance. Yet for the moment they barely seemed worth the trouble either.

A little more worrying was the lack of reports from within the city concerning the fate of Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger. He had expected his agents to have succeeded in their assassination by now. It would be nice to know that the wielder of that deadly axe had been removed. Who knew what such a weapon of power was capable of? The vision he had been granted still troubled him some times. On the other hand, if he did not enter the fray himself, it could not come true.

Arek glanced back over his shoulder and saw the twin sorcerers there. He was not pleased with them. They had been slow to obey orders recently, and quick to question his decisions. His spies reported that they had been seen in the company of his warlords, and he suspected that the twins might just be plotting against him. If so, he would soon show them the error of their ways. Actually, he was planning on doing that soon anyway. As soon as the spells were cast that would open his way into Praag, they would be consigned to the middenheap of history.

Lhoigor caught Arek’s glance and smiled, revealing his glistening white fangs. It was a smile that would have made a lesser man than Arek uneasy. He merely thought, smile all you like, magician, your smiling days will be over soon.

Lhoigor looked at his leader and smiled. It seemed like the best thing to do at the moment. Arek was becoming less and less stable with every day, but at least for the moment, he was the leader of the horde. That would soon change. The arrogant fool had made a suitable figurehead for this great dark crusade but his usefulness was just about ended, and with it, his life. It was his own fault too.

Neither Lhoigor or his brother would have objected to him remaining as the figurehead of the crusade for as long as he wished, if he had only bowed to their wishes. After all, someone had to lead the army and neither he nor Kelmain were warriors or generals. It was not what they had been born to do. Arek had been a good pawn for as long as he followed his instructions. He had danced like a puppet on the strings they had threaded around him but now he was too powerful and too full of himself to listen to reason.

Lhoigor clutched the golden staff tight in his hands. He could feel endless energy pulsing through it. Part of his mind was constantly occupied weaving and holding the spells that drew the great flow of power from the north together. He was such an accomplished mage now that he did not need more than part of his brain to do this, even though the effort would have blasted the sanity of lesser mages. He doubted that there were more than a few magicians on this pitiful world who could accomplish what he was doing now, and none of them could manage it so easily, he was sure. Perhaps Nagash at the height of his power, perhaps the Witch King of the Dark Elves, perhaps Teclis of the White Tower. Possibly they could do it. It did not matter, certainly he and his brother could. The blessing of Tzeentch was theirs, and there was little in the way of magic they could not accomplish if they set their minds to it.

It had always been their destiny. From birth they had been marked by the favour of the Changer of Ways. Their mother had lain with a daemon during the great winter solstice orgies in the caves of her tribe. As albino twins born with claws and fangs ready to eat meat at their first meal, they had come into the world marked for great things. The old shaman of the Weirdblood tribe had recognised them for what they were immediately and had taken them from their mother and put them under his own protection. They had learned all the old warlock had to teach them before they were six years old, and were respected in the councils of the tribe.

The Changer spoke to them in their dreams, whispering secrets of forbidden magic to them, and allowing them to guide the tribe to caches of ancient artefacts, long lost in the Wastes. Before they were ten, they had left the tribe to wander far across the lands of men. They had sought out the ancient holy sites in the Chaos Wastes, unearthed their staffs in the ruins of Ulangor, pledged their souls to the Lord of Mutation at the crystal altar of Nul. Everywhere the followers of Tzeentch were, they had gone, disguising themselves when they had journeyed in the lands of men,

They had walked cloaked and hooded through the streets of Altdorf, and bought tomes of forbidden lore in the bazaar of books in Marienburg. They had consulted with defrocked priests of Verena, and sailed as far as Tilea. Everywhere they had gone together, sharing the bond of magical power, and the ability to speak in each other’s minds over a distance. With time, their spellcrafting skills had far outstripped those of their former masters and they had become ambassadors of Tzeentch supervising the organisation of cultists in many lands, fomenting rebellions, rousing the mutated, tempting the weak, intimidating the strong. Tzeentch had rewarded them with more gifts, and more power, and the most precious prize of all, enduring life. They had lived for centuries watching their contemporaries pass away, needing no company but each other’s.

Eventually, their work among men completed, they had returned to the Wastes, to advance a plan they had conceived for themselves. They had decided that they would raise up a warleader and use him to spearhead a campaign to put the Old World under the dominion of Tzeentch. Arek had seemed like a good choice.

He was strong, he was intelligent, he was favoured by the Changer, and he was a formidable general and diplomat, a combination of qualities rare in Chaos warriors. It had been a useful alliance, and they had helped make him great, leading him subtly from triumph to triumph until his reputation had been enough to cement a massive alliance of warlords from the Wastes. It had all gone well for close on a decade. It was unfortunate that Arek had chosen this moment to try and ruin all their plans by his mulishness. He had attacked too early, before the paths of the Old Ones had opened, and let his troops run out of hand.

And now he was scheming to remove them from their place of power. It had not escaped Lhoigor’s notice how he and his brother had been left out of the recent councils of war. Soon, he thought, Arek was going to find out who the real chosen of Tzeentch were here. And he was not going to like that one little bit.

The streets were filled with marching men. Their manner spoke of quiet desperation. Felix could see that they did not have a great deal of hope of survival, yet their grimness told another story. They intended to sell their lives dearly. In the great square at the base of the citadel grandfathers and young boys drilled with ancient rusty weapons dragged from some hidden storehouses. Women carried loaves of bread from the bakeries. The ducal guard stood by each shop and made sure that prices were in line with the duke’s orders. There was to be no profiteering here.

Enrik might not be popular or even diplomatic, Felix thought, but he knew how to run his city. It seemed that at least some of the people were starting to realise that too. He had overheard some washerwomen commenting on the business of bread prices with approval. The only people who did not seem too pleased with the situation were some of the merchants. They did not complain too loudly though. The duke had threatened to put the heads of any profiteers on a spike outside the palace gates. No one doubted that he would be as good as his word.

They passed into the citadel easily. The sentries recognised them and gave them no trouble. It seemed that there had been orders from the highest level to let Max through as soon as he returned. The right of entry seemed to have been extended to Felix and Ulrika.

Felix looked over at Max and Ulrika. Since he had healed her, the two of them had spent a great deal of time together, and they seemed to get on better than she and Felix ever had. Since her recovery she had been distant to him. Part of him was jealous, and another part of him was glad. He did not like the idea that she might prefer any other man to him, but at the same time, he was tired of the endless arguments and constant bickering. Now that she had passed the crisis stage of her illness, the deep love for her he had thought he felt seemed to have faded in the face of her coldness. He shook his head. He doubted that he would ever understand the nature of their relationship.

He wondered if she did.

Ulrika strode through the corridor. The marble flagstones echoed beneath her boots. Despite the atmosphere of dread that surrounded her, she felt a strange contentment. She was alive, and she was healthy. The weakness the plague had inflicted on her was past. The nightmares that had filled the days of her illness were fading memories. Everything had a brightness and a clarity to it, and her heart was filled with a cold clear joy. She had returned from the gates of Morr’s kingdom, and life seemed good to her.

She felt like a different person. Her eyes had been opened to many things, and she saw her life with a clarity that had been denied to her before. She glanced over at Felix and wondered at the power he had once held over her. It seemed like the person who had fallen for him had been someone else a long time ago, someone much younger and much more naïve. She still cared about him, but the powerful sweeping passion was gone. She had been cured of it, as she had been cured of the sickness.

She wondered about this. Was this, too, a result of Max’s magic? Had he somehow interfered with her thoughts and her emotions as he had been healing her? If so, she found she did not mind quite as much as she thought she would have. It was almost a relief to be freed of Felix’s constant intrusion in her thoughts, and the constant need to preserve her own identity and keep some distance between them by fighting. It seemed clear to her now that this is what she had been doing during all those arguments, and it was a good thing to feel free of it.

She glanced over at Max. He seemed different too. He had grown somehow over the past few weeks. He was more confident, more mature. He wore his power like a cloak now, and he seemed deserving of the respect the guards showed him as they entered the duke’s council chambers.

She owed him for her life. It was a debt she felt sure she would be given a chance to repay in the coming struggle.

‘Well,’ the duke said as they entered, ‘what did you find out?’

Felix managed to keep a pleasant smile on his face in spite of the duke’s tone. Max looked a little put out by the brusqueness but then smiled anyway. Good, thought Felix, you’re learning. He listened as Max swiftly outlined his theories as to what was going on. Undiplomatic he might be, but the duke was a good listener and his council took their cue from him. He waited for Max to finish before he spoke. Felix did not think he had ever seen quite so many wealthy and powerful people gathered together in one place before: guards, nobles, priests, richly garbed merchants were all present.

‘It seems like we can expect the main attack to begin soon. So far all we have faced are a few raids. This will be the real thing. How ready are we?’

The question was directed at Boris, the captain of the ducal guard, the man who was directly responsible for overseeing the defences of the city. ‘We have every able bodied man ready to fight on the walls. They have been divided into three watches that can relieve each other when necessary. The city militias have been mustered and can be summoned by the alarm bells. We have enough food to last the winter, if rationed, and if more granaries are not poisoned. The wells are under guard. The people are frightened but willing. We are ready to fight.’

The duke glanced over at the Archlector of the Temple of Ulric, an old man, with the powerful build and straight back of the warrior. He adjusted the wolf-skin cloak about his shoulders. ‘Prayers are being said in the temple daily. The aid of the gods is being sought. The runes of protection on the walls remain strong, but our divinations tell us that our enemies are gathering an enormous amount of power. To what end remains unclear. Within the city we have some twenty priests and twelve wizards capable of working battle magic. It seems clear to me that we can and must resist.’

It was now the turn of a white-robed woman to speak. She was still beautiful though her hair was white and her face lined. Her hands played nervously with a silver dove amulet around her neck. ‘The Sisterhood of Shallya has so far treated four hundred wounded, and many cases of the plague. Fortunately, for the moment, the disease appears to be under control. I think the snowstorms may have worked to inhibit its spread in some way. Or it may simply be that whoever summoned the plague magic has ceased their efforts or moved on to other things.’

One by one, the highest-ranking citizens of Praag were called on to speak: guildmasters, priests, merchants, builders. Slowly a picture emerged of the situation. Praag appeared as well prepared for a siege as it was possible for any city to be. Had it been any other army save the vast mutant horde sitting outside its walls, the city could have withstood an attack with certainty. As it was, no one really knew what the Chaos worshippers were capable of, and the uncertainty was provoking a deep-seated unease. Max’s conclusions had done nothing to reassure the assembled council. Of all the people there, only the duke and to a lesser extent his brother did not seem bothered. They radiated a calm and decisive confidence that under almost any other circumstances might have been reassuring.

‘When do you expect the attack to begin in earnest?’ the duke asked Max.

‘Very soon. They must plan on doing something with all the power they are gathering. I do not see how they can hope to keep it under control for any length of time, no matter how potent their sorcerers are.’

The duke nodded. ‘Very well. We must expect an attack at any moment. I thank you for your presence. I suggest you all visit the temple of your choice and pray for our deliverance.’

I hope the gods can help, Felix thought. He could see no other source of deliverance.

The Gospodar muster was impressive, Ivan Petrovich Straghov thought. Hundreds of tents dotted the plain around Mikal’s Ford. The air was filled with the scent of horseflesh and charcoal braziers. In the distance was the huge pavilion that was the Ice Queen’s palace when she travelled. The tzarina must have stripped the realm bare to have assembled so many troops in so short a time. There was well over five thousand cavalry present: horse archers, winged lancers, light horse. As he rode through the throng, he shouted to many old comrades and waved his response to many more.

There was Maximilian Trask, the Count of Volksgrad, victor of over a thousand skirmishes with the orcs of the Eastern Steppes, a fact that the garland of orc ears around his neck was a testimony to. A bellow from his left drew his attention to Stanislav Lesky. Old One-eye still looked hale despite his sixty winters. He rode upright with a horsemanship that would have shamed the twenty grandsons who cantered along beside him, the sign of the grey wolf fluttering on their banners. Ivan waved and shouted: ‘Tonight we drink vodka in my tent!’

Over there was his old rival, Kaminsky, with whom Ivan had fought many a border dispute – and drunk many a cup of peace when battle was over. Now Kaminsky was as homeless as he. Still it was good to see him here, even if his riders were as diminished in numbers as Ivan’s own. What could one expect really? Like himself, Kaminsky had been right in the path of the advancing horde.

Ivan rode through the tents. The soft snow gave way beneath his horse’s hooves. Beneath it the ground was iron hard. In front of his men, Ivan chose to interpret this as a good sign. Lord Winter was mustering his white troops to defend Kislev. In reality he was worried. Snow made it just as difficult for a Kislevite army to move and support itself as it did for anyone else. Perhaps the Chaos warriors were going to use magic to feed themselves. Ivan knew his countrymen could not. But there was no sense in worrying about that now. He needed to report what he had seen to his ruler.

A groom waiting outside the vast blue pavilion took his horse, and without formality, Ivan was allowed to stride into the tent. Inside it was cold, not quite as chilly as it had been in the snow, but it was far less warm than most people would have expected. Ivan chose to interpret this as a good sign as well. When the Ice Queen was exerting her formidable powers of sorcery, the air around her inevitably took chill.

Ivan drew his furs tighter around him and strode across a floor piled with carpets towards the distant throne. Large fur-clad men moved aside to let him pass. In a few heartbeats he stood looking up at his monarch.

She was tall, taller than he, and her skin was so pale that he could see the blue veins in her face. Her eyes were a startling chilly blue, but her lips and hair fiery red. Her nails were long and glittered like gems. Rich robes covered her full, sensuous figure. When she spoke her voice was low, husky and thrilling: ‘Greetings, Ivan Petrovich. What news from the north?’

Ivan returned her greeting respectfully and told her of his journey, knowing even as he spoke that little of what he said would come as a surprise to her. The Ice Queen had her own ways of knowing what passed in her realm. It was said that she could see to its furthest reaches in the massive turquoise orb she kept beside her throne.

After he had finished speaking, he spoke openly and frankly to her as befitted a trusted Kislevite retainer speaking to his liege. ‘But what of the Empire, my lady? And our ancient allies?’

‘The Emperor musters his army to face the horde. But it is a long way from Altdorf to Kislev, and we cannot hope to see him before the spring. White Wolves ride from Middenheim, and we hope to see them sooner. The dwarfs of the Worlds Edge Mountains have also promised aid, though the roads through the peaks are hard at this time of year, and who knows when help may arrive from that doughty quarter?’

It was very much as Ivan would have expected. By attacking so late in the season, the Chaos warriors had gained an advantage. Had they attacked in spring, as any human army would have, then Kislev’s allies could have come to her aid. Now, it was unlikely they would be of much help before winter’s end. Ivan saw one small ray of hope.

‘Perhaps with their airship the dwarfs might be able to get here sooner.’

‘Perhaps. We have had no word of it since it departed for Praag. We can but hope that no mishap had befallen it.’

Ivan prayed fervently that was not the case. ‘When do we ride for Praag?’

‘On the morrow,’ said the Ice Queen. ‘Though my heart misgives me at the thought of what we will find when we get there.’

TEN

Halek listened unhappily to his agent. Felix Jaeger had been to the Red Rose and had been seen talking to the girl Sasha, an associate of his late and unlamented henchmen Sergei and Olaf. He glanced around his richly furnished chambers, rose from his cushioned seat, and went to the door. He opened it, and checked to make sure there was no one listening. In the palace you could never be quite certain. There were servants everywhere. Normally, he would never have agreed to meet his underling in his own quarters, but the man had claimed the matter was urgent, and he was someone whose judgement Halek had learned to trust.

What could the girl have told Jaeger? Nothing too incriminating, he was sure. She had never seen his face, and he had never let the two assassins know who he really was. No, he was in no danger, of that he was certain. He rose and picked up a small ebony statuette, an exotic carving made in Araby or one of those other hot southern lands. He was sure his brother would know; it was the sort of scholarship in which he excelled. His hand tightened around the figurine with such force that he almost broke it.

Control yourself, he told himself. It was bad form to show any tension in front of his lackeys, something he would never normally do. It was a sign of the pressure he was under. His superiors, those who had progressed further in the hidden order than he, were holding him responsible for the continued existence of Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger, and it did not help that the two of them had been instrumental in foiling the poisoning of the grain stores. The pressure to do something about them was really on him now. Halek shook his head, wishing for the thousandth time he had never accepted that first invitation to study secret alchemical lore.

Not that it all mattered. Soon the city would fall anyway. He took a deep breath to calm himself and fought to get his whirling thoughts under control. Even though he knew he was going to be on the winning side, the wait for victory was proving to be an enormous strain. He wished the waiting were over, and the city fallen. Only a matter of time, he told himself.

He forced his resentment-filled thoughts back to the matter at hand, the business with this bar girl. She was of no account. She could not harm him. Perhaps it would be best just to let the matter lie. That was most likely the best course. Certainly it would have been the one he would normally have favoured. But now, with the effects of his hidden mutation working on him, and the stress of all the waiting, and this constant feeling that he was betraying someone no matter what he did, he felt the need to do something.

After all, why take chances?

Quickly, decisively, he gave his agent instructions. It would perhaps be for the best if the girl quietly disappeared. He was sorry about her death, but he tried telling himself he was being merciful. She would most likely be dead in the next few days anyway.

The White Boar was quiet. Everyone was moody and tense. The events of the past few days had unsettled them all. Ghosts, dark sorcery and rumours of traitors poisoning the granaries had done nothing to improve a level of morale already undermined by plague and the size of the besieging army. Felix glanced around, wondering where Ulrika was. She had been strangely distant recently. He was starting to think that even their fights might be better than this growing estrangement. At least part of him was. Another part of him felt a growing sense of relief, of freedom, even.

He wondered where Ulli, Bjorni and Snorri were. Most likely at the Red Rose again. Bjorni was certainly proving to be a bad influence on young Ulli, dragging him along to the joyhouse every night. But, it wasn’t as if he was holding a dagger to the younger Slayer’s throat. Felix looked down into his goblet of wine, swirled the red liquid around and took a sip. He was too tense this evening, he told himself then smiled sourly.

Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising. Assassins were looking for him. He was in a haunted, plague-ridden city under siege by a daemonic army, and he and his companions had insulted many of their fellow citizens including some nasty witch hunters. It was only natural to be tense under the circumstances. He tried to tell himself he had been in tighter corners, but it did not do much good. He looked over at Gotrek. The Slayer was glaring morosely into his ale. He looked around as if daring any of their fellow customers to look at him the wrong way. No one, not even the party of White Wolf templars, were foolish enough to do so.

‘No need to look for a fight,’ said Felix. ‘There will be enough of that tomorrow.’

‘Aye, most likely,’ said Gotrek.

‘And no doubt you will have a chance to find your doom.’

‘There is that, manling.’

‘You don’t sound too pleased.’

‘It galls me.’ Felix was shocked. Was the Slayer having second thoughts about seeking a heroic death?

‘What galls you?’

‘That the forces of Chaos might conquer this place. That they might win.’

‘What does that matter to you? It is death you seek.’

‘Aye, it is. But a meaningful death. Not falling anonymously in some great ruck.’

‘Somehow I doubt that will be your fate.’

‘We shall see.’

‘Perhaps you will get a chance to challenge one of the horde’s leaders. That would be a mighty doom.’

Gotrek looked up, as if to see whether Felix was mocking him.

At that moment, the door of the White Boar opened and Snorri and Ulli hurried in. They came right over to the table. ‘Best get over to the Red Rose!’ bellowed Ulli.

‘Snorri thinks there’s something you might want to see.’

Amazing, thought Grey Seer Thanquol, staring up at the sky. So much power. So much magic. The clouds were red. Not with the sort of ruddiness he had seen before when the sun set, but a bloody red in which swirled vortexes of pure mystical energy, and around which bolts of lightning flickered without ever discharging themselves to earth. The sun was pleasantly obscured, the snow gleamed bloodily. Thanquol’s weariness evaporated as he surveyed the battlefield.

Another great victory, he told himself. A force nearly a quarter of our size annihilated with only a few hundred casualties to show for it. It was another testimony to his military genius. He could tell even Izak Grottle was impressed though he muttered sourly about their foes already having been exhausted by an earlier conflict.

As if that made any difference. Thanquol readily conceded that their foes had already seen combat. It was merely another testament to his tactical skill that he had chosen such a moment to attack them. Grottle might claim it was mere luck, but Thanquol knew that all great commanders made their own luck. So what if the Chaos worshippers had been harried by a few of the Kislevite horse soldiers? This in no way detracted from the magnitude of Thanquol’s victory.

Sweeter still was the feeling that his power was growing, as this red storm from the north grew. Using magic had come easier to him than ever before, and he had barely needed his intake of powdered warpstone to cast even his mightiest spells. It seemed like the Horned Rat favoured him once more. And about time too, a deeply buried part of him thought. If only Felix Jaeger and Gotrek Gurnisson were put before him at this moment, he felt sure he would dispatch them with ease. How sweet that would be.

He fought off a feeling almost like drunkenness. He was giddy with so much power in the air. The winds of magic were blowing stronger than ever he had felt them. Morrslieb glowed so bright its green light was visible even through the ruddy clouds. Magic flowed through his fur and into his veins. Truly this was a fine time to be alive, Thanquol thought.

He gave orders for his army to hurry south, confident that he would be able to deal with any threat they might encounter. Behind him Izak Grottle groaned and wheezed as he gave the instructions to follow the grey seer’s orders. Just at that moment, Thanquol stood dumbfounded, sensing an awesome gathering of power to the south of him. Suddenly he wanted to bury himself deep below the ground, and not emerge till he was certain whatever it was had passed. Since he could not do that, he decided it would be best to begin a tactical withdrawal away from it. He began to give the orders, but Grottle countermanded him.

‘I was told to see you to Skavenblight, and that is what I intend to do.’

Thanquol almost blasted him then and there, but restrained himself from unleashing his righteous wrath. It was time to preserve his power, in case he needed to make a quick escape.

Max Schreiber gazed out from the tower. Soon the attack would come. It was obvious. As the sun set amid the eerie red clouds a strange mist gathered over the battlefield. It was almost the same colour as the clouds, and charged with the same evil energy. Max could see the lines of force swirling within it, and knew that a spell of awesome potency was being prepared. Even with his own new-found confidence in his powers, Max knew that he would not care to meet whoever was casting that spell. The amount of power being gathered would need almost god-like strength to control, even with the backing of hundreds of acolytes. Max wished there was something he could do to disrupt it, but there was nothing he could think of. Even if he had all the mages in his college of magic behind him, he doubted there would have been anything he could do.

He turned to Ulrika. They had grown closer in the past few days. She was grateful to him for saving her life, but he sensed something more. He pushed the thought away, knowing it was more likely his own hope speaking than anything real. He gave a sour smile, thinking it was easier for men to comprehend the mysteries of potent magic than see into the human heart.

‘Why do you smile?’ Ulrika asked pleasantly.

‘You most likely don’t want to know,’ Max replied. He was embarrassed. Most of his life had been spent in study, and in advising folk on how to protect themselves against evil magic. It was not something that had prepared him for dealing with a woman like Ulrika.

‘I would not have asked if I had not wished to know.’

Max scratched his lengthening beard to cover his embarrassment. Sometimes she was disconcertingly literal minded.

‘I… I am happy to be here with you,’ he ventured. ‘Even under such circumstances as this.’

It was her turn to fall silent. She glanced away, looking over the glittering rooftops of Praag, instead of out at the gathering Chaos horde. By the light of the setting sun, seen from the height of the wall, it was magical: a wide expanse of red-tiled roofs and whitewashed walls from which rose bell-towers, onion domes, and the gilded spires of the temples. Even the frosting of snow contributed to the beauty. Max walked over to her and laid his hand on her fur-covered shoulder. She did not flinch but she did not look at him either. ‘Are you happy?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I am confused.’

‘About what?’

‘About lots of things.’

‘About you and Felix?’

‘Yes. Among other things.’

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

She slipped out of his grasp, and walked over to the edge of the battlements once more. She leaned forward, putting her weight on the parapet, and glanced out towards their enemy. The massive war machines, high as towers, carved like statues, shimmered in the gloom. Along their sides eerie red runes were springing to life, their balefires reflecting in the snow beneath them. They drew the eye naturally, such was their power. They seemed liked statues of evil gods. The small figures moving around their bases seemed more like insects than men.

‘Felix told me that in the Wastes there are huge statues of the Lords of Chaos,’ she said. ‘They must resemble those machines, don’t you think?’

‘It is possible,’ he said, noncommittally, a little hurt that she had avoided his question. ‘But I think what he saw really were statues. Those things are machines of metal and sorcery.’

‘Sorcery?’

‘Daemons are being bound into them, to give them power. Soon, I fear they will spring to life.’

‘And then?’

‘And then they will roll over these walls and crush everything in their path.’

‘Is there nothing we can do?’

‘We can pray.’

‘Recognise him?’ asked Bjorni, gesturing to the unconscious man. To his surprise, Felix did. He knew he had seen him somewhere before, he just could not recall where. The large bruise on his face might have something to do with that.

‘He is somewhat familiar,’ Felix said, leaning over and clasping the man’s chin, then moving his face from side to side to get a better view. The man’s hair was long and had flopped down into his face. His clothes were those of a nobleman, the fabric good, and the cut expensive. Felix had seen enough in his father’s storehouses to know. He looked very out of place lying here on the floor of this seedy room in the Red Rose.

‘What sort of company have you been keeping, young Felix?’ Bjorni asked with a leer. He put his heavily muscled arm around the shivering figure of the girl, Sasha, and with surprising gentleness wiped away the tears from her face. Felix looked at the half-naked Slayer, and the racks of whips and chains on the walls, and wondered if what he suspected about Bjorni and Sasha could possibly be true.

‘Nasty company,’ Gotrek said, leaning over and picking up the dagger that had fallen near the man’s hands. He sniffed it then thrust the blade in Felix’s general direction. Felix could see a greenish paste crusting the sharpened steel.

‘I am willing to bet that is the same poison that was on Sergei and Olaf’s blades,’ he said.

‘I think that is a bet you would win,’ Gotrek said.

‘What happened here?’ Felix asked, looking at Bjorni and then at Sasha. They both were in a state of considerable undress. The girl’s bodice had been hastily pinned closed. She wore only the scantiest of night-shirts. Bjorni was clad only in his britches. His boots and weapons lay near the bed.

‘Well, I thought maybe you hadn’t gone about your questioning the right way, young Felix, so I thought I would… interrogate Sasha here in my own way.’

‘That would be what the leather cords and the chains were for then,’ said Felix, gesturing to the pile of mechanisms near the bed.

Bjorni looked up at the ceiling and then nodded. ‘Something like that. Anyway just as we were getting down to business there was a disturbance outside the door and some men barged in. They were armed, and they obviously meant to do harm.’

‘You stopped them?’

‘I threw a sheet over a pair of them, and then head-butted another in the nadgers,’ said Bjorni with some satisfaction. ‘They obviously weren’t expecting much resistance, and I think they panicked when they heard Snorri and Ulli coming. So they started to run. I brained this one with the lampstand.’

‘Funny thing is, none of the bouncers came to investigate the noise, and you could hear the commotion all the way down the corridor,’ said Ulli. His face was red and he looked very embarrassed for some reason.

‘They were paid off, obviously,’ Gotrek said.

‘Such would be my guess,’ Felix added. ‘Did you know any of these men?’ he asked the girl.

‘They weren’t customers here,’ she said, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

Felix shrugged and looked at the unconscious man once more, thinking it was about time they woke him up. The only question was whether to hand him over to the authorities or leave him to the tender mercies of the Slayers. Under the circumstances, he felt like they didn’t have much choice. He would much rather they did this interrogation themselves. He was not at all sure of what might happen if they handed this would-be killer over to the guards.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, Felix suddenly realised where he had seen this man before. On the first day of the siege, at the Gate of Gargoyles, he had been one of the young men riding with the duke’s brother, Villem. Wonderful, thought Felix, wondering exactly how far this corruption reached. Just then the man groaned and began to stir.

He looked up and turned pale as he glanced into the nastily grinning faces of the Slayers surrounding him. ‘Tell me,’ said Felix. ‘Does Villem know you’re here?’

The man’s response surprised Felix. ‘He’ll kill me if he finds out.’

‘It’s us you should worry about,’ Gotrek said, raising his axe menacingly.

Halek paced backwards and forwards across the thick Arabyan carpets of his chambers. All around him, he could hear the sounds of the palace. He strode to the window, pulled the thick brocade hanging aside and glanced out through the heavy leaded glass. A rim of snow clutched the window frame. Far below he could see clean across the Square of Heroes to the Temple of Ulric. Thinking about what happened to heretics in that place, if they were caught, made him more nervous still. Being handed over to the tender mercies of the Templars of Ulric was not a prospect to make any man cheerful.

He cursed Jan Pavelovich bitterly. If ever you find your way back into my hands I will make you pay for this, you blundering fool. He turned away from the window, and strode over to his bookshelves, took down the copy of the Deed of Magnus he had pored over as a boy, and told himself to remain calm. It need not have been Jan Pavelovich’s fault. Who could have told that one of those accursed Slayers would have been present during the attack, and could have fought off four armed men equipped only with improvised weapons?

No. These things happened. Sometimes the fates were unkind, or maybe the old gods of Kislev conspired to undo his work. It was no use blaming Jan Pavelovich. The youth had served loyally and well for many seasons, ever since Halek had inducted him into the cult of the Changer of Ways. He was dedicated to the Great Cause. It was not his fault he had been left behind when the others fled. It was much more likely the fault of those other fools, the ones who had left him to the Slayer.

The words on the page were a blur. This was getting him nowhere. It did not matter who was to blame. The damage was done. The only question was how much Jan Pavelovich had told them. Halek cursed the day he had ever been so foolish as to let the young man know his true identity. Perhaps it would not matter so much. It would only be the word of Jan and his accusers against Halek’s own. He was a man of great influence at court. He could most likely face down any accusations.

Unless the Templars were called in. Or someone demanded to examine him for the stigmata of Chaos. Or perhaps one of those wizards, like Max Schreiber for instance, might be able to incriminate him with a spell. That would not be good. What could he do? The Great Plan was so near completion. Soon the city would fall. If only he could last until then he would be certain of his reward. He could flee the palace and find a hiding place among his brethren until the great day dawned.

Or could he? He had failed to see to the deaths of Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger. Perhaps the hidden masters of the cult would punish him for that. After all, they had their reasons for wanting those two dead and he had not managed it. And trusting himself to the tender mercies of the likes of Victor or Damien was not a prospect he enjoyed either. They might find it all too tempting to do away with a potential rival under such circumstances.

And then there was his own plan to contribute to the ultimate victory. At the height of the coming attack he had fully intended to open one of the postern gates to the Chaos horde. He had the authority and the means to do so. It was an act that would win him great favour in the eyes of Tzeentch. Did he really want to give that up? Did he have any choice?

Things did not seem quite as rosey as they had when he arose from his bed this morning. Don’t panic, he told himself. Think; you will find a solution.

Suddenly a way to redeem himself struck him. It was a solution so simple, and yet so perfect, he was surprised he had not dared implement it before. He shook his head. He knew why.

This was a throw of the dice by a desperate man, and he had never been this desperate before. And he had never really wanted to kill his own brother.

Felix looked down at the bruised and battered form of the heretic. In the end, under the less than gentle ministrations of Bjorni, he had told them all. Now he lay there, pale as a sheet, watching them with eyes filled with horror and pain.

Felix looked at the Slayers. He had no idea if they were as appalled by what they had found out as he was. They gave no sign of it on their faces. Gotrek looked grim. Bjorni looked satisfied. Snorri looked baffled. Ulli looked as queasy as Felix felt. His suspicions had been confirmed, if this was not all some cunning lie by the cultist. There was a traitor in the palace, and his rank was higher even than Felix’s worst fears would have put him. Who would have thought the duke’s own brother would stoop to such a thing? And why?

He looked down at the whimpering young nobleman, Jan Pavelovich, by name. He doubted the youth was in any condition to have made up such a daring lie. He simply did not look capable of it. On the other hand who knew what the cultists of Tzeentch were capable of? Perhaps he was able to resist a beating at the hands of a demented Slayer, even if he did not look it. Felix shuddered. The cult of the Changer of the Ways had managed to infiltrate even the highest levels of Kislevite society. They stood poised to reap the spoils of the great horde’s victory, or so Jan Pavelovich had claimed. And they wanted him and Gotrek dead.

Why, Felix wondered? What had they ever done to aggravate the secret cult? Well, aside from foiling their scheme at the granary, and killing a few of their assassins. Felix wondered why he had ever bothered agreeing to accompany the Slayer on his quest.

He knew this was an unworthy thought, that he should be proud that the enemies of mankind considered him worthy of being singled out along with the Slayer as a dangerous foe. He simply did not feel that way. He wondered what would happen when the horde broke into the city. Nothing pleasant, that was for sure. He pushed the thought aside and returned to the consideration of what they were to do.

Go to the palace and confront Villem? He doubted they would last very long if they did. After all, it was the word of this self-confessed heretic against that of the heir to the duchy. Who would believe them without additional proof? Maybe they could try something else – enter the palace and kill Villem. He could not quite bring himself to do that either. What if they were wrong? Perhaps the Slayers were capable of executing a man who might be innocent, but he was not. Where did that leave them then?

Felix felt well out of his depth. He needed advice from someone who knew more about mystical matters. Perhaps Max would be able to cast a spell that would compel the youth to speak the truth. And perhaps not. And even if he did, how could they be sure? The cultists obviously had magical ways of avoiding detection and baffling such spells. Max had said as much himself. Felix rose and stretched himself to his full height. He glanced over at the Slayer.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘I think we should kill this traitorous scum.’ The other Slayers nodded agreement. A puddle of wetness marked the carpet around Jan Pavelovich’s legs.

‘We need him alive. We need him to tell his story to the duke.’

‘Why should the duke believe him?’ Felix shrugged. Despite his appearance Gotrek was far from stupid and his thoughts on the matter were obviously close to Felix’s own.

‘We could get Max to ensorcel him.’ The Slayer shrugged.

‘It might work. I know nothing of sorcery except that I don’t like most of it.’

‘Snorri agrees,’ said Snorri. Another thought struck Felix. The would-be assassins must have brought word of their failure to their master by now. Doubtless he was cooking up some nasty surprise for them. Felix knew they’d better act swiftly but could not think of any brilliant plan. Lacking anything better he said: ‘Snorri, Bjorni, stay here and make sure our friend doesn’t go anywhere. Ulli, go find Max and tell him what’s going on. See if there is anything he can do. Gotrek and I are going to the palace.’

Felix headed for the door. As he opened it he turned, and said: ‘And don’t kill him. We need him alive.’

He could have sworn a look of disappointment passed across Bjorni’s face.

Max Schreiber paced through the streets towards the White Boar, Ulrika by his side. The air was crisp and cold. His breath came forth in plumes like smoke from the nostrils of a dragon. His feet were chilled through his boots but he was not troubled. He knew that people were staring at them but he did not care. He was simply happy that they were together on what might well prove to be the last day of their lives. Ulrika stopped to look at a street stall where a man was sharpening blades. Sparks flew from the grindstone as he pressed a dagger to it. The high-pitched shriek of metal against stone filled the air. Max was suddenly reminded of the calls of the ghosts as they seeped from the stones of Praag and fought back a shiver. In a lifetime filled with dealing with what most people called the supernatural, he had seen little to rival that spectacle for strangeness and terror. As long as you did not count the army sitting in the snow beyond Praag. He did not doubt that come dawn, they would see powers unleashed that would be greater than anyone living had witnessed. The slow build-up of energies was as noticeable to his mage senses as the tension before a storm would be to a normal man. Even so, he found it hard to be too unhappy. He had spent most of the day with Ulrika and the natural magic of her presence made him happy. It was something to be grateful for. Even in the shadow of death and terror there were simple pleasures to be found.

A squad of troops, local citizens drafted into the militia by the look of them, hurried past, their faces pale with strain. They were frightened boys and older men for the most part. The professionals were already on the wall confronting the enemy. A few cast envious looks at him, and Max was not sure whether it was because Ulrika was with him, or because he was a wizard, or simply because he did not have to march towards the battle yet. Maybe it was a little of all three.

Max glanced around and saw a familiar figure moving towards him out of the crowd. It was the fresh-faced young Slayer, Ulli. Ulli just as obviously recognised him, and came ploughing through the mass of people. Something about his expression told Max that the idyll was over. His strong arm grabbed Max’s wrist.

‘Felix says you’ve got to come immediately. We have caught a traitor!’ bellowed Ulli. His loud voice made dozens of folk turn to look. Max gave Ulli a hard glare. This was not the sort of thing you wanted to go shouting in a street full of scared people. It could all too easily lead to a riot or a lynch mob. Max glanced around to see that Ulrika had noticed what was going on, and indicated that she should follow. He prayed that no one in the crowd would decide to investigate the truth of the Slayer’s words. Felix could have picked a more tactful messenger, thought Max, then realised that he probably only had the Slayers to pick from. None of them was a good choice.

‘Lead on,’ said Max. ‘Tell me what is going on, and try not to shout.’

‘Do you have a plan, manling, or are you just making this up as you go along?’ asked Gotrek Gurnisson as they raced across the Square of Heroes towards the citadel.

‘The latter,’ Felix said. He was breathing easily. What was a fast run for the Slayer was but a trot for him.

‘Good. I would hate to think we were about to do anything sensible.’

‘It would probably be a good idea if you don’t attack Villem as soon as we see him. He may be innocent after all.’

‘I once heard someone say better ten innocents be punished than one guilty man go free.’

‘He was a dwarf, I suppose.’

‘He was the chief witch hunter of the Temple of Ulric.’

Felix glanced across the square at the huge temple of the Wolf God. He had been brought up in the Sigmarite faith of the Empire and had never particularly cared for that grim savage deity and his equally savage worshippers, but right now he would not have minded having a company of White Wolf templars by his side.

‘Still, it might be a good idea to keep your axe unbloodied till we establish his guilt or innocence.’

‘How are we going to do that?’

‘I wish I knew.’

Villem strode through the ducal palace towards the main council chamber. Even at this late hour throngs of people were still coming and going. In a city under siege there was always someone who wanted to see the leaders. Villem returned the salutes of the guards and walked in. He touched the hilt of the poisoned blade just to reassure himself it was still there. He wondered if he would get a chance to use it.

Enrik still sat on his throne, listening to his councillors debate what was to be done. He massaged his temples tiredly. His thin face showed some signs of the immense strain he must be under. Good, thought Villem, at least he was not the only one feeling the strain. He wondered why his brother even bothered to put up with these fools. They were always clamouring to make their little points heard. As if it really mattered which troop held which tower, or how the supplies were distributed to the men on the front lines. Tomorrow they would all be dead. Of this, he was quite certain.

He wondered if his henchmen were in position. He hoped so. Maybe this way they could make up for their bungled attempt on the girl. This was one assassination attempt that must succeed. All he had to do was lure his brother into position. It should not be too difficult.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ he said in his suavest voice. ‘Cannot you see your ruler is tired and must take some time to rest.’

Enrik looked up and gave him a wintery smile. Villem forced himself to clamp down on the sickness that gnawed at his guts and smiled back.

‘There is no time for that, brother,’ he said. ‘We must see to the disposition of the troops, and decide how we will meet the Chaos worshippers on the morrow.’

‘Surely that can wait for ten minutes, brother. After all, we do not even know for certain that they will attack tomorrow.’

The Archprelate of Ulric glanced at him scornfully. ‘If you had bothered to attend the meeting earlier, you would know that all the portents point to an imminent attack.’

‘Portents have been wrong before,’ Villem said easily. ‘I remember when the Lector of Sigmar was certain that a shower of falling stars foretold the end of the world.’

Not even the reminder of the discomfiture of his greatest rival thawed the look on the Archprelate’s face. ‘Brother Amos today also spoke of treachery among the highest,’ he said darkly.

Villem cursed inwardly. That old madman had prophesied such things before and he was usually right. Someone should have stuck a knife in him long ago. Well, after this night it would not matter. There would be all the time in the world to deal with visionary ascetics… assuming they actually survived the coming bloodletting.

‘Such accusations have been made before, usually by those trying to spread dissension in the ranks of all true men,’ he said calmly.

‘Are you suggesting one of our senior brothers could possibly be a heretic?’

Villem made his smile a little broader, as if trying to suggest he was making a joke. ‘Well, he did warn you to beware of treachery in high places.’

A few courtiers, mostly from his own faction, sniggered at that. The Archprelate remained frosty. This was not good, thought Villem. He did not want to spend all night bandying words with this old fanatic. He needed his brother dead. It was regrettable, but necessary. And it needed to be done soon.

‘Come, gentlemen, won’t you allow me to have a quiet word with my brother while he eats? There are some things we need to discuss among ourselves.’

He saw a curious look pass across Enrik’s face. Obviously his brother was wondering what they could possibly need to discuss in private at this late hour.

‘His grace could use a little food,’ said the chamberlain. ‘He has had nothing to eat since this morning.’

Villem inwardly blessed the old man. There had been many a time when he could cheerfully have throttled the stuffy old mumbler, but he had just made up for all those long dull boyhood hours of protocol lessons.

‘I suppose we could take a break for ten minutes,’ said the duke. ‘What is it exactly you want to talk to me about, Villem?’

‘A private matter of some urgency,’ Villem said, glancing around them mysteriously. Enrik merely shrugged, as if to say have it your own way then. The members of the council had already begun to file their way out of the antechamber.

‘Come, let us walk to the dining hall, and you can stretch your legs.’

‘Now that is not such a bad idea. I could use a little exercise. It will loosen me up for tomorrow.’

Villem threw his arm around his brother’s shoulders and began to guide him towards the doorway that led to the dining hall. ‘You worry too much about tomorrow, brother.’

Felix looked around the antechamber, and recognised Boris, the captain of the ducal guard. So far, so good, he and the Slayer had managed to get this far without anyone attempting to stop them. Now all he had to do was find the duke. He gestured to get the guard captain’s attention. Boris saw him and came striding over at once.

‘What is it, Herr Jaeger?’

‘Where is the duke?’

‘He has retired to the dining chamber to get something to eat. The council will reconvene in a few minutes. Why do you wish to see him?’

Felix frantically searched for a reason that would enable him to speak to the duke in private. Inspiration suddenly seized him. ‘I bring him an urgent message from Herr Schreiber about the daemonic forces laying siege to the city.’

He could see that he had got the interest of many of those present. Wizard or not, Max Schreiber was obviously well respected by these people. Well, the first hurdle was crossed. Now all he had to do was work out a way of breaking the news to the duke without losing his own head in the process.

‘Where is the duke?’ he asked out of idle curiosity.

‘He’s just gone off to the dining hall to have something to eat, and a quiet word with his brother.’

Felix exchanged a shocked look with the Slayer. This might be perfectly innocent – or it might be something much more sinister. ‘Which way to the hall?’ he asked. Seeing the quizzical look on the captain’s face, he added, ‘I have heard many tales of the beauties of the tapestries there.’

‘It’s beyond the main audience chamber, near to the great stairwell. Where is your brave companion going in such a hurry? I was hoping to talk to him about his work on the walls.’

‘I think he seeks a jakes. He had a lot to drink earlier.’

Villem walked beside his brother through the shadowy halls of the palace. He was glad it was night, and he was glad it was gloomy despite the torchlight. He did not want to look too closely at Enrik’s face, and he did not want his brother to be able to see his. He feared that his intent and his guilt were written all too clearly there.

‘So, brother, what is it you wish to talk to me about?’

In his mind, Villem tried to work out how close they were to the place where Lars and Pavel waited. Not too far now, he thought, maybe thirty paces. They should be waiting in the alcoves there. He hoped they remembered their instructions. Clean thrusts. He checked the poisoned dagger once more, remembering the part of the plan he hadn’t told them.

It was going to be necessary for them to die, slain by the grieving brother after they had foully struck down their duke. A couple of nicks with his dagger would stop them. After that he could rip up their bodies at will, and make it look like there had been a suitably bloody battle. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he wondered if he could bring himself to lead his brother to his doom. Had he really sunk this low?

‘You seem very preoccupied,’ Enrik added. ‘What is eating at you?’

His brother sounded concerned. It was actually a little touching. Now is the time to be ruthless, Villem told himself. You can’t afford sentiment. It’s him or you. It was an easy enough thing to think when he was dealing with strangers and rivals in the service of Tzeentch. It was a harder thing now. This was his brother after all, a man he had known longer than he’d known almost anybody else, who he had grown up with, whom he had played with as a child. A person who had known him in the old days before he had become entangled in the webs of dark gods and their followers, when life had been simpler and more innocent.

‘Do you remember when we were boys and were taking sword fighting lessons with old Boris?’

‘This is the important business you wanted to talk to me about?’ Enrik asked softly. He didn’t sound angry, he sounded surprised and a little affectionate. This was a side of him that most people did not see, who saw only the cold and haughty duke. This was a human being, Villem realised, that only he truly knew. He was a man whom Villem had served loyally for many years, and not all of that loyalty had been play-acting by any means, he now realised, even after he had entered the cult of the Changer. When he killed the duke’s assassins, it would be in part a real vengeance by a grieving brother.

He really would miss Enrik, and part of him was truly sorry that things had ever come to this pass. However, it was impossible his brother would survive the next few days anyway. Arek Daemonclaw’s horde would certainly take the city, and his brother would die along with all of his troops. In a way, Villem was doing him a favour by ensuring he did not live to see the bloodstained dawn.

Enough of this hypocrisy, he told himself. Your brother must die to ensure you receive eternal life at the hands of the Great Mutator. It is as simple as that. Yet, he knew it wasn’t. Too often in the past he had regretted his decision to join the cults of Chaos, and wished he had been brave enough to refuse them, and damn the consequences. He was sure when the moment came for Tzeentch to judge him, the god would see this, and hold it against him. He did not possess the ruthlessness and the drive to succeed within the ranks of the Lord of Change. He was damned whichever way he jumped. He could not turn back from the path he had chosen, and the way forward led to perdition too. He shook his head and sighed.

‘Are you ever going to let me in on this great secret you are keeping?’ Enrik asked lightly.

He was joking, of course, but Villem felt a sudden, suicidal urge to confess all, to tell his brother exactly what great secrets he had been keeping. He did not want to beg for forgiveness, he did not want to repent; he did not even want to be understood. He simply felt weary, and bowed beneath the weight of his forbidden knowledge. He wanted an end to this secrecy and standing apart.

It no longer made him feel superior to the common herd. It no longer made him feel like a member of a privileged elite. It simply made him tired almost unto death.

‘I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently, the fencing lessons,’ he said, just to end the silence and have something to say. How far were they from the alcoves now? Ten paces? Fifteen? It was hard to judge. ‘I was thinking about the time when I lost my temper, and hit you from behind and bruised your head, and you told Boris that it was an accident. I never thanked you for that.’

‘Its been preying on your mind all this time, has it?’ asked Enrik and laughed. It was a healthy, hearty laugh, the laugh of a man in his prime. It did not seem fair to cut that laugh off, thought Villem sadly. It came to him now that nothing he had done really mattered. He had killed a lot of people to no purpose, to further an end in which he had never truly believed, and now he was condemning his own brother for the very same reason. It was time for this madness to stop. Only how could he stop it now? Things had gone too far. They were almost at the alcoves. He was certain he could see the shadows of the waiting assassins. Suddenly Pavel sprang forward.

Villem was not quite sure what drove him forward into the way of the assassin’s blade: regret, love, loyalty… or perhaps a simple belief that his life had all gone wrong somehow and now he must atone. A deep-seated urge for self-preservation brought his knife from its sheath, and he shouted, ‘Beware, assassins!’ and pushed his brother back out of the way, sending him tumbling headlong. A sharp sudden stab of agony in his side told him that Pavel’s blade had found a home in his flesh. It would be a matter of moments before the poison finished him. Unless…

He reached down into his soul and found the spark of mystical power that had awakened so recently. It flickered feebly but he grasped it and instinctively sent it racing to neutralise the poison. He was aware that he had only partially succeeded, had merely bought himself a few more heartbeats of life but perhaps they would be enough. He lashed out at Pavel but the assassin was too quick. Villem watched surprise flicker across his face when Pavel realised who it was that was attacking him. It remained there only for an instant. All the followers of Tzeentch were only too aware that treachery ringed around them, and that the next blade that came at them might be from one of their allies.

Pavel reacted instantly, ducking back and stabbing once more. His blade pierced Villem’s side again. He felt a muscular arm loop itself around his neck and was aware that Lars had grabbed him and was holding him steady while Pavel plunged the blade into his body again and again. The pain receded. Strength drained from him. Everything in his sight seemed to be growing dimmer. He watched the floor rise to meet him and realised that his two erstwhile followers had dropped him. All the red stuff around him was blood and it was coming from his body. He had not realised that the human body could hold quite so much.

He looked back and saw his brother still lay sprawled on the floor. He had landed heavily when Villem pushed him clear. Regret filled him. All of his efforts had gone for naught. He had killed his brother, or at least made it possible for his assassins to do so, by accident. As from a great distance he heard a bellowed war cry and became aware of a large shadowy figure moving up the corridor. It was a dwarf, one he recognised: the Slayer, Gotrek Gurnisson.

How ironic, Villem thought. I spent all this time trying to have him killed and now I am praying for him to arrive in time and triumph. How the gods must be laughing!

Even as he watched he saw the dwarf advance upon Lars and Pavel. They turned to meet him but were no match for the Slayer’s ferocity. The axe flickered once, twice, and it was over. The red ruins of his fellow cultists lay dismembered on the ground beside him.

‘Thank you,’ Villem tried to say, but couldn’t get the words out because of the crimson tide that bubbled from his throat.

The darkness gathered round him, and he felt himself drawn downwards towards what waited beyond the doors of death. It was hot down there, and full of searing agony. The Lord of Changes waited there to greet him.

ELEVEN

Felix looked out from the walls near the Gargoyle Gate. Today was the day, no doubt about it. The legions of Chaos worshippers knew it. All the soldiers on the wall knew it. All of the citizens behind them knew it too. There was something in the air that you did not have to be a sorcerer to spot that told you so.

The clouds in the sky were red, streaked through with occasional flickers of black and silver. A crimson haze hovered over the surrounding land, turning the snow the colour of blood, and obscuring the more distant elements of the Chaos army from sight. Something about that glow made the skin on the back of Felix’s neck prickle. He did not need Max Schreiber to tell him that foul magic was at play here. Even as he watched, thousands and thousands of warriors moved to take up their positions.

Regiment was too disciplined a word to describe the mob out there, he decided. They were more like primitive tribesmen bound together in the service of some potent chieftain. They seethed around the base of the daemonic war engines, eerily silent in the ruddy light. How many tribes of the Chaos scum were there out there?

He could count at least a dozen different banners belonging to the fur-garbed humans alone. There was a flayed man. There was a face with the lips sewn shut. Above one force fluttered a symbol of a three-headed howling dog. Above the heads of others floated banners depicting some sort of daemon. Felix wished he could be certain that the only Chaos worshipping humans near him were those outside the wall. The events of the previous evening had left him shaken.

He guessed he would never know whether Villem was a traitor or not. He had certainly been a mutant, the stigmata had already appeared on his body. But, according to the duke and Gotrek, he had fought to save his brother’s life when ambushed and had died in the attempt. I guess he was innocent, and it was all part of Jan Pavelovich’s plan to sow dissension among the leadership of the city. That was if Jan Pavelovich was the highest ranking cultist, a fact which Felix frankly doubted. He wondered if the young noble had really thrown himself out the window when Snorri and Bjorni were drinking, or whether the Slayers had given him a little help. It did not seem politic to ask, and there was no sense in falling out with the others now that the moment of battle was at hand. They would all need to stand together if they were to have the faintest chance of survival.

Felix shook his head wondering what he was thinking. Such thoughts would never occur to the Slayers. That was not why they were here. They were here to seek a heroic doom. There would be plenty of those to go around this morning, Felix reckoned. He glanced sidelong at the others to see how they were taking things.

Gotrek looked as grim as ever. His gaze never left the advancing horde; he seemed to be singling out individuals as if judging whether they would be worthy of his time in single combat. Felix smiled looking at the Slayer. There was one who was going to sell his life dearly, and drag dozens, at the very least, down to hell with him.

Snorri clutched his head and groaned, apparently more concerned with his hangover than the prospect of death before them. Occasionally he would break off from his moaning long enough to shout what sounded like dwarfish obscenities in the direction of the Chaos worshippers for interrupting his slumber. Bjorni stood nearby with one arm round Sasha and the other round Mona. Felix wondered how he had managed to smuggle the bar girls onto the wall with him, and how he had managed to convince them to come with him to this place of imminent danger. Money most likely, although judging by the way they held him close, they seemed to feel some genuine affection for him. It was a funny old world, Felix thought.

Ulli stood nearby, looking pale and thoughtful. His hand played with his stubby beard and he looked up at the sky a lot as if not wanting to look too closely at the enemy. Felix could not blame him. Not too many people liked to watch certain death approach them. Not even Slayers.

Max and Ulrika stood near the duke and his retinue. Max peered off into the distance as if viewing things only he could see. Ulrika did not even look in Felix’s direction. He felt he should have been hurt more than he was, but it was obvious that their affair had run its course now, and even in the unlikely event of both of them surviving this, it was most likely they would part. A shame, he thought, but there it was.

The duke looked stern and commanding, and his soldiers were doing their best to put a brave face on things. Under normal circumstances, they would have managed it too. The winged lion fluttered from every tower, and from the pennons of a hundred companies. Heavily armed men crowded the battlements: swords, spears, and halberds clutched in gauntleted fists. Units of archers made ready to fire as soon as the enemy advanced. Mangonels, ballistae and other war machines rose from the ranks every fifty paces or so. Felix knew that in the honeycombed walls beneath them, more archers made ready to fire out through the arrow-slits and murder holes. He could smell boiling oil being heated, and hot pitch being made ready to pour on the stumps of the wounded. The canisters of alchemical fire were in the open now, ready to be loaded into the siege engines. He wished he had eaten nothing this morning but now it was too late.

He saw more movement in the distance. A vast cloud of harpies rose from the mass of Chaos worshippers and seethed and wheeled above it like a flock of swallows circling a temple spire on a summer’s evening. Not the most apt analogy, Felix thought. More like flocks of daemons rising from some fiery hell to seek prey among the lost souls beneath them. He hoped the archers and wizards were ready for them. He did not relish the prospect of fighting off a horde of those foul-smelling bat-winged fiends. Vivid memories of his narrow escape from them in the Chaos Wastes came back to his mind far too easily.

The harpies began to slowly circle around the city spiralling higher and higher until they were simply small dots in the vast blood-red sky. Obviously they were not planning on attacking just yet. Motion on the ground attracted Felix’s attention once more. Hordes of beastmen were making their way through the humans and forming up slightly ahead of them, leaving gaps through which other units might pass. It was like watching a huge chessboard on which the pieces were made of flesh and blood and were constantly in motion. Now, the black-clad Chaos warriors advanced to the beating of huge drums. Ranks of cavalry rode over the ramps across the forward trenches of the Chaos lines. Massive war altars were carried on the shoulders of tattooed fanatics.

Suddenly there was a deadly silence. Felix raised his spyglass to his eye and focused on the great silk pavilion in the centre of the army. From it emerged Arek Daemonclaw, his warlords and his wizards. Felix could see the two evil-looking albino twins, gold-robed and black-robed, and a horde of lesser mages, all clad in thick raiments covered in oddly glowing symbols and all bearing staffs that looked as if they had been carved from bone and topped with human skulls. Judging by appearances, Felix guessed that some sort of argument was taking place between the Chaos general and his wizards. He was gesticulating angrily and pointing at the city walls, while the mages at first shook their heads, and finally nodded.

What was going on over there, Felix wondered?

Arek Daemonclaw was livid. All night he had listened to the bickering of his warlords as each sought a prime position for himself and his followers in the coming assault, and attempted to persuade Arek to place them ahead of their rivals. All night he had listened to the foolish carpings of his wizards telling him that the time was not quite right for their spells, that the stars were not correctly aligned, that the ultimate force had not been summoned yet.

He was sure this was all just an excuse. His spies, and there were many of them, had brought him word that Lhoigor and Kelmain had been visiting many of his warlords. When challenged they had claimed they were simply doing their best to hold the army together and reassure his followers that all was going well. Arek was having none of it. He knew they were plotting against him, and that it would only be a matter of time before one or more of his generals rose against him. This constant inactivity, this protesting about stars and omens, was simply buying his enemies time during which the army was becoming bored and restless with inaction, and ripe for rebellion against their rightful leader. Worse than that it was giving his enemy time to gather against him. Scouts reported that the Ice Queen’s army was but a few days away, and there was a force of skaven advancing from the north. True these forces were tiny, but Arek knew that many mighty armies had been routed due to being attacked from the rear at an inopportune moment. This was not going to happen to his force. All thoughts of rebellion and inaction were going to end today.

He was not going to give them time for that. Soon all his army was going to be too busy to be bothered plotting against him. Soon he would give them a victory that would unite the entire horde behind him once more, and give those who would challenge him pause for thought. Today they would sweep over the walls of Praag and claim final and total victory.

Max Schreiber watched the mages of the Chaos horde advance to the fore. He had a more than professional interest in this. Very soon his life and the life of the woman he cared about might depend on his understanding of what he saw here.

He watched the two twin albinos closest of all. There was something about that pair that set them apart. To Max’s trained senses, they almost glowed with power. They were the mightiest mages he had ever seen, far stronger than any of his old masters, or Max himself. The others with them were almost certainly their acolytes. They watched the twins with a wary respect, and seemed to hang on their every word and gesture.

The two mages advanced to the clear ground in front of the horde, still well out of bowshot of the walls. They stood silent, heads down for a moment, then glanced at one another, raised their arms and began to chant. At first nothing seemed to happen. Max detected only the slightest stirring of the winds of magic and then only because his senses were keyed up to the highest pitch. One by one the mages around the albinos bowed their heads and began to chant too. And as they did so, Max began to feel a subtle change in the air.

The winds of magic swirled stronger now, as did the real breeze. Cool fingers of air touched Max’s face. Tendrils of power flickered out from the staffs of the twins and touched the mighty war engines around them. Arcs of power jumped from engine to engine forming a latticework almost too intricate for Max’s eye to follow. As he watched beam after beam reached upwards and outwards touching the glowing clouds overhead. Thunder rumbled. Lightning flickered downwards.

It was no normal lightning, Max could tell. It was pregnant with all the power the Chaos horde had drawn down from the Northern Wastes. The huge bolts all lashed downwards and struck the tips of one of the twins’ staffs. As they did so, the mages seemed to swell with ominous power. To Max’s trained eye their auras became ever brighter. Their voices swelled until their chanting could be heard from the walls of Praag. The words were full of evil import and repeated the name of Tzeentch constantly. As Max watched, the snow around the sorcerers melted away from around their feet until an area fifty strides across was clear, and the brown earth was visible beneath.

As the thunder rumbled, the clouds began to swirl, like water in a whirlpool. In their midst a gap opened revealing the sky above. Through that gap the evil Chaos moon Morrslieb glared down. It glowed bright as a small sun, and more than once the aura surrounding it seemed to form a wicked leering face with a gaping mouth and a massive tongue that gazed down hungrily on the city.

Max heard people close to him whimper and moan. He knew why. That wicked face was depicted on tapestries in the palace and in sculptures on many buildings. It was the same malevolent visage that had glared down on Praag during the last siege. The air vibrated with energy. A monstrous rumbling began as the light of the moon fell on the huge siege engines. Auras flickered around them. Their metal forms shuddered and vibrated and began to move. It was a terrifying and awe-inspiring sight, like watching a field of massive metal statues spring to life.

The sorcerers did not cease their chanting. The haze surrounding the army seemed to clot and congeal, drawing itself together into massive blocks of reddish light. Then these seemed to shrink and dwindle and at the same time concentrate. As they did so the outlines of humanoid figures began to appear. At first they were only vague, monstrous shapes, but as the long minutes went on, and the chanting of the wizards continued, they became solid featureless figures of light, then took on shape and definition until thousands of obscenely-shaped figures were present.

Max recognised many of them from the forbidden tomes he had studied. Those things which somehow suggested evil animated fungi were Flamers of Tzeentch, lesser daemons of considerable power. Pink beings with massive heads where their torsos should have been capered and danced on the open ground.

Now other mages in the vast army began to join in. Max guessed that it was the priests and sorcerers in the service of other powers, taking advantage of all the dark magic Arek’s house wizards had summoned. As Max watched aghast more and more daemonic figures emerged from nothingness into being.

He recognised the Daemonettes of Slaanesh: odd androgynous figures with one bare breast, hairless heads, and one mighty claw like a crab’s pincer. They had a strange and disturbing beauty. Some units of them rode on odd bipedal beasts with long flickering tongues, others marched afoot and brandished long blades.

Amid the ranks of black-armoured Chaos warriors, other figures were materialising. Mighty hounds with teeth of steel and great collars of flesh emerging from their necks. Huge armoured warriors bounded onto the backs of mighty red and bronze steeds far more massive than any horse, whose eyes blazed with an eerie blood-red light. Strange slithering slug-like things bubbled into being ahead of the diseased ranks of the followers of Nurgle. All of them were surrounded by a halo of power that told Max of their daemonic origin. In all of his life, he had never witnessed such a potent summoning, or seen so much mystical power unleashed in one spot.

He doubted he would live to see its like again.

Felix watched the Chaos horde begin its advance. It was all he could do to keep himself from whimpering with fear like some of those around him. He wondered whether he would survive an hour. Massive metal siege towers carved with the effigies of hideous daemons began to rumble forward. Teams of sweating, near-naked men drew some of them. Others moved under their own sorcerous power, rumbling ever closer to the walls. Huge trebuchet arms swung backwards and forwards sending loads of massive stones tumbling towards the walls. Felix heard screams and shrieks from a distant section of the line as their cargo of death descended among the defenders.

Now tens of thousands of marauders, beastmen and Chaos warriors began to charge forward, racing through the snow towards the walls. Their shouts and screams were terrible to hear. Mighty drums were beaten. Huge horns sounded. The wind brought the odours of brimstone and corrupt bodies to Felix’s nostrils.

He gripped his sword tight and fought to steady himself. It was difficult. He recognised some of the things racing towards them from the time he had spent in the tunnels beneath Karag Dum. Those hounds, for example, were daemonic things whose flesh no normal blade could pierce. He wondered how the defenders were going to stop them. Gotrek’s axe was capable of killing them, but the Slayer could not be everywhere at once, and not even he could kill the small army of daemons advancing upon them.

‘Ask them to keep the noise down. Snorri has a bit of a hangover,’ said Snorri.

Felix almost smiled. Some of the tension eased out of him. He decided that whatever approached and however powerful it was, he was going to give as good an account of himself as he could. If there was nothing else he could do, he was at least going to take some of those Chaos-worshipping bastards with him.

Overhead the harpies ceased to circle and began to spiral downwards. Their long descent was nothing like the swooping dives Felix had seen them perform in the Chaos Wastes. He could only guess that they had been instructed to time their attack to strike just as the siege towers were hitting the wall. They would provide an additional distraction that the defenders could not afford to ignore. Someone out there had indeed been planning this for a long time.

The Chaos horde moved ever closer. Most of the warriors and the daemons clustered around the mighty siege engines, seeking shelter in their shadow. A few bolder, more foolhardy or more desperate for glory rushed ahead. The defenders on the wall watched tensely. Soon, Felix knew, the Chaos worshippers would be in range. Now was the time to whittle away their attackers.

Felix raised his spyglass and ran it over the oncoming horde. Faces leapt into focus. Brutal barbarians, mouths open in screams of fury, froth spilling from their lips, veins standing out on their forehead, muscles distended, filled his vision. Beside them were massive beastmen, ram-headed, horned, furred, eyes filled with red malice, inhuman muzzles raised to bay their bestial cries. Black helms, rune-inscribed, hid the faces of the Chaos knights, all save their strangely glowing eyes. Daemonic visages shimmered in the wicked glow of the witch moon. Felix wrenched his sight away from them and studied one of the siege towers.

It was taller even than the walls of Praag, a structure built from wood, and sheathed in the black iron of the Wastes, doubtless drawn from the daemonic forges beneath the ruins of Karag Dum. The plates were moulded into the shape of leering daemon heads, or inscribed with unspeakable runes whose evil light hurt the eye. The tower that Felix gazed upon had a massive cast head of Khorne attached to its front. Its wheels were embossed with faces similar to that of the great bloodthirster he had faced in the lost dwarf city. It gave the impression of immense size and solidity. It seemed more like a mobile tower from some iron keep than a mobile engine of war. And yet it moved, powered by sorcery, lumbering forward as fast as a man might trot, bouncing on the rutted ground, crushing any beastman unfortunate enough to fall in its path.

A huge two-headed battering ram flickered from Khorne’s gaping maw, for all the world like the tongue of some vast snake. At the tower’s top a crew of tribesmen manned a small ballista, and were frantically bringing it to bear on the defenders. Through dozens of small windows in the machine’s sides, Felix could see the shadow shapes of the warriors waiting within.

Felix heard the chant of prayer and spell close to him now. Fireballs erupted from the walls of Praag, arcing outwards and downwards into the oncoming horde. Bolts of lightning flickered out of the turbulent sky. Odd golden glows appeared over the heads of bellowing Chaos warriors. Most of the spells spluttered and died, absorbed by the eerie haze surrounding the evil army, or neutralised by the work of the horde’s own sorcerers. One or two hit home though. As Felix watched a fireball exploded amid a regiment of beastmen. A score were blown to pieces where they stood. A dozen more caught fire and raced randomly among their brethren, blazing like human torches, till they were cut down or trampled underfoot. At the sight, a cheer went up from the warriors on the battlements. It was a first, small victory. Felix hoped there would be many more.

A creaking followed by a loud twang announced to Felix that one of the mighty catapults near him had been brought to bear. A mass of huge rocks arced out over the besiegers and then, with what seemed like appalling slowness to the distant onlooker, crashed down, killing anything beneath them. It heartened Felix to see that the catapult did not just kill its immediate targets. Many of the marauders who sought to avoid the stonefall were trampled under the hooves of their beastmen comrades. That section of the approaching line was thrown into disarray by the milling of the mob, and the advance slowed. Those coming on behind them trampled more, as the press of bodies caused a huge pileup of man and beast.

More and more catapults and ballistae opened fire from the walls. More and more beastmen and marauders fell to their projectiles. More and more crushed and maimed bodies blocked the advance of at least part of the Chaos army, causing eddies, currents in that vast sea of flesh to rival anything in a real ocean. Kegs of alchemical fire descended on the horde, turning men and beasts into blazing torches that not even the chill of the snow could extinguish.

The defenders were not having it all their own way though. The huge trebuchets at the back of the enemy lines lobbed their own cargoes of death at the walls of Praag. Felix ducked as a mighty boulder passed overhead, and flinched at the sound of it crashing through red-tiled roofs behind him. Shouts of alarm and the smell of burning told him that either it had upset some fire or stove within the broken building, or the stone had born some sinister enchantment that caused a blaze where it fell. Felix frantically hoped it was the former but suspected that it might all too easily prove to be the latter.

Amid the horde some mages, either forgetting what they knew of the defences of Praag or too filled with their own sense of superiority to care, sent spells hurtling towards the walls. As Felix watched a fiery ball in which was visible a leering evil face arced towards the defenders. The ancient enchantments held good and the spell fizzled out paces from the battlements, sending the sour stench of brimstone into the nostrils of the warriors manning them. Shouts of triumph and relief from along the line told him that the old enchantments still held there too.

Thousands of bows twanged. Thousands of arrows driven by all the power of short Kislevite composite bows and dwarf-made crossbows scythed through the attackers. Screams of agony mingled with shouts of bloodlust. Another volley and hundreds more fell. Officers shouted commands, archers reloaded and fired. Crossbowmen worked the mechanisms of their weapons. Corpses littered the snow, but were crushed to jelly beneath the wheels of the advancing siege towers. The lords of death stalked the battlefield, feasting hungrily on the souls of the slain.

A hideous stench, a crack of wings opening to slow a fast descent and the rough cawing of raucous voices all warned Felix that the harpies had at last begun their attack. He ducked the sweep of an iron-taloned claw and hacked right through the wrist of his attacker. Spurting black blood, the winged humanoid tumbled backwards away from the wall and fluttered downwards to be impaled in the spike-filled pits below. Felix wiped the ichor from his face and spat, then glanced along the wall.

Hundreds of the bat-winged humanoids wrestled and clawed at the defenders, distracting the archers and interfering with the work of the siege engines at this critical point in the battle. More and more of them surged overhead and descended into the city to spread fire and alarm. Felix watched with some satisfaction as archers from the streets below picked off a few of them but more and more descended from the blood-red heavens to continue the wicked work.

Gotrek’s war cry got Felix’s attention. A swipe of the Slayer’s axe slew two of the vile creatures, its starmetal blade seeming to sear their flesh as it passed through it. Snorri pinned one down with his foot while he bashed out its brains with his hammer, all the while keeping the beast’s companions at bay with his whirling axe. Bjorni had hidden the two girls somewhere and now was dealing terrible damage to the attackers with a military pick. Ulli wrestled with another on the blood-slick stone near Felix. The man raced over and with a lunge passed his blade through the harpy’s back.

Ulli rose to his feet, glaring and spitting blood. ‘I could have taken it,’ he shouted.

Felix gestured around them. ‘Plenty more where that one came from.’

Ulli nodded and plunged once more into the fray. A familiar searing gold light blazed along the battlements. Felix recognised that Max’s magic was at work. Powerfully too. Half a dozen winged monsters shrivelled and fell under its impact. Felix looked around to see Max and Ulrika standing side by side, the area around them clear of monsters. He gave them a thumbs-up sign and was answered with nods.

Suddenly the harpies seemed to have had enough. They rose from the battlements, shrieking defiance, and surged on into the city. At least on this section of the line they had found the defenders too tough for them. Felix looked out at the advancing horde. They had made good use of the distraction to get ever closer to the city walls. Only a few hundred paces separated them from the stonework now.

He wiped sweat from his face and shouted to one of the water-carriers. His throat felt as dry as the sands of Araby. The boy brought him a waterskin and Felix hastily downed some of its contents. They felt sweet as wine sliding down his throat. He was taking advantage of the water while it lasted. Doubtless in a few hours, if he yet lived, he would be reduced to taking mouthfuls of the snow. He should be so lucky, he told himself.

A cheer from along the line got his attention. Under a relentless bombardment from the catapults on the walls, one of the great siege engines had ground to a halt and was now beginning to topple. It wobbled for a few moments, like a cart whose front wheels have gone over the edge of a ditch. There was a sound like a metal drum hit with a hammer only a hundred times louder as another massive stone smashed into it. It was too much for the daemonic engine. It heeled over like a ship in a storm and crashed down into the middle of a host of beastmen. Their screams and wails of agony told of hundreds of deaths. There was a mighty explosion, and in an instant the black structure appeared to expand, revealing yellow fires burning inside, like a mystic portal to some hot hell. Massive metal plates, knife-edged, hurled everywhere, decapitating Chaos marauders, cutting through the armour of the black-encased knights, taking an enormous death toll.

‘One down, twelve to go,’ Ulli muttered.

‘I could show them a bigger tower,’ growled Bjorni, ‘and mine doesn’t come down so fast either.’ No one seemed interested. A company of fresh bowmen raced into position on the battlements near them. Their officer shouted instructions. The men knocked their arrows, drew their strings back to their ears and then let fly. More Chaos worshippers fell.

‘We’re slaughtering them,’ crowed Ulli.

‘This is the easy part!’ Gotrek shouted back. ‘Just wait till they get to the walls.’

The younger Slayer’s face fell.

Good for you, Gotrek Gurnisson, thought Felix ironically. You can always be relied on to raise morale in a tight spot. But if any of the men were discouraged by the dwarf’s pronouncement, they gave no sign. Probably too busy trying to pick new targets, Felix thought and offered up a prayer of thanks to Sigmar for small mercies.

Couriers raced past, bearing messages for the duke from other towers and other parts of the battlefield. Felix wondered that anybody could make any sense out of this maelstrom of combat but the duke sent all of the messengers away seemingly satisfied with the orders he had given. Felix supposed it was probably just the fact that he looked calm, and in control that did it. The men believed because they wanted to believe.

The first of the remaining siege towers was only a hundred strides away now. Huge fur-clad barbarians bellowed challenges from its roof, and brandished their weapons obscenely at the defenders. The Kislevites responded with arrow fire. Most of the marauders managed to duck down behind their parapets in time. Their kinsmen tossed those who did not off the top of their machine. No help for the wounded here, thought Felix. Khorne is probably hungry for their souls.

He strode across to Ulrika and Max. Woman and wizard were covered in gore. Felix had no idea how much of it was their own. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ she replied and looking closely at her Felix could see this was the case. She looked more than fine. She looked exalted, like someone in the throes of a powerful drug. Felix had seen many warriors get that way, had felt the same thing himself on many occasions, felt a touch of it himself now. There was nothing more thrilling than surviving mortal combat. She cast a glance out at the howling sea of Chaos worshippers.

‘Bring them on,’ she said and laughed. It was an eerie laugh, with more than a little madness in it. It reminded him of Gotrek in the throes of killing lust. Felix followed her gaze. He could see that many of those howling barbarians out there around the base of the war machines carried long siege ladders.

‘They’ll be here soon enough,’ he said.

‘Scared, Felix?’ she asked mockingly. He smiled.

‘Absolutely.’

She cocked her head to one side and looked him up and down. ‘You don’t fight like it.’

‘I find being terrified gives me an extra incentive to fight well.’

‘You are a strange man, Felix Jaeger. No Kislevite warrior would confess to feeling as you do.’

‘Perhaps I am just more honest,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ she shouted, obviously having failed to hear him over the tumult of the battle.

‘Look out!’ shouted Max and raised his hands. Golden spheres winked into being around them. Beams of energy speared upwards. Felix looked up in time to see a swooping harpy turn into a blackened, charred husk. It tumbled to the battlements at his feet and split open, revealing reddish meat and whitish bone within. Felix looked away with a grimace. A foul smell of burning flesh clogged his nostrils.

‘A useful trick, Max,’ he said.

‘I’ve been getting a lot of practice recently,’ replied the wizard and turning outwards, directed his ravening beams of coruscating energy at the nearest siege engine.

Something around that daemonic machine absorbed the power. Felix could see the air shimmering around it, as if some semi-visible shield were recoiling under the impact. The haze moved away from the point of impact, rippling like water in a pond disturbed by a thrown stone. Max drove his spell harder and the light crept slowly closer to the tip of the tower, touched a howling beastman, and caused his flesh to melt and run. Seconds later the ballista he was manning caught fire.

Felix could only hope the flames would spread to the rest of the structure. As he watched smoke continued to rise from the top of the tower and the flames leapt ever higher. It seemed that the wood, or whatever else the thing was made from was combustible. Felix watched, awe struck, as gates in the tower’s side, obviously intended to be lowered to let those within assault the walls, were thrown open and men began to leap out, falling to their doom fifty strides below. Felix turned to Max.

‘If only you could do that a few more times we might hold them back.’

The wizard was bent double. He looked pale and sickly like a man convalescing after a long illness. All of the strength had gone out of him. Ulrika stood by his side, supporting him. Felix wrestled with a surge of futile jealousy and went over to see if there was anything he could do to help.

‘I should… should not have done that,’ Max gasped, sweat running from his brow. ‘There was something alive imprisoned within the tower, something daemonic, wicked and older than the world. The strain of banishing it nearly killed me. It was just that I felt the protective spells going down, and thought if I tried a little harder I might overcome them. I did, didn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ Felix said, catching the wizard as he slowly keeled over. Hastily he and Ulrika carried Max over and propped his back against the parapet. The wizard looked as if he might pass away at any moment.

‘Will he be all right?’ Ulrika asked. She sounded very concerned. Felix checked the wizard’s pulse. It was fast but strong. His brow felt very warm. ‘I think so, but I am neither physician nor wizard. I don’t know how magic can drain you. There’s not a mark on him, and he seems all right…’

‘I don’t think he had fully recovered his strength from healing me,’ she said. She sounded guilty. Felix looked up at her and shook his head.

‘Nonsense. He was fine when he helped us stop the attack on the grain silos. Don’t fret yourself. We have other things to worry about.’

Despite his reassuring words, Felix was not so sure he was correct. Max had been using a lot of his energies recently, in combat, in healing, in banishing the ghosts that had attacked them. Perhaps he had overspent his life force and was now about to pay the price. Even as the thoughts crossed his mind, he felt a tugging on his sleeve and looked down to see Max smiling wanly up at him.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he muttered. ‘I just need a few minute’s rest and I’ll be good as new.’

The wizard did not look that way, but his words seemed to reassure Ulrika. She gave him a radiant smile, and touched his face gently. Felix felt blood rush to his cheeks. Had there been something going on between those two without him knowing? They looked more like lovers at this moment than he and Ulrika did. Get a grip on yourself, he thought. This is not the time nor the place for such thoughts.

Spells flickered between wall and siege tower. The air crackled as protective magic dampened them out. Clouds of dust rose from the oncoming units. The deadly hiss of arrows filled the air, almost drowned out by the screams of the wounded and the roaring of that onrushing sea of flesh.

Terrible frenzy filled the Chaos worshippers. The presence of the daemons in their midst obviously goaded them on as nothing else could. Despite the appalling casualties, they came on undaunted. No amount of killing seemed to dent their resolve. Felix knew that he was in for the fight of his life.

A company of beastmen in advance of the rest had reached the ditch at the foot of the walls. They had come prepared. A massive ladder was lofted, and even before it touched the walls, a goat-headed warrior was on it, climbing with surprising deftness in spite of its hooves. Even as the ladder hit the wall, it was twisted and pushed away. The beastman fell, caught a rung with one powerful hand and then continued his climb. He managed to get half way up the ladder, several of his cloven-hoofed brethren just behind him, when the defenders managed to topple the ladder. Instead of falling straight back it toppled sideways, sending the beastmen to their deaths on the sharpened stakes below.

The wall shook as the first of the mighty siege towers made contact. Felix leaned out over the battlements to see what was happening. The thing had driven right into the ditch, crushing the stakes beneath its weight. The battering ram in its belly smashed into the walls, sending chips of stone flying. Already a bridge had been lowered on the machine’s top and warriors were starting to emerge from within the machine’s body and pour across it. As Felix watched other Chaos worshippers, mad with battlelust, started to clamber up the side of the machine, using the embossed daemonic faces as handholds. Felix was reminded of ants swarming over a stump as more and more of them began the arduous climb.

All along the wall other siege towers were making contact, and more and more Chaos worshippers emerged, bellowing the name of Khorne and shouting his praises in their guttural tongue. Felix readied his sword, and looked around for the Slayers. Predictably they were rushing towards the thick of the fighting. Felix glanced at Ulrika who was bent over Max soothing his brow. He felt a surge of jealousy, annoyance, and battle lust.

‘Keep an eye on Max,’ he said as he sprinted towards the fray. ‘I will be right back.’

Even as he ran, he wondered why was he doing this. Was he running to get away from them, or to try and impress the girl with his bravery? He wondered if he would ever know.

Arek watched his warriors begin to reduce the walls of Praag. In some ways it was going better than he had expected. In some ways it was going worse. He had not expected to lose two of the towers before they even reached the walls. Curse that sorcerer and the siege engineers manning those catapults. On the other hand, the harpies had done an admirable job of distracting the defenders, and judging by the flames rising beyond the outer wall, were even now spreading havoc within the enemy city.

Arek watched enthralled as the huge siege towers disgorged their freight of warriors onto the wall. Northern tribesmen and snarling beastmen fought alongside each other, filled with a rabid desire to kill. Arek almost envied them at this moment. He had always found it deeply satisfying to triumph over his opponent in the heat of battle. There were times when he suspected that he might almost have enjoyed being one of the berserker followers of Khorne. He had never lost a single combat, and knew he was never likely to, with all the gifts the Great Mutator had heaped upon him. He was all but invincible when it came to a fray which was why none of the other warlords had ever challenged him to duel for leadership of the horde. If it had not been for that accursed vision…

Lightning flickered along the battlements, clearing away some of his men. Obviously the spell barriers that prevented his wizards casting spells at or through the walls did nothing to stop someone already there. Why was that, he wondered? Was it like being behind a wall or caught in a passage between two barriers? He would have to ask his pet magicians about it when he got the chance. Perhaps before he had them executed for showing insufficient zeal in protecting his troops. They had sworn the towers were totally protected from enemy spells and invulnerable to enemy weapons. Today’s events had proven them wrong on both accounts.

Still, the machines had worked and looked like they would fulfil their purpose, and that was the main thing. He knew they would have to do it today, all the vast energy so laboriously summoned from the northlands had been expended in the animation of the towers, the summoning of the daemons, and the weaving of the protective spells. He knew they were going to be exhausted for days afterwards.

That would be the perfect time to round them up and make an example of them, Arek thought.

Felix fought his way along the battlements. The stone was slippery with blood, and severed entrails. Puddles of red stained the snow. He leapt to one side as a dying beastman reached for him. The movement took him to the edge of the parapet on the town side of the wall. He caught sight of red-tiled roofs below him, and buildings blazing in the distance. Men seemed to be fighting with men back there. Panicked townsfolk, he wondered, or more cultists emerging to help their fellows in battle?

Time enough to worry about that later. If he survived what was going on around him now. The beastman had raised itself on one hand and gathered itself in a crouch. Judging by its wounds it was not far from death. Felix guessed that it intended to take him with it, and he had a fair idea of how. He was proven correct. The beastman sprang, spreading its arms to make a grab for him. Expecting this, Felix crouched and rolled letting the massive creature pass over him, and the battlements, and fall to its doom far below.

The snow was cold on his hands, and was starting to seep through his tunic where he had been lying in it. The chainmail shirt he wore beneath did nothing to help with the chill. Might get a fever from this, he thought, and then laughed. That would be the least of his worries. He grasped the hilt of his sword, and pushed himself upright, rising to his knees just in time to see another beastman swinging a monstrous spiked mace down on his head.

He threw himself to one side, bracing himself on one hand while swinging his blade at the creature. The mace passed just to one side of his head. His blow took the thing just behind the knee, drawing blood. The beastman threw back its goat head and bellowed in pain. Felix stabbed upwards, taking it in the groin. The bellow became extremely high-pitched and then tailed off into a piteous whimper. Felix withdrew the blade and rose to his feet, chopping half way through his foe’s neck with another swipe. Its head flopped loose, still attached by tendons. Black blood boiled forth to melt the snow. Felix strode on. Snow had started to fall. Flakes blew into his eyes and partially obscured his sight. The wind seemed to be picking up. Was this more sorcery, he wondered, or just a natural effect of the weather in these chill northern climes?

Ahead of him he could see the Slayers, fighting amid a horde of beastmen and marauders and more than holding their own. Dead and dying foes lay all around them. The Kislevites, heartened by their presence, fought like men possessed. Here at least, it seemed possible to believe, if only for a moment, that victory might be theirs. Another monstrous siege tower crashed into the wall. A smell something like musk, something like perfume wafted into Felix’s nostrils. For a moment, he thought nothing of it, but then his skin started to tingle, and a ticklish sensation started at the back of his throat. He felt all of the killing lust draining out of him, and turned to find the source of this delightful odour.

All around him, men and beastmen were doing the same, temporarily forgetting their enmity in their desire to find the source of the sweet perfume. Felix saw a massive iron drawbridge crash onto the battlements. Exotic, strangely beautiful, oddly familiar figures leapt forth from the siege tower, and raced into the fray. They looked like shaven-headed women. Despite the chill, they were near naked, wearing black leather tunics that revealed one perfectly formed breast. In place of one hand, they had crab-like claws. In the other hand some held long stabbing swords, some held whips, some held nets. Moving with an eerie grace they glided across the battlements. Wherever they went, men died. Felix recognised them as creatures of Slaanesh, Lord of Unspeakable Pleasures.

Felix watched one huge Kislevite warrior who had only moments before slaughtered three beastmen stand like a lamb waiting to be slaughtered while one of the beautiful woman things clipped off his head with a claw. Instead of avenging him the man’s comrades calmly waited for death to come to them. Felix watched it all fascinated, and filled with an odd elation. There was something perfectly enthralling about the whole performance: the grace of the females, the way the red blood glistened in perfect droplets on the snow. There was something sensual and deeply arousing about it. He doubted he had ever seen anything quite so attractive as the daemon women. It would be a pleasure to die at their hands. In fact, he could hardly wait. He took a stride towards them, eager to feel death’s embrace.

Part of him, deeply buried in his psyche, screamed that it was wrong. Those were not women. They were daemons. They were the enemy. Their musk or some other sorcery had him enchanted. Yet there was nothing he could do about it. His feet kept moving as if they belonged to someone else, the sword dangled limply from his fingers and it was all he could do not to let it slip to the ground. A smile was frozen on his face. He could see the same smile written on the lips of other enthralled defenders.

A beastman aimed a blow at him. He did not want this. It would prevent him embracing the woman-thing of his choice, an enchanting creature with pale white skin and ruby red lips. He ducked the blow and took his assailant’s hand off at the wrist. As it fell backwards, he rammed his sword into its throat. Behind him he could hear the sound of running feet, and the sound of something heavy hacking through flesh like a butcher’s cleaver. Felix sincerely hoped it wasn’t another rival for the favour of his chosen one. He wanted to look back to make sure, but he could not keep his eyes off her. Look at the way her smile revealed those gleaming ivory fangs!

Something rushed past him, and he almost stabbed it before realising that it was Gotrek. Did the Slayer intend to challenge him for the she-daemon’s favours? He would see about that. Felix aimed a stab at the Slayer’s back but something restrained him. He seemed unable to move his arm. Looking down, he saw a massive hand was locked on his wrist. He tried to struggle but someone immobilised him with the same ease with which he might immobilise a child.

‘Snorri thinks that’s far enough,’ said a deep voice from somewhere around the region of his lower back. Felix fought against the steely grip and raved curses as he saw what the cruel Slayer intended. Gotrek moved among the Slaanesh worshippers. Their light weapons could not withstand his axe, which now blazed lantern-bright with an evil red glow. One by one he chopped his way through them. They did not die as human warriors might have. Instead, as they fell their bodies disintegrated into showers of sparks and clouds of vile perfume. Smelling that stink broke the spell, and made Felix realise how close he had come to being slain by its evil enchantment. All around him other human warriors appeared to realise the same. They shook themselves, looked at their foes, and took up the fray once more.

Gotrek slew the last of the she-daemons, and leaping to the battlement struck at the lowered drawbridge with his axe. The powerful enchantment on the weapon, powerful enough to banish even the greatest of daemons, caused far more destruction on the siege tower than even the strength of Gotrek’s blow would seem to warrant. Sparks blazed on the black metal where he struck, and instead of disappearing, flickered and grew larger, writhing around the hell-metal like tiny chains of blood-red lightning. In an instant they flickered outwards from the point of impact, until they covered the whole of the mighty siege tower in a display of dazzling pyrotechnics that hurt the eye.

Felix watched in amazement. The contact with Gotrek’s mighty weapon had in some way disrupted the spell animating the siege machine, freeing the imprisoned daemonic energy. A smell like ozone mingled with brimstone filled the air, clearing away the stench of the slain daemonettes. Even Gotrek appeared stunned by the effect of his action. He stood motionless for a second watching the strange halo of lightning engulf the daemon tower. From within came screams and the stink of burning flesh and fur. Snowflakes sizzled into nothingness where they touched the light. Then the tower simply fell apart, its components raining to the ground below.

Felix wished Max Schreiber were here now to tell him what had happened. The wizard would know about such things for certain. All Felix could do was guess. He reckoned that the tower had been at least partially constructed with sorcery, and held together by magical energies. Gotrek’s blade had disrupted the spell binding its components together, and thus ensured its destruction.

The Slayer shook his head, as if to clear his sight, and then, appearing to realise what he had done, let out a crazed laugh. He raced along the battlements, seeking another one of the towers. Felix swiftly moved to follow. He knew that at all costs the Slayer must be kept alive.

If anything could turn the tide of the battle it was his axe.

Max Schreiber stared in wonderment as the spell holding the tower together unravelled. To his mage’s senses, even partially blinded as they were by the storm of dark magical energy raging about him, it was obvious what was going on. Gotrek’s blade had been forged to be the bane of daemons. Max knew this for a certainty. Those towers contained and were animated by the imprisoned essence of daemons from the darkest hells. Max knew as much from his contact with the tower earlier when he had unwoven the spell binding the evil thing.

As the axe banished the daemons from the mortal plane, the vessel holding them fell apart, no longer bound together by their presence. Max watched in awe as the Slayers made their way along the battlements and in quick succession Gotrek reduced first one, then two, then three of the monstrous engines to flinders. It was an amazing thing to watch. It seemed that in some ways the gods themselves had decided to aid the defenders after all, by allowing the presence of such a potent weapon, and such a powerful wielder. Was this the destiny the Slayer had been spared for so long to meet? Max did not know.

Summoning the last of his magical energies he freed his senses from his body, allowing sight and mage vision to roam free along the walls and observe the struggle. Everywhere he looked he could see slaughter. Men and beastmen, Chaos warrior and human defender were locked in brutal combat. Along the wall, Gotrek and Felix and the other Slayers roamed like angry gods, seemingly killing at will.

Even as he watched though, he became certain that this would not be enough. Gotrek could not be everywhere, and the towers had already done their wicked work. At many points along the wall Chaos warriors, beastmen and vile tribesmen were present, holding small sections long enough for more and more of their brethren to swarm up ladders, and haul more normal engines into place. Despite the Slayers’ efforts it looked as if the walls would be over-run.

But the attack had cost the horde dearly. Horns sounded from around them. Max sent his vision looking for the source and saw reinforcements sweeping up from the town to the walls. Fresh warriors hurled themselves into the fray, hacking at their hideous foes, chopping them down. One by one the beachheads established by the Chaos worshippers were overwhelmed, and the wall was cleared, stride by painful stride.

Max almost believed that they might be able to win this battle, and hold the wall for another day, but even as he thought this, he sensed sorcerous power being unleashed at a different section of the wall. Quickly he sent his spirit soaring in search of the disturbance. His vision ran around the perimeter, his magic still imprisoned by the binding spells along the outer and inner walls. As it did so, he saw what was going on.

At another section of the wall, far distant from where the Slayers were, more of the daemonic towers attacked. Max saw that they had reduced one section of the stonework to rubble. The protective spells in this spot had already unravelled allowing Max to shift his point of view to outside the confining perimeter. His gaze flickered over the horde of Chaos warriors and beastmen piling into the city through the gap. As he watched the largest of the towers used its ram to break through the mighty gateway. It would only be a matter of moments before the iron-clad wooden beams gave way completely. Max saw the wood splinter and the metal buckle and then the whole gate flew apart, letting the screaming horde into the city.

Max looked up at Ulrika. Concern was written on her face. ‘Go and tell the duke that the East Gate has fallen,’ he said. ‘The hordes of Chaos are within the city.’

TWELVE

The horns sounded loudly. The Kislevite troops on the wall began to panic. Felix knew what that signal meant: the enemy were within the walls. All the hard fighting they had done here had been for nothing. He gritted his teeth and spat into the snow. Somewhere, somehow, he had got blood in his mouth. Maybe he had bitten his cheek or tongue. Maybe one of his teeth was coming loose. He had been struck glancing blows a few times in the combat, and he bled from a dozen nicks on his arms, legs and face. He was tired, and filled with fear, and the sight of the hardened defenders around him starting to panic did nothing to reduce his own trepidation. He looked around to see how the Slayers were doing.

Gotrek did not look well. He swayed wearily on his feet and his features were pale. Felix had not seen him look quite this bad since after the battle at Karag Dum. It was apparent that whatever power the axe had, using it drained the Slayer of a great deal of his energy. He caught Felix’s sympathetic glance and growled, ‘I am not dead yet, manling.’

It looked only a matter of time though. Even a warrior as fearsome as Gotrek could not fight for long in the condition he was in. The Chaos warriors so recently cleared from the walls were returning with renewed vigour, casting ladders up, and pushing more conventional siege towers into position.

Snorri, Bjorni and Ulli weren’t in much better condition. All three looked as if they had been bathed in a pool of blood. Bjorni had a flap of skin loose on the side of his face which gaped open to reveal his teeth. Snorri’s tattoos were near invisible against a dark background of bruises. Ulli looked as if he wanted to either burst into tears or berserk rage and was not quite sure which. All of the Slayers looked determined though, and it was obvious to Felix that they intended to make a last stand here on the walls against the oncoming horde. It would probably prove suicidal but that, after all, was their avowed aim in life.

Madness, Felix thought, simple madness. For a brief moment back there during the fighting, he had felt something like hope. The power of Gotrek’s axe against the daemon towers, and the way the dwarfs had helped rally the weary defenders had almost made him believe victory was possible. A hopeless dream he could see now, watching the duke bellowing orders and getting his own guard to hold firm to cover the retreat of the rest of his men from the wall. It was only due to his presence of mind that things were not turning into a fully-fledged rout.

Ulrika and Max were already moving down the stairs, and he waved to them as they went. The woman supported the tired sorcerer, and Felix could not grudge him that. Max had earned a chance at life this day, and Ulrika owed him for saving hers. He knew that she would pay that debt whatever it took. He tried not to think jealous thoughts of any other reasons she might have. This was not the time.

Seeing the duke’s banner still fluttering along the walls, some of the massive siege engines had started firing again, obviously aiming at the one proud banner still fluttering defiantly in their faces, oblivious to the peril in which they placed their own warriors. Felix ducked involuntarily as a huge stone went hurtling past overhead to crash onto the tenements behind them.

‘Missed!’ cackled Snorri.

‘Not even close,’ muttered Ulli without much conviction.

Gotrek limped back over in the general direction of the wall, and began to bellow challenges at the beastmen.

Don’t do that, you idiot, thought Felix, but could not quite muster the courage to say it aloud. The duke’s men were covering the stairway down from the tower now. The duke himself shouted, ‘Come on! There is still time to go! We need every warrior now to help defend the city!’

His plea almost moved the dwarfs. He could see that it struck a chord within them. They knew his words were true. Ulli scuffed his feet and began to move in the direction of the stairwell. Bjorni shook his head. Snorri shrugged and rushed along the wall to send another ladder toppling backwards with one heave of his enormous shoulders. Gotrek did not even look back. Ulli shamefacedly stood his ground as if undecided as to whether to stay or go.

‘Come on, Jaeger, we need you too!’ shouted the duke. He obviously understood what was going on with the Slayers, and knew they were beyond either his pleadings or his commands. Felix looked at the dwarfs once more.

They are not going to come, he thought. This is it. The end of the road. They are going to wait here, fight the beastmen as they come over the walls, and die in the stupidly heroic manner they wanted to. Idiots. And he knew, to his own fury, that their madness had infected him. He was not going to move either. He had sworn an oath to record Gotrek’s doom, and he fully intended to do it, if he had to stand in the doorway there and wait until the wall was seething with Chaos warriors. Only then would he see about trying to make his own escape, if that were possible. He looked at the duke and said, ‘Go on! I’ll catch up!’

The duke gave him a wan smile and ordered his troops to go. In moments the wall was clear. It seemed strangely quiet. Felix looked at the four dwarfs and realised that at this instant he was probably the only human being on the walls of Praag. He wondered how long it would take for the beastmen and the tribesmen to start clambering up the ladders; surely not long now.

What were they waiting for? Why did he have this sense of imminent danger? He glanced all around and saw nothing, then out of the corner of his eye was aware of something massive flashing through the air towards them. No, not at them, at the space the duke and his men had so recently left. One of the trebuchet engineers had finally got the range.

He flinched as the enormous stone came tumbling down towards them. It smashed into the stonework not a dozen feet from Gotrek and sent chunks of smashed masonry and clouds of snow flying through the air. When the wrack had cleared, Felix saw the Slayer was down, a pool of blood marking the snow around his head. His axe had slipped from his nerveless fingers. He glanced at the other Slayers and saw that they were just as appalled as he was. Perhaps they had all shared some secret belief in Gotrek’s invincibility. He could see that they were shaken.

Damn, he thought, of all the incredibly stupid and utterly unworthy ways to die, that must take the prize.

Grey Seer Thanquol glared at the red sky. Up ahead of him, not too far away, he sensed the unleashing of enormous magical energies. Whatever power had been drawn down from the Chaos Wastes was being discharged now, at an incredible rate. He tugged some of it down to him, determined not to let all of it get away, and then used the energy to cast his awareness ahead of the army. Never had it been so easy. It was almost as if his soul was being swept along by the currents of energy, towards the vortex into which it had been sucked.

Thanquol was amazed and appalled by what he witnessed. He saw the mighty Chaos army throw itself at the walls of Praag. He saw enormous towers full of pent-up daemonic energy rumble forward. He saw the mass of warriors around their wheels. Had he been occupying his physical body at that moment, he would have squirted the musk of fear. He had always thought the assembled hordes of skavendom must surely be the most numerous army in the world but now he was not so sure. The Chaos horde had grown since he had encountered it thundering across the tundra of northern Kislev and it had been mighty then.

He had wanted to send his spirit soaring over the city to investigate what was going on inside, but as soon as it neared the walls, he found himself repelled painfully by some mysterious force. Protective enchantments, for sure. Perhaps just as well. It might be best to send his spirit soaring high, out of the range of possible detection by the mages he sensed present below. Two of them were of such power as to give even Grey Seer Thanquol pause. Never in his life, not even in the hall of the Council of Thirteen, had he encountered such auras of power. It was quite possible, he was forced to admit, that those two beings down there were the most powerful magicians in the world, himself not excluded. It was a terrifying thought. More terrifying yet was that he recognised them. They were the albino twins he had met in the camp of Arek Daemonclaw.

He tried to console himself with the thought that it was only because they were filled with the energy they had drawn down from the daemon lands of the north that they were his superiors in magic, but somehow the thought did not reassure him. It was still appalling to contemplate the fact that there existed two beings capable of acting as vessels for such god-like power. Thanquol felt sure that not even he could duplicate the feat. Almost he considered returning to his fleshly shell then and there to avoid even the possibility of their notice. But something kept him from doing so.

It was evident to his keen mage senses that the spells they were weaving were so complex and powerful that all of their attention must go in to maintaining them. Thanquol swept his gaze over the battlefield and counted the number of daemons that were manifesting. Astonishing. He would not have believed it was possible so far south of the Wastes. Apparently he was wrong. Sheer terror gnawed at the pit of his stomach. Here was a threat to all skavendom, and perhaps even the wellbeing and future plans of Grey Seer Thanquol himself. At all costs something must be done about it. Preferably not by him, however.

He observed the mighty assault begin, and sheer skaven curiosity kept him watching. It seemed impossible to him that the humans on the wall did not immediately turn tail and flee at the first sight of the mighty war engines and the horde of men, daemons and monsters surrounding them. Then again, he had always thought there was no end to the witless folly of the hairless apes. He watched with even greater astonishment as the humans managed to slow down and destroy one of the massive daemonic engines with catapult fire and then was even more amazed to see another destroyed by a spell of unbinding. What was even more disturbing was that Thanquol recognised the magical signature of the mage who had done it. He had fought with that wizard on two occasions at the horse-soldiers’ burrow. It appeared his power had grown since then though. How was it possible, what was his secret? Thanquol sent his spirit-self soaring even higher. There was another individual to be avoided at all costs.

Thanquol contented himself with a bird’s eye view of the main action. From just beneath the clouds it was possible for him to grasp the wide sweep of the Chaos army’s strategy. Most of the Chaos force was concentrated for a frontal assault on the gargoyle-encrusted northern gate, but a significant fraction of the numbers assaulted the eastern and western gates. Such were the numbers of the horde that it was possible for it to make these attacks in a great sweeping crescent, and still outnumber the defenders at any point. Mass attack tactics worthy of any skaven army, Thanquol thought.

He watched the man-things die like ants below him. It did not move him in any way. He was a skaven, and the deaths of lesser races meant nothing to him. To tell the truth, the deaths of most skaven meant nothing either. The only emotion he felt about death was a sense of triumph when it happened to some sworn enemy of his. The battle raged for long minutes. Siege engines exchanged shots. Arrows darkened the sky. The daemons entered the fray. Thanquol watched astonished as something unexpected occurred.

Many daemons died. One of the great siege towers toppled, the spells binding it unravelling. Now what could have caused that, the grey seer wondered? Some magic of awesome power.

He dropped his point of view towards the wall to get a closer look. He was in no way surprised to see the accursed Gotrek Gurnisson standing at the centre of the mystical conflagration, that terrible axe burning with energy in his hands. Hatred and fear warred within Thanquol. He told himself that it was impossible for the slow-witted dwarf to see him, and maintained a sensible distance from the action.

The Slayer and his companions, more dwarfs and that wicked human Felix Jaeger, raced along the walls, bringing destruction to more of the siege towers. Thanquol watched in astonishment as that evil axe did its work. He could see the runespells laid on it quite clearly now. He had always known it was a potent weapon, but he had never guessed quite how powerful. Blazing within that starmetal blade was a power quite the equal of that wielded by those sorcerers back there amid the Chaos horde, greater even perhaps. A seer trained as Thanquol was had no trouble seeing that these two opposing powers could not possibly have come to the same place at the same time by accident. He guessed that they were all in some way counters in the game played by the gods. At this moment, he felt only gladness that his physical body was many leagues away.

A disturbance at the eastern gate drew his attention; he cast his mind swiftly in that direction in time to witness the fall of the gate. It looked like despite all the resistance put up by the human defenders the city was doomed to fall after all. Thanquol watched with a certain malicious pleasure as the beastmen and barbarian tribesmen poured through the gap in the wall and charged into the city.

Already part of him wondered if there was any way to turn this to his advantage. Perhaps he could come upon the Chaos horde after it had taken the city. Not while it was there in force, of course. That would be suicide. But perhaps the horde would move on, leaving only a garrison. That would be the time for a swift, certain, strike in the true skaven manner. Yes. Yes. He could organise that.

Swiftly he sent his awareness flashing back to the area where Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger were. With any luck they would be caught up in the rout and chopped down. He prayed to the Horned Rat that this would be the case. He watched as the humans abandoned the city’s outer walls and only the foolish Slayers, and Felix Jaeger remained. This was getting better and better.

He saw the enormous stone, trebuchet-cast, tumbling headlong down onto the walls. He watched the explosion of flying masonry strike down Gotrek Gurnisson, and saw the Slayer slump forward into the snow. His whole soul exulted in an ecstasy of triumph. The Horned Rat had answered his prayers. He had seen with his own mage senses the fall of his most hated enemy.

It seemed certain that if he only waited a little while longer, he would witness the death of the loathsome Jaeger as well. Today was turning out to be one of the best of his life.

Arek saw the Slayer fall to the huge trebuchet stone. He kept watching until he was certain that Gotrek Gurnisson would not rise again. Long moments passed and he felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders. There was no way the vision the twins had shown him could be true. It was merely part of some cruel plot on their part. He could have shouted aloud with relief. He had not realised how much the vision had oppressed him until this moment. Now, he was himself once more. Now he could ride into battle like the conquering hero he was.

Ivan Petrovich Straghov touched his heels to the flanks of his horse. They moved wearily through the snow. It had been a long, hard ride under difficult conditions, and only the fact that the muster had driven a herd of remounts with it, had enabled them to make such good time towards Praag. Ivan studied the sky. Things did not look good. The clouds were a hideous red. Ivan had seen skies like that before, over the peaks that separated northern Kislev and the Troll Country from the Chaos Wastes, but he had never thought to see anything like it so far south, deep within his native land. Perhaps the seers were right, perhaps the end of the world was coming. He turned to the tzarina and said, ‘I like this not. Such a sky is not a good sign. It is as if the Wastes themselves are moving southwards.’

The tzarina looked at him with her pale blue eyes. ‘Such things have happened before, old friend. In the time of Magnus and Alexander, when last that fatal moon shimmered in the daylight sky.’

Ivan forced a smile. ‘Such words do nothing to reassure me, highness.’

The tzarina shrugged. She rode better than most men, and her mount showed no sign of tiredness. Sorcery, he thought, but in her he could not resent it. Hers was the magic of winter and the old gods of Kislev. It had not the taint of Chaos about it. ‘If anything, it is worse than you would think. Potent magic is at work ahead of us.’

‘You think the horde expects us then?’

‘I am certain of it, old friend, but I doubt those dire enchantments are intended to welcome us. I think they are directed at the walls of Praag, and the warriors who defend it.’

‘My daughter is there,’ Ivan said. ‘And many of my friends.’

‘Pray for her, and pray for them, my friend. I fear we will arrive in time only to avenge them, and even that might be beyond our strength.’

Felix looked at the lifeless form of the Slayer. Part of him did not want to believe this was happening. Part of him could not believe it. The Slayer was invincible, and, despite the nature of his self-set quest, indestructible. It was impossible for Gotrek Gurnisson to be dead. Still, Felix doubted that anything could have survived being hit on the head by such a large piece of rock. Any human would have died instantly.

He bent forward and checked the Slayer’s pulse, just to be certain. A wave of relief flooded through him. Gotrek’s heart still beat, and beat strongly. There was something to be thankful for.

‘He’s alive,’ Felix said. Smiles lit the faces of the dwarfs to be swiftly replaced by their usual sombre expressions.

‘What do you want Snorri to do, young Felix?’ asked Snorri Nosebiter.

‘Perhaps give me a hand to move him from here.’

‘What good would that do?’ Bjorni asked. ‘We have our own dooms to find here, Felix Jaeger.’

‘Yes, what good would it do?’ asked Ulli. He sounded like he hoped Felix could give him some good reason to get away. Felix looked at them in disbelief. Here they were debating while the beastmen clambered over the walls. He racked his mind for some reason that might cause these stubborn idiots to aid him.

‘Well, for one thing, we might prevent his axe falling into the hands of the Chaos gods. Surely all of you can see that it is special. Perhaps even the key to victory here.’

Slowly, Bjorni and Ulli nodded. They looked as if they were thinking about it. ‘And if he lives, you will surely have helped him greatly. This is not a doom worthy of the Slayer of the Great Bloodthirster, of the hero of Karag Dum.’

‘Snorri thinks you have a point there, young Felix,’ said Snorri. ‘Plus he still owes Snorri for the beer Snorri bought last night.’

‘Well, there you go then,’ Felix said. ‘What are you waiting for?’

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the great Chaos horde. ‘After all, you can always return to seek your doom later. And, let’s face it, there is every possibility we might not be able to escape anyway.’

Felix only wished that his words did not sound all too probable. Swiftly, he hoisted Gotrek’s recumbent form up. It was not easy. The Slayer was very, very heavy. Snorri Nosebiter reached out and grabbed him with one mighty hand, holding the Slayer upright easily. ‘Snorri will take him,’ he said.

‘One of you two get his axe,’ said Felix. Ulli and Bjorni just looked at him blankly. ‘It’s his axe,’ they said.

Exasperated Felix sheathed his sword and picked up the starmetal blade. It took him both hands to lift it, and he doubted he could wield it. ‘Let’s get out of here, he said.

Already behind him, he could hear the curses and war cries of the barbarians about to clamber over the parapet.

Life was so unfair, Thanquol was thinking. For one glorious moment, he had seen the Slayer fall, and thought him dead. And it looked certain that Jaeger and the demented dwarfs would soon be joining him. Then, in an instant, the whole wonderful dream had dissipated. He saw Jaeger bend over the Slayer and announce that he was alive, and the others move to aid him move the dwarf.

Thanquol felt like gnawing his tail in frustration. If only there was some way he could interfere, some way he could cast a spell, but it was not possible. The protective barriers still held on this part of the wall, and even if they did not, Thanquol would not have risked drawing the attention of those wizards back there in the horde. It was so frustrating, having such an easy shot at one of his most dangerous foes, and not being able to take it. One simple spell would be all it would take. The Slayer did not even have the power of his axe to protect him at this moment.

Thanquol heaped curses on the world, the gods, his enemies, and everyone else he could think of, himself excepted. The sheer unfairness of it all was shocking. Filled with the urge to howl with frustration, he decided he had seen enough here. It was time to return to his body and scheme. Perhaps there was some way he could get into the city and take vengeance on Gotrek Gurnisson while he was still unconscious.

Thanquol swore that if there was such a way, and it did not involve too many risks to his own precious hide, he would find it.

Arek rode towards the Gate of Gargoyles. His warriors had taken and opened it, and were now flooding into the undefended city. All around him buildings blazed, wooden support beams catching fire, stonework falling to blackened ruin. Whooping wildly, beastmen and barbaric tribesmen roared through the streets of the city. Some of them had discovered ale barrels, doubtless in the remains of some tavern, and were pouring jack after jack down their throats.

Let the ignorant clods have their fun, thought Arek. Soon they will regret torching those buildings. Where did they think they were going to stay now that winter had set in? Their wild songs were most likely celebrating their own certain deaths, and they did not know it. He rode on, his daemonic charger responding instantly to his mental impulse, his bodyguard of Chaos knights gazing triumphantly on the wreckage of the city.

‘We are victorious,’ Bayar Hornhelm said. His voice sounded hollow. It echoed from deep within the chest plate of his incredibly ornate armour.

‘Not yet,’ Arek said. Ahead of him he could see the inner wall rising higher than the outer wall ever had, and beyond that the mighty bulk of the citadel of Praag stood defiantly. The battle would not be over, Arek knew, until both of those had fallen. ‘This is only the beginning.’

‘Surely they cannot hold out against us much longer.’ Arek shook his head, astonished by the ignorance of even his own followers, the worshippers of Tzeentch. Surely they must know better. The casualties taking the outer wall had been greater than he expected, and now, fully two thirds of the enormous daemonic siege engines were destroyed. Mostly by that accursed dwarf, and his foul axe. Worse yet, despite the fall of the wall, no one had found the dwarf’s corpse or his axe. The vision that his sorcerers had shown him returned to plague Arek. He saw the dwarf and the human standing triumphantly over his corpse. It might still come to pass, he thought. No. He would not allow it.

‘Spread the word, the blessing of Lord Tzeentch and the pick of the plunder to any who bring me the head of the Slayer Gotrek Gurnisson and that of his human companion, Felix Jaeger.’

His heralds instantly rode to obey his instructions. Despite his victory, Arek had an ominous feeling of foreboding. It seemed he had ridden forward too soon.

Felix staggered down the narrow alleyway. The weight of the axe was murderous. He began to understand how the Slayer had become so strong. Just carrying the weapon for a few weeks would be enough to give anyone muscles like a blacksmith.

The stink of burning assailed his nostrils. He could hear the distant triumphant roar of the Chaos warriors and the crash of collapsing buildings. Off in the distance, he could see one of the gigantic daemonic siege towers looming over the red-tiled roofs of the buildings. The sun was hidden by smoke and the eerie red clouds, but the whole scene was given hellish illumination by the flames of burning tenements. At the end of the alley, he could see hordes of barbarians and beastmen revelling in the street. If he had not known better he would have thought he had died and been cast into one of the fiery hells beloved of the worst sort of Sigmarite preacher.

‘Where to?’ Ulli asked, licking his lips nervously. It was a good question. What they needed was to find Max Schreiber, if that was possible, or a healer if that was not. The best bet for that would be a Temple of Shallya where the priestesses of the dove goddess waited to grant their merciful mistress’s blessings to the sick and the wounded. That was assuming any of the temples were left standing. They were most likely all burned and pillaged by the Chaos worshippers. Somehow he could not see them allowing the house of a rival god to stand.

‘No sense in making for the inner city,’ said Bjorni. ‘The gates will be locked tight by now, if the guardians have any sense.’

‘Not enough time,’ said Felix. ‘I doubt that the duke could have got all of his men back there in so short a time.’

‘Won’t make any difference,’ said Bjorni with certainty. This was a side of the ugly Slayer’s character he had never seen before. Bjorni in the heat of battle sounded like a real soldier, not the lecherous lout he normally was. ‘If they are cut off, they are cut off. It’s the duty of the troops on those gates to close them and hold them no matter who is left outside.’

‘And where does that leave us?’ asked Ulli. He sounded downright panicky.

‘In the beastmen droppings, as usual,’ said Bjorni, and cackled.

‘You seem unduly happy under the circumstances,’ said Felix. Bjorni looked at him and winked. ‘Why not? I am alive when I expected to be making excuses to my ancestors in hell. And the prospect of doom is still in front of me. Why not make the best of these few extra minutes among the living.’

