Gotrek & Felix: Slayer (26 page)

‘
Zhorl,
’ said the abbot, apparently satisfied and turning to walk back the way they had come.

Felix watched him go for a moment, then sighed nervously and looked around. There didn’t seem to be any other way out. His skin felt hot and he pulled at the collar of his cloak. ‘Are you sure you don’t understand any of what he just said?’

‘Are you sure you don’t speak Arabyan?’

Felix bit his lip and glanced back. The doors ground shut, coming together with a resounding knell. There was the sound of locks being turned and bolts being drawn. Felix was half-expecting to hear heavy objects being piled up against the door and actually felt a little disappointed when it didn’t happen.

‘That sounds ominous.’

‘You worry too much, manling.’ The Slayer gave his surroundings a hard look, as if to subjugate them into more solid form with dwarfish opprobrium alone. His lips drew back to expose a snarl of yellow, broken teeth. ‘Come out, whatever you are. My axe thirsts.’

Felix tensed on instinct.

The Slayer’s booming shout resounded between the pillars, but rather than fade away it grew louder, echoes overlaying, strengthening, feeding itself until it became something greater. The pillars thrummed a basso vibration, as if the infinite dimensions of this temple had been designed to serve as the voice box of a titanic mountain god.

‘WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE, SLAYER?’

Felix clamped his hands to his ears and screamed, his legs buckling under the auditory assault. The voice was not communicating in any language that he understood, and yet every word was delivered firmly and defiantly into his brain.

Gotrek stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled it about, then stuck out his jaw and shouted back: ‘I heard there was something here worth having, though I’m yet to see it.’

‘AND YOU BELIEVE YOURSELF WORTHY OF THE BIRTHRIGHT OF GRIMNIR’S HEIR?’

‘Are you saying I’m not?’

A low rumble reverberated through the floor, setting Felix’s organs to quivering like jelly. He had the horrible feeling that it was laughter.

‘YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE SLAYER OATH.’

‘Of course I am,’ Gotrek grunted, running a meaty palm through his crest with a leer. ‘This isn’t for show.’

‘RECITE IT TO ME.’

Gotrek ground his teeth, the thick muscles of his neck bulging. He threw a cornered beast look towards Felix.

Felix hesitantly uncovered his ears. ‘What’s the matter? You do know it, don’t you?’

‘Of course I know it,’ Gotrek snapped, making Felix wince. His one-eyed gaze swept the columns, a caged bear hunting its tormentor. His voice sank to a low growl. ‘But I’ve never said it aloud before.’

Again that subterranean rumble greeted the Slayer’s remark. The red-gold rune-glow grew marginally brighter. ‘NEITHER DID I.’

‘And who are you, mountain?’ Gotrek demanded, eye narrowing.

The laughter sank into the stones, the voice rebuilding like a clap of thunder. ‘RECITE IT TO ME.’

Gotrek snarled dangerously, raising his axe as if to lash out at the first thing that came within reach, then suddenly lowered his arms and bellowed at the top of his lungs: ‘I am a dwarf! My honour is my life and without it I am nothing. I shall become a Slayer. I shall seek redemption in the eyes of my ancestors. I shall become as death to my enemies.’ Gotrek clenched his fists over his axe and stared challengingly into the rune-lit temple. ‘Until I face he that takes my life and my shame.’

Felix listened with increasing discomfort as the Slayer spoke, aware that he was a party to something intensely personal, and likely something that no human before him had ever heard. At the same time, he sensed a shift in the flows of power that ran through the temple, like water being siphoned off from some mighty dam.

For what purpose, Felix could only guess at.

The rune-light flickered.

‘And you expect to find such a one here, my son?’

Felix spun around, startled. The voice this time did not boom from every quarter, but instead emerged from the throat of a very ordinary-looking dwarf who had appeared behind them. His overalls were workmanlike and his big hands calloused and stained with grease. His dark brown beard petered down to his thick waist, his hair cropped roughly close into a bowl shape as if to make a better fit for a miner’s helmet. The hue of his eyes however, the set of his nose, the angle of his jaw, all reminded Felix of Gotrek.

The Slayer twisted his head half around, his deep growl catching halfway up his throat.