‘Why not indeed? But we still have to get Gotrek to a healer.’

‘There’s a temple of Shallya down these back alleys somewhere,’ Bjorni said. ‘One of the priestesses cured me of a nasty little rash I picked up at–’

‘Spare me the gory details,’ Felix said. ‘Lead on.’

Max watched as the great gate of the inner city slammed shut behind them. He could not remember ever being this weary. He felt utterly exhausted and yet he also felt that he must do something. He looked around and saw the duke. He seemed angry but hid it well. Max had seen him hustled onto horseback by his personal guard once the outer wall was vacated. His bodyguards had almost ridden down anyone who got in their way. Max was just glad that he and Ulrika had been deemed valuable enough to go with them. He did not relish the idea of being trapped out there in the city with the horde of Chaos worshippers on the rampage.

Ulrika was looking back at the huge iron-shod wooden doors as if by looking hard enough, she might be able to see through them.

‘What is it?’ asked Max.

‘Felix and the others are still out there.’

‘It’s too late to worry about that now,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you can do for them.’

‘I know. It’s just I wish we hadn’t been separated.’

Despite his rivalry with Felix, Max felt the same way, and not just because of his comradeship with the man and the Slayer. He felt certain somehow, that if anyone were going to survive this mess, it would be those two. It might have been useful to be with them when they did.

The duke was already striding through the postern gate that led to the stairs into the watchtower. Going to watch his city burn, thought Max. I suppose we’d better join him.

It was quiet inside the temple and cool. Felix looked around at the icons showing the goddess and her saints on the wall, and the huge symbol of the dove carved on the altar. The place was packed with the scared and the wounded. Bloody, bandaged men lay on the floor. Weeping women and screaming children were everywhere. Obviously these unfortunates had not managed to make it to the safety of the inner city either.

Felix wondered if there was anything at all he could do for these people. He doubted it. They were probably doomed. It would only be a matter of time before the Chaos warriors got here, or the fire spread to the temple. He doubted this wooden structure would last very long in either eventuality.

Felix watched Snorri and the other Slayers carry Gotrek through the crowd towards the altar. He followed them wearily, glancing at the icons all the time. He had come to the temple of Shallya in Altdorf many times when still a very young child. His mother had been dying of the wasting sickness, and they had come to beg the goddess’s intercession on her behalf. In spite of all his father’s offerings, the goddess, for reasons of her own no doubt, had refused to intervene. Felix had been left with ambivalent feelings towards the temple after that. He had liked the kind, quietly spoken priestesses, but he could not understand why Shallya had not answered his prayers. After all, she was a goddess; almost anything was supposed to be in her power. He forced those thoughts to one side. Now was not the time to be wool-gathering.

A priestess rose to greet the Slayers. She looked tired, pale and drained of energy in the same way as Gotrek had looked after the destruction of the daemon towers. It looked like the priestesses of the merciful one contributed some of their own strength to work their healing. It seemed logical, given what Max had told him about the nature of sorcery. He only hoped the woman still had enough power left within her to help Gotrek.

‘Lay him down near the altar,’ she said. Without comment Snorri obeyed then stood to one side, holding his huge paw respectfully over his heart. The priestess passed her hand over Gotrek’s forehead.

‘This one’s spirit is strong,’ she said. ‘He might live.’

‘We need him on his feet now,’ Felix said. ‘Can’t you do something?’

The woman looked up at Felix. He was sorry he had spoken so sharply to her. Huge fatigue circles darkened the skin under her eyes. She looked ready to drop from weariness. When she saw the axe in his hand, she gasped. ‘Is that his axe?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘It is a weapon of great power. I can feel its strength from here.’ She turned to look at the recumbent form of the Slayer once more. ‘I will see what I can do.’

She knelt beside Gotrek and placed her hand on his forehead. Closing her eyes, she began to sway from side to side, invoking the name of the goddess. A halo of light shimmered around her head and her hand. The flesh of Gotrek’s scalp began to knit together, and after a long moment, his one good eye flickered and opened.

‘You called me back,’ he said. He sounded groggy and amazed. ‘I stood at the gates of the Ancestral Hall and they would not let me in. I had not redeemed myself in battle, they said. My spirit was doomed to wander homeless in the eternal fog.’

‘Hush now,’ the priestess said, stroking his forehead as she might a child’s. ‘You were hit on the head. Often that brings strange dreams and visions.’

‘This did not feel like a dream.’

‘Sometimes they do not.’

‘Nonetheless, I owe you a debt of honour, priestess. And it is one I will repay.’

‘Don’t forget you owe Snorri a beer as well then,’ said Snorri.

Gotrek glared at him. ‘Why?’

‘I carried you here.’

Gotrek gave him a crooked smile. ‘Then I will buy you a tankard or two, Snorri Nosebiter.’

‘It’s true what they say then,’ Snorri said happily. ‘There is a first time for everything.’

Arek cursed as he rode through the devastated streets of Praag. All was madness now. The horde had broken apart in a frenzy of looting and destruction. They drank and brawled and offered up the souls of those defenders they found to their patron daemons. It would take days to reinforce discipline now, and they might not have days. They needed to take and hold the city before the depths of winter settled in. They needed shelter, not a city that had been reduced to rubble.

He had started to feel that his god was mocking him. He had possessed no idea of the scale of the challenge of holding his force together. A few more victories like this would be as good as a defeat. He looked at the drunken warriors, the blazing buildings, and the sheer brute stupidity of it all, and fought down an urge to kill. The fires blazed furnace-like, out of control. He could feel the backwash of heat from here.

‘Order the warriors to cease torching the buildings,’ said Arek suspecting it was already too late, that the fire was beyond any attempt to control it.

‘It wasn’t our warriors,’ said Bayar Hornhelm. ‘It’s the Kislevites. They did this. They set fire to their homes as they retreated into the citadel. A stubborn lot.’

Arek nodded. He should have expected it. The Kislevites were not fools. They understood the situation as well as he did. They knew that without food and shelter the winter would avenge them on their conquerors. Arek knew that he and his Chaos warriors would survive, most of the magicians too, but the beastmen and the humans would be reduced to cannibalism to see them through the cold season. The great horde would evaporate. He did not doubt that soon the various factions would fall out and start preying on one another. Either that or flee and hope to find the army of another great warlord.

Although he hated to admit it, the wizards had been right about the risks of attacking so late in the season. He had gambled and lost. Still, at the very least, he consoled himself with the thought that he would ensure that none of the Kislevites survived to enjoy their pitiful triumph. A courier rode up:

‘A message, Lord Arek.’ The warlord gestured for him to speak.

‘A Kislevite army approaches from the west. The skaven host has emerged north of us. Morgar Doomblade has taken his troops to engage them.’

Arek cursed the Khornate warleader. Always seeking glory. Always seeking more victories and more blood and more souls to offer to his hungry howling god. It was not enough to finish mopping up the defenders of Praag first. He had to seek other battles. Arek forced himself to keep calm. Under the circumstances it might not be a bad thing. After all it would not do to have the ratmen attacking his army in the rear. The question of what to do about the approaching Kislevites vexed him. They must have ridden like daemons to get here so quickly. He doubted that his own warriors, intoxicated as they currently were with butchery, were in any condition to stop them.

Swiftly he thought through his options. He needed this blaze extinguished and the city preserved. Only magic could do that now. This was a job for Kelmain and Lhoigor, damn their unruly souls. If anyone could succeed it was them. The reserves waiting outside the walls could hold the Kislevites until he could organise the overwhelming mass of his men to throw at them. At least the cold waters of the river would hold the Kislevites for a while. It would take time to get any army across the bridges and fords.

He gave the courier orders quickly, then rode out into the mob, bellowing orders in his most commanding voice.

‘Grey Seer Thanquol! Awaken!’ bellowed a familiar deep voice in his ear. Thanquol pulled himself from his trance, and resisted the urge to blast Izak Grottle with his most devastating spell.

‘Yes! Yes! What is it?’ he asked.

‘We are attacked,’ Grottle said. ‘Chaos Warriors, daemons and beastmen approach from the south. Why did you not warn us?’

Because I had more interesting things to look at, Thanquol almost replied, but didn’t. The import of Grottle’s words started to sink in. A force of Chaos warriors was about to attack them! The situation was serious! Thanquol must immediately take steps to preserve his precious life.

‘How many? How close? Quick! Quick!’ he chittered.

‘Thousands. Almost upon us,’ Grottle stammered.

‘Why did you not rouse me sooner?’

‘We tried but you were deep in your sorcery. We thought you must have been communing with the Horned Rat himself.’

‘We all might be very soon, if we do not get ready to defend ourselves.’ Hastily Thanquol barked out orders and instructions. Filled with apprehension his warriors rushed to obey.

Gotrek raised his axe and inspected it carefully. The edge glittered, as sharp as ever. The runes blazed brightly. The Slayer seemed to draw strength from the weapon. He was still pale as a ghost but he looked capable of fighting. A mad rage glittered in his one good eye. Outside in the distance, the sounds of battle could be heard.

‘Let’s get going,’ he said. ‘We’ve killing to do.’

THIRTEEN

‘It’s not that I in any way doubt your majesty’s word, but do you think it will hold?’ Ivan Petrovich Straghov asked carefully. The Ice Queen was usually a very cold and calm woman, but when she lost her temper it was as bad as a northlands blizzard.

‘It will hold, old friend,’ she replied, surveying her work with satisfaction. ‘I guarantee it.’

The belief in her voice compelled him to believe it too, although, had he not witnessed this with his own eyes, he would have found the whole thing incredible. The Ice Queen’s sorcery was potent indeed. Ivan had watched as she stood by the sluggish grey waters of the river, and incanted her spell. Spreading her arms wide she had called upon the east and west winds. Snow had fallen on the river; the air had become incredibly chill. As he watched, in heartbeats, a fine layer of frost had formed on the surface of the river, moving outward with incredible speed from the spot where the Ice Queen stood. Within a minute, massive blocks of ice had formed. Within ten minutes, the whole river had frozen solid. Now the snow lay atop it, were it not for the trench formed by its banks, Ivan would not have been able to tell the river was there at all.

‘Go,’ the tzarina said. ‘It will hold our weight.’

Suiting action to words, she spurred her horse to a gallop and it raced out over the frozen waters. With a mighty shout, the Gospodar muster followed her.

‘Look up there!’ said Ulrika pointing at the sky. Max looked up expecting to see harpies descending on them. He did indeed see some of the hideous beasts but they were fluttering upwards to attack something massive descending through the clouds.

‘It’s the Spirit of Grungni,’ Ulrika said, her voice filled with wonder.

Sigmar be praised, thought Max somewhat ashamedly. At least we will have a way out of here. As he watched, brilliant flashes blazed from the airship’s sides. The harpies plummeted earthwards as the Spirit of Grungni’s potent weaponry scythed through them.

Kelmain looked at his twin and saw his own weariness echoed in that familiar face. No living thing could withstand the stresses they had endured this day and remain untouched. They had wielded the sort of power normally reserved for greater daemons, and it had stretched them to the limit, and left them weary almost beyond enduring. Magical feedback from the destruction of the towers had almost driven them both insane. Many of their apprentices had not been so fortunate. They writhed gibbering in the snowdrifts nearby. So far neither he nor his twin had been able to spare the energy to kill them.

‘You feel it too, brother,’ Lhoigor said.

Kelmain could only nod. To the west, they sensed a mystical disturbance of great power, human magic of a powerful sort, drawing on the chill power of the Kislevite winter. To the north was another disturbance, different, touched by Chaos, also of great power. At a guess, Kelmain would have said they were skaven, and he was sure his twin would have agreed with him. Powerful as the disturbances were, under normal circumstances the twins would not have feared their cause. Few indeed were the mages in the world they feared. But these were not normal circumstances. Neither of them would be able to wield their full power for days to come. The apocalyptic energies they had unleashed today had drained most of their strength.

A rider thundered closer. Kelmain looked at the Chaos warrior closely, noting the silvered helm that marked one of Lord Arek’s personal couriers. The horseman rode right up to them and reared his mount, bringing it to a stop. ‘The Lord Arek commands you to quench the blaze in the city,’ he shouted arrogantly.

Kelmain looked at his brother. Lhoigor looked back at him. Simultaneously they began to laugh. ‘Tell Lord Arek that regretfully we must decline his polite request,’ Kelmain said.

‘What?’ spluttered the Chaos warrior.

‘Sadly it is impossible at this exact moment,’ explained Lhoigor.

‘Impossible? Lord Arek will order you skinned alive.’

‘It is a very bad idea to threaten us,’ Lhoigor said.

‘Very bad indeed,’ Kelmain added. He summoned enough energy to reduce the courier’s armour to molten slag. Droplets of metal sizzled in the snow.

‘That was unwise, brother,’ said Lhoigor, smiling approvingly.

‘True, but he deserved it.’

‘What shall we do now?’

‘Watch and wait. I suspect that Lord Arek is about to discover that his fortunes have turned.’

‘We did warn him that the stars were not right. But would he listen?’

‘How long do you think the daemons can remain on this plane? They were your responsibility.’

‘Another hour, at most. Quite possibly much less.’

‘Well, there are other warlords in the south now, and the paths of the Old Ones will soon be open.’

‘Then by all means let us see what happens.’

Felix chopped down another beastman. He had lost count of the number they had killed since they emerged into the maze of side streets around the temple. He looked around. The dwarfs seemed to be enjoying themselves. They grinned like maniacs as they killed. He supposed it was only to be expected really. They were close to finding their long-awaited dooms.

He blocked the blow of a massive fur-clad barbarian. A necklace of still bloody ears hung round the man’s neck. Felix could see that many of them were small enough to belong to children. The man bellowed something in his incomprehensible tongue and aimed another clumsy slash at Felix with his black iron blade. Felix ducked, and, with a cold cruelty he had not known he possessed, stabbed him carefully in the stomach and then turned his blade in the wound before withdrawing it. He kicked the screaming man in the mouth for good measure as he fell.

‘Look up there!’ he heard Ulli shout. Felix risked a glance upwards, and despite his despair felt his heart soar. Above them flew the well-remembered shape of the Spirit of Grungni. It appeared that Malakai Makaisson had returned. Felix could only hope he had brought reinforcements with him.

Although he doubted that the airship could possibly hold enough men to make a difference in this conflict.

The burning building crashed down around Arek. A wall of flames licked out, driving him and his knights down another side street. Arek looked up at the sky and shook his fist. Another black bomb descended, tossed down from that flying ship. The explosion blew Arek from his mount. Where were the harpies? Why were his mages not blasting that accursed airship from the sky with lightning? He looked around and saw that the explosion had killed several of his bodyguards. The rest were riding off. Obviously they had missed him in the chaos of smoke and flames and explosions.

Not that it mattered. He could hear beastmen shouting war cries nearby. He would find them, rally them to his side, and return to the fray. When he saw them again he would have more than harsh words for his pet sorcerers.

Thanquol watched wave after wave of Chaos knights surge towards his force. Enormous warriors bellowing the name of the Blood God surged through the snow and threatened to overwhelm even the stormvermin. Twice now Thanquol had been forced to call on his sorcerous powers to throw them back, and twice it had been touch and go. He had used the dark magical energy around him to inspire his troops to feats of ferocity unprecedented by any skaven army before, and it still had proved barely enough. Thanquol would have used his escape spell to cast himself clear of the fray long ago, had he not been so certain that without him the Moulder army would collapse and he would swiftly be ridden down by the Khornate riders. It might come to that yet, he thought, chewing on a piece of purified warpstone and letting the unleashed power surge through his veins.

‘They come! They come again!’ Izak Grottle bellowed in his ear.

Thanquol made a mental note that if the worst came to the worst, he would blast the obese Moulder into his component atoms before attempting his escape.

Ivan Petrovich Straghov rode through the Chaos lines chopping at anything that got in the way with his sabre. Above him the blood red sky glowered down. The burning city of Praag fitfully illuminated the whole hellish scene of battle. Ahead of him, beastmen bellowed challenges and ran for their trenches. It was a mark of how overconfident they had been that all their earthworks faced the city. Well, thought Ivan, they were paying for it now.

Ahead of him someone had set fire to a massive trebuchet. The huge siege engine blazed like a gigantic torch. Beside him the Ice Queen and her bodyguard fought like warriors born. The tzarina’s blade blazed in her hand. Ancient runes glittered along the length of the blade. Suddenly, the last beastman in the area was dead. In the lull, the Ice Queen spoke.

‘This place stinks of evil sorcery. Such power hsd been drawn on here as has not been felt in centuries. Daemons have been here, aye, and, worse than daemons.’

‘What could be worse than daemons, majesty?’ Ivan asked curiously.

‘The men who would summon them.’

Ivan was not sure about that, but he was not about to argue. Ahead of them, he could see new enemies emerging from the gates of Praag, thousands upon thousands of them, frothing with battle lust, and ready to die in combat.

‘It seems we must worry about these wicked men later, my queen,’ he said.

‘Aye, old friend, for now we must face daemons in earnest.’

Looking at the glowing shapes in the middle of the oncoming horde, Ivan knew exactly what she meant. He took a moment to commend his soul and the soul of his daughter to Ulric, and then prepared to charge once more.

Max swarmed up the swaying rope ladder into the airship’s cupola. The wind tore at his face, and he took a last look down. It was a long drop. The streets of the burning city were a long way below. Ulrika waved up at him and then raced off to join the duke’s force. He prayed she would be all right. She meant as much as life to him. Still, he could not see what harm could come to her now. No one was leaving the inner city and venturing out into that inferno.

The squat leather-clad form of the Slayer Engineer, Malakai Makaisson, was there to greet him. His leather flying-helm with the slit cut in it for his dyed crest of hair was on his head. The crystal goggles he wore when flying his gyrocopter were pushed back onto his forehead.

‘You took your time, Malakai,’ said Max. He found he was grinning nonetheless as he stretched out his hand to grasp the Slayer’s.

‘Aye, weel, we had a wee bit o’ mechanical trouble an’ then some bother wi’ the headwinds, an’ it took some time tae get ah the lads the gither,’ said Makaisson. He actually sounded a little embarrassed about it. ‘An’ the Spirit is joost a wee bit overloaded tae.’

‘Well, better late than never.’

‘That’s what ah always say. Whaur’s Gotrek and the lad Felix Jaeger? They no wi’ ye?’

It was Max’s turn to sound embarrassed. ‘I don’t know where they are. I last saw them on the outer wall. They’re probably fighting in the city right now. They were not in the citadel.’

‘Well, if onybody is gannae be fine in this mess, it’s that pair, so ah better get doon tae bizness.’

‘What would that be?’

‘The Slayer King asked me tae ferry his warriors here. Got aboot a hundred stuffed intae every nook and cranny. Some are even upstairs in the gasbag. We’d better get the lads ontae the grun so they can start fightin’ an’ ah can get doon tae the serious bizness o’ killin’ beastmen.’

Even as Max and the Slayer spoke, hard-faced dwarf warriors were pushing their way down the passage, and swarming down the rope.

‘Ah wuz gannae gaun back an’ bring the rest, but it looks like ah neednae bother. The fightin’ might well be ever by the time ah got back.’

‘Every little helps, Malakai.’

‘Aye, weel, ah built some new weapons onto the Spirit of Grungni here. Ah’ll show them in a wee minute, yince the boys are doon. That was yin o’ the things that kept me awae so laung. Ah thocht I might need something special for this.’

Max wondered what Malakai Makaisson could possibly have brought that was deadly enough to turn the tide of this conflict. He knew that if anyone could build such a thing it was the Slayer Engineer.

‘Is that the last of them?’ Felix asked.

‘Snorri doesn’t think so!’ said Snorri peering into the gloom. Snow, melted by the heat of the burning buildings, was starting to puddle round his feet. Blood mingled with the water. The reflected flames looked odd in the ruddy mess.

‘Where have they all gone then? There seems to be less of them than there was a minute ago.’

‘That’s coz we killed so many, young Felix,’ said Snorri. Felix shook his head. Was it really possible for any creature to be as stupid as Snorri Nosebiter and still live he wondered?

‘The manling is right,’ said Gotrek. ‘Something has drawn them off, and it’s not just the Spirit of Grungni.’

‘What does Makaisson think he’s playing at?’ asked Ulli. ‘One minute he was overhead, bombing the Chaos lovers, and the next he’s vanished.’

‘We just can’t see him from here,’ said Felix. ‘My guess is that he headed for the citadel. Must have brought some warriors or some weapons.’

‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Bjorni said. ‘Come on. Let’s go and see if we can find some more beastmen to kill.’

‘Snorri thinks that’s a good idea,’ said Snorri.

‘And if ye pull this lever,’ Malakai Makaisson said, pulling the lever, ‘it drops alchemical fire on the wee basturds. Like so!’

Max knew enough to understand what was going on. It was the same stuff the siege engines on the walls had used, the ever-burning fire of the ancients. Not even water or snow could put it out. It would burn for days. Screams rising from below told the wizard that the beastmen were discovering this the hard way.

‘Malakai, isn’t it dangerous to carry alchemical fire on an airship? You are always talking about the fire hazard and it’s one of the most inflammable substances known to magecraft.’

Malakai tugged at another control lever, and swung the wheel, bringing the Spirit of Grungni around for another pass over the Chaos horde. ‘Aye, weel… ye’re right, ye ken, but ah thocht, joost this yince, it would be worth the risk. Ah coodnae think o’ onythin’ else that would even the odds. Except maybe this,’ he added, pulling another lever.

‘What is it?’ The sound of enormous explosions rose from beneath him.

‘Bloody big bombs. Gunpooder an’ lots o’ it. Cost a fortune tae make but the Slayer king was footin’ the bill so why no?’

‘Malakai, you are insane,’ Max said, shuddering. Alchemical fire and tons of gunpowder on an overloaded airship, flying through a storm. It was a miracle that they had arrived at all. If he’d known, he would never have volunteered to come aboard and brief the Slayer as to the situation. This was quite possibly the most dangerous place in the battle right now.

All it would take would be for one fireball spell to break through the wards he’d placed on the machine before it went off into the Chaos Wastes, and everyone on the airship would be blasted to Morrslieb by the power of the explosion. No wonder Malakai was flying with a skeleton crew. It was a wonder anyone had elected to remain on board at all.

‘Ah’ll tell ye somethin’ though, Max, there were a few times this past flight when ah damn near cacked ma britches. Ah will never dae this again. No if ah live tae be five hundred.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Max. He wondered how Ulrika was doing. Was she fighting down there in the city even now? Malakai pulled the lever again. There was a long whistling sound and then a huge explosion.

‘Excellent,’ said Malakai peering backwards and downwards. ‘Got yin o’ those big siege towers.’

‘Sounded like an explosion,’ said Felix. ‘A big one. What new deviltry is this?’

‘If you ask me it’s that Malakai Makaisson up to his tricks,’ said Bjorni. They had all seen the airship go sailing overhead a few minutes ago, and they all knew what the Slayer Engineer was capable of dreaming up.

‘Sounds like lots of explosions,’ said Snorri. He was right too. It sounded like a continuous rumble of thunder in the distance. The ground shook, and some of the blazing buildings threatened to topple. As they ran for an open plaza, a strange chemical stink assailed their nostrils. Gotrek sniffed at it loudly.

‘Alchemical fire. Only a maniac like Makaisson would think of taking that on an airship.’

He sounded almost as if he admired the engineer’s insanity.

Kelmain and his brother watched the huge airship passing over the Chaos horde as it poured from the blazing city.

‘Protected,’ he said. To his mage senses, the runes protecting the flying machine blazed like beacons.

‘Powerfully,’ Lhoigor agreed. ‘Given time we could overcome them though.’

‘Given time, and a period of recuperation, you mean, brother,’ Kelmain said, grinning wickedly at his twin.

‘Do you think we should try?’

‘No. Whatever happens, Arek’s army is doomed. The fool should have listened to our advice. Why waste our strength trying to stave off the inevitable? We will need it to get ourselves away.’

‘You are correct, I fear,’ said Lhoigor.

‘There’s always next spring,’ said Kelmain. ‘Once the paths of the Old Ones open we will be able to do what we wish. We can unite the other warlords and move the great plan forward.’

‘Arek might win yet.’ Kelmain laughed.

‘Do you really think that’s likely? I suspect the old powers oppose him here. I am starting to feel the daemons fade.’

‘Then perhaps we should be going – before we get caught up in the rout.’

The two sorcerers gestured. The air shimmered and, in a moment, they were gone, leaving behind the dozen or so corpses of the apprentices they had drained of their power.

Arek led his beastmen along the street. He was filled with a seething annoyance. He could sense that somehow things had turned against him, and he was not where he ought to be. Right now, he should be leading his army against the Kislevites. Looking at the massive airship raining death down on his army from above, he knew they would need someone to hold them together in the face of the assault.

Where were the magicians, he asked himself again? Surely they should have blasted it out of the sky by now. He cursed again. If only he had not thrown away the harpies in the earlier assault, they might have swarmed over the airship and torn it from the sky despite its deadly armaments. As it was, they were just too few to get past those deadly cannons. Well, live and learn, he thought. Next time he would know better.

Ahead of him, he could see a massive ruck. Beastmen were fighting with humans and dwarfs. He braced himself for the coming combat. He was enjoying the slaughter. It had been some time since he had indulged his taste for carnage and he had almost forgotten just how pleasurable exercising his physical superiority could be. There was something primal in the hack and slash of battle. It was at times like this he could understand why men followed the Blood God, Khorne.

A human warrior wearing the winged lion tabard of Praag charged at him. The man’s face was pale and his eyes were wide and mindless. Froth erupted from his lips. It was obvious to Arek that the man was berserk, near mindless with rage and fear. He charged at the Chaos warrior, howling barely coherent challenges. Behind his helmet, Arek’s face twisted into a grim smile. This was almost too easy.

The human guardsman aimed a blow straight at Arek’s head. He parried it easily with his runesword, chipping away bits of steel from his opponent’s blade. A blow from Arek’s axe separated the man’s head from his shoulders. Arek leapt forward into the fray, hacking as he went. Every blow struck home, pruning away limbs, shearing heads from necks, leaving twisted torsos dripping blood and entrails onto the cobblestones.

He gave himself up to the joy of combat, fighting with the icy precision characteristic of the followers of Tzeentch. This was a game to be enjoyed. Every blow was a move, every parry a counter-move, every footstep and every shift of weight a thing to be calculated precisely. He evaluated the situation around him with lightning speed and mathematical precision. He moved like a whirlwind of death through the melee, sweeping away the tiny motes of flesh and blood and life surrounding him. He reaped souls with each passing heartbeat.

He felt almost grateful to the chain of convoluted circumstances that had brought him to this out of the way place, in the darkest heart of the battle. He had stayed in his command throne too long, he thought. He needed this baptism of blood to remind him that he was a warrior as well as a worshipper of Tzeentch.

Nearby he sensed something; a mighty mystical force he knew was inimical to him and his kind. Suddenly the vision of the Slayer and his axe passed through Arek’s mind. Was it possible that the dwarf had survived and was somehow back in the combat? If so, it was too late to do anything about it.

Part of him warned him to shy away, to get away from whatever it was, knowing that here was something that could end his immortal existence. The part of his mind that had enabled him to live so long and rise so high knew that it was not worth taking a risk, that small though the probability was of his being defeated, it was still there. He had not reached where he was today by not listening to this part of his mind. Immortality, after all, was reached in part by playing the odds, and minimising the risks. If you lived long enough, even a one in a million chance was bound to come up some day.

At the same time, part of him recognised the fact that here was a foe worthy of being overcome, a challenge greater than these puny mortals represented. The part of him that had lain so long dormant, and which had woken to the thrill of combat, wanted to face the threat, and overcome it. And Arek was wise enough to realise that the challenge appealed to another facet of his personality too. Part of him, more deeply buried than all the rest and yet still there, was sick of his long life, weary of eternal warfare, bored with the eternal repetition of his daily struggle. He recognised this part of himself for what it was, the true enemy within, the weak human part that still sometimes felt fear or guilt, and which simply wanted an end to it all.

He knew that this part of him would have to be destroyed. It was a weight holding him back, anchoring him to his mortality that made failure and destruction a temptation. He knew that he should walk away from this battle, avoid the power that was coming ever closer. And yet he could not. The deeply hidden part of him, the weak, mewling pathetic thing that he despised still had some strength, so did the lure of combat, so did the desire to prove himself worthy. They all conspired to keep him moving forward, killing as he went, when the wisest part of him knew that he should be doing his best to get away.

Felix Jaeger wiped sweat from his forehead. As he did so he noticed his sleeve was red. Blood, he thought. The question was: did it belong to him or someone else? He did not know. He could not feel anything. There was no pain. This in itself meant nothing. Many times before, he had endured wounds in battle without even realising that he had taken them till after the fight was over. He wanted to reach up and touch his forehead to see if he felt torn flesh or exposed muscle or bone, but he did not dare. All around him was the howling madness of battle, and it would be suicidal to allow himself to be distracted for even a split second.

Off to his right, he saw Ulli surrounded by a squad of beastmen. The young dwarf was covered in a hundred nicks and cuts. His jerkin was torn. Somehow he had lost one boot, and there was a long gash on his exposed leg, pumping a slow flow of blood onto the stones. Nonetheless he fought on. His hammer smashed the skull of a beastman, sending splinters of bone and gobbets of brain flying everywhere.

‘Take that, beast!’ he bellowed, even louder than usual. ‘What are the rest of you waiting for? Come on and die!’

The beasts did not need a second invitation. Howling with bloodlust they threw themselves forward at the young dwarf, who kept himself alive only by dint of desperate parrying. Felix could see that he was not going to last much longer. Not caring whether the dwarf would thank him or not for interfering with his heroic doom, Felix launched himself into the fray. His blade took one surprised beastman in the side, the creature lashed out reflexively as it coughed blood and died, and only ducking swiftly kept Felix’s head on his shoulder.

A low blow hamstrung another beastman. A swift stab in the throat killed it as it fell. A hail of blows aimed in his direction told Felix that he had gotten the beast’s attention. Suddenly it did not seem like such a good idea. He fell back parrying desperately, praying to Sigmar that no beastman would attack him on the blindside as he had just attacked them. Where was Ulli, he wondered? Now would be a good time for him to repay Felix’s help.

The beastmen were far stronger than he was, and it was only his speed and experience that were keeping him alive in the face of their multiple attacks. He blocked another blow and the force of the impact almost took his sword from his hands. Cursing, he returned the stroke, and was rewarded with the sight of two of the beastman’s fingers being sheared away. It dropped its huge bludgeon in surprise, and Felix took advantage of the moment to spear it in the groin, before continuing his fighting retreat.

He felt like he was caught in a raging sea now, being tossed around by waves of furious combat, and dragged away from his comrades by the currents of the battle. Sweat almost blinded him. He felt curiously disengaged from his body now. He fought mechanically, knowing that weariness was slowing him down, and that there was nothing he could do about it. He knew that if he lived, and kept on fighting, the weariness would pass, and his strength would return. It was curiously reassuring knowing this. Once he would have been terrified at being in the middle of this storm of blades, but somewhere along the line in his long travels with Gotrek, he had become a veteran.

Suddenly two of the beastmen ahead of him toppled forward, and he had to stay his hand before he chopped down Ulli. A look of ferocious joy was in the young Slayer’s eye. It was the sort of expression Felix had only seen on the face of dwarfs lost in the contemplation of gold. At this moment, however, he doubted that coin was what was on Ulli’s mind.

‘Got two more of the bastards!’ he bellowed and spread his arms exultantly, brandishing his weapon at the sky, as if challenging the gods themselves. ‘Come and get dead!’

They were the last words he ever spoke. A beastman’s axe descended on his head from behind. Fragments of bone and flesh splattered Felix’s face.

A red rage descended on Felix Jaeger. He leapt forward into the fray, fighting with renewed energy and a desperate desire to slay. He had not particularly liked Ulli but they had shared a desperate adventure together. Seeing someone he had known killed before his eyes was far more personal than watching the death of a stranger. It was a terrifying reminder of his own mortality, one that he could only blot out in a furious quest for vengeance.

Beastman after beastman fell before his blade. Felix fought as he had never done before, reaching a new peak of skill, speed and fury in his bloodlust. Barbaric tribesman after barbaric tribesman went down under his lightning-swift blade. He saw fear enter men’s eyes moments before they died, and cut them down with no hint of mercy. All sympathy he might have felt had been burned out of him. His mere presence started to fill his foes with fear. The expression on his face was enough to make hardened warriors back away. The moment of panic was often enough to cost them their lives. They froze rather than parried as he struck at them, and an instant of advantage was all a swordsman of Felix’s skill needed.

He noticed that his ferocious onslaught had attracted the attention of a motley band of humans: guardsmen, militia and citizens armed with pickaxes and rakes and household implements. The men threw themselves into battle at his side, cheering and groaning as they came.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of red. A howling dwarf battle cry reached his ears, and he saw Gotrek wading through the mass of beastmen, axe held high, as unstoppable as the sea. There was a better rallying point than himself, Felix realised.

‘Follow me!’ he bellowed, and began to cleave his way through to the Slayer’s side. With a ragged cheer the embattled defenders followed him.

Ulrika looked down from the walls, searching for targets. There were certainly enough of them. The Chaos horde rampaged through the burning city, killing and maiming as it came. She drew the string back to her cheek, loosed a shaft and was rewarded by seeing a burly, bearskin-cloaked marauder fall to her shaft. Automatically, she drew another arrow, nocked and searched for another target.

She was not sure where she had gotten the bow. Snatched it from the hands of a wounded defender perhaps. It did not matter. What did was that she had the weapon and could kill the monsters defiling the streets of Praag. She intended to make them pay for this sacrilege in blood.

As her body responded to its long years of training, part of her mind wondered where Felix was, and where Max was. She even would have been glad to see Gotrek or Snorri or any of the other Slayers. They would have provided familiar points of reference in this world gone mad. She had never quite experienced anything like this. Her whole world and her whole life seemed to have shrunk to just this moment, and just this place. It was as if everything that had gone before was just a dream. There was no future. There was no past. There was only this crazed inferno of death and destruction.

The strange thing was that she did not care. It was exhilarating, oddly liberating, to have no cares other than those of the moment, not to have to worry about anything other than the now. She could understand now with perfect clarity why some men loved combat more than they loved wine or women or any other pleasure. She along with everyone around lived now only a heartbeat away from death, and she held the power of life or death in her own hands, wielded it with every arrow she loosed. It was a sensation that could only be described as god-like.

Perhaps this was why some of those evil men down there followed Khorne, she thought. Perhaps they were no more evil than she, merely addicted to the thrill of mortal combat. Perhaps this was the lure of the Blood God. Even as these thoughts flickered through her mind, she wondered if they were part of some strange spell laid on the battlefield, meant to lure mortal warriors to the side of Chaos.

She dismissed the idea. Right now it did not matter. She had her bow. She had targets. While her heart beat and her eyes could see there was work for her here.

Somehow Arek realised he had fought his way out into the main streets again. All around bodies were pressed close against each other. He could smell sweat and blood and burning. It was impossible to tell who was winning from here. The beastmen and the northern tribesmen sounded trapped and panicked. That meant nothing. Arek knew all too well that warriors in one part of a battlefield responded differently from those in another. It was perfectly possible that overall the forces of Chaos were in control of the city even while this small group of them were cut off and surprised. Arek knew he could change that.

‘To me!’ he shouted. ‘Stand firm! We will prevail!’

Such was the confidence and power in his voice that hundreds of eyes swung towards him. He saw the Chaos warriors take heart and fight with renewed vigour. They knew him by sight and by reputation and had every confidence in his awesome power. Just his simple presence made them feel as if victory was once again within their grasp.

Even as those around him gained heart, Arek felt himself losing it. He felt somehow that things were slipping out of his control, that events had turned against him. It was a sour feeling, a sense that his gods had turned their face from him. He did not quite know how or why things were like this, but he felt it was the case. He tried to tell himself that it was all in his mind, but he knew that it was not. His sense of the flow of events had been made keen by his centuries of experience, and he knew he perceived the ebb and flow of battle with senses other than human.

For himself, he would have felt no real fear, had he not still been aware of that terrible inimical presence nearby. He knew his armour was all but unbreachable by mortal weapons, and such was his strength and power that no ordinary warrior could stand against him even without it. But there was something disquieting about the power he felt close by. It was the same feeling he had felt when he saw that dwarf on the walls of the city. A long forgotten sensation started to work its way into his brain. It took several heartbeats for Arek to recognise it.

It was fear.

Side by side, Gotrek and Felix fought their way to the very heart of the battle. Killing as they went, they hurled themselves wherever the fighting was heaviest. Wherever they appeared, their presence gave heart to the defenders, rallying them as they wavered, inspiring them to ever fiercer assaults where they were confident. Sometime during the desperate melee Felix became aware that Snorri and Bjorni had joined them. Both dwarfs looked as if they had been working in a slaughterhouse. Blood painted their faces and arms. Matted filth covered their torsos. But they smiled as they fought, and laughed as they killed.

In the furious berserker joy of combat they seemed to have forgotten all about seeking their doom, and set out to kill as many of the enemy as they could. Almost as much as the appearance of Gotrek the sight of them dismayed the superstitious tribesmen, and seemed to cause even the beastmen unease. The Slayers stopped for nothing, feared nothing, were undaunted by superior numbers or size. Nothing slaked their thirst for killing. They seemed like avatars of their ancient gods brought back to life to slaughter the ancestral enemies of their kind.

Felix followed them, feeling like he was moving in the wake of a whirlwind of destruction. His earlier fury at the death of Ulli had passed to be replaced by a cold calculation. He fought now as much to stay alive and witness the Slayers’ deeds as to kill his enemies. All fear had passed from his mind. It was not that he did not want to live. If he thought about it, he would have said that the fear was still there, but he had become so used to it that it seemed normal. It was simply something that sharpened his wits, and speeded his reflexes.

Ahead of him now, he sensed the resistance of the daemon worshippers stiffening. He saw black-armoured forms moving amid the masses, and realised that there were Chaos warriors present, and it seemed most likely that Gotrek and the others were about to meet foes more worthy of their steel.

Briefly Felix wondered how the battle was going, before losing himself again in the howling sea of battle.

Ivan Straghov watched bombs and alchemical fire rain down from the airship, turning the oncoming wave of beastmen into a mass of fiery flesh. Their screams were horrifying even to the ears of the men who hated them. Only the daemons continued to move closer, ignoring the flames that blazed around them.

As the first wave of creatures emerged from the inferno, the Ice Queen gestured and a searing wave of utter chill blasted towards them. Ivan sincerely hoped it was enough to stop them. He was getting too old to face daemons.

Arek saw the Slayers coming towards him through the gloom. The snow had started to fall heavily again. Footing was treacherous. Dead bodies lay partially buried where they fell. He recognised the scene at once. It was the same as the vision his mages had showed him. No. Not quite the same. Some elements were different. There were more dwarfs, and he was surrounded by more of his own people.

He recalled what the twins had told him. The future was not certain. They dealt only in probabilities. He knew then that there was a chance. The mocking foresight the Lord of all Change had provided him with need not come true. Already things were different enough for him to change the vision. He hoped so.

Looking at the Slayer he felt less fearful. Unlike in his vision the dwarf was already wounded. He did not move with quite the brutal ferocity Arek would have expected. The Chaos warlord knew he had faced more dangerous foes. He did not see how one lowly warrior could possibly stand against him.

As though he felt Arek’s gaze upon him, the Slayer looked up. An electric spark of recognition passed between the two of them. Arek knew that they both knew who was their true foe in this battle.

Shouting his war cry, Arek strode towards the demented dwarf.

Felix saw the Chaos warriors coming towards them. He recognised the one in the lead. It was the warlord who had shouted such a brutal challenge on the first day of the siege, the one who had told the whole city that he was going to kill them all.

Felix had to admit, Arek had made a fair effort to make good on that promise. The dead lay all around, only slowly being concealed by flurries of fresh snow. Here and there the white was stained with the red of blood, the black of bile or the brown of piss. Not even the fury of the gathering storm could entirely conceal the stench of death.

Felix took a deep breath, wondering if he was already dead and in hell. Buildings still burned. In the distance he could hear the sound of titanic explosions and smell the reek of alchemical fire. White flakes evaporated as the wind carried them into flames. All around men screamed and wept and died. And not just men. He could see daemons and beastmen and other things he did not want to look at too closely moving through the murk. Overhead, patches had appeared in the clouds and the hellish glow of the Chaos moon glared down, eclipsing the feeble stars.

The Chaos warriors were moving towards them now, the massive warlord in the lead. It was all the provocation that Gotrek needed. Howling madly he raced to meet them.

Oh well, thought Felix, where else have I got to go? He charged forward following the Slayers towards what he felt was certain death.

Max Schreiber looked down from the airship. He watched as the Ice Queen’s spell smashed through the oncoming units of daemons. He doubted that under normal circumstances even so potent an onslaught could have held them, but the daemons were weakened, the dark magic saturating the area was draining away swiftly, and the spells binding them to this plane had unravelled. Max could no longer sense the presence of the mages that held the intricate skein of power together. Was it possible they had fled? Was it possible that the men of Kislev might yet, against all odds pull off a victory here?

Certainly the airship had wreaked terrible havoc on the Chaos horde. Huge craters spoke of the power of Malakai Makaisson’s bombs. Glowing pools filled with melting corpses testified to the sheer destructive power of alchemical fire. Looking at the Slayer, Max realised that in his own way Malakai Makaisson wielded as much power as any mage, perhaps more. If a fleet of these airships could be manufactured they could change the course of history. Not that the engineer intended to do that. He did his best to share his secrets with no one. In their way magicians and engineers were perhaps not all that different. They were all jealous of their lore. And why not, thought Max? After all, knowledge is power.

He realised that he was only trying to distract himself from the destruction raging below. He could see the Kislevite cavalry surging through the remains of the horde. The airship’s attack had levelled the odds. The horse warriors had a chance now, but only a chance. The battle was still in the balance, and Max knew that the least little thing could tip it one way or the other.

Flakes of snow whirled across his field of vision. The airship shuddered in the turbulence. The wind keened through the struts and hawsers binding the cupola to the gasbag. Makaisson turned the nose around and Max caught sight of the city.

It was an eerie sight. Towers and temples blazed. Huge tenements collapsed as fire ate away at their innards. Gusts of snow obscured everything for moments at a time. The citadel of Praag still rose above the inner city unassailed as yet and holding the promise of safety for some. Fiery arcs and explosions spoke of siege engines still being used from within.

‘Weel, weel,’ Malakai Makaisson said, ‘that’s the last o’ the bombs. Ah suppose we’d better haid back and git doon tae some serious fightin’.’

Max looked at the dwarf with something like wonder. This maniac had done as much as an army to turn the course of the battle. His genius might just have saved the city, and perhaps the whole of this part of the world from the threat of Chaos – and now he wanted to risk himself in the maelstrom of battle below. He regarded that as the real struggle! Max grinned at him and Malakai Makaisson grinned back.

‘I suppose you’re right, Malakai! I might as well come with you and see what I can do myself.’

‘Rightie oh! Enough talk. Time for killing!’

Arek grinned as his first blow sent the dwarf reeling backward. The Slayer seemed sluggish. He had barely managed to get that fearsome axe in the way. Arek told himself not to be overconfident. It was still a weapon of enormous power. If anything was capable of breaching his invincible armour, this was, and he had no wish to put that particular theory to the test.

He strode on, confident now. The Chaos warriors and beastmen at his back chanted loudly, certain of victory. Arek realised how much they had come to fear the Slayer over the past few days. Certainly the sight of him doing his bloody work on the walls had not been good for morale. He had become a symbol of the city’s stubborn resistance, as well as a deadly killer to be feared by all who crossed his path. Well, that was going to end now, Arek thought. He had never lost a fight against any foe, and he was not going to start today.

He stepped forward calmly, and decided where to place his next blow. A feint with the sword, he thought, should leave his foe open to a killing blow from the axe. He aimed a cut directly at the Slayer’s head. The dwarf ducked at the last moment, and Arek’s razor-sharp sword chopped off a large swathe of his dyed crest of hair. His follow-up blow, intended to cave in the dwarf’s ribs and place his axe blade in his heart, was met by the Slayer’s axe. Sparks flew as hell-steel smashed into ancient starmetal.

The dwarf was a better fighter than he had given him credit for, Arek thought, calmly stepping back and parrying two thunderously powerful blows with his sword.

The Slayer was fighting on instinct and reflexes but was nonetheless deadly as a wolf at bay. Arek was pleased. It would make his inevitable victory all the sweeter.

Felix caught a glimpse of the duel out of the corner of his eye. The two combatants were moving almost too fast for him to follow. Their weapons were merely flickers of light, whose contact ended in sparks and the ring of steel on steel. It was like watching gods fence with lightning bolts, he thought, and then gave his attention back to the beastman who was trying to chop his head off.

Felix ducked the blow and lunged forward, driving his blade into the beastman’s stomach. With a flick of his wrist, he altered the angle upwards to seek the heart or some other vital organ. In the long run it would not matter much. A gut wound like this was inevitably fatal unless magic was used. In the short run though, an instant kill might save Felix’s life. Many a wounded man had dragged his foe down to hell with him. Felix wanted to avoid that, if possible.

He stepped back as bile and blood fountained outwards, and turned just in time to block a blow from a massive Chaos warrior armed with a spiked club. Felix saw that the man was off-balance, and took advantage of it to kick his legs out from beneath him. Once the warrior was on his back, Felix brought his blade smashing down through the chink in the warrior’s visor. He felt bone crunch, and hot blood spurted from the gap in the helm.

Felix saw Snorri and Bjorni battling side by side, trying to hack their way towards Gotrek and the Chaos warrior. Felix was sure that Gotrek would not thank them for interfering in his doom, but he was currently in no position to object. After all, the warlord of this horde was a prize for any Slayer. Falling in combat with him would be a doom they would all prize. Frankly it was one that Felix would be happy to avoid, but he knew if the three Slayers fell it was one he would most likely share, unless he was spectacularly lucky.

He risked another glance back at the duel. It was not going well for Gotrek as far as Felix could tell.

Arek had the measure of his foe now. The Slayer was fast and the weapon was powerful. More than that, to Arek’s altered senses, it was obvious there was some sort of link between the dwarf and the weapon. It fed him strength and vitality in some arcane manner. He guessed that, as the twins had surmised, over the years the Slayer had wielded it, the weapon had altered him, making him stronger and more resilient even than a dwarf would normally be. Arek had plenty of experience with weapons like that. Chaos had gifted them to many of his foes.

Only this was not a weapon created by the followers of the Dark Gods. It was something else. Something old and something potent had created it. The runes that blazed on its starmetal blade augmented its power, guiding perceptible flows of magical energy into it, adding keenness to its edge and swiftness to its wielder. More than that, it seethed with a baneful power, something inimical to Arek and all his kind.

Not that it mattered now. Arek knew he was the dwarf’s master. No mortal was his match for speed or guile, and Arek’s armour and weapons were just as powerful as the Slayer’s. In a few more heartbeats he would be gazing down on the dwarf’s corpse.

He moved forward once more, smashing his sword down, aiming for the Slayer’s head. The dwarf moved aside slower this time, and Arek opened a cut on his temple. His axe smashed into the Slayer’s weapon again, forcing the dwarf back another step. Soon they would be at the entrance to a burning building, and there would be nowhere else for the dwarf to retreat.

Arek saw rage and something like fear burning in the mad dwarf’s one good eye. His opponent knew he was doomed. Now was the time when he would be most dangerous. Soon the dwarf would throw all his strength into one last desperate attack. Arek focused all his concentration on his foe, readying himself for the moment of supreme victory.

It came as a complete surprise to him when he felt something barrel into him just behind his knee. His leg started to give way. He heard a voice bellow, ‘This one is Bjorni Bjornisson’s!’

He looked around and down and saw a second, repulsively ugly Slayer glaring up at him. Reflexively he brought his sword smashing down. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something metallic, covered in baleful runes, flashing towards his head.

It was the last thing he ever saw. As he died, the realisation that Lord Tzeentch had played a terrible trick on him flared through his mind.

To Felix it looked like everything happened at once. One moment, Arek stood triumphant, about to slay Gotrek with one blow. In the next, Snorri and Bjorni had barrelled into the warrior, upsetting everything.

Bjorni hit the warlord just behind the left knee, throwing him off-balance. His weapon bounced from the ornate Chaos armour but the force of the blow was still enough to upset Arek.

In the same instant, Snorri lashed out with both hammer and axe. The sheer power of his blows started the warlord toppling.

Even so, Arek was still deadly. As he fell, his savage slash smashed through poor Bjorni’s skull, splitting his head in two, and giving Felix the sort of view of the dwarf’s teeth, brains and skull that he could cheerfully have lived without. At the same time, he twisted to his right, attempting to catch Snorri with his axe. The Slayer managed to get both his weapons in the way, but the power of Arek’s blow sheared through the hammer head, and chopped through the haft of the axe, before carving a slice from Snorri’s chest.

At the sight of this, Gotrek howled a curse and lashed out with his axe. The mighty starmetal blade shrieked as it hit the neck guard of Arek’s armour. Sparks flared. The runes on the axe-blade blazed bright as miniature suns. Then the axe cut right through the armour like a knife through rotten cheese. Arek’s head parted from his shoulders, hit the ground, bounced once and rolled to land at Felix’s feet.

Caught up in the moment, not quite knowing why he did it, Felix picked the helm up and brandished it aloft.

‘Your warlord is dead!’ he shouted. Droplets of black blood dripped from Arek’s severed neck. Where they fell, the snow sizzled and melted. ‘Your warlord is dead!’

The beastmen looked upon him and fell back in dismay, as if unwilling to believe the evidence of their eyes. Felix looked over at Gotrek. The Slayer spat on the red-flecked snow in disgust.

‘Once again it seems I am robbed of a mighty doom, manling!’ he shouted, glaring at Snorri as if he held the other dwarf personally responsible. Snorri shrugged, looked at the remains of his weapons, and gently leaned down and picked up Bjorni’s axe.

‘Still plenty of killing to be done, Gotrek Gurnisson,’ he said quietly.

‘By Grimnir, you’re right there!’ Gotrek said. With that, he turned and lunged into the panicking beastmen like a swimmer diving into an ocean of blood.

Slowly at first, then more swiftly, word of Arek’s fall passed through the remains of the Chaos army. Fleeing beastmen spread panic and disorder among their comrades. Without quite knowing why, those comrades also joined the general rout. The embattled defenders, sensing a real change in their fortunes at last, fought back with renewed fury.

Seeing the tide of battle turn, Duke Enrik led the remainder of his forces from the inner citadel, helping to drive the mutants and monsters back towards the gaps in the walls.

With the departure of the sorcerers, the spells binding the energies of dark magic unravelled and failed. The daemonic war engines lost power and became lifeless hulks. The last of the ravaging daemons thinned, faded and vanished into clouds of brimstone reek.

At the Gate of Gargoyles, the duke and his men linked up with the riders of the Ice Queen. Amid the destruction they saluted each other for a moment, then led their armies forth to complete the first victory in the Second Great War Against Chaos.

VAMPIRESLAYER

William King

BOOK ONE

PRAAG

‘At that time, in the depths of that dreadful winter, I thought myself well acquainted with horror and pain. During the siege of Praag I had endured the loss of many trusty companions to the fiends of Chaos. But all the travails I had previously undergone shrank to insignificance compared to what was to come. For, through some strange quirk of fate or jest of the Dark Gods, the Slayer and I were destined to encounter an ancient, terrible evil and to lose several more of those who had been closest to us in the most peculiar and terrible of ways. The darkest of our days were yet to come.’

— From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol IV, by Herr Felix Jaeger
(Altdorf Press, 2505)

ONE

Felix Jaeger strode through the ruins of Praag – burnt out buildings, ruins, and rubble, as far as the eye could see. The remains of a few collapsed tenements poked their scorched heads from the all-enveloping snow. Here and there men piled bodies on carts to be taken away and burned. It was a thankless and probably fruitless task. Many corpses would not now be found until the spring thaws, when the snow covering them melted. That’s if they were not excavated and eaten first, Felix thought. The effects of starvation were written on the faces of people all around him. Felix pulled his faded red Sudenland wool cloak more tightly around him and strode on towards the White Boar – or where it had been, before the battle. He had grown bored with the triumphal banquets in the Citadel and the company of the Kislevite nobles. A man could only stand to listen to so many speeches praising the valour of the city’s defenders and the courage of the relieving army before his ears felt as if they would fall off. His tolerance for listening to nobility congratulating themselves on their heroism was not as great as it once had been. It was time to see what the Slayers were up to. They had left the banquet early the previous evening and not been seen since. Felix had a shrewd idea that he knew where he could find them.

He walked through the remains of what had been the Street of the Silk Merchants, surveying the burned out remains of the great warehouses. Pale, lean and hungry people, wrapped in ragged coats, were everywhere, trudging heads down through the snow, taking shelter in the ruins of the old storehouses. Many eyed him as if wondering whether he carried enough money to make him worth the risk of robbing. Some looked at him as if he might be their next meal, quite literally. Felix kept his hand near the hilt of his sword, and wore the fiercest expression he could muster on his face.

In the distance, the temple bells rang out in celebration. Felix wondered if he was the only one who found anything ironic in their joyous clamour. Considering their dire straits it was surprising how many of the people looked cheerful. He supposed most of them had expected to be dead by now. Nigh unbelievably the great Chaos horde of Arek Daemonclaw had been thrown back, and the mighty Chaos warlord had been defeated. The Gospodar muster and a ferocious bombing attack mounted by the airship, the Spirit of Grungni, had delivered the city from that vast army. Against all odds the heroic city of Praag had been saved from the mightiest army to attack it in two centuries.

It had been a victory bought at high cost. More than half of the Novygrad, the New City, that vast, densely populated warren of narrow streets between the outer wall and the old inner wall surrounding the Citadel, was gone, burned to the ground when the rampaging Chaos warriors had broken through into the city. Nearly a quarter of the city’s population was dead according to the quick and informal survey conducted by the duke’s censors. The same number again were expected to die of hunger, disease and exposure to the bitter chill of the northern winter. And that was assuming no more marauding armies emerged from the Northern Wastes. The outer wall was still breached in three places, and would not withstand any more assaults.

In the distance Felix could smell the sickly sweet scent of burning flesh. Somewhere out there people were warming their hands around funeral pyres for the slain. It was the only way to get rid of so many corpses quickly. There were too many now to be buried, the earth too hard to be broken by spades. There were still worries about plague. The dreadful diseases unleashed by the worshippers of Nurgle, the Lord of Disease, during the siege had made a resurgence in the aftermath of the battle. Some claimed it was the Plague Daemon’s revenge for the slaughter of his followers. The wizard Max Schreiber thought it more likely that the cold, the hunger and the depressing effects of the Kislevite winter were making the population more prone to the spore daemons that carried disease. Felix smiled sourly; a man with a theory for everything was Max Schreiber, and depressingly correct most of them had proven too.

A wailing woman tried frantically to stop two of the carters bearing off the body of a dead man, her lover, her husband or her brother perhaps. Most of the people in the city had lost at least one kinsman. Entire families had been wiped out. Felix thought about the people he had known who had died in the battle. Two of the dwarf Slayers, young Ulli and the hideously ugly Bjorni, had been burned on those huge funeral bonfires.

Why had this happened, Felix wondered? What had driven the Chaos worshippers from their remote realms in the uttermost north, and compelled them to attack the city? Why had they chosen the weeks before the onset of winter for their assault? It was an act of insanity. Even if they had taken Praag, they would have suffered quite as much from the effects of the cold and snow as the people of the city now were. More so, for such was the grim determination of the Kislevites that they would have burned their entire city to the ground rather than see it fall into the hands of their bitterest enemies. Felix supposed that the daemon forces would have had fewer qualms about devouring corpses or even each other, but even so their attack had been madness.

He shook his head. What was the point of trying to understand them anyway? You would have to be mad to willingly follow the daemon gods of Chaos, and that was all he needed to know. It was pointless for any sane man to try and understand the motives of such lost souls. Of course, Felix had heard many theories. Max Schreiber claimed that a huge tide of dark magical energy was flowing south out of the Chaos Wastes, and that it was goading the daemon worshippers to new heights of insane fury.

‘Repent! Repent!’ shouted a lean man with burning eyes. He stood on the pedestal once occupied by a statue of Tsar Alexander and ranted at the crowd. Foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. His long hair was lank. He looked like he had lost touch with sanity a long time ago. ‘The gods are punishing you for your sins.’

It seemed the zealots who preached in the burned out squares of the city had their own theories. They claimed that the end of the world had arrived, and that the Chaos horde had merely been a harbinger of worse things to come. That theory only lost plausibility slightly when you considered that these were the same people who claimed that the end of the world had arrived with the Chaos horde. They had been forced to change their story a little when the horde had been defeated. Felix fought down the urge to shout at the man. People had enough troubles without being harangued by a furious lunatic. A quick glance told him it was pointless. Nobody was paying the zealot any heed despite the way he had bared his breast and pummelled his own chest in fury. Most folk walked swiftly by, trying to finish whatever business they had and get back to whatever meagre shelter they might possess. The man might as well have been shouting his anger at the wind.

A few stalls had been set up at the corners of the Square of the Simoners. Men in the winged lion tabard of the duke’s household doled out a ration of grain to a queue of hungry folk. The measure was now down to half a cup. Of course, the duke was now also feeding the assembled force of the Gospodar muster, nearly five thousand warriors and their mounts. They were camped out in the remains of the city and the burned out farms that surrounded it. Felix pushed his way quickly round the edge of the square, doing his best to avoid being caught up in the teeming mass of hacking, coughing, scratching flesh. He kept one hand on his sword hilt and one on his purse. Where crowds gathered you could never be too careful.

Felix had heard people say that the Ice Queen, the Tsarina of Kislev, had power over the winter weather. If that was so, he thought, why did she not loosen winter’s grip on the throat of her people? Perhaps such magic was beyond her power. It looked as if not even the Lords of Chaos had the power to do so, and surely they, most of all, had reason to do that, unless this whole invasion was just some sort of grim divine jest for their own amusement. From what he had seen when he had flown over the Chaos Wastes, Felix would not put it past them.

As he exited the square huge, thick flakes of snow began to fall, brushing coldly against his cheek. It frosted the hair of the folk about him. Felix was sick of the sight of it. He thought he was used to snow. Winters in the Empire were long and harsh but they were a summer picnic compared to what winter brought here. He had never seen so much snow fall, so quickly, and never known it to be quite this cold. He had heard rumours of huge, white dire wolves stalking the city’s outskirts and making off with children and the weak. He had heard tales of other worse things too. It seemed the Kislevites had horror stories for everything concerned with winter. Hardly surprising, he supposed, and he had seen enough of the world to know that there was most likely a grain of truth behind all of them.

Felix told himself not to be so dour. After all, he was alive when he had fully expected to meet his death during the Chaos horde’s attack. He could even leave the city on the mighty airship, the Spirit of Grungni, when Malakai Makaisson departed. True, that would mean returning to Karak Kadrin, the squat savage home of the Slayer cult, but surely even that would be preferable to spending the winter in Praag. Only a fool or a madman would want to do that.

Felix knew that really he had no choice in the matter. He was sworn to follow Gotrek and record his doom. Wherever the Slayer chose to go, he was bound to follow. Surely not even Gotrek would choose to remain in Kislev? Felix shook his head. The Slayer would most likely do it out of sheer pig-headedness. He seemed happiest when things were most uncomfortable, and Felix could imagine few places more guaranteed to provide a healthy measure of discomfort than this snowbound, burned out shell of a city.

Now that he and Ulrika Magdova had finally separated, there was no real reason for him to stay. Briefly he wondered where the Kislevite noblewoman was. Most likely she was still with Max Schreiber, back at the banquet; the two of them were thick as thieves these days.

Ulrika claimed it was because of the honour debt she owed the wizard for saving her life during the plague. Felix was not quite so sure. It was hard for him not to feel jealous of the mage, even though, theoretically, he and Ulrika were not a couple any more.

Yes, he told himself, moving on was for the best.

The snow crunched under his boots. He walked towards a charcoal brazier where a vendor was selling skewered rats. He did so more because he wanted heat than any of the four-legged chicken the man was selling.

The vendor seemed to read his thoughts and gave him a glare. Felix met the man’s look evenly until he glanced down and away. Despite his scholarly appearance he felt there were few men in the city who would give him trouble at times like this. Over the long period of his association with the Slayer, he had learned how to intimidate all but the most confident when he wanted to.

From over by the entrance to the Alleyway of Loose Women, above which a red lantern still burned even in this gloomy daylight, he heard the sound of weeping. The more cautious part of his mind told him to move on, to avoid any trouble. The curious part egged him on to investigate. The battle was over in heartbeats, and he marched over to the mouth of the alley. He saw an old woman weeping. She was bent over something and then leaned back and let out a terrible wail of anguish. No one else seemed to be paying much heed. Misery was abundant in Praag this season, and no one had much reason to go looking to share someone else’s.

‘What is it, mother?’ Felix asked.

‘Who you calling “mother”, priest boy?’ the old woman responded. There was anger in her voice now, as well as grief. She was looking for someone to focus it on, to distract herself. Felix guessed he had just made himself the target.

‘Did I offend you?’ he asked, still polite, studying the woman more closely. He could see that she was not really all that old. She just looked that way. Her face was covered in rouge to hide the pockmarks. Her tears had smudged her makeup horribly. Black rivulets ran down her powdered cheeks. A streetgirl, he decided, one of those who sold herself for a penny a tumble. Then he looked at her feet and a faint thrill of shock passed through him as he saw why she was crying. ‘Was she a friend of yours?’

It was the pale corpse of another girl. At first he thought she had died of the cold, then he noticed how utterly unnatural her pallor was. He bent down and saw that her throat was bruised. Some instinct told him to run his fingers over it. The flesh was torn, as if a beast had gnawed at it.

‘You a watchman?’ the woman asked aggressively. She reached out and grabbed his cloak, thrusting her face close to his. ‘You secret police?’

Felix shook his head and gently removed her hand. It would be a very bad thing to be marked out as one of the duke’s spies and agent provocateurs in this rough quarter. A crowd might gather and lynch him. Felix had seen such things happen before.

‘Then you’re just a ghoul and I don’t have to tell you nuthin’. The woman coughed and he heard the phlegm rasping through her lungs. Whatever she had, he hoped it was not contagious. She did not look like a well woman. Felix looked at her coldly. He was chilled to the bone, he was tired and he was not really in the mood to be the focus of this sick madwoman’s anger. He stood up straight and said, ‘You’re right. Deal with this yourself!’

He turned to go, and noticed that a small crowd had gathered. To his surprise he felt a tug at his wrist, and turned to see the streetgirl looking up at him and crying once more. ‘I told her not to go with him,’ she said after another hacking cough. ‘I told her, I told Maria, but she wouldn’t listen. I told her he was a bad ’un, and there have been all these killin’s recent, but she wouldn’t listen. Needed the money for medicine for the little ’un she said. Now who’ll look after him?’

Felix wondered what the woman was babbling about. He felt the urge to walk away as quickly as possible. He had seen many corpses in his life but there was something about this one that sickened him. He was not sure why, but he just knew that he wanted nothing further to do with this. And yet…

And yet he could not just walk away. The meaning of the woman’s words passed into his numbed brain, just as he heard a commotion at the back of the crowd and the sound of marching feet crunching snow underfoot. He turned to see a squad of halberdiers in winged lion tabards had forced their way through the gathering crowd, hard-faced veterans of the city watch, led by a grey-haired sergeant. He looked at Felix and said, ‘You find her?’

Felix shook his head. ‘Just passing by,’ he said.

‘Then keep on passing,’ said the sergeant. Felix stepped to one side. He wanted no arguments with the duke’s guards. The sergeant bent down over the corpse and muttered a low curse. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Another one.’

‘That’s Red Maria, sarge,’ said one of the troopers. ‘From Flint Street.’

‘Have you seen something like this before?’ Felix asked.

The sergeant looked up at him. Something about his expression made it clear that he was not in the mood to give answers to any passing civilians. Felix wasn’t sure why he had asked. This was surely no business of his. But something about the man’s tone rankled him, and something about this killing niggled at the back of his mind. He knew it would most likely go unsolved anyway. He had been a watchman himself in his time, back in Nuln, what seemed a lifetime ago, and he knew the watchmen were not likely to expend any more effort on a murdered streetgirl than to carry her to the funeral pyres. Looking down at the corpse he began to see her as a person finally.

Who were you, he wondered? What was your life like? Why did you die? Who killed you? Your friend said you had a child. Did you love him? Must have or you would not have gone out with a deadly stranger on a winter night and walked off to your death.

He felt a faint familiar surge of anger at the sheer injustice of it. Somewhere out there a monster was free and a child was most likely going to die for want of food, and there was not much he could do about it. He reached down to his waist and fingered his purse. It was a bit flat, but there was gold in it. He turned so his body covered the action, and pushed it into the woman’s palm.

‘Take that, find the child and look after it. Should see you for a while. Take it to the orphanage at the Temple of Shallya. They’ll care for it, if you give them a donation.’

Stupid, stupid, stupid, he told himself. The woman will most likely keep the money herself. Or will be robbed, or the child is already dead. But what else could he do? He was a fool, he knew, but at least he had done something, made some small gesture in the face of the vast uncaring universe.

‘Same as the one down on Temple Street two nights ago,’ he heard one of the troopers murmur. He turned in time to see the man make the sign of the wolf’s head against evil. First finger and little finger extended, middle two fingers pressed into the palm by the thumb. The guard was a follower of Ulric then, like most of these Kislevites.

‘Another lunatic most likely,’ said the sergeant.

‘Or a daemon,’ said the soldier superstitiously. Rumour had it that some of the daemons summoned when the Chaos horde attacked the city were still at large. Felix knew this was unlikely. He had sat through enough of Max’s lectures on the subject to know why. There was simply not enough magical energy in the area to support one now.

‘It would not be a daemon,’ he said.

‘You’d be an expert on that, I suppose,’ the sergeant said. Felix thought back over his long career as the Slayer’s henchman, and all the vile creatures he had fought, including the great Bloodthirster of Karag Dum.

‘More than you would ever guess,’ he murmured.

‘What was that?’ the sergeant asked abruptly. Felix snapped his mouth shut. Claiming knowledge of daemons in this city was a sure way to get yourself invited to a witch hunter’s confession cell. He was not ready for the rack and the iron boot just yet.

‘Nothing,’ he said. The sergeant looked at him as if he really wanted to pick a fight just now. Felix could understand why. The sight of the body was very disturbing, a cause of both fear and anger, and the man was looking for a target to focus his on. Suddenly the streetgirl came to his rescue.

‘He’s right. It wasn’t a daemon. It was a man,’ she said. ‘I saw him.’

‘Daemons can take human shape,’ said the gloomy soldier. He obviously wasn’t going to give up on his theory without a struggle.

‘It was a man,’ she said. ‘A rich man. A nob. With a foreign accent like the stranger here.’

The sergeant was giving Felix an even harder, appraising stare now. Felix could see what he was thinking.

‘Wasn’t him,’ said the girl quickly.

‘You sure, Nella? I saw him slip you some money there. Pretty suspicious if you ask me.’

‘Wasn’t him,’ she said even more emphatically. She too could see the deep waters they were sailing into now. ‘Was taller, thinner, darker. And there was something about him that just made my flesh creep.’

‘There’s something about this one that makes my flesh creep,’ said the sergeant. His witticism drew guffaws from the troops, all except the gloomy soldier who repeated, ‘Daemons make your flesh creep. It was a daemon for sure.’

‘Don’t look like a man’s work. Look at her throat. More like a dog did that. Never saw a man kill anyone like that before.’

‘I have,’ said the sergeant. ‘Remember Mad Olaf? Chewed his way through quite a few bar girls in his time.’

‘Olaf is in the madhouse,’ said the soldier with the daemon theories.

‘Who knows?’ said the sergeant. ‘Madhouse burned down in the siege. Who knows if all the loonies burned with it?’

‘Does the girl’s description fit Mad Olaf?’ Felix asked, keen now, to divert any hint of suspicion from himself.

‘Not at all. Mad Olaf was short, bald and worked in the Street of Tanners. Smell could knock you down at six paces. I’m sure Nella would have noticed it, wouldn’t you, Nella? Unless you’re just making this up to put us off pretty boy here’s tracks.’

‘Wasn’t anythin’ like Mad Olaf,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Though he did smell kind of odd…’

‘Odd? How?’ asked Felix and the sergeant simultaneously.

‘There was a perfume about him, like something the nobs wear but stronger. Like those spices you used to be able to buy down at the Pepper Market. Like cinna... cinnabor... cinna…’

‘Like cinnamon?’ Felix finished for her.

‘That’s the word.’

‘So we’re looking for a tall, dark man, dressed like a noble, smells of cinnamon,’ said the sergeant sarcastically. It was obvious he thought Felix really was wasting his time now. He glared at Felix as if considering hauling him off anyway.

‘Where were you last night, stranger?’ he asked. Felix was glad he had a good answer for that.

‘The palace,’ he said. ‘Maybe you would like to ask the duke a few questions while you’re about it.’

The sergeant looked suddenly a bit more respectful, but only a bit. Felix could tell he was wondering whether he was being mocked. After all, how likely was it that someone as scruffily dressed as Felix would be eating with the ruler of Kislev’s second most powerful city-state?

‘Perhaps you’d care to come along to the palace and make sure of what I am saying?’ Felix said. He was confident that things would go his way there. He and Gotrek had been given a heroes’ welcome, along with Snorri Nosebiter, after their heroic stand on the outer wall and their despatch of Arek Daemonclaw. To tell the truth, Felix knew he was probably only welcome because he was associated with the dwarfs. They had, after all, proven to be the Kislevites’ best and only allies in this struggle so far. Their airship had done as much to lift the siege as the entire Gospodar muster.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the sergeant after a long moment. ‘Come on, let’s get this body to the pyres.’

Felix exchanged looks with Nella, and they went their separate ways.

Max Schreiber looked around the massive feasting chamber wondering if the celebrations would ever end. It seemed the Kislevites liked to commemorate their victories with enormous meals and endless toasts. It seemed like he had barely gone to sleep when he was woken for the next instalment of the grand debauch. His stomach was so distended it felt as if it would burst. Fortunately, he had decided to drink nothing but water since his embarrassment with Ulrika at Karag Kadrin, and he had stuck to the resolution. It had given him an opportunity to study the Kislevites around him. It had been a long time since he had moved in quite such exalted company.

At the head of the table, at the place of honour normally reserved for the Duke of Praag himself, sat the Ice Queen Katarina, the Tsarina of Kislev, a cold and perfectly beautiful woman with eyes like chips of blue ice. Today her hair was the colour of winter frost. Max knew it changed at her whim. She had the ageless sculpted beauty of a statue, a perfection of face and form that had something inhuman about it and she appeared none the worse for two days of eating and drinking. Looking at her, Max could easily believe the tales of inhuman blood that was said to flow in the veins of the royal line of Kislev.

Whatever it was that gave her beauty, it also gave her a fearsome aura of magical power. A wizard of great strength himself, Max could recognise a potent mage when he met one, and the Tsarina was certainly that. No, he thought, that was not quite right. There was something strange and not quite human about her powers as well. She did not feel like any human wizard he had ever encountered, and when he studied her with his magesight he could see the swirls of power surrounding her were quite unlike those of any human mage too. She had a frosty, chill blue aura that seemed to extend outwards beyond his field of vision. Patterns of magical energy swirled around her like snowflakes in a blizzard. She seemed to be connected directly to the cold energy of her land. He doubted that there was anything subtle about the magic she could wield, but he knew it would be effective as a battering ram. She was in receipt of great energies from somewhere.

She seemed aware of Max’s study and turned her cold gaze speculatively on him. Max had heard rumours of her, and her legion of lovers too, and had no great desire to find out if they were true. He swiftly looked away. A faint mocking smile played across the Tsarina’s lips as if she could read his thoughts. Max stroked his beard with his hand, to hide the flush that came to his cheeks. He was not quite used to the forwardness of Kislevite women. They were very unlike the ladies of his homeland, the Empire.

Automatically his eyes sought out Ulrika. She sat across the table from him, side by side with her father, the huge old March Boyar, Ivan Petrovich Straghov. Looking at the two of them, Max wondered how it was possible that the massive bear-like man could be the father of such a slender and lovely woman. Ivan Straghov was a giant, huge of shoulder, and just as huge of belly. A long beard, almost dwarf-like, descended to his waist. Sweat shone on his bald forehead. He held a stein of beer in one massive fist. It looked little larger than a delicate wine goblet in that massive ham-like hand.

His daughter by contrast was slim as a blade, with high cheekbones and wide-set eyes. Her ash-blonde hair was cut short as a man’s and she held herself with a dancer’s poise. She was garbed in tunic and riding britches, the true daughter of one of the horse lords of Kislev. She laughed and joked with her father just like any common trooper and her quips were rewarded with huge bellows of laughter that set the old man’s belly shaking like a jelly.

Seated beside Max, the duke, a tall, dark saturnine man with long drooping moustaches and sunken cheeks, leaned forward to pour more wine for the Tsarina. A peculiar gleam was in the duke’s eye and Max recalled the rumours that Enrik was not quite sane. Hardly surprising – ruling the haunted city of Praag was likely to drive even the most normal man over the edge. Since the death of his brother at the hands of Chaos worshipping assassins he seemed even sadder and more sardonic than usual. Max wondered if the duke knew of Felix Jaeger’s theory that his brother had been a member of the Chaos cults himself, but knew he would probably never find out. Who was going to risk asking such a loaded personal question of such a high-ranking noble? Not Max, for a certainty.

Max glanced around and looked at the others. This was the high table where the Tsarina, the duke and the favoured few sat to be waited on by court favourites. At the other tables were the leaders of the great muster of Kislev. Leaders of tens, fifties and hundreds of horse-soldiers, formidable warriors all. They looked more like barbarians than nobles to Max, but he kept the thought to himself. These men were allies of his homeland, the Empire, and great nobles in their own land.

It never paid to antagonise such people under any circumstances. Max had spent enough time around the courts of the rich and the powerful to know this only too well. At the bottom of the main table, looking as uncomfortable as a man waiting his own execution, sat the dwarf Malakai Makaisson, the only Slayer who had bothered to accept the duke’s invitation to dine today.

Makaisson was short and like all dwarfs very, very broad. Without the great crest of dyed hair rising above his shaven skull, his head would only have come to the top of Max’s stomach, but he outweighed Max by far, and all of that extra weight was muscle. Crystalline goggles, pushed back from his eyes, sat in the middle of his forehead, looking for all the world like the eyes of some giant insect. A leather flying helmet dangled from his neck. A fur-collared leather flying jerkin covered his massive torso. Tattoos depicting entwined dragons covered the back of his hands.

The dwarf caught Max looking at him and gave him a gap-toothed smile before raising his pitcher of ale. Max answered the smile for he liked Makaisson, who was just about as friendly and outgoing as it was possible for a dwarf Slayer to be, as well as a genius in his own field.

Max was a sorcerer not an engineer, but he had seen enough of Malakai Makaisson’s work to recognise that the dwarf was master of a power that was, in its own way, quite as great as wizardry. He had seen the massive airship, Spirit of Grungni, break the siege of Praag with the use of alchemical fire. He had seen it resist the attack of a dragon and rout an army of orcs. He had seen the Slayer’s modified firearms slaughter dozens of goblins in seconds. He had heard tales of mighty ships and siege engines created by this dwarf, and he recognised an intellect as great in its own warped way, as anything ever produced by the Universities or Colleges of Magic of the Empire. Quite possibly greater, he admitted.

‘It is a pity none of your comrades could be here tonight,’ said the duke sardonically, addressing Malakai Makaisson. ‘They seem insensible to the honour of dining with the Tsarina.’

If the Slayer was embarrassed he gave no sign of it. ‘That wud be their bizness, yer dukeship,’ he said. ‘Ah cannae answer fur them. Gotrek Gurnisson and Snorri Nosebiter are as thrawn a pair o’ dwarfs as ever lived.’

‘And that’s saying something,’ said the Ice Queen lightly. The favourites around the table laughed.

‘Among dwarfs it wud be considered a great compliment,’ said Malakai Makaisson judiciously, as if no mockery were intended. Perhaps the dwarf was too blunt to notice it, Max thought, or perhaps he chose to ignore it in the interests of diplomacy. Max considered the latter an unlikely eventuality, but you never knew. No one had ever called Malakai Makaisson stupid, just mad.

‘Present or not,’ said Ivan Straghov, ‘they did well in the last battle.’

‘They did a great service to Kislev, and shall be rewarded for it,’ said the Tsarina. Malakai Makaisson spluttered into his ale. Max wondered if he should explain the situation to the Ice Queen. Gotrek and Snorri did not seek rewards or honours; they sought death to atone for their sins. He decided that it probably wasn’t his place to share the information. Besides, the Tsarina seemed to be an extraordinarily well-informed woman. She probably already knew.

‘We shall have great need of such fighters before this war is over,’ continued the Ice Queen. Max shivered. It was war all right, quite possibly the largest in history. Before the siege he had not really had time to take it in, he had only been concerned with the seemingly unwinnable battle to come. Now, he knew that the whole of the Old World had a huge fight on its hands. The massive drift of Chaos worshippers out of the north ensured it. The Ice Queen turned her gaze on Malakai Makaisson once more and it swiftly became obvious why he had been invited to this feast. ‘Have you thought more of our proposal, Herr Makaisson?’

Malakai took another swig of his beer and met her gaze levelly. ‘If there’s ocht ah can dae, lassie, ah wull dae it. But ma airship and ma services are already spoken fur. Ah must gan back to Karak Kadrin and help the Slayer King muster his forces.’

‘Surely you can spare us a few days, Herr Makaisson, a week at the most,’ said the Tsarina. Her tone was silky but Max could hear the danger in it. He wondered what she would do if Malakai Makaisson had the gall to refuse her outright. She did not have the look of a woman who was used to taking rejection well. ‘Your airship is worth an army of scouts. In days you could cover more terrain than ten thousand of my bold riders could in a month.’

‘Aye, ye’re right,’ said Malakai. ‘Ah could. An’ ah can see the value such kenning would have. Who kens where those Chaos-lovin’ basturds will strike next, excuse ma language.’

‘So you’ll do it then?’ said the Ice Queen decisively. Malakai Makaisson sucked his teeth loudly. ‘Ah’ll dae ma best, but there are ither factors tae be considered. What if ma lovely airship gets shot doon, or blasted fae the sky by sorcery, or attacked by them bat-winged gets that are always hoverin’ above the daemon worshippers? It wouldnae dae onybody ony guid if that happened. An ah don’t own the Spirit of Grungni, ah’m only the builder. It’s no really mine tae risk.’

Max almost intervened. He had put the Chaos-repelling spells on the Spirit of Grungni himself and he knew how strong they were. Few mages would overcome them quickly. And he was just as certain that the heavily armed airship would be able to repel anything that attacked it. As for taking risks with the airship, the Slayer engineer had taken a number of crazy ones with it, to Max’s certain knowledge. He forced himself to keep his mouth shut, knowing that Malakai must be as aware of all these things as he was, and if he wanted to refuse the Ice Queen he must have his own good reasons.

The Ice Queen gave the dwarf another one of her dangerous looks. Most men would have quailed before it, but Malakai just took another slug of his beer. ‘We could of course compensate you for any risk you might run…’ she said softly.

Max half expected Malakai Makaisson to protest that he was a Slayer and that risk did not enter the equation. Makaisson surprised him. ‘Ah might be able tae dae somethin’ wi’ that. Depends on yer terms.’

With that, Malakai Makaisson and the Ice Queen began to dicker. Max did not know why he was surprised by this turn of events. Malakai Makaisson was a dwarf after all, a race of beings famous for their love of gold.

Still, thought Max, such constant advancement of self-interest among supposed allies did not bode well for the conduct of the war.

Felix Jaeger was surprised. The White Boar was still standing. Well, almost. Part of the roof had been burned away and hastily patched with timbers salvaged from the ruins of nearby tenements. A blanket covered the doorway and two heavily armed mercenaries stood on guard beside it, keeping a wary eye on everyone who came along the street. He squared his shoulders and strode up, doing his best to behave as if he could not feel their suspicious glares on him.

Once inside he was surprised by how packed it was. It looked like half the sellswords of the city had tried to squeeze inside out of the cold. Felix half suspected that even without the huge fire blazing in the hearth, the press of bodies would have kept the place warm. He heard two familiar voices bellowing and strode towards the table where the two dwarf Slayers were arm-wrestling.

Gotrek Gurnisson looked none the worse for the terrible wounds he had taken during the siege. The healers of the temple of Shallya had done a good job of patching his wounds. Right now a look of insane concentration glittered in his one good eye. Veins bulged in his forehead and his enormous crest of orange dyed hair stood on end. Sweat beaded his tattooed skull, running down his forehead into the ruined socket covered by a huge eye patch. Massive cable-like sinews bulged in his huge arms as he strove against another dwarf even more massive than he.

Snorri Nosebiter looked even dumber than usual, Felix thought. The dwarf licked his lips moronically as he concentrated. He looked as if arm wrestling were about the most intellectually stimulating pursuit he had ever engaged in. The three painted nails driven into his shaven skull were a testimony to his sheer brute stupidity. He was almost as ugly as Bjorni Bjornisson had been. One ear had been ripped clean away; the other resembled a massive cauliflower. His nose had been broken so many times it seemed to have spread across his face like wax from a melted candle. His arms were thicker than a strong man’s thighs. They bulged and flexed as he strained to overcome Gotrek’s grip. Slowly, inexorably, the one-eyed Slayer’s enormous strength began to tell. Snorri cursed as his hand was slammed into the tabletop almost upsetting his beer.

‘That’s another one of these piss-weak manling brews you owe me, Snorri Nosebiter,’ said Gotrek. His gravelly voice sounded even more contemptuous than usual.

‘Snorri thinks we should make it best of twenty-seven,’ said Snorri.

‘You would still lose,’ said Gotrek with certainty.

‘Maybe Snorri would surprise you, Gotrek Gurnisson,’ said Snorri.

‘You haven’t so far.’

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ said Snorri Nosebiter, a little petulantly, Felix thought.

‘What have you been up to, manling?’ asked Gotrek. ‘Your face is tripping you.’

Swiftly Felix told the tale of the dead girl and his escape from the clutches of the guards. Gotrek listened with the sort of unreasonable interest that Felix knew boded no good. Even Snorri was hanging on his every word. After he finished his story, Felix said, ‘You don’t seem at all surprised by what I have been saying.’

‘I’ve heard several versions of this story over the past few days. Seems like there’s a mad dog killer on the loose out there. One that needs to be put down.’

‘You think you’re the one to do it?’ Felix asked worriedly. When the Slayer got such ideas fixed in his head, he usually ended up in some dark and nasty place along with him. Gotrek shrugged.

‘If I run into the bastard, manling, I will do it happily, but I’m not planning on going out looking for him just yet.’

‘Just yet? That’s good.’

‘Snorri wonders whether it really might be a daemon,’ said Snorri. ‘That soldier sounded quite clever to Snorri.’

Gotrek shook his head. ‘If it was a daemon every wizard in the city would be shouting spells and every priest casting exorcisms from the temple roofs.’

‘Then what could it be?’ Felix asked.

‘Your guess is as good as mine, manling,’ said Gotrek and took a long swig of his ale. ‘One thing’s for sure though. Nothing good.’

The Bow and Bard might be the finest inn in Praag, Adolphus Krieger thought as he glanced around, but this was not saying much. He had seen finer inns in any small town in the Empire. He should have remained in Osrik’s mansion, he knew, but the strange restlessness that had filled him recently had driven him out into the night once more. When this mood was on him, he could not even stand the sight of his loyal manservant, Roche.

He drew his cloak around him and studied the tavern crowd. He could smell each individual scent, hear every heartbeat, was aware of the thrum of crimson through every vein. So many people, he thought, so much blood. He felt like an epicure studying a Tilean banquet.

Where to begin, he thought? Perhaps with that young noblewoman sitting over there with her lover? She was almost beautiful but there was something about her he found vaguely repulsive. As a rule, Adolphus did not care for Kislevite women with their flat peasant features and short muscular bodies. No, not her.

The tavern wench gave him a broad smile, and offered to bring him more wine. It was possible she was responding to his good looks, he thought, but more likely to the cut of his clothes. She sensed money, either in tips or afterwork activities. Adolphus shook his head and smiled at her affably. He had only just surreptitiously poured half his current goblet on the floor. It had been a long time since Adolphus drank wine. The barmaid moved off with a saucy flick of her hips. Once, a long time ago, she might have interested him, but now he was not even interested in her as prey.

Adolphus shook his head and began to draw patterns on the tabletop with his fingertip using some of his spilled wine. He was in a strange mood, and he had not lived as long as he had without learning to recognise the dangers of such things. He was becoming prey to all manner of odd impulses and he wondered what that foreboded.

Last night for instance, he had drained that girl dry when he had only meant to sip. There had been no need for it. Her blood had been flat and thin and not even remotely interesting. She herself was mere cattle, barely worth his interest. Why had he done it? Why had he drank so deep that she had died, and why had he torn out her throat with his teeth in that pathetic attempt to cover his trail?

It was difficult to understand. A delirium had come over him such as he had not experienced in centuries. He had sucked the girl’s blood like a whelp on his first night after rising. He had done the same the night before, and the night before that. Looking back on his feverish actions, it seemed almost unreal. It was as if some madness were overtaking him, and the madness was becoming stronger.

Adolphus had always despised the Arisen who slew indiscriminately. It was unsophisticated, boorish and deeply, deeply counter-productive. That way lay witch-hunts and mortal sorcerers and priests with their deadly spells at least until Adolphus fulfilled Nospheratus’s ancient prophecy. One for one, or even one for ten, the Arisen might be more than a match for any mortal, but the cattle had the numbers, and they had potent allies and magic.

It was not like the old days that the Forebears spoke of with such fondness. Mankind had grown much stronger since the time when they were skin-clad barbarians to be hunted through the woods.

Of course, things would change. Human civilisation had collapsed into anarchy before. Adolphus could remember the Time of Three Emperors and von Carstein’s efforts to re-establish the superiority of the Arisen. It had been a brave effort but a doomed one. Von Carstein had not been potent enough and clever enough to win his war. Adolphus knew that when his time came, things would go differently. He was the chosen one. He was the Prince of the Night. The Eye and the Throne would be his!

If only that old fool would give him the talisman there need be no unpleasantness. Adolphus fought down the urge to simply go round to the old man’s mansion and take it, but that would be too loud, too unsubtle, such an action might well be noticed in certain quarters before Adolphus wanted it to be. It would not do for the countess or others of her faint-hearted ilk to discover what he was up to ahead of time. No, he told himself, it would be best to wait.

He turned his attention to the noblewoman. She really wasn’t so bad, he thought. The best of the bunch present tonight certainly. He saw that she sensed him looking at her, and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Without thinking, Adolphus exerted his will. The woman froze and stared at him, as if seeing him for the very first time. Adolphus smiled at her, and she smiled back. He looked down at the table again and let her go. That was enough for now. The connection was made. He would pluck her later, when the moment was ripe, perhaps not tonight, but some other night, when the thirst came upon him. He saw that her companion, perhaps a young aristocrat of some sort from his dress, was looking at him, and then at her. He had obviously noticed the exchange between them, and was most likely jealous. He leaned forward and whispered something furiously in the woman’s ear. She shook her head as if denying something. If he had wanted to, he could have listened in on their conversation simply by focusing his mind on it. Like all of the Arisen, his senses were fantastically keen. The cattle were always so predictable, thought Adolphus.

He dismissed the mortals from his thoughts. They were irrelevant. What was worrying him was his own lack of control. He could not afford it now. Not with the consummation of all his plans so close, not with everything he had worked so hard on almost within his reach. He needed all his wits about him now. He needed all his guile and cunning. He needed to keep his plans a secret until it was too late for the rest of the Arisen or anyone else, for that matter, to stop him. Instead he had gone on a blood binge, killing and drinking indiscriminately, leaving a trail that the right sort of hunter could follow with the ease of a forester tracking a mastodon. He simply could not understand it. Such a thing had not happened to him since his first mistress had given him the red kiss all those long centuries ago. Why was this happening to him? And why now?

He had heard of such things happening before. The Arisen were sometimes subject to a strange madness that got into their blood and drove them to crazed sprees. When that happened they were just as often hunted down by their own kind as by the cattle. None of the Arisen particularly cared to have the cattle stirred into a frenzy. Adolphus knew that if he kept up this sort of behaviour it would only be a matter of time before one of the Council came looking for him, and he could not afford that, at least not until the talisman was in his hands. Once that was accomplished and the thing was attuned to him they could send whoever they liked. But until then, he very badly needed to get himself under control unless he wanted to end up with a stake through his heart and his brainpan stuffed with witchroot as a warning to others not to behave as he had done.

He was aware, as he was aware of everything in the room, that the young lover had risen and walked over to a pack of his richly garbed friends, who were standing by the bar. He was gesturing in Adolphus’s direction, pointing aggressively. Not now, you young idiot, Adolphus thought. I do not need this. The group of youths began stalking over towards his table, hands on their sword hilts. Adolphus had seen lynch mobs in small towns walk towards their victims’ homes with exactly that stride. He watched them come towards his table, hoping vaguely that they would pass him by, knowing that it really was not all that likely. Now he wished he had brought Roche. His hulking henchman was always a good distraction in situations like this.

‘So you are the one who’s been seeing Analise,’ said a voice from close by. The accents belonged to the wealthy merchant class of Praag, the tone of voice was at once arrogant and self-righteous and petulant. A young jealous man, thought Adolphus, and one about to make the biggest mistake of his short life. Adolphus did not answer but studied the contents of his goblet closely. A hand lashed out and knocked his goblet over.

‘You, sir, I am talking to you. Don’t ignore me.’ Adolphus looked up and studied him closely. A foppish young fool clad in the latest fashion, long coat, bright pantaloons, a wide-brimmed hat with a feather in it. He had a narrow face, white sharp teeth and a savage, feral look in his eye. Makeup covered some of the pockmarks on his not unhandsome face.

‘You are making that very difficult, sir,’ said Adolphus, looking up. He could smell the drink on the young man’s breath. He gazed into his eyes and tried to make contact but the youth was too far gone in drunken jealous anger to be reached. Too bad for him, thought Adolphus, feeling the devil of rage begin to stir in his own unbeating heart. He glanced over at the youth’s friends. All cut from the same cloth, he thought, all young, all drunk, all viciously certain that they could do anything they wanted to a stranger here, and get away with it. Under normal circumstances, Adolphus thought, they would most likely be right. These were not normal circumstances, however.

‘I want you to get up and leave now, and I want you never to show your ugly face in here again.’

Adolphus shrugged. Under normal circumstances he would probably have done what these boors asked. He wanted no trouble that he could avoid, not now. But somewhere in the back of his mind, the lurking daemon, the thing that had caused him to drain those women dry, was stirring. He felt irritation build up within him, a small nagging thing that swiftly ballooned into a compulsion to be contrary. Who were these oafs to be ordering him around? Mere cattle, insects barely worthy of his notice. He looked at them with loathing, letting his contempt show upon his face. He saw the answering anger written on theirs.

‘And how are you going to make me do that, boy?’ Adolphus asked. ‘Why should I listen to a child who needs half a dozen of his playmates to deliver a simple warning? Is this the usual behaviour of Praag’s so-called men?’ The internal daemon made him add, ‘Is it any wonder Analise prefers a real man to a beardless boy like you?’

Fury contorted the youth’s face. He had trapped himself and he knew it. Adolphus’s accent marked him as a noble, albeit one from some distant corner of the Empire. It would be dishonourable to simply gang up on him. The only course open to him was to call Adolphus out, to fight a duel. He saw the youth begin to look at him as if for the first time, taking in the height, the breadth of shoulder, the superb self-confidence with which Adolphus was facing down a whole gang of armed men. Obviously, even his drunken brain retained enough sense not to like the implications of what he was seeing. Adolphus wondered how he would deal with it. The response was predictable.

‘Take this piece of scum outside and beat him within an inch of his life,’ the youth said.

‘A coward as well as a cuckold,’ Adolphus sneered. He looked at the others. The part of him that was still relatively sane suggested that he should at least attempt to give them a way out from what was about to happen. Slaughtering six sons of the local wealthy was sure to bring him a lot of unwelcome attention. ‘Are you really going to fight this coward’s battles for him?’ he asked.

He could see that the justice of his words struck at least one or two of them. They did not really want to fight at these odds, any more than he did. They realised the dishonour of their act. One or two of them were wavering. Adolphus caught one’s eye and began exerting his will. The youth wavered and said, ‘I think Kurt should call this man out if he feels so strongly.’

Kurt obviously did not like this idea at all. ‘Are you all cowards? Do you all fear one scurvy outlander so much?’

This obvious appeal to their Kislevite patriotism was having as strong an effect as his questioning of their manhood. He could sense the gang wavering once more. ‘Take him outside and show him what happens to arrogant outlanders who shoot their mouths off in Praag.’

Adolphus looked around once more. He could see a lot of sympathetic looks but no offers of help. Obviously this gang of youths was well known and greatly feared around here. There was going to be no other way out than fighting, he could tell. How unfortunate. He only hoped he could restrain his bloodlust.

The real problem now was a tactical one. How was he going to deal with this bunch of young thugs without arousing suspicion of his real nature? Perhaps he should simply leave after all. He rose from his chair and loomed over Kurt. ‘Do not bother yourselves, I am leaving. The smell of yellow-bellied swine is too strong in here for my stomach.’

He cursed. What had made him say that? If he had simply strolled confidently for the door, the chances were that they would have let him go. Now there was no chance of that. He knew the answer to his own question. Deep in his heart, he did not want to let these arrogant cattle live. He was as bad as they were. It was not a thought designed to enhance his self-esteem, and he knew he was going to make these youths pay for making him think it.

Kurt reached up and grabbed Adolphus’s shoulder. ‘Oh no, you don’t. You can’t simply walk away from this one, my friend.’

Adolphus glared down at him, allowing his anger to show in his eyes. Kurt quailed away and for a moment Adolphus thought he might actually let him walk, but the pig-faced lout was too drunk and stupid to listen to his instincts. He tried to restrain Adolphus who shrugged off his grip easily.

‘On your own heads be it,’ Adolphus said, as he stepped through the doorway, watching the young fools follow him out into the night.

He glanced around. They were in an alley. There was no sign of the watch. There were no witnesses about. The idiots had done his work for him. As they slouched out behind him, they made fists, fitted knuckledusters over their hands, drew small weighted truncheons. Experienced tavern brawlers these, he thought. Not that it would do them any good.

‘Now you’re going to get what you deserve,’ said Kurt.

‘One of us is,’ said Adolphus and smiled, for the first time showing all his teeth. In the dim light it took a few moments for the youths to register what they were seeing. Then their faces blanched. Kurt began to scream.

Adolphus kept smiling, knowing that he was going to kill them all, and that he had always intended to.

TWO

Felix looked down from the cockpit of the Spirit of Grungni. Below him he could see a seemingly endless waste of snow and ice. Far off at the horizon was the grey zone where the wastelands met the leaden waters of the Sea of Claws. Cold winds tore at the steel walls of the cupola and made the great gasbag above creak. The noise of the mighty engines was barely audible above the howling of the wind. He glanced across at Malakai Makaisson who stood at the huge control wheel, pulling levers and studying gauges with all the assurance of the experienced pilot.

‘Are you really going to get 5,000 gold crowns for this, Malakai?’ Felix asked. He had been surprised when Max had told him. He had never figured on the Slayer engineer being particularly gold-crazed. On the other hand, he was a dwarf, and a little of that lurked in every dwarfish soul.

‘Aye, young Felix, ah am! Tae tell the truth ah would have done it fur nithin’ but the bloody icy bezum kept gaun on and on at me, so ah figured ah might as well make it her pay fir it.’

Felix nodded: it sounded quite possible. Malakai Makaisson was as stubborn as any other dwarf and did not like being pushed into things. Felix was surprised he had not refused outright. He was quite capable of it, despite the Tsarina’s exalted position. Dwarfs cared little for human titles or nobles. And Slayers didn’t show the least respect for their own rulers, so why should they show it for other races?

‘So why did you agree to do it?’ Felix asked curiously.

‘Coz she was bloody well right. We dae need tae ken what the Chaos basturds are up tae, and the Spirit of Grungni is the best thing fur the job.’

Felix was also a little surprised that Malakai was capable of seeing things so clearly; he normally seemed obsessed with only one thing, his machines. Unlike most Slayers he did not seem to spend much time brooding on his own death or sins. He was not stupid, Felix had to admit, and he supposed that anyone capable of designing this airship had to be only too aware of its military possibilities.

A tide of movement out of the corner of his eye caught Felix’s attention. He focused the spyglass on it and the scene jumped into view. He shivered. It was another huge force of beastmen, heading southwards, following the coast of the Sea of Claws. They trudged along with implacable determination, their massive banners fluttering in the breeze.

Seeing the symbols of the Chaos gods so nakedly visible filled Felix with horror. They were signs which from his childhood he had been taught to fear and loathe. This one took the shape of an eye from which radiated eight arrows. It was stained in blood on a white sheet, and fluttered on a crossbar made of human bones and topped with the horned skull of some huge monster.

‘That’s the tenth warband in this area,’ said Felix.

‘How many?’

‘At a guess over a thousand.’ Felix did not need to count them any more. Over the past few days, flying these reconnaissance missions, he had become quite adept at judging the size of the Chaos forces. ‘Where are they all coming from?’

Suddenly he caught sight of something else, and swiftly focused on it. At first he could not believe his eyes, then slowly the reality of what he was seeing forced itself on his brain. It was a huge ship, driving through the icy sea. It was made all of black metal and no sails were visible. The whole prow was carved in the shape of an enormous daemon’s head. Red runes glowed along its side.

‘What in hell is making that thing move?’ he asked. Malakai Makaisson snatched the spyglass from his hand.

‘Tak the controls, young Felix, an’ tak us closer tae yonder ship. Ah want tae hae a guid lang look at this.’

Felix took the controls with practiced ease and aimed the prow out towards the sea. Malakai had taught him how to fly the ship long ago, and he had had a lot of practice on their trip back from the Chaos Wastes. It was one of the reasons why, along with his keen eyesight, he was the observer on this flight. Such was the airship’s speed that they were soon passing over the turbulent water.

‘Whit in hell wus right,’ said Malakai Makaisson. ‘Ah cannae see ony paddlewheels, and there’s nae wake that wud indicate some sort of drive screw under the thing. All ah can think o’ is dark magic, an’ that isnae ma field. Cannae think o’ onythin’ else that wud shift somethin’ that big. Bloody hell. I niver guessed they Chaos basturds were capable of ocht like this. It’s movin’ as fast as a steamer under full pressure and it’s as big as onythin’ ah hae ever seen on water.’

‘That’s all very well, Malakai,’ said Felix. ‘But what does it mean?’

‘It means ye’d better pray to all your manling gods that they don’t hae a fleet o’ those things, young Felix. Coz if they dae they’ll be able tae land an army onywhere they like alang the coast of the Old World. By Grungni, they could head right up the bloody Reik as far as Altdorf and Nuln.’

Felix shivered as Malakai took the controls and returned the spyglass.

‘I don’t think Sigmar is in the mood to answer any of my prayers,’ said Felix.

‘Why?’

‘Look over there,’ he said, pointing to the fleet of black ships driving headlong through the storm-tossed sea.

‘Let’s head fir hame,’ said Malakai. ‘Ah think we’ve collected enough bad news fir yin day.’

Felix was forced to agree.

Felix was glad to be back in Praag, even gladder than he had been to see the lights of the city winking below them and the huge citadel blazing with light ahead. Sitting in the White Boar he was looking forward to getting a hot meal inside him, and then some sleep. These days the airship always seemed cold inside, and no matter how many extra layers of clothing he wore, he could never quite get warm. His mouth felt a bit dry, and there was an odd tingle in his fingers and toes. He hoped he was not coming down with something.

All around him he could hear the buzz of conversation, the gossip of all the mercenaries and merchants cooped up in the city by the snows of winter. The guild wanted permission to raise the price of corn once more, but the duke would not approve it. He wanted all of his citizens as well fed as possible, and no starvation. Felix felt that though he could never like the duke, he could respect the man and like his policies. He appeared to be about as fair as it was possible for an aristocrat to be, though Felix had never really lost the suspicion of the ruling class that had been burned into him by his merchant father.

It seemed six young nobles had died in a brawl down in the merchant quarter last night. According to rumour they had taken some wealthy foreigner outside to teach him a lesson and never come back. Their corpses had been found in the snow. The guess was that the foreigner must have had bodyguards or friends of his own waiting outside for it was deemed unlikely that one man could best six at blade work or brawling. Felix wasn’t so sure. He had seen Gotrek overcome many times that number in combat and occasionally had done it himself when desperation drove him.

Felix pushed the thought to one side. It was no business of his, even if the youths’ families were offering a huge reward to help them find the killer. What did he care? He could just picture the young men, spoiled dandies of the sort he had once been forced to deal with every night in the Blind Pig tavern in Nuln. He could not find it in himself to feel much sympathy with anyone who thought it fun to go outside six against one. Most likely they just got what they deserved.

This was not the only tale of slaughter in the night. Another two streetgirls had been found dead and drained of blood. Now there was fearful talk of some daemon stalking the night, and someone had even mentioned the dreaded word ‘vampire’. Felix shivered. His old nurse had told him chilling tales of the blood drinkers. As a child, he had spent many a sleepless night fearing that one might find its way into his room. He tried to push aside his fears and found that he could not. He had seen far too many other childhood terrors prove to be real in this terrible world. It would not surprise him in the least if one of the soulless ones were abroad in the city. He only prayed he would never encounter it. They were said to be terrible foes.

He noticed that one man was paying a lot of attention to this conversation. A tall nobleman, dressed in fashionably foppish clothes, a pomander clutched in one hand. His features were a little pale, perhaps from the powder applied to his face. His eyes were cold and his face wore a look of intense concentration.

The man caught Felix looking at him, their eyes met and Felix felt a flicker as of some sort of contact. He was suddenly filled with a desire to look away, but his own native stubbornness would not let him. He matched the stranger’s glare and studied him closely. The man wore his hair in an odd archaic style, cut square to cover his forehead, and long down the sides. There was something about him that made the hair on the back of Felix’s neck prickle. He had the same sort of aura as Max. Most likely a magician then, Felix decided, and someone best not to start trouble with. This time he looked away, just in time to see Ulrika and Max Schreiber enter the White Boar. They strode over to his table with a determined step.

What’s got into them, Felix wondered?

Adolphus looked up and watched the wizard and the woman enter the crowded tavern room. By all the gods of darkness, she was a beauty. Neither her mannish garb nor the sword she carried could detract from her loveliness. In a strange way they enhanced it. He felt the surge of an attraction the like of which he had not felt in a long time. It was a pity the man she was with wore power like a mantle.

In his long existence, Adolphus had encountered few more potent sorcerers. He was skilled enough in the art of magery to recognise a master when he saw one. He only hoped his own cloaking spells were sufficient to keep the man from noticing him.

He cursed himself for a fool. He should have stayed at the mansion and studied Nospheratus’s damn book. These nightly peregrinations might prove the end of him. After killing those louts last night, he had come to this squalid place to avoid any more attention. And what was the first thing he had done when he came down to the common room? Seeing the blond man staring at him, he had decided to use his gaze to make the man look away, but the mortal had proven unexpectedly strong-willed and could not be commanded. That in itself was unusual. Now the man had proven himself to be the associate of a master wizard. Perhaps this explained his strong will, perhaps not. Whatever it was, it was a bad thing. He only hoped the mortal would not draw the wizard’s attention to him, that was the last thing Adolphus wanted. He cursed; as so often in his long unlife, it seemed the gods were playing tricks on him. Now, with all his dreams almost within his grasp, nothing was going right.

He had given in to his bloodlust last night and slaughtered those young fools like the cattle they were. At least he had had the sense not to drink from them. He had managed to restrain the thirst until later when he had drained those two streetwalkers dry. Despite all his best efforts, he had not been able to resist the compulsion; he had not even wanted to. The thirst had not been so strong in him since he first arose. What was happening to him? What madness was overtaking him? Why did this constant lust for blood burn in his veins like a fever? He did not understand.

Perhaps it was this place. Praag was said to be a haunted city. Perhaps the strange forces of the town were working on him. Or perhaps it was the huge Chaos moon burning in the sky and haunting his dreams. He did not know, could not tell. He just knew that it was happening at the worst possible time for him and his plans. If only the old fool would prove more tractable. Adolphus resolved that if he did not give way in the negotiations soon, he would kill the man and have done with it.

Even as he thought this, he knew it was another symptom of the madness overtaking him. He knew he must hang on. It was all almost within his grasp. He could not afford any more mistakes now. He rose to return to Osrik’s mansion, taking the back exit. Best to get no closer to that wizard than absolutely necessary.

On his way out he paused to take a last long look at the lovely woman. Some night, he promised himself, I will come looking for you.

‘What is it?’ Felix asked. Max and Ulrika seemed both grim and excited at once.

‘Where is Gotrek?’ Max asked.

‘Out drinking with Snorri Nosebiter. Doubtless if you follow the trail of broken bodies along the street you will find them.’

‘That’s not funny, Felix,’ said Ulrika. Since the split she had taken to using a very cold tone towards him.

‘I wasn’t joking,’ said Felix. ‘You know what they are like when the mood is on them. What do you want with them anyway?’

‘We have been offered a job.’

‘We?’

‘All of us. You too.’ Privately Felix wondered who would be crazed enough to offer a job to a couple of Slayers. Someone pretty desperate, he guessed. Or badly in need of having a lot of violence done.

‘Does it involve killing big monsters, or fighting against insuperable odds?’ Felix asked sardonically.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Max. ‘At least I don’t know for certain.’

‘Then they probably won’t be interested.’

‘There’s a lot of gold involved,’ said Ulrika.

‘That would most likely change things.’

‘Then let’s go find the dwarfs and introduce ourselves to our potential employer.’

‘Who is he?’ Felix asked, rising and adjusting his sword belt. He noticed the rather sinister-looking nobleman had vanished.

‘A distant relative of mine,’ said Ulrika.

‘Half the nobles in this city are distant relatives of yours,’ said Felix.

‘That’s the way it is with Kislevite nobility,’ she said, a little huffily Felix thought.

The mansion was big and rather impressive in a scruffy down-at-heel sort of way. Felix paused to glance out of the window, taking in the huge pleasure garden, surrounded by spike-tipped walls. The place must be worth a small fortune, he thought, before turning to follow the others. So much space came at a high premium inside the high walls of Praag.

Inside the house, bric-a-brac filled every nook and niche. Odd exotic weapons, and masks from the distant Southland lined the corridors through which the elderly servants led them. A porcelain statue of some four-armed monkey god, which Felix guessed was from far Cathay, guarded the entrance to a vast sitting room in which the owner lolled on a huge antique couch.

Count Andriev, Ulrika’s distant cousin, rather reminded Felix of a mole. He was a short man, very broad and bulky. He had a huge nose and vast whiskers that drooped below his chin. Little round glasses perched on his mountainous nose and obscured his small weak eyes. The count wore a long silk robe in the Cathayan style. He did not look like much of a warrior, although Ulrika had assured them he had been a famous swordsman in his youth. Now he leaned on a long black walking stick, clutching the silver ball at its tip with clawed arthritic fingers. He gazed around the room, taking them all in. A pull of a bell-cord summoned a tall, lean butler almost as ancient as himself.

‘Would you – ahem – like anything to drink? Some tea perhaps?’

Snorri Nosebiter and Gotrek looked at each other unbelievingly. They seemed to be wondering what they were doing here. They had been lured from the tavern by talk of lavish sums of gold. When Felix had found them they had been busy brawling with some Kislevite horse-soldiers. Felix and the others had stood aside while the two Slayers trounced four times their number before they could get their full attention.

‘Beer,’ grunted Gotrek.

‘Vodka,’ said Snorri. ‘In a bucket.’

‘I will have some tea,’ said Max. Ulrika nodded. Felix shook his head. He was interested now almost against his will. It was fairly obvious that this old nobleman was wealthy enough to have his own bodyguards, and without a doubt the treasures in this house were worth a lot of money. Why did he need them? More to the point, how had he found out about them anyhow?

‘What do you want with us, old man?’ said Gotrek. Ever the diplomat, Felix thought sourly.

Andriev leaned forward. He seemed slightly hard of hearing. There was a faintly crazed glimmer in those weak eyes. ‘A member of the Slayer cult,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Fascinating.’

‘I know what I am, dotard. I asked what you wanted with us.’

The count cleared his throat and began to speak in a thin, quavering voice. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘This might take a little time.’

‘Snorri thinks it would take less time if you got on with it,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. Patience was not a strong suit with him, Felix noted.

‘Ahem – well – yes. I shall begin.’ The old man paused and gazed around as if to make sure he had all their attention. Felix was starting to feel a little impatient with Andriev’s querulous manner himself. ‘I am, as you have probably noticed, a collector of curios, antiques, all manner of ancient and interesting objects. It has been a hobby of mine ever since I was a boy when my grandfather gave me a particularly fine carved war mask from the Southland, a truly exquisite piece, marked with the three sigils of the black gods of Tharoum. It was–’

‘Perhaps it would be better if you stuck to what you wanted our help with,’ suggested Felix as gently as he could. The old man leaned back, looking faintly startled, and put his hand across his mouth as if in surprise.

‘Of course – ahem – sorry, sorry. I am old and my mind tends to wander. It’s been a while since I had company and well–’

‘The point,’ Felix added, a little more harshly.

‘Sorry. Yes. As I said, I am a collector of antiquities. Over the years I have acquired many pieces of considerable interest. Some of these pieces are said to be… well, mystical. I am not a sorcerer myself so I can’t really say, but Brother Benedict, my appraiser, assured me this is so.’

‘So?’ said Gotrek. It was obvious that he was fast losing patience. Doubtless he was feeling the lure of the tavern particularly strongly right now.

‘I have been assured that some of my pieces would be very valuable to mages of a certain sort. After a few incidents among the collecting fraternity many years ago, I paid not inconsiderable sums to mages of the Golden Brotherhood to protect my mansion and my collection with all manner of spells. I believe these spells might have helped preserve my house during the late inconvenience with those Chaos chappies.’

Felix wondered how sane the old man was. The siege had been something more than an ‘inconvenience’ to most of the city. On the other hand, he supposed that if he were an old man locked away deep within the city in his own fortified manor house, surrounded by servants and bodyguards, he might have been able to ignore the worst of it too.

‘So you have some valuable stuff here,’ said Gotrek. ‘So what?’

‘A few days ago, my appraiser, Brother Benedict, a former priest of Verena who left the temple after an incident which was, he assured me, none of his doing but rather–’

‘I am sure Brother Benedict is a fine man,’ said Max hastily. ‘But could you perhaps stick to the point.’

‘Yes, yes, ahem, sorry. A few days ago, a stranger, a nobleman from the Empire who claimed to be interested in purchasing one of my pieces, approached Brother Benedict. Benedict told him that my collection was not for sale, but the offer price was so high that he thought I should know about it. Of course, I love my collection and I would not part with any of it, not even that small chipped piece of Nipponese porcelain with the painting of the two herons–’

‘Please,’ said Felix. ‘Have mercy.’ Ulrika glared at him. She appeared to be the only one capable of tolerating this old bore. All very well for her, he thought. She was his relative, and her head was probably not starting to ache. He rubbed his nose with the edge of his cloak and was unsurprised to discover that it was running. He really hoped he was not coming down with something.

‘Yes, sorry. Well, I thought it would be interesting to meet a fellow collector. One rarely encounters any kindred souls. My hobby is rather a specialist field and not many people are that interested in it…’

Probably it’s you they are not interested in, Felix thought, but kept the thought to himself. Instead he coughed loudly. His cough sounded a bit phlegmy.

‘Yes, yes. Anyway, I agreed to meet the man. And I don’t mind telling you there was something about him I did not like. Not to put too fine a point on it, he scared me.’

‘That must have been difficult,’ said Gotrek sarcastically.

‘Ahem, believe me, sir,’ said the old man testily. ‘I am not all that easily daunted. As a youth I rode to battle along side Tsar Radhi Bokha and single handedly slew the great Ogre of Tronso. It was a feat of considerable renown and–’

‘No one doubts your courage,’ said Max. ‘Please tell us what so frightened you about this man that you felt you needed to make an offer for our services.’

‘There was something very sinister about him. Something daunting. Something about his eyes... When he looked at me, I wanted to do what he told me, and it took all my willpower to refuse. I think the man was a magician of some sort, and a powerful one. For a moment, after I refused his offer, I thought he was going to attack me, in the presence of my own guards and my own house magician. Brother Benedict thought so too. He said he suspected that only the protective spells in place around the mansion stopped the man from turning nasty. I ordered my guards to escort him from the house, and he went. But he said he would be back, and told me I had seven days to reconsider his offer. This was several days ago.’

‘Where is Brother Benedict?’

‘I do not know. Normally he visits me every morning. He has not shown up for two days. This is another reason I am worried. He is a man of regular habits. Only serious illness would have prevented him from coming, but this cannot be the problem. I have sent servants to his house and his office, and he seems to have disappeared.’

Felix glanced over at Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter. They were quieter now and seemed more interested. The mention of evil magicians seemed to have got their attention. The mysterious disappearance of Brother Benedict had gotten his.

‘Are you sure he has not simply left town.’

‘Maybe Benny went on a bender,’ suggested Snorri Nosebiter.

‘Impossible on both counts. Brother Benedict would have informed me of his departure. He has been in my employ for twenty years. And as for your suggestion, Herr Slayer, he was an abstinent man. Never touched anything stronger than water. Claimed anything else interfered with his ability to concentrate.’

This seemed reasonable to Felix. He had often heard Max claim the same thing.

‘So your magician has disappeared. Anything else?’ asked Gotrek.

‘Ahem, I think so. The guards report the house is being watched.’

‘By this mysterious stranger?’ Felix asked.

‘No, by others, well-dressed men and women, trying not to be noticed but obviously – ahem – not good enough at it to escape detection.’

‘Not a gang of professional thieves then,’ said Max. Seeing all eyes on him, the magician shrugged and said, ‘I used to make my living casting all manner of protective enchantments for people. It has given me some familiarity with the way such people operate.’

‘That is one reason I wanted to hire you, sir. Your reputation precedes you. The duke himself is said to think highly of you, and my dear kinswoman here says you are the most competent mage she has ever met.’

‘Why do you need us then?’ asked Felix. ‘Surely you have hired swords enough.’

‘That is another strange thing about this whole affair. Even before Brother Benedict vanished some of my guards failed to report for duty. Mostly the day guards, the ones who do not live here in the mansion, but even a few of the residents went out and never returned.’

‘These are strange times,’ said Felix. ‘The city has been under siege. Many folk are starving. Perhaps they left the city. Perhaps they felt they could get more gold or food elsewhere.’

‘Herr Jaeger, I am, without wishing to appear to be boasting, a very, very wealthy man, and I pride myself on seeing that my people are well taken care of. I doubt they could be better paid or fed anywhere else in this city under current distressing circumstances. My cellars are very well stocked. I keep the house prepared for the harshest of winters. As an old man, in Kislev, you know how to do these things.’

‘Why not take this matter to the duke?’ Ulrika asked.

‘And tell him what? That one stranger has threatened me in my own house? That my guards are disloyal and my mage has disappeared? The duke has more important things to worry about right now! Why should he trouble himself with one old man’s problems when there is a war on.’

‘Have you made inquiries why your guards did not report for duty?’ asked Felix.

‘Again, I sent servants. Some were not at their lodgings. In some cases, the servants thought there was somebody at home, but no one was answering.’

‘That’s very strange,’ said Felix.

‘The whole business is very strange, Herr Jaeger. Which is why I need your help and am prepared to pay handsomely for it.’

‘How handsomely?’

‘If you resolve this matter for me, I will pay each of you one hundred gold crowns, plus a bonus depending on how matters turn out.’

‘That sounds fair to me,’ said Felix. A glance at the dwarfs told him that they agreed.

It was Max who began to dicker.

‘Normally I am paid for the spells and wards I cast, separately from any other fees.’

‘I will pay your normal fees – in addition to the amount mentioned previously.’

‘Fine.’

‘Then you will do it?’

A glance at the others told him they were all willing to get involved. It seemed it was left to Felix to ask the obvious question: ‘What was it the stranger wanted to buy from you?’

‘Come, I will show you.’

Count Andriev’s favoured treasures were certainly well protected. The old man had led them into the centre of his mansion, and then down into a cellar guarded by thick walls worthy of an emperor’s tomb.

The entrance to the vault was through a series of huge counter-weighted doors. ‘Dwarf-built,’ the old man said proudly.

‘And protected by several very strong wards, unless I am much mistaken,’ said Max. He sounded impressed.

‘You are not mistaken. The great Elthazar himself cast these for me. I brought him especially from Altdorf two decades ago. You know of him, of course?’

‘He was one of my tutors at the College of Magicians,’ said Max in a neutral tone of voice. ‘A great wizard but very… conservative.’

‘You… ahem, sound as if you don’t like him.’

‘We had a few disputes before I left the College.’

‘Do you not think his work is good?’

‘No. I am sure it is very fine. He was very capable and strong in the power.’

‘I am glad to hear you say this. But if there is anything you feel can be improved do not hesitate to mention it.’

‘I will not, believe me.’

The vault reminded Felix of a cave from some tale of the riches of Araby. In it were many precious and beautiful objects: golden statuettes from the deserts of the Land of the Dead; complex patterned amulets from Araby; beautiful carpets from Estalia; detailed dwarf metalwork carved with all manner of intricate patterns, and vials of precious liquids engraved with the flowing scripts of the elves. Felix understood why the old man had spent so much money to protect it. He also understood just how desperate he must be to hire five near strangers to help him guard it.

Of course, Ulrika was his cousin, and Max was so renowned in this field of wizardry that the dwarfs had hired him to protect their airship so maybe it was not all that strange. And he supposed Ulrika’s recommendation would be good enough to get the Slayers and himself the job. He considered the fee. One hundred crowns was a small fortune. Enough to allow a man to live like a noble for months.

The old man showed them a massive sealed chest. He produced the key from under his robes. The chest and the lock looked like dwarf workmanship too. One thing was certain, Felix thought: he knew how to look after his treasures.

‘Ah – here it is. The Eye of Khemri,’ he said, retrieving a small dark object from out of the strongbox. He held it up to the light. After the long tale, Felix was expecting something more impressive-looking. Max held out his hand: ‘May I see it?’

Count Andriev seemed almost reluctant to hand it over, but Max kept his hand outstretched and eventually the old man gave the object to him. Felix moved closer, standing next to Ulrika so he could look over Max’s shoulder. He saw a small oval carved from what looked like black marble. A central eye gazed out from strange pictograms depicting animal-headed men and women, perhaps representations of some elder gods. The stonework was encased in a silver hand that gripped the disc with pointed talons. The whole amulet depended from an age-blackened silver chain.

Felix looked at Max’s face; he saw the wizard was frowning.

‘What is it?’ Ulrika asked. Max pursed his lips and a look of concentration passed across his face. Felix could see dim pinpoints of fire blazing within his eyes and knew that the wizard was summoning his power.

‘I don’t know,’ said Max. ‘There is something very odd here. The talisman is magical, but seems to contain little power…’

‘And?’ Felix asked.

‘Why would anyone go to the trouble of obtaining it, if such were the case?’

‘You are saying this trinket could indeed be a magical artefact?’ said Andriev.

‘Certainly. At this moment I cannot say more. Would you mind letting me study this, count?’

‘If you do not take it out of the vault, I would be fascinated to learn more. I always assumed it was some relic of the Tomb Kings. The man who sold it to me claimed it had been found in the rubble of Khemri. I always assumed he was exaggerating. Now I am not so sure.’

‘It is certainly ancient. I have never seen its like before.’

‘The question is, what are we going to do about the man who wants it? Do we go looking for him or do we wait for him to return?’ Felix was not sure he liked the idea of going looking for a magician, even in the company of Max and Gotrek. They were too powerful, and too unpredictable, and too many things could go wrong. Felix had witnessed what Max could do with a wave of his hand and a word, and did not like the idea of standing in the way of a lightning bolt.

‘No reason why we cannot do both, manling,’ said Gotrek, of course exactly what Felix had feared he would say.

‘Where would we start? Did the stranger give you his name, Count Andriev?’

‘He said his name was Adolphus Krieger.’

‘That’s an Imperial-sounding name,’ said Max.

‘Easy enough to give a false name,’ said Felix. ‘Particularly if you are going to go around threatening people, it would seem like a good idea.’

‘True enough,’ said Ulrika. ‘He must be a very confident man, to threaten a Kislevite noble, in the middle of Praag, in his own palace.’

Felix thought about the disappearing magician and the desertion of the guards.

‘Perhaps he has cause to be. He could be a very powerful magician.’

‘I’ve killed wizards before,’ said Gotrek. Felix wondered why such a feeling of foreboding had come over him. For once, all the odds appeared to be in their favour. They were in a fortified mansion. Max was a sorcerer of great skill, and Gotrek, Snorri Nosebiter and Ulrika were as formidable a trio of warriors as any man could hope to fight beside. Why then was he worried? There was something wrong here. Something troubled him. He wished the feverish feeling would go away. He was having a little difficulty concentrating.

‘We could start by looking up those guards hiding in their houses,’ said Gotrek. ‘Find out what put the wind up them.’

‘That seems like a logical starting point,’ said Felix, turning the problem over and over in his mind. A few more thoughts occurred to him.

‘Did Brother Benedict keep records?’ Felix asked Andriev. ‘How did this Adolphus Krieger know you had the Eye? How did he get in touch with Benedict?’

‘Of course Benedict keeps records,’ said Andriev. ‘He was a meticulous and methodical man, and as a former priest of Verena he was a great believer in written records. You could try his chambers on the Street of Clerks. Tell his scribes I sent you and they should help. As for your other questions I do not know how this Krieger found out I had the artefact, but I can guess.’

‘If you could share your speculations with us, I would be most grateful,’ said Felix.

‘The market for exotic collectibles is a small one. Few people have the interest, and – ahem – to be frank, the gold to indulge in a hobby like mine. There are a few dealers who make a living in this way and they tend to know all the potential customers in their area. I deal with certain reputable houses in Middenheim and Altdorf. Brother Benedict used to make purchasing trips for me once a year. I used to go myself until I became too infirm. Those were the days, let me tell you, to stand in the great hall at Zuchi & Petrillo’s and gaze upon their collections with my own eyes. It makes me want to weep when I think of all those treasures. I recall–’

‘You seem to have trusted this Benedict a good deal,’ said Felix, interrupting the old man before he could begin another of his rambling reminiscences.

‘He was a good man, worthy of trust. He accounted for every pfennig he spent, and I was always satisfied with his accounts.’

Felix returned to his original line of questioning. ‘You think this Adolphus might have traced the Eye through the dealers you bought it from, Zuchi & Petrillo?’

‘They are models of discretion, Herr Jaeger. It’s part of what their clients pay for.’

‘Men can be bribed or… daunted with sorcery.’

‘That is true. Yes.’ The old man seemed genuinely shocked by the thought that his favourite dealers might have betrayed a confidence. On the other hand, he was not denying the possibility either.

‘It seems to me that there is another point to be considered here,’ said Max.

‘Go on…’

‘Why is this Adolphus fellow prepared to go to all this trouble to acquire the Eye? What does he hope to gain from it?’

‘You’re the magician. You tell me.’

‘I think it’s imperative I begin studying this artefact,’ said Max. ‘Perhaps if I can divine its purpose I can work out what our friend wants with it.’

Felix nodded. That seemed reasonable. ‘One of us should stay here with you and help watch this place.’

‘I will,’ said Ulrika, rather too quickly for Felix’s liking.

‘Snorri will too,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. ‘If there’s going to be a fight here, Snorri wants to be around for it. Better than talking to clerks.’

Felix looked at Gotrek. ‘It looks as if we will be asking all the questions.’

The Slayer shrugged. ‘Let’s get on with it then, manling.’

The sky was overcast and more snow was falling. Felix could feel the chill right through the extra layers of clothing he wore, and he resolved to use some of the money Andriev was paying them to buy a new pair of boots. As ever there were people watching them. It was not unusual. Gotrek was a colourful figure, although one no one would think of bothering. He showed no sign that the chill bothered him in any way.

‘What do you think?’ Felix asked the Slayer. Around them crowds packed the narrow streets of the merchant quarter. Old buildings leaned over them. It was dark and mazy and he was glad they had paused to get the directions to Benedict’s office from Andriev’s steward before leaving.

‘I think Count Andriev is a rich old man who can afford to indulge whatever whims he has, manling. I think his gold is as good as anybody else’s.’

‘You think he’s imagining things?’ said Felix. He stepped out of the street to let a patrol of lancers pass. After a moment’s consideration Gotrek did the same. He eyed the horses with hostility. He had never had much love for cavalry or their mounts.

‘No. I think there is most likely something going on here. Wizard’s business by the sound of it.’

‘Do you think the others will be all right?’ Felix asked.

‘You have seen Max Schreiber use magic, manling, and you have seen Snorri Nosebiter and Ulrika fight. They are in a fortified mansion surrounded by guards. What do you think?’

‘That they are most likely safer than we are.’

Gotrek grunted as if considerations of personal safety were the last thing on his mind. Felix fought back a cough. There was an odd tickling at the back of his throat, and he seemed to be sweating a little more than normal. He hoped he was not coming down with anything nastier than a cold.

‘You think it might be Chaos cultists?’ he asked. They had encountered followers of the Dark Gods in the cities of man before. During the siege they had interrupted an attempt by the Chaos worshippers to poison the granaries. Felix did not think they had killed all of them, by a long chalk.

‘Who knows, manling? Doubtless we will find out soon enough.’ Felix wished he could emulate the Slayer’s unconcerned attitude, but knew he would never be able to. His imagination was too active, he thought too much. It probably helped that Gotrek did not care whether he lived or died either. Felix did. He knew that he wanted to live; there was much he wanted to see and do yet.

‘Doubtless you are right,’ he muttered and they trudged on down the street.

The Street of Clerks had been mostly untouched by the siege. It was in the old town, within the inner wall, in the shadow of the citadel. The buildings were mostly red-roofed tenements and shop-houses. Even in the winter chill people were coming and going. From his long experience of such things in Altdorf, Felix judged them to be merchants and lawyers and the people who ran errands for such men. Winter or no winter, war or no war, business went on as usual. It was just like his father had always said.

Brother Benedict had an office in one of the more prosperous-looking buildings, a tall tenement that leaned right out over the alley, joined by a high bridge to the building across the way. With its white-washed walls and timbered frame, it reminded Felix of the buildings in Altdorf, although it was not so high or so beautiful and the gargoyles perched on the ledges over doors and windows were far too grotesque for his home city.

They entered the building and made their way up the narrow winding stairs. On the third landing was the office where Andriev’s agent had maintained his business. Felix knocked on the door and then entered. A clerk looked up in surprise as they came in.

‘What… What do you want here?’ Felix handed him a scroll emblazoned with the count’s seal. ‘We’re here on Count Andriev’s business. I want to check your records.’

The man inspected the seal closely and then broke it and read the message on the scroll. ‘It says I am to give you my fullest co-operation.’

The man’s voice sounded querulous. Gotrek showed him a ham-sized fist. ‘I think that would be a good idea, don’t you.’

The man looked at the dwarf and then nodded silently. ‘Where does your master keep his records?’ Felix asked. The clerk indicated a large cabinet. ‘Keys?’ Felix demanded. The man reached into a purse and produced them. Felix tried them and found that they worked.

‘When did you last see your master?’ he asked.

‘Two days ago.’

‘Was there anything unusual about his behaviour?’

‘No. It was just before he locked up for the night. I was about to leave. He lived here in the small flat at the back of the office.’ Felix jingled the keys.

‘Did he meet a stranger here, a noble from the Empire? Adolphus Krieger by name.’

‘The name sounds familiar. I think he met Krieger here one evening.’

‘One evening? Isn’t that a little unusual? Normally merchants do their business during the day.’

‘In our line of work we often meet people at unusual hours – couriers from the Empire, shady characters with something interesting to sell.’

‘Shady characters?’

‘Not all collectables are legitimately acquired, Herr Jaeger. And many are quite valuable. Thieves often try and pass them on to new owners. Not all collectors are as scrupulous about such things as the count; not all brokers as scrupulous as my master either.’

‘Your master worked exclusively for the count?’

‘Yes. Since before I was apprenticed. Over a decade ago.’

‘Do you remember anything about an artefact that might have come from Araby? The Eye of Khemri.’

‘I do. We purchased it for the count about two years ago. It was part of a collection belonging to an elderly merchant in Nuln, a very good one with many exquisite pieces. To me the Eye seemed nothing special, but my master thought it might be magical. He should know – he was a wizard after all.’

‘Magical?’

‘Nothing special. Some sort of protective talisman. Old; most likely the power in it had drained away over the years. He thought it came from Khemri in the Land of the Dead.’

You wouldn’t have to be an expert to make that deduction, Felix thought. He could have made it himself. Still he was a little disturbed. The Land of the Dead had an evil reputation. It had once been the oldest of human kingdoms but had fallen into desolation millennia ago. Felix had never read anything good about the place, and a lot that was terrifying. All of the inhabitants were rumoured to have died of some terrible plague, and the cities were said to be vast haunted tombs. Worse than that, it was said to be the original home of the Great Necromancer, Nagash, a name which had been used to frighten children for hundreds of years. Felix said as much to the clerk.

‘Nehekharan relics are particularly prized by certain collectors. It was the oldest human civilisation in the world. Its people were civilised two millennia before the time of Sigmar.’

‘Civilised was not a word I would have used to describe them,’ said Gotrek. It no longer surprised Felix when the Slayer displayed unexpected depths of knowledge. The dwarf kingdoms were far older than the kingdoms of man, and the dwarfs kept extensive records in their great books.

‘Go on,’ said Felix.

‘They were half savages who built huge cities for their dead. They practised all manner of dark magic. Their nobles drank the blood of innocents in depraved ceremonies intended to prolong their own lives. They studied dark magic and daemon summoning.’

Felix could remember reading about such things in the great library of Altdorf University. He also remembered other things.

‘They were not all bad. There were many city-states. The rulers of some fought against the blood drinkers. And Alcadizaar fought against Nagash himself and destroyed him for a time.’

‘Be that as it may, manling, they all fell into darkness in the end. Their cities are terrible places, haunted by the restless dead. Believe me. I have seen them.’

‘You’ve seen them?’

‘Aye, and it’s not a sight I would care to look upon again.’

‘What were you doing there?’

Gotrek looked at him and shrugged. He said nothing. Felix knew that unless the dwarf wanted to tell him, he would learn nothing. He was surprised. He knew the Slayer had gone through many adventures before they met, but Felix had never suspected he had travelled to the distant lands east of Araby.

‘We don’t have all day,’ said Gotrek. ‘If you’re going to check the records here, you’d best get on with it.’

‘What are you looking for?’ asked the clerk.

‘I’ll know when I find it,’ said Felix. ‘You can go now. Have lunch,’ he said. The man looked at him for a moment.

‘You can read?’ he asked. Felix wasn’t surprised. Reading was not a common skill. ‘Yes,’ said Felix. He jerked a thumb at Gotrek. ‘So can he.’

‘I will leave you to it then, unless you want some help.’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’ Felix went over to the record cases and opened them. He picked the ledger that had been worked on most recently and began to skim through it. As he told the clerk, he was not sure what he was looking for; he only hoped that they would find some clue, and that Max was having better luck than they were.

Max Schreiber stared at the Eye of Khemri. The more he looked, the more convinced he became that there was something odd about it.

He inspected the stone closely. He had seen its like before during his early studies at the College. He was certain that it was obsidian, a stone often used by the ancient Nehekharans. He was less certain about the pictograms. He had never undertaken any particular studies of that obscure and near forgotten language. It was a field only necromancers studied closely, and Max had never felt any great interest in that dark and dangerous art.

There was something about this talisman that niggled at him though, a subtle wrongness that Max could not quite put his finger on. The thing seemed to have a faint residue of dark magic, as if it had once been used to store dark magical energy. Such unholy objects were common enough, and Max had encountered many of them in his travels. The Eye had obviously once been used to contain such energies, and they had long since been discharged. At least they appeared to have been. Max was not entirely sure that they had been totally used up. He knew he would need to employ some complex divinatory spells to ascertain whether that was the case. Before he did that though, there were a few elementary precautions he wanted to take, just in case of mishaps.

He closed his eyes and focused his magesight, then reached out to bind the winds of magic to him. It was difficult here. The mansion was woven around with protective spells and this vault was the most densely defended area within it. It would be near impossible for anybody save a master wizard to draw any power at all here. Fortunately Max was a master, and he did not require much energy for what he had in mind.

He felt the power slowly trickle into him. He had not felt the flows of energy this weakly since he was an apprentice. Much as Max disliked Elthazar, he had to admit the old wizard knew his business. The spell walls were tight and strong. It took all of Max’s efforts to maintain his concentration and tie the simple weave around the talisman. It took much longer than it normally would have, and by the time he was finished Max was sweating profusely. He felt drained and ill but he knew that his spell was in place. He studied the matrix of energies around the talisman closely, nipped off a loose flow here, tightened a skein there, until he was completely satisfied that the spell would hold for as long as he wanted it to. Good, he thought, the first stage of the work was complete.

Now it was time to begin his examination. He opened his magesight to the fullest and disregarded his own weave. He let his vision roam over the Eye, seeking out any slight hint that the thing was not what it appeared to be. At first nothing would come. He could tell just from the aura of the thing that it was old, and that it had indeed once held a fair amount of dark magic. It appeared to be the sort of talisman that any reasonably powerful necromancer would create to help him with his casting, one that had long ago served its purpose and discharged all its energies. It appeared to be a worthless burnt-out relic. Had he not had reason to think otherwise Max would have ended his examination there and then. But he did have reason and his curiosity was piqued and he was not a man to give up easily once his need to know was aroused.

He continued his search, focusing his magesight ever more closely on the talisman, seeking any hint of abnormality, the slightest trace that it was not quite what it seemed. He had heard of such things before. Mages sometimes camouflaged powerful artefacts with cloaking spells to prevent their enemies knowing their worth and purpose until it was too late.

Max suspected that something like this might be the case with the Eye but so far he had failed to find any evidence of it. If the thing was cloaked, then someone had done a truly masterful job. Max doubted that the mighty high elf mage Teclis himself could have hidden anything from the kind of minute examination he was giving the Eye, and still he found nothing.

The thought crossed his mind that perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps this talisman was simply just what it appeared to be, and there was nothing to be gained from any further examination. Max considered this and then considered the possibility that the thought might have originated outside his own mind, that it was in fact some sort of subtle suggestion spell placed on the Eye itself.

Part of him wondered that this might be taking suspicion too far; another part of him sincerely believed that no master magician could ever take suspicion far enough. There were far too many subtle snares that could be placed by jealous rivals. He inspected his mental defences and found them unbreached. He felt like laughing. Any suggestion subtle and potent enough to worm through his hard-held mental shields would certainly be able to hide any such tampering after the fact. This was getting him nowhere.

Once again, he returned to his painstaking search, fixing his fullest attention on finding any discrepancies in the aura of the stone. There! What was that? Perhaps nothing. Just the faintest hint of an echo of magical current, a strange resonance of an old spell. Max almost ignored it, and then realised that it was the only thing he had spotted so far. He focused his mind on it, drew on whatever magical power he could and followed the resonance trace.

It was like touching gossamer, a trace so faint that for several heartbeats Max was not sure that he had encountered anything at all. Perhaps he was imagining it. At first it truly seemed as if there was nothing there, then he noticed just the faintest hint of a weave so thin and so complex it seemed well nigh impossible that any human sorcerer could have woven it. He moved his awareness to a new level, shutting out all external visual stimuli and the pattern expanded to fill his field of vision.

As certainty bloomed within him Max was suddenly overcome with awe. He knew he was looking on spellwork of the highest order, far beyond anything he himself could perform, possibly far beyond anything anyone now living could perform. Someone had bound the most slender filaments of dark magical energy into the talisman in a way that was almost beyond Max’s ability to perceive, let alone unravel. And they had done this beneath a cloaking spell so subtle that Max had almost missed it entirely.

Max knew that he was dealing with the work of one of the true masters. Perhaps the mysterious Adolphus Krieger did have a good reason for wanting this thing after all, although, as yet, Max could discern no hint of the thing’s purpose. He was guided only by the suspicion that it was no good one. Few indeed were those who worked with dark magical energies for the benefit of mankind. He checked and rechecked his mental defences and wove the swiftest, most powerful wards around himself before continuing.

By concentrating all his powers he could just about manage to make out the pattern. He selected one thin strand of energy and began to follow it. It was an exercise he had performed many times during his apprenticeship, studying the weaves of spells cast by his tutors: now the stakes were much higher. He knew he truly had to be careful now. Anyone capable of going to so much trouble to shield the true power of the talisman was more than capable of leaving booby traps for those who might seek to uncover its secrets.

He traced the weave slowly, gingerly, like a man advancing along a rotten wooden bridge over a chasm that he knows might give way at any moment. Slowly he began to discern the order and logic of the pattern. There was some sort of zone of compulsion locked on the talisman, designed to affect minds other than human, although what sort was not entirely clear. That spell was layered over and interwoven with several other spells. Max could see that the user could somehow draw on the energies of dark magic through a lattice so subtle and powerful that it filled his mind with the sort of awe that an architect might feel in the inner sanctum of the great Temple of Sigmar in Altdorf. Max knew, without doubt, that he was looking on a work of genius.

As he continued he saw that these spells were interwoven with dozens of others, the purposes of which he could not divine. It was breathtaking. He no longer doubted that Adolphus Krieger, or whatever his real name was, really did want the Eye. If he had even an inkling of the thing’s true power, any dark magician would kill for this artefact.

Overcome with fascination, Max continued to trace the weave, overwhelmed by the subtle labyrinth of power that someone had created. He let his awareness slide along the intricate sweeps and curves of magical power, following them ever faster, certain as he reached towards the core of the design that he would be able to unravel its purpose fully and completely.

Faster and faster his mind raced along, his magesight sweeping to the very centre of the pattern. He felt excitement build within him, as if soon all the innermost secrets of the magical universe might be revealed to him. Too late part of him realised the unnatural nature of the feeling. Too late part of him realised that the Eye was indeed trapped.

Frantically he tried to shore up his mental walls, knowing that soon an assault would come. Even as he did so, his awareness finally reached the centre of the elaborate magical structure. At that moment, just before the wave of blackness swept over him, Max saw that the creator of the Eye, in a fit of megalomania or vanity, had left his signature upon the thing. Doubtless he wanted anyone who had unravelled his secrets to know their author before they were destroyed.

Looking upon that mystical seal, as certain and as recognisable to any fellow mage as handwriting, Max felt himself overcome with wonder and terror. Before the darkness took him, he knew without doubt the identity of the Eye of Khemri’s creator, and he was very, very afraid.

THREE

‘What have you found out, manling?’ asked Gotrek. He sounded bored and annoyed and Felix did not blame him. Several hours of searching Brother Benedict’s records had revealed next to nothing. The Eye of Khemri had been purchased from Zuchi & Petrillo’s in Altdorf, part of a lot sold to the auction house by the widow of one Baron Keinster of Warghafen. Felix had never heard of him, but it was hardly surprising. There were many old noble families in the Empire, far too many for anyone to ever keep track of. All he knew was that Warghafen was a small town near Talabheim, which was not a great deal of help. He coughed again, feeling a little shivery.

There were references to a meeting with Adolphus Krieger. There were even two letters from the man, written in bold flowing Imperial script, requesting a meeting with Benedict and his patron, and referring to Krieger as a fellow enthusiast of antiquities. The address given was in Middenheim and they referred to an upcoming visit to Praag. There was no way to check the address now, unless Malakai Makaisson could be persuaded to take the Spirit of Grungni all the way to the mountain city state, and given the present circumstances that seemed like a frivolous use of his time. Anyway, Malakai was preparing to leave the city and head back to Karak Kadrin to ferry more dwarf troops into Praag for when the war renewed in spring, if not before. He had better things to do than go on a wild goose chase after someone who had most likely not been using his own name and address. Felix took the letters anyway. At least they were evidence that the mysterious Krieger existed and was not some figment of Andriev’s imagination.

‘Not much,’ he told the Slayer. ‘Benedict was a meticulous man, and he recorded all of his appointments, but there is not the slightest clue as to where he is and why he disappeared.’

‘Time to visit the mysteriously deserting guards then.’

Felix nodded. He could not think of anything else to do. They had wasted the whole afternoon and a good part of the early evening here.

Adolphus stalked through the snowbound streets. His cloak was drawn tight about him; its hood obscured his features. In the present weather conditions no one would find this in the least surprising. The streets were near empty, and those who were abroad this evening were often even more muffled than he. Adolphus still felt a little weary. Like all his kind, daylight slowed him and hurt his eyes. Too much exposure to the light of the sun would leave him badly burned and in considerable pain, and it would take a good deal of warm, fresh blood to heal him.

He was feeling a little torpid. He knew that he had been feeding too much recently and too much blood could be as bad for him as too little. His head ached. His thoughts were restless and hard to focus. He wondered if some of the blood he had drunk was tainted, or whether he was succumbing to one of the insidious madnesses that the centuries sometimes brought to his kind. Once, when young and desperate, he had drunk the blood of a mutant whose veins had been tainted with warpstone. That had given him a similar feeling to this, only not nearly so bad.

It was hard to concentrate. Anger burned deep within him. He felt an urge to rend and tear, to find prey and simply kill for the sake of killing. He fought hard for control. He did not need this, not now, not with so much at stake, not with the talisman he had sought for so long and so hard this near at hand. He needed all his wits about him, in case the others got wind of what he was up to. If the countess or some other representative of the Council of Ancients should learn of his presence here and divine his purpose, all might yet be lost. After all, they were as familiar with Nospheratus’s prophecies as he, even if they were too gutless to try to fulfil them. No, he could not afford any mistakes.

Could it be that he wanted to fail? He had seen stranger things happen in his long existence. He had known some of his kind who used long quests to keep themselves motivated and interested, but who had allowed themselves to falter and fade once they had fulfilled their purpose. Maybe part of him wanted to avoid such a fate.

He sensed that he was being watched, and allowed his awareness to balloon outwards. Footsteps padded after him. He could tell there were only two of them, and that they were not too close. Footpads most likely and desperate ones, to be abroad on a night like this. He speeded his step. He had business to be about this evening, and did not want to be distracted. He had wasted too much time in negotiations with the stubborn old man. It was time to take more direct measures. He had sent out his manservant Roche to summon the coven. It was a risk he would have to take; if the council’s agents found out about it, then too bad. The hour was getting late. He had other things to worry about. He wanted to find the Eye before the madness fully overwhelmed him. Perhaps with the talisman he could overcome its effects. Or perhaps the madness was a product of this accursed city, in which case the sooner he left the better.

He realised that as he had increased his speed, so had his pursuers. He shook his head, trying to fight off the urge to turn on them and rend them asunder like a beast of prey. Quietly, he told himself. Be calm. There is no need for this. The beast that had taken up residence in the back of his head told him differently. The men were fools and they needed to die. It was an insult that such cattle dared to pursue him. Their rightful role was prey, not predator, and he should teach them the error of their ways.

He slowed his pace. His pursuers were committed now. They came on as swiftly as before. How well he knew that feeling. The decision had been made. It was time to close for the kill. He waited until the last minute before turning to meet them. Two men, as he had known there would be. Medium height. Wrapped in thick tunics. His keen eyes picked out every stitch of the patches. Their faces were intent. Long knives glittered in their hands. They intended to show no mercy. They were going to kill him and take whatever he had – or so they thought.

Adolphus did not even bother reaching for his sword. He knew he did not need it. The humans moved with appalling slowness compared to him. As the first reached him, Adolphus stretched out his arm, easily sliding round his attacker’s clumsy strike and grabbing his throat. One quick jerk and the man’s neck broke. Adolphus felt the vertebrae grind beneath his fingers, saw the light go out of the man’s eyes. The robber’s partner had not even realised what had happened yet; Adolphus did not intend to give him time to.

He decided he would teach this foolish mortal the meaning of horror. He punched out with his hand. Such was the force of the blow that his fist penetrated flesh and dug deep into the man’s abdomen. Adolphus felt wet slimy things surround his hand. With the expertise that only centuries could bring he reached out and closed his fingers. Something squished; there was a curious gurgling sound as he ripped it free.

The man only started to scream when Adolphus held a slab of meat up before his eyes. It took the robber a moment to realise that it was his own liver.

The guard lived in no salubrious area, Felix thought. No matter what Andriev claimed about paying his watchmen well, it was obvious that the money did not go on rent. The tenement was old. Rats watched them with glittering eyes as they made their way up the alley. Felix was uncomfortably reminded of the skaven he had encountered in Nuln.

The door swung open on partially broken hinges. There was a grinding sound as the wood dragged across stone. The place smelled of cheap cooking oil and chamber pots, and too many people cramped too close together. Perhaps, Felix told himself, things had been better before the siege, before so many people had been made homeless, but somehow he doubted it. This building had the look of a place that had been allowed to go to seed a long time ago.

As they entered, he became aware that other eyes than those of rodents were watching. An old woman glared at them.

‘Wot you want?’ she demanded, in a harsh, cracked voice that reminded him of a parrot’s screech.

‘We’re looking for Henrik Glasser, grandmother. Have you any idea where we might find him?’

‘He owe you money too does he? And I’m not your grandmother!’

‘No. We just wish to talk to him.’

‘You don’t look like the sort that just come around for a quiet conversation, and Henrik ain’t much of a one for small talk either.’

‘Just tell us where to find him, hag, and less of the backchat,’ said Gotrek. His voice sounded even more flinty than usual. The old woman looked as if she was going to say something cutting, but a glance at the Slayer’s brutal features and one mad eye convinced her otherwise.

‘Up the stairs, first landing. Door on the left,’ she said, and disappeared into her cubbyhole beneath the stairs rather more quickly than she had emerged. Felix heard a key turn in the lock.

‘We don’t want no trouble here,’ she shrieked once the door was securely in place behind her. ‘This is a respectable house.’

‘And my mother was a troll,’ muttered Gotrek. ‘Come on, manling, we don’t have all evening.’

Felix strode up the stairs. Ten heartbeats later, he was banging on Henrik Glasser’s door. There was no answer. He glanced down at the Slayer.

‘There’s someone in there,’ said Gotrek. ‘I can hear breathing.’

Felix could hear nothing but he had learned long ago that the Slayer’s ears were far keener than his own. ‘Open up, Henrik!’ he shouted. ‘We know you are in there.’

Still no answer.

‘If you don’t open up by the time I count to three, I’ll break the door down,’ said Gotrek. Felix could hear no sound of movement. He looked at the dwarf.

‘Three,’ said the Slayer, and his axe smashed the door to kindling.

‘That wasn’t very nice,’ said Felix, leaping through the doorway.

‘He wasn’t going to answer, manling.’

The stench of the place slapped Felix in the face, then rammed two fingers up his nostrils just to get his attention. The place reeked of unwashed clothing, unwashed flesh and uneaten food, as well as a lot of rotgut booze. A solitary candle guttered on a plate sitting on a broken table in the middle of the room. Felix heard rather than saw something slithering away out of the corner of his eye. Gotrek was already past him and in a moment, had dragged a pale-faced, fearful man into the light.

‘What do you want with me? Keep away! I won’t tell you nothing,’ said the man.

‘We’ll see about that,’ said Gotrek. His tone conveyed as much menace as a wolf’s warning growl.

‘All we want are the answers to a few questions.’

‘I don’t have any money,’ said the man. ‘I told Ari that, and I’m telling you the same. Maybe next week. Maybe once I find some more work. Breaking my arms won’t help. Ari will never get repaid that way.’

‘We’re not from Ari,’ said Felix.

‘It’s no use threatening me. I don’t have the cash. Tell Ari gold doesn’t grow on trees, you know.’

‘We’re not from Ari. We just want to ask you a few questions.’

‘You’re not from Ari?’

‘No.’

‘Then you have no right to come bursting through my door like that.’

‘Says who?’ said Gotrek in his most menacing voice.

The man looked as if he wanted to say something smart but then thought the better of it. Felix did not blame him. When he wanted to, the Slayer projected more menace than a school of sharks.

‘We’re from your former employer, Count Andriev. Remember him?’ Felix asked.

The man nodded. He looked a bit saddened. A little grieved even. ‘I never worked for the count, that was my brother, Henrik.’

‘You’re not Henrik Glasser?’

‘No. Pauli. Henrik’s gone. He vanished. Not that I blame him, mind you. Winter’s been hard, there was the siege and all. I figured he just got fed up working for that old madman and shipped out with a caravan.’

‘There’s no caravans leaving Praag at this time of year,’ said Felix. ‘None coming in either.’

‘Is too, if you know where to look.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Felix. He had the feeling he already knew.

‘Smuggling’s always profitable, particularly at times like now, what with the duke’s tax collectors clamping down and all. You get my meaning?’

‘Only too clearly.’ He remembered his father’s constant grumbling about tax collectors in Altdorf and the fact that his old man had many connections with smugglers. It was one of the things that had built the Jaeger company to the size it was. Felix could see only too clearly how such things came about. There were always men willing to make a dishonest penny or two, even in times of catastrophe.

‘You think your brother left with smugglers?’

‘Where else would he be? He might have left me some word though, instead of running off without a by your leave and us owing on the rent and all. I don’t suppose you could see your way clear to lending me a couple of silver pieces, just until I get some work and…’

Felix looked at the man, not quite believing his cheek. ‘How long has your brother been gone?’

‘A couple of days. About that silver – one would be enough.’

‘Anything else unusual about his disappearance? Aside from the fact he left no word of his going.’

‘I will have to replace that door after all. Old Gerti is most particular about things like that, and you two did smash it–’

‘It’s not the only thing I’ll smash, if you don’t start answering the questions,’ said Gotrek. Felix fumbled for his purse, as if he was considering looking in it for money. He knew the value of the carrot and the stick when it came to getting answers.

‘No. Except he never told Nell, his girl, either, and they were close as two thieves in a thicket. Closer. She’s been round a few times asking for him and doesn’t believe I don’t know where he is.’

‘I don’t believe you either,’ said Gotrek. He raised his axe menacingly.

‘There’s no need for that. I’ve told you all I know. Honest. As Ulric is my witness, why would I lie about it? To tell the truth, I wish you luck finding my brother. Remind him about his share of the rent when you see him.’

Felix looked at the Slayer. He could tell they were thinking the same thing. There was nothing more to be learned here.

‘This is a bit of a wild goose chase,’ Felix said, drawing his cloak closer against the cold. The Slayer glared off into the darkness.

‘Tell me about it, manling.’

‘Well, at least we know that Krieger or someone calling himself that exists, and that Andriev wasn’t lying about his guards or his tame wizard disappearing. I don’t think we need check on any of the others. I have a pretty good idea of what we will find. I don’t think Pauli will be seeing his brother again.’

The Slayer nodded once again.

‘Back to the mansion then.’ They trudged into the night and the deepening snow.

Adolphus glanced around the room. It was warm. It was luxurious. Osrik always liked to do well by himself, and his guests. He could smell wine and fresh cooked food and blood – lots of human blood. Thick hangings of brocade covered the windows, keeping out the night chill. Portraits of noble ancestors covered the walls. The carpets were thick, the furniture old and polished and heavy. The place suited the wealth of its other occupants. They looked on him with adoring eyes.

He was used to it now. He had selected them himself, just after he reached the city. Some of them he had known in other places, and other times. He had first met Baroness Olga nearly a decade ago. He had drunk from her veins in a scented garden in the warm south of Bretonnia, and she had been his willing slave ever since, finding new chattels for him, introducing him to other nobles, ensuring that his coven grew in size and influence.

She had proven most useful, although her thinness and the sickly light in her eyes told him that soon she would be fading. Standing too close to the sun was not good for mortals. Being on intimate terms with the Arisen had a tendency to drain them of youth and strength before their time, if they were allowed to survive at all.

Not that it mattered. There were always others willing to step up and take their place. Their owners always fascinated the cattle. None knew better than Adolphus the way the aura of immortality and power and beauty affected them. He had been overwhelmed by it himself when he had first met the countess all those centuries ago, and she had chosen him.

And that was what this was all about, he knew. Being chosen. All of these rich and powerful people present this evening hoped that eventually he would grant them the embrace. All of them knew it was unlikely he would choose to, but the hope of it kept them going, motivated them to do what Adolphus wanted willingly. Not that they had much choice anyway. He had tapped all of them for blood and that created a bond that was hard for all but the strongest to break.

He looked at them again. Everyone present had surrendered their will to him gladly. They were all in his thrall, would gladly do whatever he required of them. He felt nothing but contempt for them all. They were slow, stupid, greedy, ugly, grasping, foolish. They had all turned their backs on conventional morality, on all their old gods, and they had raised him up in their place. It was written all over their faces. He wondered whether this was what it felt like to be a god. Perhaps they were the only creatures left, aside from the Arisen, with whom he had anything in common. Perhaps the world was not divided between predators and prey, as he had always thought; perhaps it was divided between worshipped and worshippers.

Where were these thoughts coming from? Why was he thinking them now? It did not matter what these people were or who they thought they were. All he really needed them for was tools. Like all the followers of the Arisen, they provided money, blades, adulation and blood. That was all they were really good for.

He looked around once more. There were nobles here, men and women who craved immortality the way a drunkard craves drink. They were all rich and powerful, that was why they had been chosen, but right at this moment they looked like a group of desperate children keen to be the one chosen for the favour of a distant parent. Good. That was the way he liked to keep them.

The only one who stood out was Roche. His hulking servant stood to one side, a cynical smile on his brutal pockmarked face, the fingers of his massive strangler’s hands intertwined in a parody of prayer. Roche knew what was going on. Roche had seen the likes of the coven before, and he shared his master’s contempt for them. He was secure of his place in Adolphus’s favour, just as his father had been, and his grandfather before him. Roche’s family had served Adolphus for generations. In them he had placed as much trust as he placed in any mortal. They looked after his interests among the mortals, guarded his crypt while he slept, drove his coach in the daylight when he travelled, spoke with his voice to the cattle when he did not need to be present. Roche was a servant, but he knew he possessed more power than many lords and that arrogance was written on his face. Adolphus did not mind, just so long as he remembered who was truly the master here. Perhaps this evening he would allow Roche to pick out one of the noble women and begin breeding his successor. After all, Roche was not getting any younger; his close-cropped hair was iron grey now, and the lines around his eyes were deep. So soon, Adolphus thought. Mortal lives passed like those of mayflies.

Adolphus studied his slaves, wondering if he really needed them. He had disposed of most of old Andriev’s guards, and the corpse of the greedy magician would not be found until the spring thaw. Either the old man would give him the talisman at the price he offered, or he would take it from his cold, dead hands. At the moment the latter option seemed preferable. Subtlety was no longer going to get him anywhere. He had made himself too visible now. If the countess or any of her agents were in the city, then it would be only too obvious to them that another of the Arisen was also present.

He could see that one of his followers, the fat merchant Osrik, was desperate to speak. The man obviously felt he had something important to say. He rubbed his double chin and his oiled hair, his eyes fixed on Adolphus with blazing intensity. He wondered if he should let the man suffer a bit longer but dismissed the idea. A god should be above such petty games.

‘What is it, Osrik? You seem keen to speak.’

‘Yes, master, I have important news to impart to you.’ He ignored the glares of the rest of the coven, all of whom were equally desperate for Adolphus’s attention. The image of a sultan in his harem sprang into Adolphus’s mind. It was not an idea he liked.

‘Then go on, share this revelation with us all,’ said Adolphus mockingly. The coven smiled at his tone. One thing they could always be relied on to do was toady well.

‘As you know master, I have had my agents watching old Count Andriev’s house day and night.’

‘I commanded nothing less.’

‘The old man has had visitors.’ If Adolphus’s heart had still beaten it would have skipped a beat now. Immediately, he assumed the countess or some other agent of the council had found out what he was doing.

‘Who?’ he asked calmly. He had centuries of practice at concealing his emotions, and it never did to show any dismay in front of the cattle.

‘He has summoned aid. A magician and two dwarf Slayers, as well as a pair of human warriors.’ Adolphus allowed himself a small, satisfied smile. These did not sound like any agents the countess would have used. Dwarfs were almost never part of any coven. There was something about their blood that disagreed with most of the Arisen.

‘This hardly sounds like a major problem, Osrik.’

‘The magician is very powerful, master. He is an advisor to the duke. I have made enquiries and found out a few more things about him. His name is Maximilian Schreiber. He is famous for casting protective enchantments. He was an advisor on such things to the Elector Count of Middenheim and has been employed by the Duke of Praag in a similar role. By all accounts, he is a very formidable magician.’

This was sounding less promising. Adolphus feared few mortals, but mages of the first rank were a cause for caution. Given time to cast their spells they could prove a threat to even one of the Arisen. It seemed that the old man was not going to give in without a fight.

The madness that lurked in the back of Adolphus’s mind welcomed this; more deaths, more blood, more killing. He had to fight back the urge to show his fangs.

‘I believe we can overcome any single mage.’

‘The Slayers too are formidable.’ Adolphus allowed a smile to crease his features. He feared no mortal warriors.

‘I do not think we need trouble ourselves with them,’ he said confidently. To his surprise, he saw that Osrik looked troubled, almost as if he wanted to contradict Adolphus. That was unusual for a coven member. He was about to dismiss the fat merchant’s qualms but some instinct told him not to. ‘I can see you are troubled, Osrik. Why don’t you tell us why?’

The fat man sighed. His blubbery cheeks shook. ‘One of the Slayers is Gotrek Gurnisson. I met him once on the walls of the city before the siege. He is terrifying.’

It was interesting, Adolphus thought, that Osrik could describe this Gotrek Gurnisson as terrifying. After all, Osrik was a coven member and had encountered one of the Arisen. After that, few mortals were impressed by anything less. This Slayer might indeed prove to be a problem. His fame had reached even Adolphus’s ears. The dwarf had become quite famous during the siege. He was said to be the possessor of a magical axe and had slain the Chaos warlord Arek Daemonclaw. He had rallied the defenders on the walls at the height of the siege and was even said to have destroyed the great daemonic siege engines. Adolphus had been deep in slumber at the height of the battle so he had not witnessed this for himself.

Adolphus rubbed his forehead. He had bad experiences with dwarf rune weapons in the past, at the battle of Hel Fenn. He knew that they could hurt him and from all he had heard the Slayer was very skilled with his axe. Even so, Adolphus doubted that he would prove much of a threat, but it never paid to take chances.

‘You have done well, Osrik. And you appear to be thorough. Who are the other mercenaries the old man has hired?’

‘With all respect, master, they are not mercenaries. One of them is a noblewoman, Ulrika Magdova, daughter of the March Boyar Ivan Petrovich Straghov, and a distant relation of Count Andriev. The other Slayer is a certain Snorri Nosebiter, a dwarf of great strength. The last one is Felix Jaeger, a swordsman and associate of Gotrek Gurnisson’s. He too played a major part in the siege of the city and enjoys the favour of the duke.’

This was getting worse and worse, thought Adolphus. It was as if the Old Powers were intervening to thwart him. If the count appealed to Ulrika’s father then he could have a small army of troops at his disposal. Adolphus was familiar enough with Kislevite politics to know that the march boyar had the ear of the Tsarina and, if the others had the ear of the duke, a formidable coalition of foes could be raised against him. In numbers, even the cattle could prove dangerous. Worse, if this Max Schreiber was a competent wizard, and by all accounts he appeared to be, then he might unravel the true nature of the talisman and seize it for himself.

Adolphus snarled and all of the coven shivered and looked pale. He realised that unconsciously he had allowed his fangs to extrude from his gums. It was not a sight that most mortals looked upon without qualms. Events were running out of his control. All of this time, he had been worried about the countess or the council finding out his plans, and now it appeared he had been blindsided by a stupid, old madman. He knew that he would have to act quickly now. The time for waiting was past. Even if it meant revealing his presence to any Arisen in the city, he would have to act, and act quickly before the mortals could assemble their forces to stop him.

He had spent far too long tracking down the talisman to allow himself to be thwarted now. He was the Prince of Night. He would fulfil the Prophecies of Nospheratus. If anyone got in his way at this late stage then they would have to die.

He began giving instructions to the coven. He knew with their aid, he could assemble a small army of henchmen quickly. Which was good, he thought, for it looked as though he was going to need one.

Ulrika looked down at Max. She was worried. A few hours ago the wizard had screamed and fallen from the chair in which he sat. The odd talisman lay near his hand. Ulrika had checked and found out that Max was still breathing and his heart still beat albeit slowly, but nothing she could do would wake him. She had sent out for a physician but there had been nothing the man could do either. Now Max lay unconscious on the floor of the vault. It did not look as if he would be awakening any time soon.

Ulrika felt helpless, and it was not a feeling she liked. She owed Max Schreiber for saving her from the plague, and she had not had a chance to repay the debt. Now there seemed to be nothing she could do. It would take another wizard or perhaps a priest to revive Max. She wondered if she should send word to the Temple of Shallya, or to the duke. She was beginning to wish she had never become involved in any of this strange business. She could just have ignored Andriev’s message. After all, he was only a distant cousin on her mother’s side. She could barely remember her father ever mentioning him when she was growing up, and when he had it was with a mixture of pity and contempt. Her father was a warrior and he had no interests outside horses, battle and the managing of his estates. To him, Andriev’s hobby seemed to be something childish and unmanly. Ulrika shook her head. That summed up the relationship between the border nobles of Kislev and those who dwelled in the cities. Most of the country folk thought their city-bred kin were decadent and effete. Most of the city dwellers looked down on the border nobles as little more than barbarians. There was some truth in both points of view, Ulrika thought, and then brought her attention back to the matter at hand. She knew she was just trying to distract herself from it anyway.

Snorri Nosebiter looked up at her. His brutish eyes held a look of dismay. ‘Snorri thinks Max is not getting any better,’ said Snorri. ‘Of course, Snorri isn’t a doctor.’

Ulrika tried to smile at the Slayer. Snorri was stupid but he had a good heart and had been a good companion in many desperate adventures. He did not deserve to feel the cutting edge of her tongue now, no matter how much she felt like giving him it. She wondered when Felix would get back. Perhaps he would have some ideas about what to do. He was a clever man. Too clever, she often thought. Too clever, and too superior by far, when really he was only the son of a merchant. She wondered what she had ever seen in him now. Still, he had the power to make her angry even when she just thought about him. Just at that moment she heard the sound of the doorbell ringing.

Within moments, Felix and Gotrek were in the room.

‘What happened to him?’ asked Gotrek jerking his thumb in Max’s direction. Ulrika told him. Felix looked at him closely then at her. ‘Where is the talisman?’ he asked.

‘Is that all you’re concerned about?’

‘No – but if we summon another magician to look at him, he might want to study it too.’

‘It was studying the thing that did this to Max,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s possible that he might have had a fit at the exact moment he was examining the thing but I prefer to believe the two things were connected,’ she said.

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

She glared at him. He was such an infuriating man when he wanted to be. ‘Do you think summoning another magician is a good idea right now?’

‘I can’t think of anything better to do, unless it’s to summon a healer, or send him to the Temple.’

‘Best send for the healer then.’

‘The healer will want a donation to the Temple. They nearly always do.’

Andriev looked at them. ‘I will pay. After all this happened when the man was in my service.’

At that moment there came a crashing sound from above.

‘What was that?’ Ulrika asked.

‘Sounded like somebody breaking the door to me,’ said Gotrek. Felix did not doubt the Slayer was right. He usually was about such things.

‘Snorri thinks we should go and break some heads,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. Gotrek growled his agreement and the two Slayers rushed for the stairs. Felix glanced after them, and then looked around the open vault, and at the recumbent figure of Max.

‘Snorri is not exactly a master strategist,’ said Felix. ‘We’re supposed to be guarding this place.’

‘Sometimes the best form of defence is offence,’ said Ulrika. ‘Go and help them! I will stay here with Max and make sure no one gets into the vault.’

Felix could see she was determined and what she said made a certain amount of sense. If any intruders could be stopped before they got in here, it would go much better. Felix looked at Andriev. Somehow he did not doubt that Snorri Nosebiter and Gotrek would be capable of handling anything short of a small army.

‘Can the vault be opened from the inside?’

‘Ahem – yes. It can. There is a hidden lever in here.’ Good, Felix thought. ‘I will close the door behind me. If we have not returned within an hour, make your own decisions as to what to do.’

As he raced up the stairs, Felix wondered how long the air would last in the sealed vault. Long enough, he hoped.

From up ahead came the sound of fighting. Felix recognised the bellowed war cries of the two Slayers and the butcher-block sounds of weapons impacting on flesh swiftly followed by screams of agony.

It sounded as if the dwarfs were doing the work they were paid for. It was time for him to do the same.

His sword felt light in his hand. His heart raced. He was not exactly scared. He just felt a little weak. Everything seemed to be happening a little slower than normal. Felix recognised the signs. He was always like this before going into action.

He emerged into the atrium and took in the whole scene at a glance. Snow and cold night air blew in through the door that swung wide on its hinges. A mass of cloaked men, armed with swords and daggers, engaged the two Slayers. Servants and men-at-arms lay sprawled in their own blood everywhere. It looked as if the intruders had not been too choosy about who they slaughtered.

The shoe was on the other foot now though. Gotrek thundered through them like a raging bull. His axe left bloody corpses every time it struck, and it struck often, moving almost too fast for the human eye to follow. As Felix watched, the Slayer cut down two more assailants and dived headlong into the pack of men trying to force their way in through the door.

Snorri was no less dangerous. In one hand he held his broad-bladed axe, in the other a heavy warhammer. He wielded the two weapons as dextrously as most warriors would use one, lashing out almost simultaneously with both, whirling like a dervish maddened on locoweed to face his foes. As soon as one cowled man went down beneath a thunderous hail of blows, Snorri sprang over his corpse to get to grips with another. All the while an idiot grin of enjoyment played across his lips, and occasionally mad bellows of mirth erupted from deep within his enormous chest.

Even as Felix watched, more men emerged from other entrances to the halls. Either they had been there earlier slaughtering the servants or they were coming through the windows. Felix did not want to think about the implications of that. Whoever wanted the talisman had brought a small army with him. It was not a reassuring thought. Felix shouted a challenge and raced to join the melee.

He wondered if the mysterious Adolphus was somewhere in the milling throng. To be honest, Felix was not all that keen to meet him.

Adolphus Krieger moved silently through the house. It was a place he could have learned to like given time. Every corner was stuffed with curios and artefacts of an earlier time. Adolphus recognised vases that must have emerged from the potter’s kiln before he arose. Some of the tapestries on the wall had been woven when he was still a child. It almost made him nostalgic. Almost.

Behind him he could hear the sounds of battle. It appeared that the coven’s retainers were providing the distraction he required. Perhaps they might actually overwhelm the guardians of the manor. Somehow though Adolphus doubted it. Maybe with his aid they might have stood a chance, but they were on their own. The beast that lurked at the back of his mind wanted to go back there, to tear and rend and drink blood, but he was not going to give in to it. Why should he risk his centuries-long life if he did not have to? The chances were that he could defeat the dwarfs, but why chance it if there was even a one in a thousand possibility they might win?

If you took enough thousand-to-one risks, then eventually one of them would kill you. Consequently, he avoided them when he could, which was doubtless why he had lived so long when others of his kind had been snuffed out like flickering candles. No, if he absolutely had to, he would face the dwarf and kill him, but there was no sense in tempting fate when it was not utterly necessary. Despite this though, it took a great effort of will not to run towards the fray, not to rush to where he knew all that warm hot blood was flowing.

Moving so silently he doubted that even a cat could have heard him, Adolphus stalked deeper into the mansion. The magician Benedict had provided him with detailed descriptions and a rough map of the layout before his unfortunate demise. Adolphus had the near perfect memory of the Arisen, which, combined with his darkness-piercing vision, enabled him to navigate the shadowy corridors without difficulty.

A sense of relief filled him as he put more distance between himself and the battle, and the urge to kill decreased slightly. He had entered the part of the mansion where magical protections were in force. He opened his mage senses to the flow of energy moving around him. There were no magical traps that he could see, simply spells of warding and protection, weaves designed to keep prying eyes from gazing into the place with scrying spells, and wards designed to negate a head-on magical assault. Whoever had cast these spells had known his business, but had drawn the line at using harmful magical energies, just as the builders of the vault had not used any physical traps such as deadfalls.

Adolphus could understand it. Certainly, there were those who were paranoid enough to use such things but they were a minority. After all, who wanted to dwell in a building where a slight misstep could put you in a pit, or blast you with a firebolt? Despite what mages might tell you about how careful they were, such things did occur. And when they did you were usually not around afterward to complain about the consequences.

Adolphus fought to keep a smile from his lips. He was making assumptions that might prove fatal. He did not absolutely know this was the case here. It might simply be that the magician who had cast these wards was a better sorcerer than he, and he just could not perceive the traps. It would be best to proceed with the utmost caution until he had established whether this was the case or not.

He was at the top of the flight of stairs now. He knew they led down through the cellars and into the vaults. He paused for a moment, and allowed himself to savour the anticipation. He was close now, so close he could almost taste it. The thing he had sought so long and so hard for was almost within his grasp, and with it the power to do what none of the Arisen had dreamed of since the time of the Vampire Counts. He would be the one to fulfil the prophecies in the Book of Shadows and the Grimoire Necronium. Surely the time had now come to pass? The armies of Chaos were on the march, the old order was ending, and a new world would be born in fire and blood. Most of all, in blood. He would be the King of the Night, and his reign would be eternal, dark and filled with poisonous beauty.

He shook his head. Such musing brought him no closer to his goal. It was time to take the last few steps that would lead him to ultimate glory.

Felix glanced around at the scene of carnage. Dead bodies were piled up all around them. Blood splattered Gotrek and Snorri making them look as if they had been working in an abattoir. Felix guessed that he did not look much better. Not all of the blood belonged to his opponents. He was nicked and cut in half a dozen places though he guessed that none of the wounds were major.

‘Hardly a fight at all,’ grumbled Gotrek. ‘Even for humans these were poor warriors.’

‘Snorri has killed tougher cockroaches,’ agreed Snorri Nosebiter sourly. ‘Snorri squashed an ant once that put up a better fight. Nasty acid sting it had.’

Felix could not entirely agree with the Slayers about the toughness of their foes. By virtue of sheer numbers, he had been almost overwhelmed on several occasions, and his body’s aches reminded him that this fight had been dangerous enough. Still, they had a point. These men had not fought as well as many he had faced. It was not just that they were indifferent warriors; it was something more. They had fought like sleepwalkers. Their timing was off, and they had been indifferent as to whether they had lived or died. Their parries and thrusts had possessed a purely mechanical quality. A thought struck him.

‘They fought like men who were under a spell,’ he said.

‘A spell of being very bad fighters, maybe,’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

‘I think you are right, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘Not even humans are usually so bad. They fought as if they did not have all their wits about them.’

‘That’s never stopped Snorri from putting up a good fight,’ said Snorri. From the peevish tone, anyone would have thought the men had tried to cheat him out of a copper pfennig. He was obviously still disappointed by the quality of the opposition they had faced.

Felix ignored him. His mind was already racing ahead, searching out reasons for why this might have happened. This Adolphus Krieger was a magician of some sort, and obviously these men had been in his thrall. The question was why he had sent them to attack now. The answer was obvious.

‘This was a diversion,’ Felix said. ‘The magician is already in the building.’

He and Gotrek exchanged glances. ‘The vault,’ they said simultaneously.

Adolphus stood before the entrance to the vault. The door was large and very strong and could probably resist a team of men with a battering ram. Not that there would have been room to swing it in these corridors. There were several potent wards on the doors designed to neutralise spells of opening and unlocking. Adolphus doubted that he could overcome them with magic. He was a very knowledgeable mage but not a particularly potent one. The countess, for one, had been much stronger. That would change when he had the talisman.

He did not need to be a great mage, under the circumstances. The concealment of the dwarf-built pressure pads would have fooled most eyes, but not his. They were far, far keener in the darkness than any human eye could ever be. Even the hairline edges cunningly concealed in the stonework were as clear to him as the edges of a paving stone would be to a mortal.

He took out his dagger and slid its edge through the narrow gap of the nearest one. He heard a click and the stone slid out, revealing the pressure pad within. He pushed it, and was rewarded with another click that told him the way was partially open. He repeated the process on the other side of the door. There remained only the main lock on the door itself. Fortunately he had an easy solution for that too. He had made his preparations with care.

Reaching inside his jerkin he carefully pulled out the two containers he had made earlier. He smiled. He might not be the greatest of sorcerers but his knowledge of alchemy was considerable and had been perfected over long centuries. When the contents of the two containers were mixed they would create a powerful corrosive capable of eating through solid metal in a short time.

Carefully he dribbled some fluid onto the area around the lock. When the green fluid encountered the red fluid, an acrid chemical smoke rose. There was a hissing, spluttering sound and the metal of the lock began to melt away like snow under a soldier’s piss.

Very soon now, the talisman would be in his grasp.

‘What was that?’ asked Andriev nervously. Ulrika looked up. She too had heard the odd bubbling sound. A few moments before they had both heard faint clicks as if someone had been working with the locks. She could only hope it was Felix and the others coming back. Somehow she did not think it was.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. A faint reek as of noxious chemicals reached her nostrils. She was reminded of the scent of alchemical fire but it was not that. She sniffed again. The scent was coming from the direction of the doorway. She thought she heard a faint hissing sound now as well.

‘There’s someone outside. I think they are trying to get in,’ she said, raising her sword to the guard position. Andriev clutched his own weapon tighter. Even as they watched, the door began to bend inwards, as if being subjected to a force as slow and irresistible as the action of a glacier.

‘Whatever is out there, it isn’t human,’ Andriev said. Ulrika shuddered. She could remember Felix’s tales of his encounters with daemons all too clearly. What was it Adolphus Krieger had sent to collect the talisman?

Carefully avoiding the spot where the corrosive still bubbled, Adolphus exerted his strength. He was much stronger than any human, and knew in a few heartbeats the weakened door would give way. He could simply have waited for the acid to do its work, but he felt he was running out of time. The sounds of fighting had ceased behind him. That might mean his cats’ paws had succeeded in killing the defenders but somehow he doubted it. It was more likely that the Slayers were coming for him. He was not going to risk a fight now if he could help it, not when he was so close to his goal.

Inside he could hear the sounds of voices. One of them belonged to Andriev, the other to a young woman. They would not stand against him for long.

Felix raced through the house, wondering if what he was doing was wise. His legs were longer than the dwarfs’ and he was a much faster runner, so he was outdistancing them by quite a way. What if more of the enthralled warriors were in the house? What if he came upon the mage all by himself? Unless he could take the man by surprise, it would most likely prove to be a fatal encounter. He had no illusions about the outcome of any struggle between himself and a competent sorcerer.

On the other hand, Ulrika was in danger and, despite their feelings for each other, he did not want to see any harm come to her. She might be an arrogant, overbearing, inconstant, misguided snob but he did not want to see her dead. To tell the truth, he wondered at the intensity of his own feelings now that he knew she was in danger. Not quite over her yet, he thought, sourly.

He reached the top of the stairs and halted. From below, he could hear the shriek of tortured metal. It sounded as if the entrance to the vault was being shattered by the application of enormous force. Impossible, he told himself – it would take a siege engine. But the man down there was a magician. Who knew what he was capable of? Perhaps the wards woven on the vault were not quite as strong as Max had claimed, or maybe the magician was a lot more powerful than they had expected. It was not a reassuring thought.

He listened to see if he could distinguish anything else. He hoped to hear Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter approaching but there was nothing. He could not hear their booted feet ringing on the stonework. He could hear Ulrika’s indistinct voice shouting some sort of challenge, and the murmur of a response too low for him to hear. Then from down below too came an ominous silence.

Better go and learn the worst, he thought. Reluctantly he padded down the stairs, thinking, perhaps Gotrek will be the one to write the tale of my heroic doom.

Ulrika watched as the door exploded inwards. Stone screeched against stone. She expected to see a gang of warriors armed with a portable ram or a mage surrounded by the incandescent glow of power. Instead, she saw a tall, stately-looking man, garbed in fashionable clothing. A longsword hung scabbarded at his side. There was an eerie grace about him that she would have associated more with acrobats than a mage. He glanced at her but made no threatening move.

‘If you can use that blade, magician, I suggest you draw it. I hate to cut down an unarmed man.’

To her surprise he smiled, showing gleaming white teeth. His eyes when they met hers were dark and piercing.

He was a very handsome man, Ulrika thought, almost beautiful. He bore himself with an air of command that a Tsar might have envied.

‘And I would hate to kill a young woman so lovely,’ he said pleasantly. He sounded as if he came from the Empire but there was just the faintest trace of a foreign accent in his voice. If she had been forced to guess, she would have said Bretonnian.

‘I am not afraid of your magic, wizard,’ she said, and was proud of how steady her voice was. Something about the man’s manner told her she could easily die here. He laughed – an eerie, velvety sound.

‘Is that what you think I am?’

‘What else could you be?’

‘Something beyond your ability to imagine,’ he said.

Adolphus recognised the woman from that night at the White Boar, just as he recognised the unconscious man lying nearby. What a small world, he thought. Then again, Praag was a small city and not many taverns remained open after the destruction of the siege. Once again he felt the surge of attraction.

She was certainly beautiful, and she held herself well. There was something about her courage in the face of her obvious fear that he found quite touching. He wished he had had time to talk to her, but he had already wasted enough time. He could see what he had come for. It lay on the table beside the recumbent form of the man in wizard’s robes.

Adolphus could see the man still lived, but life pulsed so faintly in him that he would not recover any time soon, if at all. No threat there then.

The only ones who stood between him and the talisman were the young woman and the old man. He would not even need his sword to take them.

Behind him on the stairs came the footsteps of a man trying to move quietly. A mortal might not have detected him at all, but Adolphus could tell where he was from the sound of his breathing, let alone the soft scuff of boot leather on stone. He smiled. One lone man was no threat to him either.

‘Step away from the talisman and I will let you live,’ he told the girl quietly. ‘Interfere with me and you will most assuredly die, and that would give me no pleasure.’

The woman lunged at him with surprising speed. She was obviously not unskilled with that long blade of hers. Adolphus stepped easily aside. She was quick for a mortal, but compared to him she moved like an arthritic cripple. While she went for him the old man reached for the talisman. Adolphus was not going to allow that.

He extended his stride and reached the amulet at the same time as the old man. A quick buffet from his open hand sent Andriev flying across the room to smash into the wall. There was a sickening crack and he slid down to the floor. Blood pooled from his broken head. Triumph filled Adolphus as he picked up the amulet.

He was disappointed to feel no surge of power, no enormous burst of magical energy. Thunder did not roar. Lightning did not flash. The world did not change in an instant. He had been foolish to expect any such thing. The talisman would need to be studied and attuned before he could use it. There was no doubt he had found what he had come for in his mind though. It was exactly as described in the grimoire and the Lost Book of Nagash. There could not be more than one artefact fitting this description in the world now. He had what he came for. It was time to leave.

He turned just in time to see the woman racing towards him, and a tall blond man filling the doorway. Surely these fools did not intend to try and stop him?

Felix did not think he had ever seen a man move so fast. His swiftness was eye-blurring. Some sort of spell must be enhancing his speed. At least there was only the sorcerer. It was a small mercy. Watching the man, he knew that there was no way he could stand against him if he drew his sword. Best not to give him the chance to then, he thought, and advanced into the room.

Ulrika raced forward too, aiming a slash at the man’s neck that would have severed his head from his shoulders if it had connected. It didn’t. Krieger ducked and the blade passed above his head. With a motion like a tiger pouncing on a deer, he sprang forward. In an instant he had Ulrika immobilised, his arm around her neck; her struggles were as weak as those of a mouse in the grip of a cat.

‘Ulrika,’ Felix shouted.

The man looked up at him, and Felix was in no way surprised to see the red glow in his eyes. Mage, he thought, and then realised that there was something naggingly familiar about the man. Felix suddenly put his finger on it. He was the wizard in the tavern, the one who vanished just as Max and Ulrika came in.

Felix could hear Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter on the stairs. Help was on its way.

‘If you care about this girl, stand back,’ said Krieger. ‘Or I will snap her neck like a twig.’

‘If you harm her in any way I will kill you,’ said Felix, and was surprised to find that he meant it. Whatever it took, however long, he would hound this man to his grave.

‘Somehow I doubt that,’ said Krieger in his suave tone.

‘If the manling doesn’t then I will,’ said Gotrek, from beside Felix. There could be no doubt at all that he meant it.

The tall man laughed but hell was in his eyes. ‘It’s been tried before, by your kin, and they did not succeed either. Now stand aside or the girl dies.’

The Slayer glared at the dark magician. Felix wondered if Gotrek was going to attack and let Ulrika die anyway. He knew he could not allow it.

FOUR

‘Snorri thinks we should take him,’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

‘I don’t,’ said Felix. ‘If we do, he will kill Ulrika.’

‘And then Snorri will kill him,’ said Snorri, his battle lust unsated by his encounter with the magician’s minions. He was ready to attack no matter what Felix said. Felix looked at Gotrek pleadingly. No sign of any understanding entered the Slayer’s one mad eye. The silence lengthened. Gotrek and Krieger glared at each other. An odd glow appeared in the mage’s eyes once more. There seemed to be some sort of contest of wills going on. Neither looked away.

Felix’s mouth felt dry. The room stank of dust and death and the faintest hint of something else, cinnamon perhaps. Andriev lay near, his broken head testimony to how fragile life could be. Max did not look much better.

‘Kill him,’ gasped Ulrika. ‘Don’t worry about me. I would rather die than be dishonoured.’

Her words were cut off abruptly as Krieger tightened his grip on her throat. For a magician, he was strong. Felix was not at all sure he would like to face him with a sword in his hand. Ulrika’s face was very pale now. Felix could see she was having trouble breathing. The Slayer continued to glare. Felix could feel that things had come to a very delicate pass, it might go either way now. There was a tension in the room that begged for violent action. Unfortunately, Felix knew that when the explosion came it would end up with Ulrika dead.

‘Let her go and you have my word you can leave here,’ he said, hoping to sway the Slayers with talk of honour and oaths. This approach usually worked on dwarfs. Gotrek tensed. The Slayer did not like what he was doing. The magician merely laughed.

‘Much as I would like to take you up on such an offer, I fear it would be unwise under the circumstances. This girl is my shield and before a battle it’s a foolish warrior who throws aside his shield.’

‘You are no warrior,’ grated Gotrek. ‘You have no idea of what the word means.’

Krieger’s smile was sour, and oddly sad. ‘Once I did, probably more than you. Alas, things change.’

Gotrek was about to throw himself forward. Foam frothed from Snorri’s mouth as he champed at the bit for battle. Still he waited to take his cue from Gotrek. Ulrika tried to bring her heel down on Krieger’s booted foot, but he eluded the move easily. A further tightening of his arm brought a squeal of pain from the Kislevite noblewoman. Her neck could not be far from breaking.

Felix put a hand on the Slayer’s shoulder. He knew he had no more chance of restraining the dwarf if he decided to attack than he would have of holding back a dire wolf, but he felt he had better try. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘There has to be a way out of this.’

‘There is,’ said Krieger. ‘Let me go and, after I am free, I will let her go whenever she wishes.’

‘You would not accept my word,’ said Felix looking at the sorcerer. His faint complex smile had widened. ‘Why should I accept yours?’

‘You don’t have any choice,’ said Krieger with assurance. He raised the pomander dangling from his neck to his lips, and took a long satisfied sniff. He looked utterly calm and collected. He had the poise of an aristocrat. Felix had always disliked them.

‘Let him go,’ said Felix. ‘We can always hunt him down later.’

‘You can try,’ said Krieger.

Gotrek seemed to emerge from his killing trance. ‘However long it takes, however far you travel, I will find you and I will kill you,’ he said.

‘That goes twice as much for Snorri Nosebiter,’ said Snorri.

‘Step aside,’ said Krieger. Slowly and reluctantly, the dwarfs did so. Lifting Ulrika as if she weighed nothing, clutching the talisman in his fist still, Krieger strode between them and up the stairs.

Silence filled the vault.

‘What do we do now?’ Felix asked.

‘Follow him,’ Gotrek replied. ‘He won’t get too far.’

They moved up the stairs in Krieger’s wake but when they emerged into the night he was gone, and so was Ulrika. Felix thought he heard a sledge hissing off into the distance but it was night, and there were many sledges going to and fro between the mansions of the nobles.

Icy, freezing fog filled the streets. It had gathered almost too quickly to be natural. Felix wondered if the mage had cast some sort of spell to obscure his tracks. It seemed all too likely. Despair filled him. Ulrika was in the hands of an evil mage and so was the talisman they had agreed to protect. Andriev was dead. Max was in a coma. Failure tasted bitter in his mouth.

‘He must have used magic to remove himself once he was clear of the vaults,’ said Felix. ‘The wards would no longer have held him there.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Gotrek. Rage filled his voice. He liked their situation no more than Felix. ‘I am not a magician.’

‘Neither is Snorri, but we’d better work out how to find him soon. Snorri Nosebiter swore an oath, and if Snorri has to search this city house by house Snorri will.’

‘Chances are we will be joining you,’ muttered Felix. ‘Come on, let’s go inside and see to Max.’ None of them suggested ringing the alarm bell and summoning the watch.

Krieger lounged back in the padded seat of the sleigh. Roche’s broad back obscured his view as he handled the horses. He put an arm around the unconscious Ulrika. It was good cover. They were just two lovers returning from a sleigh ride in the night, a scene Krieger had enacted many times in the past, with the cattle, before he drank of their blood. No one would notice them.

The warm glow of triumph filled him. He had thought things might all go terribly wrong there for a while. Close up, the power of that dwarf’s terrible axe had been evident to him. There was no doubt in his mind that the weapon was capable of ending his immortal life with one blow. He had never seen anything so filled with terrible killing power. To one with mage senses as keen as Krieger’s, it was practically incandescent with deadly energy, and its wielder had been almost as worrying, a grim, fell-handed creature indeed.

The man’s weapon had not been as powerful, but to Adolphus’s surprise had been magical also, and thus capable of hurting him. Amazing really that Andriev had found two such guardians at short notice. If he had known, he would not have been quite so confident. He did not doubt he could have won any fight with the pair, but there would have been a risk, and right then, with the talisman in his grasp, it would have been foolish to take it.

Still, the part of him that craved violence and death wished that he had initiated combat, wished that he had fought, and torn his opponents limb from limb. The raging beast was still within him. He tried to tell himself that there was more to it than this. It galled him to leave enemies alive and unharmed behind him. He was annoyed by the arrogance of the dwarf. That any mortal should dare threaten one of the Arisen seemed near sacrilegious. He was also certain that the dwarf would attempt to make good on his promise, would spend years if need be hunting him down.

Not that it mattered now. Soon he would have enough power to master the world, and take his revenge on them. It would not be the dwarf who sought him out. Once he fulfilled Nospheratus’s prophecy he would take his revenge. He tried telling himself that powerful though that axe was, he was not frightened by it, but he was wise enough to know that he was lying to himself. That was why the beast was snarling within him so strongly. It felt threatened. He shivered a little. For the first time in many, many years, he had encountered something that caused him to fear.

Perhaps he should try to enjoy the novelty of it. After all, amid the ennui of the long centuries, any new emotional experience was to be welcomed. Somehow he could not quite make himself believe it. Best to get away as quickly and as quietly as possible and leave the Slayers to their futile efforts at pursuit. He could travel so quickly and so secretly that they would have no chance of finding him until he wanted it.

The main thing now was that he needed time to work out how to unleash the power of the talisman, to attune it to him, and learn to draw upon its energies. Once that was accomplished, there was little he could not do, at least according to Nospheratus, and that vampiric seer had been well placed to know.

The girl beside him whimpered but did not come to consciousness. He looked down at her. Ancient malice woke in his brain. It was obvious that the man back there had cared for her, and that the dwarfs had enough regard for her to restrain themselves from attacking. She might prove a valuable hostage and, by all the Dark Gods, she was beautiful. On his long journey a companion to while away the time might prove interesting, and he could always get rid of her if she proved dull. He doubted that she would, at least for a while. She knew the dwarfs and the man with the magical weapon, and thus she could tell him something of his enemies. He would need to know at least their names when the time came to hunt them down.

Of course, he had given his word to the man that he would let her go, and he had never broken his word in all his long centuries of unlife. It was just as well he had carefully worded the promise to suit himself. He had said he would let her go whenever she wished. He had ways of ensuring that she would not wish to leave him.

Gently he pushed back the collar of her tunic, and stroked her neck, looking for the lovely vein he knew he would find there.

Felix looked around the wreckage of the mansion. There were corpses everywhere: the remains of Andriev’s ancient servants, the mangled bodies of the men he, Gotrek and Snorri had slain. The air smelled of blood and opened innards and corruption. It did nothing to improve his mood. He wished now that he carried a pomander, as the mage did. Its perfume might cover the stench of death.

That thought tickled something at the back of his mind. It reminded him of something, just as the faint elusive scent he had smelled in the vault had done. What was it? Why did the image of a dead woman spring into his mind now?

Obviously because you are surrounded by corpses, idiot, he told himself, but knew that was not the answer. He remembered seeing the body of the dead woman found in the snow, remembered what her companion had said. She had gone out with a nobleman. She had remembered a very distinctive scent like cinnamon. That was what he had smelled in the vaults. Was it possible that the man who had killed the streetwalker and mangled her corpse was the same as the one who had taken Ulrika?

He prayed not. Many Imperial nobles carried pomanders to cover the smell of the streets, surely this was just one more. Cinnamon-based perfumes were common. No, it could not be the same man – could it? Why not? He was a dark magician and who knew what atrocities they might commit. Felix had heard tales of evil mages devouring the brains of their victims to absorb their souls, maybe those tales were true and maybe this was such a man. Suddenly, he wished Max were awake. He would know much more about such things than Felix ever would. He mentioned his suspicions to the Slayers.

‘Snorri thinks you should have let us kill him,’ said Snorri Nosebiter almost petulantly.

I should have let you, Felix thought. As if there were anything he could have done to restrain the Slayers if they had taken it into their heads to fight.

He looked over at the two sullen dwarfs. It was obvious that they were not in the best of moods. They glared at him as if he personally were responsible for costing them their chance of a heroic death. In a way, he supposed he was. Not that he was going to let it bother him all that much. Ulrika’s life was far more important than their deaths. They would have another chance when they caught up with the mage. Somehow, Felix did not doubt that they would. Now he only had to work out how.

The first thing they needed to do was get Max to a healer. He was the expert in this field, and if anyone knew how to go about finding a dark mage, it would be him. Felix thought he had better notify the authorities what had happened here. Not the city guards: they would most likely throw all four of them in the cells just on suspicion and, once there, who knew when they would get out? That’s if Gotrek and Snorri didn’t start a battle with them for their temerity in trying to make the arrest in the first place. Best take the matter straight to the top, to the duke. He would listen to them, perhaps even help.

And then there was Ulrika’s father. Felix was not looking forward to breaking the news of his daughter’s abduction and possible death to the old nobleman. Not that he was prepared to admit that Ulrika might not be alive. Such a thought did not bear thinking about. No – they would tell Ivan Petrovich Straghov and doubtless he would lend them aid, even if the duke would not.

He considered his plan from every angle. There was no sense in heading off on a fruitless search for the magician in this fog, no matter what the Slayers might want. He could perhaps convince the duke to seal the gates, and have his men scour the city. That way the guards might prove to be of use, and several thousand men would be more effective in a search than three.

Swiftly, he outlined his plans to the others. They headed out into the night.

Felix looked in on the sickroom where Max lay. The priestesses had finished their rituals. Healing magic had been invoked. Felix could only pray that it worked better for the wizard than it had for his mother all those long years ago. The duke looked up from his place beside the bed. Even in this place of healing two guard captains flanked him. These were dangerous times.

Enrik’s expression was melancholy. From his large eyes with bags beneath them, to his long drooping moustaches, he seemed to radiate sadness and depression. Felix had heard he was given to moods of black depression, and even madness, but had seen no sign of it himself. The Duke of Praag was one of the most competent and energetic nobles he had met. He had guided the defence of the city against the Chaos horde with vigour and courage. It was evident that the loss of his brother, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, had hit him hard. He moved like an old man, and not just because of his wounds.

‘Yours is very grave news, Felix Jaeger,’ he said. His voice was clear and commanding and completely at odds with his appearance. It held all the arrogant command that one might expect from the ruler of Kislev’s second greatest city. ‘Ulrika was kin to me, and so was Andriev very distantly, although there was no love lost between us. He had more in common with my brother. They were both keen on ancient things, and magic.’

Felix suspected that the duke’s brother had been involved with the cults of Chaos. Was it possible that Count Andriev had been as well? That would explain his interest in magical things, and his wish to avoid attracting attention to himself. But if he had been, then perhaps he would have had allies both magical and human of his own, and he would not have needed to call on himself, Ulrika and Gotrek. Not unless there was something he wanted to hide from his fellow daemon worshippers. Felix was familiar enough with the treachery and backstabbing that all the followers of the Dark Gods wallowed in. It was enough to make his head spin just thinking about it.

Perhaps the old man had been involved in such things, perhaps not. It would be best not to think about it until he had clear proof either way. Right now there were plenty of other things to think about.

The duke turned and barked commands to his guard captains and they departed. Felix knew that soon there would be a watch kept on every gate and the city guard would be alerted to look for anyone like Ulrika or her captor. The duke’s instructions sent soldiers hurrying to obey.

‘I am sorry I cannot do more,’ said Duke Enrik, ‘but a house-to-house search is all but impossible at the moment. And there are other things to worry about right now.’

Felix knew what he meant. With the Ice Queen in his palace and the army bivouacked on the city, there was the problem of seeing to her security and maintaining public order, not to mention planning what to do about the oncoming Chaos horde. It was a reminder to Felix that the whole world had not stopped because of his personal problems. The greatest invasion of the Old World in two centuries was still under way. The duke seemed to consider the matter settled but Felix decided to risk persisting for the moment.

‘Have you informed her father, your grace?’ Felix asked.

‘I have summoned him. It was wise of you to bring this to me first. I think such news would be best coming from a kinsman. He is very fond of Ulrika. She is his only ‘surviving’ child.’

Felix heard the hesitation on the word surviving. The duke too was trying to put his best face on things.

‘And you have no idea what this talisman was or what it was capable of?’

Felix could recognise a deliberate change of subject when he heard one.

‘I have no idea, but it must be important considering all the effort this Adolphus Krieger put into getting it. We had best hope that Max recovers soon. Perhaps he can tell us something.’

‘It was investigating the talisman that did this to him?’

‘So Ulrika said.’

‘I will have you informed when he recovers,’ said the duke. His tone made it clear that this was a dismissal. He looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘Thank you, your grace,’ said Felix and withdrew.

Adolphus looked around the chamber in the mansion. Osrik had given up his best suite of rooms so that his master might occupy them. The tapestries were thick and heavy, the best wine sat unopened on the heavy mahogany table, the fire blazed brightly. Although Adolphus no longer felt the cold and took no pleasure from wine, he always found it best to keep up appearances. Tongues always flapped otherwise, and you could not browbeat or mindbind every servant. They all looked alike to Adolphus anyway. And he admitted to having a taste for luxury that persisted from his former life, before the countess chose him. It was a taste that his status as one of the Arisen allowed him to indulge.

The only thing that was really necessary about the rooms was the thick curtains that kept the sunlight out. He had never got used to daylight. It still hurt his eyes, and burned his skin painfully. No matter how much blood he drank, he had but a fraction of his true strength when exposed to it. It made him almost as weak and feeble as a mortal. The sluggishness he felt now told him it was still light outside.

Few of the servants thought it odd that he was not to be disturbed through the day. As far as they were concerned he was a distant kinsman with a taste for lowlife and debauchery, who spent his nights in the taverns and bordellos of the city, and his days recovering from his nightly indulgences.

He was not sorry to be leaving Kislev. It was a barbaric place, and likely to become more so as the Chaos horde advanced. Bloodletting on a massive scale always seemed to bring out the wild rider in the Kislevites.

Still, he thought, the situation was not without its advantages. One could easily exploit the anarchy of the coming months and years, and he would be powerful enough to do so. The prophecies of the Grimoire Necronium would be fulfilled. This was the Time of Blood of which the ancient tome spoke, of that he was certain. And he was the Pale King who would arise to rule the night. The talisman would make that come true. With it, none of the others would be able to stand against him, all of them – even the countess and the Council – would have to swear fealty.

The woman in his bed stirred. She was almost too beautiful, he thought. She had none of the bovine stupidity that was usually written on the faces of Kislevite noblewomen. She looked hard, and sharp and fierce as a hawk. There was something predatory in her beauty. She would perhaps be worthy to be chosen, worthy of the dark kiss. Perhaps she was the one.

For long centuries, ever since the countess had explained to him how the bloodlines had thinned since the time of the Lahmians, he had resisted creating his own get. Most of the Arisen of his generation could create only one, and even that might turn out to be only an insipid counterfeit of what it should be – moronic, weak, mad, the cause of all those bizarre stereotypes of monsters mortals seemed to have about the Arisen. He himself had never risked trying to create one, for he had never found any worthy of his embrace. Over the centuries he had occasionally thought he had found someone but always there had been a flaw in them.

Let’s see. There was the Bretonnian noblewoman, Katherine, who had turned out to be nothing more than an empty, posturing fool. Her beauty had dazzled him for a while into thinking she might have the intelligence and the grace to be worthy of eternity at his side.

How wrong he had been. The woman had cared more for her mirror than she had for anyone else. It had been a distinct pleasure to watch her squeamishness as the lines appeared on her face, grey appeared in her hair, and age had eaten away her beauty.

Then there was the peasant girl turned courtesan from Nuln, what was her name? Oh yes, Marianne. She had been all that he had desired. Beautiful, intelligent, witty, charming, cultured even, with the erudition of those who have painfully acquired it by their own efforts. She had possessed a playfulness and a curiosity that had promised she would not have succumbed easily to ennui, and he had been drawn to her for many reasons. But she had been treacherous, and selfish, and deceitful. Remembering how he himself had turned against the countess, he had foreseen that she too would eventually turn on him, and that would have been too painful to endure. So he had watched over her, aided her and protected her until eventually she had died wealthy, respected and one of the great noblewomen of the Empire. Her rise had provided them both with amusement.

There was Alana, that strange bitter woman, half witch, half-seeress who had taught him all those dark secrets and opened his eyes to the power of mortals’ magic. To her as much as to the countess did he owe his knowledge of sorcery, and the knowledge that mortals tried to hide even from themselves. She had died before he had ever had a chance to make his mind up about her, torn apart by some appalling creature she had summoned in a blasphemous ritual on Geheimnisnacht, a victim of her own overwhelming ambition and desire for control. He was not certain, but he guessed that he would not have embraced her. Their relationship had always been about power, who would have it, who would wield it. She would have wanted to bind him to her with magic, as much as any one of the cattle had ever been bound by the dark kiss.

There had been others, so many others, down the long centuries. Their faces sometimes drifted before him when he entered the trance state that in the Arisen replaced sleep. Sometimes they all blended together, sometimes they changed into faces he had never seen, but would eventually. One thing you learned over the centuries was that sooner or later most things would occur.

It was strange, he mused, how much of the flesh was left behind and how much stayed when you were embraced. He no longer craved meat or drink or sex or drugs. But still he craved companionship. Perhaps it was the only thing he had in common with the cattle any more. He still was on the lookout for that one special woman now, as much as he had been when he first met the countess back in Parravon three centuries ago, as much as when he had been little more than a boy attending his first ball at the king’s court.

He pushed the thoughts aside. Here he stood on the brink of the greatest triumph any of the Arisen had ever managed, on the brink of madness goaded by something he could not explain, and he was thinking of women. He smiled wryly. It was one of the few habits of mortality he had not been able to rid himself of.

Perhaps, he thought, he should kill this woman now, drain her dry in the ecstasy of the kiss, just to prove to himself that he could still do such a thing. Pointless, he told himself, you know you can. It has been something you have done all too easily over the past few weeks. If you really want to prove you are still in control you should let her live. The reaction of the beast in his brain as it resisted the idea showed him that he was correct. For the moment then, he would let her live. She could travel with him for a while. It never hurt to have an extra vessel lying around in case of need. He could not afford to weaken Roche by tapping him on this journey, and he utterly loathed drinking the blood of animals. Only the direst of necessities could drive him to it now. Anyway, it would not be seemly for the soon-to-be lord of all vampires to drink from a deer.

He identified the footsteps approaching down the corridor long before he heard the knock on the door. Roche had a very distinctive gait. He walked very softly for such a heavy man. Adolphus’s keen senses told him that there was no one else close by. He walked to the door and turned the key in the lock. It was an elementary precaution that he never forgot to take in rooms like this ever since a chambermaid had entered his room and found him with the drained corpse of a streetwalker in the days after the countess had first embraced him.

Roche looked down on him unsmilingly. Adolphus gazed back, measuring him. He was a huge man, strong as a blacksmith, quick as cat, with the manners of a chamberlain and the morals of an assassin. Like his father and his grandfather before him, Roche served as Adolphus’s most trusted personal retainer, and was privy to all but his darkest secrets. It was a position he had been groomed for since he was a small child.

‘The sledge is ready, master,’ said Roche. His voice was melodic and not a little sad, it should have belonged to the priest that he so often impersonated. ‘We can leave as soon as you are ready.’

‘Very good, Roche.’

‘The young lady, master?’ Roche’s voice was mild. He just wanted to know what to do. He could be told to wrap her in a sheet and take her to the coach or to chop her into little pieces and feed her to the dogs. He would do either with the same quiet, calm efficiency, had done so often in the past.

‘She will be accompanying us.’

‘Very good, master. I considered the possibility that you might wish to do this and have taken the liberty of loading extra supplies. I hope this meets with your approval.’

‘As always, Roche, you think of everything.’

‘It is my pleasure to serve, master.’ They exchanged knowing smiles.

‘Let us be away, Roche. We have a long road ahead of us, and the sooner we are out of this backwater kingdom, the happier I will be.’

Ivan Petrovich Straghov was calm now. Felix was glad. He had been shouting threats and curses strong enough to make a dockworker blanch just minutes before. Now he was restricting himself to just a few choice anatomical epithets. He turned and glared at Felix. The younger man suddenly felt that the tent had become far too small.

‘We will find her,’ he said, in a challenging tone, as if Felix had just contradicted him. ‘And when we find the man who has taken her, I will string him up by the balls and…’

He went on to describe exactly what he would do. With most people, Felix would have assumed they were speaking metaphorically, but Ivan Petrovich was a march boyar. He fully intended to carry out those threats no matter how physically impossible they sounded. Felix did not envy Adolphus Krieger if the old nobleman ever got his hands on him.

‘First, we have to find him,’ Gotrek said. His harsh gravelly voice sounded almost calm compared to the Kislevite’s but for all his bluster Ivan Petrovich would never in a hundred lifetimes be able to match the menace in it. The effect was like a dash of cold water in the Kislevite’s face.

‘How will we do that?’ The Slayer shook his head. He looked baffled and frustrated. Felix knew this would just make him even more short-tempered. Felix moved over to the charcoal brazier and warmed his hands. Ivan Petrovich could have had chambers in the Citadel if he wanted, but he chose to stay with his men, who were bivouacked in tents on the edge of the city in the old Kislevite horse-warrior style. Felix would have complained about the cold, but he’d already heard enough comments about soft southerners to last him a lifetime.

The march boyar’s question was a good one though. Felix had not held out much hope that Krieger would keep his promise and release Ulrika, and over the past few days even that tiny flicker had died. How did you find one man and his prisoner in a city as large and chaotic as Praag? How did you prevent them leaving if that is what they sought to do? Ivan Petrovich had his riders, but in the cold and the snow a sweep around the city would be difficult. On the plus side, anyone setting out would be more noticeable than usual. Not too many people were leaving the city at the moment. Trickles of refugees were still streaming in.

Felix was baffled. He needed to know more. He needed to know what the purpose of the talisman was, and what the dark magician intended to use it for. He desperately needed to know whether Ulrika was still alive.

If I were an evil sorcerer and I wanted to keep myself hidden in Praag, how would I do it? In the books and plays he had read as a youth it was always easy. Evil mages lived in ruined towers, crypts in cemeteries and huge mansions built with their ill gotten gains. A search of all such locations in the city should turn him up. Unfortunately, Felix had long ago learned that things were rarely that simple. If Krieger had any sense, he would be keeping a very low profile indeed, disguising himself somehow. How would he do that? Felix wished he knew.

‘You are looking thoughtful, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘Have you got any useful suggestions?’

Despite the apparent irony in his tone, Felix could tell that the Slayer was serious. During their long association, the thinking in situations like this usually fell to him. Sadly, at the hour of their greatest need, his mind was a blank. He shook his head and sat down on the thick rug covering the tent floor, and began to trace the convoluted weave with his fingers. His head hurt, his eyes ached and his nose was running. He was definitely coming down with something.

‘We need a magician,’ he said.

‘We had one,’ said Gotrek. ‘Unfortunately, he seems to be no longer with us.’

‘That might change,’ said Felix.

‘You’re saying we should be patient,’ said Ivan Petrovich. His tone implied that Felix had suggested they take up molesting goats.

‘Sometimes, it’s the only thing you can do,’ said Felix wearily.

‘Spare us the pearls of wisdom, manling.’

‘If you have any better ideas,’ said Felix. ‘I am open to them.’

The silence was deafening.

Roche drove the sledge towards the gates. On the back was a cheap wooden coffin, bags of feed for the ponies, a ragged tent and a few other things. He cracked the reins to keep the animals moving. The runners hissed on the snow as they moved towards the gate.

The guardsmen on duty looked at him with more suspicion than they normally might. Roche met their gazes easily. The sergeant looked at a scroll, and then eyed him once more, as if checking to see whether he matched a description. Roche kept an expression of bovine stupidity on his face. It matched the peasant garb he wore. If these fools were looking for the master, they would be looking for a nobleman, and maybe a blonde-haired girl. They would hardly be looking for him.

He was confident. If they searched the sledge he had his story ready and all the evidence would confirm it. Even so, he felt a slight tension rising within him. Things could go wrong. They had in the past; they might do so again now.

‘What’s your business, peasant?’ asked a short man who had emerged from behind the guards. His fine uniform and his swaggering arrogant manner marked him as an officer of some sort, most likely one of these so-called Kislevite nobles. Roche did not like his manner. He memorised the man’s face, in case an opportunity for vengeance should arise in the future. It wasn’t likely under the circumstances, but you could always hope. A few minutes alone with Roche and his flaying tools would soon rid him of that cocky manner, along with a lot of skin.

‘Going back to the farm, bury my brother,’ said Roche. He could do a convincing impression of the thick guttural Kislevite commoner accent when he had to. ‘I promised him I would. Said before he died that he wanted to lie alongside ma and I said I would see to it.’

‘Take him back and burn him, that’s my advice. There’s beastmen in those woods now, despite the patrols.’ It was the sergeant who spoke now. His tone was not unfriendly. There was a certain amount of sympathy in it. The hard-faced officer glared at the man. The sergeant’s face became a blank mask, his mouth snapped shut. The Praag city guard still used the lash to enforce discipline. Roche had found there was nothing like it for instilling obedience.

‘People try and smuggle things in coffins,’ said the officer. ‘People try all sorts of things.’

Roche looked at the arrogant idiot but kept his face blank. Most smugglers would be trying to get things into the city, not out. Still, it was not a peasant’s place to point these things out to a nobleman. Peasants in Kislev were obedient, just like they were back home in Sylvania.

‘I promised him,’ said Roche, as if he were so stupid he was still answering the sergeant. ‘He made me swear by Shallya and Ulric that I would do it. He loved ma. He loved the old place. He said we should never have come to the city. Said he wanted to be buried under the pines.’

‘Open the box,’ said the officer. It was obvious that for some reason he had taken a dislike to Roche. People often did. Roche was used to it. It was his appearance he supposed. Still, there was nothing he could do about it now.

‘But he’s dead,’ said Roche.

‘If you won’t open it, I’ll have my men do it.’ Roche saw the soldiers flinch. They might not have any objections to cutting a man down in hot blood, but none of them wanted to open a coffin that might contain a week-old corpse.

‘What did he die of?’ one of the guards, a whey-faced boy, whose tunic barely fitted, asked nervously.

‘The coughing sickness. A month ago he was healthy as you. One day he starts coughing and wheezing, says it’s difficult to breathe. Two days ago he was gone, after a month of sweating and fevers and wracking his lungs. It wasn’t pretty.’

The soldiers looked even more nervous now. There had been many strange plagues in the city since the siege. Maybe they were remnants of the evil spells cast by the followers of Nurgle, the Plague Lord. Maybe they were just a product of overcrowding, rotten food, the cold and bad sanitation. It was said more folk had died of sickness since the siege ended than had ever died in the battle. Roche could believe it. It was often the way.

‘I said open the box. Let’s take a look at what you got in there.’

‘A corpse,’ said Roche sullenly.

‘You’ll be one soon if you don’t open it,’ said the officer. He was obviously one of those small men who liked using every speck of power he had been granted. And he obviously liked venting his authority on such hulking giants as Roche. Roche would definitely remember this man. He might even make a special trip back to Praag for him, if the master allowed. He did not like being bullied.

Roche clambered down off the sledge and walked back to the coffin. The soldiers all drew back slightly save the officer who strode officiously along beside him. Just one minute with the flaying tools, that’s all I ask, thought Roche. He levered open the coffin, and did his best to stand so that his shadow fell on the master. He knew how the sun affected his tender skin.

The officer looked down on the recumbent form. The master was garbed as a peasant too, and his hair was messed up. His pallor did not require make-up; the smudges of dirt on his face served to highlight the paleness of his skin. They had done this several times in the past when they needed to leave a city in a hurry. Roche could remember his father and grandfather telling him tales of similar departures, some in considerably more dangerous circumstances than this one.

The officer removed his glove and laid a hand on the body’s chest, as if not wanting to quite believe his eyes.

‘Definitely dead,’ he said disappointedly.

‘That’s why I am going to bury him.’

‘And I’ll have less of your sauce,’ said the captain. ‘Another word and I’ll have my men peel your hide off.’

Roche looked at his boots to hide the fury in his eyes. He loathed these petty jumped-up officials with a passion and he had been forced to deal with more than his fair share down the years. Now is not the time, he told himself. He did his best to look like the absolute embodiment of browbeaten peasantry.

The officer looked like he was seriously considering having his men tear the coffin apart. That would not be such a good thing, Roche thought, for then they might find the hidden compartment beneath the master that held the talisman. Who knew what the master might do under those circumstances. Roche knew all about his obsession with that ancient trinket, had been forced to listen to tales of it on countless evenings, till even he was sick of it, and his master’s plans. If I hear the name of Nospheratus one more time, thought Roche, I will…

The officer took another closer look at the master. Roche held his breath. He had a dagger hidden in his boot. If anything happened, the first thing he would do was stick it in the cocky officer’s gut and twist. Men took a long time to die when you did that right. Roche knew this from practical experience. Eventually though, even this man seemed to tire of his petty bullying.

‘Get out of here,’ he said. ‘Go bury your dead.’

Roche nodded dumbly, clambered onto the sledge and cracked the reins. He could see looks of something like sympathy in the soldiers’ eyes.

‘It looks like your friend is starting to heal,’ said the priestess of Shallya. There was grey in her hair but her calm face was very pretty. She smiled as she spoke. ‘He’s still very, very weak but I think he has come back from the brink. I believe he will live.’

Felix glanced around the small spartan chamber. Max had been moved to the hospice on the temple grounds at the duke’s insistence; that way the most powerful of the healers would always be on call. Felix smiled back at the woman. ‘I am glad to hear it.’

‘Herr Schreiber is a very strong-willed man, and there is a power in him that aids the healing.’

‘Do you know what happened to him?’

‘No – the Mistress of Healers claims that some malign energy entered his brain somehow. It cost her an enormous effort to drive it out. She has been confined to her own room for a day now. Your friend must be a very important man for the duke to insist she did this.’

‘I am sure he will make a very large donation to the goddess,’ said Felix sourly. It seemed that even the supposedly independent and altruistic sisters of Shallya, helpmates to the poor and weak, were subject to political interference. He did not know why this should leave him feeling surprised and disappointed but it did. The woman caught his hard tone and her face became less friendly.

‘Can I look in on him now?’ he asked, forcing a smile. It was best not to antagonise the priestesses. You never knew when your own life might depend on their help. Their prayers and herbs seemed to have helped his own illness. He felt better now, even if he was not entirely healed.

‘If you wish, but be quiet. He is asleep, and he must rest to heal. And cover your mouth with a handkerchief. It would be terrible to have him recover from his own ailment only to be taken away by your flux.’

Felix nodded and walking as softly as he could, entered the sickroom. It smelled of mint and camphor and other herbs he remembered from his childhood when he had visited his mother during her last long illness.

Felix was shocked. Max had always been a powerful, energetic man. Now he looked pale and feeble indeed, as drawn as a consumption sufferer. It was such a dreadful change in so short a time. At least his breathing was deep and regular. Felix looked up at the dove icon on the walls, and offered a prayer to Shallya for mercy and healing for the wizard. If the goddess heard she gave no sign.

Felix turned to leave and heard a change in the wizard’s breathing. He turned to see that Max’s eyes were open wide, and there was a wildness and fear in them. His hand stretched out feebly and he whispered one word that sent a chill running down Felix’s spine.

‘Nagash,’ he said, and slumped back into unconsciousness.

‘Nagash,’ said Gotrek grimly. Even in the warmth of the tavern, surrounded by a hundred drunken warriors, the smell of beer and the sound of singing and dancing, the word was enough to chill Felix like the ague. He tried to tell himself it was his lingering fever but knew that this time it was not. The name conjured up an image of a remote time when dark gods wandered the world and slew entire kingdoms. Not even the cruellest of mothers would use it to frighten the most disobedient children.

‘A name of ill omen indeed,’ said Ivan Petrovich, sending another glass of vodka tumbling down his throat. His hand shook as he did so.

‘Snorri doesn’t like this one little bit,’ said Snorri, and for once Felix had to agree with him whole-heartedly.

‘So, our pet wizard thinks this talisman is somehow connected with the Great Necromancer, manling?’

‘We didn’t exactly discuss the matter. It was the only word he said before he fell back into a coma. It would explain why this Krieger was so keen to get his hands on the thing though.’

Felix considered this as he took another slug of vodka. The fiery liquid warmed his belly, but did nothing to remove the chill from his heart. The Great Necromancer, he thought. A being who had fought with the man-god Sigmar before the Empire was even founded and who, if dark legend were to be believed, was responsible for the slaying of an entire nation in the dawn ages of the world. Nagash was by all accounts the mightiest wizard the world had ever known, a necromancer who had mastered the darkest secrets of life and death. Who knew what instrument of ultimate evil he had been capable of creating? Whatever it was, it was now in the hands of Adolphus Krieger, or whatever his true name was. Along with Ulrika.

Felix did not want to consider that. He was having a hard enough time keeping the idea that Krieger was the blood drinker who had killed those women out of his aching head.

Felix shuddered. This was all they needed. Ulrika abducted, Max in a coma, the Chaos hordes on the march, and now an ancient artefact in the hands of a mad sorcerer. How could it get worse?

Adolphus felt better. It was night, and his skin was starting to heal. The moon’s eerie light gave the snow-covered landscape a spectral beauty and filled him with the urge to hunt. From the window of the hunting lodge he could see fat Osrik and his men approaching. There were a number of sleds and bodyguards. His keen eyes could make out the men and women wrapped in heavy furs. Doubtless they had not had trouble getting out of the gates. They were after all a pack of well-known local nobles, and if they were so foolish as to want to go on a hunting trip, no gate guards were going to contradict them.

He could see that the girl Ulrika was with them, her head leaning against Osrik’s fat shoulder. She was still stunned by the kiss he had given her last night. Adolphus was looking forward to another sip of her blood. It looked as if the plan had worked. They were all outside the city now, and preparations were being made for the trip to Sylvania. His coven had seen to it that he was well provided with everything he, Roche and the girl could need for the trip. They would all soon be ready to go.

He clutched at the talisman. It hung around his neck now. He could feel something in it, something that was responding to his presence. He put his hand on it just to feel the cool stone under his fingers. It was certainly a fascinating thing, at least to his kind, and that was what made it so dangerous.

Once he was back in his adopted homeland it would grant him power undreamed of over the aristocracy of the night. He would become the Lord of Vampires in truth, and his reign would be eternal.

Now it was time to go and greet the girl. Perhaps she might prove to be the one.

BOOK TWO

SYLVANIA

‘Winter was no time to travel in Kislev. The snow, the wolves, the unending tedium of sleigh travel made this journey even more miserable than my usual experiences when travelling with the Slayer. This was in no way helped by the recurring illness that plagued me, or by the general gloominess of my companions. Nonetheless, after what I experienced on arriving at our destination, I would rather make a hundred trips across the ice wastes of Kislev, than a single journey through the bleak pine forests of Sylvania.’

— From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol IV, by Herr Felix Jaeger
(Altdorf Press, 2505)

FIVE

‘How long have I been… ill?’ asked Max Schreiber. He felt weak, and there was a horror in his mind that had not been there before. He raised his hand. It looked more like a claw, all muscle and bone. His nails were long and untrimmed. The skin appeared near translucent. Moving it took so much effort.

‘Three days,’ said Felix Jaeger.

Max raised himself up in the bed and focused his eyes on the renegade poet. Felix did not look so good either. His eyes were red and he was unkempt and unshaven. Max could smell him from where he lay, a mixture of booze and unwashed clothing. He coughed hackingly into his bunched-up fist. Max attempted a smile. It felt as if the skin of his face would crack from the effort.

‘And you have been on a drinking binge all of this time, by the look of it.’

‘Near enough,’ said Felix. He sounded grim, and he looked even grimmer. There was a wildness in his eyes that had not been there before. He looked more like the Slayer than his usual amiable self.

The effort of sitting up had drained Max. He allowed himself to slump back onto the bed and stare at the ceiling. It was whitewashed. The room smelled of mint and healing herbs. The walls were white as well. From the corner of his eye he caught sight of a dove icon.

‘It pains me to be so clichéd, but where am I?’ he asked. He could guess the answer but he wanted to know for certain.

‘The hospice of the Temple of Shallya.’

‘I have been that ill?’

‘Yes.’

Max let out a long breath and tried to gather his thoughts. The last thing he could remember was the house of the nobleman Andriev. No. He had examined something, a talisman. After that, his memories were… confused. He could remember nightmares, a skeletal giant with a face of death and horror, teeth that grinned like those of a skull, flesh peeling away from the face, eyes that were pits of greenish putrefying slime. He remembered strange visions of a desert land and a huge black pyramid; of wars in which the dead fought the living and pale aristocrats drank blood from bronze chalices and practised dark sorcery to prolong their unnaturally extended lives. From his studies he thought he could put a name to that figure and to that distant dusty land of death. He did not want to. He found his thoughts shying away from those memories. There were things there he was not ready to deal with yet. Perhaps not ever.

He reached up with his hand and felt his face. His beard was long and unkempt. His cheeks felt gaunt. He touched his heart. It still beat. Somehow he had been afraid that it would not.

‘You look like a man who has seen a ghost,’ said Felix.

‘In a way, I think I have.’

‘When you were ill you were raving. You kept mentioning a name.’

Max could guess what that name was. He did not want Felix to say it, to remind him of the things he had seen. The man would not stop though.

‘Nagash.’

Max stiffened. He knew he would have to face the thing sooner or later. He had not become a master sorcerer through lack of a strong will. He forced himself to breathe normally, to control his racing heart, to ignore the cold sweat on his brow.

‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Nagash.’

Memories flooded back. There had been so much power concealed in that amulet, woven with such cunning and skill that Max could still not quite believe it. The thing had been trapped against just such an investigation as Max had attempted, and he had triggered the trap. It was a wonder that he had survived at all. He guessed he almost hadn’t. Nagash had certainly gone to a lot of trouble to protect his secrets but that was understandable. The Great Necromancer was hardly the only magician who had ever tried to keep his secrets from other mages. His protections has simply been more effective than most.

With just an instant’s warning Max had managed to shield himself against the brunt of the attack, yet still it had overwhelmed his defences. He knew he needed time now, to check for damage, to see if his mind had been tainted, if his memories were whole, if his skill…

Instinctively he reached out to grasp the winds of magic. Power flowed. He grasped at its flows and wove them into a probe; then, realising how weak he still was, he released the power. At least he could still work magic, he thought. His skills were still intact.

He realised that Felix was gawking at him and his hand was on his sword. ‘What is it?’

‘Your eyes started to glow and you sat directly up. From the look on your face I thought you might attack me.’

‘No. I was just testing to see if… if I was still capable of working magic.’

Felix nodded, although it was plain from his expression that he still did not understand. ‘What has Nagash got to do with the Eye of Khemri?’

‘He made it. He made it a long time ago, and with a specific purpose. I managed to divine at least that much before the trap was sprung.’

‘What does it do?’

Max thought about it. He was sure that he had known the purpose of the Eye, but it was buried in his mind now underneath the cascade of horrific dreams and visions. Given time, he would be able to put it all back together. Given time he would remember. At least he hoped he would.

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Yet?’

Max did not feel like explaining the whole situation to Felix at that moment. ‘Things are still a little confused in my mind. It will come back.’

Another thought struck him. ‘Where’s Ulrika?’

Felix’s reaction surprised him. If he had blasted the young man with magic he could not have looked more pained. Suddenly it occurred to him that there might have been a reason for Felix’s drinking, and his slow, hesitant tone of voice. ‘She’s not dead, is she? What happened? What happened in Andriev’s mansion?’

Felix told him. Max listened. What he heard did not make him happy. When Felix finished, he glanced around. ‘Where are my robes? I must be up and about. We must find her.’

Felix gave him an ironic grin. ‘How? Gotrek and I have walked our feet off looking for her. We’ve wandered all over the city, checked every graveyard, and followed every rumour of a magician’s presence. Nothing. Ivan Petrovich has had his men sweep the area around the city. Nothing. The duke has given Krieger and Ulrika’s description to every gate guard. Guess what? Nothing.’

Max did not like Felix’s tone or his appearance. ‘So after that you took to investigating every tavern and the bottom of every beer glass to see if you could find her there?’ he asked nastily.

Felix’s fingers whitened on the hilt of his sword then a guilty expression played over his face. ‘I could think of nothing more to do. I tried everything I could think of and nothing worked. I was hoping that you would be able to do something, when you recovered. That is why I was waiting here.’

He sounded so obviously distressed that Max took pity on him. ‘You did the right thing then. I can find her. At least I hope I can.’

‘How? Magic?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you are better at this than half the diviners in the city.’

‘I have an advantage over them.’

‘What is that?’

‘I cast a spell of location on the talisman before I began investigating it. With any luck it still holds and I can track it down.’

‘So you can find the amulet. That doesn’t mean you can find her.’

‘Don’t be obtuse, Felix. Krieger went to a lot of trouble to get the thing. I doubt he would just fling it away. Particularly not if it’s as powerful as I believe it is. No dark magician would do anything other than keep it and try and use it. If I can find the talisman, I can find him, and if I can find him, we can find Ulrika.’

‘If she’s still alive. If he hasn’t offered her up as a sacrifice to some dark god. If…’

Max cut Felix off with a gesture of his hands although his words had almost stopped his heart with fear. Ulrika must be alive. She could not be dead. Max loved her and he would not allow it to be so. Realistically, there was every chance that Felix’s suspicions were correct but he would not allow himself to consider the possibility.

‘Pull yourself together, man. If we find him and she’s alive, we will free her. If she’s dead…’ His mouth went dry just saying the words, and he felt like his tongue would not move. He forced himself to go on. ‘If she’s dead, I will have vengeance on Krieger and all who might follow him.’

Felix straightened, and the wild glint in his eye died down slightly. He let go of his sword and ran his hand across his chin as if realising for the first time how unkempt his stubble had become.

‘How soon can you start?’ he asked.

‘As soon as I am out of this bed. And Felix…’

‘What?’

‘Get some rest. You look like hell.’

‘Are you sure this will work?’ asked Ivan Petrovich Straghov for the hundredth time.

Max sighed with exasperation and glanced back at the walls of the city. Felix could tell he was still exhausted. He was keeping himself going by sheer force of will, and the march boyar’s constant badgering was wearing him out.