‘Do you know him?’ Felix asked.

‘Gurni Gurnisson,’ said Gotrek sullenly. ‘My father.’

‘That’s your father?’

‘Don’t be daft, manling. Of course it’s not my bloody father.’

Stung, Felix clamped his mouth shut and backed away from the two dwarfs. Or the dwarf and the… apparition? Avatar? If he was honest, Felix had no idea what stood in front of him right now. He had even less idea about what it wanted.

‘But I am, Gotrek,’ said Gurni, a terrible sadness breaching the stoicism in his eyes. ‘Denied the Ancestors’ Hall by your disgrace, doomed to wander this world as a revenant shade. But you are my blood and this place will be the death of you if you continue. I beg you, please, turn back before it is too late.’

Gotrek shook his head, his own expression a granite mask set into a permanent scowl. ‘I am no longer your son. I have forsaken my home, my family, my name. Only a worthy doom will return them to me.’

‘And if you fall in dishonour, what of me? There will be no other. You are the last of the line of Gurni.’

Gotrek looked to his axe and glowered. Felix thought he knew what the Slayer saw there. Snorri Nosebiter had described to him the scene that the goblin raiders had left of his home, of his wife and daughter.

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Gotrek.

‘What then of your king?’ asked Gurni, taking a step forward and raising his voice to shout. ‘The hold of your ancestors is beset on all sides and will soon fall. You are but one dwarf, I know, and maybe even your axe would make no difference, but your place is there.’

‘I have no place until I lie in the ground,’ said Gotrek. He glanced sidelong towards Felix, lips curling up into a harsh smile. ‘And I’m sick of wandering about.’

Felix grinned despite himself. He did vaguely recall saying something like that about Middenheim prior to his encounter with Gotrek’s fist. His thoughts turned to Malakai Makaisson and the engineer’s own desire to return to Karaz-a-Karak to fight for his High King. Was this a test of some sort, to challenge a Slayer’s resolve to forsake hearth and home, everything that made a dwarf what they were, in service to some ascetic brand of honour? Had Makaisson been here in Gotrek’s place would that test have been failed? Felix hoped he wouldn’t have to find out what would happen should whatever force guarded this temple be dissatisfied with the Slayer’s answers.

‘Death is a gift, I am told. But who receives it, and what value does it hold to one who gives of it so freely? How much more precious then is life?’

As the apparition of Gurni spoke, Felix again felt power being subtly diverted, the runes guttering and hazing as he looked around to see what was going to be sent to test them next. Seeing nothing, Felix returned his attention to Gotrek and Gurni.

The only thing that had changed was Gurni himself.

The apparition was blurring into the rune-light, not disappearing but changing, growing. His fading body stretched to become taller, tanned flesh folding back into dried meat and yellow bone that was then covered once again by manifesting plates of crimson steel.

‘BE DEATH TO YOUR ENEMIES, GOTREK SON OF GURNI. IT IS A WEAPON OF THE GODS THAT YOU WIELD. IT DOES OFFENCE TO ITS FIRST MASTER THAT A VICTIM SHOULD ESCAPE ITS WRATH.’

The phantom solidified into its new form and Felix’s mouth hung open in horrified recognition.

The warrior was enormous, half again as big as Felix, who was amongst the tallest of men, and as broad as the Troll King of Praag. His armour was embossed with writhing sigils of slaughter and death, and hung with living skulls that wailed their torment even as blood filled their mouths and seeped from their empty sockets. It smeared the warrior’s gauntlets and every rivet and seam of his armour. The dead champion didn’t speak, but red witchlight pulsed from the open face of his bone-horned helm. It was a foe Felix remembered too well, one he still sometimes saw before waking up to sheets doused in icy sweat and a full moon in the sky.

Krell!

Felix brought his sword up into a guard position and moved into position to protect Gotrek’s vulnerable left side, only for the Slayer to warn him off.

‘Back, manling. This one has to be mine.’

The mountain thundered its approval. ‘A SLAYER IS ALWAYS ALONE. HE IS DEATH, AND IN THE FINAL COUNTING ALL DIE ALONE.’