‘If you do not trust in my magic you are welcome to take your men and ride off in any direction you please,’ said the wizard. His tone made it clear he was at the end of his patience. For a moment, the old man looked as if he might just do that. Worry about his daughter was making him even less restrained than usual, and he had not been a patient man to begin with.

‘I am sure Max is more than capable of finding your daughter,’ said Felix diplomatically. Felix wanted the old man and the twenty riders he had brought with him. Riding through Kislev in the depths of winter was bad at the best of times. Now, with the Chaos horde on the move, and maybe skaven in the area, it could be downright suicidal. This might well suit Gotrek and Snorri but Felix had every intention of living to set Ulrika free, and twenty hardened veterans of the northern marches along with their stout leader greatly increased the odds of this.

Ivan stood for a moment, then slapped Max so heartily on the back that he started a coughing fit. ‘I did not mean to insult you, Max, my friend, it’s just…’

Max looked wretched but he gave the boyar a wan smile, and said, ‘I understand. We are all worried about her too.’

Felix looked at their small caravan. Each of the riders had brought two extra ponies. There were three sleds, for the supplies, for Max and for the dwarfs. All of the sleds were piled high with food and grain. Felix hoped that it would be enough. Not for the first time he wished he had known when or if Malakai Makaisson would return with the Spirit of Grungni. There had been no word of the great airship for days and they could wait no longer. The Slayer engineer had muttered something about refitting at the Iron Tower when last he had seen him. If only he were here now, their mission would have been so much simpler.

Gotrek and Snorri eyed the ponies warily. Both dwarfs were of the opinion that horses were only good for eating but even they could see the point of taking sledges in this weather. Felix only hoped the beasts could endure the cold better than he was doing. Even through two layers of clothing and the thickest cloak and gloves he could find he was freezing. He wished he were back inside the White Boar warming his hands by the fire and glugging down hot spiced wine. The illness that had plagued him for weeks had returned during his drinking spree, and neither the priestesses’ herbs nor Max’s spells seemed to be of much help. He just hoped things did not get any worse.

‘Time to go,’ said Gotrek, clambering onto the sled behind Felix and giving the ponies a threatening look. If the animals were capable of reading murderous glares they would have known that they had better behave themselves. Snorri clambered up beside Max. Ivan himself took the reins of the third sledge. The riders spread out in formation. A pair of scouts moved ahead, another two pairs watched the flanks, and a rearguard dropped back to watch their tail. The rest rode along in a double line ahead of them.

Snow crunched beneath hooves and hissed beneath runners. The sledge jerked forward as Felix tugged the reins. They were off. Behind him the golden-domed towers of Praag receded into the distance.

Max closed his eyes and invoked the finding spell once more. Flows of magic swept into him and reinforced the long, thin cords that tied him to the Eye of Khemri. It was as if a long incredibly fine cable bound him to the talisman. He could not tell exactly how long, but he knew the distance was great, and that the direction they had to go in was south-west.

Hopefully, as they got closer, he would be able to divine more, but at the moment this would have to be enough. He was lucky the tenuous link held at all over so great a distance. Hell, he was lucky to still be alive, after his encounter with the traps left by the Great Necromancer.

Max had spent a great deal of time over the past few days wondering about that. He was still capable of invoking the power. His skills and memories seemed to be more or less intact. He could discover no taint on his soul left by that overwhelming tide of dark magic. In itself that meant nothing. Any spell capable of corrupting his thoughts would also be able to prevent him from seeing it. Max knew that it would take a mage of incredible power and skill to be able to do that. Until a few days ago he would not have believed it was possible. Now he knew it was. Just from the weaving left on the Eye of Khemri, Max knew Nagash would have been capable of such a thing. The man, or whatever he had become, had been a being of almost god-like power.

How was that possible, Max wondered? How could any mage have been so powerful? Perhaps magical energy had been more abundant when the world was young. Perhaps he had lived in a time when the tides of dark magical energy had risen to peaks undreamed of in modern times. Perhaps that was what was happening now, as the Chaos Wastes expanded and the armies of the Dark Powers marched south.

Or perhaps the Great Necromancer had simply been born with powers far beyond those of any modern magician. It was possible. All sorcerers varied in power and potential. Max had known men twice his age and experience that did not have a tenth of his current strength. He had seen apprentices who he had thought with practice could become stronger than he. At least, he had believed that at the time.

His encounter with the defences Nagash had laid on the Eye of Khemri had left him filled with doubt. In all his life he had never encountered the work of a magician so much superior to him. The mages who had cast the spells for the Chaos horde during the siege had been stronger than he, but at least he had understood what they were doing. And he had known that their power came in part from the huge torrent of dark magic they were tapping into. That skaven grey seer had been more powerful because he had used warpstone to enhance his strength, and Max doubted that he had truly been that much stronger or better when it came to working magic.

But Nagash was something else entirely. Max had never encountered spellcraft as sophisticated as that laid on the amulet before, nor natural strength so great it could leave a resonance down through three millennia. When he had discovered the defensive spell on the Eye he had encountered the work of a being as far beyond him as he was beyond most ordinary people when it came to magic. He knew that no matter how hard he struggled to learn or how much power he acquired he would never be a match for that being.

What had happened to him had been more than the hideous visions and nightmares. It was corrosive to his self-esteem, damaging to his confidence, and Max knew that for a mage that could be fatal. So much of spellcasting was dependent on sheer willpower, and anything that weakened your will diminished your ability. If you suffered a lapse when weaving a dangerous spell, it might have deadly results. Max had heard of it happening. The outcome had not been pleasant either for the mage or for the people around him. He knew that he could afford no such lapses at the moment. Not with Ulrika’s life at stake.

He wondered if his feelings of inferiority were in some way a product of the defences on the talisman. It would be a very subtle way of destroying an enemy magician, to undermine his confidence in this way. He doubted that Nagash would have need of such subtlety, although doubtless he would have been capable of it. Why had he concealed the power within the talisman? Why had he protected it with such defences?

Max could at least answer the latter. He had brooded on it long enough. A magician as powerful as Nagash would have had many adversaries, and it would have been only common sense to shield his work against falling into the hands of his enemies. The thought of enemies brought another image out of the whirling chaos of nightmares and visions into his mind. He saw those pale blood-drinking nobles again, and knew that the talisman was something to do with them – but what? All he could hope for was that soon the turmoil in his mind would settle and he would be able to make sense out of the mad whirl of strange thoughts the talisman had left there. He told himself that Ulrika’s life depended on it. And just as importantly, his own life depended on it too, in more ways than one. He needed to know what they would face when they finally overtook Adolphus Krieger. And he needed to start rebuilding his own self-confidence.

Think, he told himself. Look on the bright side. Learn what you can from this experience and use it to make yourself a better man, and a better magician. You have always known that there were more powerful mages than you. It in no way diminishes your accomplishments. You have done the best you can with the gifts you have been given.

You survived what happened, and you have not been broken by it. You’ve learned things. Granted you could have lived without learning some of those things but it happened. How many people can say they have had direct insight into the mind of the Great Necromancer? How many people have survived being crushed by one of his spells?

Slowly, a little at a time, Max wrestled with his self-doubt. He knew that finding himself again would be a long slow process but at least he had made a start. He only hoped he would be ready to face this dark magician when the time came. As his thoughts raced another, more frightening possibility, entered his mind.

He had triggered the trap himself, had taken the full brunt of its energies. Would the spell reset itself? Or would Krieger find the way open to easily attune the amulet? Another thought struck Max. The defences on the amulet had not been triggered until after he had tried to analyse its structure. Perhaps the amulet was intended to be used: perhaps it had some sinister, secret purpose the Great Necromancer wanted hidden. For a moment, Max could almost feel that vast skeletal hand reaching out across the ages to tug at the destinies of mortals.

He shivered, and wondered whether or not they would be doing Adolphus Krieger a favour by killing him.

Ivan Petrovich Straghov clutched the reins of the sled through hands made clumsy by the thick fur-lined gloves he wore. Snowflakes fell, muffling the stamp of ponies’ hooves and the jingle of harnesses. The wind bit at his skin. All around thick pine forests loomed over the road. Behind him he could hear the other sledges moving over the snow.

He cursed the weather. He cursed the man who had kidnapped his daughter but most of all he cursed himself. He had not been there when his daughter needed him. He had been indulging himself at the duke’s banquet when she was being borne off by some crazed magician. He had spoiled her shamelessly since the early death of her beloved mother, let her do most anything she wanted, even run after that young outlander Felix Jaeger, when she should have been safe at home.

Only there was no home, not now. His mansion had been all but destroyed by a skaven assault months ago, and doubtless anything left had been reduced to rubble by the oncoming hordes of Chaos. All of his vague hopes for a quiet old age, surrounded by grandchildren, had gone now. He felt strangely restless and rootless. The previous month of guerrilla warfare and riding with the muster had made him realise that he was not a young man any more. He was a fat old man, used to his creature comforts and grown soft with good living. It had taken an enormous effort of will to keep up with the younger men in his troop and not to show his fatigue and despair. It was taking an even more enormous effort not to give in to it now.

He tried telling himself that she was a brave and resourceful young woman, as well schooled with weapons as any warrior in his band. It made no difference. He could only hope and pray that Ulrika was still alive, and not sacrificed to some dark god. He could only hope that Max Schreiber knew what he was doing. He drove on, guilt and worry eating at his heart, his thoughts as bleak as the weather and the desolate surroundings.

Adolphus Krieger looked around the inside of the coach. It was comfortable. The seats were plush leather; there was plenty of room for himself and the girl. It had been built for Osrik by the best coachwright in Kislev and the quality showed. It was a rich man’s toy. A luxury coach built on runners. Perhaps in a country where the winters could last six months, and where snow covered the ground for most of that time, owning it made as much sense as owning a coach. In any case, whatever the reason, he was glad Osrik had indulged himself.

The girl gave him a sullen look. She looked pale, drawn and defiant. She did not understand what was happening to her. Few mortals did understand the effects of the dark kiss. She was fighting against it. That was all right, Adolphus thought. He would enjoy breaking her will. He smiled at her, not showing his teeth.

‘Admit it,’ he said silkily. ‘You enjoyed it. Last night you bared your neck before I even asked.’

That was not quite true but it was close enough. She had not fought very hard when he had embraced her. He knew the pleasure that most mortals took from being tapped. It was an ecstasy unlike any other. Once addicted to it, they would do anything to experience it again, even if it killed them. As it often did.

The girl glared at him, unwilling to admit that there was even the slightest grain of truth in what he had said, unable to acknowledge even to herself that there might be. And yet, he knew there was. Slowly that knowledge would become undeniable. Slowly it would overcome her fears, revulsions, and denials. Just the element of doubt it created would undermine her resistance as she learned she could no longer trust her own judgement, her old sense of morality. He had seen it happen many times before over the centuries. Once begun, the process was inevitable unless he chose to stop it.

He flipped open his book, an old tattered vellum copy of the Prophecies of Nospheratus, bound in manskin leather. It fell open at the section concerning the portents of the Age of Blood. Sure enough, the signs were all there. The armies of beasts were on the march. The hungry moon was devouring the sky. The cities of men burned. And now the Pale Prince had recovered the Eye of the Great Undying. It was here, burning on his throat. He could feel the subtle power of the thing. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of sudden movement.

Swift as a snake the girl went for her dagger. He smiled. He had expected her to. It was one of the reasons he had let her keep the weapon. She was very fast. The dagger would have been in a mortal’s heart before he could even have reacted. Adolphus was no mortal though. He caught her wrist and almost gently forced her hand back. The pressure was no less irresistible because of the gentleness. Within moments, he had forced the weapon back into its sheath. He let the book fall onto his knees.

‘Temper, temper, my sweet,’ he said mockingly, and caught her wrist again as she attempted to slap him. She would have to learn that she was helpless here; that there was nothing she could do to stop him. First, she would learn that physically, and then inevitably she would learn it in her heart and soul too.

‘Bloodsucker,’ she said spitefully and turned and glared out the window. Adolphus could see the two small punctures in her neck. He found the sight strangely arousing and felt the urge to sample her blood once more. He forced the urge down although it was difficult – there was something in the girl’s blood that gave him great pleasure. Perhaps that was why he spent so many waking hours working on her, subtly questioning her about her companions. He was pleased that he had managed to resist temptation. The more leagues they put between them and Praag the less the beast within troubled him. Or perhaps it was the distance they put between themselves and the north. In any case, it did not matter; what was important was that his self-control was returning.

‘I am,’ he said, allowing some of his pride to show in his voice, ‘and it’s no bad thing to be. I have lived for centuries, and I have seen wonders beyond your ability to imagine.’

‘You bought those centuries with the blood of innocents.’

He laughed. ‘Most gave themselves to me willingly enough, as you will soon.’

‘Never,’ she said, and sounded like she meant it. ‘I would rather die first.’

‘Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. You have no idea of what you speak. You are a long time in the grave, after all. Why rush to get there? Why hurry to let the worms eat those beautiful eyes, or maggots crawl through those full and lovely lips?’

For a moment there was no answer, then she spoke: ‘What do you know of death? Of true death? Of eternal rest? You are a walking corpse kept alive by the blood of the living.’

So she was going to be difficult after all. Good. The struggle always made things more interesting. Breaking her would give him something to do, until he got to the keep and could attune the talisman to his will. ‘I know enough to realise that I would prefer not to experience it.’

‘That is not an answer.’

‘What would you have me say? I am not a priest to speak knowledgeably of things I have never seen, nor talk of realms I have never been. I tell no lies.’

Adolphus suspected he had gotten her attention now. He sounded sincere, and while he was perfectly capable of counterfeiting sincerity when he wanted to, he was not doing so in this instance. There was no need to. He merely addressed himself to the doubts and fears that all mortals felt, that he himself had felt when he still breathed, and which he still felt even occasionally now.

‘You are saying the priests lie? That the Book of Morr is not true? That the words of the gods are lies?’

He reached out and grabbed her by the chin, gently but inexorably turning her head so that he could look into her eyes. ‘Have you ever spoken to a god, pretty one?’

‘I have prayed.’

‘And has the god ever spoken back to you?’

‘My prayers have been answered.’

‘I do not mean did you get what you asked for, or something you thought you had asked for. I meant: has a god ever spoken to you directly?’ He saw she was breathing harder now. Her gaze met his challengingly.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Yet you are willing to take the priest’s words for what they claim to be true. You are willing to believe in entities you have never seen.’

‘I have never seen Altdorf but I know it’s there.’

‘You could go to Altdorf if you wished, but could you speak with your priest’s gods?’

‘There have been miracles, worked by priests in the name of their gods.’

‘We both believe in magic. I believe you know a wizard. I am sure he could duplicate the effects of most of those miracles. Who is to say that the priests are not simply magicians themselves?’

Silence. He let it draw out and smiled at her mockingly. She did not flinch but glared at him. He decided to surprise her. ‘I do believe that gods exist. I have seen enough evidence to know it. I just do not believe they are what the priests tell you.’

‘You have seen evidence?’

‘So have you if you think about it. Only a fool could have looked on the Chaos horde and deny the Lords of Chaos exist.’

‘What about our gods?’

‘Your gods, you mean?’

‘If you would have it so.’

‘I believe that something exists but I do not think they are what mortals believe they are.’

She refused to be drawn so he continued. ‘I think the gods are beings as much beyond ordinary mortals as mortals are beyond dogs. When a dog looks at you, do you think he understands what goes on in your mind?’

‘My old dog did.’

‘Could he understand poetry?’

‘I don’t see what that has to do with it.’

‘I mean there are things that you can understand and think about that no dog ever could, no matter how well he understood your emotions or moods. I think your gods are creatures like that. I think they look down on you mortals and are amused. After all, they have the perspective of aeons and knowledge that far surpasses yours.’

‘I think you are projecting how you see yourself onto the gods. I think you no more understand them than you claim I do.’

Adolphus looked at her, surprised at how perceptive the point was. Obviously the girl was intelligent. Excellent, she would provide stimulating company on this rather dull trip. He had become rather bored with the company of Osrik and the rest of the coven. Fawning respect and devotion grew as wearisome as anything else when overindulged in. Anything else except blood.

Now that the immediate threat was past he found he rather missed the prospect of the Slayer and his companions showing up. It had added a touch of excitement to the proceedings. Still, these lands were said to be dangerous. He was fairly sure that something interesting would turn up before the trip was over.

‘At least we are heading back towards the Empire,’ said Felix, squinting into the snowfall. The cold wind made his eyes water, and the liquid was freezing on his cheeks. He was glad he had invested in an extra pair of gloves before they left Praag. Even through the thickness of both pairs he thought his hands might freeze to the reins. All of it increased the misery brought on by his illness. Perhaps going out drinking all of those nights back in Praag had not been such a good idea. He had never recovered properly.

Gotrek said nothing, merely glared out into the snow as if it were a personal enemy. His face was set in the grim expression that dwarfs always wore when forced to endure hardship. Underneath it he suspected the Slayer was quite enjoying himself. Dwarfs seemed to delight in undergoing physical travails. It was one of their least appealing characteristics as far as Felix was concerned. Hardship was something he could cheerfully live without.

Ahead of them, Max and Snorri were barely visible, and the riders were but dim shadows in the snowfall. Felix wondered how the scouts would ever find their way back through this grim weather but somehow they did. He supposed they were used to weather like this coming from the wilds of Northern Kislev. They had sneered at Felix’s claims concerning how cold it was, saying that this was like spring compared to the weather back home. Felix was unsure whether they were kidding him or not. He suspected they were not.

Certainly, they had shown an uncanny aptitude for finding and building shelter. Last night Ivan Petrovich had even showed them how to build a little circular house from snow and ice. It had proven surprisingly warm once they were inside, certainly more comfortable and less drafty than the tents had been.

Their progress was slow though. Moving across this part of Kislev as winter’s grip tightened was a nightmare. Had it not been for his concern over Ulrika, Felix would have begged them to turn back. He was fed up with the unending chill, the biting wind and the distant howling of wolves. They reminded him only too well of his encounter with the Arisen of Ulric under similar circumstances back in the Empire. Three days of this was more than enough for one lifetime. He knew though that he would have to endure much more. According to Max there was at least a hundred leagues between them and the talisman, and it had not stopped moving.

There were times moving through these white wastes when Felix felt the sheer futility of what they were doing. It was a kind of madness to chase after a magician with such a long head start through this dismal chilling landscape, in the faint hope that they might find Ulrika alive.

At least that was what he and Max were doing. He was certain that Gotrek and Snorri and Ivan would follow this Krieger to the ends of the earth now, for vengeance if she was killed or, in the case of the Slayers, simply to fulfil the oaths they had sworn.

There were a few small mercies to thank Sigmar for. So far they had not encountered any beastmen or Chaos warriors. From the airship the landscape seemed to have been teeming with them, but on the ground things were different. The speed of the Spirit of Grungni had been deceptive. On the ground, you came to realise just how vast and empty a land Kislev was, and quite how much distance really separated the various forces.

He wondered what was going to happen afterwards, if they did overhaul Krieger and reclaim Ulrika. The danger was not past. The winter had merely slowed down the great Chaos invasion and prevented almost any movement at all on the human side. Once the spring came, it would be total war on a scale the world had not seen for two centuries. Maybe trying to save a single woman in the midst of all this was futile. Perhaps they would all be dead soon anyway. At Praag they had succeeded only in slowing down and defeating one small part of an immense army. The forces of Chaos seemed limitless, and their daemonic masters did not care how many lives they expended in the pursuit of their goals. In the face of such opposition, it sometimes seemed inevitable to Felix that they would be defeated, and the world would end in fire and ruin.

But what could he do? Only what he saw best. And to tell the truth he would not mind a little fire right now, even if he could live without the ruin. Poor as the joke was, it cheered him up a little, for a few minutes until the cold started to sink into his bones again and his hacking cough returned.

It had been a village until quite recently. Now, the few stone buildings were soot-blackened rubble. The wooden palisade had left a few charred stumps rising above the snow. The evidence of human habitation had been buried beneath the drifts, along with most of the corpses. Felix felt guilty, as if somehow his thoughts of a few minutes ago had brought this into being. Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself, this place was destroyed days ago. Still, the feeling stayed with him and added to his gloom.

‘Look at this,’ said Marek, the tracker. He brandished something long and white and mottled with brown. Felix joined Gotrek as he stamped over. Ivan Petrovich was already there. Flakes of snow drifted down from the sky. All around the rolling plain was silent save for the eerie sweep of the wind.

‘What is it?’ Felix asked.

‘Human bone,’ said Gotrek, glancing at the thing in Marek’s hand.

‘A thigh bone,’ said Marek. He had a long thin thoughtful face, and he rarely spoke more than he had to. ‘Part of one, at least. Broken for marrow.’

‘Wolves?’ asked Felix hopefully. As soon as the words had left Marek’s lips other, more horrible possibilities had entered his mind, but he did not want to be the one to voice them. Wolves did not attack fortified villages and burn them to the ground.

‘Nah, this was split lengthways, and the break’s not made by wolf teeth. Men or things like men did this.’

‘Beastman work,’ boomed Ivan Petrovich. ‘I’ve seen enough like it up along the marches to recognise it.’

‘They must have got hungry and stopped for a snack on their long march,’ said Gotrek. His scowl was ferocious. He loathed beastmen.

Max came over and joined them. He moved slowly as if still husbanding his strength. A huge bearskin robe covered his thick woollen robes. His gloved hands clutched his staff.

‘Do you think Ulrika and Krieger might have been here when the attack came?’ Felix asked, voicing a question that was in all their minds.

Max shook his head. ‘The talisman is still on the move.’

‘The beastmen might have it,’ said Felix sourly.

Max glanced at him coldly. ‘There is no residue of magic about this place. If it were attacked, Krieger would surely have summoned the dark to defend himself. If he had I would know. I do not think he was here when this happened.’ He sounded so certain that Felix let the matter drop. Perhaps he just did not want to acknowledge any other possibility.

‘Do you think the beastmen are still about?’ Felix asked, casting a nervous glance about them.

‘No. This is two days old. They’re long gone,’ said Marek.

‘Pity,’ muttered Gotrek running his thumb along the blade of his axe till a drop of bright blood was drawn.

‘Do not fear, Gotrek Gurnisson. There will be plenty of work for your axe before we’re done. All the hordes of hell are on the move this winter.’

‘Bring them on,’ said Gotrek, gazing bleakly out into the woods. ‘Some exercise will help ward off the chill.’

From out of night and distance, Adolphus heard the howls: wolves, baying in pursuit of prey. His little caravan was the prey. Normally, the beasts would not have given them the slightest trouble, but there were other voices mingled with those of the wolves: goblins, wolf riders. The greenskins must be desperate, he thought, to come so far into the lands of men this winter. No doubt they had been displaced from their homelands by the southward drift of the Chaos horde. Not just men were running before it like deer before the beaters. Well, let them come on; they would soon learn the folly of attacking him.

Ulrika’s blood filled him with its sweetness. It left a warm glow in him like fine wine once had. He had heard that some of the Arisen drank down the memories and emotions of those they tapped but he had never experienced anything like that himself until now. It seemed some of the girl’s fire had found its way from her veins into his. It was an odd feeling but not unpleasant. The girl herself lay asleep and drained on the leather seat, a satiated smile on her face. Adolphus knew that look from other times and other feedings; she would be asleep for hours. He could sense some of her emotions now. The blood bond between them was growing.

The sledge shuddered to a halt. There was a tap on the window and Roche’s ugly face appeared, as pockmarked as the face of the greater moon. ‘It seems we are pursued, master,’ he said as calmly as if there had not been half a hundred hungry greenskins on their trail. ‘Do you wish me to drive or tell the others to make ready to fight?’

‘I do not believe there will be any need for a fight, Roche,’ said Adolphus. ‘I doubt the wolves will attack us. I have an understanding with their kind.’

He opened the door and stepped down into the chill night air. He did not feel the cold the way he had once done, and he found the wind’s chill bite refreshing. All around them snow blanketed the trees. He had always liked snow. It was the colour of bone, of blank paper. It spoke to him of innocence and fresh starts. Osrik and the other nobles gazed worriedly at him from the windows of their own sleds. The surviving bodyguards looked as if they could not decide quite whether to make ready to fight or to run. Adolphus favoured them with a smile that he guessed they would find in no way reassuring. ‘Don’t worry, my brave friends,’ he said. ‘I will protect you.’

He strode back along their trail, until he stood between the small circle of sleds and their oncoming pursuers. He inspected his nails while he waited. There was just the faintest of pink flushes beneath them from the blood he had just drank.

The baying was coming closer. The sound was lonely, even coming from the throats of a pack, and it spoke to him. Despite what he had said to Ulrika about dogs and poetry, he felt that there was a bond between him and the creatures. They both understood the loneliness of the predator. He shook his head. Such thoughts had no place in his mind at a time like this. It must be the girl’s blood, or the presence of the talisman.

Suddenly the pack erupted from the woods, snow fountaining behind them as they ran. Huge creatures, larger than normal wolves by far, white furred for the winter, red eyes burning with fierce hunger. They were beautiful creatures, but their riders were not.

They were smaller than men, perhaps the size of a big ten year-old boy, green-skinned, and wrapped in the thickest of furs and clothes that looked like old chequered coloured rags. Their mouths were filled with huge, sharp snaggly teeth. Their eyes were yellow and the size of saucers, and Adolphus knew they could see in the dark almost as well as he. Their arms were long in proportion to their bodies, perhaps half as long again as human arms. In their huge gnarled hands they clutched spears and bows and scimitars. Adolphus strode confidently towards them.

This took them aback. It was not what they were expecting. One of the goblins, larger and more ugly than the rest, raised his paw and the line of riders came to a ragged halt. A rider took aim with his short bow and loosed an arrow. Adolphus stepped to one side and let it pass by so that it thunked into the side of the coach behind him. He doubted that the stone-tipped arrows could harm him, but they would smart, and Adolphus was no more fond of pain than anyone else. The leader turned and glared at the smaller goblin who had shot. Sensing Adolphus’s approach and catching his scent on the wind, the wolves began to snarl and slink alternately. The leader of the pack, a massive beast, glared at him with eyes that matched the goblin chieftain’s for fury.

Adolphus stopped twenty paces away from the goblins. By now, he knew Roche would have unlimbered his crossbow behind him and have taken a bead on the leader. It would not be necessary but he supposed it gave his servant something to do. He doubted that the bodyguards would be much use if it came to a fight but he did not care. He put his hand on the hilt of his sword and surveyed the wolf riders contemptuously. They shifted uneasily in their saddles, not sure of what they were dealing with now, but knowing it was well outside the ambit of their usual experience.

‘Go now and I will let you live. Stay and you will surely die,’ Adolphus told them confidently, eyeing the leader directly. He felt the connection as their eyes met and the battle of wills began. The goblin was fierce, stupid, ambitious, and did not like being balked. The contest was far from being one-sided.

The rest of the riders brandished their weapons and howled challenges and jeers in their crude guttural tongue. He doubted very much whether they understood a fraction of what he had said. It was just their nature to behave this way. The leader looked at him, clearly uncertain what was going on. He sensed the presence of magic, and it unnerved him. And his anger was turning to fear.

‘Kill magic man,’ he shouted then bellowed orders in his own speech. The wolves snarled, and crouched to spring. The goblins couched their lances, and raised their scimitars. Adolphus shrugged. It had been a slim hope but it had been worth trying. Now he would have to use his alternative plan.

His gaze flashed over the wolves, and he let them see the beast that dwelled within him, let them know they were in the presence of a predator far more dangerous than they. The change was immediate. The wolves’ hackles rose and they cringed like beaten curs – their tails drooped between their legs, their mouths hung open and their tongues lolled out. Their riders’ battle cries dropped to feeble protests of dismay. Adolphus reached for the dark magical energy that filled the night and projected his will onto the animals. Perhaps it was his imagination but it seemed easier now that he had the Eye. He sensed momentary resistance from the animals but his will was too strong. In moments, the beasts were his to command and he drove his orders directly into their minds.

Almost as one they reared and bucked, throwing their riders from the saddle and pouncing on them to rip their throats. It took long moments for the goblins to get over their surprise and realise what was happening. By that time, over half of them were dead.

They were not going to go down without a fight. Some of them managed to stay in the saddle. Adolphus saw the chieftain reach forward and slash his mount’s throat with a dagger. Wolf blood crimsoned the snow. The chieftain rolled clear of the saddle and came racing at Adolphus, dagger dripping red. Adolphus almost smiled at his foolish bravery.

He strode forward to meet the creature, not even drawing his sword. As he met the goblin he sidestepped and got his arm round his throat. With a single twist, he snapped the chieftain’s neck. Vertebrae ground. Something wet and sticky flopped down the goblin’s leg into the snow. He raised the corpse above his head and tossed at another struggling rider.

A crossbow bolt flashed past him and took another goblin through the throat. He could hear the bodyguards begin to advance towards the melee now that it appeared won. It was all too much for the greenskins. Within heartbeats the survivors had turned and fled, only to be run down by their own mounts. Within a minute the snow was awash with yellowy-green blood, and all the goblins were dead.

Adolphus gave the wolves permission to feed. They fell to with a will. Obviously the winter had been hard and their former masters had not fed them well. He turned and strolled back to the coach. Roche watched him expressionlessly. His coven gazed on him with expressions somewhere between worship and terror. Fear blazed in the eyes of the bodyguards as they parted to let him through.

‘When we move on,’ said Adolphus, ‘I believe we will have an escort.’

‘Very good, master,’ said Roche. ‘I shall wait for your new followers to finish their repast.’

‘I don’t like the look of this at all,’ said Max Schreiber. ‘These tracks are unnatural.’

Felix felt a deep-seated unease. The woods were thick and dark all around them, the trees frosted with white flakes. Ahead of them the snow had been churned as if a large number of men or other things had passed this way quite recently. Felix seriously doubted that any sane or honest man would be abroad in this weather without some overwhelmingly important reason. As the cold intensified and the weather became grimmer and grimmer, he himself found the thought of giving up becoming ever more appealing.

It was not that he did not want to save Ulrika. It was just that the more time passed, the less chance there seemed to be that she was still alive. Swearing to avenge her was all very well, but men frozen to death in the snow, or losing their limbs to frostbite were not very likely to avenge anyone.

For the moment, Felix was keeping these thoughts to himself. They were not likely to find much favour with the Slayers, Max or Ulrika’s father. There were times when they did not find much favour with him. They sometimes left him disgusted with himself, but more and more often recently they had been creeping into his mind. He knew he was ill; the flux had returned with a vengeance. He hoped he was not going to go down with pneumonia.

He tried telling himself that no hero in the stories he had read as a boy ever gave up just because he was cold, hungry, had a splitting headache or the thought of eating another mouthful of beef jerky left him feeling nauseous. But as the days had drawn out, he had found it was just these things that left him feeling the most discouraged.

The threat of violence Felix could deal with. While he was not completely enamoured with the idea of facing physical danger, he knew he had done it in the past and acquitted himself well. It was the little things that were slowly but surely wearing him down and out: the way his lips were cracked, the way his belly rumbled, the constant pain in his temples from the flu that never quite went away no matter how often Max healed it or gave him herbal infusions. He was just feeling strung out, as if his vitality were being leeched away by the spirits of the winter woods. Sometimes he thought that if they did overtake Krieger he would be too weary to fight him.

He found that it took an effort of will to conjure the image of Ulrika to his mind now, to imagine her in peril. It was alarming. You thought you loved her. No, you did love her, and yet now you are seriously considering abandoning her. This was another area he had discovered where things were not quite like the storybooks. There all the heroes dared everything to rescue their loved ones. They blazed with unquenchable passion and utter certainty. They never suffered from doubts or wondered whether they really were in love at all.

Such feelings were all too common for him. Sometimes when he was hungry or tired or hungover or scared, he could easily forget that he loved her. He could easily remember all the times she had hurt him, or snubbed him or told him he was foolish. All the little resentments he harboured crowded into his brain and clamoured for his attention. Detlef Sierck had never bothered to mention any of this in his plays. He wondered if he were the only man on the face of the earth who felt like this. Somehow he doubted it.

Then, just when he thought all feelings were extinguished, they would return in the oddest ways. He would find himself remembering the strange Kislevite way in which she stressed certain syllables, or the way she shook her head but smiled when he said something particularly stupid. He was not sure why he found these things endearing, he just knew that he did. They were some of the links in the chain that still somehow bound him, even when he thought time, distance and hunger had corroded it. He might never be really certain of how he felt about her, but he knew that as long as she lived he would have the chance to find out. If she died…

Just keep moving, he told himself. Just keep following this trail. Just keep eating the disgusting Kislevite iron rations. Just put up with the cold and the aches and the grumbling of the dwarfs and the boasting of the Kislevites and Max’s constant worried expression. Just endure them. One way or another, you will get through this. One day, if you are lucky, you will look back on this and remember it fondly, in the way you can look back on hardships you have endured once they are safely long in the past.

He knew the strange tricks his memory could play would, if he lived, somehow edit this trial down into its highlights. He would remember the camaraderie, and the shared dangers survived. He would remember the sudden, surprising way beauty would spring on you even in the depths of this winter wilderness. He would remember enchanted vistas of frozen forest groves glimpsed from the corner of his eye as they bumped along the trail. He would remember a startled deer bounding off into the distance as it caught sight of them, its hindquarters flickering as it covered the ground in mighty leaps. He would remember the clear, clean frozen air, the sound of the runners cleaving the snow, and the ponies whickering to one another as if to keep their spirits up. He would remember the odd feeling of tranquillity as the horse-soldiers sang their winter hymns around the fires in the ice huts they carved for themselves each afternoon.

Without the immediate feelings of pain and nausea and worry and fear his memory would translate this into a wonderful adventure.

It would all be a lie of course, but it would be a glamorous lie far, far better than the real thing, and perhaps like all the other tale-tellers he would pass on that lie and make them think there was something wonderful about it too. And strangest of all, he knew that he would be sincere when he did it. He would genuinely believe what he was saying.

Marek had dropped back to look at the tracks. He was studying them carefully. ‘Not too far ahead of us, I would guess,’ he said. ‘Not friendly either.’

‘How can you tell?’ Felix asked.

‘Easy. Some of the footprints are mixed with hoof prints. Cloven ones. Beastmen are the only things that leave tracks like that. If we’re lucky we’ll overtake them soon.’

There will be nothing lucky about it, Felix thought, nursing his aching head.

Max was worried. Not by the prospect of facing an indeterminate number of beastmen but by the length of time the pursuit was taking. They had been on the move for almost a week now and were still no closer to the talisman. If anything, the distance was increasing. Whoever Krieger was, he certainly knew how to move through this winter landscape.

In a way it was good. He was reassured that the dark magician could keep going, and not be slowed by any of the perils of the way. It implied that if he wanted to keep Ulrika alive he was capable of it, and that was Max’s one remaining source of hope. It was not a good one, though. Knowing that Krieger was powerful boded ill for their chances of recovering the girl, particularly if he had learned to tap the powers of the talisman.

Max shivered, and not with the cold. Since Ulrika’s capture he had driven himself far beyond anything he would have believed possible. He sometimes felt he was keeping himself going by sheer willpower alone. He had turned into a man of stone. He did not feel the cold, he did not feel weary and he did not feel any hunger. He just wanted to get the woman back.

In a way he was almost grateful for the situation. It had helped him recover from the terrible mental ordeal of putting himself back together after his encounter with the wards on the talisman. It had given him a reason to overcome his feelings of weakness and self-pity and to confront the abyss of doubt that loomed within his mind. He knew that he must pull himself back from the brink as much for Ulrika’s sake as for his own.

He had thought he had loved her before but what he had felt then was but a pale shadow of what he felt now. The prospect of losing her was almost more than he could bear. He had never felt anything so deeply before in his life. The urge to find her was an overwhelming drive; it dwarfed any of his bodily needs or any of his own weaknesses.

He begrudged every minute lost on the trail. He resented the possibility of encountering the beastmen as much because it would slow them down as because there was a possibility of injury or death. He hated every moment lost that enabled Krieger to put distance between them. He resented the time it took to make camp at night, to build the icehouses, make fires. If he could, he would have gone without them, without food or drink or sleep if need be.

Part of him knew this was madness. If he did not get those things he would die, and be of no help to anyone, least of all Ulrika. But it was one thing knowing these things rationally and another to feel them in the depths of his soul.

His life had simplified down to one true and real thing: he must save Ulrika. He thought he might go mad if he did not.

So far, they had found nothing, overtaken no monsters, and seen no sight of any beastmen. The only ones who were sorry were the Slayers. Everyone else was relieved. Felix wondered how the beastmen could survive in the depths of winter. Ivan had the answer.

‘They eat each other when they can’t get manflesh. The big ones eat the little ones. The strong devour the weak. I suppose they think it’s their gods’ way of testing them, so that only the hardiest survive. I don’t know. I only know that I have seen enough corpses and fought enough battles against them in the winter to know the truth of it.’

Gotrek nodded as if he agreed with every word. Felix shuddered. This was the sort of knowledge he could cheerfully have spent his entire life without ever acquiring. Unfortunately it appeared that fate had other plans for him.

‘Best keep moving,’ said the Slayer. ‘Every foul Chaos beast in the world appears to be moving this winter. Sooner or later we’re going to run into some of them.’ His evil smile left Felix in no doubt as to what would happen then.

SIX

The moons blazed brightly overhead. The snow lay thick upon the forest. Gnarled ancient trees surrounded them, growing out over the road. Adolphus breathed deeply. Finally they were here. The air tasted different: it was sharper, with a tang of blood and dark magic and ancient secrets. He knew he was home. There was no place in the world that smelled quite like Sylvania.

He had not been born here, of course, but he had spent many centuries of his undeath here. It was a haven for his kind. A land which had been ruled by undying counts for centuries, where the peasants and the lesser so-called aristocrats had long ago realised their true place in the great scheme of things and bowed their heads and given their service to the Arisen. He would see that those days returned once more. The Time of Blood was here. The Council and those who followed them would change their ways or go to hell. He would send them there personally.

With the wolves trailing along behind him like a pack of obedient dogs, he strode in the wake of the coaches. It was easy enough for him to keep pace with it even in the deep snow. It was no obstacle to one such as he. The cold did not slow him, and he had long ago left such human weaknesses as suffering from frostbite behind him. On this night, the night of his return, he wanted to be outside, to stalk the night like the hunter he was, to sniff the wind for prey, to seek blood in the old way. Here of all places it was possible to do so without fear of reprisal. And he wanted to be alone to savour the moment, away from the pettiness of the coven and the cold amusement of Roche.

In this ancient stronghold of vampiric power, the cattle knew better than to rise up against their masters. Even in the dark times, when the forces of the so-called Emperor had driven the Arisen underground, they had been feared and respected in Sylvania. The mortals knew that no matter who claimed sovereignty over this land, there would only ever be one true set of rulers. Human power was transitory here. The sway of the Arisen would always return. An accommodation had been reached between the mortals and their masters that Adolphus knew satisfied a deep-seated need in both. For the brutish short-lived peasants what could be better than one who combined all the characteristics of feudal liege and undying god? Such people always needed to know their place in the world, and the Arisen had made sure that they did. In a way, the cattle were even grateful to feel the smack of firm government. They were happiest when they knew their place, when their thinking was done for them.

Adolphus knew that one day the whole world would be like this. Sylvania was a model for what was to come. Now that the talisman was in his hands, he would soon have the power to make it so. He had never been the most accomplished of magicians – his talents had always lain in other directions – but once he reached Drakenhof and tapped the ancient node of power there, he would claim the Eye for his own.

He smiled. It had taken decades of research and years of studying cryptic books and prophecies but the key to ultimate power was now in his grasp. In his hand, he held an artefact of the Great Necromancer, created at the peak of his power, an item that the mighty liche had once held in his own claw, and imbued with a fraction of his own limitless strength. Nagash had been subtle and relentless in his hatred of all the powers that might challenge his. He had forged the talisman when it became obvious that the ancient Vampire Queens of Lahmia and their followers might eventually rise to challenge him. He was not going to risk having such potent undying sorcerers dwelling in the same land without taking precautions against them, so he had created the Eye of Khemri to work their undoing.

It contained runes which when properly activated would bend the Arisen to its wearer’s will. With it he had created the Hounds of Nagash, kin who served him loyally while under its spell. The rest of the Arisen had fled and hidden themselves in the distant corners of the world. Of course, Nagash had never intended for the Eye to leave his presence. For all his power he had not foreseen his own defeat first by the hero-king Alcadizaar then by the man-god Sigmar. Upon his destruction the Eye had vanished into history, passing through the hands of a succession of unknown bearers until it had re-appeared on the throat of Vlad von Carstein. Not even his closest associates had known what it was even as they fell under its sway. Sometimes, Adolphus wondered whether the first and mightiest of the Vampire Counts had truly realised what it was he owned. Vlad was gone forever now and Adolphus regretted he would never have the chance to ask him. It had passed through the hands of his successors, none of whom had guessed its true power until its eventual loss at the Battle of Hel Fenn. It had been years later, perusing the section of one of the three extant copies of the dread Liber Occultus dealing with the history of ancient Nehekhara, that Krieger had realised what the Eye was. So had begun his long search.

Now the talisman was in his hands, and he almost had it attuned to his will. With it, he could make himself undisputed ruler of the Arisen. He could unite all of Sylvania behind him and create an invincible army. It would take time and patience, of course. In many ways the Arisen fancied themselves the secret rulers of the world, but the main thing that prevented this, in truth, was their disunity. They spent more time plotting against each other than they did seeking to extend the dominion of their kind.

Adolphus would put an end to this. He would organise the Arisen and replace the vacillations of the Council with his own ironhanded rule. He would be their king, but he would see to it that they had a hierarchy as strict as any Empire with every one knowing their place, and having their own clearly defined fiefdoms. He had travelled. There was enough room for all of them, and big enough herds of human cattle to keep them all through eternity. He was excited now. Visions of what was to come burned in his brain, and he found he wanted to share them.

Leaving the wolves, he strode back past his followers and vaulted up into the coach. The girl looked up at him. He could see the resistance was slowly draining out of her along with the blood. Her anger was mixed with desire now and yes, even need. The ecstasy of the dark kiss did that to them, no matter how much they denied it. Still she reached for her dagger; still she intended to make a show of fighting him off. Casually he reached out and took it from her, the way a man might take a toy from a child. He was in no mood for games this evening. He wanted to talk, and it was either to her or Roche or the wolves. He felt somehow that telling her was the right thing.

‘I am going to rule this land soon,’ he said.

‘You are mad,’ she said. Her weakness made her voice soft and breathy. Adolphus felt the urge to sip from her blood rise in him once more. He pushed it back. He wanted to explain his plan to her, to force her to see what he saw, to make her acknowledge him for what he was and what he would be.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not. I am in a position to do everything I claim.’

She shook her head disbelievingly, but he could tell he had her interest. ‘The Arisen are many and their covens have a great deal of influence in the world. You would be surprised how many of the rich and powerful are secret members.’

‘So?’ He liked the way she raised her chin challengingly as she spoke, despite her weakness, despite the way the kiss must have made her head spin. It made things interesting.

‘I am going to rule the Arisen.’

‘How?’

‘Don’t be sullen, Ulrika. It doesn’t become you. I am going to use this talisman, which you and your friends so valiantly defended. It has a great deal of power within it. It was created by the Great Necromancer Nagash to allow him to command my kind many centuries ago. The power is still within it. I will rule the Arisen, and through them I shall rule this land.’

‘The Emperor might have something to say about that. You may have money and influence but that won’t defeat an army.’

‘Ulrika, Ulrika, sometimes I think you deliberately pretend to be stupid in order to make me underestimate you. We both know that money and influence can recruit soldiers, and we both know that many of the people who have them also already employ soldiers. More to the point, Nagash was the Great Necromancer. I can use the power of this talisman to raise an army from every cemetery and every burial ground if necessary. And many of the Arisen are also potent necromancers. United we will create an army so vast that no mortal force could stand against it.’

‘An army of walking corpses.’

‘I am sure they will not object. After all, they are already dead. Only the gods and the Arisen live forever.’ He let those words and that thought hang in the air for a moment. Most mortals were eventually seduced by its power. Even if he never offered to make them one of the Arisen, they would begin to think about it. They would begin to see the possibilities of what pleasing him could bring. No fear of ageing; no fear of the grave. No fear of having to leave this world behind. It was this promise more than anything else that made them give themselves up so willingly. It was a coin that only his kind could demonstrably offer. He thought he saw the temptation occur to her, and he could tell by her expression that she dismissed it. He was not worried. Many mortals did the first time, before they truly had time to think about it. Once they did…

‘The forces of Chaos may object as well. They seem hell-bent on having the world themselves.’ She gestured at the window, to the bloated face of Morrsleib glaring down garishly from the sky.

‘They will be thrown back, as they have before. United, the Arisen will have the power to do that. They are possibly the only ones who could. Do you think the decaying kingdoms of mankind have the strength?’

‘They will have strength enough to stop you. Just as von Carstein was stopped at Hel Fenn.’

He smiled, showing her his teeth, all of them. She shivered. Partly from fear he was sure, but also partially from desire. ‘Hel Fenn? I remember it well. Von Carstein should never have fought there. It was a bad site for a battle. No place to retreat except the swamp. He was confident we would not need to. Foolish…’

‘You were at Hel Fenn?’ He could see the dawn of knowledge in her eyes. She was beginning to realise what he was, what he was capable of offering. She now knew he had been present at a battle fought over two centuries ago.

‘I am still here,’ he said. ‘How many of the so-called victors can say that?’

She had no answer. There was none.

‘We’re getting closer to the beastmen at last,’ said Marek. Felix looked at the tracker through the gathering twilight. His weather-beaten face was tense with suppressed excitement. All of the Kislevite lancers looked ready for combat. Max stretched his limbs and Felix thought for a moment he saw a faint nimbus of light play around the wizard’s flexing fingers.

‘I hear the sound of fighting up ahead,’ said Gotrek. Felix heard nothing but that did not surprise him. The Slayer’s ears were keener than his, just as his eyes were better than a dwarf’s in daylight.

‘Who is fighting?’ Felix asked.

‘Men and beasts and Chaos warriors. The name of Khorne is being chanted, but we will soon put an end to that.’ Felix wished that he felt so certain. Ivan Petrovich nodded. His lancers broke into a trot. Felix cracked the reins and urged the ponies forward.

Soon he could hear the sounds of battle himself.

Blood stained the snow. A group of men armoured like Imperial knights made a last stand in the centre of the clearing. They were attempting to protect a coach. Men-at-arms lay dead in snowdrifts, their pikes fallen from their nerveless fingers. All around them were beastmen, horned horrors, part man, part goat, clutching weapons in their misshapen fingers, stamping on the fallen with their cloven hooves. Their eyes gleamed red with bloodlust. Froth dripped from their mouths.

As Felix watched a horse whinnied with terror. The rider, gaudily caparisoned in red and gold, was tipped from the saddle. A massive beastman clutching a standard depicting a bloated hungry moon face, tipped with a human skull, strode forward and drove the iron-shod base of the banner into the man’s chest with a sickening, squelching sound. The man gurgled as he died.

The beastmen turned, alerted by the sound of hooves crashing through snow. Ivan bellowed orders to his men and twenty lances dropped into the ready position. The Kislevite horse thundered forward and crashed into the unprepared ranks of the beastmen. They went down screaming, impaled on lances, trampled by iron-shod hoofs. Gotrek and Snorri were right behind, weapons ready, irresistible as thunderbolts. Max chanted a spell and the clearing became bright as day.

A glowing solar disk appeared over the wizard’s head and then, at a word from its creator, bolts of searing light erupted forth, burning the fur from the beastmen and filling the air with the smell of charred flesh.

Felix barely had time to rip his sword from the scabbard and climb down from the sledge before it was over. The savage beastmen, unprepared for such an onslaught, broke and ran for the woods. Most of them did not make it. They were overrun by the horsemen or slain by Max’s mystical bolts. Gotrek and Snorri finished off the wounded, looking utterly disgruntled.

‘Hardly a proper fight,’ said Gotrek.

‘Beastmen are not what they used to be when Snorri was a lad,’ said Snorri. ‘They would have put up a bit of a fight then.’

Felix was glad they had not. Slowed by his illness, and worn out by the chill, he wondered if he would have survived a battle with a beastman. Best to push such thoughts aside. He strode over to the carriage the knights had fought so hard to defend. Even as he did so, one of them, a huge man with a mane of golden hair, strode between him and the vehicle. He raised his blade, obviously intending that Felix come no closer. Felix shrugged and stopped.

‘We mean you no harm,’ he said. Gotrek and Snorri clumped over to stand beside Felix. They did not look quite as unthreatening as Felix would have wished. They were obviously still keen for a fight, and perhaps this knight would give them one. He certainly looked as if he were considering it. Felix thought he’d better say something before things got out of hand. ‘In Sigmar’s name, put your weapon down. We just saved your lives.’

The four surviving knights had gathered around the gold-haired man. From the way they looked to him for their cue, Felix gathered that he was their leader.

‘We were doing fine by ourselves,’ he said eventually. His voice was rich and commanding and filled with utter self-assurance. He seemed to believe every word he said.

Just what I need, thought Felix, another aristocratic idiot. There was something odd about the man’s accent, a thickness that was not quite Imperial and not quite Kislevite. A stress that reminded him of the way characters spoke in old books.

‘The way your men threw themselves on the beastmen’s spears was all part of your strategy then, was it?’ Gotrek asked sarcastically. ‘A great plan.’

Felix thought the knight was going to raise his sword to Gotrek. He was tempted to let him. If this idiot wanted to throw away his life fighting the Slayer why should he interfere, he thought uncharitably? He wiped his nose on a fold of his cloak and waited.

‘What is going on here, Rodrik?’ asked a woman’s voice from within the coach. ‘Why aren’t you thanking these kind strangers for their aid against those fiends?’

‘My lady, their manner is insolent and lacking in true courtliness. You should not sully your chaste ears listening to their words.’

Gotrek and Felix exchanged glances. If Felix had not known better he would have guessed the Slayer was amused. ‘I think it is you who are lacking in knightly graces, Rodrik. A truly chivalrous man would express gratitude under these circumstances, not look for excuses.’

The knight looked crestfallen and when his gaze returned to the Slayers, he executed a perfect courtly bow.

‘I apologise for my manners,’ he said. ‘My only excuse is that I let my concern for the safety of a fair lady overcome me. I beg your pardon.’

Gotrek spat on the ground at his feet. He was not one to accept an apology graciously. To his credit, Rodrik did not even blink. Max limped over. He looked even more tired and drained than usual. Working his magic on the beastmen must have cost him dearly.

‘It is unusual for people to be abroad in weather like this, with the land so dangerous,’ he said. The knight looked at him suspiciously. Felix had been around the wizard for so long he had forgotten how much many ordinary people disliked sorcerers.

‘I could say the same about you,’ Rodrik said. There was more intelligence behind the answer than Felix would have given him credit for. Perhaps he was not as stupid as he looked.

‘We have a mission,’ Max said suavely, although a pained look passed across his face. ‘A quest, you might almost say.’

It was a well-considered response. Felix could see that Rodrik was intrigued. Quests were the sort of things knights understood, particularly ones like Rodrik who appeared to think he was living in some courtly romance. Felix had heard that there were still some like him, but he would never have believed it until now. He had thought only Bretonnians went in for that sort of thing.

‘And what might that be?’

‘A fair young lady of our acquaintance has been kidnapped by an evil sorcerer. We intend to rescue her or avenge her.’ The words should have sounded ludicrous but the way Max said them invested every word with weight and seriousness. Felix could tell Rodrik was impressed.

The curtains of the coach window were drawn back and a pale, beautiful face cowled in black and partially obscured by a thin mesh of veil looked out at them. ‘If it would not delay you too long in your quest, perhaps we could offer you shelter for the night. There is a keep not too far from here where we are expected. The least we can offer you after your efforts on our behalf is a hot fire and warm spiced wine.’

Not even the Slayers seemed ready to object to that.

Rodrik and his men rode ahead of the coach. Ivan Petrovich’s scouts rode ahead of them. The sledges brought up the rear.

‘I notice they did not tell us what they were about,’ said Felix.

‘Doubtless we will find out soon enough, manling,’ said the Slayer.

‘It’s like a haunted castle in a Detlef Sierck melodrama,’ murmured Felix. The Slayer looked at him. Felix wondered if he knew who the playwright was. ‘I don’t like it.’

The keep clutched the top of the hill on which it stood, like a hawk on a perch. There was something predatory about it. It made Felix think of robber barons, bandits and other things less pleasant from old stories. The scene was somehow ominously familiar. He told himself not to let his imagination run wild. He was sick, it was cold, and any place in this icy land would look sinister. The place looked strong; the walls thick. The turrets of the inner bailey looked built to resist a siege, and yet there was something about it that suggested other things. Felix thought of torture chambers, ghosts with clanking chains and wicked old barons threatening heroines with a fate worse than death.

‘It’s a castle, manling, and a strong one. Some good stonework there, for human work that is.’ He might have guessed the dwarf would see things in the most prosaic terms possible. Not a terribly imaginative people, Felix thought, though at this moment it was a trait he wished he shared. There was something about this place that set his nerves on edge.

‘It makes me nervous,’ Felix said. ‘There’s something about the style of the building that…’

Even as he said the words, it came to him. He remembered where he had seen the likeness of this keep before. It had been in a book of horror tales he had read as a boy, tales set in the land of Sylvania. This place was an almost exact replica of one of the keeps in the book. It might have been the original model for the picture. He hoped that it was only the memory that made it seem so sinister.

The town beneath the castle was mostly ruined. The destruction was not recent, Felix could see. Most of the buildings had tumbled down decades ago. The city looked as if it had been built for a population of five thousand and now held only a tenth of that number. Even in the city centre, on the main thoroughfare leading to the castle only about one in every three houses appeared occupied and those seemed to be half rubble. The people were surlier and more brutish than any Felix had ever encountered. They wandered through the near-deserted streets listlessly, with no sense of purpose. The air stank of rot and human excrement.

And this was Waldenhof, a large and prosperous town, by local standards. Felix decided he would not like to live here.

The road led up the steep hillside towards the grinning gatehouse. Even as they approached the entrance, the gateway reminded Felix of the mouth of a great beast, and the portcullis of its fangs. A shiver ran down his spine.

Fever, Felix told himself, but did not quite believe it.

‘Welcome to Waldenschlosse,’ said the man who waited for them in the courtyard. He was a tall florid aristocrat, garbed in a slightly antiquated style. The padding of his tunic’s shoulders and codpiece had not been fashionable in the Empire for half a century. Felix had only seen its like in old portraits. The others around him were garbed in a similar fashion. Somehow it suited their slightly antiquated manner of speaking. ‘We thank you for the service you have rendered my sister-in-law, the Countess Gabriella, and my son Rodrik. It seems that without your intercession we would not have the pleasure of greeting her now. Nothing we could do can express our gratitude for your kindness, but we will do our poor best.’

‘I am Rudgar, Count of Waldenhof, and you are my most honoured guests. I hope before you leave that you will discover the true meaning of Sylvanian hospitality.’

Felix’s mind reeled a little with shock. They had come further than he had thought, or, indeed, would have wished, if they had crossed the borders of the ill-famed province of Sylvania. It was not a place he had ever harboured a strong desire to visit, not even in high summer, and without the beastmen filling the woods. It was a place of very evil reputation.

More introductions followed, but Felix’s head still spun with the fever and he remembered none of them. He did recall noticing that the Countess Gabriella was looking at him, and, despite her widow’s veil he could see that she was a very beautiful woman.

‘Your health,’ said Count Rudgar, raising his glass. Sweat glistened on his bald pate. The tips of his long moustaches drooped into his wine. He tipped his glass back and downed it all in one long swallow. A silent servant glided forward to refill it almost automatically.

Felix had to admit that he felt better now after a few hours sitting at the dining table in the great hall, near a warm fire, his stomach filled with beef and roast potatoes and capon and gravy. Half a bottle of the count’s fine wine had done wonders too, and left him feeling a little better disposed to his surroundings as well. He could see that most of the others did not quite feel the same way.

Only Gotrek glared around suspiciously with his one good eye, as if expecting armed enemies to attack him at any second. Nothing unusual about that. He normally looked that way, but it was an unwelcome reminder to Felix that perhaps he should keep his guard up as well. Max was not drinking, and although the sorcerer chatted amiably enough with the Sylvanian nobles Felix could tell he was not entirely at his ease either. He saw Felix looking at him and nodded as if to say that he, too, shared his companion’s suspicions of the place.

The Kislevite horse-soldiers and Snorri Nosebiter dug in with a will however, throwing back food and wine as if this was their last chance at it. Come to think of it, it might be. Ivan Petrovich shared the table with them. His men had another table down the great hall with the off-duty castle soldiers and the other troops.

Felix was surprised to find that they and the countess’s party were not the only guests. It seemed many Sylvanian nobles were visiting Waldenschlosse, though why they should choose to do this in the middle of winter eluded him. He had read too many stories and seen too many plays in which terrible things happened at feasts in Sylvanian castles for his own comfort. Even through the pleasant warmth of the wine in his belly, part of him half expected to hear an order given that would have hidden warriors fall on the guests in an orgy of bloodshed. Such things were all too common in the tales.

He looked around trying to put faces to names once more. This time he was sure he had got things right. The frail old man on his right, skeletally lean and with a full head of pure white hair was Petr, Count of Swartzhafen. He seemed pleasant enough, mild-mannered and polite, but there was something about his eyes, a haunted quality that made Felix think that here was a man who had seen things that few mortals had. Facing him across the table was a tall man in his prime. Kristof, Baron of Leicheburg, had pure black hair and an arrogant hawk-like face dominated by blazing black eyes. To his right sat Johan Richter, a good-looking young man who shared something of the Count of Swartzhafen’s haunted air. From what Felix had gathered, all of them were important noblemen in this part of the world, and reading between the lines, all of them were scared. All of the assembled company except Gotrek raised their glasses to the toast. Felix felt as if eyes were on him, and looking to his left saw the Countess Gabriella was looking at him appraisingly, her blue eyes startlingly clear above the veil.

‘And to the health of our most unexpected and most welcome guests,’ said Rudgar. ‘They have my gratitude for saving the life of my son and my esteemed sister-in-law.’

Rodrik looked a little embarrassed by this, but kept his mouth shut. Doubtless he did not want any more lectures about gratitude from his father or the countess. Murmurs from around the table agreed with the count’s words. Whatever else you said about the Sylvanian nobility, Felix thought, they were certainly polite, in an old-fashioned courtly sort of way.

‘Now that we have eaten I suggest we get down to business,’ said Baron Leicheburg. His voice was deep and resonant, the sort of voice that could fill a theatre or a room, or rise effortlessly over a battlefield. Felix envied him it. ‘I have not come all this way through the worst winter in two hundred years merely to sip your wine, old friend, no matter how fine a cellar you keep.’

The count inclined his head graciously at the compliment and spoke at once.

‘Aye, there is the rub. It is the worst winter in two centuries and not just from the snow. Wolves multiply in the forests, beastmen clog the Emperor’s highway, and other things, worse things are stirring once more.’

Felix was not sure he liked the tone of the count’s voice. It made the hackles on the back of his neck rise. Count Swartzhafen raised his fist to his mouth and gave a dry, desiccated cough. ‘You are saying the ancient curse has returned to trouble us once more?’

Felix glanced over at Gotrek. The Slayer had sat up like a hound that scents prey straining at a leash. Doubtless he thought there was work here for him. Great, thought Felix, as if getting Ulrika from the clutches of a dark sorcerer was not bad enough, now they were going to get themselves mixed up with some ancient evil. Just what he needed.

‘Can you doubt it?’ said Richter. He leaned forward and placed his goblet carefully on the table but his eyes blazed with a near insane intensity. Felix was not sure he wanted to know what could put a look like that in a man’s eyes. ‘The signs are all there. A merchant saw witch lights burning on the Dark Moor two weeks ago. Black coaches have been sighted on the Old Road to the Red Abbey. Something had been disturbing the graves at the cemetery in Essen. On my way here I entered the crypt at Mikalsdorf, and found it empty. Grave robbers had been at work there.’

‘That does not sound good,’ said Count Swartzhafen mildly. Mirthless laughter from the rest of the nobles greeted this pronouncement, which also caused the men-at-arms to fall silent at the other table for a moment and glance at their masters. Only for a moment though, and then conversation was resumed.

Baron Leicheburg glanced at them all and continued. ‘Maidens have started to vanish again in the Grim Wood, and the peasants have started hanging bundles of witchbane and bloodroot over their doors. Normally I would have thought nothing of it. The winter has been so bad, and the Chaos tainted so numerous, this would be reason enough for their precautions, but black-garbed men with pale faces have been seen too.’

‘I don’t think there can be any doubts,’ said Rudgar. ‘The undying ones have returned.’

Something in the man’s tone made Felix shiver. ‘The undying ones?’ he asked. He guessed that he already knew, but he wanted to be sure.

‘The followers of von Carstein, the drinkers of blood,’ said Johan turning his blazing gaze upon them.

‘Vampires,’ said Max Schreiber. ‘You are talking about vampires.’

Rudgar gave him a bitter smile, a mere flashing of teeth with no mirth in it. ‘This is Sylvania,’ he said. ‘The land of the Vampire Counts.’

Silence fell once again. Not even the servants moved. It was as if someone had laughed at a funeral or voiced an awful truth that everybody thought but no one had dared put into words until that moment.

Wonderful, thought Felix: evil sorcerers, the coming of Chaos and now the return of the Vampire Counts. How do I get myself into these things?

‘More wine anybody?’ asked Count Rudgar to break the silence. His moustaches seemed to droop even more. He looked like a man who had just been told that his family had contracted the plague and there was a good chance he had caught it himself. Felix knew exactly how he felt.

Max glanced down into his still full wine cup as if he could see the secrets of the future there. Gotrek rubbed his massive hands together almost gleefully. Ivan Petrovich looked even more grimly determined to find his daughter. Felix stifled the urge to moan.

‘There will be time enough for these discussions later,’ said the Countess Gabriella, her musical voice sounding cool and amused. ‘Perhaps our guests would care to tell us what brings them here in this time of troubles.’

Max looked at Felix as if asking which of them should explain. Felix gestured for Max to speak. Doubtless the mage could tell the tale better than he. Max spoke of the kidnapping of Ulrika and their pursuit across the frozen lands. In the telling he was forced to speak of the siege of Praag and the Chaos invasion.

The Sylvanian nobles remained silent for a time after he had finished, then looked at each other. Their faces were calm for the most part, but Felix was certain he could see fear in their eyes, and by now he was certain that these were people who did not frighten easily.

‘It sounds like the end of the world,’ said the Count of Swartzhafen eventually.

‘We live in evil times indeed,’ agreed Baron Leicheburg. ‘More evil even than I had imagined.’

‘The Emperor will be summoning his armies,’ said Max. ‘I am sure that come spring he will move to meet the foes.’

‘Be that as it may,’ said Rudgar. ‘None of us will be moving with him.’

Felix felt a vague sense of outrage. Nobles were always ones to talk about their rights and privileges. As he recalled they had some duties too, and one of them was to defend the Empire when called upon to do so. Of all those present it seemed Rodrik was the only one who noticed his looks, and he had the good grace to look embarrassed.

‘It is not that we don’t want to,’ he said quickly. ‘I could ask for nothing more than to ride by the Emperor’s side into battle but our duty is here with our people. If the undying ones have crept once more from hiding it is our duty to see that they are cast back into the pit from which they crawled.’

The last part of his speech was said with a great deal less confidence than the first part. Felix was not surprised. If his history was correct, the last time the Vampire Counts had risen it had taken all the military might of the Empire and its allies to cast them down, and that had taken many years and the loss of countless lives.

‘I agree with young Rodrik,’ said the white-haired old Count of Swartzhafen. He coughed dryly once more. ‘It will do the Empire no good if the Emperor marches to meet the spawn of Chaos only to find an army of undying ones on his flank. Actually, I fear it would spell disaster.’

Felix was no expert on military matters but it sounded plausible. With such a powerful foe before it, any threat to the Imperial lines of supply or to flanks would be catastrophic. And now he recalled other things about the armies of the Vampire Counts. Their followers tended to be walking corpses animated by the darkest of sorcery. The snows of winter would slow them not at all. Indeed it would be a time when they were at their strongest. Even as they spoke the forces of darkness were gaining a mighty ally.

‘The best we can do for the Empire is to smash the undying ones before they grow to their full strength, and then march to the Emperor’s aid.’

‘Let us pray that is possible,’ said the Countess Gabriella. All of them made the sign of the hammer over the table save for Gotrek. He just grunted and took a swig of his wine. She leaned forward over the table and a feral gleam entered her cold blue eyes. ‘It seems to me that the gods smile on us. It is not by chance that our friends came here today.’

Felix saw Gotrek and Max turn to look at her. Ivan was deep in his wine but something about his manner told Felix that he too was listening intently. ‘What do you mean?’ Max asked.

‘The name Adolphus Krieger is not unknown to us,’ she said.

Max sucked in his breath. ‘He is a necromancer?’

‘Worse. He is one of the undying ones. A very dangerous progeny of the Carstein bloodline.’

‘And what is that exactly?’ Felix asked. He felt he had to say something to conceal the fear that swept through him.

Krieger was a vampire! It explained a lot about him: his uncanny quickness, his incredible strength. And maybe there was a connection too between him and the killer who had stalked the streets of Praag, draining bodies of blood. He remembered how Nella, the street girl, had mentioned the smell of cinnamon, and the pomander Krieger had carried in the vault.

The countess’s laugh was silvery. ‘Forgive me, Herr Jaeger: sitting at this table it is sometimes easy to forget that not everyone shares our obsessive interest in, and knowledge of the undying ones. If you are a Sylvanian noble, it is something you grow up with.’

‘I thought most Sylvanian nobles were vampires,’ said Gotrek nastily. It was not the most tactful thing to say but it was what Felix had always heard anyway, although most of his knowledge on the subject had come from a nurse who liked to terrify the children under her care with tales of horror.

In response to the Slayer’s words, the temperature at the table seemed to drop. Rodrik’s hand stole towards his sword and Felix felt sure that only a cool glare from his father prevented the youth from challenging Gotrek on the spot.

‘Your knowledge is a little out of date,’ said Baron Leicheburg. He studied the Slayer as if he were a nasty insect that had just crawled onto the table. If Gotrek cared, he gave no sign. He took another swig of the wine and belched loudly. This time it took his father’s hand on his shoulder to prevent Rodrik from surging to his feet and issuing a challenge. There was a look of concern on the older man’s face. He most likely could guess the outcome of that challenge as well as Felix could.

‘I can see you are keen to correct me,’ Gotrek said.

‘Two centuries ago, you would have been absolutely correct,’ said the Count of Swartzhafen. ‘Two centuries ago this land lay under the heel of the Vampire Counts and their allies. After Hel Fenn they were… exterminated, and the Emperor gave these lands in fief to trustworthy vassals.’

Felix remembered reading something about the subject in the University Library in Altdorf. The book had said nothing about trustworthy vassals though. It had said that the lands of Sylvania were given to impoverished noble houses, and second sons keen to own land who could not get it any other way. The book implied that you would have to be very desperate indeed to want to rule over any part of the province.

‘I have heard tales of vampires in Sylvania far more recently than Hel Fenn,’ said Max. ‘Reliable sources have informed me they have ruled large tracts of this land until even quite recently. I believe the Templars of the White Wolf besieged Castle Regrak ten years ago when it was discovered that the occupant was a blood drinker.’

‘Regrak was a blood drinker,’ said the Count of Swartzhafen, ‘but he was as mortal as you or me. He merely thought that consuming the blood of virgin youths would keep him young and give him mystical powers. As far as I know it did not. Believe me, if he had been a vampire, the Templars would have had considerably more trouble burning down his manor.’

‘Nonetheless, our learned friend is quite correct,’ said the countess. ‘There have been other instances of the undying ones ruling in Sylvania since Hel Fenn, as we all know only too well. If the number of these instances is less than popular rumour would have the ignorant believe it does not change the essential truth.’

‘You haven’t answered my original question, countess,’ said Felix. He realised from his tone of voice and the slurring of his words that he was actually getting quite drunk. Not surprising really. He had been ill for days, and not taken any wine for the length of their journey. He was out of practice at drinking. ‘What did you mean by the Carstein bloodline?’

Again Felix was surprised when Max replied. He could never quite resist showing off his knowledge when given half a chance. ‘Scholars of these things believe the undying ones can be… classified is perhaps the best word, into several bloodlines. These are believed to be descendants of the original vampires of the city of Lahmia in the kingdom of Nehekhara created by Nagash over three thousand years ago. Each bloodline is supposed to share some of the traits of its progenitor and to have different strengths and weaknesses depending on its ancestry.’

Felix saw the countess staring at Max with a mixture of amusement, respect and interest. He felt a little jealous. She certainly was a very good-looking woman. Suddenly he felt disgusted with himself. What was he thinking? Ulrika was in the hands of something far worse than a madman and a dark magician, and here he was lusting after another woman. The more cynical part of his mind told him that feeling ashamed would not in any way change the facts of the situation.

‘You are a very learned man, Herr Schreiber. I am surprised. These are not matters of common knowledge. We must discuss how you came to acquire such scholarship some time.’

Max nodded his head condescendingly. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I have studied much dark and forbidden lore and–’

‘Nonetheless, you are wrong in one or two particulars.’

‘Wrong?’

‘The vampires were not created by Nagash. They were mighty mages in their own right who acquired some of his knowledge in the long wars of the Dawn Ages.’

Max looked dubious but remained silent.

‘That was an age at least as fractious as our own.’

‘The Carstein bloodline?’ Felix prodded, hoping still to get an answer to his original question.

‘It is one of the major vampiric bloodlines,’ said the countess. ‘In the Empire it is perhaps the major bloodline.’

‘The name is certainly the most familiar,’ said Felix dryly. ‘What with the wars of the Vampire Counts and all.’

‘That is why the bloodline is known as the Carstein line. The original Vlad von Carstein was the most famous of all the counts, and popular legend gives his name to all of his progeny.’

‘You sound as if you disagree with this?’ said Max, ever the scholar, quibbling over a minor point of terminology not discussing a mass murderer whose insane plans of conquest had resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

The countess gave a small shrug, a gesture Felix associated with the wealthy Bretonnian merchants who often visited his father’s premises. ‘I do not see that it matters. We know little of von Carstein’s antecedents. He was the first of his line who achieved notoriety. Since then, his descendants have been quite active, particularly here in Sylvania.’

‘It looks like they have become a lot more active just recently,’ said Felix. ‘I wonder why.’

‘I think that is something we need to find out,’ said Count Rudgar. ‘Many lives might depend on it.’

Not least our own, thought Felix. He forced himself to concentrate once more in spite of the wine and the heat and the feeling of wellbeing brought on by consuming rich food for the first time after many days of hardship. ‘You seem to know a bit about Adolphus Krieger,’ he said, trying not to slur his words too much. ‘Would you care to share your knowledge with us?’

‘Later,’ said the countess. ‘It’s been a long day and I am sure we are all weary. The matter will wait for tomorrow. There are some things best discussed when the sun is high.’

Under the circumstances, Felix could not fault her reasoning.

The chamber was large, chilly and dominated by a huge portrait of a cold-eyed Sylvanian nobleman who seemed to study Felix with murderous intent. Briefly, he considered checking the rooms for secret passages. In the old tales Sylvanian castles were riddled with such things but the room was too cold and he was too drunk to bother. He did take the precaution of latching his door and leaving his sword propped against the wall within easy grasping distance of his bed.

As he drifted off into a cold and fitful sleep, he could have sworn he heard the distant howling of wolves.

SEVEN

It was dark. The coach slid through the night silently and swiftly. Behind them, the wolves padded along in the snow like wraiths. Their eyes burned. Their breath billowed forth in clouds. They looked at once beaten and fierce. There was something deeply unnatural about them now, as they slid further and further under the domination of the vampire.

Ulrika knew how they felt. She was confused. Her emotions were awhirl and it sometimes seemed to her that the darkness of the night had invaded her mind and her soul. She hated Krieger. She loathed him. He was arrogant, supercilious, sure of himself, domineering, contemptuous of those he deemed beneath him, which consisted of most of the world. She was sure that what he planned was evil, and yet sometimes she wanted to be part of it.

When she stopped to think, she knew that she must get away, that somehow she should escape from the coach and flee or find some way to kill him.

And yet it was impossible. He was too strong, too powerful. Often she had tried to strike him with her knife, and he had taken it from her as an adult might snatch a toy from a child. Twice she had tried to flee over the snows, into the depths of the winter woods. She had raced off, uncaring of whether she died of cold or starvation.

Once he had simply followed her trail, overtaken her in the darkness and carried her back to the coach. She could no more resist being snatched up than a mouse could have resisted a cat. The second time, she thought she had got away clean, but the cold had bitten through the thin clothing she wore, and she had passed out in the snow. She had woken to find herself back in the coach, warmed by some unnatural means, and quite certain that he could have overhauled her at any time, that he was toying with her, that he had let her think she had escaped just to be able to dash her hopes further. The most astonishing thing was that none of the vampire’s servants tried to stop her. It was as if they had been commanded not to interfere.

She had kept her eyes peeled for a village where she might break free and find shelter, but they never stopped in one for long, and Roche or the others purchased all of the supplies while she was held immobile in thrall to his master’s burning gaze and unnaturally strong grip. She could not even begin to make herself scream or shout for help, and that too made her wonder.

There was a darker side to her captivity, she acknowledged. In the vampire’s burning embrace there was an ecstasy the like of which she had never known, a pleasure fiercer than anything she had ever experienced. She had heard that some devotees of the daemon god Slaanesh became addicted to certain drugs and became completely dependent on them. She was starting to suspect that she knew how they felt. There were times when she found herself looking forward to the coming of night with longing, and times when she was disappointed when Krieger did not wish to sip her blood. There were times when she felt jealous when she saw him descend from the coaches of one of his followers, with that sleepy sated look on his face.

And worse yet, she suspected that he knew this. Certainly the amused glances he gave her implied as much as his talk. He seemed very certain of this; very sure, as if he had done this hundreds of times before, and watched hundreds of women become his mindless slaves.

That thought brought a spark of resistance to her mind. She was not going to be anybody’s mindless servant. She was not going to become his willing victim. If he thought she would, he was in for a surprise. Some way, somehow, she would find her way out of this trap and then…

And then what? There were other things to be considered as well. She was a long way from home, with no money or equipment or friends. She was sure they were in the wicked land of Sylvania now, a place of dark legends – not a place to be stranded alone in the depths of winter. There were the wolves loping along steadily behind them. Without Krieger’s protection they might well tear her limb from limb. She glanced out into the gloom and saw Krieger there, striding along among them, a predator among predators.

With the sight of him, the darkness in her thoughts returned, and with the darkness, temptation. Of late he had taken to talking to her more softly, of offering her things. Not bribes, not gold or jewels, but power and immortality. He did it in a mocking, teasing way, so she could never be sure whether he meant it, or merely intended to torment her before killing her.

She was not interested in such offers, she told herself. She did not want to become immortal at the price of her soul. She did not want to unnaturally prolong her life at the cost of others’ blood. She had no desire to learn the darkest secrets of sorcery. No. She wanted none of these things. There was no temptation there.

But at times she had found herself considering things. If she became immortal, she could some day become his equal, she could learn his secrets, and make her escape or extract her revenge. Unlife would eventually grant her that power, she was sure. That was the only real temptation there, or so she tried to convince herself. Unfortunately, she was not sure it was exactly true.

Sometimes when he talked, he seemed to be giving her glimpses into a greater, darker world, one possessed of an ancient and terrible beauty, ruled over by an aristocracy of the night, who held court in shadowed palaces, served by legions of more than willing servants. He talked of the far places he had been, and the things he had seen there, more places than any mortal could visit in a lifetime she was sure.

He had seen the Land of the Dead, and the great Black Pyramid of Nagash at midnight. He had heard the whisperings of the dead men as they stirred within the tomb cities. He had visited the edges of the Realms of Chaos and they seemed to hold no terrors for him. He had visited Bretonnia, Estalia, Tilea and every one of the known lands of men. He had talked with famous painters, and poets, as well as kings and queens and lesser rulers. He had discussed philosophy with Neumann, and playwriting and poetry with von Diehl and Sierck and Tarradasch.

He possessed a knowledge and a sophistication that made every man she had ever met seem shallow and venal. Even Max did not possess his depth of knowledge. Of course, she thought, Max had not stolen centuries of lives from innocents to acquire his scholarship either.

Krieger strode up to the side of the coach and wrenched the door open. The night’s chill entered with him. He reached out and touched her cheek with one icy hand. She flinched away but not as quickly as she would have liked.

‘Have you thought about the question I asked?’

‘You are not a teacher and I am not your pupil,’ she said. ‘I do not need to answer any of your questions.’

He smiled, showing teeth like any normal mortal’s. The killing fangs were still retracted. ‘I did not ask you to answer. I asked you to think about it,’ he said quietly. ‘Actually, I know you have thought about it. How could you not?’

Again that smug self-assurance, again that certainty that she could not but do what he wanted. The annoying thing was that he was right. He had a way of putting things that, combined with the situation itself, made it impossible not to think about what he wanted her to. Once again she felt like a fly snared in a particularly strong and subtly woven web. She ignored him, knowing that to say anything would be to grant him another victory. He shrugged and glanced out of the window into the moonlight.

Despite her efforts to keep them out, the questions he had asked her blazed through her brain. It was as if his presence transmitted them into her mind by some mystical power. He had asked her what the difference was between him and her. He preserved his life by taking the life of mortals. She preserved hers by taking the lives of cattle, birds and other living things.

The answer had seemed so simple at first. He killed people, sentient things with loves and hates and thoughts and passions. He had asked her how she could not be certain that animals did not feel the same things. After all, once she had said her old dog had understood her.

‘Are you prepared to kill to defend yourself or your family? You don’t need to answer. I already know what you will say.’ She spoke just to be contradictory. ‘Of course I would.’

‘What is the difference between doing that and killing to prolong your life?’

‘The difference is that I would not be the aggressor. I would be defending myself.’

‘What about to protect your land?’

‘I would fight to protect it.’

‘So you are saying you value your land more highly than another person’s life.’

‘If they tried to take my land, yes.’ He shook his head and gave her a mocking smile.

‘And if your allies call on you to fight, you would kill to protect their lands?’

‘I would be honour bound to.’

‘So now your honour is worth more than another person’s life. I think I am more honest than you. I can truthfully say I value my existence more highly than I value theirs.’

‘That is your privilege,’ she said. ‘What happens when you run into someone who feels the same way about you?’

‘You already know the answer.’

Ulrika fell silent. She knew his questions were just another one of his games, designed to make her feel inferior and weak, to break down her resistance. She could not understand why he bothered, other than perhaps because he got some sick sadistic pleasure from it.

She did not regard herself as having a particularly philosophical turn of mind. Such a thing was hardly a necessity for the daughter of a frontier nobleman of Kislev. All she needed to be able to do was manage an estate and wield a weapon, not be able to answer complex ethical riddles. She felt out of her depth here, confronted with a puzzle that was way beyond all her previous experience.

She was willing to admit that eternal life and eternal youth were not without their attractions. But the price being asked here was too high.

Beside her, Adolphus Krieger smiled as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

She really wished to put a dagger through his heart at that moment, but she suspected that if she could, it would make no difference. He seemed so invulnerable.

Max watched the sun rise from the walls of Waldenschlosse. It did not cheer him. The meat he had eaten last night sat in his stomach as if made of lead. The weakness he had felt since recovering from his investigation of the Eye of Khemri stayed with him. He summoned a splinter of power, and wrapped himself in it, to keep out the chill, to warm himself. His old masters would have shuddered to see him use power in such a way but, right at this moment, he did not care.

The warmth spread over his skin and brought a flush to his cheeks but it did not touch his heart. It was no wonder; the view from the castle was enough to chill the blood of any man. The keep stood atop a great rocky crag. As the shadows of night retreated he saw the corpse of the town. That was the best way he could describe the ruined and half-deserted township. Waldenhof seemed less like a living city than a prison or a camp in which the refugees of some terrible disaster huddled, waiting for the next dreadful doom to descend on them.

In the distance, beyond the tumbled-down town walls, lay a seemingly endless dark forest. There was a brooding sense of presence about it, as if ancient evil things still lurked there, waiting to strike. It was said the woods of Sylvania had been a haven for creatures of darkness since the time of Sigmar. Max found it easy to believe. Not even the plumes of smoke rising from the snow-covered hovels below reassured him much. The town looked even less prepossessing by daylight than it had the night before.

Max had thought he would have slept well last night. After all, he had had a real bed and a real room heated by a real fireplace. He had not done so. His sleep had been full of nightmares. His body had become so accustomed to hard ground that he had constantly shifted on his mattress in a futile search for rest. The room had seemed stuffy and it had been hard to breathe. Perhaps he was becoming ill, but his routine monitoring of his physical health had shown no signs of it. His protective spells seemed to be working. He doubted if he was coming down with a flux or plague. It must simply be worry and exhaustion.

He invoked the location spell on the Eye of Khemri. It had stopped moving, as it often did at this time of day. Well, at least he had answered one mystery. If Krieger were a blood drinker, that would explain why he travelled mostly at night. Max prayed that finally the vampire had reached his goal and they would soon overtake him. It seemed logical that they would: Sylvania was most likely his destination. The question was, what horror did he plan when he reached his eventual goal? He surely intended to use the Eye for some unspeakable purpose.

Max saw Felix emerge onto the battlements. He looked considerably the worse for wear. He was pale and sweating, despite the cold. His hair was lank and his beard unkempt. The tattered red cloak was drawn tight about his shoulders. He gave a great hacking cough that made his whole body shudder. He shuffled along the battlements towards Max like an old man, moving very cautiously. The wizard was not surprised. The stone was slippery, and it was a long drop to the hard flagstones of the courtyard below.

‘Morning, Max, you’re up early,’ he said. His voice was hoarse, and Max was sure he could hear a wheezing noise coming from his chest.

‘I did not sleep well.’

Felix smiled. ‘You look how I feel.’

‘I could say the same about you,’ said Max.

‘This is a depressing place.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘And it’s a depressing time. The winter is deep. The hordes of Chaos are on the march. The forces of the undead muster, and we’re right in the middle of it. It’s funny – when I was a child I always wanted to have adventures like the ones I read about in books. Now I find myself having adventures and I wish I was a child back in my father’s house again.’

‘These are dark times,’ said Max. To his surprise, Felix burst out laughing, and kept laughing till his mirth ended in a spasm of coughing. ‘What was that about?’ Max asked.

‘You really do sound just like a wizard should sometimes, Max. Would you care to make some ominous prophecies now?’

‘I don’t think you are in the right frame of mind for them. Maybe I will wait till it’s dark and the wolves are howling outside. Maybe then you’ll shiver appropriately at my oracular pronouncements.’

‘I think I’m shivering quite enough at the moment.’

Max turned and looked away towards the horizon. In the distance, he could see a huge plume of dark smoke rising. ‘What is that?’ he asked. He answered his own question. ‘Most likely just the fire from some townsman’s hut.’

Felix shook his head. ‘No. The billows are too big and too dark. It’s no normal fire. Not unless he has set fire to his whole street in an effort to keep warm. Not that I would blame him if he had.’

A horn sounded from one of the nearby watchtowers. The call echoed through the courtyard and was answered from other towers.

‘It would seem we are not the only ones who have noticed,’ said Felix.

Within minutes, a company of men-at-arms had assembled in the courtyard. ‘I suppose we had better go and help them investigate,’ said Felix without much enthusiasm. He coughed long and hard before shuffling towards the stairs.

Even as Max watched a mass of people appeared before the castle, emerging from the tumbled down streets of the decaying city. They looked as if they had been running for their lives. There were raggedly clad men, women clutching babies to their breasts, and small children. A few of the men clutched pitchforks and other weapons. Some had pitifully small sacks over their shoulders that Max guessed held a few possessions. All of them seemed to be scared. The villagers in the huts below emerged from their homes to meet them. After a few seconds of chatter they began to shout for their masters to open the gates.

‘It seems there has been another raid in the night,’ said the countess. She strode over and glanced at Max and Felix. Max looked at her. She was pale and very beautiful, very much the languid aristocrat, and there was something about her that he disliked. ‘Rudgar and his men will ride out and investigate, although I doubt that they will find anything. The creatures will have melted away into the woods by now. They always do. They are very good at it.’

Even as she spoke, Rudgar, Rodrik and a group of knights thundered past, going hell for leather through the snow into the woods, looking for all the world as if they were out hunting. A few even let out wild whoops of excitement, and blew upon their horns exactly as if going to hounds. Max was not too impressed by their grasp of tactics. Why warn your foes that you are coming? He had never suspected the count and his son as being the brightest of men and here was proof of it. Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter were stomping down the stairs now, hefting their weapons and looking as cheerful as men on their way to an Elector countess’s ball.

‘Better hurry,’ he said ironically. ‘Otherwise you’ll miss the battle.’

The two grinned as if he was not being sarcastic and began trotting in the direction of the smoke. Felix coughed behind his hand, and began to move off too. Max supposed he had to fill the conditions of his oath.

‘Wait,’ said the countess. ‘Get horses from the stable. We’ll all get there quicker.’ Max noticed that he seemed to have been included in that. He found himself moving towards the stables almost automatically. There was something very subtly commanding about the countess.

It was a twenty minute ride through the snow-covered streets to where the outskirts of the city touched the woods. All around rotting buildings loomed, frightened people glancing out from shadowy doorways. Max’s breath steamed in the air. The horse raced along smoothly underneath him, great muscles bunching and uncoiling. Riding was exhilarating, and he thought he might be able to understand the behaviour of the young nobles earlier.

‘Your face is very grim, Herr Schreiber,’ said Countess Gabriella. ‘Any particular reason, or are you always this way?’

Max forced himself to smile, and to relax a little. He might not like the countess much, but there was no need to be rude. It served little purpose. And really, who was he to judge her? He hardly knew the woman, after all.

‘I am worried. About Ulrika and about Adolphus Krieger.’

‘You have every reason to be. He is a very wicked man.’

Max glanced over at her. In the cold clear morning light, he could see that she was not as young as he had first thought. Over the veil, small lines were visible at the corner of her eyes. Expertly applied make-up almost concealed them but they were there. And there was a sheen to her black hair that suggested to Max that it was dyed. She was older than he was by ten years at least, he guessed.

‘Are you talking from personal experience?’ Max was not sure why he said that, the words just slipped out. He could see Felix give him a warning look. Perhaps his tone had been a bit insensitive, he thought, but he could not help it. The woman brought out the worst in him for some reason.

‘You could say that,’ she said. ‘He is an old enemy of my husband’s family. Or rather, they are old enemies of his.’

‘Why?’

‘The Emperor granted us the castle that he had occupied before the Wars of the Vampire Counts, before everyone knew what he was. He resented that a great deal, and he swore to take it back and have revenge on my husband’s entire line.’

‘He certainly knows how to hold a grudge,’ said Felix. There was a note of mild irony in his voice.

‘You don’t understand, Herr Jaeger. You have no comprehension of the way the undying ones think. They look like mortals, but they are not like mortals. They are not sane, as you would judge sanity. What they are twists their minds. They are no more comprehensible to most people than a spider would be, if we could read its thoughts.’

‘That’s an uncomfortable idea,’ said Felix, and the tone of irony was gone.

‘The undying ones are disturbing things. They are predators and mortals are their prey. They are driven by needs and drives that are incomprehensible to the living.’

Max fought down a shiver. Somewhere out there Ulrika was in the hands of a creature like this, and that was the best he could hope for, if the thing had not simply slain her out of hand and drunk her blood to sustain its unnatural existence. Somewhere deep in his heart red-hot anger began to blaze. If that had happened Adolphus Krieger would pay; it would not matter how long it took, Max would hunt him down and make an end of him. It did not matter how powerful the creature thought he was, he would discover there were other powers in this world.

Max reached out and touched the weave of his location spell again. It was still there. He could still feel it. Suddenly, he just wanted to be away from here, for the chase to be on once more. They were wasting time here. Every heartbeat might prove vital. He pushed the thoughts back. This woman could tell him things that might help. It was always best to know your enemy, particularly if they were as powerful and dangerous as he feared Adolphus Krieger might be. Surely remaining here for a few more hours would not make that much difference. Just the extra rest would let them move faster over the next few days. Surely that alone would make this delay worthwhile.

He tried to convince himself, but he still felt guilty. ‘Tell me more of Adolphus Krieger,’ he said.

‘Little enough is known of him. He was one of von Carstein’s most trusted minions. He led armies in the field for him during the Winter War. It is said even von Carstein feared him. He vanished after Hel Fenn. Many thought he had perished with the other undying ones. My husband’s family did not.’

‘Why?’

‘Things happened. My kinfolk died under mysterious circumstances, and always after reports of someone who looked like Krieger had been spotted in the area. Some thought his ghost had returned to haunt the family. Others knew he still existed and was taunting them. The undying ones can afford to take a long time over their revenges, and they like to spin these things out. Compared to them a cat toying with a mouse is merciful.’

She spoke on, telling bloodcurdling tales of Krieger’s misdeeds, and anecdotes from her family history. As Max listened he began to build a picture of Krieger that chilled the blood. And this was the man who had Nagash’s amulet! Putting aside rescuing Ulrika it occurred to Max that it would be a very bad thing to allow the Eye of Khemri to stay within his clutches.

Felix listened to Max and Gabriella talk as he rode. His cough was worse. His lungs felt clogged but he managed to stay upright on the horse. He kept his eyes peeled studying the surroundings. If there were beastmen about, he wanted to see them before they saw him. These half-abandoned streets were perfect for an ambush. Idly he wondered where the Slayers were. They had not overtaken them on the road, but he would not have put it past Gotrek and Snorri to have taken a shortcut.

His nostrils twitched. From up ahead he could smell burning. It seemed that they were closer than he had thought. A pity. He had a few questions he wanted to ask of the Countess Gabriella. She seemed the best informed of all the Sylvanian nobles, although he supposed it was quite likely that any of them could answer his questions. There was a lot he wanted to know about the undying ones, and the Carstein bloodline, particularly since he felt a cold certainty that one of these nights he was going to find himself in some out of the way place hunting Krieger or others of his ilk. Such episodes had all too frequently punctuated his career as the Slayer’s henchman.

He wanted to know how many of the tales concerning vampires were true and how many were old wives’ tales, and it seemed to him that the Sylvanians were best placed to be able to answer them. No time like the present, he told himself.

‘Countess, is it true that the undying ones are much stronger than ordinary men, strong enough to rip a man’s heart out with their bare hands?’

If Max was displeased with this interruption he did not let it show. He looked at the countess expectantly. She considered for a moment.

‘Some of them certainly are. Krieger is… if the old tales are to be believed.’

Wonderful, thought Felix. I stood in a room with a man capable of rending my flesh with his bare hands, and I was quite prepared to fight him. I may have to do so again.

‘Why do you say “some of them”?’ Max asked. It was a good question, and Felix wished he had thought of it.

‘The undying ones vary in their characteristics far more than humans. You hear many stories of them, and it’s a certainty that all of them have some basis in fact. It’s just that not every tale holds true of every blood drinker.’

‘Can you give me an example?’

‘They are said to be unable to abide the sign of the hammer, or to pass any window barred with daemonroot. In some cases this is true. There are documented reports of the undying fleeing from priests of Sigmar when presented with holy symbols. But equally there are believable accounts of them tearing apart priests who confronted them, and trampling on the holy signs and laughing.’

‘I would be surprised if these tales involved the same vampire though,’ said Max. The countess looked at him with some respect. Felix wondered what the wizard’s point was. He wished his head did not hurt quite so much. He wished the motion of the horse did not make him quite so nauseous.

‘You would mostly be correct, Herr Schreiber. And where the stories do overlap there is always the possibility of confusion.’

‘There are some simple possible explanations,’ said Max. ‘Such things might be completely dependent on what the individual creature itself believes. It happens all the time with wizards. Some can only cast spells when they have their favourite staff. Some believe implicitly that their spells will have no effect on certain things like priests or people bearing the sign of the hammer and, strangely, this is the case. Even though other wizards have no difficulty doing this whatsoever. Magic is in many ways as much about confidence and willpower as it is about tapping the currents of magic, and certainly the undying ones must be even more steeped in magic than even wizards.’

‘You are referring to Karel Lazlo’s theory of belief systems,’ said the countess. Max smiled.

‘I would have thought I was the only person in a hundred leagues to know about that book, much less to have read it.’

‘In Sylvania we know the utility of much strange lore, and we set ourselves to acquiring it.’

Felix’s head reeled but he still had questions he wanted answered and he wasn’t about to let these two get side-tracked into some long-winded discussion of what some centuries’ dead philosopher thought, no matter how much it might have interested him under normal circumstances.

‘Is it true they die if exposed to sunlight?’ he asked, once again forcing his way into the conversation.

‘Again it varies,’ said the countess. ‘Some become very badly burned by daylight, some die, some seem able to bear it without major damage. All accounts agree, though, that unless they have just consumed a great deal of blood, or enhanced their powers with magic, that they are considerably less formidable during daylight. No one knows why.’

‘I have read that some of them are capable of going abroad by daylight even, provided they protect their skins from exposure,’ said Max. The countess adjusted her veil and looked at him.

‘That is most likely true too.’

Felix wondered how much of what he thought he knew about the creatures was true and how much of it was conditional, or applied only to some and not to others, or was merely an old wives’ tale? He pushed on.

‘Can they fly or transform themselves into bats or wolves or other animals? I have read that they can.’

Both Max and the countess stared at him for long moments in silence. He could not make up his mind whether they were giving his question serious consideration or looking at him as if he were an idiot, but he met their gaze evenly. His question was not stupid if his life might depend on the answer. Eventually the countess spoke, ‘It is said that there were some of the Carstein bloodline who could transform themselves into creatures of the night.’

Max considered for a while. ‘There is no reason why it should not be possible. Some wizards can manage the same trick using certain transformational spells. I have never seen it done, but I see no reason to doubt that it is possible. Many strange things are given the proper application of the correct forces.’

Things were looking worse and worse, Felix thought. It was possible that Krieger possessed all the powers that legend ascribed to the blood drinkers, and it was equally possible that none of the protections of which the tales spoke might work against him. He tried telling himself that he was looking at things in the worst of all possible lights but often in the past the worst had happened, so this was no comfort.

Where was Gotrek, Felix wondered? The power of that ancient axe would certainly be a reassuring thing to have around right now.

The building still burned as they rode up to it. Thick oily clouds of smoke rose from the peat walls of the nearest huts. Felix had heard the living conditions of the peasants in Sylvania were even more squalid than those of such people elsewhere, and here was evidence of it before his very eyes. Farmers around Altdorf kept pigs in sties that looked more inhabitable than some of these huts must have been.

Felix had heard that things were hard in Sylvania, and that the lives of the peasants here were bywords for brutishness. Looking at this he could believe it. He had never seen dwellings so small and squalid. The peasants who had come filtering back when they realised the knights had arrived were smaller, thinner and more unhealthy looking than any human beings Felix had ever seen, and most of them bore pockmarks or possessed wall eyes or the look of congenital idiocy. Was there something in the soil here that twisted human life, he wondered?

He had not realised he had spoken out loud until he saw Max looking at him. ‘The taint of dark magic is very strong in Sylvania,’ said the wizard. ‘And the soil was said to have been contaminated terribly by the warpstone starfall that preceded the Great Plague of 1111. Maybe that has affected the people, although this is probably neither the time nor the place to speak of it.’

Felix nodded his head. He had visited the Chaos Wastes and thought that there could be no worse place in the world, but now he was starting to have his doubts. The mark of darkness was much more obvious in the Wastes, but in some way the very familiarity of Sylvania made it seem worse. This was part of the Empire. These people were citizens of his native land and yet ruinous magic had tainted their lives in many ways and on many levels. He wondered what his own life would have been like if he had been born here.

Thinking of the somewhat eccentric appearance and manner of the nobles he had met, he wondered if they were at all different from their people. Perhaps they were changed on the inside the way these folks had been altered on the outside. Perhaps there was some truth in all those tales of madness set in this accursed province. He shook his head. He was making too many assumptions based on too few facts. He was letting the depressing atmosphere of this decaying place get to him.

He rode up to where some of the villagers were prodding a corpse. Or what at first looked like a corpse. He looked again, reined the horse in and dismounted then shouldered his way through the small knot of people around the body. Maybe once it had been human, although it must have been a very lean and evil-looking man. He prodded it with his boot and the head rolled to one side. The face was shocking, as much for the ways in which it resembled a man as for the ways it did not. The skin was greyish and flaky with an oddly reptilian quality although Felix could not quite put his finger on what made it so.

The yellowish eyes were much larger than normal, and seemed to bulge out of their sockets so that the eyelids could not contain them. The face was very long, and very lean, and the jaw was very narrow. The mouth grinning in death’s rictus was full of teeth that were discoloured and far too sharp. The nails on the hands were long and claw-like.

‘What is it?’ he asked quietly.

‘It’s a ghoul, manling,’ said Gotrek, the crowd parting around him. ‘An eater of manflesh.’

Felix was sickened. Like all the citizens of the Empire he had heard tales of these foul cannibals who gorged themselves on the meat of corpses but he had never really expected to encounter one.

‘Goetz killed it yer honour, wiv ’is pitchfork,’ said one of the peasants. ‘Just afore two o’ this thing’s mates grabbed ’im an’ made off. I guess we’ll find his bones cracked for marrow one o’ these days.’

Now, Felix really did feel nauseous. It was disturbing enough to see the bones of those who had been killed and eaten by beastmen, but if legends were correct this ghoul here had once been human till he developed a taste for forbidden meat.

‘Look’s a bit like Wilhelm, this one,’ said another peasant with a sort of dull curiosity. ‘I always did wonder what ’appened to ’im.’

‘You’re saying you knew this thing?’ said Felix incredulously.

‘Maybe. Wouldn’t be the first around here to try a bit of sweet pork if you get my drift. Winter is long and sometimes food is scarce. Who can afford the butcher’s bill?’

Felix did not know what horrified him more, the information the man had imparted or the casual way he had said it. Seeing Felix looking at him askance, the man flinched and added, ‘Not that I’ve ever tried it myself, you understand.’

The thunder of hooves announced the arrival of Rudgar. ‘These creatures are either very desperate or very confident to be attacking the town itself.’

The Countess Gabriella’s voice was chill. ‘I fear they are growing very confident.’

At that moment, the ghoul’s eyes flickered open and it let out a chilling malevolent laugh. ‘The Time of Blood is here,’ it cackled and lunged upward at Felix. Before he even had time to step back, Gotrek’s axe had parted the thing’s head from its shoulders. There was surprisingly little blood.

The peasants had fallen back muttering with horror, making the sign of the hammer, and other wards that Felix did not recognise. ‘The thing was dead, I knows it was,’ said the peasant who had spoken of sweet pig.

‘It is now,’ said Gotrek and spat on the headless corpse.

‘It certainly looked dead when I poked it with my boot,’ said Felix, as they strode through the ruins at the edge of town. Here the walls were almost the height of four men and tipped with spikes in places. Of course, in other places there were huge gaps, where the stonework had tumbled and not been rebuilt. It was easy to see how the things had got in.

‘Anyone can make a mistake, manling,’ said Gotrek.

‘It might have been dead,’ said Max. ‘Perhaps there was some residue of dark magic left within it, which allowed it to come back to a semblance of life one last time.’

‘Maybe,’ said the Slayer. ‘Or maybe it was just wounded and faking.’

‘You’re most probably right,’ said Max, but he still sounded a little dubious. Felix wondered if the atmosphere of this place was starting to get to the wizard as well. Normally Max Schreiber was quite sceptical.

‘Vampires, ghouls, beastmen; what next?’ muttered Felix.

‘Some of these peasants look like they might want a good meal of sweet pork,’ said the Slayer nastily.

‘They just look like they could use a good meal,’ said Felix.

‘No need to concern yourself with these scum,’ boomed Rodrik, striding up the muddy street. He had obviously overheard. ‘They will get by. Their sort always does. Most likely have a whole sackful of turnips they should have used for taxes buried in their midden piles.’

‘A whole sackful? Of turnips?’ said Felix softly. His irony was obviously lost on the young knight who just nodded sagely.

‘These villains are scum, pure and simple. Steal their liege lords blind, rob a passing stranger for his shoes and use them to make soup. If you don’t treat them with the lash they’ll go right back to their old ways. They were too long under the Vampire Counts.’

Too long under the likes of you more like, thought Felix, all the reasons why he disliked the aristocracy of his homeland coming flooding back to him. He gazed at the young knight with unconcealed distaste. If Rodrik noticed he gave no sign of it.

‘There’s nothing much more we can do here. Best get back to the schloss,’ said Rodrik.

Felix nodded. They had better things to do than stick around and help this upper class brute oppress the peasants. Still, he had to admit, some of the peasants were looking at him rather hungrily.

Max was happy to be back on the road again, though less than pleased that Countess Gabriella had decided to accompany them, with Rodrik and his fellows as escort. It seemed that their routes ran together for many leagues. If what the countess claimed about Krieger having a claim on her husband’s lands was true, then perhaps they might find themselves allies.

The conference of nobles had ended inconclusively. They had agreed to send aid to one another if attacked, but it seemed that the plan was mostly to remain within their castles till the end of winter and then summon their vassals and muster their armies to scour the land. In truth, there was very little else for them to do. Armies would not be able to march in the deep winter and keeping any large force supplied would be next to impossible. Only the desperate or the driven would be abroad now. Max smiled grimly. People like ourselves in other words. And those in the service of the dark powers, he added after a moment’s consideration.

He wondered how much chance the Sylvanian nobles really had against any force Krieger might muster. Max doubted that it was good. This was a poor, infertile land, and could not support many people. The size of the nobles’ forces was considerably smaller than any that might be mustered elsewhere in the Empire. He doubted that all of the rulers at the meeting at Waldenschlosse together could muster as many troops as the city guard of Praag. That was not an encouraging thought either.

There had been some talk of hiring mercenaries as well but Max doubted that anything would come of it. No mercenary in his right mind would want to come to Sylvania for the sums these impoverished nobles would offer, and even if they did most would, doubtless, soon be far more lucratively employed by the Emperor in the campaign against Chaos.

Max dismissed these thoughts and gave his attention to his surroundings. Snow crunched beneath the hooves of the ponies. The Kislevite warriors rode in a column, silently scanning their surroundings with wary eyes. Max did not blame them for their low spirits. He himself had never seen a more ominous-looking wood. The trees were sickly and, where not covered in snow, were blotched with some sort of parasitic mould that glowed in the shadows. The place was oppressive and deathly quiet save for the sounds made by the advancing party.

He shivered. This was the road to Drakenhof, a place with as bad a reputation as any in the world. At Drakenhof, the scourge of the Vampire Counts had first arisen. At Drakenhof, the first of the infamous von Carsteins had raised his banner and proclaimed himself ruler of Sylvania. The castle itself was said to have been built on a particularly ill-omened site, a nexus of terrible dark magical energies, a place so woven around by evil protective spells that any mortal who spent time there went insane. It was said that the siege engineers who had been set the task of destroying the place by the Emperor Joachim had gone mad, and devoured each other. All things considered, it was not a place he was keen to visit. Unfortunately it seemed likely to be the ultimate destination of Adolphus Krieger. It was a disturbing thought.

At least, whatever else they might have been, the folk back at Waldenschlosse had been generous with their supplies. They had replenished the stores of grain and hard tack on the wagons out of their own meagre stocks. They had an ulterior motive, Max supposed. If this expedition had even the faintest chance of ridding them of Krieger then it was worth their while supporting it. Judging by the looks they had received, as they rode out, not too many rated their chances highly.

Max had other reasons to be grateful. While at the keep he had taken advantage of the library and learned a great deal of obscure knowledge concerning Sylvania and the Vampire Counts. The family chronicles of noble houses here were for the most part as dry and dull as those of aristocratic families elsewhere but some surprising nuggets of information could show up.

Mannfred von Carstein had had the whole approach to Drakenhof lined with the crucified forms of his enemies. One dark autumn evening he had them all set alight to illuminate his triumphal procession into the town. Many of the victims had still been alive when the torch had been set to their oil-soaked bodies. What sort of maniac would do that sort of thing, Max wondered?

Unfortunately, the answer was all too obvious, when dealing with members of the Carstein bloodline. There seemed to be something tainted in that brood, as if an ancient curse of madness inevitably descended on its members. Not that any of the undying ones were exactly sane. From his other readings, Max knew that almost all of the bloodlines suffered this in some way. Max wondered if the vampires would see it that way though.

How could he judge? Their lives were so long and their perspectives so skewed by what they were that maybe to them their behaviour was normal. If you had lived for centuries by treating people as cattle then maybe using them as torches would seem natural. Somehow Max could not quite convince himself of this. He thought it far more likely that the creatures were so saturated by dark magic that their minds and their souls, if they still had any, were warped by it. It was a well documented process that occurred to dark magicians and those who trafficked with the Ruinous Powers. There was no reason to assume that vampires were immune; quite the opposite, in fact.

Max did not know where all of this speculation was leading him except perhaps to the fact that he knew several spells of unbinding and dissipation against dark magic, and that these might prove most useful against a creature which owed its existence in part to those baneful energies. In some ways too this was a tactical problem. If Krieger was one of those who were affected by sunlight then Max knew several spells for replicating the effect of the sun too. Those might prove very handy as well. This was a problem that needed to be considered from all angles. The stakes were too high to allow for any errors of judgement. Not only his life but Ulrika’s and all of their party’s might depend on such things.

‘So, you have written poetry?’ asked the Countess Gabriella. Felix nodded, wondering why she had asked him to join her. Surely she had not asked him here simply to discuss poesy. He glanced out into the gathering gloom before nodding. Rodrik rode along beside the coach. He caught Felix’s eye upon him and glanced back with a look that could only be described as jealous. Felix turned to look away. The last thing he wanted was any trouble with the hotheaded young noble.

He felt quite sleepy. The motion of the coach on its runners was lulling him into a daze. The countess’s coach was warm and the cushioned leather seats a lot more comfortable than the hard bench on the supply sledge. The countess herself was far more pleasant company than the Slayer, although that wasn’t saying much since, on most days, so was a dead badger. To be fair to the woman, she was a lot better company than most people he knew – witty, erudite and charming.

‘And where was it published?’ He looked over at her. Behind her veil her eyes seemed to glitter in the dim light. The subtle, spicy smell of her perfume filled the coach’s interior.

‘In Altdorf, by the Altdorf Press. In their anthologies of new Imperial poetry for the most part.’

‘So you wrote it in Imperial, not Classical.’

‘It’s the modern manner,’ said Felix, a little defensively. Like most educated men he could read and write quite competently in the old tongue if he had to, but the idea of writing poetry in it had no great appeal. Too many of the great masters had used the language, and that invited unfavourable comparisons. ‘Most publishers these days are aiming at the vernacular audience. It’s larger.’

‘Quite,’ said the countess, a little sharply. ‘But Classical is a much more elegant language, don’t you think?’ There was something a little challenging in her tone. Felix felt as if he were being quizzed by his professors back at the university.

‘I don’t know that I agree,’ he said. ‘I think it’s the choice of words that makes a statement elegant, if that’s what you wish, rather than the language it’s written in. Certainly I can think of just as many bad poems written in Classical as Imperial. More, actually, since it was the language of scholars and poets for so much longer.’

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘You are a most unusual young man, Herr Jaeger, with an original turn of thought.’

Felix looked at her to see if she was being ironic. He had just told her what most intellectuals and professors would have told her. It had been something of an orthodoxy for the past twenty-five years. Yet there was no trace of mockery in her voice or manner. He supposed it was possible. Sylvania was after all a backwater place, far from the mainstream of intellectual life. Most of the books back in the Waldenschlosse library had been hand-written, copied by scribes rather than set in movable type. Considering the explosion in publishing since Johannes of Marienburg introduced his printing machine over a century ago that was unusual. Felix had heard someone say more books were now printed in any given year than had been scribed in all of Imperial history before the introduction of printing, and more new books were published in any year than had been written in any previous century. He did not know if that was true, but it certainly sounded correct to him.

He mentioned this to the countess just for something to say.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Things used to be so different. Once you could keep up with all the new trends in literature and philosophy and natural philosophy. Now, sadly it’s impossible. The world is racing forward at a much faster pace, and I fear it’s rushing headlong toward no good final destination.’

She sounded very definite about that. ‘I think the expansion of knowledge is a good thing,’ said Felix. ‘I think the more we can learn the better.’

She sighed. ‘The confidence of youth.’

Felix was not sure he liked her tone. He did not feel very young these days. He worried that his experiences had aged him prematurely. The countess continued speaking as if she had not noticed his frosty look, although he was certain that she had. She was a very observant woman.

‘Do you think it’s good that knowledge of the dark cults is spreading? Or that soon the secrets of the darkest sorcery will be available to any lout who can read, where once they were the preserve of those who knew their dangers and their costs?’

‘The wizards’ guilds and the temples still hold their secrets close,’ said Felix. ‘So do the engineers and the alchemists.’

‘How much longer do you think that will continue? How much longer do you think the world has?’

That was a fair question, Felix thought. He had seen the armies of Chaos on the march. It was all too likely that they were living in the final days. All the bright promise of natural philosophy and magical research might well never be fulfilled. Instead, the whole of the Old World might be ground under the iron-shod hooves of the Chaos hordes. Still, you could hardly blame the spread of printing for that. The countess watched him intently, as if deeply interested in his answer.

Felix felt as if he should say something reassuring, that the Emperor would triumph, and everything would turn out all right in the end, but he had seen too much to believe it. The forces of Chaos might have been halted at Praag but that was a temporary setback for them. They would soon recover and push ever deeper into the lands of men.

‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘These are dark times.’

‘Darker than you think,’ she said.

Felix clambered down from the coach, oddly disturbed by his conversations with the Countess Gabriella. She had a way of making him think about the things he did not want to, and she was a very erudite woman in her old-fashioned way. She seemed particularly interested in him as well, and he was not sure why. He would have said it was in the normal way a woman was interested in a man, and yet there was a reserve about her, a holding back, a quality of waiting and watching and judging so intense that it seemed abnormal. A most peculiar woman, he decided, trudging back through the snow to the supply sledge.

He drew his cloak tight against the wind. At least he felt a little better. His nose had stopped running, his cough no longer scourged his body and brought tears to his eyes, and he was not quite as feverish as he had been. Perhaps the stay at the castle had done him some good after all.

He clambered back up onto the sledge beside Gotrek and took the reins of the pony.

‘Best be careful, manling. There’s a fellow who looks like he might want to slip a dagger into your back.’ The Slayer sounded amused in his own bleak fashion. Felix glanced around and saw Rodrik glaring at him, his handsome face contorted by what might almost have been hatred. It looked as if Rodrik were jealous of the time he had spent with the countess.

‘Rodrik’s too honourable to put a knife into my back,’ Felix muttered.

‘He might try a sword into your belly then.’

Felix laughed. ‘I don’t think now is the time to be fighting duels for the hand of the countess.’

‘He might disagree with you.’

‘I’ll worry about it if it happens.’ The Slayer chuckled maliciously. ‘Might be too late by then.’

‘It smells a bit fusty,’ said Roche.

Adolphus Krieger looked around the entrance hall of Drakenhof. It looked good. His servants had undone some of the damage done by those vandals two centuries ago. The scorched walls had been rebuilt, the vegetation clogging the gateways had been removed and the huge tree growing through the roof had been chopped down. A fire burned in the hearth. He did not need the heat but he liked the look of it. Unlike many of his kind he did not take the fear of fire to great extremes. It was a good beginning, he decided.

‘It smells wonderful,’ said Adolphus, and meant it. ‘It smells like home.’

He was surprised by how much that meant to him. He felt as if his decades of rootless wanderings were over. He sensed the flow of old magical energies course through the stones. This was a place of power where he could do what he needed to do. Here he would take the final steps on the road of his destiny.

Ulrika entered the chamber. She looked pale and she staggered a little. Her eyes had the glazed ecstatic look that so many mortals got after the dark kiss. She looked at him with a mixture of resentment, hatred and longing that had become familiar down the centuries.

‘Show the girl to the guest chambers,’ he said to the chambermaid. The faint flicker of jealousy that appeared in the woman’s eyes amused him. She was one of his most faithful servants and bore herself with appropriate modesty although once she had been the proud daughter of one of the noblest houses of Kislev. She was beautiful but she had been too weak to interest him for long.

What was he going to do about Ulrika, he wondered? She was beautiful, intelligent and ambitious, and in his own cold way, he liked her. Her blood enchanted him, and there was a latent viciousness in her that he thought would make her truly one of the Arisen. Perhaps it was time for him to create a get. Perhaps he would grant her the gift of immortality. Not yet though. She was not quite ready. She still had to be won round to his point of view. If he granted her the final kiss, she might well go mad, or kill herself, or worse yet break free of him entirely and go her own way. He did not want that. It defeated the whole point of the exercise, which was to have someone at your side to go through eternity with. Thinking about himself and the countess, he did not know if he wanted to face that.

Of course it was inevitable she would leave. All gets eventually did. He had himself broken with his progenitor and made his own way out into the world. It was better if that did not happen too soon though. Still, if all went according to plan with the Eye of Khemri that was not something he needed to worry about. Using its power, he could well bind her and any others among the Arisen he wished to his will.

How the countess would regret ever sharing that knowledge with him! He chuckled. He would make his honoured progenitor sorry she had ever spoken of it all those long years ago. Of course at the time, it had been necessary to hide the desire that burned in his heart for the Eye. He had needed to acquire power and knowledge before making the break from the elder vampire and that had taken decades of quasi-servitude. It was not that he hated the countess for it. It was just that her cloying affection and concern for his wellbeing had reminded him too much of his own mother’s overpowering interest in him. It had enfolded him and choked him and made him feel trapped and imprisoned. Just thinking about her brought those feelings back.

Soon now, he would not have to worry about her or any others of the Arisen. The ancient enchantments Nagash had woven around the Eye of Khemri would see to that.

EIGHT

Adolphus finished chalking the pentagram onto the floor. Around the edges he had made the symbols of all four of the great Powers of Chaos. He himself stood within a triangle in the centre of the pentagram. The scared young girl lay naked and bound before him. The Eye of Khemri glittered between her breasts. He could see the panic and bewilderment in her eyes. Only yesterday she had gone to sleep in her parents’ hovel near the castle. Tonight she had awoken in its deepest dungeon, spirited away by his servants.

The witch-knife glittered sharply in his hands. She looked as if she wanted to scream.

Adolphus chanted the names of the Dark Gods, invoking their presence, as the ritual prescribed. The girl began to thrash, terror overcoming even the potent compulsion to obey he had laid upon her. Perhaps he should have bound her physically. Perhaps he had been too confident in his own abilities. He pushed the thoughts aside. Any loss of concentration now might prove fatal.

Dark magical energy rose all around him. To his magesight it appeared reddish, blood-like, droplets of it dripping from the stones of the cellar walls and flowing around the boundaries of the pentagram. To the girl’s mortal eyes, nothing would have changed, but she seemed to sense what was going on and whimpered.

Adolphus breathed deeply. Dark magic had a scent uniquely its own, like blood but more so. It made his skin tingle and his brain buzz. He felt the beast start to stir inside him. What was happening? He had not felt like this since Praag. Why was the fury within him emerging now?

With an enormous effort of will, he fought the bloodlust down. He could not afford any loss of control for now. The girl started to rise. If she broke the edges of the pentagram, the dark magic would surge in uncontrollably. Worse, some of the daemonic entities that it attracted might enter too. Adolphus was not sure even his strength might prevail against such things, at least not until he had the Eye attuned.

He strode over to the girl, still chanting, and grabbed her by the throat. He lifted her easily with one hand despite the feeble beating of her fists and feet against his body. He raised her until her eyes were level with his and his gaze struck her with the impact of a hammer. Her pupils dilated, her mouth fell open slackly and soft whimpers emerged from her mouth as her whole body went limp in his grasp. Easily, he lowered her to the desecrated altar once more.

Ripples appeared in the tide of dark magic, taking on the shapes of evil entities. The ritual was starting to attract daemonic presences: huge hounds with great fleshy crests on their necks fought with clawed androgens; monstrously obese, pustule-covered things writhed on the floor in combat with strange disks whose edges were covered in eyes. They battled over a small proportion of the energy he drew up from the dark depths beneath the keep. It was enough to give them shape and form. Now even the girl’s mortal eyes might be able to perceive them as shimmering shapes in the darkness. The beast howled within his breast, desperate for the combat that would ensue, even though that combat would most likely end in his destruction.

He needed to progress faster. If he did not use the power he had gathered before the creatures fully manifested, terrible things might happen. The dark magical energy rushed in through the gaps in the point he had left at the northern edge of the pentagram, the arm of the star that pointed towards the Chaos Wastes. Ancient Nehekharan poured from his lips as he continued to chant the words of the ritual. His thoughts were inexorably drawn into the necessary configuration for the spell to be complete. The torrent of words continued even as the evil presences surged around the pentagram’s edges, attracted now to the souls they sensed within.

Adolphus fought down panic. He was not the best of sorcerers. There were mages who could have accomplished what he intended without the rituals and the extra power he needed to draw from the ancient evil beneath the keep. Perhaps he had made a mistake; perhaps he had attempted something beyond his ability. Perhaps this was the end.

No! He would not let that happen. He steeled his will and continued the chant he had memorised so long ago. He moved the knife through the elaborate ritual gestures, thrusting it in the direction of each point of the star in turn before finally raising it high above the girl and then plunging it into her heart.

She gave one long despairing wail as her soul was drawn from her body, and her blood splattered the altar. At that exact moment Adolphus felt the dark thirst within him. The beast wanted to lap up that blood. He fought with the urge and let the blood flow, until the trickle overflowed the altar and reached the floor. It touched the streams of dark magic and began to sizzle and dance, droplets jerking upward from the paving stones. A fine red mist filled the air inside the pentagram. From outside the spell walls Adolphus thought he heard the thin wailing and howling of the daemons. He continued to chant and gesture, guiding the twisting writhing mist until it touched both his flesh and the Eye of Khemri.

At that moment, a link was formed between him and the amulet. He sensed the power within it, and the ancient spells. He felt almost as if he was being sucked into it and he fought against it as a swimmer fights against the current of a raging river.

Then suddenly it was done. The amulet was his. He began the ritual of dismissal and the energies he had summoned began to drain away. The daemonic entities fought against it but there was nothing they could do to stop the process. As the flows of dark magic departed they were left high and dry like fish flopping on the bed of a sun-dried lake. One by one they disappeared, returning to whatever extra-dimensional hell from which they had come, leaving Adolphus alone with his prize. It pulsed in his hand as he attuned it to his own mystical energies.

As he did so he noticed lines of force shimmering through the night, so faint as to be almost invisible, leaving the pentagram through its open edge and flowing away towards the distance. These did not have the feel of the power within the amulet. They felt more recent, and bore the signature of a different wizard. Well, no matter. Adolphus reached out with the witch-knife and cut them. In a heartbeat they unravelled.

The amulet was his now, and he was about to use its power to serve his ultimate purpose. The dead girl looked up at him with empty sightless eyes. He reached down, dipped his fingertips in her blood and raised them to his lips. The blood tasted very sweet.

Felix saw Max crumple forward and almost fall off the supply sledge. He jumped down from his own seat, leaving Gotrek clutching for the reins, and raced forward.

‘What is wrong?’ he asked. The wizard looked pale and drained. Sweat crossed his brow and he gave every impression of being a man in extreme pain.

‘The spell I placed on the Eye of Khemri was just broken,’ he groaned. ‘It was not a pleasant feeling.’

‘Can you still find it?’ Max shook his head despairingly.

‘No. I can’t sense it any more.’

‘Do you have any idea where the Eye might be?’ Slowly and painfully the wizard nodded.

‘I know the direction we must go. I can give a bearing from here, judging by the position of the sun.’

‘That won’t be much help. This trail winds its way through the forest. We can easily lose the way.’ Max gritted his teeth and nodded once more.

‘It gets worse,’ he said.

‘Oh good,’ said Felix. ‘Tell me all the cheering details.’

‘Just before my spell was cut I had a strange sense that something was happening to the amulet. I could sense a surge of power, and a soul screaming in terror. I suspect that Krieger has used the darkest of all magic to bind the amulet to him. I think he sacrificed someone.’

From Max’s expression, Felix could tell they were both thinking the same thing. ‘Ulrika?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Max. ‘Maybe.’

‘Damn!’ said Felix, crashing his fist into the side of the sled. The pain of hitting the wood helped bring him back to his senses, and get control of his mounting panic and anger. He looked at Max again. The magician did not look too healthy.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I will be. Whatever Krieger has done, I intend to punish him.’

‘I will help you,’ said Felix, wishing he felt nearly as confident as he sounded.

‘First we will have to find him,’ said Max.

‘Something tells me that it won’t be too difficult. He came all the way to Sylvania for a reason, and I think we can both guess what it is.’

‘To claim the whole bloody province, and that’s just for a start.’

Even as he spoke, Felix knew Max was right. The wars of the Vampire Counts were about to start all over again.

Max hunched forward in his seat, barely able to handle the reins. Fortunately the weary ponies could almost be trusted to follow the path themselves. The cold wind bit into his face, bringing tears to his eyes. He could not find the energy to recast a spell of warming. It was all he could do to keep himself upright and concentrate on breathing.

At first there was a niggling sense of loss. The link to the Eye, which he had held onto for so long, was gone completely. Even when he had not been concentrating on the thing, he had always been aware that it was there. Now, he could not feel its presence. After a while he realised that he also felt better. It was as if he had just had a tooth pulled, one that had been giving him niggling pain for weeks.

In a way he was relieved. His contact with the ancient evil within the Eye of Khemri, no matter how far removed, had been oppressive, and had cast a pall over his spirits. Now, despite the circumstances he felt almost cheerful. It was difficult to keep a smile off his face, despite his worries over Ulrika and what the vampire might be doing. He knew this was not right, but he could not help himself. It was as if he had just started to recover from a long illness. The whole world looked somehow brighter.

Ulrika looked at the talisman glittering on Adolphus Krieger’s chest. Somehow, it made the vampire look taller, more commanding and more confident even than he usually did. He smiled at her in a way that was almost friendly. She shook her head and looked away, wondering why everything in the room seemed sharper and clearer to her sight than it normally did, despite the darkness. What was happening to her? She was not sure she wanted to know.

She glanced around the strange throne room he had brought her to. It was buried deep within this haunted castle with its strange corridors in which time and distance seemed to become all twisted. There was a stillness about the place such as you found only in the oldest of temples, and a sense of brooding evil power that left her in no doubt that she was at the heart of the wickedness that enshrouded this place. Ancient suits of armour filled the niches, clutching old but still serviceable weapons.

Overhead, amid the enormous beams of a gigantic vaulted ceiling, she thought she saw something move. Vast shadows seemed to shift above the huge chandelier, independent of the light being cast. There was a terrible sense of presence about the place that she very badly wanted to ignore.

‘It begins now,’ said Krieger, mounting the massive dais and lounging back on an enormous throne of carved and polished wood. The back of the throne was sculpted to resemble the wings of a massive bat or dragon. Over Krieger’s head loomed the skull of an enormous bat. Glowing rubies gazed from its eye sockets.

Krieger’s voice was deeper somehow, more resonant and thrilling. It was difficult not to believe someone who sounded like that. She fought the compulsion, reminding herself that he was an evil, soulless bloodsucker. Somehow she could not manage the vehemence she once had. It was hard to think of anything save the pleasure of his last embrace. She wondered how that could have happened, then dismissed the thought as irrelevant.

It had happened and she needed to fight against it. That was all she needed to know.

‘The talisman is mine now, Ulrika. Soon I will be the Prince of Night.’

‘I do not know what you mean.’

‘The talisman was created by the Great Necromancer himself in the ancient days. One of its many attributes is to increase its wearer’s… influence over the Arisen.’

‘Why?’

‘Nagash feared the growth of their power, and saw them as potential rivals. He made the talisman and with it bent many of the Arisen to his will: they became his hounds, creatures that are feared to this very day. The amulet was lost when Alcadizaar overcame him. It has drifted down the ages born by fools who were too blind to see what it was. All that is ended. Tonight, I have claimed it for my own, just as I have claimed von Carstein’s throne for my own.’

‘How do you know it will still work after all this time?’

‘Not for nothing was he known as the Great Necromancer. The things he made do not lose their potency. He was the greatest sorcerer of his age, the greatest necromancer of any age. No one ever understood the magic of Undeath like he did. I know the Eye works. I can feel it. You are already responding to its influence.’ The tone of his voice shocked her. She had never heard anyone sound quite so triumphant.

‘What do you mean? Why should I feel its influence?’ She suspected she already knew the answer.

‘Because every night for the past three nights you have taken a step closer to joining me. It seems only fair that I should have someone by my side to enjoy my triumph. You will be the possessor of eternal life.’

Her mouth felt suddenly dry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to run shrieking from the hall. She wanted to drive her knife into the chest of this undead ghoul. And a surprisingly large part of her was almost pathetically grateful for the offer.

‘No,’ she forced herself to say.

‘Yes,’ he said, springing on her, his fangs emerging, his eyes glowing with a hellish light. She tried to dodge but she was dazed and slow. He caught her easily. His fingers burned on her neck. She grabbed his wrists and tried to pry his hands away but he was far too strong. Slowly, he bent over her, as if he was about to deliver the gentlest of kisses. His eyes blazed redly. His canine teeth gleamed like ivory. She could see they were long and sharp as needles.

A surge of ecstasy passed through her body as his teeth bit into her neck. Strength drained from her along with all will to resist. Slowly her vision darkened, and her hearing dimmed until all she could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat. She felt a bloody finger being forced into her mouth and she sucked at it as greedily as an infant at a mother’s breast.

Even as she did so, the darkness continued to gather. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears like thunder and then stopped.

‘At least this village has an inn,’ said Ivan Petrovich Straghov gloomily, staring up at the sign of the Green Man. ‘It certainly beats camping out in the snow for another night.’

Felix was not sure he agreed. The Green Man was an enormous fortified structure overlooking another nameless and partially ruined Sylvanian hamlet. His limited experience of this land’s towns and villages had not left him filled with any great desire to spend time in them, although he had to admit the howling of the distant wolves made even this squalid place seem an attractive option.

He sniffed and looked at Gotrek.

‘They will have beer,’ said the Slayer, as if this was reason enough to spend a night in a flea-infested hovel.

‘Snorri likes beer,’ Snorri added, by way of clarification.

‘I’m glad you told me that. I would never have guessed.’

‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, young Felix.’ Felix reflected miserably that one of the worst things about his lengthening association with Snorri was that the dwarf’s capacity to detect sarcasm had improved greatly with practice. ‘A pint or two is just the thing to drive off the night chill.’

A pint or ten more likely, thought Felix, but did not voice the thought out loud. He realised he was just arguing for the sake of being contrary, to give vent to his anger and anxiety over Ulrika and their quest, and his own misery in his illness. He was not being constructive, or helpful, and anyway, it appeared that his opinion mattered not at all, since everyone else in their party appeared to be in favour.

All the tales of dark, haunted Sylvanian inns he had read as a youngster returned to him. They were often the haunt of murderers or monstrous vampires who preyed on innocent travellers. He felt like making dire pronouncements about how they would all regret this, but he resisted. There was no point other than to increase the pall of gloom that had already gathered over their journey.

Inside, the inn was not as bad as Felix had expected. The building was made of stone, perhaps an indicator of more prosperous days in the region, although Felix could not ever recall hearing of any time when Sylvania was prosperous.

The thin crowd of folk within fell silent at the entrance of the party of knights, Slayers and over a score of Kislevite horsemen. The landlord, a fat barrel of a man with cold calculating eyes in a jolly face, came round the bar to greet them. He rubbed his hand nervously on a soiled apron, obviously unsure whether they were customers or a bandit band.

Rodrik informed him of their purpose, and requested rooms for his companions and a separate chamber for the countess. Felix and Max took separate chambers. The Slayers and the Kislevites elected to remain in the common room. Actually, several of the horse archers elected to remain in the stables with their mounts. A number of obscene jokes concerning the love of the Kislevite cavalryman for his horse sprang to Felix’s mind but he tactfully restrained himself from telling them.

Felix studied the patrons. This was a relatively prosperous inn for this part of the world, he realised. Few in the common room appeared to be locals. Most looked like merchants and their bodyguards, although it seemed to be a bit early in the year for them to be on the road.

A few looked like noblemen down on their luck, the sort of shabby genteel men who you always found in the remoter parts of the Empire, cheating the locals at cards and making outrageous demands based on their supposed superior status. More than a few looked like mercenaries, hard-faced dangerous men in worn armour. Most of them had a hungry, hopeful look. They reminded Felix of a pack of starving wolves scenting a wounded deer.

In one corner, sat a priest of Morr, in his black robes, a cowl obscuring his face. His presence was such a cliché in melodramas that Felix almost laughed. Instead he strode up to the bar, and ordered ale for himself and the dwarfs. Ivan Petrovich was already seeing to the comfort of his men, and Max and the nobles had disappeared upstairs to inspect the rooms along with the countess.

As he leaned on the bar, one of the dingy-looking men at the corner table sidled over to him. He was dressed in a tattered fur cloak and hat, and the soiled finery of those who belonged to the nobility. His eyes were quick and fear-filled, his face was gaunt and narrow, and his Adam’s apple was very prominent.

‘Just got in?’ he asked. He had the look of a man gauging whether Felix would offer to buy him a drink or not. His accent marked him as a noble, or someone who had learned how to pretend to be one. He licked his lips. ‘Where have you come from, sir?’

Felix noticed the man’s fingers toyed nervously with the pommel of his longsword. The hilt was absurdly over-decorated. It went all too well with the man’s pretentious tunic and codpiece. ‘Waldenhof,’ said Felix, more to be polite than because he was interested in anything the man had to say. The man quirked an eyebrow as if to say both he and Felix knew that Felix was kidding. Felix refused to take the bait.

‘And yourself?’ he asked.

‘Here and there,’ said the man. It was Felix’s turn to smile ironically at him. Felix turned to watch the barman pour the drinks, hoping to indicate by this the conversation was over. ‘Just came up the road from Leicheberg.’

‘You’re travelling at a bad time of the year,’ said Felix.

‘I could say the same about you,’ muttered the stranger.

‘I have urgent business in these parts,’ said Felix.

‘Must be. I can’t help but wonder what urgent business might bring twenty Kislevite horse-soldiers, a pair of Slayers, a wizard, some Sylvanian knights and the Countess of Nachthafen to the Green Man on a winter night like tonight. And an educated man like yourself as well.’

Felix looked at the man with a bit more interest. He was not as drunk as he seemed, and his eyes and mind were quick. His count of the Kislevites was accurate. Felix kept his expression bland.

‘Urgent business,’ he said.

‘Must be,’ said the man.

‘What brings you here?’

‘This and that. Itchy feet, a desire to see what was beyond the next hilltop, some family problems.’

‘Family problems?’

‘A dispute with my brothers over an inheritance. I needed to put some distance between myself and the ancestral manor.’ The man spoke confidingly, and flashed a quick, calculating look at Felix.

He seemed to think that by sharing a confidence, he would get Felix to do the same. Felix had encountered men with such a manner before, in the underworlds of Altdorf and Nuln. Most of them had been professional informers. ‘You know how it is?’

‘Not really,’ said Felix. ‘I always got on well with my brothers.’

‘It’s a bad thing when kin fall out over an inheritance,’ said the man. He gave a long practiced sigh, but he did not look at all bothered.

‘I imagine so,’ said Felix. ‘I mean it must be bad to bring a man like yourself to this out of the way place at this time of the year.’

The man’s nervous gaze flickered around the room. He looked down at the counter-top and started drawing circles with his fingertip. ‘I count myself lucky that I got here,’ he said in an ominous tone.

‘Why?’

‘Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘If you’re going south you will want to hear it.’

‘Give me a hint.’

‘The undying are on the move,’ whispered the stranger, in a portentous manner.

‘Really?’ said Felix ironically. ‘Tell me something everyone doesn’t already know.’

The stranger smirked. ‘Ghouls are gathering in the forests. The old castle at Drakenhof has been reoccupied. I saw strange lights flickering in the windows as I passed. We saw the lights in the woods and thought we might be granted shelter for the night. In this cold, any place is better than a tent. But when I saw those lights I thought differently.’

‘We?’

‘The lads over there at the table were with me. We were all travelling together. Safety in numbers is a good maxim but never more so than in Sylvania at a time like this.’

Felix looked over at the group the stranger had indicated. They were a rough looking crowd, down at heel mercenaries by the looks of them. He hadn’t seen such a fine collection of cauliflower ears, broken noses and missing teeth since he left Karak Kadrin, the city of Slayers.

‘They don’t look to be the sort of men to be scared off by a few lights,’ said Felix. Quite the contrary, he thought, they looked exactly the type to be drawn to them to see if they could rob anybody in the vicinity.

‘You would have been scared if you saw them, and maybe even your Slayer friends too. Those lights were the work of evil magic, I have no doubt whatsoever.’

‘You’re an expert on evil magic then,’ said Felix.

‘There’s no need to mock, friend. Anybody could have told these lights were the work of something wicked. They glowed green and sputtered, went out and then started to glow all over again. They seemed to float through the woods.’

Felix thought this sounded fairly convincing when compared to his own experience but he kept a disbelieving look on his face. ‘When was this then?’

‘Three nights ago.’

Felix nodded. That would be the night Max said the spell linking him to the Eye of Khemri was broken. There was a pattern here, even if the stranger knew nothing about it. Maybe he should make the man recount his tale to the wizard. He decided to tell Max himself and wait and see what the wizard said.

‘So you’re saying avoid Drakenhof keep,’ said Felix.

‘Like the plague. How about that beer then?’

Felix saw the barman looking at him. He nodded.

‘This is going to be good,’ said the stranger.

‘What did the tailor’s dummy want?’ asked Gotrek, a little too loudly, as Felix set down the beers. Felix recounted the man’s tale in a low voice.

‘I think we’ll be visiting this keep,’ said the Slayer. Snorri Nosebiter nodded enthusiastic approval.

‘I knew you were going to say that,’ said Felix.

‘It fits,’ said Max. He had listened intently as Felix finished the barfly’s tale. Felix got up and walked over to the window. It was shuttered against the chill. He listened for a moment anyway then glanced around the room. It was surprisingly well furnished for such an out of the way place, although all the furniture looked ancient. The bed was a four poster carved with disturbing-looking dragons. The wardrobe was big and heavy and reminded him too much of a coffin.

Max sat on a claw-footed chair and regarded him with a clear-eyed gaze.

‘I imagine Krieger would want to cast any spells in what had once been a place of power filled with dark magic, and Drakenhof is said to be that. And that was the very night when my spell was broken. A suitably potent and far-ranging spell might manifest itself with a display of lights such as he described.’

‘It all fits a bit too well, don’t you think?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Max.

‘I mean, what are the chances that this fellow downstairs just happened to be passing the keep with his mates on the very night this occurred, and then just happened to be here tonight to tell us about it?’

‘Such coincidences do happen,’ said Max. ‘But I see what you mean.’

‘Coincidences, Max? Come on. It’s the dead of winter. Why would someone of his sort even be on the road? If he really were what he claimed then he’d have found a nice tavern somewhere in Middenheim to hole up for the winter, and you’d need a big spade to dig him out. I tell you, I didn’t like his look at all. He was a weasel, and I’ve seen his sort before.’

Max had the tact not to ask where. Instead he stroked his beard for a moment and then drummed his fingers on the armrest of the chair.

‘You think maybe Krieger sent him? That he’s laying a false scent to get us off his trail?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s figured out how to make the talisman work for him and he wants us to walk into a trap.’

‘This is all just speculation, Felix.’

Felix smiled grimly. ‘This is a land that lends itself all too well to speculation.’

Max nodded his head in agreement.

The lantern flame flickered and went out. Felix cursed the gust of chill air and the shoddiness of the device. It looked as if it had been lighting the way for guests since the time of Great Plague. He moved through the darkened corridors, one hand out touching the wall so that he could find his way in the gloom, walking his fingers along the stonework to feel when they encountered a doorway. The cool plaster beneath his fingers reminded him of the simple silly games of his childhood, and he smiled a little.

He knew his room was the third door on the right from the top of the stairs. He had to hunch low because of the sloping roof of the inn. It reminded him of the cramped conditions on the airship Spirit of Grungni which in turn reminded him of Ulrika. The thought sent a little surge of pain through his heart. Suddenly he sensed a presence ahead of him in the gloom, and his hand slipped to the hilt of his sword.

‘Be calm, Herr Jaeger. It is only me,’ said Countess Gabriella. By all the gods, Felix thought, the woman must have eyes like a cat’s to be able to tell who he was in this gloom. ‘I would like a word with you in private, if that is possible.’

‘Certainly,’ said Felix wondering what exactly she meant by that. He had some experience of ladies requiring a private word at this time of the evening. You could never tell. Cool, dry fingers closed on his, tugging his hand away from the sword hilt, and she guided him with surprising strength through the corridors. He heard a key click in a lock, and saw her silhouetted in the doorway of her room. She was very slender, he noted drunkenly, but her figure was surprisingly good. She stepped inside and gestured for him to follow.

The chamber was the best in the inn, finely furnished in an antique fashion. A faint smell of cinnamon fought the mustiness in the air. Felix doubted this room was used all that often. The countess closed the door behind him, and he heard the key turn in the lock once more. He had a sudden panicky feeling of being trapped. She gestured for him to take one of the overstuffed armchairs and relaxed into one herself.

Felix remained standing, his sense of unease growing, as he listened to the wind whistle past the windows. He started as a particularly strong gust rattled the wooden shutters.

‘Do sit down, Herr Jaeger! I assure you I mean you no harm.’ The countess sounded faintly amused. Felix suspected this small, slight woman could do him a great deal of harm if she chose to, but he slumped down into the chair, and let his long legs stretch out towards the fire.

‘What is it you want to talk about?’

‘You appear to be a sensible man, Herr Jaeger, and you seem to have encountered more than your share of… unusual situations.’

Felix smiled wryly. He doubted that he would be following Gotrek Gurnisson around if he was the former but the latter was certainly true. There were times when he was surprised his hair had not turned white with the horrors he had seen. ‘Perhaps.’

‘And I think you are a discreet one.’

‘Is this a situation that requires discretion?’

‘Please, Herr Jaeger, this is not what you think. I am about to entrust you with a secret that might cost both our lives.’

Felix felt his smile widen. There was something about Sylvania that inspired the melodramatic as well as the terrible.

‘I assure you there is no cause for amusement.’

Felix could not help himself. He laughed. For a second the countess looked like she was going to rise and slap him but he waved her away. Felix spluttered. ‘No. Please I am sorry. It’s just here I am in a Sylvanian inn. Outside the wind scratches at the windows, the candles gutter and a beautiful woman is about to let me in on a terrible secret. I feel like I am in a Detlef Sierck play. If only a wolf would howl, things would be perfect.’

‘You have a very strange sense of humour, Herr Jaeger.’

‘It comes from reading too many tall tales when I was a youth. I am sorry. Please what is it you wished to tell me.’

‘First, can I ask you for your word that you will pass on nothing of what I tell you here unless I ask you to?’

Felix considered this. ‘As long as it would not cause harm to myself or my comrades.’

‘You are a cautious man. That is good.’

‘It should also tell you I mean to keep my word as long as my conditions are met. Why make them otherwise?’

‘Quite,’ she said dryly. ‘Although it’s also the sort of thing a good liar would say.’

‘You are the one who asked me here. You are the one who wants to tell me secrets. You must already have some ideas concerning my trustworthiness.’

‘You are quite correct,’ she said. ‘I pride myself in being a good judge of men. In my life I have made very few mistakes on that score.’

‘You seem to be a woman possessed of formidable powers of judgement.’

Felix was quite serious. There was something about her that inspired respect. He steepled his fingers and leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked at her closely, trying to study her features through the veil. ‘What exactly is it that you wanted to tell me.’

‘Tell me, do you believe all you have heard about the undying ones?’

‘In this place, at this time, I don’t have much else to go on,’ he said honestly.

‘Do you believe they are all what you would call evil?’

‘What I would call evil?’

‘Herr Jaeger, this is not one of your Altdorf university debates. We are not here to split hairs or discuss how many daemons can dance on the head of a pin. Time is getting short and many lives are at stake.’

Suddenly Felix had an inkling of where this was going, and he fought the urge to reach immediately for his sword. He doubted that it would do him any good if what he suspected was true.

‘You have very good control over yourself, Herr Jaeger, for a mortal. But rest assured if I meant you harm I would have done it before now.’

Felix looked at her in horror, as if a gigantic spider were seated in the chair opposite him, not a small and attractive seeming woman. He felt like he was very close to death. He was very suddenly sober.

‘A pity,’ she breathed softly. ‘Still to business. Not all of the undying are the monsters you believe them to be.’

‘I find that hard to believe,’ said Felix.

‘Why – because they drink the blood of humans to continue their existence? That does not mean they are all murderers. Believe it or not, there are many humans who give their blood willingly. You would be surprised by the number in your own Empire who have done so.’

‘I doubt that there is any wickedness done in the Empire that could surprise me.’

‘Don’t be so parochial, Herr Jaeger! What two consenting people do together in privacy is between them, providing they harm no one else.’

‘That depends on how consenting one of them is.’

‘I do not have time to debate the ethics of this with you. I need your help. A monster is loose and he must be stopped. You and your friends can do it with my help.’

‘Why should I trust you?’

‘You don’t have much choice. You need my help if you are going to find Adolphus Krieger and stop him before he becomes too powerful for anything short of the Lords of Chaos to stop. You need my help if you are going to free your woman from his influence. Which, to be frank, by now I judge is impossible.’

Felix felt his heart skip a beat. His mouth felt dry. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because by now she is either a bloodless corpse, hopelessly enthralled by him, or she is his consort, and I judge the latter option most unlikely unless she is a most unusual and striking woman.’

‘She is.’

The countess shrugged. It was a human gesture but Felix felt as if he had just watched a spider shrug. He watched her with a kind of horrid fascination. He supposed a worm might watch a bird like that, or a rabbit a fox.

‘You are a vampire,’ said Felix. He felt proud of himself. He had wanted to say the words for minutes but forcing them out had seemed somehow dangerous. The countess clapped her hands together ironically.

‘Very good, Herr Jaeger, no one could accuse you of being slow on the uptake.’ Felix felt his fingers tighten on the pommel of his sword.

‘I should warn you this is an enchanted weapon. I do not know if it can affect your kind but I am willing to try if you provoke me.’

‘I know it is a magical weapon and a formidable one, albeit not nearly so formidable as that rather terrifying axe your friend carries. They are among the reasons I think you have a chance of stopping Krieger if you are quick.’

‘Why are you prepared to help us against one of your own kind?’

‘Believe it or not, Herr Jaeger, we are as different and as fractious as humans. We are just a lot fewer. Most of us would prefer to live in some sort of harmony with your kind. You are far more numerous and in the past centuries have gained too much power for us to want anything else. Most of us wish to be left alone with our flocks.’

‘Flocks?’

‘Admirers, willing victims, whatever you wish to call them, Herr Jaeger. See – I am being frank with you.’

‘Fine. Most of you, you say.’

‘There are some who dream of a return to the elder days, who would have us rule the night as they believe we once did. Mostly they are young and don’t realise that we never ruled the night in the way they think. Things were never that simple.’

Felix’s mind reeled with all this new information. He had never considered that vampires might be as filled with fear of humans as humans were of them. What she was saying did make sense. Humans did have the numbers, and the ability to operate in daylight when the undying were weakest, and they did have powerful magic too.

The countess studied him for a moment, as if gauging the impact of her revelations, and then she continued to speak. ‘As I have said, there are those who believe that we should claim our ancient glories, no matter how often they are told that such things never were. Adolphus Krieger is one of them.’

‘I believe you.’

‘Good. We are making some progress.’

‘Tell me – does the count, and those other nobles at Waldenschlosse, know what you are.’

‘Yes. There is a pact between those Arisen who would avoid a return to the ancient wars, and the current rulers of Sylvania. We have no wish to see a pogrom initiated against us.’

‘What about Rodrik?’

‘He and his followers are part of my flock.’ Felix paused to digest all of this information. It was almost too much for him to take in. He found it difficult to believe that he was sitting here calmly discussing such a thing with the countess, and not either attacking her or trying to flee the chamber. A thought struck him. ‘So the count and his friends were concealing something from us.’

‘Why should he let you in on all of his secrets? You are strangers, after all. He has no reason to trust you.’

‘And you have?’

‘I have no choice. I know what Krieger is doing.’

‘And what exactly is that?’

‘He intends to unite all of the Arisen behind him and fulfil an ancient prophecy of our kind. A prophecy made by a madman and destined never to be fulfilled, but that will not stop Adolphus from trying.’

‘Given what you have already told me, it does not seem likely that he can do it.’

‘Herr Jaeger, he possesses the means to do it. You have seen it, touched it.’

‘The Eye of Khemri?’

‘If that is what you wish to call it. It would be better to call it the Eye of Nagash.’

‘Is it really so powerful?’

‘I believe it to be so.’

‘Why?’

‘It was created by Nagash to bind my people to him. It can call them over a great distance and compel obedience if the wearer is strong enough.’

‘If?’

‘You have doubtless heard tales of how the Arisen can impose their will on mortals.’

Felix nodded.

‘It takes a great disparity in willpower for the binding to take place and even then it is only temporary in most cases. To be frank, this is why I have not tried to bind you or your companions. I doubt it could be done without your consent, not without creating a blood bond. It is a less well-known fact that the Arisen can do the same to each other. Among its many gifts the Eye magnifies this ability in one attuned to it. It works far more effectively for one of us than it ever did for the Great Necromancer. Perhaps due to the affinities we have for each other. We are all, at base, of one blood after all. Whatever the reason, by using it Krieger really could summon us all and bind us to his will. In fact, I think he has already started the process. I feel a… tugging at the corners of my mind even as we speak. I do not doubt it will grow stronger over the next few nights as he grows more powerful.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes. I want to know what we face here.’

‘Herr Jaeger, I have lived a very long time. I have studied much strange and obscure lore and I have had many many centuries to assimilate it. Believe me, along with most of my kind I have an obsession with the Great Necromancer and his works. I have read all of the supposedly forbidden books – van Hal’s translations of the Nine Books of Nagash, the Book of the Dead, the Forbidden Grimoires of Tal Akhad. I have travelled to the ancient places to collect knowledge of him. I have walked the sands of the Land of the Dead and visited the pyramids of Khemri. It would take me more time than we have to explain how I sifted through all the lies and myths and distortions and eventually put together the pieces of the puzzle. You will just have to trust me when I say what I am telling you is true.’

‘It seems I have little choice. Perhaps I should ask Max to join us.’

‘Perhaps later. At the moment, I would prefer this to remain between us and give you a chance to prepare your companions. It would be better for us all if they did nothing rash.’

Thinking of what Gotrek would do if he found out there was a vampire in their midst, that seemed the wisest course for the present to Felix. If the countess was a potential ally it would be best if her head remained attached to her shoulders. Or, he reminded himself, if she was very powerful, perhaps it would be best if the Slayer did not achieve his long-awaited doom until after Ulrika was free or avenged. He could see from the way the countess nodded that she already took his agreement for granted. Was she really so good at reading him, he wondered? He supposed that after living for centuries she might have gained such a gift for understanding mortals. He gestured for her to go on.

‘The Eye was created by Nagash in ancient times specifically as a weapon to be used against my kind, when he feared we might challenge him for domination of the ancient world. He even used it to bind some of the Arisen to his service. That is when we learned of the power concealed in it. Fearing what might happen, the rest of the Arisen fled as far and as fast as they could and hid themselves with whatever spells they could muster.’

Felix listened enthralled as she told tales of ancient intrigues, of the war between Nagash and the skaven and the eventual dispersal of the Great Necromancer’s treasures. She spoke of the disappearance of the Eye until its return in the possession of Mannfred von Carstein and how he used it to forge the undead force that fought the War of the Vampire Counts. She claimed it was the loss of the Eye at Hel Fenn that had ended those wars as much as the slaughter of the counts.

‘Of course, after the fact,’ she continued, ‘It is easy to see what happened. Most of the Arisen believed the Eye destroyed or lost forever after Hel Fenn and were glad. The Eye must have been found by one of the mortals after the battle, and he took it as part of the spoils of war, a memento of that terrible conflict. Not being a magus and having no idea of what it was he held, it became merely a family heirloom. Eventually some of the heirs, needing money, sold the collection and it came onto the open market. It then passed from hand to hand till it ended up in Andriev’s collection.‘

‘How did you and Krieger come to know about it?’

‘Alas, not all the Arisen believed the Eye lost. Some coveted its power. Adolphus Krieger was one such.’

Felix looked at her. And what about you, he thought? Did you want this thing for yourself? Again she seemed to read his mind.

‘There are some of us who feared the return of the Eye, Herr Jaeger. We feared the rise of another von Carstein. It would be the end for many of us and we are already too few. We cannot afford another War of the Vampire Counts.’

‘You are saying you have no interest in the Eye of Khemri yourself?’ Felix did not quite understand why he was taunting this woman who most likely had the power to kill him where he sat but he felt the need to do so. ‘If it fell into your hands you would not use it?’

‘I would do my best to destroy it, or at very least, take it to a place where it would not be found for a long time, if ever.’

‘Really?’

‘I don’t expect you to believe this, but I have sound reasons for not wanting to use the thing.’

‘And what would they be?’

‘The Eye was created by Nagash. It contains part of his power, his spirit, if you will. Over time it corrupts anyone who uses it and leads them to disaster. Nagash was jealous of his creations. They will not truly serve any but him.’

‘Surely Krieger knows this.’

‘Perhaps not and even if he does, perhaps he does not believe it. Or perhaps he believes he can master it. Or perhaps he is already subtly under the thing’s domination. He was close to von Carstein and was exposed to its influence centuries ago.’

‘Perhaps we should simply sit back and wait for this dire fate to overtake Krieger then.’

Felix wondered what he was going to do. There seemed little choice but to go along with her suggestions. Until she proved false she represented a potential ally and one who understood their enemy far better than they could hope to. Still, he realised he was reluctant to trust this undying predator. He felt rather like a deer trying to negotiate with a wolf. Perhaps that was why he felt the need to keep chipping away at her position.

‘I would have thought your kind would gladly do anything to aid the victory of the Dark Lords of Chaos. Are you not their spawn?’

‘We are not the creations of the daemon gods any more than you are, and they love us no more than they do you. They require only souls and slaves. Some of the Arisen have served them in the past, but then so have many of your kind. We have learned from the mistakes of those who thought they could somehow get the Lords of Darkness to serve their ends better than your sort.’

And there was some truth in that too, Felix guessed, at least the part about many humans having given their souls up to the evil ones. The countess leaned forward and gazed at him intently. So swift was her movement that Felix backed away, startled.

‘Look, Herr Jaeger, it is really very simple. Either you believe me or you don’t. Either you trust me or you don’t. I am the one who has taken all of the risks here. There are those of my own kind who would see my existence ended if they learned what I have told you here. You could tell your friends what I am and they would doubtless help you destroy me. I suspect they have the power. Herr Schreiber is a most powerful wizard and in all my long existence I don’t think I have ever seen a weapon more powerful than Gotrek Gurnisson’s axe.’

‘I could, if you let me leave here alive.’

‘You can go now if you wish. I will not stop you.’

Felix almost rose but he was reluctant to put her words to the test. After all, they were exactly what she would say if she wished to take him off guard. He would be at his most vulnerable trying to open the door, with his back partially turned to her. Maybe he could call for help now but her apartments were a long way from the others, and the walls were very thick. With the wind gusting loudly outside perhaps no one would ever hear him.

He spoke again, as much to buy himself some time to think as because he was interested in the answer.

‘When I listen to you I sense something personal in your animosity towards Krieger. What is the real reason you want us to go against him?’

To his surprise she laughed. ‘I had not thought I was so transparent. I have grown so accustomed to reading mortals that I have ceased to believe that they might be able to see through me.’

Somehow, Felix doubted this. He was beginning to believe that this ancient immortal never did anything without a reason, that all of her acts were the result of long deliberation, and that if she had given something away it was because she wanted him to see it. He decided that it would be better to keep such thoughts to himself. Instead he said, ‘You have not answered my question.’

The silence was long and at first Felix thought he had misjudged the situation and that she was not going to answer.

‘Krieger is my creation. My child if you like. I made him what he is today, to my lasting sorrow. In a way, he is my responsibility. He would have been dead centuries ago had I not intervened in his life, and we would not have to worry about any of the things he is doing now.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘I want you to help me with your companions. I do not want to have to fight with them while I struggle with Krieger.’

Felix rose from the chair and headed for the door. She made no move to stop him. He saw the key was still in the lock. ‘I will think on what you have said,’ he said as he opened the door.

‘Do not think too long, Herr Jaeger. The hour is getting very late.’

As Felix made his way back to his room, he was troubled as well as frightened. He felt as if he had had a narrow escape. And what was he to do with the information she had given him, and about the request she had made?

Surely she must see she had placed him in an impossible position. Max Schreiber might accept what she was and ally with her, but he did not think Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter would. He could imagine the Slayers’ response to the fact there was a bloodsucker in their midst. They would attack first and think later. Ivan Petrovich Straghov and his men were no more likely to accept the vampire than the dwarfs. They were from the marches of Kislev, which did not breed men who would compromise with the darkness.

Whatever she was, the countess was intelligent. She must already know all this. What did she hope to gain? Turning things over in his mind, he could not uncover anything. Just because he could not see any advantage for her, did not mean there was not one there.

It was only after all these thoughts passed through his mind that Felix realised that he had in part accepted her case. He was not going to go rushing to the Slayers and inform them about her, at least not until after he had considered all the implications. Still, he realised he needed to talk to somebody.

‘The countess is what?’ exclaimed Max Schreiber.

‘Keep it down,’ said Felix. ‘I don’t want the whole tavern to know.’

An aura of fire played around the wizard’s hand and Felix saw that Max was seriously considering storming off to the countess’s room. Under the circumstances, it was the last thing Felix wanted. A confrontation between a powerful sorcerer and a vampire might leave the whole inn in ruins. He was starting to regret telling the wizard all that the countess had shared with him.

‘I can’t believe you are just standing there, Felix. There is one of those monsters in this house, and you do nothing.’

‘I’m talking to you, aren’t I?’

‘I would have thought gathering a mob and storming her room would be more appropriate.’

‘You are the last person I would expect to hear talking that way, Max. A wizard should have some sympathy. After all it was not that long ago when people felt the same way about your kind.’

‘I think I resent that, Felix. I don’t see any connection between mortal sorcerers and undead mass murderers.’

Felix shrugged. It had been an undiplomatic thing to say but he was still shocked by Max’s response. The wizard normally showed more self-control. Perhaps the strain of the past few weeks was telling more than he let show. Felix wanted to respond hotly to Max’s words himself but someone here needed to keep calm, and it looked like he was the one chosen by circumstances. ‘I am sorry I said it then, Max, but think about it. What if she is telling the truth? She might be our best ally against Krieger.’

Suddenly Felix felt a chill run through him. Max stared hard at him and he looked as if he was contemplating violence. It was all Felix could do to keep from drawing his sword. ‘Has she enchanted you?’ the wizard murmured. ‘Are you bound to her will?’

Felix flinched as Max gestured with his hand. A trail of glowing fire followed the wizard’s fingers as he sketched an intricate symbol in the air. It hung there glowing. Felix shut his eyes but the after-image of the rune seemed burned onto his retina. He was tempted to lash out at the magician but he wanted an answer to the wizard’s question too. He did not feel as if he had been put under a spell, but how would he know? Perhaps the binding prevented those who had been bound from noticing it.

After a few seconds he heard Max exhale softly. He opened his eyes. The wizard looked calmer. There was a thoughtful look in his eye. ‘There are no persistent enchantments on you that I can detect.’

‘You would know about such things better than I,’ said Felix. Max walked over to his bed and slumped down on it. His roomer was smaller and meaner than the countess’s. Felix sat down in the only chair.

‘What are we going to do about her?’

‘If you are really seriously considering accepting her aid, I don’t think telling Gotrek about this is such a good idea,’ said Max.

‘That thought has already crossed my mind,’ said Felix. ‘I don’t feel good about it but right now I think our first concern should be rescuing Ulrika. And preventing whatever Krieger is up to.’

More of the tension drained out of Max. ‘I agree. The question is, can we trust the countess? What if she simply desires the Eye for herself? She could be just as bad as she claims Krieger will be if she has it.’

‘I know. I think it would be best if we ensure she does not get it. I think it would be advisable to trust her no further than necessary, and if one of us keeps a wary eye on her at all times.’

‘You seemed to be doing a bit more than that already.’

‘She’s a fascinating… woman.’

‘It might be best if you stopped thinking of her as that.’

‘Believe me I already have. Just being in the same room as her made my flesh crawl.’

‘I have heard that some men enjoy the company of the undying. There are rumours about Detlef Sierck for instance.’

‘Some men might, but I am not one of them. I don’t like the idea of anyone looking at me like I might be their next meal.’

‘Glad to hear it. What about the knights? Our impetuous friend Rodrik and his companions?’

‘We should assume they are completely under her spell.’

‘It seems she was very forthright with you.’

‘It seems that way but she has travelled with us for a few days. Do you think it’s possible that a few of our companions might have been ensnared?’

‘It’s possible. I will check on the morrow.’

‘Discreetly.’

‘Yes.’

Talking in hushed voices they spent several hours discussing their plans. In both their minds the possibility of treachery was foremost.

BOOK THREE

THE VAMPIRE’S LAIR

‘And so, almost inevitably, our path led us to Drakenhof Castle, a place steeped in legends of horror. Unfortunately I am in a position to confirm that the old tales were in no way exaggerated. If anything, they do not go far enough. It is not my intention to disturb the dreams of my readers, or to engender nightmares, but honesty, and the need to set down a true chronicle of the events of the Slayer’s career, forces me to set such things to paper. Readers of a sensitive disposition may wish to stop at this point. Those who continue cannot say they have not been warned.’

— From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol IV, by Herr Felix Jaeger
(Altdorf Press, 2505)

NINE

‘You seem very thoughtful today, manling,’ growled Gotrek.

Felix flicked the reins and goaded the ponies into movement, then turned and looked at the Slayer. The Kislevites as always rode ahead of them. The Countess Gabriella and her escort followed behind in their coach. He could hear Rodrik talking loudly about how this part of the wood looked like a good place to hunt for beastmen when spring came. To Felix, it looked like a good place for beastmen to hunt them right now.

‘I have a lot on my mind,’ he said. He wondered whether in spite of everything he should tell the Slayer about the countess’s revelations of the previous evening. After all, if she did prove to be treacherous, Gotrek deserved some warning. Felix felt he deserved at least this. He and the dwarf had been companions on many a desperate adventure and the dwarf had saved his life more times than he cared to count. Keeping this a secret from him felt wrong. For all he knew, the countess could just be a very persuasive liar, leading them all into a trap.

‘I do not trust those Sylvanians,’ Felix said eventually.

‘You seem to be getting on well enough with the Countess Gabriella,’ said the Slayer. He sounded amused.

‘She is part of the problem.’

The Slayer looked at him quizzically. He seemed to be in unusually good spirits today, despite having consumed a great deal of ale the previous evening. Perhaps the prospect of facing Krieger and achieving his long awaited doom was cheering him. With dwarfs it was difficult to tell. ‘Go on?’

‘I am not sure I can.’ The Slayer’s grin widened.

‘Why not?’

‘It is a matter of trust. I have given my word on it.’ The dwarf looked more serious now. His people took oaths very seriously. ‘I will not pry then,’ he said.

Felix was disappointed. He had been half-hoping the dwarf would ask some questions. He glanced at the path, studying their way forward through the snow-covered land. The path wound through a wood that was becoming progressively darker and gloomier with every pace they took forward. He did not like the look of the place at all.

‘If it makes you feel any better, manling, I too have my suspicions about our chance-met companions.’

Felix felt a thrill of fear pass through him. Had the Slayer discovered the countess’s secret all on his own? Felix knew that despite his brutish appearance Gotrek was far from stupid. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘I do not think they are quite what they seem.’ Felix wondered exactly what the Slayer was getting at. He could not know the whole truth already, otherwise he would have already charged the countess’s coach, axe held high. Felix thought he had better take some action.

‘Do you trust my judgement?’ he asked suddenly.

The Slayer regarded him for a long moment. Looking into his single mad eye, Felix was reminded of just how alien Gotrek’s race was. They looked human enough but they were not. They were a product of a different culture, and a different upbringing, children of different gods.

‘Yes,’ said the Slayer eventually.

‘I know a secret concerning the countess which is very dangerous, and which may give you cause to distrust her. Will you promise me not to attack her or harm her in any way until after we have freed Ulrika or slain Krieger?’

Felix could see he had piqued the dwarf’s curiosity now. The Slayer remained silent for a long time considering. Felix wondered if he had misjudged the situation and Gotrek was going to go and try and beat Gabriella’s secret from her right now. Perhaps he was simply looking at things from all angles. He knew dwarfs took oaths and promises very seriously, and did not give them lightly.

‘You’ve picked an interesting deadline, manling,’ said Gotrek eventually. Felix realised he had. It appeared that, no matter how persuasive the countess’s arguments had been, he was not prepared to trust her in the long term.

‘Will you take it?’

‘Providing she does not attempt to harm any of us, yes,’ Gotrek said eventually. The words came out reluctantly, as if against his better judgement. Felix felt quite proud of the fact that the Slayer was prepared to trust him so much. It made telling him the whole story a lot easier.

As he spoke, he thought Gotrek was going to explode. It was plain from his manner that the Slayer was very unhappy with the thought of having one of the undying within striking distance and not being able to do anything about. Swiftly Felix went on to explain the reasons why they should accept her aid at least until Ulrika was free. Gotrek glared at him as if he had been tricked. At any moment, Felix half expected the Slayer to throw himself from the supply sledge and rush over to the coach, but he did not. He merely favoured it with a sullen glower. Felix could see his knuckles were tight around the shaft of his axe.

‘I like this not, manling,’ he said.

‘But you will leave her alone. For the moment.’

‘An oath is an oath.’

The Slayer’s words sent a short spasm of guilt through Felix. He did not feel good about giving the countess’s secret to the Slayer. He told himself that he was being ridiculous. He owed the vampire nothing. She was a monster who fed on the blood of innocent men and women. Despite his guilt, he felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. At least the Slayer was aware of what was going on, and would be on guard.

If the countess planned treachery, she would find herself on the receiving end of the axe she feared so very much. It was not much of a reassurance but at the moment it was the only one he had.

‘Who else knows about this?’ growled Gotrek.

‘Only Max.’

‘It would probably be best to avoid mentioning this to Snorri Nosebiter.’ The Slayer sounded almost embarrassed.

Felix could not help but agree.

The forest became quieter and emptier as they progressed, the trees more twisted and stunted. Max glanced behind him constantly, seeking to keep his eye on the coach of the countess. He certainly did not trust her, even as much as Felix. He had held the Eye of Khemri and felt its power. He knew that it would be as useful to one vampire as another, and no matter what she claimed, he could not bring himself to believe her motives were entirely altruistic.

He sensed a change in the nature of the forest. The place was tainted in a very subtle way. He felt vaguely nauseous, as he sometimes did in the presence of Chaos. He was beginning to think that the tales of this land being corrupted by the warpstone starfall of 1111 were not far from the truth.

More than that though, he sensed the winds of dark magic in this place were strangely altered, almost like the way they had been channelled when the Chaos horde attacked Praag, although not so strong. Not yet anyway. He wondered if all these events were somehow connected. It seemed that the flow of dark magic at the present moment was rather too malleable to the will of evil mages. Perhaps the Lords of Chaos were putting forth their power to aid their supporters. Max shivered and not with the cold.

He opened his magesight and saw nothing surrounding the coach. At least the countess was not working any magic that he could detect, and that meant she was most likely casting no spells. Max was a sufficiently competent sorcerer to spot it if she was. Not even a master mage could conceal his spellcraft from Max now.

He reviewed the plan he and Felix had come up with the previous evening. Even if the vampire countess was what she claimed, it was best to ensure the Eye of Khemri did not fall into her hands. If possible, Felix was to take it. Max was reluctant to do so. Felix was not a mage and the thing was unlikely to be able to affect him as much as it would Max. Even if it did, his lack of magical ability would ensure he could work no harm.

Max tried to recall everything he could about the Eye from his brief contact with its secret heart. It certainly seemed possible that wondrously complex cluster of spells at its core could do what the countess claimed. There definitely had been spells of amplification and compulsion in there, of a most unusual kind. They had not seemed to be aimed at binding anything human either.

Max knew they were fumbling in the dark with little or no light to guide them. They had fitted together hints and vague memories and suspicions to make a theory concerning their foe and what he wanted, but it was by no means certain that what they thought was correct. All they could do was move on and hope that when the time came they would be ready for the vampire’s onslaught.

Overhead the Chaos moon burned so bright that Mannsleib seemed dim. Adolphus Krieger strode through the forest surrounding his new keep. So far his minions had not had time to clear the land and make a killing ground, but that would all change soon. He smiled, revealing his fangs.

He felt strong. The Eye of Khemri was his. His spell of summoning had gone out across the land. Already ghouls and other creatures of the darkness had begun to gather at his call. He knew that in their submerged dreams all of the children within a hundred leagues were beginning to feel the tug of his will. Soon the aristocracy of the night would gather at his home and plan the reconquest of all that had been theirs.

Tonight he had another purpose. His strides had taken him to the massive graveyard, hidden deep within the woods not far from the tumbled down ruins of Drakenhof town. It was a huge area, originally consecrated to Morr, the Lord of Death. It was a place where once men had thought to lie in peace through all eternity, a sanctuary, a place of rest.

Adolphus intended to change all of that. Tonight, the cemetery would be turned into a recruiting office for the mightiest army in all of history. Tonight, he would raise the first of many regiments to be drawn from the ranks of the dead.

He touched the talisman and felt its power. As he did so, he seemed to hear a voice whispering to him, telling him potent secrets of necromancy. Somehow, since he had attuned the Eye, his understanding of sorcery had deepened.

Ancient incantations that had once seemed meaningless to him were now pregnant with hidden significance. He could visualise and control the flows of dark magic with an ease that surprised him. He had always been an indifferent student of the magical arts, but now he felt given enough time he would prove to be one of their greatest masters. It appeared that there was no end to the gifts Nagash’s ancient creation granted. Who knows, given time, he might match that ancient liche for knowledge and create such potent artefacts himself.

He pushed the thought aside. Such sweet dreams were for the future. Right now, he had more important work to do. Right now, he must take his next steps along the path of empire. There were prophecies to be fulfilled. It was his duty to herald the Age of Blood.

Lithely he leapt atop the defaced remains of an ancient mausoleum. From here, he had a fine view of the entire graveyard. He could see the masses of tumbled gravestones, broken-limbed statues, effigies of the now-forgotten dead who would soon return to be his soldiers.

He cast back his head, opened his mouth and began to enunciate the words of the ancient ritual.

‘In the name of Nagash, Lord of Undeath, I call you…’

The Eye blazed at his throat, a beacon sending a cold clear light out to illuminate his surroundings. The winds of magic swirled around him, caressing him lightly as they flowed into the talisman.

‘In the name of Nagash, Lord of Unlife, you must come…’

Burning snakes of fire twisted and turned in his belly. For once, there was no struggle to control them. All of this energy was his to command. Dark magical power flowed through him and down into the tainted soil of Sylvania.

The tendrils of power spread like an elaborate root system. He could sense through them, an odd mixture of sight and touch and other unnamed perceptions. He became aware of the many hundreds of corpses planted in the earth, preserved for centuries by the faint taint of warpstone in the soil. He saw the bloated white worms burrowing, and other twisted creatures that even he found dreadful to contemplate.

As the web of power touched the corpses there came a faint echo of the life that had once burned so strongly within them. Here was a proud nobleman who had ground his peasants to dirt. There was a knight who in life had been a proud defender of his faith. He touched a woman who had died painfully in childbirth and a man who had died of hunger during one of the many periodic famines that wracked Sylvania.

Krieger did not care how they had died. He did not care what they once had been in life. He only cared that they would serve him in death. His spell opened up a path to somewhere else, another world parallel to his own, a seething sea of wild chaotic energies in which evil presences lurked. Some of the weakest drifted towards the spirits and entered the rotting bodies, merging with them, lending them animation.

In his mind’s eye, he saw green witchfires spring to life in empty eye sockets. He saw white bony limbs move, skeletal fingers flex. Worm-eaten skeletons shifted, swimmers plunging through a sea of dirt. It did not matter that they had been buried face down to confuse them in the event of just such a dark resurrection. They sensed the direction of the power that drew them, and they came.

Wriggling, writhing, twisting and turning, they clawed their way to the surface. His voice was a high-pitched wail as he recited the ancient forbidden words. The earth below him vibrated as hundreds of dead woke from their long slumber. Somewhere off in the distance a wolf howled in terror. The eerie hunting calls of ghouls ripped the night as they responded subconsciously to the energies they sensed being unleashed.

A grin of triumph twisted his lips. He opened his eyes. Lines of power shimmered in the air. As if in response to his thaumaturgy, a shower of glowing stars fell from the heavens, blazing across the leering face of the Chaos moon. Eerie green contrails raked the night, as if the talons of some huge predatory beast had shredded the parchment-thin surface of the sky.

A faint white speck appeared on the ground. It might have been the head of one of those albino worms he had seen in the depths, but it was not. It was a fingertip. Four near identical slivers of ivory then a whole skeletal arm followed, emerging from the earth, flailing in the empty air like that of a swimmer drowning in deep water.

The palm of the arm pushed flat against the ground, gaining leverage, and the rest of the skeleton appeared. First came the skull, with its glowing eyes and leering evil smile, then came the ribcage and the other arm, followed by the spine, the hips and the strangely elongated-looking legs. The first of Adolphus’s newly recruited army emerged into the night, and stretched exultantly, lifting its arms skywards in triumph. As it moved, it clicked. Its grinning jaws opened and then shut in a deranged parody of a man sucking in huge breaths.

The stink of corruption and fresh-turned earth filled the air, as more and more animated corpses pulled themselves upwards in the moon’s pale light. Gravestones tumbled; old markers fell as the skeletons emerged. Some of them looked around, heads scanning their surroundings, necks creaking faintly as they moved. Others danced wildly amid the tombstones, as if testing their mobility after centuries of being interred. A few nodded gravely as if they understood what was happening and approved.

Then one by one, clicking as they moved, they drew closer to Krieger and abased themselves like worshippers of some dreadful ancient god before a bloodstained altar.

Tonight, he thought, a new age begins. Tonight, I have taken my first step towards an empire that will last throughout eternity. Tonight will be remembered a thousand years hence. I too will remember it.

He spoke more words, drew more power and extended the spell outwards, sending dark magical energies tumbling in an ever-expanding sphere for leagues upon leagues. Everywhere the spell touched, the dead began to move in their graves.

At his throat the talisman of Nagash glowed like the eye of an evil god. The Time of Blood had arrived.

Max looked up from the fire around which they sat huddled. He could tell that they all sensed it, the stirrings of that vast power somewhere in the forest. One did not have to be a wizard to notice. The pulse was so strong that even the most ungifted yokel would feel it and know dread. By the way even the most hardened Kislevite shuddered and glanced out into the surrounding gloom, he could tell that they felt it too.

If such a thing was noticeable to someone lacking the talent, it was like a thunderclap to Max. His entire being echoed to the power he sensed being unleashed. He knew that somewhere out there in the night, a spell of extreme potency was being woven. He could sense the direction as clearly as he could see a beacon burning in the night. He could feel the pressure of power moving across the land as surely as the pilot of a merchantman feels the wind. What was that undying madman up to, he wondered?

As if some celestial being were giving a sign of the evil to come, a clutch of meteors blazed through the night. From the colour of their fiery contrails, Max knew that they were made from warpstone, the concentrated essence of pure evil. What was it about this land that attracted the stuff so, Max wondered? Why did it seem to receive an inordinate concentration of this dreadful starfalls? An accident of geography? Like calling to like? The curse of the gods? Or was this starfall’s appearance something to do with the spell he had just sensed being cast. Would he ever know?

Even as the thought flickered through his mind, he sensed a further rending of the fabric of reality. It was strong enough so he could tell the exact direction and distance, and yet distant enough so that he merely felt uncomfortable. He suspected that had he been closer he would be enduring far more than a faint sense of nausea and dizziness.

He rose reluctantly from the fire and walked towards the small pavilion where the Countess Gabriella was resting. A gesture and a word called a ball of light into being. It floated at his shoulder illumining his way. Another gesture and an incantation and a web of energy sprang into being around him, invisible to any eyes but that of a mage. Anyone or anything, any spell or malign influence, would trip a number of powerful defensive spells. Max was taking no chances.

Outside the tent, Rodrik’s companions met him with bared blades but Rodrik himself was nowhere to be seen.

‘What do you want, wizard?’ asked the youngest of them. His voice was high-pitched and faintly effeminate. In the glow of the witchlight Max could clearly see his fresh face with a small caterpillar of a moustache crawling over his upper lip. The boy sounded at once a little scared and desperate to prove his bravery.

‘I want to speak to the Countess Gabriella.’

‘It’s all right, Quentin. Let him pass.’ The voice of the countess sounded from within the tent. The young warriors stepped aside reluctantly. Max gave them a pleasant smile, although his flesh crawled knowing what they were. Despite his defensive web, he half expected a sword in the back as he pulled aside the tent flap and let himself in.

Inside the air smelled of musk and cinnamon, a strong perfume meant to cover the smell of something else. Undead flesh, perhaps. An Arabyan rug covered the floor. Two heavy chests were set to one side. Aside from his own glowing globe there was no source of light within the tent. He supposed its occupants did not need it.

Rodrik lay sprawled on the floor. He looked exhausted and ecstatic. His face was flushed. His lips were bruised and swollen. His eyes were unfocused, staring at nothing. His breathing came in ragged gasps, like a man who had just run a long race. The countess lay beside him. Her arms were wrapped round his shoulders. Her head was thrown back. Her veil was still in place. Judging from the scene, Max had no doubt he had just missed watching her take her evening meal from her follower’s veins.

Coldly and deliberately, Max reviewed all the swiftest and most destructive spells he knew. With a gesture the glowglobe could be turned into an engine of destruction. A word and a more complex weave would send hundreds of streamers of razor-edged light slashing through the gloom. Another word would encase him in a cocoon of protective energies. He breathed deeply, and smiled in a relaxed manner, all the while ready to deal death in a heartbeat.

‘There is no need for violence between us, Herr Schreiber,’ said the countess. It was almost as if she had read his thoughts. She sounded amused.

‘Let us hope so,’ said Max, not letting his guard down for an instant.

‘Do not dare to threaten milady,’ said Rodrik weakly, struggling to rise to his feet. His voice sounded slurred, like a man who had drunk too much or overindulged in witchweed.

‘It is unwise to threaten me,’ said Max, in return letting his eyes move from the knight to the woman so there was no doubt as to his meaning. ‘Leave us, Rodrik. I would have words with your mistress.’ Despite himself Max could not help but stress the last word to play on its ambiguity.

Rodrik looked up blearily at the countess. She stroked his cheek almost affectionately and nodded her permission. The young knight gathered his wits and reeled to his feet, before staggering to the exit.

‘If you need me, milady, I will be within call.’

‘His devotion is truly touching,’ said Max ironically, after Rodrik had executed a clumsy bow and left.

‘His devotion is quite sincere and unforced I assure you, Herr Schreiber. And I am sure you did not come here simply to sneer at my admirers.’

‘A nice way to put it,’ said Max.

‘I take it Herr Jaeger has told you all about me then. I thought as much from your manner on the ride.’

‘Let us make one thing clear,’ said Max. ‘I do not like you or what you are. At the moment we happen to be allies because we have need of each other. Under different circumstances, we would be enemies.’

‘You are forthright, Herr Schreiber. Very well, we need each other, as you say, so I will forgive your boorish manners and the way you have entered cloaked in power, and I will discuss things like a reasonable person. I suggest you do the same.’

Max smiled at her coldly. The rebuke had been delivered well, in the tone of a parent admonishing a surly child. Many men would have been cowed by that alone. Max was not one of them.

‘Your protégé, Krieger, has begun his work. You must have sensed that as clearly as I.’

‘Why do you think I took the risk of asking Rodrik to join me in my tent? I will soon need all the strength I can muster, so will you. I fear that my get has become very strong indeed.’

‘I had understood that he was an indifferent sorcerer. The spell cast this evening was not the work of a clumsy journeyman.’

‘Then we can assume that either he has learned a great deal over the past few years, or that the Eye of Khemri is augmenting his capabilities in that area.’

‘If that is so we face a truly terrifying foe.’

‘And one who is summoning an army to him unless I miss my guess, Herr Schreiber. What we both sensed was necromancy of the darkest and most potent sort. Believe me, I have enough experience of this to know.’

‘And what does your experience tell you we should do?’

‘Hurry to Krieger’s fortress and destroy him, if we can. Already I can feel the power of the Eye growing in my mind. He is summoning the Arisen, and it’s a tug that few within a hundred leagues will be able to resist.’

‘You are saying that perhaps he can turn you against us?’

‘Yes, Herr Schreiber, that is exactly what I am saying. You see, I am giving you fair warning of all hazards.’

Max looked at her, measuring her words. In a way, he would welcome the chance to destroy this creature, but part of him also hoped it would not come to that, for then it would be a truly desperate situation indeed. She nodded her head, as if reading his mind once more.

‘I believe I can fight Krieger’s influence for a long time. I am much older, and more skilled in these arts than he.’

‘I think the Eye of Khemri might change that.’

‘You should know. You have had more contact with it than I.’

‘Tell me all you know about it.’

Max settled down to listen to the vampire’s tale, looking for any contradictions between what she told him and what she had told Felix. He already suspected he would find none. As he gave his attention to her clear, soothing voice, he found his thoughts turning to Ulrika. He truly dreaded what might have happened to her.

Ulrika woke in darkness. She felt weak and strange. There was something wrong with her eyes. She could see her surroundings quite clearly but they had been drained of all colour. Everything was in varying shades of black and white.

She pushed herself upright. The motion made her dizzy. Her whole body ached. Her head was sore. Her stomach churned. Pains stabbed through her mouth. She looked around. She lay on cold stone, in a crypt. It looked as if she were entombed in a burial chamber of some sort. A wave of panic passed through her. Was she imprisoned within some tomb, mistakenly believed to be dead, when all the while she had been alive?

It could have been worse, she supposed. She could have been interred within a coffin. At least she would be up and about when they came to bury her. If they came to bury her. What had happened? She suspected that Krieger had drunk so deep of her blood that she had fallen into a death-like trance. It would be a mistake that was easy to make.

The thought of the vampire and that final embrace sent a wave of conflicting emotions through her: hatred, resentment– and secret guilty pleasure. She stretched and rose to prowl around the room. It was small, with carvings of skeletons, skulls and other symbols of death engraved into the walls. She sniffed the air. Her senses seemed keener than once they had been. She could smell the dust, and the faint scent of a cinnamon perfume Krieger used. Underneath lay the faintest hint of decay. She could smell mould in the air, and off in the distance she caught the warm smell of living things. She listened and thought she caught the sound of footsteps far away.

The burning hunger grew stronger. Responding to some primal instinct, she moved towards the exit. She reached a stairwell and found it barred. A gate of rusty yet ornate metalwork blocked the way out. Typical of Sylvanians, she thought, to turn even their mausoleums into prison cells, as if somehow the dead might escape from their internment. She shook her head. What had happened to her showed that they might have some justification. That sent her thoughts racing in a direction she did not yet want to follow. Instead she tested the bars, feeling the cold of the metal beneath her fingers.

They seemed old and weak. Rusty, indeed, she thought thankfully, exerting her strength against them. Even weak as she was, she managed to bend the bars enough to make a gap for her to slip through, and she raced up the stairs. What was she going to do now? Where was Adolphus Krieger? Did it matter?

She was on her own at last, with a chance to escape. This was still her best chance to get away before he or his repulsive human followers came to check the vault. She considered her options. The burning hunger increased. She had no winter clothing and no weapons. In the snow, in this haunted land, she would not get far. No matter how risky it was she needed to find supplies and weapons and warm gear. That meant searching this house and praying to all the gods she did not encounter the vampire or his henchmen. Part of her rebelled against the very concept of flight, part of her wanted to experience the vampire’s embrace again and again, no matter what the cost. Ruthlessly she squashed these thoughts. They would not help.

Quietly as she could she paced on. She was in part of the manor house she had never seen before, which was hardly surprising for mostly she had been confined to her rooms, except when summoned to Krieger’s throne room. A whiff of cooking food reached her nostrils, all animal fat and charred flesh. In spite of her hunger it left her repulsed. Nonetheless she forced herself to move in that direction.

She passed door after door. She knew she should pause and check them out, looking for what she needed, but she found she could not. Some compulsion, only half-understood by her rebellious mind, drove her in the direction she knew she would find people.

Ahead of her she caught a flicker of movement. Her first thoughts were to throw herself through a doorway and hide, instead she found her stride lengthening, sending her racing towards the fat merchant, Osrik. He stood there, a look of astonishment and fear on his face, a drumstick of chicken in his hands, and a stream of grease dribbling from his blubbery mouth. He raised his hands as if to ward her off. All of his actions seemed terribly slow to Ulrika, as if she were caught up in some strange nightmare. She could smell the warmth of him, the sweetness of the blood coursing through his body. She could see the pulse beating in his neck. It hypnotised her, drew all of her attention. The hunger in her was irresistible. She felt like a passenger in a runaway coach, or a rider mounted on a wild stallion. She had no conscious control over her body now, and she did not want to have.

The pain in her mouth grew intense. She felt something ripping through the flesh of her gums. A taste of old, stale black blood filled her mouth. She leapt forward on the screaming servant, arms grasping his neck and drawing him closer into her embrace. Weak as she felt herself to be, his frantic struggles availed him nothing. He seemed about as strong as a small child.

All conscious thought was seared away as she leaned forward and felt her fangs puncture the flesh of his throat. Like a wild beast she ripped at the artery, widening the gap, causing the blood to spray everywhere. It rose in a red mist, obscuring her sight, clinging to her flesh. It did not matter. There was plenty of the warm red stuff to drink down.

As it slid down her throat, a wonderful warmth filled her, a glow of wellbeing stronger than any pleasure she had ever felt before. The embrace of the vampire had been but a dim echo. The pleasure blotted out all other sensations: all horror, all guilt and all restraint. She gulped the blood down greedily, never wanting this moment to end, not wanting to stop. She heard the shouts and screams of the other servants but she ignored them. Osrik spasmed in her grasp, but the convulsions of his muscles were nothing to her. She held him in place easily though he was much heavier than she.

Her whole universe contracted till there was only her mouth and the hot wonderful flow of life-giving liquid. She was aware dimly of Osrik’s heartbeat slowing and then stopping, and the flow dying away until it became only a few drops. Still, the warmth of blood passed through her system. It passed from her stomach to her veins, with a sweetness so intense it was almost unbearable, then surged through some barrier where the pleasure became pain, and horror and fear came flooding back into her mind along with conscious thought.

Now she felt sick, nauseous, bloated beyond belief. She felt as if she might explode, like an overfull wineskin stuffed with stolen blood. Worse was the realisation of what she had done, of what she had become.

The sickness became so intense that she could barely stand up. She sensed the approach of other servants and could do nothing. She knew she should flee but could she could not. She knew that they would kill her and that she would welcome death. Instinctively, though, her body betrayed her. She reeled away down the corridor, nausea sweeping through her swift as fire. She hit a wall with her head, crumbled to her knees then crawled blindly down the corridor, retching up blood, bile and decaying bits of food as she went.

Swiftly the weakness overcame her and she slowed to a halt face down in a pool of filthy vomit, overcome with loathing for herself, and the thing she had become, and the one who had made her so. Darkness filled her vision again, and as it blotted out her consciousness she welcomed it.

‘Interesting chat?’ Felix asked, as Max settled down beside him. The wizard looked weary and more than a little grim. Hardly surprising under the circumstances, thought Felix. Dealing with one of the undying would put a strain on anyone. He was suddenly glad he had shared his knowledge of the countess with Gotrek and the wizard. In this case, it really was true that a burden shared was a burden lightened.

Across the fire, Gotrek looked up. His one good eye reflected the flames, giving the Slayer an eerie supernatural look.

‘Very,’ said Max carefully. ‘The countess is a very learned… woman.’

He sounded like he was having some trouble saying the last word. Felix thought he knew how Max felt. There was a crawling between his own shoulder blades whenever he thought of her out there in the darkness behind him. It had increased ever since he felt that strange surge of unease earlier in the evening, the prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck that he sometimes got when magic was being used in the vicinity.

‘Did you learn anything from her?’ Felix coughed. He could feel phlegm moving in his lungs but he was feeling a little better, he thought. Not quite so weak.

‘I learned we should beware of treachery.’ Max glanced around the fire. Aside from Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter they were alone. The Kislevites preferred the company of their companions around the other fire. Ivan Petrovich was lost in gloom and stood apart, staring into the night. Snorri snored loudly. Gotrek glared at them. Felix did not doubt that the Slayer’s keen ears could hear everything Max said. ‘She thinks the Eye of Khemri might be used to control her, to turn her against us.’

‘Wonderful,’ muttered Felix. This news amplified his unease. ‘She also thinks we need to strike soon before others of their kind are drawn to the place. Who knows, they may already be on the way.’

‘This gets better and better. Remind me again why I came here.’

‘The same reason as I did, to free Ulrika.’

‘What if we can’t? What if she is dead?’ Felix pressed.

‘Then we avenge her.’

‘And what if she has… gone over to the other side.’

‘Then we kill her.’

Felix looked at Max and wondered if either of them were really capable of it. He caught the glitter in Gotrek’s eye. If they could not bring themselves to kill the woman, the dwarf could. Felix prayed to Sigmar that things would not come to that.

Under the moon’s eerie light, the corpses pulled themselves from their graves. Cerements still clung to their flesh. Their hands were claws. They hungered for the flesh of the living but another more powerful urge overcame their lust for meat. Somewhere out in the night, something called them, with a strength they could not resist. Stumbling, shuffling, moving like sick blind men, they began to march towards their goal. All over the cursed land of Sylvania peasants hid themselves within their houses and prayed to Sigmar to save them. The undead were on the move.

‘So now you know,’ said Adolphus. Ulrika was surprised. There was no triumph in his manner, only concern. He looked at her like a lover might, or a father, or a king contemplating a favoured vassal or some combination of all three. She glanced around at her surroundings. She lay on the great four-poster bed, in his chamber. Someone had taken the trouble to clean the vomit and the blood and to change her clothing.

‘Let me die,’ she said. She felt miserable, physically and mentally. Her body was wracked by sickness, her mind by self-hatred and guilt.

‘You will not die now unless you kill yourself or someone kills you. You feel terrible now because you drank too much blood. It is a common mistake among the newly risen. In some ways it is like what happens when a starving man sits down to a banquet. His stomach simply cannot deal with all the food he eats. In other ways it’s like what happens after a human indulges in too much wine. There is what you might call a hangover.’

‘I do not want to live. I killed a man for no reason.’

‘You killed a man to extend your life. People do it every day. We have discussed this. Oh, now you feel guilty because it goes against many of the hypocrisies you have been taught since you were a child, but believe me, this too shall pass.’

‘I do not want to change the way I feel.’

‘But you will. Trust me. You will.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘We all say that, at first.’

‘You are so sure of yourself, aren’t you?’ Ulrika sneered. Adolphus Krieger shrugged.

‘I have every reason to be. I have gone through what you have gone through. And I know that one day you will thank me for doing you the greatest favour anyone has ever done for you.’

‘Turning me into a monster?’

‘Turning you into an immortal.’ Ulrika rose up on her elbow to stare at him.

She felt like lashing out. She wanted to take her nails and slash his face to the bone, to bury her fangs in his throat. He took a step back.

‘It would be extremely foolish of you to turn on me now,’ he said. ‘I know things that you need to know. Without that knowledge you will be prey to any passing vampire who decides to take advantage of you.’

‘It seems to me that you have already done that.’

‘True, but I am your progenitor. You are my get. I have certain responsibilities to you just as you have certain responsibilities to me. In a very real sense, you are my child.’

‘I already have a father.’

‘You had a father. What do you think he will do to you, if he finds out what you are now?’

Ulrika paused for a second. She knew what her father would do. The people of Kislev did not suffer monsters to live in their midst. That thought sent a flash of pain through her chest; no matter how much her father had once loved her, he would do his duty. It would pain him unto death but he would do what he had to.

‘Look at it another way,’ Krieger continued mercilessly. ‘What do you think you might do to him if you were near him when the thirst overtook you?’

An image of doing what she had done to the fat merchant to her own father flashed through her mind. It was at once horrifying and strangely attractive. She shuddered and tried to force the picture from her mind, but it would not go.

‘I see you do understand. It is best if you break all mortal ties now. You are still a neophyte. You would not be able to control yourself when the killing lust came upon you.’

‘Would I be able to one day?’

‘Good – you are beginning to adjust to your new state, to accept it.’

Ulrika realised that she was. She had taken to her new condition far too easily. Part of it was sheer Kislevite pragmatism. She was what she was and nothing could change that now, but part of it was something else.

‘You are doing something to my mind,’ she said. He nodded like a teacher pleased with a particularly apt pupil.

‘It is because I am your progenitor. There is a link between us that is very strong. Also it is this,’ he said indicating the talisman at his throat.

Her eyes were drawn to it. She sensed its power. It was like watching a huge spider clinging to his neck. Did he not sense the wickedness and the power of the thing? ‘It is as well that you understand your position from the start. There is much I have to teach you and we do not have a huge amount of time. Soon we will both be very busy.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Carving out a new kingdom here in Sylvania, ruling the night, and setting our servants to rule the day.’

‘Do you really think you can do that?’

‘I have already started. Now, listen! There is much you have to learn.’

Such was the compulsion implicit in his words that she fell silent, and simply stared at him, waiting for him to share his infernal wisdom.

‘You will find that many things have changed. You no longer need to eat or drink as mortals do. Blood will provide you with all the sustenance you need. It is everything to you now. It is the be all and end all of your unlife. It will nourish you, heal you, and provide you with power the like of which you could only dream about when you were mortal. With it, you can maintain your existence forever. Without it…’

He paused for a moment and glanced out the window as if considering something.

‘You will not die, not as others understand it. Something worse will happen.’

‘Worse?’

‘You will simply wither away, losing strength and youth and beauty. Your muscles will shrivel. Your mind will deteriorate. You will not be able to move or speak or think. Your body will become a withered desiccated husk, and yet part of you will live on imprisoned in it, aware in a very dim way of what has happened to you and of what you once were. It will be a long eternity of torment and hunger, tortured by the thirst but unable to slake it. It is something like hell.’

‘You speak as if you have experienced it.’ She said softly.

‘The beginnings of it, once, long ago. I was saved when another brought me blood. It gave me enough strength to hunt for myself once more. But enough of these ancient memories – I was telling you what you need to know.’

‘Then go on,’ she said, a little sulkily.

He reached out and touched her cheek. A thrill passed through her body. The feel of his cold skin on hers aroused a strange sensation in her. He smiled as if he knew what she was feeling.

‘I told you there was a link between us. Some of my blood is in you, just as one day some of your blood will be in your get. We are bound now by blood and by darkness.’

Ulrika considered this. On some deep instinctive level she knew it was true. There was a bond between her and Krieger such as she had never felt with any other human being. With any human being, she corrected herself bitterly, knowing she was no longer one herself.

‘Tonight I will tell you the essentials of what you need to know. The rules are simple. Do not go out by day if you can possibly help it. Find yourself a safe place and keep out of the light.’

‘Why? You sometimes do it.’

‘I have a tolerance for light. Some do not. Sunlight burns some of our kind as surely as flaming oil. Some are merely made torpid unless they have taken a great deal of blood, and even then their minds are not sharp. The only way to find out which type you are is to risk it and see, and that is not something you should do unless you are in the greatest of danger and swathed in the thickest cloak you can find, exposing as little flesh as possible.’

‘Could I not simply expose some skin, say, on the back of my hand, for a short space of time.’

‘You could, if you are willing to see it melt away into a stump if you are one of those who are vulnerable. And sometimes, for some of the Arisen there is an increased risk. Sunlight does not burn them immediately. It scorches their skin after prolonged exposure, blistering it and cracking it and causing the most extreme agony. It’s like a case of sunburn to a mortal, only a thousand times worse.’

‘Why is this?’

‘I am not a natural philosopher. I do not know. I can only tell you the stories I have heard. Some say the sun god of the long dead kingdom of Nehekhara cursed our kind. Others say it is because we are saturated with a dark magic that is disrupted by sunlight. The only thing I know for certain is that all our kind are almost blind by day compared to how well we see at night. Something in our eye changes, adapting it to darkness and making it too sensitive to the sun’s light. It is best to sleep through the day. It is when we become naturally torpid anyway.’

‘Can I fly? Turn myself into a bat?’ She realised it was a childish question, but being able to fly like a bird was a childhood dream, and perhaps she could find something good in what had happened to her.

‘Transformation can be learned but the mastery is a long and difficult process. I will teach you what I know of it when I have the time. For the present you should be content with what you have. Mortal diseases no longer affect you. You are now many times stronger and hardier and faster than any mortal man, and you are invulnerable to many of their weapons.’

‘Why?’

‘Most of your internal organs are useless to you now. Over time they will atrophy. A blade to the belly will do you no real harm. Most wounds will heal very quickly when you take enough blood.’

‘What about a stake through the heart?’

‘Ah, that old chestnut. Yes. That will harm you. Any blow there will. Your heart still beats, albeit so slowly as to be undetectable except after you have drunk. It still pumps blood through your body though. If it is shattered then it will take a long time to repair itself. You will still live, but all the things I told you about lack of blood will apply. It will be a period of torture, and at the end of it you may be too weak to feed.

‘You should also protect your head. It is the seat of your soul, or at least your mind. If your brain is damaged you will go mad, or lose memories or become an unthinking soulless brute. Having your head parted from your body, having the brain scooped out and burned, is the surest way of finding a real death. You would do well to avoid it.’

‘What about magical powers? I have always heard that vampires gain many sorcerous powers through pacts with the Dark Ones.’

‘Our powers do not come from the Lords of Chaos but they are very real. There are many ways to compel mortals to your will, to fascinate them, bedazzle them and ultimately to command them. Again, these things take a long time to master and I will teach you how to use them as and when I can.’

‘It seems you intend to keep me very dependent on you.’

‘Why not? These are traditional roles in our society. I am the master. You are the apprentice. I will teach and in return you will obey.’

‘And if I do not want to? What will you do then?’

He smiled, showing all his teeth, and gestured to the talisman at his throat. ‘Believe me, you have no choice. I command you to obey me in all things, to serve and protect me, until I release you from this binding.’

Even as he spoke Ulrika felt the compulsion settle on her mind like burning fetters hot from the forge being hammered onto the limbs of a condemned prisoner. She wanted to scream and to resist but there was nothing she could do. The power of the Eye of Khemri and of the will behind it was too great. She knew she was overwhelmed now, as surely as she had been by the red thirst earlier. Part of her actually wanted to obey. The spell was very strong.

‘This is a very great honour, Ulrika. You will be the first of many bound to my service. Together we will forge a new empire and bring a new age of darkness to the world.’

TEN

‘We are very close now,’ said Max. His voice sounded gloomy and bitter, half crazed with fear and frustration, but Felix did not doubt that he was right. The cloying evil in the air was almost tangible. He felt as if eyes watched him out of every shadow. He wanted to turn and run before whatever it was that waited out there came to get him. It was an effort of will to keep from constantly glancing over his shoulder.

It was these ruins. They were depressing him more than even the normal buildings of Sylvania. He told himself to be glad they had found some shelter. Even this old abandoned manor with its tumbled down walls and collapsed roof was better than nothing with a storm coming. At least the walls provided some shelter from the wind. He just wished it did not remind him so much of those tales he had read as a youth.

The forest was deep and dark. The sense of corruption was more intense. The snow here was a thin crust over the tainted earth. A miasma of evil rose from it. There were times when Felix found it difficult to breathe. It was late afternoon, and the shadows were lengthening. The ponies whickered nervously. Felix drew his cloak tighter about him, and then made sure his sword was loose in its scabbard.

From up ahead he could hear the sound of horses forcing their way forward. It had started to snow again, big flakes falling fast, so many of them that they obscured vision more than a few feet away. Their coldness brushing his cheek felt like the touch of dead men’s fingers. He cursed and wondered whether they would all die in the blizzard. It would be ironic after they had come all this way.

Felix wiped his running nose on the edge of his cloak and looked at Gotrek. At that moment, he heard soft sounds of approaching movement from up ahead. His hand flew to the hilt of his sword.

The Slayer held his axe negligently in his hands. He looked as relaxed as he ever did. ‘Tis just the scouts returning, manling.’

A moment later Felix saw that he was right. Two of the Kislevites had returned, Marek and another man. Their faces looked at once excited and afraid. They rode up to Ivan Petrovich and Marek spoke swiftly in a loud voice so that all could hear.

‘Drakenhof Castle ahead of us about two hours’ fast ride. A terrible sinister place it is, half in ruins, but at least partially occupied. We saw many men marching through the snow towards it. At least they looked like men – but they moved slowly, as if under some evil spell.’

Ivan Petrovich cocked his head. ‘How many?’

‘Many. Coming from all directions and converging on the castle. And we saw other things. Their tracks, anyway, before the snow started to fall.’

A thrill of fear passed through Felix.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Ivan Petrovich.

‘We saw footprints in the snow around the mansion. Lots of them. They appeared to be human…’

‘Appeared to be?’

‘They were bare-footed, no shoes or boots.’

‘And there were small indentations at the toes that looked like… well, like the marks of claws.’

Felix thought back to what they had seen on the outskirts of Waldenhof. It sounded like the tracks of ghouls. He caught enough of the rest of the scout’s speech to guess that they thought the same.

‘We could camp here tonight,’ said Marek. ‘There is no sense in going on through this storm.’

Ivan Petrovich listened to the rest of the scout’s reports and then wheeled his horse round and rode towards them. Max had already stridden over to stand beside their sled. Rodrik was with him.

‘It seems we have found what we were looking for,’ said Max. ‘I think we have tracked the monster to his lair.’

‘Aye, but there is no way we can reach there tonight. Not in this weather.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘We should camp here,’ said Ivan Petrovich. ‘The men will be tired and hungry. I say we wait till tomorrow morning and push on then.’

Max nodded his agreement, as did Rodrik. Gotrek looked around as if he was going to disagree but to Felix’s surprise he glanced over at the countess’s coach and then kept his mouth shut. Felix thought he could read his mind. The Slayer did not trust the countess and did not want to abandon these men to their mercies. Besides, if she attacked them, his oath would end and he could fight her. Felix did not doubt that one vampire was very much as good as another for Gotrek’s purposes.

‘We will post a very careful watch tonight,’ said Max.

‘I will double the sentries and make sure they guard in pairs tonight to keep each other awake,’ said Ivan Petrovich.

‘I will keep a careful eye open myself,’ said Gotrek. He rubbed his eye patch so ostentatiously that Felix wondered if he was making a joke.

‘They are out there,’ said Adolphus Krieger, leaning forward on the Throne of Blood.

The ghoul who had brought the word lay sprawled on the cracked mosaic of the floor, its arms stretched out before it in a gesture of abject fealty. Adolphus paid it no more attention than he would any other piece of furniture. He glanced around at Ulrika, Roche and the rest of his followers. They looked around uneasily. Overhead, in the shadows, something vast flapped leathery wings.

‘Who are they?’ Ulrika asked. Obviously she had difficulty following the ghoul’s slurred words. Krieger smiled fondly at her. She seemed to be adapting well to her new role. She was docile and obedient. If he detected a look of trapped horror far back in her eyes, he chose to ignore it.

‘Our enemies. Warriors of some sort, strangers mostly. Outlanders it seems, sheltering in the ruins of the old Rattenberg house. The ghoul does not know enough to tell us any more.’

‘What do you intend to do?’ She walked over and stood in front of the dais, staring up at him boldly. He wondered how she felt. This was all new to her. He could remember his own horror and wonder at the strangeness of his condition when he was freshly risen. He felt a surge of affection such as he had felt for no other being in a very long time. Was this what humans felt for their children, he wondered? Was this what the countess had felt for him? Had he really not been able to return that feeling with a fraction of the intensity? Did Ulrika feel the same way about him as he had once felt about the countess? He dismissed the thoughts as being of no account, even as he came to a decision.

‘I will go and take a look at them. Perhaps I will teach them the folly of trespassing in my domain.’

‘Perhaps I should go, master,’ suggested Roche.

‘Tonight is not the night for a mortal to be abroad, old friend,’ said Krieger. Fear passed over the faces of the other coven members. They did not want to be left alone here, in this haunted place, with the newly risen Ulrika and the army of the undead gathering. They all knew what had happened to Osrik. Krieger let his malicious amusement show.

‘Do not worry. I will return.’

The blizzard had stopped, leaving the forest cloaked in a mantle of deep fresh snow. Adolphus Krieger stalked through it, lithe as a leopard, confident as a king. He knew no mortal eyes could pick him out unless he wanted them to. The night was his home. It would cloak and shield him until he chose otherwise.

What fools were these, he wondered as he saw the distant campfires flickering through the trees, to be abroad in Sylvania in the depths of winter, and to have strayed so far from the beaten track? Surely they must know how close they were to the haunted keep at Drakenhof? Were they fortune hunters keen to prove their bravery and despoil the ancient castle of its mythical treasures? If so, they were in for an unpleasant surprise.

Perhaps he would be merciful. Perhaps he would kill a few sentries silently and unseen and leave them as a warning that would terrify the others. Or perhaps he would summon the ghouls and the skeletons he had raised and massacre them all, leaving only one to carry word of the killing back to the lands of men. That might be better. It would spread fear and terror in advance of his armies, and those had always been the greatest allies of the Arisen when they went to war.

He moved forward swiftly, from pool of shadow to pool of shadow. Tempting as that course of action was, perhaps it was not the wisest. He was not yet ready to begin his campaign yet. True, several hundred animated corpses and skeletons had joined him but there were other hidden burial grounds to be visited. More ghouls were drawn to him every night. Soon the first of the Arisen themselves would arrive. Only once that had happened could he be certain of his power. It would be folly to strike too early and forewarn his foes. Perhaps the first method would be best after all. Or maybe he should summon the wolves and have them deal with the intruders.

The Eye tingled on his throat. He sensed something was wrong in the night. Surrounding the old ruins was a flow of power that should not be there. He opened his magesight to its fullest and studied his surroundings. Nearer to the fire, he could perceive a subtle webwork of force, a spell of some sort, a ward or an alarm, no doubt. It was fine work, near invisible. He suspected that had he not been wearing the Eye he might not even have noticed it. There was a wizard present in that camp. He needed to be careful indeed.

Moving with exaggerated caution he proceeded through the snow, easing his weight down to minimise the sound of the white stuff crunching underfoot. Within the tumbled down walls was a large camp, with a coach, several sledges and many horses pegged within what was left of the stables. Some of them neighed nervously as if catching his scent. There were a lot of warriors, probably too many for the wolves to deal with unless his other servants supported them. If the wizard was powerful, perhaps even that would not be enough.

Who were these people, he wondered: some noble and his retinue, perhaps? Only the nobility were rich enough to hire wizards to travel with them. Or perhaps the coach belonged to the wizard himself, and these were his bodyguards. It had been known for sorcerers engaged in all manner of dubious practices to seek refuge in the wilds of Sylvania in order to continue their nefarious researches untroubled by the authorities and by witch-hunters. Perhaps he had stumbled on one of these. Or perhaps the man had come to investigate his own spellcasting. His use of the Great Ritual must have been noticeable for a dozen leagues to one sensitive enough.

Someone called out. Krieger froze. Had he been spotted? He listened. No. It was merely one nervous man making sure another was there. Perhaps the unease of the animals had transmitted itself to the sentries. He would have to be careful. Under normal circumstances he would have used his powers to cloud their minds, but the wizard down there would be able to sense it.

Krieger told himself not to be foolish. He was a power now. He possessed the Eye of Khemri. There was nothing those mortals down there could do to harm him. Still, he had not survived as long as he had by throwing caution to the winds. He needed to be careful now, more than ever with his destiny so close to being fulfilled.

There was something naggingly familiar about the voices. They were speaking with the accents of Kislev! These men had strayed far from home. Perhaps they were merely wandering mercenaries or perhaps the whole party were refugees fleeing the advance of the Chaos army. Or perhaps they were connected in some way to his recent stay in Praag. He knew that he had better find out.

As he moved closer, he saw that most of them wore the garb of Kislevite horse-soldiers. They were short, stocky men, bandy-legged from so much riding. One of them seemed very tall. He caught a flash of blond hair as the man strode off to relieve himself.

He sniffed the air, and found a whiff of some familiar scents. Dwarf, he thought. Near one of the fires he caught sight of a squat figure with a towering crest of hair and a massive axe in one hand. It seemed that Gotrek Gurnisson had taken his oath seriously and tracked him here! How had the dwarf managed to track him over hundreds of leagues of winter forest, Krieger wondered. Perhaps the wizard had done it.

Krieger moved around the camp, staying out of the light. He could see that there were some Sylvanians present. Their horses were larger than the rangy steeds of the Kislevites; chargers intended to carry men in full plate. The sign of Waldenhof covered the raiment. These were all ranged around a pavilion and a large coach on runners.

This was a strange mix indeed. What were dwarfs, Kislevite archers, a local lordling and a wizard doing so near to his home all at once? He paused to consider this for a second. Obviously the Slayers had come to fulfil their vow. Perhaps they had hired the wizard, or perhaps it was this Max Schreiber that Ulrika talked of. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. The tall blond man he had spotted would be Felix Jaeger. Maybe the Kislevites were mercenaries or had been sent by the Praag authorities to bring him to justice. The locals could have come along as guides. Doubtless they would aid anyone who set themselves up against him. He could not be completely certain, of course, but all of this seemed to be the likeliest explanation.

The question was – what was he to do against them? Here, on his own, he doubted he could prevail against so many. Particularly not a wizard and warriors so formidably armed as Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger. He could kill many but doubtless they would drag him down. He did not want to risk his life against that axe.

He could summon the wolves and the ghouls and the skeletons and attack their camp. But it would take most of the night to assemble such a force, and perhaps the wizard would sense the summoning. If the fighting was not done by morning, he would be far from shelter and surrounded by enemies when the sun rose, and that was a fate he wished to avoid at all costs.

If they were coming against him, it would be best to fight them on his home ground in a place that he knew, on a field of his choice. At Drakenhof, if the worst came to the worst he could drain some of his human servants of blood and fight in the light. It would be better though to send the wolves to harass and slow them, to use the ghouls to set ambushes and traps so that they would arrive at his home as late as possible. Better yet would be to lure them into the ruins and pick them off one by one.

And back at the mansion he had a potent ally. Ulrika would be doubly useful. She was strong and deadly, and more importantly, because of her relationship with Felix Jaeger, the mortals would be unlikely to attack her until they were absolutely certain she was his ally. Perhaps he could even use her to lure them into a trap.

Yes, he thought, that would be the best plan. He could refine it on his way back. When his pursuers set out tomorrow, they would find several unpleasant surprises in store for them.

‘Something was here during the night,’ said Marek the tracker, a frown creasing his leathery brow. ‘You can see here if you look closely. These are boot prints that the snow has not yet had time to fill.’

‘They are very close to the camp,’ said Felix. ‘Were the sentries asleep?’

‘None of my men slept last night, Felix Jaeger,’ said Ivan Petrovich Straghov wearily. Felix thought he looked dreadfully old. ‘I have ridden with these men from the Marches of Chaos, and I swear to that. They are veterans and they are honourable men.’

‘Nothing disturbed my wards,’ said Max. ‘I would have woken if anything did. Nothing and no one came into or left our camp last night.’

The way Max stressed the possibility of someone leaving the camp, Felix knew they thinking along the same lines. It seemed no one in the camp had set out to warn Krieger.

‘Snorri thinks it does not matter if one man came to spy,’ said Snorri.

‘It matters a lot if it was Krieger,’ said Felix. ‘He is more than a man.’

‘Or less than one,’ said Max.

‘The tracks lead away in the direction we are going,’ said the tracker.

‘I suggest we prepare ourselves for an ambush then,’ said Felix. ‘If it’s Krieger he may have friends in the area.’

‘Perhaps the countess and her men should be sent on their way,’ said Ivan Petrovich Straghov. He was chivalrous in his way, and would not want to see the woman in danger. ‘She might wish to take a different road.’

‘I will suggest that to her,’ said Felix striding off in the direction of the coach.

‘Don’t take too long about your suggestions, manling. We leave immediately,’ said Gotrek.

‘You think it was him then,’ said Felix. As the coach swayed on its runners, he braced himself, not wanting to be thrown any closer to the countess than he already was. He had already put as much distance between the two of them as was possible in the enclosed space.

The vampire adjusted her veil and covered her mouth while she yawned. Felix was not sure whether she was trying to tell him he was boring her or whether she was feeling the effects of the daylight. He told himself that he didn’t care. ‘Who else could it be? Who could have got so close to the camp without being spotted by sentries or setting off your friend the wizard’s defences?’

‘You think he could have penetrated them?’

‘No. I inspected them myself and I doubt the Great Necromancer himself could have pierced that weave without setting it off. Max Schreiber is a very competent mage.’

‘I am sure he will appreciate that ringing vote of confidence.’

‘Tell him what you will. Just be sure he is alert. Drakenhof is a place of power, sacred to the Arisen. Strong wards protect it. The very stones are steeped in bloody magic, and there are potent weaves of illusion and masking on the place that will affect all save the Arisen or those bound by blood to them. Krieger is not going to allow us to walk right up and decapitate him. I think right now he is preparing a very cold reception for us indeed.’

‘That is not reassuring.’

‘This is not a pleasure jaunt, Herr Jaeger. We are heading towards the lair of a very dangerous beast.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

Suddenly from outside came the whinnying of panicked horses and the shouts of warriors, intermingled with blood-curdling howls.

Felix let the door of the coach swing open and jumped out into the snow, wrenching his sword from his scabbard as he landed. Up ahead a melee swirled. From out of the shadows beneath the trees long loping forms emerged to strike at the horses. Enormous red-eyed wolves sprang from cover to hamstring mounts and rip the throats of the riders who fell from the saddle.

Felix raced forward. In front of him a wolf worried at a Kislevite horse-soldier. The man had got his arm between the creature’s jaws but the white-furred beast was massive and strong. It kept the man off-balance and unable to draw his knife while its kin circled closer. Felix kicked the wolf’s head, sending the beast tumbling backwards. It bounded back up immediately and returned to the attack, madness in its eyes. Vile sorcery was at work here, Felix thought, whipping the beasts into a rabid frenzy.

Felix took the hilt of his sword in both hands and swung it in a great arc, slashing across the chest of the pouncing wolf. The impact of the massive body almost knocked Felix over. He recovered his balance and lashed out again, half-severing the wolf’s head. He glanced around to see what had become of the other wolf and saw the soldier wrestling with it, rolling over and over in the snow. He had one hand at its throat while he stabbed it with the dagger held in the other.

Off in the distance, an explosion sounded, swiftly followed by the smell of burning flesh. Max was using his magic, Felix guessed. Ignoring the distraction, Felix took careful aim at the second wolf and stabbed. His blade passed through the animal’s ribs. Blood gouted from its mouth. It gurgled as it died. The warrior pulled himself to his feet and wiped himself down. Felix saw that it was Marek.

‘A handy stroke,’ he said. ‘And thanks for it.’

Felix nodded his acknowledgement and took in the scene of the battle. Dozens of wolves bounded through the snow. Here and there a few lay pierced by arrows. Still more had their skulls crushed by the hooves of horses. Many lupine corpses lay in puddles of red blood, testimony to the deadly skill with which the men of Kislev wielded their sabres. In the distance, smoke billowed and golden light flared. Max Schreiber was still alive and invoking his terrible powers.

Gotrek and Snorri stood atop the supply sled, bellowing war cries and daring the wolves to attack them. Both of their ponies were dead. A small hill of white furred bodies showed that the two Slayers had not been idle. Rodrik and his companions had formed up around Gabriella’s coach, determined to protect her from harm but taking no part in the battle. No wolves had come near them. Felix wondered why.

At least a dozen men and horses were down. And judging by the screams more were going to be. He strode across to the two Slayers, the Kislevite at his heels.

‘This is not natural. Wolves do not attack large bands of armed men unless provoked!’ Felix shouted.

‘Your powers of observation amaze me, manling,’ sneered Gotrek leaping down from the sled. ‘I think we can take it for granted that this is the handiwork of our bloodsucking friend up ahead.’

Snorri plunged into the snow behind Gotrek. ‘Snorri thinks it’s not right, sending these poor wolves to fight for him. He should have come himself.’

‘Be sure to tell him that when we run into him,’ Felix suggested mildly. ‘Right now we’d best go help Ivan Petrovich and his lads.’

Gotrek glanced significantly at the four knights surrounding the coach and making no move to aid the Kislevites. ‘It would seem that some folk here would disagree with you.’

‘We’ll deal with them later. First things first. Let’s kill some wolves.’

‘Fair enough, manling.’

‘Snorri still doesn’t like it. Poor beasts.’

‘You’ve picked a bad time to start having scruples about killing things, Snorri,’ said Felix.

‘Snorri didn’t say he wouldn’t kill them. Snorri just said he doesn’t like it,’ said Snorri Nosebiter racing off towards the fray.

‘How many men have we lost?’ Felix asked.

Ivan Petrovich looked at him wearily. His breath rasped heavily from his chest. He wiped blood and sweat from his balding forehead with the sleeve of his tunic. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. It’s a good job Max was here to do some healing. We’ve three men dead, and five more wounded. Two of those can still fight once their wounds are bandaged. The other three won’t be good for anything for a while.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Felix knew what he wanted to suggest, but Ivan was the leader of the horsemen, and this was his decision. Ivan sucked in his cheeks and considered for a moment. ‘Under normal circumstances I would leave the two who can still fight to guard the ones who can’t, along with the sledges we don’t have ponies for, but right now I am loath to do it. The wolves might come back, or other things might come for them, and I would not wish that on my worst enemy, let alone these lads.’

It was as Felix had feared. The whole purpose of the attack had been to slow them down, and the wounded were going to do that. It was suspicious how the wolves had fled once about half of them had been cut down. They had attacked as if they were starving but had left without taking any food. It was not natural. Felix looked over at Max. The magician was sweating a little and his chest still rose and fell like a bellows.

‘How are you feeling, Max?’

‘I’ve felt worse.’

‘Can you still cast a spell?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suspect this attack was meant to wear us down.’

‘I wish I could disagree, Felix, but I can’t.’

‘We should expect more attacks before we get to Drakenhof.’

‘That will slow us down too. We’ll need to move cautiously.’

‘Let’s hope we can still get there before dark,’ said Felix. Somehow he doubted they would.

The shadows lengthened; the wind grew colder. Felix drew his cloak tighter around him and trudged on through the snow. His nose still ran. He felt a little feverish. Behind him, he could hear the grunts of Snorri Nosebiter and Gotrek as they dragged the sled along. He was still amazed by this display of strength. The two dwarfs had drawn the heavy sledge along for most of the day without showing any signs of weariness. Except for the odd grumble and curse they even seemed to be enjoying themselves. Felix thought: I will never understand dwarfs; the worse things look, the happier they seem.

‘If I had known you two were so good at this, I would have had you pull the sledge sooner. The ponies could have ridden with me.’

‘Snorri thinks we could have eaten them,’ grumbled Snorri.

‘In the mines dwarfs carry their own burdens and pull their own ore trucks,’ said Gotrek. He sounded almost nostalgic.

‘Snorri once pulled a truck up and down the Black Pit shaft for three days without stopping. Fought off a tribe of gobbos at the end too. Bastards tried to steal Snorri’s truck.’

‘And you couldn’t have that, could you?’ said Felix ironically. He glanced over his shoulder. A small lantern glowed on the countess’s coach and Felix could see Quentin and two of his companions riding alongside it. Doubtless Rodrik was inside, providing the vampire with some nourishment. Well, tonight they would most likely have need of her strength – unless she betrayed them.

The young Sylvanians looked pretty sullen, as well they might after the haranguing Gotrek and Snorri had given them earlier about not joining the fight. It had been all the countess had been able to do to restrain them from attacking the two dwarfs. Of course, Gotrek had let them have a few well-chosen words about being brave now that the big bad wolves had gone. That hadn’t helped things either. Still, he could understand the dwarfs’ anger and the smouldering resentment the Kislevites held towards the knights. It was not good to have companions who did not pull their weight in a fight. Even though Felix knew the reason why this had happened, he resented it himself.

Now, of course, the knights were desperate to prove their manhood and work off this slur against their honour. They glared belligerently at anyone looking at them. Felix saw Quentin notice his own glance and he was rewarded with an angry glare. Felix shook his head. Idiot, he thought. At least Ivan Petrovich had stopped trying to send the countess on her way. He could not do that when there were wolves about and maybe worse things waiting in ambush.

Ahead, the wounded lay on the second sledge where Max could tend them. Ivan Petrovich rode alongside sharing a comforting word or two with his injured soldiers. All things considered the old march boyar was holding up pretty well, Felix thought, considering his age and all his worries. Felix felt bad about not letting him in on the countess’s secret. On the other hand, given the fact that his daughter was in the hands of the countess’s own ‘son’, who knew how Ivan would respond? Felix had decided it was better not to take the risk.

He wondered what would happen when they found Ulrika. He supposed it depended on how she was. If she were a prisoner, they would free her, but if she had been changed into one of the undying, what then?

Felix still wasn’t sure of how he felt about the woman. Once he had thought they had been in love, but after the initial infatuation had passed, it had been a troubled and difficult relationship. She had not been the easiest person in the world to get on with, although, he supposed, neither had he. Still, there was something there, some emotional bond between them, at least on his side. He did not know if he could bring himself to try and kill her. No, that was not true. He was certain he could not, nor could he stand by and let Gotrek do so either. He felt pretty sure that Max felt the same way.

But would she feel the same way about them? That was the real question. He had talked with the countess about this, and she had done her best to allay what she called his superstitious fears. He had grown up believing that vampires were possessed by monstrous, malefic spirits that would turn them against their own flesh and blood in an effort to slake their terrible thirst.

The countess had told him this was not so. Vampires were driven to drink blood but they maintained all of their old memories and loyalties and affections. The problem was that for a newly risen vampire the thirst was near uncontrollable and they would attack whoever they could find when in its grip. All too often that proved to be their kin, unless another older, wiser vampire was there to guide them. Felix was not at all sure that the countess’s explanation reassured him. In its way, this sounded as bad as the daemonic possession theory.

More to the point, she had told him that if she were one of the Arisen now, Ulrika would almost certainly be under Krieger’s sway. The countess claimed that no newly risen vampire could hold out against the power of the Eye of Khemri. She had urged him to do his level best to restrain or slay Ulrika. A strange note had entered the countess’s voice when she talked about her. She sounded almost jealous. Did she see Ulrika as a potential rival for Krieger’s affections? If so, what did that say about her true motives?

In the gathering gloom, surrounded by this sinister forest, it was all too easy to believe that this was all some complex scheme to lure them into a trap. Would the countess really side with mortals against her own kind? It did not seem likely. Felix could not imagine ever siding with the Arisen against his own folk.

He shook his head, and gave a bitter laugh. What a hypocrite you are, Felix Jaeger, he thought. Only a few minutes ago you were considering that very thing, when you were trying to decide whether you would let Gotrek slay Ulrika. It seemed that these situations could indeed be complex. If you could judge the motives of a vampire by the motives of a human.

Somewhere off in the night, a wolf howled.

‘Furry bastards,’ muttered Gotrek.

When they breasted the last hill and Drakenhof came into sight Felix was surprised. It seemed impossible that they had not noticed so massive a structure before now. Even though logic told him that the trees and the roll of the hills had concealed it until that moment, there was something sorcerous about its sudden appearance. Felix had been expecting something small, like one of the fortified manors of the Kislevite nobility. What he saw now was built on an entirely different scale. It appeared as if a huge hill had been carved into a castle. The building had once surely been as large as the citadel of Praag, and its architecture was just as twisted, albeit in a different way.

The stonework was not as intricate. Even in the fading light of the blood red sun, he could see that. The dominant motif was one of skulls and bones. The casements of the windows had been carved to resemble skulls. The monstrous main gateway was encased in the gaping maw of another gigantic fleshless head. Gargoyles clutched the side of the building, bat-winged, skeletal. Felix half expected them to come to life and flap down to attack. Snow had settled like a crust on the stonework, adding to the haunted look of the place.

It was obvious that the castle had lain in ruins for centuries, and that it had fallen to siege. There were huge holes in the walls where war engines had battered through them. Many of the statues had been defaced and someone had obviously taken a hammer to the stonework in an effort to deface the symbols. If anything this added to the atmosphere of faded grandeur surrounding the place, and contributed to the sense of sinister evil hovering over it.

Coming on such a massive structure so deep in the forest was something of a shock. He had become used to thinking of Sylvania as an impoverished land, a place where everything was smaller and meaner than in the rest of his homeland. He had not expected this. He pointed this out to Max.

‘It just shows what can be done with undead labour,’ said the wizard.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Doubtless this place was raised using necromancy, by what laymen call zombies and animated skeletons. They require no food, no sleep and no wages. All the builder needed do was provide the raw materials and they would work until it was done. If we searched around here we would find quarries from where the stone came from. Probably the wood was local too but in two centuries it would all have grown back.’

Felix gaped at the wizard. ‘What about those carvings? I doubt mindless automatons could have made them.’

‘The Vampire Counts enslaved the whole population of Sylvania, Felix. They bound them with fear, superstition and sorcery. Doubtless they had craftsmen in their service who would do this work in return for their lives and the lives of their families.’

‘You are correct, Max Schreiber,’ said the countess. Felix was startled. In the gathering gloom the undead noblewoman had approached so quietly he had not noticed. Max did not seem surprised though. Either the wizard had some means of detecting her approach or he was better at concealing his feelings than Felix was. Probably both.

‘I can remember this place when it was the capital of all Sylvania, when the aristocracy of the night sipped blood from crystal goblets, by the light of glittering chandeliers. When the most beautiful youths and maidens garbed all in white waited to be tapped, and all the while hoped to be selected to join us.’

‘There’s no need to sound so nostalgic,’ said Max.

‘It was a beautiful and terrible time,’ said Gabriella, and her voice had a sad haunted quality. ‘Not since the fall of Lahmia had the Arisen ruled mortals so openly or indulged themselves so unstintingly. It is well remembered in the chronicles of the undying. Few who were there would ever forget it. Some have never stopped wanting to recreate it.’

‘Of course, you are not one of them.’

‘I am ambivalent, Max Schreiber. I would have thought that you of all people would have some sympathy. Wizards too have been outcasts, shunned by those who feared them and resented their power. Can you not imagine what it means, not having to hide what you are, but being able to glory in it?’

‘Wizards have never tried to set up their own kingdom, and never tried to oppress those who did not possess their powers.’

Gabriella’s laughter was tinkling, silver and utterly flaying. ‘You are being wilfully naïve, Herr Schreiber. History is littered with examples of wizards who have sought to carve themselves dominions. What was Nagash if not a wizard, and he conquered the greatest empire of antiquity. My people have cause to remember it. Many other mages have succeeded in carving out their own lands, if only temporarily. Believe me, I am old enough to remember some of them.’

‘Perhaps, but as a race or a class or a breed we have never sought to set ourselves up over others.’

‘Not yet, perhaps, but I think it’s only a matter of time before someone thinks to try it. Mortals experiment restlessly with their forms of government. Sooner or later someone is bound to think: why not a land where those who wield magic rule? Are they not usually wiser, and more learned than their fellow man as well as more powerful?’

‘I would oppose such wizards,’ said Max. Felix could feel the tension in the air. The wizard and the vampire resented each other, perhaps because in some ways they were so alike.

‘Perhaps we could save this discussion until tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There will be time enough then for such a debate. Right now we are wasting time, and the lair of our common enemy lies before us.’

Both of them looked at him for a moment, and seemed on the verge of a snappish rejoinder. He met their gazes as calmly as he could, and slowly the tension dissipated.

‘Your words make sense, Herr Jaeger,’ said the countess.

Max nodded agreement. Felix saw that the rest of their party was already disappearing among the trees down slope.

‘Then let us join the others before they get too far ahead of us, and we have to work our way through this accursed forest on our own.’

As they came closer to the mighty keep, Felix felt more and more as if he were walking in the shadow of some terrible giant which might at any moment spring to life and crush him.

The sheer scale of the ruin was oppressive. It made even the ancient trees around them seem no more than weeds. Its sense of antiquity made him feel like a mayfly. What sort of person would choose to dwell here, he wondered? Or was it simply the power of the warding spells the countess had warned about that he was feeling?

Wearily the warriors trudged towards the building’s gaping entrance. Their earlier courage seemed to have evaporated. No one spoke. The only sounds to break the silence were the occasional groans of the wounded as the sled hit a rut in the earth.

The cold wind tugged at Felix’s cloak. Flakes of snow struck his face. Under other circumstances he might have looked forward to getting inside out of the wind and the chill. Now he found his feet dragging, as if reluctant to carry him any closer to their destination.

As the darkness deepened, he heard a shout from up ahead. He glanced up and saw what the commotion was about. An eerie green witch light had appeared in one of the highest towers. It flickered for a moment and then receded. It seemed that the place was occupied although what sort of creature used one of those devilish lights did not bear thinking about.

‘Looks like we’re expected,’ Felix said. Gotrek glanced at him.

‘There’s a surprise, manling.’

‘What do you think of this place?’

‘The stonework is crude even by human standards.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I think we shall see what we shall see once we are inside. There’s no sense in speculating until then.’

Felix shook his head, astonished by how calm the dwarf could remain in the face of horror and danger. No, that was not true. He knew the Slayer well enough to recognise the underlying note of anticipation in his voice. A frenzied light had appeared in the dwarf’s one good eye. His expression might be as bleak and uncaring as usual, but Felix knew Gotrek was as tense as himself.

As well he might be, Felix thought.

‘This place is wrapped round with spells,’ said Max. He stood for a moment, leaning on his staff and appeared to reconsider his words. ‘No. That is not quite correct. The walls hold all the usual defensive wards you would expect in a castle of this size, but they seemed twisted somehow.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Felix.

‘I am not sure I can explain it to one who is not a magician.’

‘Try!’ said Gotrek.

The magician started walking again, easily keeping pace with the two of them. Felix thought he detected a small flow of heat from around him. Was he using magic to keep himself warm, Felix wondered? That would certainly explain a lot of things.

‘There is something else at work here. The whole keep is saturated with dark magic. Tainted in some way, as if some of the stonework contained warpstone or somewhere deep below is a mother lode of the stuff. Whatever it is I think its influence has modified the defensive spells, mutated them, if you will.’

‘And?’ Felix probed.

‘And I don’t know what the overall effect will be. I suspect it might be nasty, and I also suspect that it will interfere with the casting of spells within the keep.’

‘Wonderful,’ said Felix sardonically. ‘You are saying that your magic will be useless.’

‘Not necessarily. Just that their effects might be dampened or unpredictable.’

‘You think it’s the effect of the talisman?’

‘No. The very stones here are steeped in evil magic. It would take centuries for that to happen. I think this place is a locus of dark power. I have no idea why.’

‘Any more vague warnings you would like to give us?’ sneered Gotrek. ‘Maybe I should consult Snorri Nosebiter and see what he thinks. It would probably be clearer.’

‘We are all a little tense here, Gotrek,’ said Max with what Felix considered to be a masterful use of understatement. ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’

Gotrek grunted and then spat on the ground. Ahead of them the entrance to the keep loomed massively. Felix could see that once there had been a portcullis but the blades had rusted into position. The metal struts that had once reinforced the door lay in pieces on the ground. It looked deserted, but appearances could prove deceptive. Ahead of them, the Kislevites paused to light torches and pour oil into their few lanterns. The horses whickered nervously. Max gestured and a ball of golden light came into being just above his outstretched fingers. Another gesture sent it orbiting outwards.

Felix wished he knew the trick for doing that. He could imagine that once he was within the keep the ability to conjure light would prove very useful.

‘This is the great hall,’ said the Countess Gabriella. She had the trick of speaking in a quiet-sounding, calm voice that somehow managed to carry to the furthest of the group.

‘You don’t say,’ said Gotrek.

‘Snorri would never have guessed that,’ said Snorri and then chortled at his words.

It was huge. The vaulted ceiling was almost lost to sight above them. Massive galleries ran round the chamber. The posts of the banisters were carved to resemble naked skeletal humans. The floor underfoot was covered in a vandalised mosaic that Felix guessed had once shown the heraldic symbol of the keep’s owner.

The air smelled of rot and chill. A massive staircase at the far end of the hall rose up to the galleries. Max’s gesture sent his sphere of light arcing towards the ceiling. It stopped at the remains of a massive crystal chandelier, and its beams were reflected eerily about the chamber.

Gotrek wandered around the edges of the vast room. Felix followed him. He had long ago learned that his best chance of survival lay in sticking close to the dwarf and his massive axe. There were many doorways leading off into smaller passages and chambers. Here and there were vandalised pictures. Huge patches of black mould covered parts of the walls. Massive cockroaches scuttled away from the light.

‘This is an evil place,’ said Felix.

To his surprise, the dwarf laughed. It was a sound as cold as ice floes cracking together.

‘It seems our wizard is not the only one with a gift for stating the obvious.’

They strode back towards the assembled troops. All the warriors and their mounts were present, and the sledges had been dragged through the huge gate of the keep. The countess and her knightly companions seemed to be debating something with Max and Ivan Petrovich. As they closed Felix could hear what was being said.

‘I say we set up camp here for the evening, set the fires burning brightly and ready ourselves for an attack,’ said Ivan Petrovich. ‘I do not doubt one will come.’

‘This is not a very defensible position if an enemy comes at us in any numbers,’ said Max. ‘It’s too open, with too many entrances. We should find a smaller chamber.’

‘And be trapped in it like rabbits in a burrow when a weasel comes?’ asked Ivan Petrovich. The use of such an analogy told Felix how nervous the Kislevite was beneath his bluff exterior.

‘You forget who and what had this place built,’ said the countess. ‘The whole mansion is riddled with secret passages. At least if we camp here we will see our opponents coming at us.’

‘And we will have a clear field on which to fight,’ said Rodrik. ‘I will not cower from the foe.’

‘Not like when we fought the wolves, eh?’ bellowed Gotrek. If looks could kill, the knight’s glance would have struck him down on the spot. He glanced contemptuously at the countess. ‘Secret passages, eh? I am a dwarf and the secret passage has not been built that a dwarf could not find.’

‘Are you suggesting we should hide like frightened children?’ said Quentin. His high-pitched voice sounded even closer to breaking than usual.

Gotrek looked at him nastily. ‘That is certainly what you remind me of.’

Ever the diplomat, thought Felix. A room full of armed people, scared and ready to come to blows, and what do you do? Try to set a spark to that dry tinder. ‘No one is suggesting that we hide,’ said Felix quickly before the situation could deteriorate further. ‘We are discussing the best plan to proceed and destroy the monster that dwells here. That is all.’

Much to his surprise the others nodded as if he had just said something sensible; even Gotrek managed to hold his tongue. He decided to press his advantage. ‘We need a place to keep the wounded safe, and our supplies guarded. We will need them when we leave, unless any of you have discovered a way to eat snow.’

He glanced around. ‘This darkness is probably not the best time to go searching through the adjoining chambers looking for a refuge. Who knows what we will find, and we don’t want to split our forces.’

He saw they were getting restive once more. They did not want a balanced assessment of their situation. Most of them were scared and wanted decisive leadership. Just this once he would give them it. ‘We build fires here, split into watches and wait for the night to pass. On the morrow, when there is more light, we will seek our foe.’

They nodded agreement. Men had already begun to move off to build fires in the centre of the chamber. Some of them tethered the horses to the runners of the coach and the sledges. Men nocked their bows and put lanterns up where they could provide the most light. Max set more balls of light spiralling towards the ceiling. They wavered and flickered eerily but at least they continued to provide some illumination.

From somewhere in the distance came the high-pitched shrieking gibber of a ghoul. With all the echoes it was impossible to tell from where the call had come. From the opposite direction came a response.

Felix was suddenly glad that they were not going to check the adjoining rooms. He could tell the others were too.

From the balcony above the grand hall Adolphus Krieger looked down on the assembled mortals. His magesight saw the glittering web of magical wards the wizard wove. They flickered as the keep’s own wards interfered with them but somehow maintained their integrity.

The vast setting made them look like ants but appearances were deceptive. He was not going to underestimate his foes. That was the cardinal mistake so many of his kind had made when dealing with mortals. He considered using overwhelming force, assembling all the walking corpses and animated skeletons and throwing them against the intruders in one mighty hammer blow, and dismissed the idea. There would be time enough for that later. This was his home ground. The ghouls and his mortal followers knew their way around it better than those men down below and the old wards would not interfere with their movements. First of all, he would pick off a few of the interlopers, one at a time, and then when the force was weakened and morale low, he would destroy them.

He watched them, feeling quite pleased with himself until he caught sight of a familiar figure moving through the assembled mortals. The countess! What was she doing here? He had not expected to see her so soon. It was strange how she still affected him after all these years. He still felt like a schoolboy about to be confronted by a domineering mother. He told himself not to be ridiculous, he had the Eye of Nagash, and there was nothing she could do to him now. It was all very well telling himself this but it did not lessen the shock or the strange echo of old emotions washing through his brain.

Doubtless she was scheming with his enemies, but why? How would accompanying these foolish mortals advance her schemes? He shrugged. It was fairly easy to understand. She obviously hoped that they would kill him, and allow her to take the Eye of Khemri. As ever, she preferred to use others as her cat’s-paws. The wonder of it was that she had come all this way and exposed her precious self to danger. He smiled revealing his teeth as anger flowed through him.

He stalked along the balcony fingering the precious talisman. Then again, she had never been a coward, and he supposed she was desperate. It was unlikely those particular mortals down there could simply be tricked into taking the Eye back to her. And now that the summoning had begun others of the Arisen would soon be here. She could hardly take the risk of them getting it. It seemed her motives were simple and comprehensible after all.

He wondered if her mortal dupes knew what they were letting themselves in for. They were caught between him and the countess and there was no way they could survive the experience. In a way, he would be doing them a favour by killing her before she could work her will on them.

Of course, they would serve him too, in their own way, as soldiers in his resurrected legions.

‘I feel as if there is something watching us,’ said Felix. He glanced upwards, his flesh crawling, knowing somehow that there was something on the balcony above, looking at them with the same glance a hawk gives a field mouse.

‘That would be a fair bet, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘Perhaps we should go up and take a look.’

Are you mad? Felix wanted to ask, but didn’t. He already knew the answer. The Slayer was not sane as most men measured sanity. So instead, he said, ‘I don’t think that is a good idea.’

However, the Slayer was already stomping off towards the huge staircase. Felix considered letting him go alone for an instant but then followed. In part because he had sworn an oath to follow the Slayer and record his doom, and in part because he suspected that in this place it was safest to stay close to the Slayer and his axe. Then, realising he had no light, he rushed back into the mass of men and grabbed a lantern.

‘Oi! Where are you going?’ Snorri Nosebiter shouted. Felix could see the others around the fire were looking at them.

‘Just going to scout about for a bit,’ Felix responded.

‘Not without Snorri you’re not. If there’s fighting to be done, Snorri wants to be part of it.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Felix, as the second Slayer rushed over to join them. Seeing the uneasy looks of the men around the fire, Felix was not surprised when there were no other volunteers.

Krieger looked down in disbelief. The two dwarfs and the human were actually coming looking for him. Either they were mad, or they were supremely overconfident. In either case, he did not really care. This was a hell-sent opportunity. His foes had split their forces and thus reduced their effectiveness. He intended to take full advantage of it. For the moment, all he had to do was wait.

‘This place could use a little cleaning,’ said Felix, as they stalked upstairs. Cobwebs hung between the spokes of the banister. Very big spiders scuttled away from the light. The stairs creaked eerily beneath his boots. Not for the first time he wished he could see in the dark like the dwarfs. This lantern made him an easy mark for anything in the dark. None of the creatures they had encountered so far seemed to have any difficulty functioning without light.

‘Complain to the servants, manling,’ said Gotrek, pausing at the top of the stairs to inspect their surroundings for a moment.

‘I suppose good help is hard to find these days,’ said Felix, glancing over the dwarf’s shoulder. ‘My father always used to say that.’

The stairs ended in a gallery running left and right around the edges of the great hall. There were more doors leading off into more chambers. Here and there large paintings covered the walls. About halfway down the hall on either side, more stairs led off upwards. It was very quiet. Felix could hear the voices of the men below, and the soft, scared whinnying of the horses. Felix ran his fingers over the edge of the banister. They came away caked with a thick layer of dust. There was no sign of any enemy but still Felix’s flesh crawled. He looked up at the ceiling, half expecting to see a massive spider about to drop on his head. Instead he saw nothing except the painted and blotched plasterwork of the ceiling, which was also the floor of the gallery above.

Felix stepped forward onto the gallery. The floor flexed beneath his foot. He wondered how safe this place was. After all, it had not been maintained in two centuries. He proceeded forward cautiously, half expecting the floor beneath him to give way at any moment.

He moved over to the nearest painting, holding his lantern up close so that he could inspect it. Within an elaborate gilded frame was a portrait of a tall, pale woman, classically beautiful, black hair piled high in an ornate coiffure. She stood by a window. A huge crescent moon dominated the night sky behind her. In one hand she held a crystal glass of what Felix hoped was red wine. The other rested on the head of a kneeling man. There was something disturbingly bestial in the features of the man.

The painter had contrived to convey the impression that the woman was stroking him, as a noble lady of the Empire might a pet leopard. A broken silver chain dangling from the man’s neck added to the impression.

‘Snorri thinks she was a bad one,’ said Snorri Nosebiter, from just behind Felix. He had to agree. There was something about the woman’s features that suggested great power and a refined cruelty. Perhaps it was the faint flaring of the nostrils and the slight twist to those pouting red lips.

‘One of the vampire countesses, no doubt,’ said Felix. ‘They all gathered here once or so I am told.’

They stalked on across the crumbling gallery to the next portrait. This time it was of a tall, pale-skinned man, bearded and aristocratic looking. His clothes were rich and dark. He too held a goblet of red wine in one hand. A massive golden hunting horn dangled from his neck. His booted foot rested on the chest of a dead man like a hunter standing triumphant over a stag. Once again it was night. This man smiled confidently, revealing two long prominent fangs. He radiated power and confidence, certain of his authority and right to dominate others. Like the first, this painting was executed with a skill amounting to genius. It almost seemed like the subject was about to step out of the painting. Felix shivered. That was a concept that did not bear thinking about.

They passed more pictures, alternating male and female, and all as beautifully executed and as disturbing as the first two. All were nightscapes. One showed a woman modelled as a goddess with a crown of laurel leaves on her head and a bow in the other. There was a powerfully built man stripped to the waist who looked strong as a bull. His head was shaved and he possessed an enormous walrus moustache. He toasted the viewer with a glass of red liquid while an adoring child clutched at his leg. The child’s eyes glowed a sinister red.

Felix paused in front of the fifth picture, for he thought he recognised the features of the countess. Certainly the proportions were correct, and the face looked like the one hinted at through her veil. It was not possible to be certain, of course, but he knew that it was possible that she had posed for the artist all those long centuries ago.

He hurried past this painting. Neither Gotrek nor Snorri Nosebiter had spent as much time in the company of the countess as he had, so he doubted that either of them would recognise her. He did not want to take the chance of Snorri doing so now. He might just go charging back into the camp and give the game away although that might not be such a bad thing. He glanced over his shoulder. Gotrek and Snorri were checking doors, inspecting the rooms beyond. He decided to take a look at the next painting and then wait for them.

He recognised the man in it immediately. It was beyond a shadow of a doubt Adolphus Krieger, dressed in heavy black robes, a book tucked under his left arm, a glass of the red liquor held in his right. Two adoring women crouched beside him, naked save for diaphanous robes, looks that could only be described as worshipful engraved on their faces.

Felix paused to consider the picture. Krieger looked every inch the aristocrat: arrogant, swaggering, unafraid. A secretive smile played on his lips.

‘It’s a very good likeness, isn’t it?’ said a voice from nearby. Felix whirled, tearing his blade from the scabbard. He looked in the direction the words had come from. It was almost as if his earlier fantasy about the pictures coming to life had happened. Krieger stood there looking unchanged from the picture.

‘Belardo was a genius in his way. He was one of the greatest of the Tilean painters, I always thought. Of course, the common folk never forgave him for taking our commissions. I heard that after Hel Fenn he was burned atop a pile of his works in the public square in Talabheim. Someone betrayed him as he tried to pass through the city in secret.’

Without taking his eyes from the vampire, Felix set the lamp on the floor.

Krieger looked as relaxed as he had in the picture, but instinct warned Felix that charging him would be most unwise. Instead he began to inch forward, blade held ready, nerves keyed. He doubted he had ever been more wound up in his entire life. Without taking his eyes off the vampire, he shouted, ‘Gotrek! Snorri! Look what crawled out of the woodwork.’

‘Now, now, Herr Jaeger, that’s not very polite. I come here to make pleasant conversation with you, and you start tossing insults.’

‘I’d rather toss you over the balcony. What have you done with Ulrika?’ The vampire smiled, showing all his fangs. The sound of pounding feet told him that the Slayers were rushing to join him.

‘I have not done her any harm, I promise you. I am sure she will be delighted to see you.’

Felix edged ever closer. He was all too aware of the long drop into the great hall below. He did not doubt that the vampire was swift enough and strong enough to toss him over the balcony without difficulty given the slightest opportunity. He did not intend to let that happen if he could help it.

‘Where is she?’

‘If you want her, you’ll have to find her yourself. She’s somewhere in the castle.’

Felix was almost within striking distance now. He tested the floor beneath him pressing gently with his foot before putting all his weight on it, fearing a trap. He did not like the vampire’s look of confidence. He had not even drawn his weapon yet. The Eye of Khemri glittered hypnotically at his throat.

‘Now you die, bloodsucker!’ bellowed Gotrek.

Krieger’s smile widened. He raised his arms wide. Mist bubbled around his feet and enshrouded his form. As it did so, he began to fade, almost as if his body was dissolving into the swirling fog. A faint hint of decay hit Felix’s nostrils. He leapt forward and slashed with his sword at where he thought he saw the vampire’s outline.

His blade encountered no resistance. Instead there was a sickening lurch as his foot passed through the rotting floorboards. The whole world wheeled around him. He dropped his blade, desperately trying to catch hold of something to prevent himself falling all the way to the hard floor of the great hall so far below.

‘Gotrek! Snorri! Stop! It’s a trap!’ he shouted. Evil, distant laughter rang in his ears. The floor gave way beneath him and he began to fall. Felix grabbed the edge of the hole with his hands. Splintered wood bit into his palm. Pain surged along his nerve endings. He fought the urge to let go, knowing that if he did so, he would most certainly fall to his doom. The old rotten boards began to come apart. Frantically he flailed about with his right hand, trying to get a better grip. The shift of weight swung his body around, and he felt his fingers losing their grip. A long way below his boots, death beckoned.

Groaning he tried to find something to grip on and failed. His last tenuous handhold gave way. His stomach lurched as gravity gripped him and pulled down towards certain death.

ELEVEN

Strong fingers gripped Felix’s wrist. It felt like his arm was being pulled out of its socket by the wrenching shock. Looking up, he saw the Slayer’s tattooed arm. Gotrek was taking all of his weight one-handed. Snorri stood wide-legged, his hand gripping the Slayer’s belt, anchoring Gotrek in case the rotted boards beneath him gave way. A moment later he was pulled back out of the hole.

Felix’s breath came in gasps. He wiped sweat from his brow and tried to calm his racing heart. Neither of the dwarfs showed any sign of strain. Snorri walked calmly over to where Felix’s sword lay, picked it up and returned it to him. ‘Snorri thinks now is not a good time to be throwing your weapons away, young Felix,’ he said.

‘I am inclined to agree with you,’ said Felix, limping over to where the lantern stood. As his fingers closed on its handle, he winced. Splinters of wood from the broken floor were driven deeply into his flesh. He inspected his hand for a moment, and used his dagger point to pick them out.

‘What was that all about, manling?’ rumbled Gotrek.

Felix looked up at the dwarf. ‘He has Ulrika. She is here somewhere. Or so he says.’

‘Perhaps he just wants us to go running off looking for her.’

Felix nodded. It seemed very likely, considering what had just happened. This was the vampire’s home territory, after all. He knew it well. He could lead them around by the nose until they fell into more traps. Still, he did not see what other options they had.

Even as he thought this, he saw that Krieger had reappeared much further down the balcony. He waved mockingly as if challenging them to come and get him. Snorri Nosebiter raced forward, with Gotrek in hot pursuit.

‘Wait,’ shouted Felix. ‘What if he’s leading us into a trap?’

‘We wouldn’t want to disappoint him then, manling. Would we?’

‘I suppose not,’ muttered Felix, following swiftly on the heels of the dwarfs.

Max Schreiber glanced up at the ceiling. For a moment, he had seen Felix’s feet dangling through a gap in the floor, and then the man had vanished back through the hole.

‘What’s going on up there?’ Ivan Petrovich asked.

‘Exactly what I was wondering, my friend,’ Max replied.

‘We should go up there and help them.’

‘I did not hear any cries for aid,’ said Max. ‘And I can’t think of three people better able to look after themselves.’

‘I suppose you are right.’

‘Don’t worry. They’ll be back soon.’

One of the archers came over. ‘I thought I saw another man up there in the gallery with them.’

Max knew the man had been standing at a better angle than he had been to see. ‘Describe him.’

‘I could not see all that well in the gloom. But he was tall with black hair and pale skin. Sounds like the one we are after.’

The horse-soldier sounded scared, and Max did not blame him.

‘Maybe we should go up there,’ said Ivan. Max shook his head. Instead he concentrated his mind and began an incantation. A wave of dizziness swept over him as he fought to overcome the strange resistance in the place, then he looked out from the sphere of light hovering over his shoulder. There was a moment of disorientation until his brain adjusted to the fact that the man beneath him was in fact himself. He willed the sphere to rise and watched the camp dwindle beneath him, then sent it arcing up to the hole in the gallery floor. There was a faint queasy feeling in his stomach. He had never liked using this spell. When he moved his point of view up to great heights it made him nauseous with vertigo.

He looked through the hole and saw nothing. Swiftly he sent the light darting around the gallery, knowing he would have to act quickly. Turning the sphere into an eye entailed setting up a complex weave of forces that was difficult to maintain here. It would swiftly unravel even with the utmost concentration. Under his breath he cursed the dark magical wards on this place.

His eye swept through the gallery of portraits. He saw no one, no signs of a struggle, no bodies, no blood. His comrades had simply disappeared. The most logical explanation was they had left the gallery through one of the many doorways. But where and why? There were too many exits for him to explore before his spell faltered. All he was doing was wasting power. He opened his own eyes and let the spell unwind. Overhead the golden eye disintegrated in a shower of sparks.

‘They are gone,’ he said to Ivan Petrovich.

‘Dead?’ The old boyar sounded dismayed.

Max shook his head. ‘Just vanished beyond the range of my mage sight. There’s no need to assume the worst.’

‘In this place?’

Max shrugged. ‘They can look after themselves.’

He wished he felt as confident as he sounded, and cursed the Slayers for going wandering off on such a wild goose chase.

‘I will take some of the men and go look for them.’

‘That would not be wise, Ivan Petrovich. Our forces are already far more dispersed than seems sensible. Why chance losing more?’

He suspected that in this place, at this time, it was going to take all of their combined resources to survive. He noticed that the countess and her henchmen were looking at him appraisingly. Max sincerely hoped that they had not brought an enemy within. Judging by those looks he would not have bet gold on it.

There was one good thing about dwarfs, Felix reflected, as he jogged down the corridor. They were easy to keep up with. Because of their short strides any chase involving them was naturally a very slow one. The vampire could have left them behind any time he wanted to, which meant that he had his own reasons for luring them deeper and deeper into this ancient stronghold.

He had completely lost track of time and distance since they had left the great hall. He had no idea where they were or how they were going to get back. This whole place was a maze. The pursuit swept them through an endless succession of rooms of decaying grandeur, rotting fittings, and crumbling beauty. He remembered fleeting glimpses of peeling wallpaper and walls blotched black with mould, of painted ceilings where god-like vampires depicted in fading paints glared down from scenes of hellish cruelty. The stink of mould, decomposing leather and stagnant water filled his nostrils.

Ten more minutes of running through the decaying chambers convinced him of something else. One of the bad things about dwarfs was that by human standards they were near tireless. Felix’s long bout of illness had not left him in the best physical condition. Sweat ran down his brow, and his breathing was laboured. He felt winded and he had a stitch in his side. Far off in the distance, the mocking figure of Krieger loomed. Felix decided that for the moment he could go no further.

‘Wait!’ he gasped, bending double, bracing his hands on his thighs. ‘Wait! This is getting us nowhere except lost.’

The Slayers reluctantly halted and turned to look at him. ‘Dwarfs don’t get lost,’ said Gotrek.

‘That’s not exactly correct,’ said Felix. ‘I can remember a few occasions. When we were coming back from the land of the Border Princes for example–’

‘Let me rephrase that, manling. Dwarfs don’t get lost underground, in mines or deep delvings.’

‘I may be being a little obtuse here but we’re not in a mine.’

‘We’re in a building. The principle is the same. I can remember all the twists and turns of every passage we took. So can Snorri.’

‘That’s right,’ said Snorri. ‘Snorri could find his way back to the entrance with his eyes closed.’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ said Felix. He glanced along the corridor. Krieger was nowhere in sight. ‘It seems that our bloodsucking friend is sulking now that we’re not playing his little game.’

‘Maybe not, manling.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I think he’s brought along some playmates.’

Felix looked at the Slayer. He had no idea what Gotrek meant.

‘Listen!’ said the Slayer. ‘Can’t you hear them?’

Felix shook his head. All he could hear was the sound of his own rasping breath, and his heartbeat drumming in his chest. Gotrek and Snorri grinned at each other in anticipation. This was a bad sign. Felix’s heart sank.

A few moments later he heard what they were talking about: a distant stealthy padding of many feet, strange high-pitched chittering voices that yet had something horribly human about them.

‘Ghouls,’ he said mournfully, and whipped his sword through the air in practice passes to loosen his muscles for the struggle.

‘Lots of them,’ said Snorri happily.

‘Coming from behind us as well,’ added Gotrek almost gleefully.

‘A trap,’ said Felix.

‘We’ll see who for,’ said Gotrek, smiling nastily. He dragged his thumb along the edge of his blade. A bright drop of blood appeared. Feeling hopeless, Felix glanced left and right. In both directions he saw faint pinpoints of reddish light, the reflections of his lantern in the eyes of monsters.

Krieger smiled happily. Things were going very well. The foolish dwarfs had been lured away from their compatriots with remarkable ease. Now his army of ghouls would overwhelm them. This might actually be a good time to change his initial plans and take the Kislevites in the great hall. He sped along the corridor, fingers stroking the Eye of Khemri lovingly, sending his silent call speeding through the darkness. Everywhere in the massive building his undead minions responded.

Max opened his eyes when he felt the vampire touch the web of warding spells woven around him. He came awake instantly, glad to leave the nightmares behind, and looked at the countess.

‘I would not come any closer if I were you,’ he said cautiously. The thought of this creature approaching while he slept was a disturbing one. ‘You will trigger some particularly nasty wards.’

The countess adjusted her veil. ‘I noticed. That is why I have made no attempt to touch you.’

So she could see his spell webs well enough to know what would trigger them. That was worth knowing. Max filed the information away for future reference. The countess shivered. ‘I came to tell you that Krieger is doing something, sending out a summons to anything dark within this place that can respond. There will be many such things here.’

‘I believe you,’ said Max. He was more than a little disturbed. His own wards should have woken him at the first trace of any such thing happening. It seemed the dark magic saturating this place was doing more to suppress his powers than he had realised. Once more he cursed whoever had cast them, then pushed the thought aside as childish. Curses wouldn’t help him or Ulrika now.

‘I think we should be prepared for an attack,’ said Gabriella. ‘I have already sent Rodrik to waken the others.’

All around him the Kislevites wiped sleep from their eyes and reached for their weapons. The horses shifted restlessly, as if they knew something dreadful was going to happen. Damn, he thought, why couldn’t Gotrek and Felix have stayed here? Their blades would have made a big difference in any battle. No sense in wishing for the impossible. What is done is done. Work with what you have.

‘You can sense other presences in this place?’ he asked, realising the implications of what she had just said.

‘Only if they are very close. A spark of dark magic animates most undead constructs. You should be able to see it as well as I. I am merely deducing that if Krieger sends a summons then he expects it to be answered.’

‘That would seem logical.’

Gabriella nodded. ‘Herr Schreiber, we will soon be fighting for our very existences, and the penalty for losing may be something worse than death. I would have some things understood clearly before the fighting begins.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as that we are both on the same side here. I wish no accidents to happen to myself or to my men in the heat of battle. Things will be difficult enough fighting one enemy without having to worry about another at our backs.’

‘I was thinking the same thing myself.’

‘Then we have a truce?’

‘We have had that since the Green Man. I will not be the first to break it.’

‘Nor will I.’

‘I truly hope so.’ The vampire turned to walk away.

‘Countess!’ She looked back at him over her shoulder.

‘If you do break our truce, your existence will end. Be assured of it.’

For a moment the fires of hell flared in her eyes. Anger, naked and unmasked, burned there. She bared her fangs threateningly. ‘I do not like threats, Herr Schreiber.’

Max shrugged. ‘That was not a threat. It was a promise.’

Roche glanced out from the cover of the doorway, laced his fingers and fought down the urge to crack his knuckles. It defied belief that such a small number would dare enter this keep and think to challenge his master. Why, there were almost enough of the so-called coven members here to match them. When you added the number of magical constructs the master had reanimated, they would be swept away like a child’s sandcastle by the tide.

Of course, they did not know what was here, he told himself. If they did, they would not have come. They would have remained hiding in their pitiful keeps until the master came and winkled them out. Roche drew his short stabbing blade and glanced around.

Far back down the corridor, skeletons moved, their bones softly clicking as they took up their positions in answer to their master’s silent command. Roche smiled as he saw the coven members flinch at the sight of them. They might be wealthy and powerful people back in their own lands, but they were finding that this was a place apart. Roche wondered what they would do when they realised that the master had no idea of granting them immortality. Probably whine and backbite and do nothing, he decided. Those that did show some spirit would swiftly learn the folly of opposing the master’s will. And then they would end up serving him as animated corpses just like those fool Kislevites. The master’s skill at necromancy had grown impressively over the past few days. It was another testimony to the fact his great plan was working.

The master’s new consort would be the only mortal raised to near divinity in this place. Roche admitted to himself that he was a little jealous. Deep in the back of his mind, there had always rested the faint hope that he might be granted that ultimate boon. It could still happen, he thought.

Roche saw that the Kislevites were rousing themselves. Did this mean they realised that their doom was close? Roche did not really care. He rather liked the thought of them being awake and realising what was happening to them. He always liked it when the victims struggled a little.

Felix chopped down another ghoul. His blade crunched through its skull. The hideous creature went down with the top of its head sheared off. Felix hacked at another, and then another. Clotted blackish blood covered his whole body along with the strange green slime that oozed from the ghouls’ innards when he gutted them. He felt sick with the stench and the killing.

The monsters were strong and terribly swift and their claws were as sharp as knives. He bled from a dozen small cuts and bites. Sweat almost blinded him. His muscles ached. At least he had more than held his own against the ghouls. His method had been simple. He stood between Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter and let the Slayers do the bulk of the killing. In the narrow corridor, only a few of the monsters could attack at a time, and the dwarfs had wreaked terrible havoc. The ghouls were fearsome but the Slayers were engines of destruction. Felix knew that few things in the world could stand against Gotrek when the killing rage was upon him, and Snorri was far more than a match for a ghoul.

To begin with Felix had only to stand there, and stab any of the monsters that got past the dwarfs. As the battle had raged longer and the dwarfs waded into the throng, more and more had somehow got by them and attacked Felix who must have seemed far easier prey. At one time, Gotrek fought at one end of the corridor, Snorri at the other, and Felix had been on his own against a trio of ghouls. Things had been desperate until the Slayers had fought their way back into a closer formation.

Felix hacked another ghoul, then suddenly, to his surprise, it was over. Everything went quiet. The only other things moving were the two dwarfs. Dozens of dead and decapitated ghoul corpses filled the corridor. Gotrek spat on the nearest.

‘I hope the bloody vampire puts up a better fight,’ Gotrek complained, wiping ghoul blood from his forehead with his tattooed arm.

‘Snorri thinks Felix could have taken them on his own,’ said Snorri Nosebiter.

Felix tried to grin. Snorri Nosebiter was probably idiotic enough to believe such a thing, but he didn’t. He had no illusions whatsoever about what his chances of survival would have been without the Slayers.

‘Next time, we’ll leave them to you, manling. Snorri Nosebiter can just stand there and give you some pointers on your fighting style.’

‘Thanks,’ said Felix. ‘I look forward to it. But what now? Krieger is nowhere in sight. Shouldn’t we head back to the others? They’ll be wondering what happened to us.’

Gotrek looked around and nodded. ‘Might as well. Who knows – they might need our help.’

Ulrika heard the sounds of fighting off in the distance, and wondered what was going on. Adolphus had told her to wait in her chamber, and keep as far away from the intruders as possible. She was only to leave if her existence was threatened or if he came for her. He seemed to be worried that in her newly arisen condition she might prove vulnerable to attack, but she sensed there was something more to it than that. She wondered if he were hiding something from her.

She wished that the compulsion to obey was not quite so strong. The thirst gnawed away at her mind, and no matter how much it horrified her, she was filled with a deep need to slake it.

She sat down on the bed, and considered her predicament. The power of the Eye was such that she could not disobey a direct command. Or could she? She made for the door. She did not even reach it before her feet carried her back to where she had come from. She growled like an animal at bay.

There was one thing. If she could hear the sounds of fighting that had just faded, perhaps the warriors could hear her. It was worth a try. She opened her mouth and let out a long, hideous scream.

Max Schreiber concentrated on remaining calm. It was not easy. The panicked horses raced around the huge hall, desperate to find an escape from their predicament. If something was not done soon they were going to trample someone to death. Ivan had obviously reached the same conclusion.

The old boyar nodded to two of his men. ‘Open the main door! Let the beasts out!’

The two Kislevites were not happy. Max could tell they were thinking about what might happen if they were stranded here without mounts. ‘Do it!’ bellowed Ivan. ‘Now!’

The soldiers hastened to obey, casting a nervous eye in the direction of the great staircase. Like everyone else, they had figured that whatever was making their steeds nervous was over there somewhere. Max knew a way to find out.

Once again he created the floating eye. A touch of his will sent it in the right direction, covering the ground faster than a running man. From its point of view, Max caught sight of things moving beneath one of the arches. He sent the eye to investigate.

Suddenly, he saw what waited and horror filled him. All along the corridor skeletons marched, with rusting, notched weapons clutched in bony fingers. Animated corpses, rotting skin peeling back from gangrenous flesh, clad in the ragged remains of grave clothes, shambled slowly along, a hellish glow burning in their decomposing eyes. Here and there, armed and armoured men waited. Most of them looked as sick as Max felt. Their leader was a gigantic man with a shaven head and the gaunt ascetic face of a fanatic.

All of the mortals looked up, seeing the glowing sphere. One of the men rushed at it and slashed with a sword. Max broke the link before impact.

‘Get ready to fight,’ he told the Kislevites. ‘The dead walk here. Ready yourselves!’

Pale, nervous faces turned to look at him. He could see that some of the younger ones wanted to run, but would not shame themselves.

These were men brought up on the marches of Kislev; they had seen more than their share of horrors. Just as well really. Their chances of survival were higher here with their fellows than fleeing through the winter darkness outside.

Rodrik and his companions clustered around the countess, preparing to defend her with all the ardour of Bretonnian knights fighting for the honour of their lady love. The sight at once astonished and sickened Max. He took a deep breath and began the mental exercises designed to calm his mind. He forced himself to relax and be receptive to the flow of the winds of magic.

The currents of power were turbulent here, roiling like the waters of a fast flowing stream passing through rocks. The strange corrupted wards in the walls and the evil power buried deep within the keep caused weird swirls and eddies. It was going to take all of his skill and concentration to work powerful magic.

He pushed his palms together, interlocked his fingers and flexed them, feeling some of the tension in his shoulders unknot. The waiting was over. Conflict beckoned. His destiny was in his own hands. By his skill and power he would survive.

Or at least, send as many of his foes back to hell as he could before he fell himself.

Adolphus Krieger looked down from the gallery once more, watching the Kislevites and their wizard preparing to meet his forces. Give them some credit, he thought, they are brave. Few men could stand their ground against the forces of undeath at night within the walls of this keep. Of course, they did not yet know what they truly faced. And it was always possible that the countess had enthralled them. It took no courage to stand and fight when your will was bound to it.

He was tempted to probe the defences the wizard had set around the camp, but resisted. He was not yet confident enough in his sorcerous skills to risk a direct confrontation with a powerful mage. It would be best to wait for an opportune moment, then strike. He composed himself to watch the battle until that time arrived.

‘What was that?’ asked Snorri, as the echoes of the scream faded.

‘It sounded like Ulrika,’ said Felix, wondering if this were yet another trap. Even if it was, they had to investigate it. They had come so far in search of her that they could not afford to ignore any possible trail.

‘It came from this direction,’ said Gotrek, stomping off down the corridor towards the source of the noise. Decision made, thought Felix. A thrill of fear and anticipation at what they would find passed through him.

Bones clicking horribly, the skeletons marched into the great hall and deployed themselves in an evil parody of a human regiment. No human force had ever marched with such precision, thought Max. The whole mass moved in unison in response to a single will.

Another force of skeletons entered the chamber, and then another. Walking corpses followed them, and then finally came the humans he had seen earlier, garbed in their black surcoats and britches bearing the sign of a skull flanked by two mirrored half moons. Max tried to count the numbers of the enemy. He guessed that they were outnumbered by at least ten to one. It was a second before he realised that he had spoken aloud.

‘Not bad odds,’ he heard Ivan Petrovich mutter. The old boyar chuckled. His men looked at him admiringly. So did Max. Straghov obviously knew how to reassure his troops under difficult conditions.

‘Maybe half of the lads should stand aside to give these ghoul lovers a sporting chance,’ said Max. It was a weak joke but most of the men laughed as if he had said something uproariously funny. ‘Perhaps you should all stand aside and I’ll deal with them myself.’

He could tell by the awestruck looks that some of them thought he was serious. The clicking of bones grew louder as the enemy surged towards them. Their lack of war cries and boasts was as unnerving as the sight of them. No human army would advance without a mighty roar.

‘Allow me to demonstrate,’ said Max, spreading his arms wide and opening his mind to draw the winds of magic to him. A nimbus of light appeared around his head and each of his hands. He spoke words of power, focused his mind in the patterns he had been taught. The flows resisted him. As he forced one part of the pattern into place, another oozed out. It required utter concentration, far above the norm, to bind the winds of magic to his will.

In the air above his head, between his outstretched arms, an intricate web of light sprang into being. Shimmering strands of power flowed into one another weaving among themselves like a basketful of snakes. Max strained to keep the magical structure in place while he drew all the power he could to himself. The strain was enormous. His head felt as if it would explode from the pressure. Pain stabbed through his mind. His forehead felt as if it was caught in a huge vice. His arms shuddered as if he tried to hold the weight of the world above his head.

Power attracted power. Like was drawn to like. More and more magical energy swirled inwards now, drawn into the vortex he had created. Tendrils of it touched the real world; phantom fingers made his robes ripple as if in a breeze. His skin tingled. The tips of his fingertips felt like they were touching red-hot iron.

Where at first he had struggled to draw power into the weave, now he was having difficulty releasing it. Power buffeted him from every direction, all of it being pulled inward. He took a deep breath, howled the final syllables of the incantation and focused every iota of willpower, every ounce of magical sinew, to cast the sphere of destruction he had created towards his foes.

He felt something give way but was not sure whether it was in himself or the binding. An enormous weight lifted from him, and a blaze of light flashed across his sight.

Adolphus Krieger watched in awe as the wizard struggled to cast his spell. He would not have thought it possible for any mortal to draw such power to himself in the face of the wards on this keep, but not only was the mage doing it, he was controlling a mightier flow of energy than Krieger had ever seen bound before.

Snakes of light flickered from every corner of the room, searing the air as they were pulled into the sphere above the sorcerer. They were so bright that Krieger’s sensitive eyes almost could not bear the sight of them, and he had to force himself to watch.

A wind sprang up from nowhere and passed through the room. Krieger wondered how it was possible for any man to contain so much power. It seemed impossible that any human form could do so for more than a few moments. Every inch of the wizard’s skin glowed. His eyeballs were molten spheres of gold.

Then the wizard unleashed his spell. Dozens of serpents of golden light flickered through the air towards the undead horde. They covered the distance in a heartbeat. As each one impacted, a skeleton disintegrated into a clattering pile of bones. The lights in the skulls faded and died. As each shimmering snake touched a zombie, the walking corpse shrivelled and collapsed into a desiccated husk and came apart in a shower of dust. Where the lights touched men, they screamed and burned. Krieger was suddenly very glad he had chosen not to lead the attack.

The Kislevites cheered as about half of their foes went down to Max’s spell. The rest sent a wave of arrows hurtling towards their attackers. Some buried themselves into the flesh of walking corpses and quivered there, seemingly having done no harm. Others clattered through the empty ribcages of the animated skeletons. A few took down some of the men. The effect was not what Max would have hoped for, but was hardly surprising. The walking dead were fell foes.

Max felt the tug of magical energy being drawn to someone else. His magesight saw a wave of dark magic being drawn to the countess. A web of darkness came into being around her then tendrils leapt from it towards the undead. When it touched them they simply stopped in their tracks.

It was a good casting under difficult circumstances, Max judged, but it was neither as strong nor as destructive as his own had been. Barely half a dozen of their foes went down. The rest covered the distance between the two sides in a few more strides. Max snatched up his staff and prepared to defend himself.

All around him the blades of man and undead monster rang against each other. He had done all that he could. He only hoped that it was enough.

‘I wish she would stop screaming like that,’ said Felix. He was angry but he suspected that his anger merely concealed a deeper-seated worry. There was something profoundly disturbing about the voice, a faintly inhuman note that suggested a mind either just on or just over the brink of being unhinged.

‘Be sure to tell her that when we see her,’ said Gotrek. He moved warily, the monstrous axe held in his right hand. With the ghoul blood covering him he looked as terrifying as anything they were likely to encounter here.

They crossed a massive hall, its floor chequered in tiles of bone white and blood red. Old fusty tapestries depicting mounted men and women hunting naked people in the woods covered the walls.

‘Whoever furnished this place was not sane,’ Felix muttered. He expected no reply and got none. They passed a long crumbling flight of marble stairs and halted in front of the door from behind which the screaming was coming. As they reached it, the screams halted. Before Felix could reach for the handle Gotrek’s axe smashed into the wood, splintering it. The runes on the blade glowed. With swift chops the Slayer made an entry into the room.

Ulrika waited within. She looked very pale and had lost a lot of weight but seemed otherwise unharmed. The room was richly furnished and cleaner than most in this foul place, although there were still massive cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling, and a faint smell of rot in the air.

Felix wanted to rush over to her and take her in his arms and reassure her but some instinct stopped him. She looked up at him and smiled – and as she did so long fangs extruded themselves from her gums. A red glow entered her eyes. Seeing these changes come over that well remembered face, turning it into something at once evil and eerily familiar, Felix felt his own sanity teeter on the brink.

‘Sorry, manling,’ said Gotrek, striding into the room, axe held ready to strike.

‘Snorri’s sorry too, Felix,’ said Snorri Nosebiter as he followed.

Felix stood by the doorway, unable to decide what to do. Looking at them, a hideous hissing sound emerged from Ulrika’s mouth.

Roche aimed a blow at the Kislevite in front of him. His mighty arm drove his blade right through the man’s leather armour and buried it deep in his guts. The man screamed as he died. Another servant for the master, thought Roche happily as he pulled his sword out. Warm ropy entrails spilled over his hand. He glanced around to see how the battle was going.

Somewhat differently than he had hoped. Well over three quarters of the master’s forces were down. The wizard stood with his back to the coach, two zombies coming for him. As Roche watched, the mage struck one in the head with his staff, stepped away from the second and spoke a word. Something emerged from his mouth and hovered shimmering in the air for a moment, a blazing pattern of light that brought tears to the eye and hurt the brain. In another heartbeat the zombie’s head exploded, spurting brains and fragments of bone into the air and covering everyone nearby in a rain of jelly and splinters. Roche licked his lips. The taste was interesting. Briefly he considered charging the wizard and trying to overwhelm him with a hail of blows. It might work, he thought. The wizard gestured and a bolt of golden light ripped through the spine of a nearby skeleton. It fell on the floor in two halves, the glow of animation fading from its eyes. Then again, it might not.

Off to his left the battle had taken another surprising turn. A small, frail-looking woman leapt amid the coven members. With one sweep of her arm, she tore off Gaius’s head. Roche knew he was strong. He could break a man’s neck with his bare hands if he needed to, but there was no way he could rip a head from its shoulders even using both hands. What sort of woman could? Instantly the answer swept into his mind: one like the master. This was not good. Why had the master not warned him? Roche dismissed the thought. Doubtless the master had his reasons.

The intruders were not having it all their own way. Many of the Kislevites were down now, and most of the Sylvanian knights were dead. By Roche’s count that left only the wizard, the fat old man, the countess, and one of the knights. A quick glance told Roche that more than a dozen of the zombies were still on the go, and a couple of the coven. It would be enough, he told himself. It would have to be.

He raced towards the old man hoping to take him unawares and then get on to the wizard. As he moved he suddenly came to a halt, anchored to the spot by a slender arm. He caught sight of long fingernails dripping red blood. He noticed a ruby glittering on one of the fingers. Automatically, he appraised its worth, even as a low, surprisingly gentle woman’s voice whispered in his ear.

‘Now, lackey, you go to the grave.’

There was a flash of pain, a terrible strain on his neck, and then the pain and the strain were gone. He watched the roof wheel and found himself looking up at a massive headless corpse tottering above him. With a shock, he realised that the body belonged to him. It seemed that a brain was capable of living for a few moments after being separated from its body. His lips formed a prayer for help to his master but there were no lungs to push air into his mouth.

Max summoned power and gestured. A bolt of golden light sheared through the chest of an animated corpse, chopping it in half like an enormous cleaver. The body flopped to the ground and remained horribly animated for a few moments. Its top half still tried to crawl towards him, while its bottom half drummed its feet on the flagstones. Max took no chances. Another gesture and another blast of power incinerated the creature.

Here and there a few knots of fighters were still locked in combat. Ivan Petrovich hacked down a pair of animated skeletons with one stroke of his sabre. The old man was covered in cuts and bled profusely from a massive wound in his arm. Rodrik fought beside the countess, guarding her back. Not that she needed much guarding. The vampire moved with phenomenal speed, rending and tearing anything that got in her way. To his horror he realised that they were the only members of their party remaining on their feet. All of the other Kislevites were down. Many cried in pain. As Max watched, a skeleton bit out the throat of one of the wounded.

Still fighting against the strange warping power of his surroundings, Max wearily drew on his magic once more. A blast of energy ignited the brittle bones of the animated thing. Molten bone splattered the corpses surrounding it.

Suddenly, all was silent, save for the cold whisper of the breeze carrying snowflakes through the open doorway. Max glanced around and realised that it was over. Only he, Ivan, the countess and Rodrik remained standing in the hall. After the terrifying din of battle, the quiet was almost as unnerving.

Max looked at his companions, and smiled without warmth or any sense of triumph. It was the weary smile of a man who had remained alive while most of his companions had fallen, and the other two men mirrored it. The countess did not smile at all. Instead she stood with her head cocked in the attitude of one listening, although what it was she listened for, Max could not begin to guess.

Max saw that Ivan Petrovich was staring at the countess, as if contemplating driving his blade into her back. The old boyar must have seen the carnage she had wrought and doubtless he now wondered exactly what had travelled with him to this place. Perhaps like Max he was searching his memory, trying to remember if any of the Kislevite casualties had been her work.

Max could not recall any, but in the heat of battle he might have missed some. He regretted his bravado and his threats from earlier. Manipulating the powers of magic had cost him dearly. Overcoming the resistance of this place had taken almost as much of his strength as working the magic itself. He felt as tired as if he had walked for days without sleep. He took a deep breath and calmed his mind. He was not about to let any of this show.

Instead he strode across to Ivan Petrovich. ‘Let me see your arm,’ he said gently.

Absent-mindedly the boyar stretched out his arm, but his gaze never left the Countess Gabriella. ‘Did you see what she did?’ he asked.

Max nodded. The Kislevite nobleman’s expression mingled awe and horror in equal parts. ‘What evil have you brought here?’ he asked.

Max ran his fingers over the wound and concentrated. A gentle golden glow passed from his fingertips to the boyar’s arm. The flow of blood stopped. The flesh knitted beneath his touch. The boyar winced at the pain of the procedure but made no sound. The countess turned to look at them. Max saw her gaze at the blood on the closed wound as if hypnotised. She licked her lips. The gesture reminded the wizard of the flicker of a serpent’s tongue.

‘He is close,’ she said after a moment of silence. ‘And so is the talisman. I can feel its presence gnawing at my mind.’

‘Where?’ Max asked.

‘Somewhere above us.’

Max was about to summon his golden eye for the third time that day when she winced. ‘He is moving away from us.’

‘He has seen what we have done here and flees in fear,’ said Rodrik stoutly.

‘Then we will follow him,’ said Ivan Petrovich.

‘First we will burn these bodies,’ said Max. ‘I would not have him draw them back to life. I do not want to have to face the corpses of those who fought so bravely alongside us.’

‘How will we burn so many?’ Rodrik asked.

‘Cover them with lantern oil,’ said Max. ‘I will do the rest.’

From behind them came the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh mingled with aromatic lantern oil. Max walked beside Ivan Petrovich. Ahead of them walked the countess and then Rodrik. He was sure this was a deliberate gesture of bravado on her part, turning her back to them, letting him see that she trusted them enough to leave herself vulnerable, even if they did not trust her. Or perhaps, thought Max, she was simply contemptuous of them. Weak as he currently felt that contempt might well prove justified. Max prayed that the wounded would be all right until they returned. He would have healed more, but he knew he needed to conserve his remaining power.

‘Be very careful,’ the countess said, in that deceptively gentle voice. ‘There could still be ghouls and worse in this place, and not a few of his coven fled the battle before it was over. Adolphus Krieger is not the only foe we might have to face, although he is doubtless the worst.’

Max glanced around. This had never been the most reassuring place and now, without the troops, with only Ivan Petrovich and the vampire and her minion for company, it was even less so. Every shadow seemed to conceal some hidden threat. Every open doorway was a gaping maw that he expected to spew forth a horde of undead monsters.

What now? Were they going to have to search this whole horrid place to find Krieger or would he come to them? What other nasty surprises did this place hold?

‘No!’ shouted Felix. ‘Don’t!’

For a moment everyone in the chamber froze. Ulrika stood legs flexed, ready to strike. The two Slayers had covered half the distance between them and her.

‘Surely we can settle this sensibly.’ Felix was not sure how, but they had reached an accommodation with the countess – surely they could do so with Ulrika, surely she had not changed that much.

He moved between the dwarfs and the woman and turned arms open wide to beseech Gotrek and Snorri Nosebiter not to attack. ‘Nobody here need die.’

‘That is not true, Felix,’ he heard Ulrika’s voice whisper in his ear, as a very strong arm looped around his neck. He struggled but he was like a mouse caught in the jaws of a cat. Gods, she had become very strong. His feet were off the ground. He found himself being held as a shield between her and the dwarfs.

‘So you’re going to kill me then,’ he said, relaxing completely. He felt resigned to his fate. If he was going to die here, so be it. It was ironic that it would be at the hand of the woman he had come so far to rescue.

Snorri and Gotrek had moved apart, one on either side, flanking Ulrika. One or the other of them was going to get a strike at her, or him, if she chose to interpose his body between herself and the blow.

Suddenly, the world tipped and he was hurtling through the air towards Gotrek. From the corner of his eye, he saw a blurred figure leaping between the two Slayers towards the door. Gotrek leapt to one side to avoid him. Felix hit the flagstones rolling. Pain slammed through his body with the impact. He kept rolling hoping to absorb the impact and slammed into the wall. Stars danced before his eyes.

He pulled himself erect and glanced around to see the two Slayers gazing mournfully out of the door. ‘She was too quick for us,’ said Gotrek. ‘She has got away – for the moment.’

A bewildered expression flickered across his brutal face. He shook his head annoyed and spat on the ground. Felix looked at the Slayer. For a moment there he had been certain that Gotrek was not saddened by Ulrika’s escape and that fact shamed him. Now did not seem a good time to check his observation.

‘What now?’ he asked instead. Snorri shrugged. Gotrek glared at him.

‘The next time we meet her, don’t talk, manling, strike!’ Felix remembered how he had felt in Ulrika’s grasp. He was certain that he had come very close to death. He knew that the Slayer was right. Next time, there would be no attempts to negotiate and no mercy.

Ulrika fled through the vast maze of the keep. She shook from reaction. The thirst was on her now. She was not sure how she had found the willpower to avoid burying her fangs into Felix’s neck and draining him dry.

She stretched her legs and bounded up a flight of stairs, boots soundless on the moth-eaten red carpet. Perhaps it was some residue of the feeling she had once felt for Felix that had saved him. She would have liked to think so but she was not certain. It seemed equally possible that it was a deep buried instinct for survival. If she had allowed herself to be overcome by the thirst just then, she would have given the Slayers a clear shot at her. Many mortals might flinch and flee from the sight of one of the Arisen in full feeding frenzy but she knew that neither Gotrek nor Snorri Nosebiter could be counted among that number. She was certain that allowing the Slayer one clean stroke with that axe of his would have been the end of her, and horrified as she was by her new condition she was not yet ready for the final death. For one thing, she intended to repay Adolphus Krieger for what he had done to her, if it took all eternity.

She might be bound to him now by her need for knowledge and the power of the talisman, but she would find a way to slay him. She knew it had to be possible. After all, if she were cautious, she had all the time in the world, and over the centuries surely anything would eventually become possible.

The question was, what was she to do right now? She needed to avoid her pursuers and find Krieger. Failing that, she ought to get away from here, and then see what happened next. It was not the best of plans, but she could think of no other. For many conflicting reasons, she was not about to stay and fight with Felix and the Slayers.

Why had Krieger not told her they were here? Why did he keep it a secret from her, and what other secrets was he keeping? These were other scores to be settled with him when the time came.

Some instinct told her to head to the right, taking a long corridor into a massive dining room. Why? Could it be the talisman still called to her? Would the call lead her eventually to Krieger? It was possible. She decided to trust the feeling, and follow her instincts. What else was there to do? She raced along the path leading to the throne room.

‘He went this way,’ said the countess. She paused at the junction of two corridors and indicated the one to the left.

‘How can you be so certain?’ Max asked. The walk had left him feeling a little worse. The castle was covered in spells of mazing and warding intended to confuse anyone but the undead and their servants. Using his magesight to overcome them had left him feeling queasy.

‘He is using the talisman to summon all of our kind here. Perhaps he has not thought to cease the summoning. Perhaps it is something he has overlooked.’

Or perhaps, thought Max, he is luring us into yet another trap.

Things could have gone better, thought Krieger. The vanguard of his invincible undead army was gone, defeated by the enemies who still roamed free in his castle. All of his careful preparation had gone for naught.

On the other hand, things could be worse. Ulrika was still free, as he could sense through their bond. And the countess was here. Foolish of her, really, to put herself in his power like this. It meant that potentially he still had two very powerful pawns within the building.

All it would take now would be to arrange matters as he wished, and choose a spot where he would dispatch his enemies. Where better than his throne room? He would gather what were left of his forces in the building and draw matters to their inevitable conclusion there.

‘Ah, Ulrika, I am so glad you could join me,’ said Adolphus Krieger.

Ulrika entered the throne room. It was a hideous place, dominated by a massive ebony throne inlaid with skull motifs. Each of the skulls had rubies for eyes. The walls were covered in tapestries depicting the great triumphs of the wars of the Vampire Counts. The floor was tiled in black and white, save for a mouldering carpet that lay around the base of the regal dais. Adolphus Krieger lounged in the throne. As she had suspected, she had been drawn to him by the power of that evil talisman blazing at his throat.

‘I did not have much choice,’ she said bitterly.

‘True, but that in no way lessens my joy at seeing you.’

‘Why did you not tell me Felix was coming here?’

‘Would it have made any difference? You would still have had to do as I wished.’

‘I wish you had told me anyway.’

‘Why? You sound regretful. Did you kill him?’

‘No.’

‘A pity.’

‘He and Gotrek almost killed me though.’

‘I would have been sorry about that. The Slayer and his cohorts are still alive, then?’

‘When I last saw them they were, very much so.’

‘I suppose they will have to be dealt with too then.’

‘Too?’

‘Your wizard friend also came here with some Kislevites, and a former associate of mine. I think they seek what I now have.’

‘Kislevites?’

‘Your countrymen, my dear. Led by a fat old man.’

A spasm of fear and guilt passed through Ulrika’s mind. It could only be her father. Of course, if Max and Felix could find her here, he would have come with them. He would ride into the gates of hell themselves to save her. In a way, he had.

‘Are they dead?’

‘Who?’

‘The wizard and the Kislevite leader.’

‘Regrettably both were still alive when I last saw them, but don’t worry, that will soon change. Did you know the old man?’

Ulrika considered for a moment. She could see nothing to be gained by denying the truth. And perhaps if worst came to worst she could see her father’s life spared. ‘He is my father.’

‘Ah… That would explain why he came all this way to find you then. I should have suspected as much.’

‘You are not going to kill him, are you?’

‘That certainly was my intention, my dear. Why? Do you have something else in mind?’

‘Spare him!’

‘Such sentimentality, Ulrika. He is no longer your father. I am. I doubt that he would spare you if he finds you.’

Ulrika had to admit there was truth in that. Ivan Petrovich’s upbringing on the marches of Kislev left him little room for compromise with the powers of darkness, to which she now undoubtedly belonged. He would have come all this way to make sure his only daughter was truly dead, as much as to rescue her. It was the only honourable thing to do, and Ivan Petrovich Straghov was a man of honour. Even so, even if he would kill her, she did not want that to happen to him.

‘Nonetheless, I ask you to spare him.’

Adolphus Krieger leant forward on his throne and stroked his chin with the fingers of his left hand. ‘He came here to try and slay me. I am not inclined to show mercy.’

Overhead, in the shadows of the vault, massive things moved.

Max blasted the last of the animated corpses. It flew apart as if sited atop a keg of exploding gunpowder. The stench of charred flesh filled the air. Max was too used to it by now to feel nauseated. He glanced around and saw that there had been no casualties among his comrades.

‘There are fewer of them,’ said Ivan Petrovich with a weak grin. ‘And they do not seem so well organised.’

‘I think these were just remnants of the main force left wandering aimlessly around the keep,’ said the countess. ‘I do not think they were sent to attack us specifically.’

Max agreed. There had been too few of these zombies to pose a threat. The countess could have torn them apart herself. In fact, Max resolved, the next time this situation arose, he would stand aside and let her do just that. ‘How much further?’ he asked.

‘Not far now,’ said the countess. There was a strange gleam in her eyes.

‘She went this way,’ said Gotrek.

‘Are you sure?’ Felix asked. He tugged at his cloak nervously. The sense of oppressive evil had deepened. He really did not want to be in this place. In answer to his question, the Slayer shook his head doubtfully.

‘I am not the tracker Marek is, but these are her prints in this mould.’

‘Perhaps those lights up ahead are a clue as well,’ said Snorri Nosebiter. Both Felix and Gotrek glanced in the direction he indicated. Felix thought he caught sight of Ulrika slipping through a low archway. He felt sure that neither the archway nor the lights had been visible moments ago. He felt certain that either he or Gotrek would have noticed them.

‘That’s very convenient,’ said Gotrek.

‘Isn’t it?’ said Felix. Without further discussion they moved towards the light.

‘Herr Jaeger! Herr Gurnisson! It gives me great pleasure to renew our acquaintance.’

The throne room was vast, quiet and appeared to be in good repair. On a massive ebony throne lolled Adolphus Krieger; Ulrika crouched down by his side. His left hand played with her ash blonde hair the way a man might idly stroke the head of a favourite hound. His right hand toyed with the familiar talisman at his neck.

‘Snorri Nosebiter is here too, you cheeky bastard,’ said Snorri.

‘My apologies. I was not sure whether to call you Herr Nosebiter or not,’ said the vampire with an amused smile. His face was clearly visible in the light of the enormous chandelier.

How had it been lit, Felix wondered? And why? Around the walls stood countless suits of antique armour, filling every niche. Each held a sword, a pike or some other weapon of antique design but obvious utility. He thought he detected movement overhead. A quick glance revealed only deeper shadows moving in the blackness above the lights.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Gotrek, advancing towards the throne. ‘You are dead.’

The vampire raised his hands. ‘Wait a moment,’ said Krieger. ‘My other guests are about to arrive.’

Max entered the enormous throne room just behind the countess. His gaze swept past the massive throne and was drawn as if by a magnet to Ulrika. She looked so pale. Fangs were visible in her mouth. His heart sank when he realised that she had become a vampire.

Max asked himself what he was going to do. He had come all this way to rescue her, and it looked like she was beyond salvation. Could he really kill her? Could he really stand by and watch as Gotrek attempted to do so?

He was almost glad when a sudden massive surge of magical power drew his gaze to the throne.

Felix saw Max Schreiber, Ivan Petrovich, the countess and her lapdog Rodrik enter from the other side of the chamber. They looked just as surprised to see him as he was to see them. He saw the look of horror and despair sweep over Max’s face. He understood it all too well.

What was Krieger planning now? Why had he brought them here? Surely he must have some sort of ace up his sleeve or he would not look so confident. Not unless he was completely mad. Or utterly secure in his power.

‘Countess Gabriella. It’s been a very long time. I am so pleased that you are the first to answer my summons. Rest assured you won’t be the last,’ Krieger smiled.

‘I should have put you down when I whelped you,’ said the countess, her voice chilly with hate. Any doubts about the animosity between the two Felix might have had vanished. The countess sincerely wished Krieger dead. Well, that makes two of us, Felix thought. Gotrek watched the confrontation between the two with interest and began to move towards the throne, holding his axe ready.

‘Alas, countess, the time for such regrets is long past. I am the master now. You will serve me as surely as young Ulrika here.’

Was there something fluttering among the rafters of the hall? Felix was sure he had heard something. As he looked up again he felt certain he could see massive scraps of black shadow fluttering about. Things were not as they seemed here at all, he told himself. He needed to be very careful. He placed his lantern on the ground and held his sword warily.

‘We shall see,’ said the countess. Felix was certain he heard a hint of doubt in her voice.

‘Indeed we shall. I have mastered the Eye now. Allow me to demonstrate.’

The talisman at Krieger’s throat flared dazzlingly. Just the sight of it made Felix dizzy. Gotrek halted for a moment, covering his eye with his arm. The countess gave a shriek and fell to her knees. Rodrik ran to her side, solicitously. Max watched everything very carefully, as if following the invisible flow of power with his mage sight. Snorri Nosebiter looked just as bemused as Felix felt.

Ulrika stared miserably at her father. He stared back disbelievingly. Felix wished he did not have to look at their faces; they were such studies of horror and misery. Quickly he looked back at Krieger. If anything, the vampire appeared to be enjoying himself even more.

The countess raised her head. An odd glow entered her eyes. Her whole expression changed. She stood up, moving jerkily and mechanically, as if her mind fought with something else for control of her body. Fear, hatred and impotent rage flashed across her face. Rodrik moved to her side, reaching out for her with all the tender concern of a worried lover.

Gotrek prepared to charge. Felix made ready to follow him.

Max watched the incredibly complex flows of energy emerging from the vampire on the throne. Doing so distracted him for a moment from his horror at what had happened to Ulrika. The mesh was of incredible complexity, speed and subtlety. It reminded him of the defences he had encountered when he had probed the Eye of Khemri himself.

It was difficult to follow such a swift, complex casting but Max did his best. There were elements of compulsion there, reinforced with strong threads of dark magic. The power of the thing was incredible. Max doubted that such a spell could be used on a mortal; it was too finely attuned to the dark magic-saturated physiognomy of a vampire.

Thin tendrils of dark magical energy, emanating from the throne, coiled down to the stones of the castle. Great roots of magical energy delved down through the floor into the stonework. Krieger had attuned himself to the castle, which was why he was not struggling to overcome the wards the way Max had to.

Closer inspection revealed the tendrils were connected through the throne to the Eye of Khemri itself. At this moment Krieger was drawing power from the keep for some purpose Max could not yet guess, although he could see the dark magical energy beginning to shimmer around the vampire’s form. The power was so great he was surprised that no one else in the room could see it.

The countess had claimed that Krieger was an indifferent mage. Something had certainly changed. He was maintaining two very potent spells with superlative skill. Max doubted he could have managed quite so well himself.

Max would have been willing to bet that Krieger had not always cast spells like this. He was attuned to the talisman now, and it was affecting his magical signature, changing it to resemble its creator. It was likely not all that had been changed either. Doubtless the vampire’s mind was being subtly altered too. He shivered briefly at the closeness of his own escape. Who knew where such a process might end up?

The countess moved towards him. Max prepared to defend himself.

Ulrika knew as soon as she saw the woman called the countess that here was a fellow vampire. Perhaps it was like calling to like, she did not know. Ulrika could tell at once that this new woman was immeasurably stronger and older than she herself was. She watched in despair as the countess tried to resist Krieger’s binding spell and failed. She saw her put up an enormous struggle. It seemed that she could feel the echoes of that struggle in her own mind, and even as she did so, she felt the bonds holding her weaken a little.

Was it possible that while Adolphus used his strength to subdue the countess, his grasp on her was somehow weakened? If so, would his grip return once her struggles ceased? Ulrika knew she could not take the chance. Frantically she tried to break the mental shackles holding her, to force her way to Krieger’s side and attack him.

Felix saw Ulrika begin to move, and Gotrek react as if to a threat. The Slayer raised his axe and prepared to strike, although at least twenty paces separated them from the dais. Noticing this, Krieger gave a laugh and gestured with his right hand.

Something massive and dark flashed downwards from the ceiling. Enormous wings spread to break its fall, massive jaws, full of razor sharp fangs and glistening saliva opened to rend and tear. It was a huge bat, its body larger than any man’s. The hooks on its wing tips were razor sharp. It slashed at Gotrek, and the Slayer whirled and ducked, striking at thin air as the creature swept past.

The displacement of air behind him was the only warning Felix had. He threw himself flat even as a winged shadow loomed on the floor in front of him. Pain seared his shoulder like vitriol as flesh parted. An upward glance revealed another of the huge bats hurtling away from him, up towards the cavernous ceiling of the hall. Eerie high-pitched chittering filled Felix’s ears.

The clang of metal announced a new threat. One of the massive suits of armour stepped down from its pedestal and began striding towards him. More clattering told him that others were springing into a similar horrid semblance of life.

‘Look out!’ he cried as several of the armoured forms lumbered towards the Slayer.

Adolphus Krieger felt his two captives struggle against the chains he had placed around their minds. He knew it was futile. There was no way they could resist him. He had the power of the Eye of Khemri; even two women as strong-willed as they could not resist him. The Servants of the Throne would take care of the other interlopers.

A crash of metal on metal drew his attention. He looked down and saw the accursed Slayer piling through the armoured figures of his guardians. His mighty axe smashed through their metal breastplates, cleaving metal to reveal the bones of the animated skeletal constructs within. Even as Krieger watched, a skull rolled from its helmet and the red light of its eyes faded and died.

The monstrous Servants swooped from above. Felix Jaeger ducked the sweep of one’s massive membranous wing, and slashed it with his sword, ripping flesh and sinew. The gashed wing interfered with its flight and the Servant tumbled to the stone flagstones. Another Servant grabbed Snorri Nosebiter in its claws and raised him into the air. The Slayer struggled like a mouse in the talons of an owl as he was borne high into the vaulted ceiling. The Slayer’s furious struggles allowed him to slip from the creature’s bloody talons. Snorri dropped like a stone, tumbling through the air, arms and legs flailing. Krieger grinned. There was no way anything could survive that.

Felix watched Snorri tumbling to his death. A growing sense of helplessness filled him. There was nothing he could do to save the dwarf. Then Snorri lashed out with his axe, hooking the massive chandelier. He hung there, as the monstrous bat closed in for the kill and the chandelier swung like a pendulum. Two more massive bat-winged creatures dropped towards Felix. It was going to take all of his attention to stay alive. There would be time enough later to worry about Snorri Nosebiter. He ducked the slash of one razor-sharp talon, rolled under two talons that tried to grab him and stabbed upwards into the belly of the wounded one. Black bile spurted, obscuring his vision.

Max watched the countess turn her eyes towards him. Their gazes met with an impact that was almost physical. He had heard much of the vampire’s hypnotic glance before, but experiencing it was something completely different. He felt as if all the will were draining out of him: all he could do was stand there like a small bird fascinated by a serpent.

His head spun from trying to maintain his concentration amid the wards of the castle. At that moment, all he wanted to do was give in. Normally, he would have been able to resist her easily, but these were not normal circumstances. He was drained of strength from the long battle, and his mind reeled under the influence of the castle’s warding spells. It was all he could do not to simply surrender to her power immediately.

As he stood there paralysed, Rodrik, the countess’s faithful lapdog, advanced towards him, blade bared.

Ivan Petrovich looked up at his beloved daughter, knowing that she was no more. Her soul had been devoured. A daemon had taken possession of her body. There was nothing he could do now but slay her, and lay her body to rest. Hopefully doing so would free her soul to go to eternal rest. So all the old tales claimed.

Yet he found himself reluctant to advance and do his duty. He could remember what she had looked like as a small helpless infant, smiling and glad on the day he had received her first pony, torn by grief at the death of her mother.

How could he forget holding her in his arms as a child or all of the memories of their shared lives? How could he kill her now?

She is gone, he told himself. There is nothing left of her, only a daemon wearing her form. You must do your duty now, even though it’s the hardest thing you will ever do. Anything else would be a betrayal of all those fine soldiers you left dead on the way here, and of Ulrika herself. You can mourn afterwards. You must do this thing even though it kills you.

He kept his eyes fixed firmly on her as he charged towards the dais, blade in hand. It was only at the last moment he heard the swish of wings in the air, and felt razor-sharp claws bite into his neck.

Adolphus Krieger looked down from his throne and saw that things were going well. The fat old man was dead. The stupidest of the two Slayers was about to die. The countess and her lackey would take care of the wizard. Felix Jaeger was on his knees blinded by blood as two of the Servants flapped overhead, circling like hawks about to swoop for the kill. All that was left was Gotrek Gurnisson and his axe. He would take care of it himself.

The Slayer crashed through the last of the armoured guardians and stood at the foot of the dais, brandishing his mighty weapon. His beard bristled and his one mad eye glittered with insane fury. He looked like some unleashed god of battle. For a moment, Krieger felt almost afraid, but only for a moment.

It was time to put an end to this farce he decided, throwing wide his arms, and drawing on the full power of the Eye. His bones rippled and elongated, and his skin stretched. His features flowed into a new configuration. Long talons ripped the flesh of his fingers. Enormous strength flowed into him, and he knew there was nothing he could not do.

Frantically, fearing at any moment to hear the hissing of air and the slash of talons, Felix wiped the black stuff from his eyes with his arm and scrabbled for his blade. As he did so, from the corner of his eye he caught sight of Adolphus Krieger’s transformation.

The vampire’s skin cracked open. Reddish flesh erupted through the pallid, broken skin, flowing like melted candle wax into a new shape. His face became longer, his ears became larger and his hair seemed to withdraw into his head. White bones emerged from the mass, lengthening and thinning; translucent folds of flesh wove themselves around them, becoming monstrous bat-like wings that ended in weirdly human hands. Huge scythe-like talons sprang forth from his fingertips. His eyes became larger and darker, his head more triangular. Massive ears emerged from his head, and his nose flattened.

Krieger’s whole body lengthened and grew taller, forcing him to hunch forward in a bestial manner. Within seconds an awful hybrid of bat and man loomed over the Slayer, casting a terrible shadow. Even as it did so more of the armoured guardians sprang forward to assail Gotrek. The monstrous bats assaulting Felix withdrew to join the attack. Gotrek swept his axe around in a huge arc, striving to hold them at bay with its fury.

As he did so, the Krieger thing sprang forward with awful speed, so fast that Gotrek had no time to strike. In an instant those razor-sharp talons were digging into his throat. Droplets of red beaded the dwarf’s skin. For a terrified heartbeat, Felix wondered whether this was where the Slayer’s saga ended. If it did, he knew his own tale would end shortly thereafter.

Ulrika saw her father fall, and horror and despair swept over her in a tidal wave. For a moment, she had been worried that the old man was going to kill her, and she had undergone a brief surge of guilt at the relief she felt when she saw him fall. She knew that he was the one person in the world she would not have defended herself against. This guilt amplified her anger and her despair. Her rage sought an outlet and found it in the monstrously mutated form of Adolphus Krieger. He was responsible for all of this. He had brought her here. He had changed her. It was because of him that Ivan Petrovich had come here looking for her, and found his own death instead.

She threw all the force of her will against the bonds that held her. Strong as they were she felt them shiver. And distantly, she sensed she was not alone in the struggle. Another will joined hers in resisting Krieger’s evil spell, the will of a being much older, stronger and more disciplined by dark sorcery than her own. Together they began to throw off the chains that bound them.

Max watched Rodrik’s blade descend. It was all he could do to force himself to duck to one side. The blade caught his arm and drew blood. He saw the vampire lick her lips hungrily. She leapt forward to pinion him, pushing aside her lackey. Ivory fangs flashed nearer to his neck. Her eyes had expanded to vast pits that filled his consciousness and threatened to swallow all awareness.

Suddenly, she stopped, and the hellish light in her eyes flickered. Max felt the will bearing down on his weaken, as if it were distracted. Perhaps it was. He could sense the bonds of Krieger’s spell begin to weaken. Those incredibly strong hands loosened themselves from his throat. He fell to the floor and caught sight of the monstrous bat-creature that had been Krieger dash Gotrek to the ground. He loomed over the Slayer like the shadow of doom.

Triumph filled Adolphus Krieger. The dwarf had proven no match for his altered form. Look at his pathetic struggles as even now he tries to rise to his feet, he thought.

Krieger bared his fangs. It was time to end this. Even as he did so, he felt Ulrika and the countess threaten to break free from his influence. The backlash from their efforts almost paralysed him. He threw all of his willpower into the struggle and drew deeply on the power of the Eye. Their despair was like nectar to him. They knew he was invincible. Just at that moment, he heard something moving above him. He looked up, and in a shocked second saw the enormous crystal chandelier descending towards him, the metal spike on the bottom glittering like a sword-blade.

A bellowed warcry from overhead drew Max’s attention. He saw Snorri Nosebiter had somehow clambered up onto the chandelier and chopped through its chain. It crashed downwards, hurtling down onto the massive hybrid thing that was Krieger. At the last second the monster sensed its peril and looked up, a peculiarly human look of despair flashing through its eyes, as the spiked tip at the base of the huge structure smashed through its chest, driven by all the weight of Snorri Nosebiter and the momentum of its long fall.

Krieger surged to his feet, desperately casting off the remains of the chandelier. His unnatural shape was already changing back to human. The marks of mortality were etched on his face. Max summoned the last of his remaining power and sent a bolt of dazzling light flickering towards the transformed vampire’s eyes. Krieger let out a screech of unnatural rage and pain. It emerged from his warped throat and the pitch heightened until it seemed to reach a realm inaudible to human ears.

Gotrek pulled himself to his feet and sent his axe thundering at the vampire’s neck. His blade impacted on the Eye of Khemri and drove right through it, burying itself deep in Krieger’s chest. As the enchanted axe smashed through the ancient talisman, all of the armoured guardians lost their animation and collapsed. The huge bats, no longer guided by a single will, fluttered upwards, away from the battle. For a moment, everything seemed frozen in place. An aura of unnatural energy crackled around Krieger’s form as the talisman discharged the last of its power, then a vast explosion of unleashed magical energy ripped outwards, tearing the vampire apart.

The force of the blast smashed into the weakened Max, knocking him from his feet and down into darkness.

Without taking his eyes off the countess, Felix bent down and retrieved his sword. He ached all over but he still offered up his thanks to Sigmar for sparing him. His clothing was scorched, his hair was burned and his face felt toasted. All in all though, things could have been worse. Looking at the countess however, his gratitude vanished. She glared at him hungrily.

‘Come and die,’ growled Gotrek from somewhere behind Felix’s back. Felix braced himself for the inevitable attack. It did not come. Instead the countess merely looked at him and then at the Slayer, and shook her head like someone awakening from a bad dream.

‘There is no need for us to fight,’ she said. ‘We have done what we came here to do.’

‘Are you sure?’ Felix asked.

‘The threat of the Eye is ended forever.’

Felix glanced down at where the corpse of Krieger should have been. All that remained were some putrefying chunks of flesh, and a few fragments of the broken Eye. As Felix watched the shards turned to dust.

The countess looked at Ulrika. She extended one of her hands. ‘Come with me child. Your progenitor is gone, and there is much you must learn.’

Ulrika strode over to where her father lay. She looked as if she wanted to cry but could not quite remember how. ‘I must bury him first.’

The countess nodded. Ulrika bent and picked up the old man’s corpse as if it were weightless. Felix looked at Gotrek. He wondered if the Slayer were going to attack her. At the moment the dwarf did not look as if he was up to overcoming a puppy let alone a vampire. The explosion had covered him in filth. His eyebrows and crest were singed and smouldering. He bled from a dozen cuts. He appeared barely capable of standing let alone fighting. Snorri Nosebiter sprawled amid the remains of the chandelier. No help there either, Felix thought.

‘What she did was done under the influence of something she could not resist,’ said the countess. ‘She bears you no malice.’

For the first time Ulrika seemed to see them. ‘That is true,’ she said. There was nothing apologetic in her tone though. Her voice was cold and distant and alien. Felix wondered if any trace of the woman he had once known remained.

‘She was as much Krieger’s victim as anyone here. She does not deserve to be punished for something that was not her choice. I will take her and teach her and see that she does no one any harm,’ said the countess. The Slayer started as if he was considering an attack. Felix was surprised at his restraint. Gotrek looked at Ulrika and an odd mixture of emotions flickered across his brutal features.

‘See that you do,’ he said eventually. ‘Or I will come looking for you both.’

The countess knelt down beside Max and touched his forehead gently. ‘He will live,’ she said eventually. ‘When he recovers he will heal you.’

Together the countess and Ulrika left the chamber. Rodrik followed like a lapdog. Gotrek surveyed the shambles of the throne room bleakly and then stared towards the door, as if trying to decide whether he should follow the departing vampires. Eventually he shook his head and slumped wearily to the floor. Felix suddenly realised just how much effort it had cost the Slayer to remain upright.

‘I am spending too much time with humans,’ Gotrek said quietly. ‘I am getting soft.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Felix said. ‘What now?’

‘The forces of Chaos are abroad. There is a war still to be fought, manling, and monsters to be slain. I am sure we will find something to do.’

Groaning, Snorri Nosebiter rose from the wreckage of the chandelier. ‘Good thing something broke Snorri’s fall,’ he said. ‘Now where’s that bloody vampire?’

‘You killed him,’ said Felix.

Snorri Nosebiter looked pleased.

THE TILEAN’S TALISMAN

David Guymer

From now on, Siskritt intended to do as he was told. No more, no less. He cowered beneath the table as the slaughter raged around him. Trembling, he risked a peek through the cage of his own claws. The room resembled the aftermath of a stampede: tables and chairs had been smashed to kindling and the floor rushes were thick with the blood of countless corpses, both skaven and man-thing.

Heedless of the carpet of carrion, the melee swirled on through the same dense smoke that seared Siskritt’s snout. The roar of warpfire flooded his ears as the tavern’s frontage burned, fingers of green-black flame licking hungrily at the beamed ceiling, casting the whole orgy of bloodshed in an unearthly glare and exciting his whiskers with the tang of warpstone.

A sudden crash above his head made him jump and he bit down hard on the pommel stone of his shiny new sword to keep from yelping out loud in terror. A dirty, gold-furred arm fell across his view, the battered wooden shield it bore sliding free and rolling to a halt at his feet. The Horned One’s sigil stared into him. Silently, he screamed into the precious stone. It was a sign. He was going to die here.

Unconsciously, his paw moved to the talisman around his neck.

It had been worth it, whatever happened. The talisman belonged to him now. It would protect him. The horrors of the room seemed to fade as the talisman’s magic seeped through his fur and flesh, flowing lazily up his arms and filling his mind with calm thoughts. He closed his eyes and could almost hear its whispering voice, reassuring him, encouraging him.

He pulled the sword from his mouth and regarded the gleaming blade. This was ridiculous, now that he thought about it. It was just one dwarf.

Siskritt snarled, shaking his head as the moment passed. This was not just any dwarf: it was like a warpstone-powered engine of death.

The dwarf tore its axe from the belly of another skaven, its momentum carrying it through a low spin to take the legs from the next. An iron-shod boot across the struggling warrior’s windpipe put an end to his suffering.

Siskritt watched as the dwarf took advantage of the momentary lull to wipe skaven blood from its good eye.

In the far corner of the tavern, the few surviving man-things still hung on. Backs to the wall and side-by-side, they fought a losing battle against the endless tide.

The dwarf hefted its axe with a sneer. It opened its mouth to speak and, though Siskritt could not make out every word, its joyful belligerence was plain to see. It hurled challenges at the swarming clanrats, cursing their cowardice as the axe bit deeply into their wiry bodies. In a furious panic, skaven warriors turned swords and teeth upon one another, but there was nowhere left to run. With a final roar of laughter, the dwarf barrelled forwards, tossing the survivors aside like grass. It burst through the press of furred bodies, bellowing a war cry as it swung its axe for a warrior that knelt across a prone man-thing on the rush-covered floor.

The skaven sprayed the struggling man-thing’s grimy red cloak with fear-musk and hurriedly raised his blade in defence, but the dwarf’s axe clove the rusted weapon in two like rotten matchwood. The tip skittered off into the darkness as the rune-encrusted axe buried itself in the skaven’s skull.

The man-thing heaved the dead skaven away and clambered upright, suddenly wracked by a fit of coughing as it drew in a lungful of the acrid smoke. Siskritt could not clearly see its face through the haze, but the man-thing was tall, and its armour writhed with green shapes reflected from the spreading warpfire. He recognised it as the dwarf-thing’s companion, Feelicks. The man-thing gabbled something in Reikspiel, but the dwarf merely laughed as it sent another warrior flying with a swipe of its bare fist.

It spoke slowly, in the usual manner of the dwarfs, but Siskritt still struggled to puzzle out their conversation. He cursed bitterly as the exchange passed over his head.

A shrill note from the doorway grabbed the man-thing’s attention as a fresh wave of skaven warriors spilled through the blazing portal. Charging ahead of the rest, a wicked halberd held high in both paws, was a massive, black-furred brute in armour the colour of malachite, a challenge shrieking from his throat.

The dwarf grinned. Its man-thing friend sagged.

Siskritt leapt from his hiding place, sword in paw. He was saved. Nobody was stronger than Krizzak. He rushed to join the battle, already picturing how the grateful chieftain would reward his bravery.

The dwarf lumbered forwards to meet Krizzak’s mighty charge, swinging its axe in a killing arc. At the last instant the giant skaven checked his run and the axe instead tore out the ribcage from one of his more slow-witted brethren. Taking advantage of the mis-strike, Krizzak threw his weight against the dwarf, pinning its weapon and burying his teeth into its neck.

The dwarf bellowed like an enraged bull, and with a strength that defied reason, it ripped the skaven’s jaws clear with its free hand. The dwarf compressed its grip around the huge skaven’s throat, and Krizzak thrashed and squealed – a pathetic, mewling sound that seemed unreal coming from the jaws of the giant warrior – and sank his claws deeply into the dwarf’s bicep. Blood ran freely down the dwarf’s arm, but its hold didn’t loosen. Instead, the dwarf roared and hauled down hard, smashing the skaven’s snout with a brutal headbutt, splattering its own tattooed hide with its foe’s blood and sputum. Krizzak staggered back a pace, shaking his head to clear it before the dwarf’s axe parted it from his shoulders.

Too late, Siskritt realised he was alone, and face-to-face with a monstrosity: the vivid orange mohawk, the skaven gore smeared across the fearsome patterns on its brutish face, the axe wielded with unnatural strength that dripped with the still-warm blood of his kin. He sprayed himself with fear scent.

A faint tinkling skirted the boundaries of his perception, vaguely registering as the sound of his sword clattering to the floor from his trembling fingers.

He was thrown back into his senses by a body bowling into him. He looked up into a familiar face twisted with fear.

‘Crassik?’ he squeaked in surprise. With no time for any further thought, he spun his litter-brother around and shoved him into the dwarf’s path. ‘Fight, Crassik-brother. Kill-kill!’

Whirling away, Siskritt dashed for freedom. He had only to make it to the cellar and from there he could easily lose the dwarf in the tunnels. The cellar, he thought with black despair, why had he not just stayed down in that cellar?

Siskritt stumbled through the shattered furniture away from the rampaging dwarf. Frantically he threw his gaze left and right but could see nothing through the smoke. He forced himself to be calm. Yes! The cellar was to his right; even through the fire he could detect the rancid ale smell. He dashed in that direction, vaulting the bar, only to blunder straight into the man-thing Feelicks. This time he saw its frightful face, blackened with ash and its pale hair pasted to the skin with spatters of blood.

Only their mutual surprise spared Siskritt’s life.

His paws twitched instinctively for his weapon, but too late he recalled how he had dropped it. The man-thing’s eyes widened, and it raised its sword above its head for the killing blow.

Siskritt scrunched his eyes tight and waited for death.

The talisman vibrated on its chain, a muffled bell tolling inside his skull, and for an instant he was enveloped by an incandescent shield of light. The man-thing cried out in alarm as the sword was wrenched from its grip and fired into the ceiling like a missile from a bolt thrower.

Hesitantly, expecting his head to split like a cracked nut if he moved too hastily, Siskritt opened one eye. The man-thing’s sword was buried to the hilt in the rough wooden beams, the owner’s knuckles whitening around the grip as its feet kicked ineffectually at the empty air, trying to turn its own weight and straining muscles to tug the weapon free.

Siskritt tittered and scooped up a fallen blade. It wasn’t his nice new one, but there’d be other swords. The man-thing dropped to the floor empty-handed and spun into a fighting crouch in front of him, raising its fists as he approached. Siskritt rejoiced. Just one unarmed man-thing and he would be free!

Suddenly the man-thing relaxed, a smile splitting its ugly face. Siskritt’s nose twitched at this puzzling behaviour, but the heavy footsteps behind him sent cold dread marching up his spine, scattering all thoughts of the man-thing in its wake.

He spun on his heel as the dwarf approached.

The fighting was over. His kin were all gone and the tavern was a dead place. The only sounds that remained were the crackling of the wooden structure as it was consumed by warpfire, the heaving breaths of the man-thing, and the footfalls of the dwarf that seemed to echo the frantic hammering of his own heart.

‘You!’ he hissed in broken Reikspiel. ‘How you still live-breathe?’

The dwarf raised its axe. ‘Because nothing has killed me yet.’

Siskritt snarled. His talisman would spare him. He lived with the Horned One’s blessing. He sprang forwards, ducking under the dwarf’s swing to stab at its belly. The dwarf swatted aside the flat of his blade on its wrist and, with a deftness of foot that would not have been misplaced on an Eshin assassin, shifted its balance to bring the axe backhanded between Siskritt’s shoulder blades.

As it had before, the talisman flared into life. It caught the axe in mid-swing.

The dwarf roared as the talisman held its weapon in a supernatural grip, the axe’s runes glowing hot as it burrowed into the flickering barrier. The talisman’s song became a scream, filling Siskritt’s ears with pain. Just as he felt he could endure no more, the light fled before the dwarf’s axe, drawing back into the talisman and leaving him deafened and in darkness. He stared at it in disbelief as the dwarf’s axe punched into his spine.

His sword slithered free from nerveless paws and he sank to his knees, crumpling over onto his side. His face struck the floor but he barely felt it, his nose filling with the scent of blood, wood dust and mouldering straw.

The talisman lay before him, amidst the corpses, as far away as its chain would allow, almost as though it were trying to escape him. Siskritt tried to stretch out a paw to reclaim it but his arms no longer obeyed. Sound and colour bled from his world as his vision closed in around the talisman.

Why had it left him? Why could he no longer hear its whispering voice? Why had it betrayed its new master at the moment of his greatest need?

It was the last thing he saw as the darkness claimed him.

Siskritt watched his litter-brother work as the blood ran in tiny rivulets between the flagstones, relishing the fleeting warmth as it moved languidly between his toes. Drawing his sword, he padded over to where the dead man-thing lay, the notched and rusted weapon reflecting nothing of the cellar’s dim torchlight.

He prodded the corpse with the blunted tip of his blade. ‘Fool! Can’t you see, is not the one!’

Crassik sniffed. ‘You sure, Siskritt-brother? Man-things look all same-same to me.’

Siskritt snarled, treasured notions of skaven supremacy offended by his litter-brother’s slack-jawed idiocy. ‘This one doesn’t have it. Is just a child-thing. Look how small it is! And is too pale. The man-things of Tilea have darker hides. You spend more time watching man-things back home, then you not be so stupid-slow.’

He sighed. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that their target should fall so invitingly into their lap; Siskritt had never been overly burdened with the Horned One’s favour.

Vaguely, he realised his litter-brother was still speaking.

‘We must be going-gone. Lesskreep kill-feed for rats if missed.’

‘Fool!’ Siskritt resisted the impulse to lash out. Crassik was nearly twice his size, and not too beholden to his litter-brother’s wits to administer a beating of his own. ‘None will miss us. Who will miss two from so many? None. None will care.’

‘But–’

‘Graaah!’ With a cry of exasperation, Siskritt ignored his better judgement and cuffed the other skaven across the snout. ‘Sneak into man-thing town is what Lesskreep said, and sneak-sneak is what we do. If no other skaven knows this tunnel then is because they are not half so smart as Siskritt. Lesskreep will be pleased.’

And besides, he thought, when he found this man-thing merchant, this Ambrosio Vento, and took the talisman it wore for himself, maybe he would feed Lesskreep to the rats instead…

Siskritt chewed his weapon nervously. If any of that was going to happen, then it had to happen soon. At best, he had an hour before the attack began. When that happened, his opportunity would be lost and the Tilean’s talisman would be looted from its corpse as a pretty bauble by whoever found it first and was strong enough to keep it longest.

And that, Siskritt acknowledged, would not be him.

He returned his attention to the immediate problem, looking up at the ominous portal to the surface world. For so foreboding a thing it was a simple affair: plain and pale-coloured, raised about the height of a man from the floor, and accessible by a half-dozen roughly hewn stone steps. Giant barrels loomed in the shadows on either side like leering trolls as he padded silently towards the steps. A man-thing might have been given pause, but Siskritt was born to darkness.

He pressed his muzzle to the door and listened.

His hearing was exceptional, even by the standards of his own race. He could pick up the strains of several man-thing voices, but they were distant and his grasp of Reikspiel far too rudimentary to pick out one voice amongst so many. He stayed a moment longer, the scent of the damp wood filling his nostrils, until at last he was satisfied he could open the door in safety.

He returned his attention to Crassik. ‘You watch-see, you watch-guard. Understand? You pay attention. I go see. Anyone comes in here you kill-kill. Be quiet.’ He gestured at the dead man-thing. ‘And no eat-eat. You pay attention. You listen for me. I call, you come run-quick. Understand?’

Crassik said nothing, preferring to stare sullenly at his own paws. Siskritt smirked. His litter-brother didn’t want Siskritt to have the talisman for himself, but Siskritt was in charge, and Crassik far too big and stupid to help him steal it. Too bad for Crassik.

‘Understand?’ he repeated.

‘I watch tunnel. Come run quick-quick. I understand.’

Siskritt took a deep, steadying breath, cracked open the door, and scuttled hesitantly into the light.

It was blinding. And terrifying.

With trembling paws, Siskritt clung to the door frame, reassuring himself that escape was possible at any time. Gradually, the white glare began to fade and a vision of a smoothly cut, upward sloping stone passageway came into focus. A high-pitched squeak, well beyond the range of feeble man-thing ears, escaped his lips.

It was strange, he thought, to be so fearful of walking amongst the man-things. He had spent many nights crouched in the shadows of Sartosa, ever alert for even the most meagre of opportunities for his own advancement. But the Tilean port city was a warren of bolt holes and hiding places from years of discreet skaven exploration, and Siskritt knew every inch of it better than the scratches on his own claws. Even now, after many weeks’ absence, he could picture its close, densely shadowed alleys, filled with the detritus of a city awash with poverty and prosperity in equal measure.

Feeling emboldened by thoughts of home, he managed to slide one foot-paw forwards. He winced slightly, half expecting his leg to be burned from his body by the unfamiliar environment. When it was not, he felt his courage return like a rising tide. He flitted along the passageway’s upward incline, moth-like, towards the second doorway, cowering beneath the open frame to peer at the man-things beyond.

He supposed it was some kind of common room, typical the world over of all man-thing buildings of similar function, no doubt: wide, straw-covered floor; high ceiling supported by sagging beams and joists; a score of rectangular tables and short stools littering the floor space; and a long bar opposite the doorway.

The room was near deserted. His sharp eyes counted no more than a dozen men: the old, the sick and the crippled. Their conversations were muted, and their eyes were dead inside haunted faces. Siskritt cared not for their fears.

Upon their first arrival in the Badlands, the clan had stirred up the local orc-thing tribes who had gone on to burn a swathe through this barren corner of the Old World. It had been the grey seer’s plan and Siskritt couldn’t help but admire the old skaven’s cleverness, even though the merest thought of the grey-furred rat set loose the fear of the Horned One himself in his soul. At the cost of a few hundred clan warriors, the seer had unleashed a horde of the orcs into the man-thing territories, and even now most of those of an age to fight were somewhere out in the Badlands hoping to repel the supposed marauders. And while orc and man-thing slaughtered each other in the fields, Siskritt and his kin would rise up to claim what remained.

Siskritt peeked out from the doorway and behind the length of the bar, pulling his head back to relative safety with all the speed of a serpent’s flickering tongue. He snarled silently, nibbling at his dulled sword blade in consternation.

The bar was just a single stretch of plain wood with nothing at either end. It could give him a clear and concealed run across the common room, and to the stairway he had glimpsed at its opposite end. Were it not, that was, for the fat man-thing standing squarely in the way as though placed there by the Horned One himself as some wicked taunt. Siskritt bit down hard on the metal as he took another, more measured, look.

Tasting iron on his lips, he withdrew his sword and hefted it thoughtfully. These men were on the very brink of madness after months of war against the orc-things, their soft minds ready to snap, to be sure. Catching the fat one unawares, Siskritt could kill it easily and swiftly – both things he liked – and he suspected there was a good chance that these others would not come willingly to its aid. He could be gone and away before anyone caught a glimpse of him. A good chance…

But not good enough a chance for Siskritt. He liked to deal in certainties. Anything less left a chance for error, and when the cost of failure was so high…

Well, what in this world could be more valuable than his own life?

Not for the first time that day, he cursed the haste he’d been forced into. He didn’t like it. It made his fur crawl and his tail itch. Every sound and shadow sent his heart into his mouth. As if skaven lives were not already too short! He didn’t understand the rush, and that bothered him. What bothered him much more was the danger that that entailed for him. Damn that stupid grey seer, and damn Hellpaw too! Siskritt didn’t understand how someone as big and frightening as the warlord could be pushed around by anyone, even the insidious Thanquol.

He shivered. He had met the grey seer just once, and then only briefly, for he had felt a sudden urge to be anywhere but in that infamous skaven’s presence.

What was Thanquol after? He’d have given anything to find out. He shivered again, and changed his mind. He really didn’t want to know.

He gnawed upon his blade to keep his fear in check and chanced another look along the bar. The fat man-thing was lost in conversation, but he could neither see to whom he was speaking nor understand the words he uttered. Nor did he much care. All he could see was a few inches of bright orange hair flaring up from behind the bar. Yet another child-thing; this place seemed infested with them.

Riven with indecision, he hopped back and forth, one foot to the next, expelling some of the anxious energy that was bubbling up inside him. He had come too far, risked too much, to be thwarted at the last by… by a… a stupid, fat man-thing.

His racing thoughts were disturbed by a distant scream from somewhere outside the tavern. His ears pricked up, though none of the man-things seemed to notice. As if the first had been some kind of signal, the strains of pained and frightened man-thing voices started rising from all across the town, merging together with the sound of slamming doors and of weapons being drawn. It was a cacophony that was most pleasing to Siskritt.

At last, the noise reached the weak ears of the man-things. They raised wrinkled faces from their cups and muttered to each other fearfully. Siskritt found most of what was spoken incomprehensible, but one word stood out, a word that was common to all lands and languages of men throughout the world.

Orcs.

He couldn’t help but smirk. Yes man-things, he thought, turn to face the orc-thing that isn’t there, and die with a skaven sword in your back. It was at times such as this that the sheer magnificence of the skaven intellect simply demanded to be recognised.

Muffled noises filtered through the sturdy walls of the tavern: confused shouts, screams, the pounding of running boots on cobbles, and the dull clamour of steel on steel.

The men shuffled nervously from the doorway and towards the bar, perilously close to where Siskritt lay hidden. For a moment he feared that man-thing soldiers would come bursting in, but such fears were instantly scattered by the roar of an explosion, close enough to rattle the door in its hinges and bring clouds of dust and grime streaming from the rafters, sending the man-things into fits of coughing. He flinched momentarily, but gripped the wooden frame tightly to steel his nerve.

The fat man-thing cursed in words Siskritt did not know, before reaching behind it to a spot on the wall that was hidden from Siskritt’s view and plucking a giant war hammer from a sconce. Siskritt gulped to see the ease with which the silver-haired man-thing hefted the massive weapon, seeing for the first time the broad shoulders and powerful muscles that had lain hidden beneath thick rolls of fat. A former adventurer settled down for retirement, no doubt. He should’ve suspected as much. In many ways life in the Badlands bore similarity to life in the clans: only the strongest could survive and thrive.

Again, he cursed the enforced haste. If he could have had just one day to scout the tavern…

The innkeeper strode across the room with a calm authority, its hammer glowing with an inner power. Finally the fat one neared the door, squat and suddenly forbidding as if it were a portal to the Chaos Wastes themselves. Before it could lay hands upon the handle, a voice spoke out. Its words were in slow, deliberate Reikspiel, and Siskritt could just about make them out.

‘I wouldn’t open that door just yet, manling.’

The speaker strode from where it had been hidden behind the bar. The enormous orange mohawk came into view like the sails of a smuggler’s ship rounding the horizon, followed by the muscular, heavily tattooed shoulders of a dwarf Slayer.

The fat one turned to the dwarf to say something that seemed to Siskritt to be quite innocuous, but the dwarf spat back a venomous reply that was far too quick for him to follow. The man-thing dropped its eyes and raised an empty palm in surrender, and spoke again, this time more softly.

Siskritt cursed the man-things and their pointless plethora of languages and dialects. He would gladly have traded a paw to know what it was they were saying.

The dwarf cast the innkeeper a glance before returning his stare to the doorway. The man-thing towered above him, but the dwarf had an aura that dominated the room. Even Siskritt felt himself hanging on his next words. ‘I don’t know, manling. I’m just looking forward to killing it.’

Siskritt snickered. Foolish dwarf-man, no orc-things for you this day.

Taking one last look, he scurried behind the protection of the bar and dashed with silent haste to its far end. It was only a short hop from the bar to the shelter of the stairway. His ears twitched as the sounds of battle drifted closer.

A green-black glow was streaming through the cracks in the door, accompanied by the murderous crackle of warpfire, bathing the man-things in a ghastly light. The air was practically fizzing with warpstone ash. There was a brief struggle in the street outside: shouts, screams, shrill squeaks, and metal sliding though meat. The door rattled angrily, as though something soft and heavy had just been thrown against it. The wail of a man-thing melted into a gurgle and, by its silhouette, Siskritt saw it slump against the outside of the door.

Suddenly, it was as though a spell of quietude had been broken.

The fat one began bellowing orders and the man-things snapped into life. Tables and chairs were dragged into a crude barricade, while those that had them readied their weapons. Siskritt picked out ridiculous names called between the man-things: Roodolf, Gunter, Holegur, Feelicks. The one named Roodolf hurried for the cellar door, fumbling with a heavy iron ring of keys.

The sense of entrapment closed in upon him like claws around his throat. Between the rising barricade and the man-thing Roodolf, there was no way out. Panic rose in him as Roodolf drew closer and closer.

Grah! Now or never!

Half running, half crawling, he scrambled across the straw covered boards and behind the thin wall of stone that partitioned the stairway from the common room. He came gasping to a halt on the first step as he waited for his panicked heart to slow. Silently, he promised himself he would never ever do anything like this again.

He glanced back around the wall just in time to watch the man-thing disappear down into the cellar. For a short moment he thought of Crassik; he would not grieve for the idiot, but the sudden feeling of isolation wormed its way through his veins. He was alone, trapped in the lair of the man-things!

He took a deep breath, and though the air was thick with man-thing fear, he felt calmer. Crassik or no Crassik, he had always been alone. One Siskritt amidst a hundred thousand less deserving skaven. He ignored the shouts and noises of the busy man-things and returned his attention to the task in hand. The talisman was so close now he could almost feel its weight around his neck.

The stairway was short. He counted ten bare wooden treads leading up to the building’s second level, but they were widely spaced, more suitable for the long stride of a man-thing than for Siskritt’s short legs. He leapt delicately from one step to the next, taking great care to land silently, though he doubted the sound of a creaking board would carry far above the excited chittering of a thousand clanrat warriors closing in on an easy kill.

The upper floor was better kept than the lower. A wide, carpeted hallway stretched ahead of him, its stained and faded patterns barely visible after years of wear. To the left was an evenly spaced trio of low, recessed doorways leading to the guest rooms, each one carved with the likeness of a different fantastical beast. He could not quite discern the carvings on the further two, but the nearest door carried a rendering of a three-headed chimera, sufficiently lifelike to make him squeak out in alarm when he rounded the corner to find it six inches away and glaring into his face.

The wall to the right was broken by several wide and intricately leaded windows, and the view beyond was one to warm the heart of any skaven.

The city burned.

Half of the skyline was alight, with pockets of green-tinged flame in hotspots throughout the city. Siskritt’s heart swelled at the inherent greatness of his race. Let the foolish man-things sit behind their walls and battlements. How useless they were in the face of skaven cunning. He watched as another explosion carried the roof from a nearby building, its walls bursting like overripe fruit to be consumed by the warpstone-fuelled fires.

The flames painted the hall with an eerie green light through the windows, as though Siskritt himself swam in molten warpstone, trapped behind glass for the amusement of some half-crazed Clan Skryre warlock.

He was dragged from his reverie by a sound from further along the hallway, and he dived through the chimera door just as a pair of armed men clattered past him and down the stairs. From the furthest doorway a voice yelled after them in the Tilean tongue that Siskritt knew well.

‘I’m the one that pays you, you ungrateful dogs! Not this excuse for a city!’

For a few moments, Siskritt could hear the man-thing still hanging upon the threshold as if fully expecting its minions to return.

‘Fine then! Die together, all of you!’

The door slammed closed and Siskritt grinned to be the beneficiary of such unlikely luck. Listening to his prey’s former bodyguards lending their efforts to the man-things below, Siskritt mouthed a silent thanks to the munificence of the Horned One.

He spared a glance over the empty, unmade chimera room. The eldritch warplight from outside cast long shadows that flickered and danced across the walls and ceiling. Even in this state, the room smacked of human luxuries he could only imagine… But one day soon he would have all of this, and more. He squeezed his eyes tight with pleasure at the prospect. His paw closed over his chest where his talisman might soon rest. Yes, he would have all this and much more besides.

He crept back into the hallway, reassuring himself that the Tilean’s guards were fully occupied downstairs and would not be returning any time soon. Satisfied, he moved lightly past the second guestroom – a manticore, he thought – and around a long table towards the third.

Suddenly, a low rumble vibrated its way up through his feet. He stared out of the window in horror as the tall building across the street subsided into an evidently ill-judged skaven tunnel, burying hundreds of panicked clanrats as they swarmed clear. Broken tiles tumbled from its roof and peppered the rough stucco walls of the inn. As realisation finally dawned, Siskritt rolled under the table just as the tiles from the building’s elevated garret smashed through the windows, showering the hall with glass and heavy lengths of gritty lead that thundered against his scant cover. Rolling into a ball, he buried his face in his fur until the scraping of settling rubble and the thin cries of buried skaven told him the barrage had ceased.

Timidly, he unblocked his ears and poked his snout from his hiding place. The sounds of slaughter came clearly now through the voided windows, the wind laced with screams and heavy with the scent of smoke and burning flesh. He took a sniff, but he could smell little beyond his own blood, welling up where a sliver of glass had lacerated the soft flesh of his nose. Squeaking alarm, he squashed his bloodied snout beneath the tattered sleeve of his tunic.

The last wisps of courage fled his body with the blood from his precious nose and he scampered clear of the table, blind to everything but the instinct to escape. He collided headlong into a wall, collapsing tail-over-head into a heap before righting himself in a blur of blood and fur. Witless with panic, he trembled in the shadow of the wall, catching short rapid gasps of the charnel house air. Slowly, his nerve returned and he gingerly pulled his sleeve from his face. He gave his nose a tentative dab with the cleaner – relatively speaking – side and almost fainted with relief when it came away bloodless.

He gave the cloth an experimental sniff. Blood, dirt, faeces. All of the familiar smells.

Using the window ledge for support, he pulled himself upright, tiny slivers of glass twinkling from his fur in the fiery green glow, and peered down into what remained of the street below.

The man-thing city was overrun. The sounds of fighting continued in more distant quarters, but here clanrat hordes flowed through the thoroughfares like high-tide in the Sartosa marina, and the only sounds to punctuate their excited chittering were the cries for mercy of the nearly dead.

Everywhere, he could see skaven warriors spilling from open doorways carrying looted treasures and man-things: the living, the dead, and the half-consumed. The inn itself seemed to have checked their advance, a lone bulwark placed in the path of an unstoppable tide. One particularly creative skaven had fashioned a battering ram from an abandoned cart and was attempting to smash through to the last pocket of defenders within. Siskritt watched with detached disdain as the impromptu siege engine fell apart under the pressure without having made a dent in the heavy doors.

Fools. Someone would pay for that failure. Siskritt could have done better.

True enough, some poor unfortunate – whether the guilty party or no – had already been run through by one of his nearest compatriots, and a maddened brawl broke out before normality was restored by a high-pitched barrage of threats and bluster from a larger rat in the muddied green armour of the clan.

As Siskritt watched this minor sideshow unfold, the excitement in the street had quite palpably turned up a notch. Scanning the crowd, he could just about discern a huge black-furred skaven arriving from a side street.

It was Krizzak, Hellpaw’s feared lieutenant and second in command of the whole clan. He and his stormvermin elite were shoving a path through their lesser brethren, while a group of smaller figures trailed behind in his wake, clutching an unlikely array of machinery in their paws.

Siskritt’s nose twitched.

Lubricant… accelerant… a cocktail of chemicals he couldn’t begin to identify but had learned, through hard experience, to recognise a mile away. The delicious taint of warpstone reached his nostrils with bleak inevitability.

Warpfire thrower!

‘No, no, no. Now-now Siskritt, before whole wretched man-thing place comes down!’

He turned to face the final door, carved into the features of some kind of a feathered monster. A griffon… Or possibly a cockatrice? He didn’t care. It was nothing but the final obstacle between himself and the first step on his path to greatness. His fur tingled.

Drawing his sword, he kicked at the door with a snarl. Once. Twice.

On the third kick the lock gave and the door burst inwards. He charged through, experiencing a bravado that came only through an immediate sense of absolute mortal terror, his blade held before him as though he had a rabid plague rat by the tail.

At that exact moment, the side wall of the tavern was wreathed in a great gout of warpfire from the crew below. The surviving windows exploded inwards as fiery tendrils licked at the beams and plasterwork. Siskritt screeched in terror as he was hurled from his feet and into the room on billowing wings of unholy flame.

The Tilean merchant threw itself to the floor and wailed as Siskritt descended upon it, wreathed in a halo of green-black fire. A pewter goblet it had been clutching fell from its fingers, the blood-red contents already spilled over its silken finery.

Ignoring the stupid man-thing entirely, Siskritt hissed and snarled as he swatted out small fires in his fur and clothing, his tail spinning an intricate spider’s web of afterimages as its flickering tip lashed through the air. His wild eyes darted about the room seeking some means of escape…

But then they settled upon the talisman.

He caught his breath and his eyes narrowed, terror at once overcome by a fierce, jealous avarice. It was here. It would be his!

With wisps of smoke rising from his warpfire-scorched fur, he advanced towards the snivelling man-thing, crushing the fallen goblet beneath his paws as it scrambled backwards. He was invincible. I am Siskritt, fearsome and great, scourge of the man-things, and soon-to-be favoured of the Horned Rat!

The man-thing, who Siskritt knew was called Ambrosio, retreated until it sank into the corner, its eyes dilated with fear and its face slack with incomprehension. Siskritt had little sympathy as he closed the distance between them with short, quick steps. Despite all the evidence before their flabby noses, the man-things continued to refute the very existence of the skaven.

A Tilean of all people, dwelling in the shadow of Skavenblight itself, should know better.

‘W-wh… what…’ The man-thing cowered like a monkey cornered by a bird of prey. It might be better dressed than a monkey, it might be taller, but its flapping lips gabbled no less gibberish.

‘Quiet, man-thing. Be silent-still.’

‘Y-you speak Tilean! Are you a daemon sent to punish me?’

Siskritt responded with a burst of chittering laughter. ‘Yes-yes. I’m a daemon of… of… man-thing gods. Give me talisman and I’ll go away-gone.’

He held out an expectant paw. He hoped the man-thing didn’t notice how it trembled. He hoped the man-thing’s weak nose couldn’t smell his fear scent.

The man-thing started to weep, tears scouring twin trails over its sand-worn cheeks. Ambrosio folded down to grovel at Siskritt’s feet, either uncaring or blindly unaware of the man-thing blood that was congealed there, spongy and soft like jelly.

Siskritt cocked his head in bafflement as the man-thing began to babble a litany of supposed sins for which it was, of course, wholly repentant. The whole spectacle might have been amusing were he not so pressed for time. His back blistered in the terrible heat, and alarming groans of tortured wooden beams spread through the building. Not far below his feet, he heard the solid doors of the tavern collapse.

There would have been no need for orders. The weight of warriors filling the street would be pushing the nearest skaven through the hanging curtain of cinders and into the inn where the frightened man-things waited. The first dozen might die in agony, stepping in molten metal, fur set alight by dancing flames. Already, the frantic screams of skaven and man-thing were echoing through the smoky corridors like the unquiet spirits of the damned. Ambrosio snivelled on the carpeted floor as the sounds of chaos and carnage grew.

It was only through an effort of great will that Siskritt did not snivel right alongside the man-thing. He held his paw outstretched. ‘The talisman, man-thing! Hurry-Hurry.’

‘M-my talisman? Of course. It belonged to a man I sold as a slave. Am I being punished for that sin? If I buy back his freedom, will I be allowed to live?’

‘Yes-yes, man-thing will live! Just give talisman quick-quick or foolish man-thing die!’

Fingers sticky with sweat, Ambrosio yanked at the chain about its neck, the links tearing at its straggly beard in its haste to see the item removed. It pressed the talisman eagerly into Siskritt’s paws as though relieving itself of a curse from the gods.

Siskritt beamed with delight. In a way, it was.

His gaze settled on the talisman in his paws as though pulled by a puppeteer’s strings. The chaos of battle ebbed away as the talisman held his full attention. Long seconds passed with only the sound of his own breathing and, if he closed his eyes, the faintest whispering inside his mind, congratulating him on being such a clever skaven. So much work, so much risk, so much planning, and now it was his. Lovingly, he traced his claws across its surface.

The talisman was jet black within a latticework of platinum and a long silver chain. Even were it not magical, this pendant could doubtless have bought him his own clan. But magic it was; Siskritt could feel it. It felt unnaturally heavy in his paw given its size, and it had a presence, as though it was regarding him in return.

He pushed the eeriness aside and popped the chain around his neck, the talisman falling to rest against his thighs.

He felt strong. The man-thing had kept the talisman hidden beneath his silks, but Siskritt let it hang over his rags with pride. Let the others know I am a skaven to be reckoned with!

Ambrosio sank to one knee, having seemingly travelled through the veil of madness and well beyond the other side. ‘I have served you, servant of the gods. Will you keep your promise to me? Will you permit me to live?’

Siskritt shuffled forwards and reached down for the sword in the man-thing’s hand. The merchant released its grip willingly. Siskritt held the blade in his admiring hand. It was a long and beautiful weapon, double-edged with a cruciform hilt and tapered to a wicked point that drew blood when he laid his finger upon it. Elegant lettering traced the length of the blade from tip to hilt. He recognised the curling Arabyan script, but he could no more read it than he could this man-thing’s mind.

It was a fine weapon indeed.

Siskritt looked up at Ambrosio. ‘Of course I help, man-thing. You help-help, I help-help.’

The merchant followed him out into the hallway, but it paused at the shattered windows. The wind was angry and its breath was hot with fiery green cinders, roasted meat, and blood: always the pervasive iron whisper on the tongue, of blood.

Ambrosio was aghast. ‘What has happened here? Have I brought this terror upon them all?’

‘Quiet now, man-thing. I say Siskritt will help you.’

The street was largely empty, barring a few hold-outs that had successfully avoided the fighting. The whole frontage of the building was alight with warpfire, and even just standing here at the window was uncomfortably akin to being strung above some hungry giant’s fireplace.

Silently, Siskritt crept up behind Ambrosio. Jumping up from one leg, he planted a firm kick with the other into the merchant’s back. Had it been further from the window it might not have fallen, but its clumsy feet caught on the base of the wall and tipped it over the edge, its silks flapping madly in the rising heat as it pitched forwards with an undignified yelp. The man-thing disappeared into the flames before it had even a chance to scream.

An ominous groan from the floorboards beneath the steaming carpet sent Siskritt scurrying for the stairwell. Somehow, the fighting downstairs raged on and he could hear the booming war cry of the crazed dwarf rallying the survivors for a final stand. Siskritt drew his enchanting new weapon and waited for the right moment to join in the fray. He was injured and bloodied: no one could claim that he hadn’t been present all along.

He fondled his talisman and grinned; a smile filled with wicked, yellowing teeth. He could almost taste the greatness that would soon be his. Lesskreep, Krazzik, Hellpaw, and yes, even Thanquol. They would all recognise his power.

He flew down the stairs like a shadow to rejoin his victorious brethren.

Gotrek spared his companion a glance before walking over to where the last ratman lay. He pulled his axe free from the dead creature’s spine, the blade coming loose with a wet squeal of bone and a small gout of dark blood. Almost as an afterthought, he stamped down on the pathetic creature’s little trinket, grinding the black shards into dust beneath his boot.

He scanned the room, looking for more enemies but, disappointingly, there appeared to be none left alive.

Felix came up behind him, hacking and wheezing in the smoke. ‘Now, may we leave? Or are you going to insist on having one more drink first?’

Gotrek ignored him, instead clambering up onto one of the few remaining tables and grabbing the hilt of his companion’s runesword. He tugged it free from the ceiling without the slightest effort. Agape, Felix almost failed to catch the weapon as Gotrek tossed it over to him.

‘No,’ he said finally. ‘The ale in this place tastes like orc-spit.’

Felix raised a blood-caked eyebrow, and shrugged before starting for the cellar door. Gotrek stopped him with a raised meaty fist.

‘Where do you think you’re going, manling?’

‘That last ratman was headed this way, obviously there’s a way out.’

Gotrek shook his head and laughed his deep, gruff laugh. Lumbering into a run, he drove through the flames and out into the street. The sounds of battle resumed.

Felix sighed as he swallowed a curse. ‘A burning city filled with an army of ratmen? Of course we’re going that way.’

A CASK OF WYNTERS

Josh Reynolds

‘Snorri is working up a thirst!’ Snorri Nosebiter shouted as he gleefully brought his hammer down on the pointed skull of a goblin. The goblin made a sound like mud squelching underfoot and dropped to the forest floor. It spasmed as Snorri stepped over it and wrenched his hatchet out of its companion. The second goblin toppled forwards from where Snorri’s thrown axe had impaled it against a scrub pine. Wiping the blade against his breeches, he took in the scene.

The goblins had sprung their ambush with all the cunning of born backstabbers. A full thirty of the stunted humanoids had raced from concealment the moment Snorri and his companions had begun their ascent of the slope. Clad in filthy cloaks and hoods covered in branches and leaves, the goblins were obviously old hands at ambushing merchants brave enough to use a route other than the Old Dwarf Road through Black Fire Pass.

Unfortunately for them, Snorri and his companions were anything but merchants. Case in point, Volg Staahl of Averheim, the leader of the impromptu expedition. Staahl was sometimes called ‘the Voluminous’; he was a big man with an even bigger voice. Clad in battered plate-mail, he roared out a bawdy drinking song as he swept three goblins off their feet with one swing of his massive sword.

‘Haha! Hurry up, Slayer. Winner buys the drinks!’ Staahl bellowed, his ginger beard coated with goblin blood. Near to him, all three of his fellow knights were giving a good account of themselves. But then, the templars of the Order of the Black Bear had had plenty of practice fighting goblins. Indeed, other than halfling coursing, it was their favourite pastime. Staahl and his brother knights had left the warm alehouses of Averheim for the cold peaks of Black Fire Pass on a mission of honour, as well as by the request of the final member of their party.

A few feet away from the knights, the individual in question drove the wicked hook that had replaced his left hand into a goblin’s ear and broke the creature’s scrawny neck with a vicious jerk. He was a dwarf and, like Snorri, a Slayer, though his crest was a small thing yet and his beard had yet to recover fully from its ritual shearing in the Temple of Grimnir. He called himself Grudi Halfhand, though the brothers of the Black Bear knew him by a different name.

Once, Grudi had been Grudi Wynters, son of Olgep Wynters, Master-Brewer and personal friend of Caspian Rodor, former Grandmaster of the Order of the Black Bear. Now, both Rodor and Wynters were dead, and the brewery with them. That was why they were all here today, fighting goblins on the scrub slopes of the Black Mountains.

Whistling cheerfully, Snorri trotted towards the melee, the fading sunlight glinting off the trio of nails hammered into the crown of his skull. ‘Save some for Snorri, fatty!’ he said, picking up speed. The Slayer catapulted himself at the last moment, hurling himself into the goblin ranks like a thunderbolt, his hatchet and hammer swinging.

‘Don’t call me fatty, stumpy!’ Staahl growled, plucking a goblin up and snapping its neck. He tossed the carcass at Snorri and it bounced off the Slayer’s massive shoulders. Snorri laughed unapologetically and stamped on a goblin.

The goblin gave a strangled squeak, and then silence fell on the slope. Snorri looked around, disappointment settling on him like a cloak. ‘Oh. Are they all dead then?’

‘No. Some of them buggered off,’ one of the knights said wearily, sinking into a sitting position on a dry log. He removed his helmet and ran a hand through his sweaty hair. Big and blond, Angmar of Nordland was a novice of the order, though his sour expression spoke of a man with more than his share of experiences, and most of those bad. ‘Still alive, brothers?’ he continued. The other two knights answered back, one after the next. They were a motley duo, even among the less than orderly ranks of the Knights of the Black Bear.

‘I yet live, and the ladies of Averheim can rest easy,’ said Flanders Drahl, a beautifully moustachioed student of the Marienburg school of duelling for fun and profit. He carried not a longsword but a rapier, and wore only a light hauberk of leather and ringmail. Near him was Grim Hogan, a Kislevite with a face like a stormcloud and a heavy mace that was stained with blood.

‘Pah. Goblins. They are no threat,’ he grunted. ‘They flee like rats at the slightest sign of resistance.’

‘And why wouldn’t they flee? We are mighty warriors, are we not?’ Grudi Halfhand barked, thumping his bare chest with his hook. He blanched a moment later, and spent a tense few seconds trying to extricate the tip of his prosthesis from the meat of his tattooed chest. Snorri chuckled and the other Slayer glared at him. ‘Well, some of us are mighty warriors,’ he said nastily. ‘Others are just senile old rust-skulls!’

‘Right now Snorri doesn’t feel mighty so much as thirsty,’ Snorri said, ignoring the jibe. ‘Where is this brewery of yours, Grudi Halfhand? Where is the cask of Wynters you promised Snorri?’

‘It is here, Nosebiter. Just up the slope,’ Grudi said, running the curve of his hook across his bristly crest. ‘Right where I left–’ He stopped and flushed. ‘Right where I last saw it.’

Snorri grunted. The two Slayers were as different as night and day: Grudi was young and eager to die, while Snorri was… Snorri.

Bigger and wider than most dwarfs, Snorri Nosebiter was a barrel of muscle covered in equal parts scar-tissue and tattoos. His crest, composed of three orange nails, had once been brightly painted, but it had since become tarnished, chipped and rusty. Grudi wondered whether the latter was at least partially responsible for Snorri’s distinct lack of precociousness. Rust on the brain couldn’t be anything other than harmful. But then, the same could be said of the nails.

‘Snorri thinks we should find that beer, Grudi Halfhand,’ Snorri continued, slapping one tree-trunk thigh with his hammer. ‘Killing goblins makes Snorri thirsty.’

‘Everything makes Snorri thirsty!’ Grudi said, waving his hook under Snorri’s nose. ‘Breathing makes Snorri thirsty! If Snorri needed a drink so badly, he should have stayed in Averheim!’

‘And what fun would that have been, when all of Snorri’s friends were here?’ Snorri said.

‘We’re glad to have old Snorri aren’t we, lads?’ Staahl said, clapping a hand on Snorri’s shoulder. ‘Anyone who can outdrink twelve cubs of the order in a single night is a worthy companion on this quest!’

‘I still say he cheated,’ Hogan said. ‘A hollow leg, perhaps.’

‘The only thing hollow on Snorri is his head,’ Grudi said, his hook still waving under Snorri’s nose.

‘Don’t make fun of Snorri,’ Snorri said gently, pushing the hook away. ‘You haven’t earned the right.’ Grudi hesitated, and then drew his hook back. He swallowed thoughtfully. It was easy to forget that the old Slayer had survived more than his share of battles, even as dim as he was. They said Snorri had fought a daemon once, or at least survived an encounter with one. Grudi, in contrast, had had his hand bitten off by an orc. It had been a big orc, but still… Not quite so glorious, all things considered. ‘Only Snorri’s friends can make fun of him,’ Snorri continued, looking around.

‘Snorri must have plenty of friends then,’ Grudi muttered.

‘One or two,’ Snorri said, giving Grudi a gap-toothed grin. The grin faded as the Slayer recalled the last time he had seen Gotrek Gurnisson and Felix Jaeger. He had been dragged into a glowing portal by a hurricane of daemonic tendrils, and Gotrek had, unfortunately, rescued him. Catapulted out of the portal, he had collided with the wizard Max Schreiber and been knocked unconscious. When he and the wizard had come to, both Gotrek and Felix were gone and the portal had been dark.

Where the duo had gone, or what their eventual fate had been, Snorri did not know. Schreiber’s magic could not find them, and though Snorri had made a pilgrimage of Gotrek’s old haunts, no one had heard from the one-eyed Slayer. It had been three years since then, and Snorri was coming to think that Gotrek had just possibly met his doom at last.

Which would be just like Gotrek as well: selfish to the last, hogging a mighty doom and leaving poor Snorri to settle for something more boring. Because whatever else you could say about Gurnisson, it was a certainty that he was destined for an end worthy of at least two sagas; possibly three. ‘Though Snorri would like a saga too,’ he muttered. ‘Just a little one.’

‘What?’ Grudi said, looking askance at him.

‘Snorri was saying that he hates goblins. They give Snorri the runs something awful.’

Grudi turned with his mouth open to ask the obvious question. Seeing the look of innocent obliviousness on Snorri’s face, he stopped short and drove past it. ‘We all hate grobi,’ he said. ‘Even other grobi hate grobi.’

‘These goblins were foragers,’ Drahl said, kicking one of the bodies. ‘Orcs will send them out to catch game of one size or another.’

‘Then they’re still up there,’ Hogan said. ‘How many was it again, Halfhand? A hundred? Three?’ He looked at the younger Slayer, his eyes as hard as flint. ‘How many took the brewery?’

‘No more than a dozen after we got through with them!’ Grudi protested.

‘Snorri will take the first six then,’ Snorri said, scratching at his head with his hatchet. ‘You lot can split the rest.’

‘Hardly fair,’ Staahl rumbled. ‘One for each?’

‘Have them all, if you like. My only concern is the honour of our order,’ Angmar said. ‘I intend to see that we get what is ours.’ He stood and replaced his helmet. ‘Come on. If we’re going to fight orcs, I’d rather not do it in the dark.’

‘Spoilsport,’ Snorri said, stuffing his weapons into his belt. ‘Snorri once fought an orc with both eyes covered in dung.’

‘Was this before or after you routed a daemon horde in the Chaos Wastes?’ Grudi said, waggling his eyebrows. ‘Or was it around the time you crawled down a dragon’s gullet and killed it with its own fangs?’

‘After. And before,’ Snorri said, peering hard at the other dwarf. ‘Are you making fun of Snorri again?’

‘No,’ Grudi said firmly, resting his axe on his shoulder. He looked at the knights. ‘If we hurry, we can reach the brewery by dusk.’

‘Perfect!’ Staahl said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Just in time for a drink, eh, Snorri?’ he continued, nudging the Slayer. ‘We’ll drink to old Rodor’s memory. Him and mad, bad Leitdorf!’ Grandmaster Rodor had fallen in battle alongside the former Elector Count of Averland, Marius Leitdorf, battling an orc invasion the previous year.

It was the dregs of that same invasion that had caused the death of Olgep Wynters and taken the second-best brewery ever produced by the elder race for themselves. Snorri shuddered slightly, thinking of all that ale and beer going to waste in grobi gullets. If that wasn’t a crime worthy of a grudge he didn’t know what was.

‘Snorri doesn’t just want a drink. He wants Wynters,’ he said, rubbing his palm over the flat heads of his nail crest. The knights murmured in agreement. As a friend of their order, Wynters had supplied them with enough drink to drown a village, a gift the boisterous knights never took for granted. There were few enough places that would serve them in Averheim these days thanks to their penchant for un-knightly behaviour, and a ready supply of alcohol was considered a necessity by the members of the order.

But Wynters’ Own was special. It was rumoured to be the perfect blend of tastes and ingredients, a drink that even the dwarf gods themselves would fall to fighting over.

Grudi made a face. ‘And if the greenskins have left any, you’re welcome to it. It’ll be the last of it, and likely all the sweeter because of that,’ the young Slayer said grimly. ‘I’m the last of my clan, and I’ll brew no more.’ He gestured uphill. ‘Let us go.’

As the group set off, Snorri ambled alongside Staahl. The big knight looked down at Snorri and said, ‘Is it really as good as they say?’

‘Better, Snorri thinks,’ Snorri said, smacking his lips. ‘Wynters was almost as good as Bugman’s Best. Makes Snorri’s mouth tingle just to think of it.’

‘No wonder old Rodor had himself sealed inside a cask of it when he popped off,’ Staahl said, shaking his head. ‘Should have seen the party we had to celebrate his passing, my friend. It was a glorious thing. Glorious!’ This last was said in a roar that set the birds to flying from the trees.

Angmar whirled. ‘Quiet, you great oaf!’

‘Is that any way to talk to your Grandmaster?’ Staahl blustered.

‘When that Grandmaster is you? Yes!’

‘He’s loud,’ Snorri said.

Staahl nodded. ‘And unpleasant. You’d think he’d show me a bit of respect, considering my august status.’ Staahl had been voted into position as head of the diminutive order after a drinking contest that had lasted for forty-eight hours. As the last man with seniority standing (or swaying), he’d taken Rodor’s seat for his own.

It was during this same contest that Rodor’s body had been ceremoniously stuffed into a cask of Wynters XVI in a ritual overseen by the old brew-master himself. On the anniversary of Rodor’s death, every man in the order was to take a ceremonial drink from the grave-cask of Caspian Rodor. No man alive had ever tasted such a batch, it being reserved for dwarf kings and heroes. There were many stories as to how Rodor had warranted such treatment, but as to which was true, no one could say save Olgep Wynters, and he was dead.

Unfortunately, when the brewery had fallen to the greenskins, the grave-cask had fallen with it. A fact that the notoriously inobservant order had been unaware of until the newly shorn and christened Grudi Halfhand had shown up on the very day his father was due to escort the cask to the Averheim chapter-house and told his sad tale.

Now, the Grandmaster of the order and his chosen honour-guard (or, rather, those sober enough to make the trip) intended to get both the body and the beer back, though not necessarily in that order. And if they happened to help Grudi Halfhand free his father’s brewery from the clutches of its new owners, so much the better.

‘Would the both of you be quiet?’ Angmar said, glaring at them both. ‘I’d rather not wade through orcs unless we have to.’

‘Snorri thinks that perhaps he doesn’t understand much about being a knight,’ Snorri said, frowning. Staahl gave another booming laugh.

‘Certainly not my kind of knight, no!’ He threw back his head and began to sing a bawdy song. One by one, the other knights joined him, as did Snorri, who sang with more energy than rhythm. Angmar and Grudi exchanged a look. The young knight shrugged. He had acted as an aide to Rodor, before he’d got his skull pulped by a troll, and had functioned in the same capacity for Staahl ever since. He well knew his elder’s quirks and peculiarities.

Grudi, on the other hand, had only been travelling with Snorri Nosebiter for a few weeks. The older Slayer had joined him as he travelled down the Old Dwarf Road towards Averheim, fresh from his oath-taking at the Shrine of Grimnir. So far, despite Snorri’s relative infamy, the young dwarf was unimpressed.

‘This is not an occasion for singing,’ he said, glaring at the group. ‘Not unless it’s a dirge,’ he amended.

‘You are sourer than Snorri’s old friend Gotrek,’ Snorri said. ‘He once scowled so hard his eye popped out.’

‘What?’

Snorri mimed his eye popping out of the socket and flashed his worn teeth in a grin. ‘Snorri saw it happen.’

‘I’ve read one of Herr Jaeger’s pamphlets,’ Drahl said. The handsome knight stroked his moustaches speculatively. ‘I thought Gurnisson lost his eye fighting wolf riders.’

‘Felix Jaeger is – was – a good man. Good fighter. Bad poet,’ Snorri said, shaking his head. ‘Granted, Gotrek put his eye back after Snorri saw it pop out, so he could have lost it later…’ He shot a glance at Grudi. ‘Grudi Halfhand is still sour, though.’

‘And don’t I have reason to be?’ Grudi snarled, his patchy beard bristling with rage. He thrust his hook at the sky. ‘The grobi took my hand, my home and my honour! You may not take your vows seriously, rust-skull, but I do!’

It was Snorri’s turn to bristle. He squinted at the other Slayer and rested his hands on his weapons. ‘Snorri takes his vows very seriously, beardling,’ he said quietly, his eyes dark with old memories. Grudi suddenly recalled the other stories about Snorri Nosebiter: not the ones about his deeds, but about his shame. About how Snorri had been so determined to make right his wrongs that he had taken three nails from the Shrine of Grimnir and hammered them into his own head in order to hold the memory of his shame forever foremost in his thoughts. It took a determined dwarf to shear his beard; it took a mad one to perforate his own skull.

‘I never said you didn’t,’ Grudi said, keenly aware of the knights gathered around. He raised his hand in a placating manner and stepped back. Snorri relaxed instantly, his grin returning and his shoulders slumping.

‘Oh. Well, in that case, Snorri thinks we should keep going.’

The slope grew steeper as they continued on, and the scrub trees grew thicker. They pressed together so closely that what sunlight was left in the sky had to fight fiercely to squeeze through the branches. The knights had the hardest time of it, clad in their heavy armour. Even Drahl, who was wearing the lightest mail, was puffing slightly. The order, like all warriors of their ilk, usually rode horses. Averland was known for the quality of its horseflesh, and the Knights of the Black Bear got their pick. Unfortunately, the mountains were no place for horses.

As such, the knights had been forced to forgo their dwarf-forged plate mail in favour of less refined heavy cuirasses and helms that had been crafted by the foremost Averheim blacksmiths. However, it was still a load to carry, even for a strong man. In contrast, the dwarfs marched clad only in ragged trousers and jerkins, like true Slayers. Armour would have only prevented them from reaching their ultimate goal: their doom.

It was a goal that Grudi seemed eager for, even above and beyond his oath. Snorri watched the younger Slayer and felt a vague sense of annoyance at the downright suicidal eagerness the other dwarf displayed as he stumped along. Grudi Halfhand was on a mission to find a specific doom, at a specific time, and as they drew ever closer to their goal, his pace increased and his eyes grew ever-madder.

It was a madness Snorri recognised, however dimly. He had possessed it once himself, before one drink or one blow to the head too many had put a soft blanket of dullness over his wits and memories. Nowadays he could only recall the vaguest of sensations, and the phantom presences of a dwarf woman and a child haunted his all too frequent bouts of sobriety, when he couldn’t exorcise them with drink or pain.

Blunt fingers stroked the largest of the pale scars that curled across his massive chest. He couldn’t for the life of him remember where they had come from, though he recalled that Gotrek had been there. And a daemon… A big, red one. Snorri shook his head and hurried to catch up with Grudi. It wouldn’t do to be beaten to his doom by a beardling.

‘Tell us about it,’ Drahl said suddenly.

‘What?’ Grudi said, glancing at the knight.

‘The brewery. What happened? You didn’t really say…’

‘Not that he needed to. Orcs happened, popinjay,’ Hogan grunted, thumping his mace against his thigh. ‘We all know what that’s like well enough.’

Grudi frowned and scratched at his crest. ‘We saw the goblins first. They crept through the tunnels beneath the brewery like vermin. We thought it was just an isolated raid… The grobi love beer and ale.’

‘Considering the fungus-squeezings they usually drink, I don’t blame them,’ Staahl said. He tugged at his beard. ‘I’d attack a brewery for a good beer after a diet of that rot.’

‘It wasn’t just goblins, though,’ Grudi went on. ‘As they fell on us from within, the orcs assaulted our walls from without. Not many of them, but enough. We were only forty dwarfs, good and true, and they were three times our number.’

‘Sound like good odds to Snorri,’ Snorri said.

Grudi shot him a poisonous look. ‘It would. But we weren’t Slayers. Not then, anyway,’ he continued, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘We weren’t warriors. We were brewers and vintners. Merchants.’ He looked helpless for a moment, and Staahl cleared his throat.

‘Never mind that. We will teach them the error of their ways, young master dwarf.’ Staahl slapped him on the shoulder, causing the unprepared Grudi to nearly lose his balance. ‘And we will get our grave-cask back as well!’

Despite the momentary boost in morale, by the time the sun drifted over the rim of the tallest mountain peaks, disappearing in a burst of orange radiance, the knights were wheezing and staggering. Angmar called a halt, his pale features flushed crimson and his blond locks plastered to his skull with sweat.

‘We must stop,’ he said.

Grudi spun, his eyes bulging. ‘No! We’re almost there!’

‘And a load of bollocks that’ll do us if we’re too tired to stand when we get there!’ Staahl said, gasping like a beached fish. He squatted, his hands on his knees, his head bent. ‘I was not meant to march, but to fight.’

‘But–’ Grudi began.

‘We will scout ahead,’ Snorri said. He caught the other Slayer by the shoulder. ‘Let the manlings rest, Grudi Halfhand.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Snorri thinks dwarf noses are more useful for finding beer than the eyes of men anyway, eh?’

The other Slayer allowed himself to be pulled away. ‘We are so close,’ he muttered.

‘Aye. But men tire quickly. Snorri has fought beside them often and he knows this to be true,’ Snorri said genially. ‘Let them rest. We will kill the grobi who have been following us since we crested the rise.’

‘What?’ Grudi said, looking alarmed.

‘You didn’t know?’ Snorri shook his head and pulled on a ragged earlobe. ‘You need to learn to listen, beardling, or else you’ll never earn a mighty doom.’ He yanked his weapons from his belt and slammed the heads together. ‘Listen.’

From between the trees echoed the gentle padding of heavy paws. Grudi’s nostrils flared as he caught a whiff of wolf-musk. ‘Grobi are smart,’ Snorri said. ‘Sneaky-smart, not dwarf-smart, but smart. They watch and learn. They were waiting for us to make camp. If an ambush doesn’t work in the light, try it again in the dark.’

The first wolf lunged out from between the trees, its foaming muzzle closing on Grudi’s prosthesis with a loud clang. Mounted precariously on its back, a goblin thrust a spear at the dwarf. Grudi yelped and grabbed the spear, hauling it and its wielder off the wolf and tossing them away.

‘Get it off! Get it off!’ Grudi said, trying to shake the wolf from his hook. For its part, the animal scrabbled at Grudi’s arm and chest, its claws scraping red lines across his flesh.

‘Snorri is busy, do it yourself,’ Snorri said, as two more wolves leapt at him out of the darkness. His hammer sang out, crushing the skull of one and sending its green-skinned rider spilling off. His hatchet skimmed the head of the second and sent the goblin rider flying back, its intestines trailing after it like a ragged cloak.

Shrill cries split the night as more wolves bounded forwards. Snorri grabbed the scruff of the second wolf’s neck and sent the beast hurtling into the newcomers. All of the animals went down in a snapping, snarling tangle. Snorri spun as the goblin whom he’d forcibly de-wolfed sprang up, a crude spear in its knobbly fingers. The blade carved a thin trench in Snorri’s cheek as it went past. Growling, Snorri slapped it aside and brought both his weapons around, pulping the goblin’s skull.

Grudi, meanwhile, had finally dislodged the wolf and had snapped its neck, though it had gnawed his fingers bloody. Flexing his hand, he lashed out with his hook, decapitating a goblin that got too close. He drew his axe and made ready as more wolves rushed out of the trees. They loped around him, their riders glaring at him with hatefully glittering eyes. There were a dozen of them.

Then, suddenly, three fewer as a longsword flashed, lopping off a trio of bat-eared heads. ‘Ho Averheim! Ho Leitdorf!’ Staahl bellowed, stomping on a wolf that was too slow to get out of the way. Red-faced and sweating, Staahl kicked wildly at another wolf as he swung his sword over his head in an undignified manner.

‘Feeling rested, fatty?’ Snorri said, head-butting a wolf and sending fangs flying.

‘Just didn’t want you to meet your doom before you poured me that beer you owed me,’ Staahl said. From behind him came the battle-cries of the other knights as they joined the fray. Hogan’s mace crushed skulls as Drahl’s sword danced across scrawny bodies, and Angmar’s own, rather more blunt, blade-work did for the rest.

The remaining wolves scattered a few moments later, racing off into the night with mournful howls, their riders either dead or dying. ‘Wonderful,’ Angmar said. ‘They know we’re coming now!’

‘Doubtful,’ Staahl wheezed. ‘And so what if they do?’

‘There’ll be an army on our heads, that’s what!’ Angmar snapped. ‘How will we get Rodor’s body then, eh?’

‘Well, if we stand here yammering it’s not going to make much difference,’ Grudi said, wrenching his axe out of a wolf’s head. ‘If you delicate manlings are rested, we can go.’

‘In the dark?’ Drahl said.

‘Brighter than a tunnel lit by candles,’ Snorri said. ‘Trust our noses, manlings.’

The two Slayers started off through the trees, following a trail only they could see. Soon enough, the sound of running water reached even the ears of the knights. Angmar silently motioned for a halt. The Slayers crouched and Snorri reached out with his hammer and pushed aside a thorn bush.

Below them, a sturdy, three-storey building rose out from the rock of the mountain-side. It crouched over a softly rushing mountain stream, and the stink of goblins hung heavy on the air. ‘The secret of a good brew is in the water, my father said,’ Grudi murmured, his face stiff with anguish. ‘One of many secrets that will be lost tonight.’

‘You sound certain of your doom,’ Angmar said, shuffling up to join them. ‘Maybe you’ll survive, like Snorri here.’

Snorri glanced at Angmar, a stricken expression on his face. ‘What has Snorri ever done to you, manling?’

‘I just meant–’

‘You lack politesse, Angmar. This is why I’m Grandmaster, by the by,’ Staahl rumbled. He patted Snorri awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘I’m sure you’ll get your brains dashed out, my stumpy companion.’

‘Truly?’ Snorri said, brightening.

‘Of course! We’re all likely to die, after all,’ Staahl said. ‘But at least we won’t die sober. Break out the Bear’s Milk!’ he continued, turning to his men. The other knights began to rummage in their packs or at their belts, and one by one they extracted wineskins and miniature casks.

Angmar sighed and did the same, unstoppering a clay bottle. ‘Must we?’

‘Tradition,’ Staahl said. ‘I brought plenty,’ he went on, tossing two more skins to Snorri. ‘One for each of our stunted brothers.’

Grudi bristled at the comment on his height, but Snorri slapped the skin into his arms before he could comment. The dwarf looked down at the skin curiously. ‘What is it?’

‘Tradition!’ Staahl said again.

‘Fermented bear’s milk and vodka,’ Angmar said, upending his bottle.

‘Tradition,’ the other knights said in unison, swigging from their various containers.

‘Pah!’ Staahl said, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Now, let us see what there is to see.’ He leaned over the dwarfs and peered at the darkened brewery. It had been, for lack of a better term, corrupted. Orcish graffiti was splashed across the walls in substances too foul to name, and crude wooden sigils were nailed to the shutters and doors. Huts made of mud and stone had been built up against the brewery as the orcs’ numbers swelled. In the darkness, a number of cooking fires gleamed and heavy shapes moved through and around the building.

‘Orcs,’ Snorri said. ‘Good.’

‘There are more of them than I thought there’d be. Why are they all still here?’ Drahl said.

‘Who can say?’ Hogan said. ‘Maybe they’ve taken up brewing.’ Grudi stared at him in horror.

‘Orcs know a good thing when they see it,’ Staahl said. He frowned and took another swig of Bear’s Milk. ‘I’d wager your father had a century’s worth of beer and ale stored in there, wouldn’t you say?’

‘More. We had the largest stores this side of Barak Varr,’ Grudi said proudly. ‘That stream runs underneath the brewery and into the guts of the mountains. We sank hundreds of kegs and casks into the silt to stay cool. They’re all still there.’

‘If the orcs haven’t gotten to them,’ Angmar said. He burped and shook his head. ‘No. There’s something going on down there. Listen.’

They did so, and were rewarded with the sound of squabbling. It echoed from the rocks and soon enough there came the sound of weapons clashing. A wolf yelped piteously somewhere as something heavy crashed to the ground. Then there was a roar that shook them all down to the soles of their boots.

‘What is it?’ Grudi said, trying to make out what was happening. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s been almost a year since they took the brewery. Like as not the brutes are having a falling out. Let’s get down there before they kill each other,’ Staahl said.

‘Surely you mean “after”,’ Angmar said.

‘Definitely the other one,’ Snorri said, hopping to his feet. He threw himself down the slope, his weapons in his hands. The knights gave a drunken cheer and, at Staahl’s bellowed command, followed the Slayer.

The orcs had no sentries as such: a few goblins roamed the outskirts of the camp, but they turned and fled, squealing the alarm as Snorri thundered towards them. The first orc to exit its hut got a clout with the Slayer’s hammer that crushed its skull. The second, more swift than its predecessor, locked axes with Snorri and the two strained against one another as battle was joined.

Snorri smashed his head into the orc’s own and the brute staggered. Then, with a growl, it reciprocated. Snorri shook his head to clear it and grabbed the orc by its filthy hauberk and gave it another headbutt. Tusks flew and the brute slumped in Snorri’s hands. Dropping it, he wiped blood off his brow and turned. A third orc brought a heavy maul down and Snorri was forced to hurl himself aside as it pulverised the orc he’d knocked out. Dragging the weapon up for another blow, the orc turned to follow Snorri and ran right into his axe. Grinning, Snorri jammed it in further and then extricated it, covering himself in green blood in the process.

Snatching the maul before it could hit the ground, he spun in a circle and let it fly. It caught an orc on the run and sent it flying into the stream. Snorri picked up his own hammer and looked around for more opponents.

Nearby, Grudi was methodically driving his hook into what had been the throat of the orc he straddled. Staahl and his knights had crashed into the few orcs that had tried to make an organised stand, and as Snorri watched, the big man swept his sword through his opponent’s belly. Surprised, and without the advantage of numbers, the orcs were proving little match for the men.

‘This doesn’t make sense,’ Drahl said, kicking a twitching orc off his blade. ‘Where are the others? This camp should have three times this number of the monsters.’ He looked around. ‘Where are the alarms? What’s going on?’

‘Maybe they heard us coming and fled,’ Staahl said.

As the last of the creatures fell, Grudi bounded towards the great doors of the brewery. They had been smashed off their hinges and then repaired in the primitive fashion common to orc buildings. Without pausing, he snatched up an orc and crashed into the doors, using the body as a battering ram.

‘Father! I have returned!’ he cried.

‘Snorri thinks that was perhaps a bad idea,’ Snorri said.

‘Oh?’ said Staahl.

There was another roar, louder than the one they’d heard earlier, and then the young Slayer came hurtling back out of the doors, his limp body bouncing off a pine and tumbling to the ground. Snorri nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes.’

‘Troll!’ Angmar cried, gesturing with his sword. And it was. Something big and foul that stank of stagnant water and mouldy stone shouldered its way out of the doors, a ragged harness dangling from its bloated body.

‘Big troll,’ Hogan said, gripping his mace tightly.

‘River troll,’ Snorri said, grinning eagerly. He trotted towards the beast, rotating his wrists as if warming up for the fight to come. He leapt forwards, embedding his axe deep into the meat of the creature’s side. It shrieked and clawed at him with webbed talons. Using his axe as a makeshift piton, Snorri swung himself onto the troll’s back and grabbed a handful of the harness it wore.

‘Snorri would like to play you a melody,’ he said, cocking his hammer back. He brought it down between the troll’s flared ears with every ounce of strength he could muster. The beast stumbled and shook its head. Snorri hit it again and again. Each blow gave the creature pause, but none put it down. Grunting in frustration, Snorri reached down and ripped his axe free and chopped down on the troll’s thick neck. Talons tore at him as he whipped the hammer back and struck the head of the axe, driving it deeper into the troll’s flesh. The monster gargled as it wobbled in a circle, trying to pull Snorri off.

The others had shaken off their shock at the sight of the troll and were moving to help. Soon enough a ring of swords encircled the beast. But Staahl stopped them from doing anything more. ‘Hold! Let the Slayer find his doom, if he’s able,’ the big man said.

‘Thanks, fatty,’ Snorri said, grabbing one of the troll’s ears. He turned until he was squatting on its skull and whacked the axe again. The troll reached up and grabbed him, yanking him off and slamming him to the ground. Gasping, Snorri fought to pry its fingers off as it opened its mouth and the smell of bile washed over him.

Then, the troll made a comical sound, halfway between a burp and a whimper, and its head popped off its axe-weakened neck, propelled on a stream of boiling vomit. Snorri scrambled aside as the head crashed down where he’d lain only moments earlier.

He got to his feet and kicked the head aside. ‘That was fun. Snorri has worked up quite a thirst,’ he said, yanking his axe free of the troll’s bulk and walking towards the brewery. ‘Someone get Grudi Halfhand up. Snorri wants his Wynters!’

‘There is no Wynters!’ Grudi snarled as Angmar helped him to his feet. The younger Slayer’s face was consumed by a purple bruise, and he was missing several teeth. ‘There’s nothing left. They’ve taken it all!’

‘Taken it? How?’ Staahl said, his disbelief evident in his tone.

‘See for yourself!’ Grudi flailed his hook towards the shattered doors. ‘All gone,’ he groaned.

Snorri and the others stepped inside and saw that Grudi hadn’t been exaggerating. The brewery’s central hall was as bare as a pauper’s grave, unless you counted the foetid piles of orc and troll dung clinging to the corners.

Snorri ambled forwards, scanning the empty spots where, until recently, kegs and casks and barrels had rested, piled one atop the other. He stopped at a set of stone steps and crouched, resting his palm on the top step.

‘What is it?’ Staahl said, handing him a skin of Bear’s Milk. Snorri took the skin and rinsed his mouth out before answering.

‘Snorri feels water.’

‘Staahl hears water,’ Staahl said, flicking an earlobe. ‘Didn’t your friend say that the river runs beneath this building?’

‘Aye,’ Snorri said. He rubbed the head of his hammer across his crest carelessly. ‘There weren’t many of them out there, were there?’ he said slowly, his eyes crossing slightly with the effort of stringing his thoughts together. ‘Grobi like groups, the bigger the better.’

‘So where were all of them, eh?’ Staahl pulled on his lower lip. The two of them stared down into the darkness at the bottom of the steps, one tapping on the nails in his head, the other scratching his nose.

Snorri blinked. ‘Harness.’

‘What?’

‘Harness. The troll was wearing a harness. Snorri used to use harnesses like that, with mine ponies.’

‘The troll was a pony?’

‘Yes. No.’ Snorri shook his head. ‘Snorri is going downstairs. Are you coming, fatty?’

‘Try and stop me, stumpy.’

The two warriors descended the steps, Snorri in the lead. The orc-stink grew stronger, as did the troll-smell. Broken barrels and straps littered the steps and the floor at the bottom. The sound of the stream grew louder, becoming an almost thunderous roar.

‘Can’t see a blasted thing,’ Staahl said. In answer, Snorri stamped on a stone at the bottom of the steps. Instantly, a network of similar stones lit up with a soft glow. Staahl blinked in the sudden flush of light. ‘What…’

‘Light-runes. Very costly. Wynters was doing well, Snorri thinks.’ Snorri tapped a rune emblazoned on a floor stone with his foot.

‘He supplied most of the taverns in Averland.’ Staahl shrugged. ‘We drink a bit more than most.’

‘Snorri thinks perhaps a bit more than a bit.’

‘Was that a joke?’ Staahl said, a bit goggle-eyed.

‘Was what a joke?’ Snorri said blankly. ‘Snorri has found the river.’ He gestured with his hammer, and Staahl whistled in awe.

‘The little buggers built an entire wharf down here,’ he said.

And they had. Stone jetties and platforms filled the cavernous cellar. Bigger by far than the brewery above, with all manner of industrial achievement the likes of which the knight had never before seen. Snorri moved carefully across the wharf, his bald head swinging this way and that. He sniffed the damp air.

‘Goblins,’ he said.

‘Where goblins?’ Staahl said, drawing his sword.

The arrow skipped off the foremost nail in Snorri’s crest and clattered to the ground. He gestured with his hammer. ‘There goblins,’ he said. Small, black-robed shapes scuttled across the upper viewing platforms that extended over the wharf. More arrows peppered the ground around the duo. Staahl hopped back, his sword swiping an arrow out of the air.

‘How many, do you think?’ Staahl said.

‘Barely a mouthful,’ Snorri replied, charging towards the loading pulleys and ropes that hung over the wharf. Stuffing his axe through his belt and clutching his hammer in his teeth, Snorri grabbed a rope and swung out over the river.

As the dwarf made his move, Staahl found himself on the pointy end of a number of spears. The goblins crept out from between the kegs and crates. They were paler than the others, and clad in mouldy black robes, their beady red eyes shining in the faint light. As one, they charged towards the knight, uttering falsetto screeches.

‘Ho Averheim!’ Staahl roared, his voice echoing throughout the cellar. He charged forwards, meeting the spears with his sword. Meanwhile, Snorri had reached the apex of his swing and he let go of the one rope and threw himself towards the next. In that fashion he swung across the gap and crashed belly-first into the closest platform.

Wheezing, he pulled himself up even as an arrow skimmed across his shoulder. Ignoring the burning sensation it imparted, he charged towards the archers, scattering them with a series of wild blows. The goblins screamed as they fell towards the river below. Snorri watched them tumble into the water in frustration. ‘Get back here! Snorri wasn’t done killing you yet!’ he bellowed.

Down below, Staahl’s shout had summoned the others. Grudi crashed into the goblins with a wild yell, killing three in a flurry of savage eagerness. The others tried to flee, going in every direction as the Knights of the Black Bear set to with a vengeance.

After a few moments, the last of the goblins had fallen. Angmar kicked it contemptuously and looked around. ‘It’s as if they were trying to delay us.’

‘Funny, I thought they were trying to kill us,’ Staahl said, wiping dark blood off his blade.

His aide looked at him. ‘That too, but what would this ambush have accomplished?’

‘Beyond killing us?’

‘Yes,’ Angmar said.

‘Snorri thinks it was a distraction,’ Snorri said. ‘Snorri thinks they took the beer somewhere.’

‘How?’ Angmar said, looking around. ‘I see no way they could–’

‘The boats,’ Grudi said, wiping blood off his battered face. The two knights looked at him. ‘The boats!’ Grudi said, gesturing. ‘They’re gone!’

‘Boats?’

‘Paddleboats. Steam engines. We used them to make deliveries to Zhufbar, Karak Hirn and the Everpeak via this river. It runs all through the Black Mountains and even into the Worlds Edge Mountains,’ he said, stumping towards the wharf. He peered at the river, his face contorting in fury and sudden realisation. ‘Trolls. They’re using trolls to pull them! First they take our lives, then they take our ale, and now they’ve taken our boats. And they’re not even using them properly! What next?’

‘Not all the boats,’ Snorri said, dropping to the wharf. He nodded at a bobbing shape covered in a heavy tarp. ‘Unless Snorri is mistaken. Which is possible.’

‘That’s not a boat,’ Grudi said darkly. ‘It’s a menace. Even the grobi were smart enough to realise that.’

‘Looks like a boat to Snorri,’ Snorri said, whipping the canvas off and revealing what sat below. It was shaped like a skiff – flat bottomed with a narrow prow – but on its rear was an odd contraption that looked like equal parts cannon and propeller.

‘What is it?’ Drahl murmured.

‘A debt owed,’ Grudi said. He glared at the skiff. ‘An engineer of my father’s acquaintance offered to design a better distillation device for him. Unfortunately, it distilled liquor into explosives and blew itself, and part of the brewery, up. In recompense, Makaisson–’

‘Malakai Makaisson?’ Snorri said, his eyes widening.

‘Yes,’ Grudi grated. ‘Yes, Malakai Makaisson, the maniac!’ He shook himself. ‘He gave that...that monstrosity to my father in payment of his debt. Said it would help us make deliveries in record time.’

‘And did it?’ Staahl said.

‘Oh yes. Record time, as he promised. Too bad it moved too fast for us to keep the cargo from flying off!’ Grudi gesticulated. ‘And not just cargo. We lost three couriers the last time we used it!’

‘Sounds like just what we need, Snorri thinks,’ Snorri said, climbing aboard. ‘Unless Grudi Halfhand didn’t intend to catch the grobi?’

‘Catch–’ Grudi blinked. Then his face hardened. ‘Of course I intend to catch them! I will fulfil my oath or find my doom in the process!’ He stomped towards the skiff. ‘One side, Nosebiter… I’m the only one here who knows how to pilot this craft!’

‘Wait for us,’ Staahl said, hurrying forwards. The other knights hesitated and the Grandmaster whirled on them, his face flushing. ‘Are you cowards coming or not? We have a Grandmaster to reclaim! Not to mention the beer he’s floating in!’

The knights climbed aboard sheepishly. Staahl glared at them for a moment and then transferred the look to Grudi. ‘Well? What are we waiting for?’

Grudi looked at Snorri. ‘Nosebiter… Start the engine.’

Snorri stumped to the back of the skiff and glared at the strange propeller contraption. Then, with a grunt, he whacked the central plate of the construct. It depressed with a hiss of long-dormant hydraulics and there was a growl worthy of a dragon. The skiff shifted in the water, and then it was moving.

The sudden thrust caused Snorri to fall, and the knights hastily grabbed the rails as Grudi battled the steering mechanism, his lips peeled back from his teeth and pressed tight. Such was their speed that his nascent crest was flattened against his skull and one of the knights lost his helm.

The boat jerked from side to side as Grudi fought the controls. True to his claim, the vessel wasn’t the gentlest of its kind. In fact, it was positively murderous. It moved too fast, and jerked too wildly to be anything other than a last resort. With the Bear’s Milk sloshing in their bellies, the knights began to look as green as the orcs they were hunting. Snorri, however, was enjoying himself. Crouched in the prow, he beat the flat of his axe against the side of the boat and howled out an overly cheerful dirge.

They rounded a bend only minutes after setting out, and suddenly a large shape sprang into view. It was a paddleboat, moving so slowly that the skiff and its passengers shot past it, leaving the irregularly spaced torches lining its sides doused in their wake.

The vessel was large and square-shaped, with a boat-house at its aft-section, and a towering pyramid of kegs at its bow. The kegs had been haphazardly tied down with lengths of leather, chain and cloth. Goblins crawled over the pyramid like red-eyed ants, and orcs with whips and axes supervised their efforts to keep the pyramid shipshape.

Grudi howled a war-song and twisted the wheel, spinning the skiff around for a second pass. Snorri clambered up onto the rail as they shot forwards. As they closed in on the front of the paddleboat, Snorri could see that his suspicions had indeed been correct: the boat was being pulled by teams of river trolls. Two of the brutes strained at the prow, pulling against thick harnesses and hauling the boat bodily through the water.

As the skiff shot back towards the boat, Snorri leapt onto the team of trolls, using the head of one to springboard onto the other. He brought his hammer down between his feet as he landed. The troll immediately sank below the water, nearly taking Snorri with it. Using his axe like a grapple, he scurried up the prow onto the paddleboat.

Heaving himself over the rail, he came face-to-face with a shield-wall of black-clad goblins. Several orcs loomed behind them, and one of the brutes cracked a whip over the goblins’ heads, sending them rushing forwards. Snorri swept his axe out and beheaded the spears that darted for his flesh. Then, with a roar, he bulled into the goblins, his weapons leaving a mangled trail of greenskins in his wake.

Meanwhile, Grudi had spun the skiff again and was charging towards the aft section of the paddleboat, which, thanks to Snorri’s impetuous assault, had slowed to a crawl. ‘Hold on, manlings!’ he roared, not looking back at his passengers. He wrenched the wheel and the skiff bounced up and smashed full-tilt into the boathouse, splintering wood and glass and sending green bodies flying.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Staahl kicked his way free of the wreckage, his sword in one hand and his skin of Bear’s Milk in the other. Pulling the stopper with his teeth, he poured the skin haphazardly into his mouth and roared out a daring approximation of a bear’s snarl as he charged towards the nearest orc. Uttering their own cries, his knights followed suit, hacking and slashing at the bewildered goblinoids.

Grudi was the last to free himself. Spitting blood and splinters, he crawled out of the wreckage and shook himself. Then, freeing his axe, he charged towards the pyramid of barrels.

Snorri reached it at the same time, albeit on the opposite side. At the apex, a massive orc squatted, overseeing the battle and occasionally uttering incomprehensible orders to his underlings. Clad in patchwork gromril armour that had quite obviously been stripped from dead dwarfs and strung together to make something that would fit, the orc was an imposing sight. Knotted beards had been tied to its belt and it gestured with a dwarfish axe.

Berserk, Grudi began to climb the pyramid. Foaming and cursing, he chopped at goblins and barrels alike. Snorri began to climb the other side, and shouted up taunts at the orc, who looked back and forth between them with what appeared to be indecisive eagerness.

‘He’s mine, Nosebiter!’ Grudi howled, lopping off a goblin’s head and booting the body at Snorri. ‘That’s the one who took my hand and the life of my kin! He’s mine! My doom!’

‘Only if Snorri doesn’t get there first, Grudi Halfhand!’ Snorri said, selfish desire propelling him to climb faster.

‘Back off!’ Snarling, Grudi lashed out at the makeshift straps that held the pyramid to its shape. The straps parted with a shriek and the barrels began to shift. Snorri nearly lost his footing and lashed out with his axe, hoping to anchor himself. Instead, the axe sank into an already rolling barrel and the Slayer was yanked off the pyramid as the barrel bounced down towards the deck. Snorri screamed in frustration as the orc boss receded into the distance.

The barrel struck the deck and shattered. Snorri bounced once and slammed into the hideous face of a troll as it began to pull itself up out of the water. Instinctively Snorri struck out, burying his axe in the monster’s shoulder. It reared back, hauling him over the rail.

A strong hand fastened on his ankle as Staahl rushed to his aid. ‘Hold on, stunty!’ the big man said.

‘Let Snorri go, fatty!’ Snorri said, kicking at his would-be rescuer. ‘Snorri is going to his doom!’ The troll, in pain, buried its talons in the Slayer’s shoulders. Staahl lost his grip as dwarf and troll toppled into the water.

‘’Ware!’ someone shouted. Staahl whirled and saw the barrel pyramid beginning to wobble and dissolve into a crashing mess of wood and alcohol. At the tip of the disintegrating pyramid, the orc boss and Grudi Halfhand fought a savage duel atop an ever-rotating cask. Axe crashed against axe for several moments, until, inevitably, their duelling ground dropped out from under them. Orc and dwarf disappeared beneath the avalanche of barrels. The knights scrambled for cover even as the barrels crashed to the deck in a chaotic cacophony. The paddleboat dipped with the force of the collapse, and several knights were almost thrown overboard, including Staahl.

As silence returned, the last surviving cask bounced down the pile of shattered barrels and rolled towards the rail. As it struck it, the top popped off, spilling out a familiar shape. Staahl, pulling himself back on board, looked down at it and grinned. ‘Hello, Rodor, you old lush! Have a nice time?’

The ex-Grandmaster didn’t answer, but Staahl took the rictus grin for assent. Stepping over the body, he joined the other knights in staring at the pile. Angmar shook his head.

‘What a waste,’ he said softly. Staahl put an arm around his shoulders.

‘I know. That’s an awful lot of good beer gone.’

‘I meant Grudi!’ Angmar snapped. He crouched and hauled aside a chunk of wood, revealing an arm ending in a hook extending from within the pile. The knights watched silently as Angmar and Staahl pulled the limp body of the Slayer from out of the debris.

‘He died as he lived,’ Angmar said softly.

‘Aye. Covered in blood and liquor,’ Staahl said piously. ‘Sigmar bless the stunted little madman. And Snorri as well, wherever he–’

A troll’s head slid across the deck and bounced over Grudi’s body. The knights turned as Snorri hauled himself over the rail, dripping wet and covered in black blood. He looked at them, then at the body at their feet. And then at the now-empty cask of Wynters.

‘Is that the Wynters?’

‘Unfortunately,’ Staahl said.

‘Is he dead?’ Snorri said, pointing at Grudi.

‘Ah… yes,’ Angmar said.

‘Lucky bastard,’ Snorri said. ‘Got his doom when Snorri doesn’t even have a drink.’ He sighed and sat down on a dead orc. He looked around and sighed again, rubbing his palm over his crest of nails. ‘Snorri begins to understand why his friend Gotrek Gurnisson is so sour.’

PROPHECY

Ben McCallum

I

Thunder was a god’s spoken wrath.

The sound had the shape of a snarled curse. The heavens’ anger was rich with spite. It rumbled into the physical realm as a literal thunderclap, the aftershock of a god’s volcanic contempt, a deity’s ill-temper translated into the world of natural laws and physical constants.

It was a command that left nothing unchanged. The land yielded like clay to the god’s primordial brutality. Mountains fell flat in storms of tectonic agony, throwing up enough dust and ash to obscure the horizon. A filthy ocean of oil and blood boiled away in a blink-fast instant of hissing vapour. A toxic bank of fog formed in its sudden absence, vast enough to choke a nation.

The god-thunder lengthened into a predator-growl, like the roar of some great hunting cat from antiquity. It opened a snaking trail of fissures in the parched earth, reminiscent of the earthquake-ravaged islands of the far south.

Finally, with a snorted boom of disinterest, the riot of change fell silent and the god glanced elsewhere.

It was the nature of the Chaos Wastes to warp and heave in such a way. It was a land slaved to malignant energies, doomed to conform to the whims of the aethyr. This cursed state owed every one of its torments to the ugly rent in reality at the world’s northern pole. It was here that the breath of the gods was at its foulest.

It infected every principle of nature, every foundation of existence. Distance was a quaint notion, here. A league could be travelled in a matter of footsteps, or it could stretch out into endlessness at any given moment. In the ever-changing landscape, mountains could crawl across the horizon, becoming meaningless and confusing points of reference.

Time, too, became a fickle thing. Anyone foolish enough to lie down and sleep upon the Wastes might wake to find that either mere moments had passed or themselves aged by half a century.

Even roving warbands from the Hung and Kurgan territories turned their noses up at this region. It was merely the first step of damnation’s long road. The destruction wrought by the tyrannical god was a diluted echo of something fiercer further north. Ambitious warlords struck deeper into the heart of the Wastes to fight for the gods’ favour, where the suspension of order became stranger still, and far more dangerous.

But of the death of mountains and oceans, two souls paid no heed. They didn’t hear the god-thunder, even as it drowned out their screams.

Twins. Brothers, identical in all but minor ways. Their albino-pale skin showed an unhealthy grey under the weak light of the blighted skies. Their eyes marked them as souls with a god’s favour – in the magic-rich air of the Wastes, they were flickers of crimson fire.

They howled like dogs. It was not a dignified sight. They stumbled over their long robes, barking at phantoms, drooling at nightmares only they could see. Pain was plastered over their gaunt features. And fear. Fear was a tangy spice in the chill air.

Around them, ghosts blinked in and out of existence, either through their own uncontrolled talents, or as quirks of the haunted land. Colourless figures flickered as indistinct insights into whatever madness ran amok inside their skulls.

It was not such a rare sight in the northern reaches of the world. For here, this was how men dreamed.

Most men dream in silent repose.

It was never their way. As children, the twins would howl into the late hours, screaming at the scenes that played behind their eyes. The tribe’s elders would gather in cautious silence, straining to steal any meaning from the youths’ anguished cries. Old men would lean over their cots, thin, gnarled hands outstretched as if to snatch their secrets from the air. The pair were blessed; they all knew that from the moment the children had left the womb. Ordinary infants aren’t born with a carnivore’s needle teeth.

That practice soon ceased as the twins matured, and the howling became violence. Whatever secrets Tchar whispered to them, it turned the silent youths into snarling animals. Night after night, they bled under each other’s ferocity.

Sharpened teeth weren’t the only sign of the Changer’s favour. Kelmain – Goldenrod, as he would soon come to be known – possessed fingernails that were blade-sharp claws on his right hand, the fierce gold of a cold steppe sunrise. Lhoigor – Blackstaff, true to his slightly quieter, more introverted nature – was much the same, save that his were dark silver on the opposite hand.

Emerging unscathed each morning, they kept their secrets to themselves. No one enquired too deeply about what these children, so obviously born with Tchar’s blessing, saw. It was foolish to pry. When the mood took them, they offered whispered warnings of trouble down the road, of rival tribes waiting in ambush.

No one realised that even in their hushed seclusion away from the rest of the tribe, they rarely spoke with their actual voices. It was their first expression of sorcerous talent, an ability to communicate with each other through thought alone. They shared the same dreams, experienced the same hungers and passions, and through the harsh years of their nomadic upbringing, they plotted the route their lives would take, like the charted course of a raiding vessel.

With this power, with these gifts, they set off into the world, dreaming their dreams of what was to be, beholden to no one except the Changer.

Consciousness returned with a strangled gasp.

Kelmain’s vision swam, painting the world in bleary smears. The ragged inhalation awakened his physical senses. He tasted blood’s copper tang on his tongue, and spat it into the foul wind.

Worrying. Something inside him must have ruptured. Visions always took their toll, but this was severe.

He closed his eyes as his pulse began to quicken in the claws of a panic attack. The helplessness of disorientation was rare to a man like him, but the landscape had changed again. When the vision had taken him, there had been mountains on the horizon. Now there was just a distant dust storm, a smudge of black off to the... north. Or perhaps east.

He grappled the momentary weakness. Throttled it before it could taint him further.

He sat up delicately. The ash beneath him held his imprint, his robes leaving a confused outline on the ground. He bit back a groan, his every muscle offering him a thousand different pains. It was an effort to still the trembling.

Lhoigor came awake opposite him. Where Kelmain would rouse slowly and carefully, his brother all but fled the visions. The seizures could be staved off, and willpower could force their muscles to obey, but Lhoigor always floundered, always let his fear master him. His screams were a confession of weakness.

Stop it, he scolded. There was nothing of kindness in the voiceless communication.

‘I am sorry, brother,’ came Lhoigor’s breathless reply. His voice was scratchy and hoarse at being so rarely used. ‘It always makes me so disorientated.’

They sat in silence for several long moments, gathering their wits, cataloguing their pains. One brother scowled at the barren earth, grim and silent, where the other turned his crimson eyes skywards, as if entreating heaven to relieve him.

‘Brother.’ Lhoigor’s voice still shook, uncertainty creeping into his tone.

Lhoigor.

‘What did we see?’

You saw. We both saw.

‘Nevertheless,’ Lhoigor pressed. Minor convulsions wracked his spindly frame. ‘I would hear you speak it aloud.’

Kelmain sighed, composed where his brother was honest with his weakness.

‘We saw him,’ he said, using his actual voice for the first time in days. ‘We saw the Slayer.’

II

The dragon opened its eyes.

Lhoigor faltered in his chanting. It was something few mortals had ever witnessed, and it startled him, despite the fact that he had already foreseen this moment. To see such a beast in the flesh, to actually feel its breath gust past him...

Focus. His brother’s rebuttal was hard. Impatient. This moment was crucial.

It was easy for Kelmain to say. To one attuned in such a way, the dragon’s ancient intelligence was a palpable presence. It was not just a powerful creature. Its consciousness was a transcendent thing, an order of magnitude above humanity’s frail perceptions. Even the Slight Ones, who claimed companionship with these draconic gods, were like children in comparison.

Lhoigor, focus.

It was an effort to shrug off his fascination, but he took up the intonations where he left off, his thin lips framing impossible syllables. They rose and fell in time with the ancient creature’s slow, pounding heartbeat. Its lids began to drop again, closing over unfocused, reptilian eyes.

Despite its elevated perceptions, the sleeping god’s senses were shut off to the world. Its centuries-long slumber, thus far undisturbed, was a deep, abyssal state of rest.

At the periphery of his focus, Lhoigor sensed his brother’s movements. Kelmain was stalking around the cave, his feet shuffling in the darkness. His pulse quickened as he felt what his twin gripped in his golden-clawed hand.

With fearless bare-skin contact, Kelmain hefted a shard of heaven.

Wyrdstone, the scholars of the Empire named it. It was the stuff of the aethyr, condensed by the mortal world’s laws into a shard of luminous rock. To the men of the civilised south, it was pure corruption, a hazard to be purged and avoided at all costs. To merely be in the presence of the volatile substance invited mutation and madness. From their pulpits, priests and holy men representing a pantheon of southern gods urged their flocks to spurn the afflicted, to scorn those blackened by the Shadow’s touch.

It was the cause of a thousand stillbirths and deformities across humanity’s various kingdoms and nations. A mere flake tossed into a well would doom a whole community. Beastmen and verminkin hoarded it as a rare and precious treasure, the former worshipping it as a gift from the Ruinous Ones, the latter prizing it as currency and a valued food supply.

Kelmain plunged it into the dragon’s scaly flesh.

The sleeping god groaned. It was a sound like the precursor to a volcanic eruption, a rumble of deep tectonic unrest. Lhoigor saw movement beneath its eyelids. Its dreams – whatever gods dreamed – darkened. He smiled as he chanted.

The spell was a simple one, made easier by the presence of wyrdstone. The substance was flaky, and its potency persisted even when it was burned or dissolved in liquid. It mingled with the dragon’s potent blood, and with a soft exertion of his will, Lhoigor began to guide it through the creature’s veins. It invaded arteries like a disease, carrying naturally into the chambers of the beast’s ancient heart.

The effect was unnerving in its immediacy. Mucus began to drool from the dragon’s slitted nostrils, its constitution already beginning to unravel as the taint thrived. The pitch of its heartbeat changed; instinct readied the dragon to fight an enemy that had already won.

Lhoigor’s smile widened, his unnatural teeth showing bright in the cave’s dank gloom.

‘It is working,’ he whispered breathlessly. He turned to his brother, seeing his expression mirrored: two vultures grinning over a carcass. ‘Another. Our work will be done before dusk falls. Skjalandir wakens today.’

Another shard of heaven appeared in Kelmain’s clawed hands, and the sleeping god’s dreams grew darker still.

It was fated to die. This, they realised only after their work was done.

Swollen, corrupted, the dragon thundered from its lair for the first time in an age, no longer the exalted creature it had once been. Its mind was in a clawed grip, squeezed until all that was left was the overriding impulse to defend itself against threats that didn’t exist.

It was a fallen god.

It met the night sky with the promise of annihilation. Its ability to breathe gouts of flame from its fanged maw had been fouled: now acid and bile drooled from between its teeth every time it opened its mouth to scream.

It heaved its bloated bulk into the skies on tattered wings, but it was too heavy to fly. Its form had been warped too much for the fallen god to achieve natural flight for very long. With every beat of its wings, it ravaged its own draconic musculature to stay aloft.

Everything within a mile of the fallen god’s screams cowered. Birds broke their formations, scattering in the frantic need to flee. Nocturnal hunters howled and yelped, gnawing at their own bodies in confusion and fear. A community of humans and dwarfs eking out a grim existence in this relatively secure stretch of the Worlds Edge Mountains awoke to the roaring of a god soon to vent its wrath upon their homes.

The twins did not see. The sense of premonition that seized them stole the nightmarish scene from their sight, replacing it with a whirlwind of unwritten futures, a roiling storm of prophecy.

It was the price they paid for the potency of their visions. Prophecy was like experiencing a seizure, as if it was a curse rather than a gift. This was something they both knew and hated, because it reminded them of lesser seers who needed hallucinogens and incantations for their abilities to function. The injustice of it stung deeply.

But these were thoughts for afterwards, when their muscles ceased trembling and the headaches passed. It was a bitterness that both nurtured in their hours of recovery, and both had entreated their god of claws and feathers to allay the pain.

He only answered with more visions. More agony.

In the vision’s embrace, they saw a god’s death.

And the Slayer.

The dragon dies.

Skjalandir’s killer is a sword. The blade is a yard of ornate steelwork and burning runes, dragon-hilted and vicious. They know without understanding why that it is invested with the purpose of being the nemesis of all dragons, forged in the time when the blood shed between the elder races was still hot.

The blade’s wielder is almost entirely unimportant. Blond-haired and shouting curses, he moves with a ferocity that isn’t his own. His uncharacteristic courage is an expression of the blade’s molten need to enact its purpose. The wielder is an unknowing puppet.

The blade skewers Skjalandir’s brain. It is over as quickly as that. Their plan to ravage the mountain fails. The scheme that would have eventually seen the legendary Slayer Keep powerless beneath Skjalandir’s shadow dies with the stolen bravery of one fool with an enchanted sword.

In a flare of exultant bliss, the blade falls silent, inert now that its task is done.

All of these thing are irrelevant.

Skjalandir’s killer did not come alone. His companions boast a ramshackle bundle of loyalties and allegiances: humans and dwarfs, adventurers and Slayers. The vision compels them to focus on one soul, a dwarfish Slayer who seems not to savour victory’s taste as the others do.

Brother, look...

I know, Lhoigor. I see it.

Look at his axe.

I know. I see.

The course they had charted so many years ago became a quaint irrelevancy.

The vision left them as they always did, but the revelation of what they had seen made their post-prophecy pains seem a small thing.

‘The scope of this is troubling,’ Lhoigor observed. His words came with a small burble of blood where his needle teeth had pierced gum.

‘At times, you wildly exaggerate, Lhoigor, but you irritate me far more when you understate things.’

Kelmain was a master of his own emotions, and peerless at masking his fears and insecurities with arrogance and false confidence. Lhoigor looked away to cover a smile at his brother’s blunder. He spoke. He actually used his voice.

‘I will be rational for both of us, then. Where do we stand?’

Kelmain took a calming breath, marshalling his willpower.

We will return to Daemonclaw as if nothing has happened. We say nothing of the dragon, and nothing of the fools who are fated to kill it. I will never admit failure to him. His petty little horde will have its siege.

‘And the dwarf?’

Kelmain glanced over the valley. From their vantage at the cave mouth, the mountain offered a wide view of the surrounding terrain. They heard the thunder of Skjalandir’s distant rampage. As the twins talked, they saw the dragon plunge from the air, his fire a tiny gout of malevolence in the darkness. In that moment, a dozen souls perished.

Daemonclaw is beyond foolish, but he is... blessed. Slightly. Enough for him to be of use to us. He will not be blind to the dwarf’s presence. He will at least suspect what he represents.

‘But Praag is long distant from here. You think the dwarf will be present for the siege?’

Lhoigor, came Kelmain’s admonishment. Equilibrium was restored. Stop being such a fool. Think. We were showed this dwarf for a reason. He possesses rare significance. He will have a part to play in the razing of Praag.

‘And what part would that be?’

Kelmain’s lips twisted into a rare grin. His hoarse voice was rich with vicious amusement.

‘I think he is going to kill Daemonclaw.’

III

Daemonclaw.

Warlord. Champion of the Changer. A master of swordsmanship, a fiercely competent sorcerer. Uniter: a warrior of Tchar who held together the warring slaves of gods that despised each other.

And, the brothers knew, born a pampered lordling of the Empire he was destined to conquer.

They knew the warlord better than he knew himself. They knew his birth name, and they knew the petty viciousness that led him to swear his soul to the Changer. The childish need to murder his political rivals with clever poisons exposed him to a minor conjurer. This was what set him on Tchar’s path, and took him far north of his birthland.

He was... competent. This, the brothers also knew. It was a tale repeated a thousand times across the bloody history of the north. Followers flocked to this fledgling warlord, won through cunning and force. He visited the ancient shrines, spattered the ritual circles with the blood of his conquests, and slowly, over the long years, Tchar took notice.

The god of claws and feathers extended his taloned hand, and thus Arek Daemonclaw was born.

Much was owed to the brothers, of course. He would have failed early on, had Kelmain and Lhoigor not seen that burning ember of potential. Their counsel secured his victories. Their warnings saved his armies. Their formidable power parted oceans in the depths of the Wastes that his forces might cross unhindered, and their prophetic gifts interpreted the Changer’s shifting whims. All for Daemonclaw. All in the name of an Empire in ruins.

The warlord was theirs. They owned this creature.

And now, on the eve of a city’s destruction, on the very precipice of his army’s first victory, their pet was showing... resentment.

Rebellion, even.

The warlord railed against their warnings. ‘Cross the Lynsk in winter,’ the brothers counselled. ‘Your warriors are no stranger to marching through the snows.’

Oh, how he had flown into a rage, then. He claimed that to wait was idiocy. They would not expect an invasion at the height of summer. It was the pampered lordling who spoke that day, impatient for blood.

They did not contradict him. They did not even act against him. But the brothers began to wonder. Had they made the correct choice? Was this truly the man who would usher in the Time of Changes?

His army was vast. It was a patchwork coalition of tribes and warbands, over a hundred thousand damned souls hungry to tear down a city’s walls. It spoke of the power that Daemonclaw wielded that a champion of the Changer could win over servants of other, rival powers.

It seemed right. It seemed like this was... it.

Summer was a poor season to begin this war. The Empire and its ancestral dwarfish allies could respond hastily without the snows stunting their movements. That was something that could not be allowed to happen. That was why the brothers awakened Skjalandir, to cripple the Slayer Keep, denying the Empire reinforcements.

But that plan had failed. And now this Slayer had been revealed to them. What next, then? What did he represent?

It was prudent, the brothers decided, to be adaptable. Fluid. History would be made here.

They doubted Daemonclaw would be the one writing it.

The warlord was afraid.

To his credit, he was a master of veiling his deeper emotions. A trait that Kelmain could respect, even if he wasn’t fooled.

Arek Daemonclaw was a titan. He moved with physical arrogance and a striding gait, unhindered by the blessed plate armour that had painfully fused to his living flesh.

The brothers had inscribed the runes adorning it personally, a glowing screed of warding text – fire’s harsh illumination against the black of iron plate – deflecting harm back at anyone dimwitted enough to confront him. Even as he strode into their tent, demanding they offer him a vision, he was almost unkillable by virtue of their efforts.

Daemonclaw reached down, his armour creaking softly, to move the pieces of the chessboard. It ended the game in a victory for the white player.

The brothers glanced up at him, identical, vicious smiles written across their pale faces.

‘Why do you always do that?’ Khelmain asked.

‘I fail to understand why you play each other at all.’ The warlord’s voice was a rumble of petulant syllables. It teased through the visor of his expressionless war helm.

‘One day we hope to establish which of us is the better player,’ came Lhoigor’s answer.

My, his feathers are ruffled. I wonder what ails him.

Perhaps he has seen a certain Slayer sally forth from the walls, no? The voiceless communication was ripe with amusement. Their smiles widened.

‘How many games have you played now?

‘Close on ten thousand.’

‘What is the score?’

‘Kelmain’s victory, which you foresaw, puts him one ahead.’

There was a pause. The warlord looked off into the darkness of the tent, his sapphire eyes glancing over the scattered miscellanea that made up the brothers’ worldly possessions. Outside, the walls of Praag held against a massed charge of beastmen. Their braying death agonies drifted into the tent.

Breath of the Changer, he chafes at confessing his fears. This is glorious.

‘You did not come here to discuss our chess playing, fascinating as it doubtless is,’ Lhoigor prompted.

‘What do you require of us?’

‘What I always do: information, prophecy, knowledge.’

‘Tchar has granted us a great deal of the latter,’ Lhoigor sighed with mock wistfulness.

‘Sometimes too much, I think,’ Kelmain observed.

After several hesitant moments, the warlord shook his armoured head, and ploughed into what Kelmain and Lhoigor had already known for several weeks.

Daemonclaw did indeed glimpse the Slayer.

The dwarf was a machine. A murderous engine.

How he came to be in Praag, the brothers didn’t know, but that was an irrelevance. The city was a convergence of a hundred thousand fates. Tchar had placed the son of Grimnir here for some bleak purpose. Almost certainly to thwart Daemonclaw.

The warlord explained that the Slayer had emerged from the city walls like wrath’s very avatar. He was like a force of nature. Every movement caused something to die. Stinking, bestial corpses were piled high by the time the Slayer withdrew.

It was, the warlord explained, his weapon that caused him a moment’s... unease. A trifling matter. A point of simple curiosity.

‘Your forebodings are doubtless justified,’ Kelmain’s tone was sage. Patient.

‘Sometimes Lord Tchar chooses to send warnings in just this manner.’

Oh, he does indeed.

‘I require more information than this,’ the warlord growled. The sound was a deep thrum of aggression. He wasn’t blind to the brothers’ amusement.

‘Of course.’

‘You wish to learn more of this axe and its bearer.’

‘Naturally.’

‘You wish us to invoke the name of the Changer and ask him to grant you the boon of a vision.’

The brothers moved in synchronicity, the temperature dropping with the gathering of sorcerous energies. Daemonclaw took a step back, his plated boot clunking loudly against a tent pole dug into the earth. He envied and feared what they were capable of.

The boon of a vision indeed, Arek. I pray you find this to your taste, my lord.

‘Look, my lord. Let the Changer reveal all things.’

And reveal, he did.

A dwarf at the forge.

The blow of a hammer against heated starmetal throws up a flare of eye-aching sparks.

The anvil is a work of ancient genius. Dwarf artisanry cages and tames the winds of magic, imbuing it with the qualities that the runesmith requires. An axe takes shape on the iron surface, the metal hammered into a lethal smile.

The weight of ancient prehistory is a musky scent in the air, mingling with the dwarf’s sour sweat. He hammers, and hammers, and hammers, until...

A battle.

A dwarf ripples with spiralling tattoos, the play of ink over iron-hard muscles giving them motion of their own. The blood that spatters him is foul and black, the stink of it overpowering every other sense.

He bears an axe. The axe, alongside its twin, gripped in clenched fists. He wields them like he was born for this. As if this is his very purpose.

The first great incursion, the warlord hears Kelmain’s whispered voice.

At the very beginning, Lhoigor affirms. There is awe in their voices. Longing.

The dwarf is a leader of armies. The numbers... the scale... The warlord has seen nothing like this before. Soldiers without end. Violence without restraint. The sky roils in apocalyptic motion, and a million souls wage war for a world that is already doomed.

The warlord sees the dwarf’s insane decision. He sees him marching off into the heaving north, to deny the hordes their prize of his beloved mountains.

He sees the axe, cast away, before he strides into his final battle.

The axe is found.

Karag Dum. The lost northern hold. The vision shows walls unblackened by time’s ravages, and towers manned by bearded warriors. They fight for their souls.

The Wastes are young here, but the malignant energies expand their cancerous influence. Daemons walk the earth freely, and hurl themselves at the stone fortifications. The defenders are beleaguered. Flagging. Morale is nothing more than a grim need for survival.

The axe’s new wielder performs a single act of stunning bravery. A bloodthirster, the very avatar of the Blood God’s wrathful purpose, perishes, defenceless against the baneful runes hammered onto the weapon’s surface. Its demise is a shower of boiling blood. The wielder dies in scalding agony, never having the chance to savour his victory.

Another scoops the weapon from the ground. An oath forms on his lips, to bring vengeance to the great enemy that threatens to swallow up the world.

He leaves Karag Dum in glory, and dies in failure.

A convoy.

Wagons. Armoured in steel plates.

An expedition, Lhoigor breathes. To find lost Karag Dum.

Futile, of course.

Over weeks, the procession trails through the Wastes, each wagon gradually falling to misfortune and destruction. One remains, set upon by braying monstrosities, and the passengers emerge to defend the stricken vehicle.

Decades into the future, a warlord in a tent outside a burning city takes a sharp breath.

It’s him, Kelmain observes. The humour in his tone is malicious, serrated like a blade.

The Slayer, Lhoigor says. Gotrek Gurnisson.

The dwarfs abandon their ruined wagon, the expedition a failure. The Wastes does its vile work. The three survivors are separated, and Gurnisson trudges on alone. To see him in this way, as this diminished warrior bereft of the trappings of a Slayer is astounding. He looks so unremarkable, so... tame.

And then, he finds the axe.

The cave is inhabited by a creature. It lairs here, dragging back its kills, smearing the walls with its filth. Gurnisson needs the shelter. He starts a fight he can’t win.

The axe is hoarded at the back of the cave, amid a pile of bones and a handful of rusting trinkets the creature considers precious. In desperation, Gurnisson takes up the blade.

The moment his fingers brush against the weapon’s handle, the warlord feels the brothers spasm. It’s a moment that’s so rare that it feels as if the stars are in some unheard of, auspicious alignment. Fate’s threads stretch taut. Some even snap.

Gurnisson lived through that night. He even made it...

…home.

A valley. Picturesque. Serene.

Gurnisson is already changed. Dwarfs are thick, compact creatures. His musculature is swollen beyond what passes for normality. And his nature, too, is not the same. The dwarf’s soul has become a darker thing.

The axe changes the wielder, brother. He has grown.

Home, however, is not as he left it. He walks among a village of blackened structures and ravaged bodies. He pauses over a female with an infant clutched in her bloodied hands.

Gurnisson bows his head. In the ashes of his broken life, he weeps.

Vengeance.

Gurnisson snarls a violent promise in the hall of a dwarf lord.

The enthroned noble watches with a highborn’s sneering dispassion. The words they exchange are heated, laced with a mutual dislike. There is some unresolved history here, a past slight that stokes anger’s flame.

With a lazy gesture of one broad hand, the noble orders Gurnisson’s death, and thus secures his own.

It’s a charnel scene. The lord’s chamber, richly appointed in rare gold and the elaborate tapestries of a ruling clan, becomes a gory mess of broken bodies and spattered blood.

When Gurnisson shaves his head, he takes his time. With a blade taken from the slain lord’s belt, he cuts away his hair, leaving the stubbly crest that signifies a dwarf undertaking the Slayer Oath.

He leaves that chamber in the throes of shame, and begins a ceaseless hunt for his own doom.

Altdorf.

Accursed Imperial capital. Birthplace of the pretender-god Sigmar Heldenhammer.

The tavern is the usual squalid dive so common in all Imperial cities. Whoring and drinking, pissing and retching, the sweating mass of humanity squanders what few copper coins they have to forget about the harshness of their lives.

Gurnisson is here. And another. A human.

That... fool... slew Skjalandir. It was him.

They are drunk, and locked in intense conversation. The bonds formed during heavy drinking often endure the longest, but the human utters perhaps the stupidest words he will ever speak.

He slurs an oath. To a dwarf.

An oath.

The warlord dies.

Praag burns. Flame consumes the outer districts, and the raucous chanting of the conquering invaders is a deep chorus in the ruined streets and alleys.

The sky is red. Literally, the very clouds are the deep crimson of arterial blood. Sorcery charges the air as the enchantments woven into the city’s broken walls bleed freely into the blighted skies. Everything smells of smoke and fire, blood and dying, looting and murder.

Creatures that should not be wander the streets, feasting on the dead. They behold the world with beady scavenger eyes, avoiding anyone who comes close, and tearing out the throats of the mortally wounded.

Praag burns, and yet the warlord dies.

His life ends in a flurry of violence, surrounded by the heaving press of his own warriors. Gurnisson – the Slayer, the axe wielder – roars like a Lustrian carnosaur. The blade he fears, the weapon that is fated to end his life, is a blazing beacon of hatred for the warlord’s kind. It exults in the pain it is about to inflict. It howls its contempt for the Great Powers.

His armour is breached, the enchantments of his slave-sorcerers burned out and useless. He feels his own blood snaking down the inside of the damaged plate in hot trickles.

It flashes down in a blur of hot starmetal – gromril, the dwarfs name the rare and precious metal – and severs the warlord’s head from his shoulders.

A hush falls over the–

–stop this end this Kelmain Lhoigor I have seen en–

–warlord’s forces. They pause in their destruction, uncertainty replacing the buzz of malicious celebration. Gurnisson’s human companion stoops to collect the warlord’s head, and holds it aloft so that they can all see.

‘Your warlord is dead!’ he shouts, his teeth bared in angry triumph. ‘Your warlord is dead!’

He nearly lost his balance.

Stunned, he held out a plated hand to steady his bulky form. His breathing came in ragged gasps, his warped throat turning the sound into a panted growl.

‘Your visions,’ he said, when his pulse had slowed, ‘have done nothing to reassure me.’

The brothers watched with the warmth of a glacier. Their smiles were hungry. They scented the warlord’s weakness.

He will tell us to kill the dwarf, brother. He will think that he can stop this.

That he will, Lhoigor.

How best to handle it?

The way we always handle him. Humour him. Let him believe he is in control. He has scented his own demise. He will only grow more fearful as the hour draws closer.

This war, this city... It was all for naught?

No. Think of what will transpire. We have engineered the slaughter of thousands. This blow is not grievous enough to lay Kislev low entirely, but Praag will take years to rebuild. This army will scatter, but we will endure. And there are other, worthier warlords.

True enough, brother. True enough.

They gave Daemonclaw their assurances that such a fate could be avoided, and that death was just a mere possibility. They wove their lies with guiltless ease, and he calmed.

‘See to it the dwarf and his human henchman die. See that the axe is lost and not found again soon.’

‘We shall do our best,’ Kelmain lied with a smile.

‘If the vision truly came from Tchar, it would be blasphemy to try and interfere with the destiny he plans for you.’ Lhoigor couldn’t help himself.

‘Nonetheless, do it.’

‘As you wish.’

They glanced at each other as he left, the black and white pieces of the chessboard sliding back into their starting positions.

Delicious.

IV

The vision had not shown the actual truth. Not entirely.

After all, Arek’s decapitation was not as clean as he had been shown. Not at all as clean.

Dwarfs are often compared to their human allies and neighbours. Popular Imperial literature describes them as ‘short but stout’, always measuring them by human standards. The frowning, bearded little lords of the Worlds Edge Mountains; useful to have at your side in a fight, valuing a promise, and taking their quaint oaths very seriously.

Humans could be very stupid, sometimes.

To accuse a dwarf of having a dour nature is to misunderstand dawi psychology completely. It disregards an ancient culture’s pathological obsession with every slight, every injustice, every loss it has ever endured. Every month, another hold has to be scourged of verminkin. Every week, a new greenskin warleader trumpets his dominance by lining the mountain roads with fresh trophy pikes.

To mock the importance they place in keeping oaths and fulfilling promises is to devalue a society that has endured since civilisation’s bloody dawn. To break a promise, to spit on an oath, is to throw brotherhood in their faces. It’s the fulcrum upon which their society spins. It is all they have.

Every dwarf knows this. And they also know that the limits of their anger far exceed what humans have the capacity to comprehend.

He put every remembered grudge into the blow. He summoned every shred of frothing, black rage into the strike that felled Daemonclaw and ended the razing of Praag. And yet, despite all these things, the axe forged in antiquity by an ancestor-god only partially severed his head.

He grunted a Khazalid curse, blood and spit spraying from his lips. With a broad, flat boot, he forced the hissing gromril to bite deeper, as if he was breaking ground with a shovel. In the space between armoured pauldron and full-face war helm, black, polluted blood squirted from the wound in time with the dying warlord’s failing heartbeat.

The head came free with the wrench of tearing sinew, and his armoured body crashed to the ground.

What happened next, the vision had represented with chilling accuracy.

‘You warlord is dead!’ cried Felix Jaeger. ‘Your warlord is dead!’

The brothers did not even spare a moment’s attention as their puppet died.

They, of course, had abandoned him. Outside the walls, they had listened politely to the demands of Daemonclaw’s heralds to stop the spread of fires within the city. The army had to winter here, after all. Smoking ruins offered little shelter.

Lhoigor had declined in a sorrowful, regretful tone, and with a gesture, their armour became molten slag.

‘Now that Arek’s farce is concluded, have we a plan?’

Kelmain’s rebuke had none of its usual venom. He was almost kindly, as if talking to a dim child.

Of course we do, Lhoigor. We start again.

‘Oh?’

Kelmain gave a shrill laugh. Around them, the brothers’ cabal of lowly acolytes and half-hearted disciples listened with their shaven heads bowed in deference. No one commented on the apparent one-sidedness of the conversation.

As this gaping wound in Kislev scabs over, all we must do is guide another soul along the paths Arek took. Except this time, we shall be careful to study his worthiness more closely, no? We should choose a man who thinks slightly less of himself than this fool did.

Lhoigor dipped his bald head in concession of his brother’s wisdom. ‘If this is the case, I thought perhaps we could alter our route to include the mountains? I would very much like to examine Skjalandir’s carcass.’

Kelmain’s answer was spoken aloud so the acolytes could hear his words.

‘We travel by swifter means, my brother.’ He showed them his needle-teeth in what looked more like a threat-display than a grin. ‘Would you die for us? We are in a hurry.’

In silent, wordless loyalty, they cut their own throats to power the brothers’ spell. With a thick bang of displaced air, they left the stink of a burning city behind them, and the fleeing hordes that had already begun to fight amongst themselves.

V

‘We saw,’ Kelmain repeated, almost choking the words from his parched throat, ‘the Slayer.’

Lhoigor shivered. The images were scars in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t banish what the vision had shown. His blinking was rapid.

‘Is he following us?’

Lhoigor...

‘He must have followed us from Praag, Kelmain. You saw what he is capable of.’

If one more fearful muttering passes your lips, I swear by the blood of the Changer I will kill you myself.

Kelmain’s chest rose and fell in anger, as well as fear of his own. Something was wrong. The quality of the vision had been too... violent. Too vivid. Even more than the premonitions they usually endured. And the weakness was passing too slowly.

Tchar’s holy breath, his skull ached.

As he rose to his feet, the trembling of his knees shocked him. With a golden-clawed fist gripping his staff for support, he limped a few steps to encourage circulation. Lhoigor remained where he was, biting his silver claws in fretful thought.

At last, Kelmain sighed. ‘You realise this is an opportunity.’ He used his ravaged flesh-voice. Lhoigor always responded better this way.

‘How so?’ His brother didn’t even look up.

‘Recall the vision.’

‘I... don’t want to, brother.’

‘Lhoigor. Recall the vision. Describe what we saw.’

The silver-clawed sorcerer took a shuddering breath. Kelmain shook his head in wonderment. It was true that the two almost shared souls, that was how fundamental their bond was, but some things remained hidden from each other. Lhoigor never realised that he possessed a fractional superiority in raw talent, where Kelmain refined his own abilities with tight, masterful control.

‘He was walking through the Wastes. He seemed possessed by anger.’

‘No. That isn’t what we saw. Clear your head. This is vital. Recall the vision accurately, Lhoigor. Don’t be afraid.’

As calm settled over the tension of the silver-clawed brother’s shoulders, he began to talk.

Not walking.

Staggering. The Slayer is staggering.

His boots scuff the ashen earth of the Wastes, footsteps trailing behind him for countless leagues. Gurnisson can barely stand. He cackles a madman’s laugh, as if this wretched state of being holds some private hilarity.

The bleakness of cold sunlight catches on his golden armbands. The priceless metal is worn and scratched from a journey that has surely taken months. Every hour of that trek shows. New scars stand out as livid blemishes on pale, tattooed skin.

His presence is somehow diminished. This isn’t the warrior who bested Daemonclaw. It seems that even the axe’s influence can’t – or perhaps won’t – sustain him. He holds the blade out in front of him, swinging drunkenly at enemies who aren’t there.

With the one eye that remains to him, blinking and clogged with dust, he stumbles after landmarks that won’t stay still, mumbling over the sanctity of mountains, cursing the false tranquillity of open valleys.

No anger. No wrathful pursuit of two twin sorcerers.

Just a Slayer fated to find his doom in the north.

‘Let’s kill him ourselves.’

Kelmain hid a private smile. Like a child shown the foolishness of his fear, Lhoigor had certainly perked up.

Now you are thinking like my brother again.

They began to walk without paying attention to where they were going. It seemed an illogical thing to do, but it didn’t matter where you thought you were heading in the Chaos Wastes. It took you along its own paths, and guided you into its numerous pitfalls.

I am sorry, brother, Lhoigor said for the second time that day. That vision was so strong. I was not myself when I came to.

In truth, neither was I, Kelmain confessed, his reluctance to admit this obvious in the hesitance of his thoughts. Normally my wits convalesce swiftly. Not today.

Does it give you pause? The strangeness of it?

Kelmain shrugged his spindly shoulders. We stand on the precipice of the gods’ realm. We should be surprised that vague abnormality was all we experienced, no?

It is possible that the vision isn’t accurate. Lhoigor was voicing a concern neither really wanted to face up to. Perhaps something interfered, poisoning our perceptions with false visions.

Kelmain took a long, impatient breath. If that is the case, then we will deal with it as it comes. The possibility of destroying this Gurnisson, perhaps bending his weapon to our purposes, is too great an opportunity to pass over. He added, You darken my thoughts.

The journey continued in silence, not even with their voiceless communication. Each brother kept his own counsel, perhaps wondering which of fate’s threads would snap with the Slayer gone. Or perhaps they simply pondered how they would murder him.

He was almost dead. It quite removed the fun from the situation.

He was far gaunter than the vision showed. His bones were visible on account of the severe wasting of his muscles, the bumpy curvature of his ribcage hiking with each spluttered breath. He couldn’t even stand up.

He cradled his axe on the ground underneath him, as if sheltering it from predators. And the bands decorating his arms seemed too dull to be true gold. Curious.

The brothers stalked around him, as lean as vultures, bent over in their predatory intent.

‘You are ours, Slayer,’ Kelmain teased, the words close to a sneer. ‘Finally, this is the doom that has eluded you these past decades.’

Despite the taunt, neither brother actually moved any closer. The dwarf was dying, but he was still dangerous. Obscured under his bulk, that axe waited.

‘Do I congratulate you, dwarf? In your dim, oafish mind, is this a victory for you?’ Lhoigor sniped. ‘What a life it must be, to have death as your foremost ambition.’

The brothers tittered like hyenas, and the Slayer glanced up at them.

With two eyes.

Both gleamed with madness, even if one was milky with blindness.

‘He should possess only one eye...’ Kelmain began. The thought was finished as the dwarf heaved himself to his feet, brandishing his lethal weapon with the skill and strength of an infant.

‘It is not him,’ Lhoigor breathed. ‘This is not Gotrek Gurnisson.’

They burned him alive.

When he rushed at them in one final, doomed burst of suicidal violence, his weapon swinging in weak arcs, as worthless as the blade itself.

Realising they had been fooled, cursing whatever entity had fouled their gift, they annihilated the dwarf’s body with acid fire, and watched the emerald flame consume his wasted flesh. His dyed beard and crest went up first, in a spectacular moment of illumination. Then his inked flesh split open under the heat, spattering his boiling blood across the dust.

‘Brother,’ Lhoigor said, after a long time of watching the flames. The blackened husk was a wretched shape, the impression of limbs extended in a plea for deliverance. ‘We should go, now.’

Let me linger a while longer, Lhoigor. Let me scent his scorched bones for just a few more moments. I will have at least that satisfaction. He growled. I dislike being fooled.

‘It is over now. He is dead, and the spirit who engineered this has had its fun.’

Kelmain didn’t seem to be listening.

‘Brother? Can you still your temper, just for this small while?’

Lhoigor... come here. Look at this.

A golden claw pointed at the dwarf’s burned husk, where blood had scabbed into the dust.

‘What?’

Kelmain sunk to his haunches, staring intently at where the blood had fallen the thickest. Do you recognise this shape?

‘I am not sure. It could be anything.’

You have studied more maps than I. I think I have seen this shape before.

Even as they watched, something stirred in the aethyric winds. The scabbed blood reverted to its liquid state, and began to flow of its own volition into a sticky, sanguine pool.

‘Yes,’ Lhoigor was breathless. Excited. ‘Yes, I do know this shape. It even mimics the contours of mountains.’

They locked eyes. Two pairs of crimson orbs widened as they felt the warp and weft of their fates shifting, stretching.

‘Albion.’

Two brothers left a charred corpse in the dust.

They left side by side, striding with a dark purpose, animated with the exultant rightness of the task that lay before them. The sanguine omen had pointed them to that mist-wreathed isle. As portents went, it was a rather unsubtle thing, but in their eagerness, they gave it little thought.

They gave the Slayer’s blackened husk not even a second glance. It rocked in a gentle wind, the ash that had once been its living flesh flaking off in drifting falls.

And then it sat up.

The crunch of breaking charcoal was like hearing a twig snap in the forest. The head, little more than a featureless stump of blackened flesh, beheld the world without eyes, and scented the wind without a snout.

It rose spasmodically to its feet, flakes of burned matter raining down from its body. The impression of a mouth – sharp and pointed like a beak – thrust through the brittle shell that formed the husk-thing’s face.

It cawed long and loud, a sound rich with good humour.

When it spoke, the husk-thing had several voices at once.

‘Albion,’ came Daemonclaw’s reverberative drawl, underlaid by Gotrek Gurnisson’s gruff, grunting tones. The mockery was obvious. ‘Breath of the Changer. It’s Albion.’

It pointed its beak skywards to caw its cackling laughter to the skies again, and opened its yellow, avian eyes.

‘And what waits for you there, little brothers?’ The bird-husk spoke in Felix’s Jaeger’s smooth, cultured voice, while Ulrika Magdova echoed him in perfect harmony. ‘What waits, indeed?’

The bird-husk’s back exploded into vibrant motion. Feathered wings, the blue of calmer skies, ruffled in the wind as more and more of its blackened shell began to fall away.

‘Oh, I hope we have made the right decision,’ the daemon croaked, in the hoarse tones of Kelmain and Lhoigor. ‘I hope the spirit who engineered this has had its fun.’

LORD OF UNDEATH

William King

‘I really don’t like the look of this place,’ whined Felix Jaeger, surveying his surroundings warily. He cast a glance towards the distant gateway just to make sure that the portcullis had not come crashing down. The whole place reminded him of a set from one of Detlef Sierck’s horror plays. No, the young scholar corrected himself, this castle was probably the prototype for all of those settings.

Evil gargoyles leered from every corner of the ancient building. Tall chill towers loomed overhead. As the blood-red Sylvanian sun sank behind the massive walls an aura of fear settled over the place. The smell of mould and rot filled the air. Blood and evil seemed to have seeped into every crumbling stone of the lichen-crusted walls. Felix started as a huge rat scuttled across the courtyard and disappeared into the ruins of the ancient stables.

‘Small ponies they have here,’ muttered his companion, running a massive fist through his enormous crest of dyed red hair. Felix turned and looked down at the dwarf. He was glad Gotrek was there. Although a full head shorter than Felix, he was nearly twice as heavy and all that weight was muscle. The sight of the monstrous axe the Dwarf held so casually in one hand was even more reassuring.

‘It was a rat, Gotrek. A rat. I hate rats,’ said Felix, throwing his tattered red cloak back over his shoulder to leave his sword arm free. It was true. He did hate rats. He had hated the pestilential things ever since his encounter with the skaven in the sewers below Nuln.

‘It was a joke, manling,’ muttered the Trollslayer, surveying the grim remains of the keep with his one good eye. Felix looked around nervously. Perhaps the dwarf could make jokes here but he could not. He was scared. All his life he had heard tales of the von Carsteins, the infamous Vampire Counts of Sylvania, and now he was standing amid the ruins of their ancestral home.

How did I ever get here, he asked himself? Why did that damned innkeeper have to mention the rumours that a necromancer was laired up here to Gotrek. Why did the Trollslayer feel it was incumbent on the two of them to investigate? He felt like telling the dwarf that he could take a death wish too far. He knew the Slayer had sworn a mighty oath to seek death in battle but it was all too possible that against a necromancer he would not find mere death but an eternity of ghastly servitude as an animated corpse. Just the thought of it made Felix want to flee screaming from the keep.

‘What was that noise, manling?’

‘Probably my teeth chattering.’

‘I’m serious!’ Felix looked warily at the dwarf. He knew the dwarf’s ears were keener than his. If Gotrek said he’d heard something then something was there.

‘Probably the rats,’ suggested Felix without much hope.

‘Bloody big rats,’ muttered the dwarf. Felix wished he had not mentioned the word ‘bloody’ so loudly. It brought to mind the infamous thirst for human blood that the vampire counts were said to have suffered from.

‘Look,’ said Gotrek, ‘a trail!’

Felix followed the dwarf’s stubby pointing finger. He could see that there were indeed tracks in the mud of the courtyard. It looked as if something heavy had been dragged across the ground here. They backtracked to the point of origin and found a huge black coach like those used by undertakers back in Felix’s home city of Altdorf. Nowhere was there a sign of any horses.

‘Must be the coach the villagers were talking about,’ grunted Gotrek.

‘Surely not,’ said Felix with nervous irony.

‘I think we’d better look inside the keep.’

‘Oh good,’ said Felix, with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

Inside the keep all was quiet. They stood in the great hall and surveyed their surroundings. Mouldering hangings covered the chill walls. From over a huge empty fireplace an enormous portrait of a tall and elegantly clad man, garbed in finery centuries out of fashion, glared down at them. Felix walked over to the fireplace and rubbed the dust from the brass plate at the bottom of the picture. It read: Mannfred von Carstein, Count of all Sylvania.

Felix looked up at the picture. The count was a handsome man but there was something feral and predatory about his features. His skin was pale and the painter had tinted his eyes with just the hint of red. On his fingers was a great ring with a ruby set among black bat wings.

‘Mannfred von Carstein,’ said Felix.

‘My father fought against him at Hel Fenn,’ said Gotrek.

‘Your father?’ spluttered Felix. ‘But Hel Fenn was nearly three hundred years ago...’

‘So?’

Felix shrugged. Dwarfs were long-lived and their concept of time was not the same as men’s.

‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘Often he would tell us of that dreadful day when the sun hid its face from the slaughter and the armies of dwarf and man pitted themselves against the Lords of Undeath.’

The dwarf looked lost in thought. His coarse and brutal features relaxed into an expression that was almost gentle. His enormous axe was held negligently in one hand. When he spoke he seemed to be remembering another’s words and recounting them word for word from memory.

‘It was an overcast day. The sky was black with storm clouds. The sun’s light was dim and watery. In the gathering gloom a great host of yellow-boned skeletons grinned and champed their teeth, and brandished their notched and rusty weapons. Zombies marched forward in rotting ranks – balefires glowing in their putrefying eyeballs. Their flesh was blotched with rot. Great patches of skin had peeled away and flapped in the breeze revealing hearts that did not beat, and veins through which no blood flowed. Overhead, ghastly birds flapped like daemon ravens descending on the battlefields of hell. In the centre of the host were the last of the vampire aristocrats, their skin white and smooth as porcelain. Their eyes were red with unnatural thirst.’

‘It was a long fight and a hard one that day. For the men were filled with fear at the sight of the walking dead, and the horses of their cavalry panicked at the ghastly smell of the advancing enemies. As the two forces clashed only the dwarfs held their ground and it seemed that they might be overwhelmed by the sea of undead foes. Then the Elector Count of Stirland rallied his force and returned to face the vampire count. In the centre of the field they clashed and for a while it seemed that Mannfred might prevail but the elector’s runefang bit deep and the vampire turned and fled, to be lost on the edge of Hel Fenn. The body was never found.’

Gotrek shook himself from his reverie. ‘Often I have wished for a chance to measure myself against the princes of the undead, as my father did,’ said Gotrek.

Personally Felix hoped that he would never get the chance.

They pushed on down the stairwell towards the dungeons. From up ahead they heard the sound of chanting in some foreign tongue. After a moment Felix recognised the harsh and guttural cadences of Arabyan, although the intonation was much different from that used by the merchants who had once visited his father’s warehouses. Only one word was familiar from the whole long litany. It was a name his parents had used to frighten him into silence when he was a child. It was the name of the infamous Liche Lord Nagash.

Gotrek too must have understood the significance, for he flinched then smiled broadly, revealing his missing teeth. He ran his thumb along the edge of his axe blade until a bead of bright red blood appeared. Under the circumstances the sight of it made Felix shudder. He hoped there was nothing nearby that might be drawn to the sight of it.

The voice chanting the incantation was high-pitched and cracked and made Felix think of the mad beggars he had often seen ranting on the cobbled streets of Altdorf. The ones who always claimed that the end of the world was coming and that it was time to repent.

They pushed on into the crypts and the chanting slowly stopped, dying away into an ominous eerie silence. Felix could almost feel the currents of Dark Magic in the air. It was like having icy fingers scrape his skin.

Now the voice had started to speak again. ‘Soon, master, soon,’ it shrieked. ‘Soon you will return to spread fear and reverence among the citizens of the Empire. Soon the cattle who call themselves men will grovel in the dust before thee. Soon all will know that you walk the woods of Sylvania once more.’

The tone of the voice changed once more. ‘They said I was mad, you know. They said it could never be done. For years I trawled my nets through the murk of Hel Fenn. Everyone said it couldn’t be done, that it shouldn’t be done, but I succeeded. I found HIS body. I will prove them wrong girl. With your virgin blood I will bring Mannfred von Carstein back to unlife and all will tremble at my genius. I, Hermann Schtillman, will have performed the mightiest act of necromancy of the age.’

‘Please, let me go,’ a girl’s voice said. ‘I promise I won’t tell anyone.’

‘True. You most certainly won’t. You will, unfortunately, be dead.’

Gotrek growled with barely suppressed fury. Felix’s hand found his sword hilt. The sound of the girl’s tears drove back his forebodings. He looked at the dwarf. Gotrek nodded. Weapons ready they charged into the room. When Felix saw what was waiting he wished they hadn’t.

The crypt was huge. A shivering girl was chained against one clammy wall. Her lithe form was a stark contrast to that of the skeletons who dangled from the chains about her. Before her stood a tall, thin man with a shaven head and vulpine features. In one hand he clutched a black-bladed knife with a small brass skull at its pommel. This he wiped against the breast of his none-too-clean black robe. On the floor in front of him was a pile of mouldering bones to which clung the hardened remains of mud and traces of swamp reed. All this was ominous enough but it was what stood around the edges of the chamber the grabbed Felix’s attention and made him freeze with fear.

Ten huge grey corpses stood there, each clutching an enormous rusting weapon. As Felix and Gotrek entered their eyes opened and luminous witchfires gazed out. Teeth were visible through their ragged cheeks and bones protruded from their flaking skin. The stench of corruption and decay was near overwhelming.

‘Stop!’ shrieked the necromancer. Gotrek paid him no heed. With surprising speed for one so short and muscular, he bounded across the room, axe held high. The zombies shuffled forward to intercept him like obscene puppets in a hellish play. Gotrek’s axe flickered and one giant fell, decapitated. Then the axe struck again and sheared away the right arm of another. A third stroke crunched through rotten ribs as if they were matchwood. A fourth blow narrowly missed and smashed into the stone floor of the crypt sending blue sparks flying into the air. Red runes blazed along the blade of Gotrek’s axe, as if in response to the presence of evil magic.

Felix forced himself forward into the fray and found himself face to face with a mighty shuffling zombie. The sight of worms burrowing through its rotting eyes and the sound of the air wheezing through the thing’s decomposing chest combined with its charnel reek to make him feel physically sick. He barely managed to raise his blade in time to parry its sweeping blow. He could hardly bring himself to strike out. His blade burrowed deep into the clammy flesh and his second stroke chopped off a slimy hand. Droplets of pus that once might have been blood splashed his face. It took all his willpower to keep his mind concentrated on his foes and not to stop and wipe his face.

The necromancer recovered from his surprise and began to chant aloud. Cold fear played up and down Felix’s spine as a nimbus of dark power crackled round Schtillman’s head and hands and then lashed out to touch the skeletons on the wall. The girl screamed as lights flickered on in the gaping skulls’ sockets. The chains fell away from the skeletons’ limbs as they pulled themselves upright and leapt into battle.

If Gotrek was disturbed by this he gave no sign. He kept chopping away at everything within reach. The axe flashed out, describing a great figure of eight and four zombies fell, cut to pieces by the thunderous power of his blows. Foam dripped from the Slayer’s lips, his beard bristled and he howled with the insane lust for battle. Recovering slightly from his fear Felix lashed out with his own blade, taking out another zombie.

His stomach lurched as he slipped on a puddle of pus on the slimy floor. He fell on his back, barely managing to keep his head from striking the stone floor. His heart raced as he saw two more animated corpses lumber towards him, weapons held high. Sticky filth covered his hand as he rolled to one side, barely dodging in time, as blows that would have reduced him to bloody pulp almost connected. The necromancer continued to chant and more and more skeletons threw off their chains and staggered forward, pausing only to pick up their fallen comrades’ weapons.

Gotrek’s roars mingled with the girl’s screams and the magician’s chanting. The noise echoed round the crypt threatening to deafen Felix. He forced himself to concentrate and continue to fight.

Gotrek laughed and gibbered and threw himself forward towards the horrified magician. Two skeletons tried to grab him as if at some unspoken command. The Trollslayer’s cable-like sinews swelled as he threw them off and brought his axe down in an irresistible arc, nearly cleaving the evil sorcerer in two with the force of his blow.

Instantly the zombies dropped to the floor like men pole-axed. The skeletons disintegrated in a clattering shower of bones. Gratefully Felix pulled himself to his feet. Gotrek stomped over to the girl. His axe flashed twice and her chains fell to the floor, severed cleanly by two blows. Felix moved forward and barely managed to catch the girl as she toppled floorward. The way he felt he wished there was someone to catch him. Then he felt the girl stiffen against him and let out a little gasp.

‘Look,’ she whispered. ‘Sigmar save us.’

Felix turned to see what she was looking at. At first he saw nothing but then the awful details of what was happening became clear.

A trickle of bright red blood flowed from the necromancer’s mangled body. It touched the pile of bones in the centre of the floor. As it did so the blood bubbled and evaporated into a fine red steam. A cloud of the stuff swiftly spread to cover the bones. Through a red haze Felix watched what happened next.

First all the dirt and mud and reeds evaporated from the bones leaving the skeleton gleaming white. Felix noticed that its skull had two very long and pronounced canine teeth. Next, layers of muscle and sinew congealed out of the mist and wrapped themselves round the bones. Veins burrowed their way through the clay-like flesh. Red eyeballs sprouted in the sockets of the skull. Great cables of sinew writhed like snakes as they formed.

The three stood transfixed as they watched this bizarre resurrection. Not even Gotrek seemed capable of movement. He watched in fascination as white flesh enveloped the man-like form and glossy black hair erupted from its scalp. It dawned on Felix’s shocked brain that what he had just witnessed was like watching the decomposition of a corpse only at great speed and in reverse. Slowly the pale creature rose to its feet and smiled at them revealing long white teeth.

Felix recognised the thing at once although his stunned mind refused to accept what he was seeing. ‘Mannfred von Carstein,’ he breathed.

‘True,’ said the vampire count in a low well-modulated voice. ‘And I thank you for your part in my resurrection. It was not quite what Herr Schtillman intended I think, but nonetheless the results are satisfactory.’

‘Undead scum, prepare to die,’ said Gotrek.

The vampire gestured with one long claw-like hand and Gotrek froze on the spot. Veins bulged in his forehead. Great muscles swelled on his chest and arms. He looked as if he were struggling in the grip of an invisible giant. The only sign of this contest was a look of strain on the vampire count’s face.

‘No, Slayer,’ he said. ‘I would be foolish indeed to face such an axe as yours in my newly reborn state. I think I shall forgo the pleasure of humbling you till another evening. For the moment farewell.’

With a mighty roar Gotrek threw himself forward, overcoming his invisible bonds. Even as the slayer sprang the vampire shimmered and his form came apart in a cloud of black mist. Gotrek’s axe cleaved through the fog and Felix thought he heard a slight cry of pain. Droplets of blood congealed on the edge of the axe. Then with faintest trace of mocking laughter the cloud slithered up the stairs and was gone.

Gotrek bounded after it, howling oaths and curses. Felix turned to look at the girl. He took off his cloak and draped it round her shivering form. She looked stunned.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. The girl nodded. After a moment she said. ‘He was rather handsome. The count, I mean.’

Felix groaned and headed for the stairs. The sooner they got out of this accursed place, the happier he would be.

THE TWO CROWNS OF RAS KARIM

Nathan Long

ONE

‘The Lurking Horror?’ chuckled a merchant in orange robes. ‘A tale to frighten children. It does not exist.’

‘It exists,’ said a hard-faced man in the garb of a river pilot. His accent was almost impenetrable. ‘Not a year ago it made off with half the sheep of my tribe and ate my cousin Amduj.’

‘Do you know where it dwells?’ asked Felix.

The pilot shrugged. ‘It is everywhere and nowhere. It steps from behind the night, and can open a door in a shadow.’

Gotrek growled, annoyed. ‘Very helpful.’

Felix sighed and looked around the low, arched common room, trying to gauge who else in this foreign place might speak Reikspiel. He and Gotrek were in the Forbidden Garden, a house of ill repute in Ras Karim, a port some hundred leagues east of Copher, asking after a legendary monster said to haunt the desert south of the city.

They had first learned of the beast on Sartosa, where Gotrek had overheard an Arabyan pirate bragging that he had seen it kill fifty men, and that it had a hide of black iron that no mortal weapon could pierce. The tale had worked upon the Slayer like a red cape to an Estalian bull. He bought passage on the first ship heading south, and they had followed the rumour of the Horror from Lashiek, the corsair city, to Copher, the spice port, and now to Ras Karim. But though everyone they spoke to in their travels had heard of it, none could agree where it lived, or what it was, or if it was anything more than a myth.

The mellow glow of intricately pierced tin lamps pushed back the darkness of the hot, dry evening, revealing clusters of men reclining on satin cushions around knee-high tables, drinking fragrant mint tea from tiny cups and sipping smoke from water-filled pipes. The air was heady with smoke and the cloying scent of night jasmine, blooming in the courtyard garden that gave the place its name.

In the centre of the tables, veiled, bare-midriffed dancers in gauzy pantaloons swayed to whining flutes and pattering drums, while other women served and sat with the men, murmuring seductions in their ears and leaning lasciviously against them as they fed them chunks of spiced lamb.

Not all eyes were on the dancers, however. More than a few men glanced furtively at Gotrek and Felix. Felix tried to convince himself that this was only natural. Men of the Empire were not often seen this far south and east, and dwarfs were undoubtedly rarer still, particularly bare-chested, red-crested, one-eyed dwarfs with shoulders wider than many doorways.

A thin man at Felix’s elbow coughed politely. His head was shaved, and gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose. ‘Noble foreigners, if you truly seek the Horror, it would be wiser to enquire on the morrow in the Street of Scholars.’ He sniffed in the direction of the other men. ‘There you will receive science and fact, not rumour and tall tales.’

‘Thank you, learned sir,’ said Felix, bowing and hoping he’d got the honorific right. ‘We will do so.’ He looked at Gotrek. ‘Tomorrow then?’

Gotrek shrugged. ‘Aye. Though the sooner I find my doom, the sooner I can stop drinking this piss water.’ He made a face as he finished his mug. ‘Worst beer I’ve ever had.’

‘That is because it is not beer,’ said the merchant. ‘Ras Karim is not rich in wheat like your northern lands. It is tialva, made from sorghum.’

‘Sorghum?’ Gotrek choked. ‘Valaya preserve me.’ He glared behind the bar. ‘Do they have anything else?’

The merchant nodded. ‘Try the arag, our native drink. It is made with anise, and very potent.’

‘Anise.’ Gotrek shuddered. He turned away from the merchant and pounded the bar. ‘Barkeep! More piss water!’

Felix cringed and looked around to see if anyone had taken offence. They were still being scrutinised, but thankfully no one seemed to have understood Gotrek’s words.

As he turned back to tell Gotrek to keep his voice down, Felix noticed a pair of dark eyes looking at him. He stopped, held by their gaze. They belonged to one of the women of the house. She leaned against a fat pillar, staring boldly at him. Behind her translucent veil her full lips curved into a knowing smile. The rest of her voluptuous charms were revealed beneath an equally transparent sleeveless top and pantaloons. Felix gulped. It had been a long, dry journey to Ras Karim. Very dry.

She stepped toward him, her belt of coins jingling softly with each sway of her hips.

‘Greetings, esteemed foreigner,’ she said in a low, honeyed voice.

‘Greetings,’ said Felix, awkwardly. His tongue seemed suddenly too big for his mouth.

‘Would you like to add a coin to my belt?’ she asked, looking up at him through black lashes. She smelled of vanilla and smoke. ‘I have never had the coin of a northman before. I hear they are large, and of very hard metal.’

Felix coughed, blushing. He turned to Gotrek. ‘Gotrek, as we must wait until tomorrow…’

The Slayer shrugged. ‘Do what you will, manling. I’m going to see how much sorghum beer it takes to get me drunk.’ He pounded on the bar again. ‘Barkeep! Where’s that piss water?’

Unclothed but for her veil and her shimmering belt, the dancer’s golden-brown curves were even more astounding. Felix swallowed convulsively as she took his hand and drew him toward the bed, a low, cushioned dais in the centre of her small, opulent room, piled high with silk pillows and overhung with a sheer canopy.

Felix cleared his throat. ‘Aren’t you going to remove your veil?’

‘My veil?’ She smiled as she knelt before him. ‘That would be immodest.’ She began unbuckling his belt. ‘Now, please, tease me no more. I must see what you have in your coin pouch…’

‘Oh, devil of the north,’ cried the dancer a while later. ‘You shake me to my core!’

She clutched Felix to her in ecstasy.

‘Er,’ said Felix, pausing. ‘I think that was the building shaking, actually.’

‘Indeed,’ purred the dancer. ‘So powerful. So potent.’

The room shook again, and this time Felix heard a crash from below.

‘Ah, I think there might be some trouble.’

The dancer pouted. ‘The men fight. They always fight. Forget them, beloved.’ She ground against him. ‘Come, I hunger for you.’

Felix was hungry too, but just as he returned to her embrace, there came a thunderous crash, then a muffled, ‘By Grimnir’s beard, you’ll pay for that!’

More thuds and smashes followed, along with angry cries and the high-pitched shrieks of frightened women.

‘Sigmar curse him!’ groaned Felix. He disentangled himself from the dancer’s arms and reached for his clothes.

‘You leave me, noble warrior?’ she moaned, dismayed. ‘Where do you go?’

‘To speak with a Slayer about timing,’ growled Felix.

‘Sigmar take you, Gotrek!’ cried Felix, still buckling on his sword belt and stamping his left foot into his boot as he shoved through the angry sailors and merchants and artisans who were all trying to come to grips with the dwarf. ‘Can you not go one night without stirring up trouble? I’d only just–’

He paused. Gotrek looked awful. Though he fought like a badger, he was sweating and pale – almost green – and his eyes were unfocused.

Felix ducked as a tribesman swung a stool at him, then kicked the man in the knee. ‘Gotrek?’

Gotrek heaved a merchant in loose breeches into the crowd. Five men went down, but Gotrek almost did too. He was reeling.

‘Gotrek?’ said Felix again as he tripped one man into another. ‘Are you drunk?’

Gotrek shook his head. Sweat sprayed from his beard. ‘Something…’ He punched a man in the stomach, then kneed him in the face when he doubled up. ‘Something wrong… with the beer.’

Felix frowned. ‘Wrong?’

Gotrek swung at a man with fierce eyes and fiercer moustaches. He missed! The man kicked Gotrek in the chest to no effect. Gotrek shoved him unsteadily to the floor and staggered back. ‘My head… hurts.’

The barkeep was shouting at the crowd. His nose was twice its normal size and streaming blood, and he had two alarming black eyes. He pointed to the door.

The brawlers started pushing Gotrek and Felix toward the street like they were flotsam floating on a sweaty sea. Felix was tempted to draw his sword and even the odds a bit, but dared not. The local authorities might forgive a tavern brawl. Murder they would not.

Unfortunately, some of the brothel’s patrons didn’t share his compunction. A tribesman was drawing a curved dagger. Gotrek caught his wrist and gave him an uppercut that snapped his teeth together with a crack like a pistol-shot.

The barkeep roared in his native tongue, waving his hands, and Felix saw other men reluctantly sheathing knives and scimitars. Must be fastidious about blood on his flagstones, he thought.

Gotrek spun a herdsman around by his belt and tossed him into the crowd. Felix punched a black-bearded trader in the face and dodged a kick from a brawny labourer. He heard a shout behind him and turned. Four men were running at them with one of the low tables tipped on its side like a shield. Gotrek tried to get his axe out to split the table, but he fumbled it. The table bashed into them and forced them backwards.

Gotrek slurred a dwarfish curse and pushed back. Felix joined him, but they could get no traction.

Felix looked back. They were skidding toward the door.

‘Get around it!’ he called. ‘Gotrek–’

Too late. With a crash, the table hit the edges of the door and shot them tumbling out into the dusty street.

Gotrek surged up, roaring and throwing blind punches, but no one had followed them out. Instead, the Forbidden Garden’s heavy wooden door slammed shut in their faces, and Felix heard bolts shoot shut and locks clack closed.

Felix got painfully to his feet and looked around. They were entirely alone. There wasn’t a soul on the street. And it was quiet. No noise of traffic. No night bird’s cry. Not a sound came from the houses around them. Even the shouting and commotion from inside the brothel had stopped as if it had never been.

Gotrek stood clutching his head and swaying, his legs wide-braced and shaking, as if he struggled under a great weight. ‘Drugged,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Cowards drugged me.’

‘Drugged?’ Felix wondered why. Did they hope to rob the Slayer? The only things of value either of them carried at the moment were their weapons. Their journey to the east had beggared them.

‘Let’s go back to Ishurak’s ship,’ he said. ‘You can sleep it off there.’

Gotrek nodded queasily. ‘Just… point me in the right direction.’

‘This way.’

Felix started toward the docks, Gotrek lurching along behind as if his legs were made of wood. Their steps echoed eerily off the moon-washed stucco buildings that lined the street. Ahead of them a lit window went dark. The shutters of another banged shut, and Felix heard the click of a lock. A baby wailed, then was silenced.

Felix slowed, his hand dropping to his hilt. Something was wrong. Gotrek didn’t look up. All his concentration was focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

There was a tiny sound behind them – the softest scuff of sole on sand. Felix turned. He stared. A semicircle of motionless, identically dressed men stood behind them, heavy tulwars in their gauntleted hands.

TWO

The men wore bronze breastplates over blood-red livery, and spiked helmets wrapped in blood-red turbans. Their faces were hidden, veils of fine bronze mail draped over their features, obscuring them utterly. They showed no flesh at all.

Gotrek snarled and drew his rune axe, holding it unsteadily before him. Felix drew his sword. The masked warriors advanced in unison, going on guard as one.

A voice cried out a command.

They stopped.

A man in gold-trimmed red robes stepped from behind them. He was tall but hunched, as if his high, column-shaped hat made his head too heavy for his stringy neck. Swinging before his sunken chest was a small silver flute that hung from a long necklace. He looked at Gotrek and Felix with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. ‘Do not hurt our guests,’ he said in a smooth voice, and Felix realised he was speaking Reikspiel for their benefit. ‘The dwarf will fall soon enough.’

Gotrek growled. ‘Fall?’ He was having difficulty forming words. He started forward, axe raised, but his legs were rubber. He listed sideways. ‘Fall?’

With each step, the weight of Gotrek’s impairment seemed to press more heavily upon him. He tripped and caught himself with his axe, then staggered on.

Felix advanced too, aiming for the gold-robed man, but he stepped back, the mail-masked soldiers closing ranks before him.

‘I… will not… fall…’ Gotrek rasped.

He fell, forehead thudding against the rough, dry earth.

At a sign from the tall man, the red warriors moved in.

Felix stood over Gotrek, sword out, ready to protect him to his death. ‘Who dies first!’ he cried.

Pain and sparking fire exploded inside his head, and he felt his shoulders hit the street. The last thing he saw before all went dark was the barkeep standing above him with a cudgel, bowing obsequiously to the man in red, who tossed him a gold coin.

Felix woke with harsh morning light stabbing him in the eyes. It wasn’t his first waking. He had vague recollections of swinging head-down over a uniformed shoulder, of being dropped on a stone floor, of barred doors clanging shut. Now he woke fully, and wished he hadn’t.

He was in a dark cell – more like a cage – with iron bars on three sides and a stone wall on the fourth. Sunlight lanced through an arrow slit in the wall. He sat up to get out of its savage beam and groaned. His head felt like it was made of loosely jointed scrap-iron. It clanged when it moved. He felt his skull gingerly. There was an egg-sized lump behind his ear, and a smaller one on his forehead, and he was thirsty – terribly thirsty. It was as dry and as hot as an oven in that low-roofed space. His skin felt like it might crumble to powder.

He looked around. ‘Gotrek, are you…?’

Gotrek wasn’t in the cell. Felix looked through the bars beyond it. His cage was one of hundreds, arranged in neat rows that vanished into the gloom of the dungeon. In every cell, emaciated figures huddled on the floor – asleep or dead, Felix could not tell. Gotrek wasn’t in any of the cells he could see.

The prisoner in the next cell rolled over and looked at him. ‘Ah, the pale one awakes,’ he said, his cultured voice belying his rags and matted beard. ‘A man of the Empire, yes?’

‘Yes,’ Felix nodded, then groaned. His head rang like a gong.

‘Welcome then, honoured friend,’ said the ragged man, sitting up. ‘All that I may call mine is yours.’ He smirked as he scratched himself. ‘I am currently wealthy in fleas.’

‘Where am I?’ asked Felix. ‘And where is Gotrek? The dwarf.’

‘You are in the dungeons of the Palace of Penitence, guest of his divine eminence, Falhedar il Toorissi, Scourge of the Bermini, Conqueror of the Medgidal hill kings, Defender of the Faithful, and Caliph of our fair city of Ras Karim.’ The man scratched himself again and looked down the corridor outside the cells. ‘As for your squat friend, our gracious hosts took him away in chains not a half-hour ago. I know not where.’

Felix slumped back against the stone wall, groaning. Imprisoned in a strange land. They could die here and no one would know what had become of them. Gotrek wouldn’t like it much. Rotting in a cell was not a proper death for a Slayer. But… but perhaps there had been some mistake. Perhaps if they could speak to someone they might be released.

He looked at the man in the next cell. ‘This caliph. Is he a reasonable man? Is he just?’

The prisoner snorted, then chuckled, then guffawed, then bent double in a violent coughing fit, tears turning to mud as they ran down his filthy face. At last he recovered and leaned back, looking at Felix with sparkling eyes. ‘Ah, my friend, I have not laughed like that in…’ His face grew grave. ‘Well, a long time.’ He bowed where he sat, one hand making flourishes. ‘My name is Halim il Saredi. My father once served the old caliph and, until recently, I served his son, Falhedar, your host, who is as cruel and tyrannical as his father was wise and just.’

‘You served him?’ Felix asked. ‘And you’re here now?’

Halim nodded. ‘For a time I thought I could help the people by using my influence to blunt Falhedar’s excesses.’ He sighed. ‘Finally I could no longer pretend that I made a difference. When I dared speak against one of his more villainous edicts he ordered my execution. I escaped into the desert, then returned in disguise not long ago to organise a rebellion with some like-minded friends.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Needless to say, I was caught.’ He looked toward the arrow slit in his cell wall. ‘And soon I will fight the khimar, and die, but only after I am tortured into betraying my conspirators.’ He blinked, lost in thought, then grinned suddenly at Felix. ‘So – to answer your question – no, the caliph is not particularly just.’

Felix sighed. It had been a faint hope. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry for your–’

A roar from the narrow windows drowned him out – the sound of thousands of voices all shouting at once.

‘What was that?’

Halim cringed away from the window, pale beneath his grime. ‘The khimar is about to take another victim.’

‘The khimar? What is that?’ Felix stood and craned his neck to look through the arrow slit. Did the beast, whatever it was, have a thousand throats?

He blinked in the blinding rays of the sun. A hot, dusty breeze blew into his face as details emerged from the glare. The window was nearly level with a broad sandy floor, encircled by high walls, and above the walls, slanting planes of colour, endlessly shifting. For a moment, he didn’t understand, for he could only see a small wedge of the world. Then it came into focus. It was an arena, like an Estalian bull ring, but much larger. The stands thronged with people. It was from them the roar had come.

On the far wall large double doors were rumbling open and something was coming out – something big.

‘The khimar,’ Halim whimpered, peering out of his window as well.

The thing emerged from the shadows of the door, padding on great clawed feet. Felix gasped. Though he had read descriptions of such a beast in books, he had never seen one in life. It had the body of a lion, but much larger – taller than a man at the shoulder, with powerful muscles rippling under its tawny, scar-inscribed fur. It had a lion’s head as well, great golden mane shining in the sun as it roared at the crowd, but the head was not alone. Sprouting from its left shoulder screamed the head of an eagle, its cruel beak snapping, while growing from its right, whipping angrily at the end of a long neck, was the head of a dark red serpent, saliva dripping from its fangs. The monster prowled to the centre of the arena, lion tail lashing, its heads looking in every direction for prey. The crowd roared again.

Felix gaped. ‘A chimera? They feed the prisoners to a chimera?’

‘Not feed,’ said Halim. ‘Fight.’ His wide eyes never left the beast. ‘We are instructed to fight it – unarmed, of course. It is more entertaining that way.’

‘Unarmed? Against that?’ Felix laughed hollowly. He pitied the poor unfortunate who would have to face all those fangs and beaks and claws. It would be a massacre.

There was a fanfare of trumpets and a tall door at the back of a raised platform slowly opened. Behind it, a portcullis rose, curtains parted, and a figure was thrust, stumbling, onto the platform, his wrists shackled in chains, his one eye blinking in the sun.

It was Gotrek.

THREE

The Slayer looked as if he was still suffering from the drugged drink that had poleaxed him the night before. He stared around stupidly at his surroundings, weaving on his powerful legs as the door closed behind him. The crowd laughed.

The chimera crept toward him, eagle beak shrieking a challenge. Gotrek’s head snapped up. He reached instinctively for his back, then looked around, baffled, at the place where his axe should have been.

Felix choked, then berated himself. Of course Gotrek wouldn’t have his axe. They were prisoners. But it was still a shock to see it. He could not remember a time when Gotrek had been separated from it.

The Slayer back-pedalled, straining to break the chains that hung between his manacles. The links were too thick. The chimera leapt onto the platform. Gotrek dived off – out of Felix’s field of vision. The chimera sprung after him. The crowd roared.

‘What’s happening?’ Felix cried.

‘I can see no more than you, friend,’ said Halim.

Felix leaned left and right, to no avail. Then his eye was caught by a splash of red in the stands. The man in the red robes! He stood in a canopied box, his silver flute winking in the shadows. Beside him on an opulent throne sat a plump man, lavishly dressed in white and gold, and wearing a golden circlet on his head that looked like a coiled cobra. They watched the contest with interest.

‘Who is the man in red?’ Felix asked.

Halim growled. ‘Dujedi il Kaadiq. The caliph’s advisor and chief sorcerer, may his soul be flayed by djinn.’

Gotrek ran past, the chimera bounding after him, and was gone again. Felix cursed in frustration.

A second later, the Slayer landed near Felix’s window in a cloud of dust – close enough for Felix to hear him grunt. He was striped across the chest with crimson claw marks. The chimera dropped down on top of him, both snake and lion heads whipping down. Gotrek swung his chains, fists together, and cracked the snake head with the heavy links, knocking it into the lion head. The beast recoiled. Gotrek surged up and headbutted it in the underbelly. It roared and fell backwards, then flipped around like the cat it was and landed on its feet. Bellowing from its three throats, it leapt at Gotrek again.

Gotrek thrust his hands up and apart and blocked the eagle’s beak with the rigid chain. It bit the links and flung Gotrek over its shoulder with a flick of its neck, then pounced after him and was gone.

Felix tried to gauge what was happening by the cheers and screams of the crowd, but he didn’t know if they were cheering Gotrek or the chimera, or just bloodshed in general. The noise rose and rose.

After a moment, the beast galloped by the window again, shaking its heads violently. Gotrek hung from them, struggling to hold away the eagle with one hand and choking the snake with the other. Its slavering fangs snapped an inch from his face. The heel of his boot was crammed in the lion’s maw, forcing it open.

Felix groaned as the combatants disappeared again. That looked like the end. At any moment one of the heads would break free and rip Gotrek to pieces.

There was an intake of breath from the whole arena, and then a roar, louder than any before. Felix cursed. That must have been it. It could have been nothing else.

But as the chimera staggered into view again, Felix saw that he was wrong. The eagle head was stuffed into the snake’s distended jaw, and Gotrek was on the beast’s back, strangling the lion head with his chains.

The red sorcerer and the man in white and gold were on their feet, shouting down into the arena.

‘By the seven fathers of Mu’Allid!’ whispered Halim, gaping.

The chimera writhed and roared, trying to reach Gotrek with its claws and disentangle its other heads at the same time. The lion head was bleeding from the mouth, its bellows hoarse and constricted.

Gotrek heaved mightily on the chain and the lion head went limp. The chimera lost its footing and fell on one shoulder. The snake head finally freed the eagle head from its jaws and turned on Gotrek. The Slayer caught it in his bare hands as it lunged, and twisted it cruelly. The eagle head tried to reach him, but couldn’t get around the lion head.

There was a dull crack, and the snake head flopped to the ground. Gotrek leapt at the eagle head. It bit at his hand, crushing his manacle. Gotrek grabbed the powerful beak with his free hand and began pushing it open. Its paws clawed weakly at him, shredding his back and legs. He ignored them, forcing the beak further apart.

The man in white was screaming at the sorcerer, who cringed at his displeasure and began making cabalistic gestures in the air.

He was too late.

With a horrible ripping sound, the two halves of the eagle beak tore apart, splitting the flesh around it. The eagle head’s white feathers were drenched in blood and the chimera collapsed, dead. Gotrek fell beside it, utterly spent.

The arena was silent, the crowd still. Then suddenly they roared, a deafening, jubilant cheer. The caliph and the sorcerer looked around at them, furious and afraid.

Felix let out a long-held breath.

Halim’s jaw hung loose. ‘This… this is a sign,’ he said, then stepped back, suddenly calculating. ‘At least, it can be used as one. Proof that the caliph’s time has come. By the silver beard of Abdul ibn Ashid! That I have lived to see the day…’

White-uniformed guards crept toward Gotrek. He struggled up, lifting his fists. He was running with blood, his flesh criss-crossed with deep gashes. He could barely stand.

The guards spread out. They held something between them. Gotrek lurched toward them. Half of them ran forward, raising what they held – a weighted net. It settled over the Slayer. He grabbed at it, trying to tear it off, but they pulled the far edge under him, knocking him off his feet, and dragged him, kicking uselessly, toward the arena door.

Felix watched as, accompanied by a jailer, the guards hauled Gotrek down the long hall between the cages and rolled him out of the net into a cell.

Gotrek rose to his feet as they slammed the door, and stumbled to the bars. ‘Let me out!’ he spat, mouth bloody. ‘Give me my axe!’

The chief guard sneered and said something in his own language that sounded like an insult. He turned to the jailer and barked an order. The jailer bowed and ran off.

‘You are to be brought food and bandages,’ said Halim, as the guards strode away. ‘It seems the caliph wishes you to die in the arena, not in private.’

Gotrek slumped against the bars, his strength ebbing with his fury. He slid to the floor.

Halim bowed to him from his cell. ‘A magnificent battle, friend dwarf. By Kasoun’s fiery sword, if all dwarfs are like you, it seems incredible that they do not rule the world.’

Gotrek’s answer was a snore.

A short while later, a slave appeared, carrying food and bandages. He set them outside the cell and scurried away. Gotrek woke as Felix pulled it all through the bars.

‘Give me that,’ he rasped.

He dressed his wounds first, tearing the bandages with his teeth, for no blade had been provided, then ate the gruel and flat bread, muttering under his breath, without a glance for Felix or Halim.

‘Friend dwarf,’ said Halim, reverently. ‘Know it or not, you have shaken the caliph’s rule to its core today. The people have believed his hold on the throne unshakable. Now they know he can be beaten. Now is the time to strike! If only I could be free of this cell I could topple him like a rootless tree.’

The Slayer ignored him, chewing mechanically until all the food was gone, then he stood and stepped to the bars. ‘Come on, manling. I have to find my axe.’

‘Come? Come where?’ said Felix.

The Slayer grabbed two of the bars and began pulling at them.

‘Gotrek,’ said Felix, scowling. ‘Not even at your strongest…’

Gotrek continued pulling, keeping inexorable pressure on the bars. His face turned red. His arms trembled. ‘A dwarf knows iron,’ he hissed. ‘This is poor stuff.’

Felix gaped. The bars groaned. They were a half-inch further apart.

‘Poorly forged,’ grunted Gotrek. ‘Poorly set.’

Halim stood, staring. The bars were bowing, creaking and squealing. Gotrek shook like a palsy victim. The veins stood out on his neck. His muscles bulged. Sweat poured from his brow. Blood leaked into his bandages.

‘Spirits of sky, earth and water!’ breathed Halim.

Other prisoners were turning and looking. The slap of boots echoed down the corridor and the jailer appeared. He gasped then stepped to the bars, screaming and bashing at Gotrek’s knuckles with a long, iron-shod truncheon to make him let go.

Gotrek’s hand shot out and grabbed the jailer’s wrist. He pulled. The jailer’s face banged off the bars. His eyes crossed. Gotrek caught him around the neck with one massive hand and yanked forward. The jailer’s head popped through the bars like a melon seed. He screamed. He had left his ears behind. Blood poured from the sides of his head. Gotrek punched him in the temple and he slumped, unconscious.

Felix darted forward and took the jailer’s ring of keys. He stepped to the door and began trying them in the lock. In every cell, the other prisoners were stepping forward, watching with desperate eyes.

‘My friends,’ said Halim, licking his lips.

The fourth key unlocked the door. Felix threw it open.

Gotrek stomped out and took up the jailer’s truncheon, then started down the corridor. ‘Let’s go.’

As Felix followed, the prisoners called to them, begging to be released.

Halim reached through the bars of his cell. ‘Wait, friends! Wait!’

Gotrek ignored him.

‘Friends, I beg you, listen to me!’ called Halim. ‘I can help you!’

Gotrek kept walking.

‘I know a secret way out of this place.’

Gotrek shrugged. ‘I’ll make my own way out.’

‘I know where your weapons are! I can lead you to them.’

Gotrek paused, then turned back. ‘Where are they?’

Halim laughed. ‘You think me a fool, friend dwarf? I will tell you when you let me out.’

Gotrek shot a questioning glance at Felix.

Felix shrugged. ‘He said he was once an advisor to the caliph.’

Gotrek grunted. ‘Let him out.’

Felix turned back and unlocked Halim’s cell.

Halim bowed profusely as he stepped out of the cage. ‘Thank you, friends. May the blessings of your gods be upon you.’

‘Never mind that,’ growled Gotrek. ‘Where is my axe?’

Halim shook his head. ‘Oh no. We are not yet free.’

Gotrek looked like he was going to stuff the man back in his cell.

‘I will take you to your weapons,’ said Halim. ‘I promise you. But we must be away from this place first, and quickly.’

Gotrek glowered at him. ‘If this is a trick, I’ll turn you inside out.’

Halim chuckled. ‘Friend dwarf, I saw you dispatch the chimera. I have more sense than to cross you.’

Gotrek grunted, unimpressed, then motioned for him to lead on.

Halim bowed. ‘Bless you. Now come. There is a secret way to the outside.’ Halim motioned them further down the corridor, away from the exit. ‘I know it from my father’s time as court sorcerer.’

As they followed, the other prisoners clamoured to be freed. Felix paused, then took the keys and tossed them to the man in the nearest cell. He didn’t know what good it would do them, but he wouldn’t deny them the attempt.

FOUR

‘You tricked us!’ cried Felix.

‘Didn’t I tell you I’d–’ began Gotrek, standing.

‘You would do well not to do anything you will later regret,’ said Halim softly. ‘You will not retrieve your weapons without me.’

He looked entirely different, freshly bathed and with his beard neatly trimmed. The clean blue robes and snow-white headcloth helped too, giving him an air of quiet nobility. Only the gauntness of his cheeks betrayed his recent captivity.

It was after sunset on the same day that he had led Gotrek and Felix out of the caliph’s prison. They sat around a broad table in the cellar of a dye works. Jars of ochre and indigo and other powders were stacked against the walls, as were bolts of cloth, both dyed and undyed. The acrid scents of the dyes mixed oddly with that of the meagre meal spread before them – curried lamb, dates, cheese and fragrant tea.

A handful of men and women sat with them. A proud young beauty sat at Halim’s side, her hand on his. She was dressed entirely in black, from pantaloons to blouse to veil. Her hair was black as well – glossy waves that fell to her waist.

All of them were glaring at Gotrek and Felix.

‘You dare threaten Bey Saredi, infidel?’ growled a hard-eyed, hard-muscled man with the bearing of a professional soldier. His Reikspiel was abominable.

‘Peace, Ghal,’ said Halim. ‘The dwarf and the northerner have a right to feel ill-used.’ Halim turned to Gotrek. ‘Though I did not lie. I will bring you to your weapons, in time.’

‘But you didn’t tell us it would take usurping the caliph to do it!’ said Felix.

Gotrek’s knuckles cracked like pistol-shots. ‘I don’t care about some little squabble. You promised me my axe.’

‘Little squabble?’ said the woman at Halim’s side. Her voice was clear and sharp. ‘The fate of a nation is at stake!’

Halim put a hand on her arm to quiet her. ‘Friends, there is no other way. Your weapons are in the caliph’s palace, as I feared, locked inside his treasure vault. A thousand men guard the palace, as does Kaadiq, the sorcerer who laid you low once before. I know secret ways into the palace, true, but there is no way to the vault that is not guarded. It is not a job for two men, or three, or twenty. It is a job for an army.’

Gotrek glared death at him for a long minute, and Felix was certain that the cellar was about to erupt into bloody violence, but at last the Slayer sank back into his chair.

‘Carry on,’ he grunted. ‘But if I don’t have my axe at the end of this, your reign will be over before it begins.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Ghal, rising.

Halim waved him down, then gave the Slayer a cool look. ‘There is no need for more threats, friend dwarf. You can only kill me once.’ He turned to the others and began to speak in his own language.

Felix let out a nervous breath. The crisis seemed to have passed.

As they could not understand the discussion that followed, Gotrek and Felix had little to do but wait. Gotrek spent the time eating and drinking – mostly drinking – but Felix entertained himself observing the play of personalities around the table.

Halim was clearly admired by the others – worshipped by some – as was the woman. She had a regal bearing that spoke of noble birth, but seemingly none of the spoiled selfishness that often went with it.

Ghal was the most passionate of them, pounding the table to make his points. He and Halim argued and bantered like old friends, but every now and then, when someone else was speaking, Felix noticed the warrior’s gaze stray to the woman’s hand, where it rested upon Halim’s.

After more than an hour, the conversation wound down, and Halim turned back to Gotrek and Felix. ‘So,’ he said. ‘We have a plan. In three days, Caliph Falhedar and Kaadiq the sorcerer hear the reports of the tax collectors in the throne room of the palace.’ He looked around at his followers. ‘That day, riots will break out all over the city, drawing as many guards as possible from the palace. More rioters will attack the palace gates. When they do, I and a select few will enter the palace gardens through the seventh summer house.’ He smirked. ‘Wise ruler though he was, the old caliph had a weakness for women of easy virtue, and built a secret passage to that pavilion to smuggle them in.’ He nodded at Gotrek and Felix. ‘You will be with us. It will be your duty to kill Kaadiq and defeat his crimson guard. I will deal with Falhedar.’

‘What?’ snapped Ghal. ‘I was to kill Kaadiq! It was he who slew my brothers. I must–’

‘Do you wish revenge? Or success?’ asked Halim, his eyes burning into Ghal’s.

Ghal held his gaze for a long moment, then at last shrugged and looked away.

Halim turned to the young woman in black. ‘When the tyrant and his vulture are dead, my beloved betrothed, Yuleh il Toorissi, Princess of the Blood and niece of the old caliph, will ask me, before the spirits of air, land and water, and before the people of the city, to be her husband and rule with her at her right hand.’ He smiled. ‘And with their blessing, I will accept.’

‘Their blessing?’ Ghal laughed. ‘When you have the crown, and the army, and a princess of the blood? Will you truly step aside if the crowd says nay?’

‘I would not have attempted this venture if I did not think the people would support me,’ said Halim. ‘But if they do not…’ He shrugged, his expression grim. ‘Then at least I will have had the satisfaction of ridding my land of the greatest leeches it has ever known.’

He turned to Gotrek and Felix. ‘So, friends, will you do your part?’

Felix shrugged.

Gotrek was scowling. ‘If you kill the caliph and the sorcerer, you still have the palace guard beating down the doors. I suppose you want me to kill them for you too?’

Halim shook his head. ‘The loyalty of the guards is maintained by the Serpent Crown – an artefact of great power. It protects the wearer from poison and steel, and grants the ability to bend the wills of weak men. If Falhedar is killed, or the crown removed, his guards will lose heart.’

Felix frowned. ‘But if you put it on, couldn’t you command them to surrender entirely?’

Halim’s face drained of colour. ‘I will not wear that crown. It is a vile thing.’

‘But in times of trouble, maybe a necessary one,’ said Ghal.

‘No!’ barked Halim. His hands were clenched. ‘No. I will wear the Lion Crown. The true crown.’ He turned to Gotrek and Felix. ‘Ras Karim has two crowns. The first, the Lion Crown, was made by the founder of this city, Karim the Benevolent. It is only a crown. It has no magic. But it is a symbol of just rule, and he who wears it and honours its legacy is loved by the people.’ He shot a glance at Ghal. ‘The second crown, the Serpent Crown, was made for Falhedar by Kaadiq, after the first attempt on his life.’ He sneered. ‘I hear he wears it to bed.’

Princess Yuleh flashed a mischievous grin. ‘I hope you don’t do that, beloved. I would find it very uncomfortable.’

Halim chuckled and squeezed her hand.

Ghal grunted and looked away.

Gotrek and Felix exchanged a glance.

FIVE

On the day of the attack, smoke rose from a dozen points in the city, and riots and demonstrations choked the streets with people. Company after company of palace guard was dispatched to put down the disturbances.

When Halim estimated that more than half of the garrison was chasing phantoms in the slums, he sent a ragtag army to the front gate, to pepper it with rocks and arrows and generally make a lot of noise.

Gotrek and Felix waited with him and Ghal and Yuleh and fifty armed men in an abandoned house with a secret door in its basement. Strangely, Halim was armed, not with a tulwar, but with an ugly wooden club with sharp chunks of basalt set into the end. The princess wore mannish garb, her hair hidden under a headscarf.

At last, word came that most of the remaining palace troops were engaged at the front gate. Halim opened the secret door and they ran swiftly through a narrow, lightless passage that ended, after more than a hundred yards, in another underground room – a dungeon of sorts, though curiously, all the fetters and whips seemed to be made of silk and satin, rather than iron and leather.

Above this was an opulent pleasure pavilion, a miniature palace of rose marble and satin pillows, of silver tables and tasselled lamps. Through its windows Gotrek and Felix looked with the others across a garden awash with flowers and fountains and exotic trees to an enormous palace that gleamed in the sun like a gilded sapphire. Spires and minarets rose from its every corner, and gold-pillared arcades ringed its upper storeys. There were no guards to be seen, only sounds of battle echoing in the distance.

Halim and Yuleh led the rest at a trot through the endless grounds until they came to a more modest garden, hidden by hedges, where melons and pears and nut trees grew. A genuflecting servant let the interlopers in at the kitchen door and they filed silently through a maze of service corridors until they came to a narrow stair, at the head of which was a stout door.

Halim turned as his men crowded forward. ‘Through that door is the Court of Palms, and beyond it, the throne room. We must cross the court like the wind, for if the guards close the throne room doors before we reach them, we are done before we begin. Are we ready?’

Ghal grunted. The men muttered their assent. Felix drew the scimitar he had been given. It felt alien and unbalanced in his hand.

Gotrek smacked into his palm the iron-shod truncheon he had taken from the jailer. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he growled.

Halim and Ghal crept up the stairs with the others behind them. Halim pressed his ear to the door, then shoved through it at a run.

The others burst through after him into a huge indoor jungle. Palm trees soared overhead under a faceted glass ceiling. Exotic flowers exploded from dark foliage, parrots and monkeys clutched drooping vines. Felix saw the far wall as if looking into a clearing. A towering archway revealed a golden-pillared room beyond.

Ten guards in white and gold stood before it, spears at parade rest. As Halim’s force sprinted from the shadows they cried out, but after that their response was calm and practised. Eight stepped forward, grounding their spears to meet the charge, while the other two began to pull closed a pair of heavy golden doors, richly worked with scenes of war and triumph.

Halim’s front rank drew recurved bows and fired on the fly. The men pulling the door fell, twisting and screaming, but more ran from the throne room to replace them. Halim’s force was still fifty feet away.

Another flight of arrows and the doors slowed again, but they continued to close.

‘Step aside, Grimnir curse you!’ roared Gotrek.

The Slayer had fallen behind, his short legs unable to compete, but his bellow parted those in front of him, and he side-armed his iron-tipped truncheon toward the door with all his might.

It spun noisily across the floor, scraping white gouges in the green marble. The guards leapt aside as it came, fearing for their ankles, and it slid past them to wedge between the two doors just before they met, keeping them open.

The guards started hauling them apart again to get the truncheon out, but it was too late. Halim’s men crashed into them, overwhelming them quickly and shouldering open the doors. Guards within tried to hold them closed, but they were no match for the fifty rebels outside.

Gotrek snatched up the truncheon and pushed through the widening gap, the first into the throne room. He bashed left and right and the doors opened more quickly. Felix, Ghal and Halim came in behind him, Halim’s men flooding in after to meet a score more white-clad guards. The last rebels slammed the doors behind them and set massive bolts.

Felix stole glances around him as he fought. The throne room was dazzling. White and gold pillars rose above a yellow-canopied dais. On the walls, tall windows alternated with jewel-covered tapestries of hunts and battles and courtiers at play.

On a gilded settee on the dais, surrounded by the motionless, chainmail-veiled red and bronze warriors who had captured Gotrek and Felix outside the Forbidden Garden, a man was rising and staggering back, a trembling hand pointing at Gotrek. He was of middle height and build and age, but magnificently dressed in snow-white robes, with a round, childish face under the golden coils of what could only be the Serpent Crown. ‘The dwarf!’ he cried to Kaadiq, who stood beside him, a hand clutching his silver flute. ‘The slayer of my khimar! Get him away. Protect me. He is a daemon!’

Gotrek looked every inch a thing of the nether realms just then, drenched in blood and brains as he swung his terrible iron-shod club in a humming circle, breaking limbs and smashing skulls.

‘Fear not, your benevolence,’ said Kaadiq, soothingly. ‘He will not reach you. None of them will.’ He called to his mail-masked men. ‘Crimson Ones, protect the caliph. Protect me.’

The red and bronze warriors stepped forward as one, forming a line between the rebels and the dais. Kaadiq began waving his fingers and singing under his breath.

The last of the throne room guards went down under the rebels’ ferocious onslaught. The rebels cheered and rushed forward. The Crimson Ones went on guard and struck in unison, like the pistons of some hellish machine. Though outnumbered more than two to one, the masked warriors repelled even Halim and Ghal with brutal ease. Gotrek fought three. They blocked his every strike. Another drove Felix back with bone-jarring blows.

Behind the rebels, a huge crash shivered the throne room doors. Felix heard cries and orders from without. It sounded as if the palace guard had brought a battering ram.

Kaadiq’s singing grew louder.

Halim turned to Gotrek. ‘Quickly friend, before his enchantments can take effect! You must break through!’

‘Right,’ said Gotrek. ‘Watch my sides, manling.’

Gotrek waded forward, swinging his truncheon two-handed, as Felix fell in behind him and to his left. The Slayer forced two of the mail-masked warriors back a step, but could not break their guard. Another cut at his flank. Felix lunged forward and parried the strike. It was so strong that his fingers stung.

He hacked the warrior across the arm. His scimitar glanced off as if he were encased in gromril plate. Gotrek clubbed one to the floor with a blow that should have caved in his ribs. He sprang up again. The Slayer growled like a thwarted bear.

Felix’s opponent smashed his unfamiliar sword out of his hand and lunged. Felix ducked the tulwar, then slashed at the Crimson One’s eyes with his dagger. The veil of mail ripped away. Felix gasped.

There were no eyes behind it. The warrior’s skull-featured head was carved from grey, weathered granite.

SIX

‘Gotrek!’ choked Felix. ‘They’re not men!’

‘I know that, manling,’ said Gotrek, cracking another in the head so hard that its helmet flew off and cracks appeared in its stone cranium. ‘Men don’t get up when I hit them.’

The thing kept fighting.

As the caliph cowered and the sorcerer chanted, the stone men chopped the rebels to pieces. Behind the fighting, the bolts of the throne room doors groaned and buckled. The palace guard were almost in.

The sorcerer’s droning chant began buzzing strangely in Felix’s ears, and suddenly he could hardly keep his eyes open. His arms felt leaden. He wasn’t alone. All along the rebel line, Halim’s men were dying as their arms drooped and the stone men buried their tulwars in their chests.

‘It won’t work, sorcerer,’ growled Gotrek. ‘Not without drugging me again.’ He tripped a stone man to the floor and leapt over it, swinging for Kaadiq.

The sorcerer yelped and dodged behind the caliph’s throne. Gotrek gave chase.

The sleepy buzz instantly vanished from Felix’s mind, and he saw Halim’s men recover themselves as well. It made little difference. The stone men could not be stopped. Swords did nothing. Heavier weapons might knock them down, but they fought on just as strongly.

‘Ushabti!’ called Kaadiq, dancing awkwardly back from Gotrek. ‘Protect me. Kill the dwarf!’

But before the stone men could turn, Gotrek flung his truncheon again. It caught the sorcerer at the knees and he crashed, shrieking, beside the dais.

At the same time, with a final bash of the battering ram, the throne room doors exploded open, and a flood of white uniformed guards poured in, charging the rebels.

Gotrek stood over Kaadiq, truncheon raised, ‘Get in my head, will you?’ he roared, then smashed down. The iron-shod club stove in Kaadiq’s skull like an eggshell. Gotrek laughed evilly. ‘Ha! Now I’m in yours!’

The stone men clattered to the ground like unstrung puppets, all life gone from them. Relieved, Felix and the rebels turned to fight the palace guards, but they were so few now, and the guards so many, that their destruction seemed inevitable.

Gotrek swung his truncheon at the caliph, but it swerved in the air and missed him.

‘No!’ cried Halim. ‘Iron won’t touch him!’ He leapt onto the dais, swinging his basalt-studded club. It caught Falhedar on the shoulder and knocked him from his settee. Strangely, the crown stayed firmly on his head.

Halim leapt on the caliph and grabbed the crown, tugging at it. It wouldn’t come off. In a glance behind him, Felix saw that it was sewn to Falhedar’s scalp – threads going through his skin.

‘Coward!’ Halim pulled harder and the crown came away, ripping flesh and hair with it. The caliph shrieked, his head a ragged, bloody mess.

Yuleh stepped up before him, curved dagger held high. ‘For my father,’ she said, and plunged it into his heart.

‘For my country,’ said Halim, and sank his blade next to hers.

All around the room, the white-clad guards faltered and blinked around, as if waking from a dream. The rebels knocked their blades aside and tore into them.

Halim stood, Falhedar’s bloody crown in one hand. ‘Stop! Friends! It is over!’

The rebels stepped back reluctantly. They did not lower their swords.

Halim addressed the bewildered guards. ‘Loyal men of the palace, the yoke of the Serpent Crown has been lifted from your shoulders. Your wills are your own again.’ He gestured to the bodies at his feet. ‘Caliph Falhedar is dead. The red sorcerer is dead. You need no longer fight to protect them. Instead I invite you to join me and return our land to its former glory.’

He was met with silence. The guards seemed too stunned to respond.

At last a captain of the guard gathered his wits. ‘And under what crown will you rule?’ he asked sullenly. ‘The Serpent or the Lion?’

Halim looked down at the bloody crown in his hands. He seemed to hesitate, then threw it savagely from him. It chimed as it skipped across the marble floor. ‘The Lion Crown,’ he said. ‘Only the Lion.’

The captain looked at his fellows. They seemed as suspicious as he. He turned back to Halim. ‘From now on we follow the man, not the crown. Prove yourself a lion and we will follow.’

Halim bowed. ‘That is all I ask.’

‘Halim!’ called Ghal. ‘They say this and you trust them? Slay them before they change their minds!’

‘I trust them more for this honesty than if they kissed my feet and swore a thousand oaths,’ Halim said. He turned to Gotrek and Felix. ‘Come, friends, the Lion Crown is in the vault, along with your weapons.’ He took a strange key from Falhedar’s belt and started across the throne room. ‘Ghal, call peace at the front gate, and let in the rest of our brothers. Yuleh, go with them. Your presence will win over any hold-outs.’

‘Aye, beloved,’ said Yuleh.

‘Aye, Halim,’ said Ghal begrudgingly.

Gotrek and Felix followed Halim out of the room.

The door of the caliph’s treasure vault was a great slab of iron-bound stone, secured with bolts, bars, and magical wards. Halim slid the four shafts of the rune inscribed key – one of gold, one of silver, one of iron, and one a slim rod of jade – into a four-holed lock set in a steel plate in the centre of the door, then turned it right, left, and right again. With a ratcheting of clockwork, the bars raised, the bolts withdrew, and the door rose up into the ceiling.

Gotrek sneered. ‘Human gimmickry.’

He and Felix stepped with Halim through the door into a glittering grotto of treasure. The vault was enormous, larger than the throne room, and doors in each wall opened into further rooms. Felix had never seen so much wealth and art gathered in one place before. Bound chests were stacked to head height along the walls. Rugs and statues and weapons and full suits of gem-encrusted armour rose in haphazard mounds, through which wound narrow paths. Books with gilded bindings spilled from overflowing shelves. Vases and urns and gold-and-silver lamps cluttered every corner, as well as spyglasses and maps and clockwork toys, jewels and crowns and sceptres. In one corner was a silver-barred cage, in which, confusingly, was locked a carpet. A statue of a monkey with a very superior smirk gazed at him from another corner. On a tall onyx stand in the centre of the mess was an alabaster egg that seemed to glow from within with an inner fire. And these were only the first things that caught his eye.

Halim sighed. ‘Somewhere among all this is my crown, and your weapons.’

Felix groaned.

Gotrek started forward, his one eye glittering as he took in the mountains of golden treasure. He licked his lips. ‘Let’s get started.’

The others followed him.

‘Be careful,’ said Halim. ‘I am told that after I left his service, Falhedar placed a guardian within the vault.’

‘What kind of guardian?’ asked Felix, looking nervously around.

‘I know not.’ Halim shrugged. ‘But it should only be released if the protective wards are broken. Since we entered with the key, it should not trouble–’

A deafening clang interrupted him. They spun around. A heavy iron portcullis had dropped down to block the exit.

SEVEN

Halim stared at the portcullis. ‘That isn’t supposed to happen unless intruders have breached the door.’

An ugly laugh echoed from above. They looked up. A dark balcony ran above the door – some sort of guard platform. Ghal grinned down from it. It was hard to see him clearly in the shadows, but there seemed to be streaks of red on his face, and something strange on his head. ‘Imprisoned again!’ he chortled. ‘And this time you won’t escape alive.’

‘Ghal!’ cried Halim. ‘What are you playing at?’

‘I couldn’t believe it when you returned,’ Ghal growled. ‘I had worked so hard to have you arrested. Then it would have been me who stormed the palace! Me who liberated the country! Me who was crowned caliph! Me who married the beautiful Yuleh.’ An evil smile spread across his face and he beckoned behind him. ‘Well, now it will be me.’

A pair of Ghal’s picked men stepped forward. Yuleh struggled between them, her wrists bound, her mouth gagged.

‘Yuleh!’ Halim called. ‘Release her, you fool! Do you think the others will stand for this?’

Ghal stepped forward, and Felix saw that it was the Serpent Crown he wore on his head, still crusted with blood and dangling hairy scraps of Falhedar’s scalp. ‘The others are in my power,’ he said. ‘And my palace guard is slaughtering your beggar army as we speak.’ He touched the crown. ‘You were a fool to leave this behind.’ He took something from his belt. ‘And this.’

He raised the object to his lips. It was Kaadiq’s silver flute. Ghal was no musician, but he was able to pipe a simple tune on the thing – shrill and loud.

Halim scowled, confused. ‘Nursery tunes? Are you mad as well as a fool?’

Ghal stopped playing and grinned down at him. ‘Did no one tell you of Kaadiq’s new pet? Have you not heard of the nature of the guardian of the treasure room?’

‘Pet?’ said Halim, and looked worriedly from door to door. ‘What sort of pet?’

Ghal only laughed and resumed playing his piercing tune on the flute.

‘Friends,’ said Halim to Gotrek and Felix. ‘I fear–’

There was a crash from the right-hand room, and a low hissing. Halim and Felix froze. Gotrek looked up, but continued searching methodically through the treasure. Another crash came, then a scraping, like a coat of heavy chainmail being dragged across the floor. Felix saw movement through the arch.

A blunt, poison-green snake head the size of a rowboat ducked through the door, followed by a neck like a flexible tree trunk. Huge yellow eyes blazed as it swung angrily from side to side, knocking suits of armour and statues flying. It didn’t appear to like Ghal’s music, but the melody seemed to act as a goad as well. It saw the men and the dwarf and lunged at them, jaws snapping. Its fangs were as long as Felix’s forearms. Its tail had yet to come through the door.

Gotrek and Felix dived left and right. Felix crashed into the silver cage that contained the carpet. As he stood, he almost thought the rug had flapped at him and strained angrily at the silver bars.

He edged away from the strange thing and returned his attention to Halim, who was slashing at the snake’s flank with a found sword. The steel turned harmlessly on the thick scales. The snake twisted back to reach him, its snout clubbed him to the ground, then darted forward, jaws distending.

Gotrek hauled Halim out of the way just in time. He was unconscious, a great bruise growing on his forehead.

Felix found a tasselled spear and jabbed the snake’s side, shouting to draw its attention. The tip pierced the scales an inch, no more. The snake hissed and reared up, turning on him. Felix scrambled behind a cluster of statues. Ghal’s flute squealed. The snake shot after Felix.

Gotrek jumped on the serpent, riding it like a horse, and battered it with his truncheon. The blows did little but annoy it. It left off chasing Felix to double back and snap at Gotrek. The Slayer bashed it on the nose and it reared back in pain, bucking him to the floor.

Ghal piped louder. The snake returned to the attack.

‘Gotrek! Don’t fight the snake!’ Felix cried. ‘Stop the flute!’ Felix cast the spear he held. Ghal flinched away as it struck the wall beside him, his melody faltering. The snake slowed its attacks.

Gotrek saw the connection. He picked up a heavy jewelled bracelet and flung it. Ghal ducked.

Felix threw an entire set of golden dishes, one after the other, denting them irreparably. Gotrek hurled a ruby the size of a baby’s fist. Chips flew as it struck the wall.

Ghal gasped and lowered the flute. ‘My treasure! You’re destroying my treasure!’

The snake calmed the instant he stopped playing. Ghal cursed and resumed, shriller and faster than before. The snake cringed like a whipped slave, but turned back to Gotrek and Felix.

Felix slung jade chess pieces as he dodged away from its teeth. One caught Ghal on the forehead and he staggered, but kept playing.

Gotrek dived over the snake’s coils and came up beside the onyx stand in the centre of the room. He grabbed the alabaster egg and heaved it.

Ghal bellowed. ‘No! Not the phoenix egg!’ He threw aside the flute and lunged forward to catch the egg. It glanced off his thumb and he bobbled it, eyes wide, then at last trapped it between his hands. He breathed a sigh of relief and set it down carefully on the balcony floor.

The snake nosed half-heartedly after Felix.

‘You only delay the inevitable, fools!’ shouted Ghal, snatching up the flute again and beginning to play. A dreadful squawking honk blared from it.

The snake jerked its head up and turned on him, hissing angrily.

Ghal swallowed and looked at the flute. Throwing it aside had kinked it and crumpled its delicate silver bell. He tried to bend it back into position, then blew it again. The noise was worse than ever, a farting, unmusical bleat.

The snake shot toward him, scattering heaps of treasure as it came. Ghal backed away, tootling madly. The snake kept coming, enraged by the horrible noise.

Ghal threw down the flute and screamed, but the snake didn’t desist. It had found its tormenter at last. Its head snapped forward. Ghal shrieked as the huge jaws crushed him and shook him like a rat. The Serpent Crown flew from his head and fell into the vault.

Halim recovered consciousness just in time to see Ghal disappearing into the snake’s maw. ‘Spirits of earth,’ he murmured, horrified.

Freed from the crown’s influence, Ghal’s men ran from the balcony in terror. Yuleh did too.

‘My axe!’ shouted Gotrek.

Felix turned. The snake’s passage had caused an avalanche of treasure to spill across the floor, and on top of it was Gotrek’s axe and Felix’s dragon-hilted sword.

They grabbed their weapons and turned. The snake had swallowed Ghal and was pushing through the balcony door after Yuleh.

‘No!’ Halim staggered up unsteadily and hacked at its tail with his scimitar.

The snake didn’t notice.

‘Stay back,’ said Gotrek.

He raised his axe over his head and swung down mightily. The blade bit deep into the snake’s flesh, cutting to the bone.

The snake spasmed and hissed, squirming backward out of the doorway to turn and face this savage attack. Its huge head shot down at Gotrek like a meteor, jaws gaping. The Slayer rolled aside and the snake scooped up a mouthful of golden treasure.

Felix slashed at it and opened an angry wound in its side. Perhaps it was that the snake was some mundane kin to dragons, but the runed sword seemed to cut through its flesh like hot wax. The snake hissed and turned, massive head looming above him.

‘That’s it, manling,’ called Gotrek. ‘Distract it.’

Distract it, thought Felix as he dived away from the slavering jaws. His death might distract it, for a second. He rolled under a low table. The snake’s snout upended the table and came on. Felix ran into a wall. There was nowhere to go. He swung his sword desperately.

The snake reared back for the kill.

‘Die, serpent!’ Gotrek roared, and ran up the snake’s arching neck to its massive head. He swung, off-balance. The axe exploded the snake’s left eye, splashing yellow jelly everywhere. The snake bucked in agony, hissing, and Gotrek crashed shoulders first on the stone floor.

The snake whipped down at him, its jaws snapped shut, and the Slayer was gone.

Felix stared. It had been like a magic trick. One moment Gotrek had been lying in a heap against the wall, the next moment he had vanished.

EIGHT

Felix looked up at the snake, rising up and tipping its head back. A thick lump was making its way down its gullet.

‘Halim!’ he called, rushing forward. ‘Help me! We have to get him out! We have to–’

Suddenly something bright appeared in the centre of the snake’s throat – a sharp wedge of metal. The beast writhed and twisted, hissing in agony. A line of red appeared around the steel wedge. It lengthened and widened as the steel slid further down the snake’s length.

The snake flopped on the ground, coiling and uncoiling in violent death throes. Felix and Halim dodged and ran as its tail beat the ground, pulverising a fortune in golden treasures.

The wedge pushed further out through the snake’s flesh, revealing it to be an axe. It was followed by an arm, then another arm, prying the two edges of the wound wide. Then an ugly head with an eye patch poked out, and Gotrek shouldered his way out of the snake’s still twitching body. His crest was plastered to his skull and he glistened with blood and mucus. He coughed and spat and noisily cleared his nose, then grinned evilly at Halim. ‘Ghal says hello.’

‘You…’ said Halim. ‘Dwarf… I…’ He burst out laughing.

Felix joined him. ‘I thought…’ he said. ‘I really thought that this time…’

Gotrek sneered. ‘A common snake? Do you insult me?’

A rattle of chains made them turn. The portcullis that blocked the vault door was rising and Yuleh ran through, still bound and gagged.

‘Beloved!’ said Halim, striding to her. He cut her ropes and tore off her gag and they embraced. Gotrek and Felix turned to give them privacy. Gotrek mopped his face with a cloth-of-gold scarf.

‘Now friends,’ said Halim, turning from Yuleh after a long moment. ‘The Lion Crown.’

They spread out and searched the six rooms of the vault, until at last Yuleh found it, shoved into a mahogany cabinet. Halim took it with trembling fingers. It was a beautiful thing, simple but elegant. A circular silver band set at the front with a carved amber lion’s head, out of which gazed deep emerald eyes.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is the true heart of Ras Karim.’

As they walked back to the vault door, stepping around the motionless body of the giant snake, Halim saw the fallen Serpent Crown. He stooped and picked it up, then stood looking from one crown to the other.

‘Destroy it, beloved,’ said Yuleh, staring at the cobra-headed circlet with distaste. ‘Destroy it so that it may never again tempt you or any other caliph to cruelty.’

Halim hesitated. He looked toward the door. ‘Ghal may not have been the only conspirator. We may be surrounded by traitors. The palace guard may turn against us. What if I have need of its protection? Of its power?’

Yuleh stared at him, her eyes troubled. ‘Then it will not be Ghal who the snake devoured, but you. And it will be Ghal who walks out of this room, not you.’

Felix coughed. ‘It didn’t do much to protect Falhedar from you, did it? In fact, it seems to have inspired you to overthrow him. Put it on and there will soon be another Halim who will rise up to overthrow you.’

Halim frowned, still uncertain, but at last he sighed. ‘You are right. It must be destroyed. It is an evil thing, that wants too much to be worn. I will destroy it, as soon as…’ He hesitated again. ‘As soon as…’ He cursed. ‘No! It is too tempting! It must be done now!’ He turned to Gotrek. ‘Friend dwarf. Your axe has slain one serpent today. Now slay another.’

He threw the bloody crown on the floor before the Slayer. Gotrek nodded and lashed down with his axe. With a flash of green flame, the crown was split in two. The others stepped back. The two halves of the thing sizzled and melted into a puddle of black slag.

‘Magic,’ sneered Gotrek, disgusted.

Halim blinked at the smouldering black mess, then nodded. ‘Thank you, friend dwarf. You have done me a great service.’ He lifted his head and squared his shoulders. ‘Come, let us see what fate awaits us in the throne room.’

NINE

Four days later Gotrek and Felix stood with Halim and Yuleh outside the stables of the caliph’s palace – their palace now.

There had been a wedding, and a coronation. Yuleh, the last of the line of the old caliphs, had crowned Halim with the Lion Crown, then knelt with him before the high priest of Ras Karim to be pronounced man and wife, and caliph and queen, as the multitudes cheered outside the great gold domed temple in the centre of the city.

Now the newlyweds bowed to the poet and the Slayer.

‘Friends,’ Halim said. ‘We could not have done it without you.’ He touched his hand to his chest. ‘Truly. All might have gone very differently had you not been there. Even at my moment of determination the crown tempted me. Had you not been there to destroy it…’

‘We are indebted to you both,’ said Yuleh, who looked every inch a queen in flowing blue robes and sapphires in her black hair.

Gotrek shrugged. ‘It was only a snake.’

‘The snake was the least of it,’ said Halim, grinning. ‘As you well know.’ He turned and clapped his hands. ‘We have gifts for you. To aid you in your hunt for the Lurking Horror.’

A servant came forward leading a camel. Its humped back was piled high with trunks and packs and water skins.

‘Also these,’ said Yuleh, taking a small pouch from her robes. ‘Gold and gems enough to take you around the world.’ She pressed the pouch into Felix’s hand. ‘Though you would be welcome to stay here as long as you liked.’

Felix wouldn’t have minded in the least. With the rebellion over, the palace was a beautiful, peaceful place, full of fountains, gardens, and delectable women.

‘No thanks,’ said Gotrek. ‘We’ve stayed too long already.’ He saluted the royal couple in dwarf fashion, fist over his heart.

Felix sighed and bowed resignedly. Gotrek had never been one to relax and enjoy the good times while he could.

A short while later, Gotrek and Felix led their camel through the dusty streets of Ras Karim on their way to the city gate. Felix looked around with interest, taking in all the curious costumes, the unusual architecture and the unintelligible script of the signs.

‘More for my journals,’ he said. ‘It always amazes me, the infinite variations of man’s many cultures. How strange and alien the customs, how odd–’

‘Rubbish,’ grunted Gotrek. ‘Man is the same everywhere. Only the hats are different.’ He picked up his pace, tugging on the camel’s bridle. ‘Now hurry up, manling. I’ve got a monster to slay.’

A GOTREK & FELIX GAZETTEER

A

Adolphus Krieger

A vampire. He was one of von Carstein’s most trusted minions but vanished after the battle of Hel Fenn and von Carstein’s defeat, only to resurface in Praag centuries later. Tall, dark and thin, he speaks with a noticeably foreign accent. He will also stop at nothing to get his hands on the Eye of Khemri, a deceptively powerful artefact.

Alberich

Prior of the Schrammel monastery.

Albericht Kruger

The Mutant Master. He was a mild-mannered mage who attended Altdorf University at the same time as Felix Jaeger but he has now become corrupted by the Dark Arts he practises.

Albion

Reputedly a land of perpetual rain and mists, very little else is actually known about it, mainly because it has always been surrounded by spells of great potency intended to ward it from the eye of outsiders.

Aldred Keppler

Known as ‘Fellblade’, a knight of the Order of the Fiery Heart. He journeyed to Karag Eight Peaks to retrieve the blade Karaghul.

Aldreth

One of the oldest servants of Teclis and his brother.

Altdorf

Greatest city in the Old World, Capital of the Empire, and seat of the Emperor Karl Franz II.

Ambrosio Vento

A Tilean merchant in possession of a magic amulet, coveted by the skaven.

Anya Nitikin

A Kislevite woman, author of Call of the South, said to be one of the finest writers in the Empire. She is taking her younger sister Talia to the Kingdom of the Dragon searching for a cure for her out-of-control behaviour.

Arag

A strong drink made from anise, found in exotic lands far to the south of the Empire.

Arek Daemonclaw

A formidable Chaos Warrior who has succeeded in uniting the four different factions of the Dark Powers to march down from the Chaos Wastes and lay siege to Praag. He is superstrong, superfast and near invulnerable.

Axe of the Runemasters

Also known as the Axe of Valek. An ancient artefact of immense power, previously wielded only by the High Runemasters of Karag Dum.

B

Baldurach

A member of the Council of Truthsayers in Albion.

Barak Varr

‘Torrent Gate’, the dwarf port lying on the mouth of Blood River. Being not only a lowland fortress but a haven for ocean-going vessels, more traditional dwarfs consider the locals a little touched.

Bear’s Milk

A strong alcoholic beverage popular with the knights of the Black Bear Order. It consists of fermented bears’ milk mixed with vodka.

Belegar

Nominal ruler of Karag Eight Peaks, he led the expedition to reclaim the lost stronghold.

Bjorni Bjornsson

Bjorni is a squat, muscular, repulsively ugly dwarf with a gruesome collection of warts on his face and a particularly huge and hairy one right on the end of his nose. He is crude, lewd and tells some exceptionally tall tales about his sexual conquests, though admittedly he does enjoy surprising success with women, a fact which never ceases to amaze Felix Jaeger. He is first encountered by Ulrika at Karak Kadrin and introduces himself by propositioning her. Though she rejects him, he joins the party on their quest anyway and is one of the seven slayers who go to confront the dragon Skjalandir in its lair.

Black Coach

Unmarked coach that travels the Bögenhafen road on Geheimnisnacht, said to be driven by daemons.

Blind Pig, The

A tavern on Commerce Street, Nuln, owned by Heinz. Gotrek and Felix were employed as bouncers and it is here that the gutter runners stage their daring attack.

Blutdorf

A small and particularly squalid village located between Fredericksburg and Nuln.

Blutdorf Keep

Rundown castle overlooking Blutdorf, inhabited by the wizard Albericht Kruger.

Boneripper

Thanquol obtains a succession of unfortunate rat-ogre bodyguards from Clan Moulder, at great cost. Finally, he has a mechanical version constructed by a warlock-engineer, but even this proves unreliable.

Borek the Scholar

Also known as Borek Forkbeard because he has a huge forked beard which reaches all the way to the floor before being looped back up into his belt

He is the ancient dwarf scholar who organises an expedition to the Chaos Wastes to try and find the lost citadel of Karag Dum. It was Borek and his brother Vareg, who brought the last message from Karag Dum before it was swallowed by the Wastes, and though he tried to return at the time, the first mission failed and he was one of only three survivors.

Bounty Bay

Location where the combined fleets of Estalia finally defeated Redhand’s pirate fleet. Redhand is believed to have escaped.

Bran Mac Kerog

The bear-like chieftain of the mountain men of Carn Mallog whose main passion seems to be greed.

Brocht

Huge circular stone tower.

Broken Pickaxe, The

Inn situated in the small town of Gelt. Gotrek, Felix and their party stay there en route to the Dragon Mountain.

C

Cabbage

A gnoblar in the service of the ogre Gutsnorter.

Captain Ahabsson

Captain of the Storm Hammer. He has a hook to replace his lost hand, and a letter of marque from Barak Varr.

Carn Mallog

A settlement of brochts on a ridge top and home to Bran Mac Kerog’s mountain men. They are massive structures designed to resist siege and are engraved with runes similar to the tattoo patterns which adorn the faces of the warriors.

Caspian Rodor

Former grandmaster of the Order of the Black Bear. When he died, Rodor had his body sealed up in a cask of Wynters XVI. On the anniversary of his death, it became the tradition for every man in the order to take a ceremonial drink from his grave-cask.

Cauldron of a Thousand Poxes

A hideously powerful artefact for brewing diseases. Reputedly stolen from a temple of the Plague God, Nurgle and reconsecrated to the service of the Horned Rat.

Chang Squik

Of Clan Eshin, the assassins. Trained for years in the delivery of silent death. 3rd Degree adept in the way of the Crimson Talon and black belt in the Path of the Deadly Paw. Pupil of the infamous skaven assassin, Deathmaster Snikch.

Chaos Wastes

A hellish land to the far north beyond Kislev and Blackblood Pass. The armies of the four ruinous powers of Chaos reside there.

Chimera

A fantastic beast with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and a serpent’s tail. They are sometimes captured and used as mounts, or to fight as beasts of war.

Count Andriev

Ulrika’s distant cousin, a collector of antiques and curiosities. He hires the slayer and his companions to protect his collection and in particular, the Eye of Khemri.

Countess Gabriella of Nachthafen

A beautiful woman of indeterminate age. Sister-in-law to Rudgar. She also appears to have a mysterious connection to Krieger.

Count Hrothgar

Nobleman and member of the Order. He wants the Children of Ulric dead.

Crannog Mere

A strange floating village built in the middle of a lake. The somewhat primitive houses appear to be either on stilts or situated atop small artificial islands and are linked by causeways of mud and logs. The only way of getting out to them is by way of a narrow, winding causeway, cunningly concealed just below the waterline so that it can only be seen from close at hand.

Crassik

Litter-brother of Siskritt the skaven.

Crimson Ones

Elite palace guard in the employ of the corrupt caliph of Ras Karim. They are not entirely human.

Culum

A massive and extremely well muscled Albion tribesman who challenges Gotrek to an arm wrestling competition. He is related to Murdo MacBaldoch in some way and married to Klara.

Cult of Slayers

Dwarf cult which has its spiritual home in Karak Kadrin, where the Shrine of Grimnir is located.

D

Darkstone Ring

Stone circle lying between Blutroch and the Standing Stones Inn, to the north of the Bögenhafen road.

Detlef Sierck

Greatest playwright in the Empire, and known associate of the vampire Genevieve.

Dieter

A stern, grey-haired man, who looks after the von Diehl entourage. He employs Gotrek and Felix as mercenaries.

Dog and Donkey, The

A tavern in Guntersbad, and the scene of Gotrek and Snorri’s epic drinking contest.

Dragon Crag

Another name for Karak Azgal.

Dragon Mountain

Under this peak, in an extensive cave system, is where the dragon Skjalandir has made his home.

Dragon Vale

The valley leading to the Dragon Mountain, which has been devastated by Skjalandir since it has made its home there.

Drakenhof Castle

A huge castle in Sylvania, it is said to be built on a particularly ill-omened site, a nexus of terrible dark energies, and is a sacred place to the Arisen.

Drexler, Doktor

A physician and scholar in Nuln. He studied medicine in Kah Sabar, Araby. Felix is referred to him by his brother when he starts displaying what could be possible symptoms of the Plague.

E

Echter

A witch hunter Thanquol locks horns with when his mind is temporarily trapped in Boneripper’s body.

Elissa

Barmaid at the Blind Pig in Nuln and Felix’s love interest for awhile.

Emperor’s Griffon

Tavern in the Human quarter of Karak Kadrin.

Enrik Kozinski

The Duke of Praag. A middle-aged man with greying hair, his tendency to see the works of Chaos around him has led to rumours that he shares his father’s insanity. His curt manner and fiery temperament belie a gentle and caring manner.

Eye of Khemri

A small, oval-shaped pendant carved from obsidian with a central eye surrounded by odd pictograms of animal-
headed people. The stone itself is gripped in a silver hand setting with pointed talons. Found in the rubble of Khemri and also known as the Eye of Nagash.

Eye of the Lord

A magical artefact, kept by Kelmain and Lhoigor. A gigantic crystal orb encased in metal, it is used to predict the future.

F

Falhedar il Toorissi

The tyrannical caliph of Ras Karim. He controls his unruly subjects through use of the Serpent Crown, a magic artefact that allows him to subdue the wills of other men.

Faragrim

A senile dwarf prospector who Gotrek and Felix bump into in the Border Princes.

Fedrich Gerlach

Innkeep at the Skewered Dragon, Middenheim.

Felix Jaeger

Born the younger son of a wealthy Altdorf merchant, Gustav Jaeger and his wife Renata, Felix Jaeger always had dreams of becoming a famous poet and scholar. Unfortunately, his promising career was cut short when he found himself expelled from University after accidentally killing a fellow student in a duel. He then became involved in the infamous Window Tax Riots where he met Gotrek Gurnisson under somewhat fortuitous circumstances, when the slayer pulled him out from under the hooves of one of the mounted cavalry officers sent in to break up the fray. Unfortunately, the slayer then took exception to nearly being trampled himself, so set about breaking a few heads. Unsurprisingly, both soon found themselves wanted by the authorities.

Later that evening in the Axe and Hammer tavern, Felix heard of the slayer’s quest to find a worthy doom, and being slightly worse for wear at the time, swore a blood oath to follow the dwarf and record his demise in a suitably epic poem, never dreaming just what this would entail.

The duo’s adventures have seen them journey extensively throughout the Empire, battling the forces of Chaos wherever they find them. Felix acquired the mystical dragon-hilted blade, Karaghul, in a troll’s treasure hoard under Karak Eight Peaks and has used it to great effect against the numerous enemies he has fought since, particularly the dragon Skjalandir. Since teaming up with the slayer, he has also thwarted a Skaven invasion, an assassination plot and a great Chaos incursion, and battled true Terror in the lost dwarf city of Karag Dum. He has also found time to meet and fall in love with Ulrika Magdova Straghov, though the affair has been a bitter-sweet experience.

Tall, broad-shouldered and blond, probably the most notable thing about Felix’s handsome features is the long, thin scar which mars his cheek, a legacy of his student dueling days. He wears a tattered, red Sudenland wool cloak and though his clothes are of good quality, they have all seen better days; much like the poet himself, in fact.

Flanders Draahl

A knight of the Order of the Black Bear. A trained duellist, he carries a rapier rather than a longsword, and wears a hauberk of leather and ringmail rather than plate armour.

Forbidden Garden, The

A house of ill-repute in the port of Ras Karim.

Forgast Gaptooth

A Slayer acquaintance of Snorri who killed a troll in a most unusual way.

Fort von Diehl

Settlement founded by the von Diehl family and their retainers, following their exile from the Empire.

Frau Winter

Sorceress, part of the von Diehl entourage, and mistress to Kirsten.

Fredericksburg

Town in Averland, near Blackfire Pass.

Fritz von Halstadt

Head of Nuln’s secret police and a chief magistrate. A tall, gaunt man, von Halstadt is a deadly swordsman and obsessed with the Elector Countess he serves.

G

Garg Gorgul

Huge ogre encountered by Gotrek and Felix below Karag Eight Peaks.

Geheimnisnacht

‘Night of Mystery’, considered extremely unlucky by citizens of the Empire. Both moons are full on this night.

Gnoblars

These malicious little greenskins are related to goblins, and indeed rather resemble them. They can be mostly found living alongside ogres, where they serve as servants, soldiers and (more often than they would like) food.

Golden Brotherhood

A secret order devoted to seeking Chaos and destroying it. Max Schreiber is a member.

Golden Gull

Katja Murillo’s ship, sunk by Uragh Goldtusk while she was searching for Redhand’s treasure.

Golden Hammer, The

An upmarket restaurant in Nuln which Otto Jaeger takes Felix to, and where Felix sees and recognises Fritz von Halstadt.

Gospodar Muster

A force of 5,000 mounted warriors, led by the Ice Queen herself, that go to aid Praag in its fight against the forces of Arek Daemonclaw.

Gotrek Gurnisson

Gotrek, son of Gurni was born and raised in the corridors of Karaz-a-Karak and like all citizens of the King’s Council, did his military service in the depths below the Everpeak as a youth. Details of the intervening years between then and his meeting with Felix Jaeger are vague, though it is known that he was part of the first ill-fated attempt to find the lost city of Karag Dum. One of only three survivors to return from the Chaos Wastes, when he did so, he was carrying the awesome star-metal rune axe which never leaves his side.

After swearing blood kinship with Felix Jaeger and making him his Rememberer, the pair set out on their travels, the slayer actively seeking his doom, the man simply there to record it. Losing his eye in an epic battle against some greenskins at Fort von Diehl has been perhaps the most noticeable injury the slayer has sustained and though there have been a few close calls, much to his chagrin, Gotrek inevitably lives on to fight another day.

A typical slayer, Gotrek sports the bright orange crest and numerous tattoos which mark him as such. He is huge by dwarvish standards and though he only comes up to his companion’s chest, he outweighs him by a substantial margin, all of it muscle. A gold chain runs from nostril to ear and a leather patch covers his ruined eye. He can drink almost as well as he can fight, which is saying something indeed, and he hates trees, boats and elves with a vengeance.

‘...there was no denying that the trollslayer presented a formidable appearance. Although Gotrek only came up to Felix’s chest, and a great deal of that height was made up of the huge dyed crest of red hair atop his shaved and tattooed skull, he was broader at the shoulders than a blacksmith. In one massive paw, he held a rune-covered axe that most men would have struggled to lift with both hands. When he shifted his massive head, the gold chain that ran from his nose to his ear jingled.’

From Trollslayer, by William King

Gottfried von Diehl

Baron of the Vennland Marches, exiled after a conflict with their Sigmarite neighbours. He leads his people on a doomed expedition out of the Empire south into the Border Princes.

Green Man, The

A fortified inn on the road to Drakenhof.

Greypaw Hollow

A small skaven settlement located under a forest.

Grim Hogan

A Kislevite knight of the Order of the Black Bear.

Grimme

A dwarf slayer, first encountered by Felix in the Shrine of Grimnir. He speaks very little, seeming to be too overwhelmed by some personal grief to allow any kind of connection with others. He is one of the seven slayers who go to beard the dragon in its den.

Grudi Halfhand

Dwarf slayer, son of Olgep Wynters, Master Brewer. He lost his left hand in an unnamed battle, and has a hook in its place. Grudi and Snorri join up with the knights of the Black Bear on their expedition to reclaim the Wynters Brewery.

Gulf of Araby

Expanse of water lying between the southern coast of Araby and the Southlands.

Grume of the Night Fang

A massive and foul-smelling Khorne warlord who is in league with the Tzeentch sorcerers, Kelmain and Lhoigor. He wants to kill Gotrek and claim his axe for his own, and carries the fearsome Skull Mace of Malarak to help him achieve his goal.

Guntersbad

A small town on the road to Talabheim.

Gurag

A monstrously obese orc shaman who pits his powers and his wits against Teclis, with surprising results.

Gutsnorter

An ogre, and relative of Vork Kineater.

H

Halim il Saredi

A revolutionary who wishes to overthrow the cruel caliph of Ras Karim.

Hall of the Well

The main hall housing Thangrim’s people in Karag Dum. The settlement is protected by Runes of Concealment.

Hammer of Fate

The mighty magical warhammer used by King Thangrim, said to be one of the artefacts bequeathed to the dwarfs by the Ancestor-Gods.

Hanged Man, The

Inn located in Blutdorf, just as unpleasant as the rest of the village.

Hans Muller

The Divine One. A filthy, unkempt and quite, quite mad mage whose Spell of Translocation went wrong so he ended up the Ruined City in the Chaos Wastes where he meets Gotrek, Felix and Snorri.

Hargrim

Son of Thangrim Firebeard, a massive broad-shouldered dwarf and leader of the Tunnel Fighters at Karag Dum.

Hate Child

A parable told by the monks of the Schrammel monastery. It concerns a noble count called Benoist, and the consequences of his liaison with a woman called Yvette.

Haunted Citadel

An abandoned slann fortress in the swamps near Crannog Mere.

Heart of Fire

A magical gem secreted in the depths of the temple where Redhand’s treasure was hidden. It was believed to control the eruptions of the island’s volcano.

Hef (i)

Trapper, hired by the von Diehl family to guide them across the Border Princes. Felix first encounters him in the trading post where Hef is harassing Kirsten.

Hef (ii)

One of two twin sewerjack knifemen who work with Gotrek & Felix in the Nuln sewers (see also Spider).

Heinz

Owner of the Blind Pig and old mercenary friend of Gotrek. He spent ten years as a Halberdier and rose to the rank of captain during Karl Franz’s campaigns against orcs to the East. Sports a bad leg after being stamped on by a Bretonnian charger at the Battle of Red Orc Pass.

Henkin Warsch

A traveller who crosses paths with Gotrek and Felix at Schrammel, near the infamous monastery there.

Henrik Richter

A bandit chief who has forged the bands of outlaws together in a bid to defeat the invading horde led by Ugrek Manflayer.

Heskit One Eye

Master Warp Engineer of Clan Skyre, he leads the attack on Nuln’s College of Engineering in an attempt to steal a steam tank.

Hieronymous Ostwald, Count

Secretary to Her Serene Highness, Countess Emmanuelle. Friend of Drexler’s.

Hippogryph

A fabulous beast with the forequarters of a griffon, and the rear quarters of a horse, found in the wildest reaches of the Old World. They are occasionally captured and forced to fight in arenas, or tamed for use as riding beasts.

Holdborn, Sergeant

An officious dwarf sergeant at Karak Azgal.

I

Indestructible

Malakai’s first flying ship. Big as a sailing ship, the fuselage was over a hundred paces long and the ship itself could fly at ten leagues an hour. It crashed and was destroyed utterly.

Iron Door, The

Tavern in Karak Kadrin. A reputed hangout for Slayers, renegades, and other lowlifes.

Ivan Stragov

Ulrika’s father. A huge burly man with a long white beard and a shaved head except for a top knot. He is a Kislevite March Warden, in command of a thousand men.

Ivan took care of Borek, Gotrek and Snorri on their return from the Chaos Wastes on their first mission to find Karag Dum and thus earned their respect and friendship.

Ivory Road

A long trading road that runs between Barak Varr, the dwarf sea port, and Cathay, far to the east. It is a dangerous trip, not be undertaken without an armed escort.

Ixix

Goblin shaman, serving under Ugrek Manflayer, considered mad even by greenskin standards.

Izak Grottle

Obese Clan Moulder Packmaster, Grottle’s appetite for food is rivalled only by his appetite for power.

J

Johann Zauberlich

A wizard and companion to Aldred Keppler. When not adventuring, he is a lecturer at the University of Nuln.

Jules Gascoigne

A Bretonnian scout originating from Quenelles. He was hired by Aldred Keppler to guide their party to Karag Eight Peaks.

Jurgen, Frater

Librarian of the Schrammel monastery.

Justine

A Chaos Warrior of Khorne, leader of the beastmen that destroyed Kleindorf.

K

Kaadiq

Court sorcerer of the caliph of Ras Karim. He has a magic silver flute, which enables him to charm beasts and animals to do his bidding.

Karag Dum

Lost dwarfhold in the Chaos Wastes and formerly one of the greatest dwarf cities, the mightiest in the northern lands in fact. Lost during the last great incursion of Chaos before the reign of Magnus the Pious.

Karaghul

Magic sword, originally wielded by the Templar Raphael. It was discovered by Felix, in Thulgul the troll’s treasure hoard.

Karak Eight Peaks

Ancient dwarf stronghold that fell to the goblins three thousand years ago.

Karak Kadrin

‘Slayer Keep’, a dwarf stronghold that overlooks the Peak Pass in the Worlds Edge Mountains. Karak Kadrin has never fallen, partly due to the presence of the Shrine of Grimnir which attracts Slayers from across the Old World.

Karak Varn

A Dwarf steamship that sank in a tale told by Urli aboard the Storm Hammer. Nobody knows why it sank.

Karl-Franz

Leader of the most powerful human nation in the Old World, the Empire, he leads fearlessly leads his armies into battle against their enemies – greenskins, beastmen, and worse.

Kat

A young girl with a distinctive white streak in her black hair. She was found by Gotrek & Felix in the ruins of Kleindorf.

Katja Murillo

Captain of the Golden Gull, and captive of Uragh Goldtusk when she first meets Felix. Tall, with raven-black, curly hair that falls to her shoulders, and with a low, husky voice. Despite being somewhat attracted, Felix cannot help but be suspicious of her.

Kelmain Blackstaff

An albino Tzeentchian sorcerer of immense power, he is also the identical twin of Lhoigor. Both he and his brother served as advisors to Arek Daemonclaw and also had a hand in the corruption of the dragon, Skjalandir. Kelmain carries a staff of ebony and silver, which he found in ruins in the Chaos Wastes. He and Lhoigor are also responsible for opening the Paths of Old Ones and unwittingly putting the whole of the Old World in jeopardy by doing so.

Khimar

In the South Lands, a local term for a chimera.

Kingdom of the Dragon

A mysterious land – possibly mythical – rumoured to lie far, far to the east.

Kirsten

Indentured to Frau Winter, part of the von Diehl entourage. Felix rescues her from the attentions of Hef, Kell and Lars in the trading post and she becomes his first love.

Kislev

Reputed to be a land of ice and snow where winter never lifts. In actuality, it is a land of rolling plains and thick forests of pine which has a brief but intense summer and a long, cold winter. Famed for its horsemen.

Klara

Culum’s pretty and somewhat inquisitive wife. Her attempt to wheedle information out of Felix only succeeds in earning him the enmity of her husband.

Kleindorf

Small village on the Flensburg road, deep in the Drakwald.

Knoblauch, Frater

Gatekeeper at the Schrammel monastery.

Krakul Zapskratch

An itinerant warlock engineer who at one time passes through the skaven outpost of Greypaw Hollow. It is here where he takes on a job for Grey Seer Thanquol – constructing a mechanical Boneripper.

‘Had it been standing, the creature would have been three times the size of its master, a towering construction of steel, bone and wire fuelled by a warpstone heart and driven by the arcane mechanics of Clan Skryre techno-sorcery. In shape, it retained a morbid resemblance to a living rat-ogre, and the warlock-engineers had even used the bones of Thanquol’s first Boneripper when assembling their creation.’

From Mindstealer by C L Werner

Kregaerak

The location near where the Karak Varn was washed up.

L

Lars

Trapper. Felix manages to enamour himself of Lars by smashing his teeth during a fight in the trading post.

Lhoigor Goldenrod

A tall, vulpine albino sorcerer of immense power, he is evenly matched with his identical twin, Kelmain. Both Lhoigor and his brother come from the strange Weirdblood tribe and from birth they were marked by the favour of the Changer of Ways, by being born with teeth and claws so they could have meat as their first meal. Lhoigor carries a gold-sheathed staff which was unearthed in the Ruins of Ulangor in the Chaos Wastes.

Lonely Tower

Built on top of an old coal mine, this is the secret location where Malakai and his engineers build the Spirit of Grungni. It comes under attack by Grey Seer Thanquol and his minions as they try to steal the airship.

Lord of Dragons

One of the Undying Ones, ghostly elven wizards who sacrificed themselves in order to save Ulthuan and their people. He and his brethren are mighty mages, responsible for maintaining the web of spells that keeps the island continent of Ulthuan afloat and it is he who brings the danger facing the island to Teclis’s attention.

Lothar Kryptman

Alchemist, living in Fredericksburg. A weirdroot addict, he assists Gotrek & Felix after their encounter in the Sleeping Dragon.

Lothern

Great elvish harbour city where the Phoenix King holds court. Teclis and his brother Tyrion have a mansion built on the side of the highest hill overlooking the city.

Lurkers Within

Ancient spider daemons who guard the Haunted Citadel in Albion. They are naturally resistant to magic.

Lurking Horror

A fantastic beast that is rumoured to be quite fantastical.

Lurk Snitchtongue

Thanquol’s henchling and a former Clawleader. He has a warpstone powered communication amulet hammered into his skull by his master and sneaks aboard the Spirit of Grungni at his master’s command. An encounter with a warp-storm while onboard leaves him somewhat changed though.

M

Magda Freyadotter

Cleric of Valaya, member of Belegar’s expedition to Karag Eight Peaks. She warns Gotrek and his party of the dangers awaiting them beneath the Peaks.

Magdalena

Mysterious silver-haired girl with golden eyes, a captive of Count Hrothgar.

Magrig One Eye

The fearsome guardian of the Temple of the Old Ones. He was the mightiest of the giants of old before his brain became clouded and he acquired the lust for manflesh. He lost an eye in a ferocious battle to the death with his brother and is worshipped as a god by the local orc tribes.

Magritta

City-state on the southern coast of Estalia. Built upon the Bay of Quietude, it commands one of the greatest fleets in the Old World, much to the chagrin of its Tilean neighbours.

Malakai Makaisson

Thought to be the best engineer who ever lived. He was drummed out of the Guild of Engineers after the first airship fiasco and became a slayer. He built the Spirit of Grungni and is responsible for devising many other ingenious munitions and weapons also.

He is another shaven-headed dwarf, with the customary red dyed crest and a short white beard. When flying the airship, he wears a short leather jerkin with sheepskin collar, a leather cap with long ear flaps and a cut-out for his crest to fit through and thick optical lenses engraved with crosshairs.

Malakai appears to have been a prolific inventer, and well travelled, with devices allegedly invented by him turning up all over the Empire and the dwarf realms. The powered skiff used by the dwarfs of Wynters Breery being a case in point.

He is originally from Dwimmerdim Vale, way up north – an isolated place, which is thought to account for his somewhat odd accent.

Malgrim

Chief engineer of the Storm Hammer.

Mannfred von Carstein

The most cunning and dangerous of the von Carstein vampires.

Manfred von Diehl

Nephew and heir to Gottfried von Diehl, considered a brilliant, if blasphemous playwright among the cognoscenti of Altdorf.

Maximillian Schreiber

Max is a powerful mage and as such, he has become an invaluable ally to Gotrek and Felix in their recent adventures. He was expelled from the Imperial College of Magicians for showing an unhealthy interest in Chaos but found a sympathetic sponsor for his research in the form of the Elector Count of Middenheim. A tall, good-looking man with a well-trimmed beard, he is about ten years older than Felix. He and the other man also share a mutual interest in the same woman, Ulrika Straghov, and this has led to a few complications recently. Max is also a member of the mysterious Golden Brotherhood, an order dedicated to fighting Chaos, though the details are vague.

Mead and Mazer, The

Schrammel’s only inn.

Megalean Chain

A group of islands lying in or near the Gulf of Araby.

Middenheim

The City of the White Wolf. The central heights of this mountain top city are dominated by the Elector Count’s Palace and the mighty Temple of Ulric. It started life as a fortress but then a fair sized community sprung up around the heights as well.

Migrunsson, Engineer

Dwarf engineer involved in the fight to reclaim Karak Azgal from the orcs.

Mikal’s Ford

Site of the mustering of the Kislevite forces.

Mobi

Dwarf marine aboard the Storm Hammer. He is short even for a dwarf, and very wide.

Morakai

Thangrim Firebeard’s other son who died out in the wastes in the cave surrounded by the bodies of the twenty beastmen he’d killed.

Morrslieb

One of the two moons of the Old World (the other being Mannslieb). Morrslieb is smaller than its brother, and characterised by a sickly green glow. It is generally considered to be a sign of ill omen.

Murdo MacBaldoch

The old but surprisingly tough chieftain of Crannog Mere. He is also a member of the Order of Truthsayers of Albion and a canny man. He wears trews and a pleated cloak of a tartan colour that blends into the undergrowth and sports the same strange tattoos that all his people do, tattoos that bear a marked resemblance to some of the engravings in the Paths of the Old Ones.

N

Naktit

Scout-rat in the employ of Warlord Pakstab.

Narli

Ancient dwarf marine aboard the Storm Hammer. His face was like a diseased prune and his beard came almost to his feet.

Nuln

Large city-state in the southern Empire and former capital. Ruled by Countess Emmanuelle von Liebewitz.

O

Ogham Rings

Great stone circles, which attract dark magical energy in Albion and somehow render it harmless.

Olaf

Cultist sent to kill Felix in Praag. A short, stocky man with a high rasping voice. He accompanied Sergei and was considered the brains of the pair.

Old Ones

A race of gods older than the gods. Some claim they created the world, others that they never existed at all.

Olgar Olgersson

Also known as Olgar Goldgrabber because of his miserly tendencies. He funds the expedition to the Chaos Wastes.

Olgep Wynters

A dwarf master brewer.

Oracle of Truthsayers

A tall woman, sharp faced but still beautiful. She is a respected wise woman throughout Albion and lives with her guardians in sacred caves up in the mountains. She has been gifted with visions though had to pay a heavy price for the power. Teclis is told to seek her out and ask her advice on how to close the Paths of the Old Ones.

Order of the Black Bear

An order of Empire knights based in Averheim.

P

Pakstab, Warlord

The leader of the skaven settlement of Greypaw Hollow.

Paths of the Old Ones

An ancient network of strange interdimensional corridors with nexus points in places all over the world. A very dangerous place indeed.

Pavel

Tzeentchian cultist, sent to assassinate Enrik.

Pigbarter

A filthy little port city on the estuary of the River Ruin, whose primary is currency is swine.

Praag

City in northern Kislev on the River Lynsk. Kislev’s second most powerful City State.

Q

Quadira

Citadel on the Gulf of Araby, where Gotrek and Felix board the Storm Hammer.

R

Ranagor

A renowned breeder of gryphons who raised Teclis’s beast from an egg she found on the slopes of Mount Brood.

Ras Karim

A port some hundred leagues east of Copher. Historically, the caliph of this city has two crowns at his disposal – the maleficent Serpent Crown, and the more benevolent Lion Crown. The choice of crown says much about its bearer’s style of rulership.

Red Rose, The

Large brothel in Praag, visited by Felix, Gotrek and the other slayers during their ‘investigations’.

Redhand

Pirate captain and former scourge of the southern seas. At one time, Redhand’s fleet sailed as they pleased and even stormed the walls of Magritta. Redhand’s fate is unknown.

Rememberer

Someone who travels with a Slayer to record the heroic manner of his death. For reasons that can only be guessed at, they are usually human.

Roche

Adolphus Krieger’s hulking, pockmarked henchman. His family has served Krieger for generations.

Rodrik

A huge, golden-maned knight and bodyguard to Countess Gabriella. Son of Rudgar.

Rudgar

Count of Waldenhof. A tall, florid aristocrat and brother-in-law to the Countess Gabriella.

Ruined City

An ancient city in the Chaos Wastes where everything is built on a giant scale. There is a massive ziggurat in the middle of it which is home to harpies and something far worse.

Rumblebelly

An ogre ‘chef’.

S

Schrammel

A small village somewhere in the isolated wildness of the Empire.

Schrammel Monastery

The site of this monastery – now in ruins – lies an hour’s walk from the village of Schrammel, somewhere in the Empire. Supposedly run by the followers of Solkan, the God of Law, in reality the monastery‘s allegiance lay with a darker master.

Sergei

Cultist sent with Olaf to kill Felix in Praag. A tall, heavily built man with a deep voice. His lack of wits make him no less dangerous.

Shienara

One of Teclis’s female companions. She and her twin, Malyria, are courtesans.

Shrine of Grimnir

Located in the dwarf hold of Karak Kadrin, this shrine is dedicated to Grimnir, the most bloodthirsty of the dwarf ancestor gods. Once a dwarf has taken his slayer oath, his name is carved into the great pillar in the temple – the pillar of woe – so all will know of their passing from life.

‘You say Grimnir is bloodthirsty,’ Ulrika asked. ‘Does he accept living sacrifices then?’

‘Only the lives of his slayers. He takes their death in payment for their sins. And their hair.’

Borek must have noticed the startled look pass across Felix’s face, for he added: ‘Most slayers take their vow before the great altar of Grimnir down there, that is where they shave their heads, then they burn their hair in the great furnace. Outside is the street of the skin artists , where they have their first tattoos inked into their flesh.’

From Dragonslayer, by William King

Siobhain

One of the Oracle’s Guardians and an accomplished warrior. She is almost as tall as Felix and tattoos cover her face and arms in the style of her people.

Siskritt

A skaven sent on a mission to Sartosa to steal a magic talisman.

Skabrand

An ogre settlement located in the southern reaches of the Mountains of Mourn.

Skewered Dragon, The

A bar in Middenheim.

Skitch

Izak Grottle’s henchling. A hunchback who wears glasses, Skitch is reputed to be the best ratmaster of his day.

Skjalandir

A huge and ancient dragon, it is first encountered by the Spirit of Grungni whilst travelling to Kislev. Its long sleep had been disturbed by Kelmain and Lhoigor, who drove warpstone charms into its flesh, corrupting it. Skjalandir made its nest in a system of caverns below the Dragon Mountain along the Old High Road.

Skull Mace of Malarak

A weapon wielded by Grume of the Nightfang. Made of some odd metal, its head is shaped like the skull of a daemon and the empty eye-sockets glow with an infernal light. It freezes the limbs and chills the hearts of those who face it.

Sleeping Dragon, The

Tavern in Fredericksburg.

Snelli

Dwarf marine aboard the Storm Hammer. He volunteers to join the party that search for Redhand’s treasure.

Snorri Nosebiter

Snorri is a massive, well-muscled and immensely stupid slayer. His trademark ‘crest’ is made up of nails, which have been painted different colours and driven into his skull and this may account for his lack of wits. His beard is cropped short and his nose has been broken so many times that it’s shapeless. One ear is cauliflowered, while the other one is missing altogether, leaving only a hole in the side of his head. He has a huge ring through his nose and is heavily scarred and tattooed.

He is one of only three survivors of the first ill-fated mission to find Karag Dum, and at some point in the past, there has been a tragedy involving a dwarf woman and child, which has led Snorri to take the Oath.

Snorri fights with a hammer and axe and enjoys the simple things in life – drinking and killing, and he is very good at both!

Sonnstill

The festival of the summer solstice, observed in and around the Empire and the surrounding lands.

Sphere of Destiny

Strange apparatus Teclis found in the ruins of an ancient Cathayan city nearly two centuries ago. A massive sphere of bronze, engraved with strange runes, he uses it to augment his powers when performing a particular spell of viewing.

Spirit of Grungni

The second airship built in secret by Malakai, it is even bigger than its ill-fated predecessor, the Indestructible. It is made up of two main parts: a massive, many skinned balloon full of lift-gas cells, and a smaller, heavily armed and armoured cabin suspended beneath it. There are weapons cupolas embedded into the fuselage of the main ship and it has many portholes and a massive glass window at the front helm to allow a good view from the command deck. Powered by ‘black water’ engines and a massive propellor at the stern, the airship is capable of flying over two hundred leagues per day. Malakai wanted to call it the Unstoppable but much to the relief of the many dwarfs who serve onboard, he was persuaded against it!

Spider

One of two twin sewerjack knifemen Gotrek and Felix work with in Nuln. He is distinguished from his brother by the spider tattooed onto his cheek (see also Hef II).

Standing Stones Inn, The

Coach house on the Bögenhafen road.

Steg

Dwarf Slayer, met by Felix and Gotrek in the Iron Door tavern. His shame lies in being caught as a thief, though he seems little concerned about further tarnishing his name.

Stew

The sewers beneath Nuln where Gotrek, Felix and the other sewerjacks patrol. The tunnels themselves are of Khazalid workmanship with high vaulted ceilings more reminiscent of a cathedral than a sewage system.

Storm Hammer

Dwarf steamship which Gotrek and Felix take passage on to escape Araby.

Sulmander’s tomb

Gotrek & Felix ransacked this tomb whilst in Araby.

Sylvania

A forsaken region of the Empire, a nexus of death and evil. No sane man would ever wish to tread its soil, or penetrate its dark, gloomy forests. Nominally, it is part of Stirland, but its true lords are the vampire counts.

T

Talia Nitikin

A Kislevite woman, younger sister of Anya. Following a fall, her behaviour has become so erratic and aggressive that she is danger of being labelled a follower of Chaos.

Tasirion

An elf mage who broke elvish law by unlocking the Paths of the Old Ones. The venture ended in his ultimate madness and his fate is considered a warning to others who might attempt to do the same. He has left some documented accounts about the Paths which Teclis consults.

Teclis

A mighty elven arch-mage and twin to Tyrion. In his youth, he was frail and sickly but then he learned to strengthen himself with spells and potions so now the only visible legacy of this former weakness is a slight limp in his left leg. He bears the War Crown of Saphery and the staff of Lileath, artefacts of considerable power.

His first encounter with Gotrek Gurnisson is within the Paths of the Old Ones and it is not an auspicious one.

Temple of the Old Ones

A massive stepped pyramid in Albion with seven huge levels, each level marked with ancient runes.

Terror

The Great Destroyer, a Blutdrengrik, the Bane of Grung – a bloodthirster of Khorne!

A daemon of Chaos summoned by Skathloc in the last days of the siege of Karag Dum. Huge, more than twice the height of a man, it is winged with ruddy red skin and has the mark of the Blood God on its brow. It is armed with whip and axe.

Thangrim Firebeard

The leader of the dwarfs at Karag Dum. An old but still powerful dwarf with long red hair and beard striped with white, he carries the Hammer of Fate.

Thanquol

A skaven magelord and master schemer whose cunning plans always seem to be thwarted – usually by his own paranoia! Pre-eminent among the Grey Seers, the feared and potent skaven magicians who rank just below the Council of Thirteen itself, Thanquol is a mighty mage indeed, especially when he augments his powers by liberal use of the powdered warpstone snuff he keeps in a manskin pouch at his belt.

Pale-furred with pink, blind-seeming eyes, he sports the horns which signify his calling, and the favour of his master, the Horned Rat. Thanquol loathes and fears Gotrek Gurnisson in equal measures, and holds the slayer and his human companion entirely responsible for all his recent setbacks. Still, he is determined to have his revenge, no matter how long it takes!

Thulgul

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

Tialva

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

Tobaro

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

Tobi

Young dwarf marine aboard the Storm Hammer.

Trollslayer’s Doom

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

Truthsayers

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

Twisted Paths

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

Tyrion

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

Tzarina Katarin

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

U

Ugrek Manflayer

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

Ulgo

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

Ulli Ullisson

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

Ulrika Magdova Straghov

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

Ulthuan

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

Ungrim Ironfist

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

Unsinkable

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

Uragh Goldtusk

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

Urli

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

V

Varek Varigsson

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

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

Van Niek’s Emporium

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

Vermak Skab

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

Vilebroth Null

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

Villem Kozinski

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

Volg Staahl

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

Voorman

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

Von Carsteins

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

Von Diehls

An ancient Empire family line, rumoured to be cursed.

Vork Kineater

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

W

Waldenschlosse

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

Warlord Pakstab

Warlord of the skaven settlement Greypaw Hollow.

White Boar, The

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

Wildgans, Frater

An instructor at the Schrammel monastery.

Witch

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

Wolfgang Krassner

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

Wolfgang Lammel

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

Worlds Edge Mountains

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

Wynters Brewery

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

Y

Yuleh il Toorissi

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

Z

Zayed al Mahrak

An Arabyan caravan master who plies his trade between the Empire and far Cathay.

Zarkhul

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

David Guymer wrote the Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, and for Warhammer 40,000 The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the two The Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he wrote the novel Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods, 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 drama Realmslayer. 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.

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

Ben McCallum hails from the wild lands of northern Scotland where he writes, plays video games and generally causes mischief. His first work for Black Library was the short story ‘Charandis’ in the digital magazine Hammer and Bolter. He has also written a story for Gotrek & Felix: The Anthology.

Josh Reynolds is the author of the Horus Heresy Primarchs novel Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix, and two audio dramas featuring the Blackshields: The False War and The Red Fief. His Warhammer 40,000 work includes Lukas the Trickster and the Fabius Bile novels Primogenitor and Clonelord. 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. His tales of the Warhammer old world include The Return of Nagash and The Lord of the End Times, and two Gotrek & Felix novels. He lives and works in Sheffield.

An extract from Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods.

I arced over the gurgling water like a zephyrgryph with his claws unfurled. The air was ice, the sky a weird shade of green, amber leaking into the night with the dawn. My face was the painful side of numb as my arms and legs paddled the thin air. All I could hear from beneath me was the creak of ice, the rush of the river and the wind slipping through my fingers. I started to laugh, my mouth thus conveniently wide for a roar of triumph as my boots slammed into the frozen slush of the Nevermarsh. Cracks spread through the frost-veined mud, but it was already hard as rock and did not break.

Just as well – sinking to my greaves in mud or getting into a tug-of-war for my boot was hardly the look I had been going for.

‘Yes!’

The cry exploded from my chest and I spun around with my fists in the air.

‘Let it be known that Hamilcar Bear-Eater is first across every river, first into every charge, first unto every blade!’ I bellowed.

Broudiccan’s slow handclap wasn’t quite the enthusiastic reaction that I felt the feat deserved. My second-in-command cut an imposing figure on the other side of the water, a fortress of a man in the thrice-blessed maroon and gold of the Astral Templars. His Mask Impassive, the grim facial covering of the Stormcast Eternals, was anything but; a gouge from a beast’s claw had cloven the stoic purple mask in two, leaving a disdainful aspect which suited his taciturnity to the ground.

If he thought he could leap twenty feet across ice-cold rapids then I would have very much liked to see him try.

‘Bravo, Lord Hamilcar,’ Frankos shouted through cupped hands, separated from the burly Decimator by the haggard width of a tree. ‘Congratulations on being the first of Sigmar’s Stormhosts to set foot in the Nevermarsh.’

Distinctions of age and experience counted for little within a company of immortals, but the Knight-Heraldor had always been possessed of a youthful effervescence that made me feel old. I nodded my thanks, pausing to glare at my second.

‘May the Heraldor Temples always proclaim it so,’ I bellowed back.

‘They shall, my lord,’ he cried with gusto. ‘They shall.’

Frankos was also quite unique amongst my warrior chamber in taking everything I said in deadly earnest. He continues to do so, in fact, even after the later reversal in our fortunes.

The sigmarite mountain called Broudiccan rumbled as the giant sighed.

His masked gaze slipped towards the frothing water.

Feral-looking birds with wicked red eyes twittered back and forth between the two banks. Their beaks were perfectly made for the stripping of flesh, the cracking of bone, and I suspected they could even chew the cure right off a man’s armour. Generally, the birds were happy enough scavenging for fish and insects amongst the densely tangled buttress roots that clawed out of the riverbank and into the water, but the Freeguild army I was leading through the Gorwood might as well have been one giant victuallers’ caravan for all they were concerned. More than one poor soldier had already lost a finger or an eye. Broudiccan swatted at one, which knew better than to test its toothed beak on sigmarite and flapped out of reach to shrill from the leafless canopy.

‘I’ll wait for the bridge,’ he grumbled, after a while.

I barely heard him over the white roar of the water, but I am a Stormcast Eternal, and my ears are sharp enough.

‘I wonder about you sometimes,’ I laughed. ‘Are you a plodding Knight-Excelsior, summoned to my warrior chamber in error?’

Broudiccan shrugged. ‘Even Sigmar can make mistakes. The pain of reforging is proof enough of this.’

‘Ha! Indeed. I remember my last day as a mortal, when I feasted with Him and ten thousand warriors in the Heldenhall.’ The memories of my mortal life were dimmer back then than they are now, jumbled like a stained glass window that had been broken and thrown back together, most of the pieces still missing, but this I remembered. ‘He has a delicate stomach. For a god.’

Frankos frowned at nothing. ‘I do not remember my final night.’

‘Parts of mine are a little blurry also. It was that aelf nectar wine. I swear there was nothing like it where–’

A racket worthy of Gorkamorka drowned me out as the rest of the army made their way through the trees.

I looked past the two Astral Templars, my sentence unfinished.

About nineteen hundred soldiers, two of the five Freeguild regiments of the Seven Words, had followed me into the Gorwood. Their baggage train and camp followers amounted to about the same again although I generally deferred the small details to Frankos and the mortal generals themselves. The fifty warriors of my Chamber, the Bear-Eaters, were strung out over several leagues of woodland. The trees that grew here at the boundary of the Low Gorwood were twisted runts compared to the predatory bowers that canopied the high slopes of the Gorkomon, but no less deadly. For all my efforts, the Gorwood was – and would always be – a wild place, home to as many hungry creatures as it had been when the Beastlord Uxor Untamed had ruled these heights. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The men and women that emerged wore a collage of colours – torn, faded, chewed on – over armour of tough leather and the occasional skin. There were a few wooden or leather shields, but most carried two-handed spears, javelins or hunting bows. Despite the cold and the predations of the forest they were still laughing – Ghurites all of them, none tougher – whistling catcalls at those behind and pointing at me on the other side of the river.

Coming in behind the vanguard was a trio of ogors in tattered surcoats, hauling a bridge of coppery lumber behind them. Their faces were snarled with effort, muscles standing like boulders from a mountainside. A few of the soldiers dropped their gear to run in and help push, the ogors hissing something that probably wasn’t all that complimentary through their teeth.

I put my hands on my hips and watched them, my heart ready to burst with pride.

I loved them all.

Only slightly less than they loved me.

‘Who is first upon the Nevermarsh?’ I called out to them, thumping my breastplate. ‘He who waits upon no man, beast nor creature of Ruin.’ I thrust my gauntleted fists in the air, wringing the musty stink of bear from my cloak.

‘Hamilcar!’

Cheers rippled through the treeline. The ogors took the opportunity to draw up and wipe the sweat from their sledgehammer-like brows, before readjusting the draw-chains wrapped round their fists.

I made a grand show of pulling off my gauntlets, rubbing my hands together and blowing into them, despite the fact I have little feeling for the cold. I am a champion of Heaven, and to be of Heaven is to be as cold as starlight. And yet it means something to the common soldier to see his hardships shared. Most Stormcast Eternals, broken from humanity in order to be elevated to that space beyond, would never even have considered such a gesture. There are better warriors than I in Sigmar’s Stormhosts. I’ll not name them, and I’ll only deny saying it should it get back to them. Let’s just say I have all the fingers I need to count them. But if you think that any of them can get as much as I can from a mortal man, then I would say you have passed too many times over the Anvil of Apotheosis, my friend.

‘The winter is cold,’ I yelled. ‘The Ghurlands are dangerous. But you know cold, you know danger. Every man and woman here is a veteran of the Gorwood. You have fought beside me against beastman and skaven and orruk, yet here you all are with me still. Why?’ My breath shrouded my tattooed fist in fog. ‘Because Hamilcar Bear-Eater is your brother and your champion, ahead of you every step of the way!’

‘Hamilcar!’

The cry came back louder now, men still spilling out of the forest to hear my words.

I unhooked the halberd from its bracket across my back. The black wood of the haft scraped over my armour as I drew it. The head sang as it came free. The blade was sigmarite, forged by the first of the Six Smiths under the Auroral Tempest, imbuing the metal with the storm’s vicious power. Bands of amber and violet rippled through the blade as I turned it and held it aloft. A pair of predator birds that I had managed to trap and kill myself dangled from the head on chains. Runes of my own inscription decorated the haft. They imparted no power I know of, and I had no idea from which ice hole of my memory they emerged, only that in those days you could not leave me with a flat surface and a knife and not return to find the former filled with the strange pictograms.

I had always assumed them to be a facet of my lost life as a mortal, which would of course prove to be correct, though I never gave it much thought at the time.

‘The Nevermarsh is another challenge again. No army of Sigmar has ever crossed its border, and yet…’ I spread my arms to indicate the river running across me. The soldiers chuckled, a few of them still shouting my name. A cloaked and helmeted veteran in a glittery cuirass of leather and glass and a rash of insect bites on his browned face choked with laughter. Even I didn’t think my remark was that amusing, but I acknowledged the old-timer with the point of my halberd. I recognised him from some battle or other, and I always liked to give the impression of familiarity with every woman or man who bore the Twin-Tailed Comet in my name.

‘This is where our enemies seek to hide from us, so this is where we hound them. We will run them to the ground, my friends. We will kill them, we will butcher them, and we will feed their bloody carcasses to the carniferns of the Gorwood!’

The bank erupted with a mighty cheer.

‘For Sigmar!’

‘Sigmar!’

‘For the God-King!’

My voice was the coming of thunder. I held the final syllable until my throat was hoarse and my body shook with passion.

I rehoused my halberd, leaving my fist raised in salute.

The men would all be warm now. If my Vanguards were right about the position of the hole that our enemy had found to hide in, and they generally were, then I expected the fire I had put in the soldiers’ bellies to last them until it was needed.

‘A good speech, lord,’ Frankos shouted to me.

I could almost sense Broudiccan’s eyes rolling.

‘Go and aid with the bridge,’ I told the Heraldor. ‘You’re as strong as any ogor, brother.’ One hand on the pommel of his broadsword, Frankos bowed low, his white crest bobbing in the frozen muck. I called after him as he departed. ‘Be sure that it’s good and flat. I would hate for Broudiccan to fall off.’

I chuckled to myself, Broudiccan still wearing that disdainful look of his.

Now ordinarily, these sullen spells were precisely the reason I chose the Paladin for my second. The long silences gave me more room to talk, but a man can only bear so much.

‘Spit it out, brother,’ I barked.

‘It is nothing.’

‘With you, it’s never nothing.’

The big Paladin grumbled. ‘You are like a boy on his first hunt, lord.’

I smiled wistfully. ‘You remember your first hunt?’

‘No.’

‘Nor I mine.’ I cocked a grin as though he had just made my point for me. ‘Every time is the first now. The realms are so vast, the enemy so numerous. It is always new.’

‘You are a Lord-Castellant, not an Azyros or a Venator to go seeking out new dangers.’

I blew out through my lips. ‘The best defence…’ Broudiccan’s eyes narrowed reproachfully, and I motioned towards the Freeguild further uphill, dragging the bridge towards us with renewed vigour. ‘They will work faster knowing I’m here on the far side. I don’t forget my calling, brother.’

Frankos had joined the labourers as I spoke, jostling in between the ogors and taking up some of the chain to help pull.

‘He is a bad influence upon you,’ said Broudiccan.

I laughed at that. ‘I suspect most would say it was the other way around.’

‘I have known Frankos longer than you. He is perfectly incorruptible. You, on the other hand, will do anything for an audience.’

I frowned across the water, but Broudiccan had nothing more to add. Frankly, I should have been astonished to have got as many words out of him as I had, but I was justifiably distracted by what happened next.

Lightning struck earth a few feet from where I was standing.

Not an actual lightning bolt, of course. Deliverance from the Celestial Stair remained as possible as it ever had been during the Realmgate Wars, but it had become rarer in those days as Sigmar’s wars spread his attention thinner. Azyrite energies crackled and burst as the Prosecutor furled his wings then stood. His armour was the black of freshly dug soil, richer in gold even than my own, and embellished with images and inscriptions as one would a tombstone. It put me in mind of the mortis armour worn by Xeros Stormcloud, my Lord-Relictor, who had earned his war name for the black mood that followed him wheresoever he chose to darken with his tread. Or so I chose to believe, and tell all who ask.

Despite having just risen, the Prosecutor dropped again to one knee. ‘Lord-Castellant, I bear an urgent missive from my lord, Akturus.’ His delivery smacked of some ritual phrasing, the effect only slightly ruined by the breathlessness that came with a long flight from the Seven Words. He presented a tightly furled scroll, sealed with a flickering Azyrite rune.

The scroll fizzled under my nose.

Now, it has never been any secret that I find the written word disturbing. Trapping a man’s words and thoughts, his soul even, on parchment or tablet still seems to me like witchcraft and I avoid it where I can.

An awkward second passed between us in which neither moved or spoke.

‘Urgent was Akturus’ word, lord,’ said the Prosecutor, the formality of his address slipping. ‘Not mine.’

I sighed.

If in doubt, bluff it out.

‘Read it to me as we go.’ I turned my back, picked a direction from the frostbitten scabgrass and sand-coloured rushes of the Nevermarsh in what I was sure was an authoritative manner and started walking.

‘Yes, lord.’

The sounds of hammering and sawing and the strains of an ogor working song faded quickly as I strode into the marsh, swallowed by the chirp of predatory birds and biting insects. I idly swatted at a few. Largely out of habit. Most things in Ghur would try to eat you one way or another, but there wasn’t much out there that would willingly make a meal out of the storm-fused flesh and blessed sigmarite of a Stormcast Eternal.

The realm’s erratic sun was just pushing over the horizon, kissing every leaf and frond with amber lips. It was beautiful. From behind me, there came a faint crack as the Prosecutor broke the lightning seal and unrolled the scroll.

‘Brother Castellant,’ he read aloud. ‘Praise Sigmar, for he has noted your abrupt absence and seen fit to reinforce the Seven Words until your prompt return. Lord-Veritant Vikaeus Creed did arrive this morn at the head of the Drakwards, Exemplar Chamber of the Knights Merciless, to–’

I grumbled under my breath, missing whatever it was that the Prosecutor said next.

Vikaeus and I had what you could call a history.

She thought me foolhardy and arrogant. Actually, she still does, and nor is she exactly wrong. Foolishness and arrogance are two of my finest qualities, virtues to which too few amongst the Stormhosts can lay claim. I, for my part, have always been underwhelmed by the Lord-Veritant’s much vaunted gift for prophecy. While it is true that she accurately prophesied the coming of the White Pox to the Valdenmoor, and foretold of Skulla Gashamna’s ascension to daemonhood months before Lord-Ordinator Vorrus Starstrike read it in the stars, her warnings of my imminent self-inflicted demise had thus far all come to naught.

‘Still waiting for that vermintide she foresaw swallowing the Seven Words, I imagine,’ I said.

‘The Lord-Castellant did not impart that detail, lord.’

‘I bet he didn’t. Did he impart anything else?’

‘Yes, lord. He asked me to tell you that he prays for your swift return, and to remind you that the slight raised against his honour still stands.’

I said nothing to that.

Akturus Ironheel commanded a warrior chamber known as the Imperishables, a force numbering some four hundred souls. As a Lord-Castellant, we were equivalent in rank, but utterly dissimilar in character. The Anvils of the Heldenhammer, the Stormhost to which the Imperishables belonged, were a force of black repute, assembled from the heroes of empires long-dead and hammered into being while the Mallus turned under a darksome phase.

Or so their lords-relictor claim, and good luck to them, for no one knows better the power of a fearsome legend than I.

‘It was meant in jest,’ I said. ‘He enjoys it.’

‘He has already prepared the ring for ritual combat, lord. All of the Seven Words are eager for your return.’ It could just have been me, but I was certain I heard a smirk in the winged warrior’s voice.

Akturus might have preferred sitting in a castle to taking one, and despised the untamed Ghurlands as much as I hated being bottled up in the Seven Words, but he was the most vicious and underhanded fighter I have ever had the misfortune to cross in all my centuries of war. I swear, he knew the weaknesses of aegis armour and the pressure points of a Stormcast Eternal’s body the way a Lord-Castellant should know bricks and mortar.

And he was touchy about the honour of his war name, as I had recently learned.

‘Not nearly as eager as I am,’ I said, though I would have rather challenged the entire Drakwards Exemplar Chamber than entertain Akturus in the ring. If there’s one thing people admire more than a victor, it’s a bold loser, and being batted around the Seven Words by a Dracoth or two would at least be a moral triumph of sorts.

The Prosecutor chuckled, which I took as more comradely than mocking. It was easy to forget sometimes that the Imperishables were as human beneath their armour as I.

I sighed. I supposed that my reputation could afford to suffer a knock or two, taken in good spirits.

Suddenly, I stopped walking, holding up my hand as I stared into the endless marsh. It was called the Nevermarsh for a reason.

‘The thought occurs. I have no idea where I’m going.’

The Prosecutor gestured back the way we had come. ‘This way, lord. I am not the only bringer of news.’

Click here to buy Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2013.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Tatyana Kupriyanova.
Map by Nuala Kinrade.

Gotrek & Felix: The Second Omnibus © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Gotrek & Felix: The Second 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.
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Table of Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer

Map

DRAGONSLAYER

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

BEASTSLAYER

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

VAMPIRESLAYER

Book One

One

Two

Three

Four

Book Two

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Book Three

Nine

Ten

Eleven

THE TILEAN’S TALISMAN

A CASK OF WYNTERS

PROPHECY

LORD OF UNDEATH

THE TWO CROWNS OF RAS KARIM

A Gotrek & Felix Gazetteer

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Table of Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer

Map

DRAGONSLAYER

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

BEASTSLAYER

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

VAMPIRESLAYER

Book One

One

Two

Three

Four

Book Two

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Book Three

Nine

Ten

Eleven

THE TILEAN’S TALISMAN

A CASK OF WYNTERS

PROPHECY

LORD OF UNDEATH

THE TWO CROWNS OF RAS KARIM

A Gotrek & Felix Gazetteer

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Table of Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

Warhammer

Map

DRAGONSLAYER

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

BEASTSLAYER

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

VAMPIRESLAYER

Book One

One

Two

Three

Four

Book Two

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Book Three

Nine

Ten

Eleven

THE TILEAN’S TALISMAN

A CASK OF WYNTERS

PROPHECY

LORD OF UNDEATH

THE TWO CROWNS OF RAS KARIM

A Gotrek & Felix Gazetteer

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods’

A Black Library Publication

eBook license