Felix tightened his grip on his sword but withdrew, bound by duty and friendship to stand back and watch. Krell spun his enormous axe menacingly, a blade as black as plague and just as lethal. Gotrek brought up his own deadly weapon, the two fighters circling, trading feints faster than the human eye could follow, testing each other’s guard with blows that left Felix’s hands ringing just for having seen them. Krell had been a champion of Khorne before his death and subsequent resurrection. The God-King Sigmar himself had once fought him.

And he was one of the few to have crossed blades with Gotrek and walked away.

‘Gotrek. Left.’

The Slayer bashed aside the wight-lord’s axe and unleashed a flurry of blows that drove the champion of death back. A mortal adversary would have been torn apart by such an onslaught, but Krell was tireless, skilful and uncannily swift for so large a being, and he was Gotrek’s equal in strength. Felix could see no weakness in the wight’s technique, and more than once his heart leapt into his mouth as a counter-stroke scythed towards Gotrek only for the dwarf to somehow pull himself out of the way at the last moment.

Felix let out the breath that had been building pressure inside his chest.

The merest graze of Krell’s obsidian blade could kill, and Felix could only assume that this simulacral version was similarly imbued. Felix had seen first-hand the slow, lingering demise that weapon had almost inflicted upon Gotrek once before.

The Slayer had claimed that his death here would not be a good one.

Had this been what he meant? Was Krell destined to finish the task he had so nearly completed at Castle Reikguard? Felix scowled, loyalty to the Slayer and all that that meant warring with what he thought he recognised as common human goodness.

He hadn’t come through all of this to watch Gotrek fall to a spectre from their past.

The Slayer threw a stroke across Krell’s middle, but simply from the fact that Felix was able to see it from beginning to end he could tell that it was laboured. The wight angled his body under the blow, swinging his axe overhead and launching it one-handed towards Gotrek’s face, forcing the Slayer for the first time onto the back foot. He retreated, breathing hard, his axe moving so fast that it looked almost like a shield as Krell hammered down blow after blow. His bare torso glistened with sweat.

Gotrek had gone into this contest wounded and it was beginning to tell.

The dwarf drove all his flagging strength into a decapitating blow, dispatching it at Krell’s neck with a gravelly roar. The wight dropped silently to one knee, driving a blood-soaked couter into Gotrek’s stomach at the same moment that the Slayer’s axe cracked against a pillar. Gotrek’s axe sprang from his grip and he stumbled back, clutching his stomach muscles and wheezing.

Krell advanced. The champion’s grin was fixed but Felix sensed triumph in the glow of his eyes. And more than triumph: vengeance, blood for his vile god. If it was not the real Krell then it was a terrifyingly close approximation. The wight swung up his axe for an executioner’s stroke as Felix raised his sword and tensed for a suicidal dive forward.

‘I don’t need your help, manling,’ Gotrek bellowed, dropping his shoulder and ploughing under Krell’s guard into the wight’s waist.

A hiss of dead air escaped Krell’s teeth as the Slayer’s low-centred, bulldog-like power carried the wight back and smashed him up against a pillar.

Stone crunched. Cracks spidered out through the luminous rock. Krell brought the haft of his axe down on Gotrek’s shoulder, but though it drew blood there was no force behind it. His poleyn slammed into Gotrek’s muscle-slabbed chest, but the Slayer shrugged off the blow with a grunt, denting the wight’s breastplate with a punch. Dust crumbled around him. Krell seized Gotrek’s fist in his, then the other, driving his knee into the Slayer’s chest like a piston as Gotrek emitted a furious roar and smacked his forehead into the wight’s face.

The impact beat Krell’s skull against the pillar, a thin crack splitting through the bone from the back of his head over to his left orbit. Gotrek staggered back, an ugly skull-shaped red welt from the wight’s chin-guard on his brow, then shook it off to haul the undead champion out of the pillar.

Dust fell over them both.

Clenching his teeth the Slayer heaved the enormous warrior up over his head, then flipped him over from front to back and slammed him into the ground.

Metal crunched, ancient bones ground together and snapped. The magic that animated the champion flickered, dazed, as Gotrek’s fist descended like a bomb from an airship, shattering the vertebrae of Krell’s neck and burying dwarf knuckles in the flagstones.

With the toes of his boot, Gotrek slid Krell’s axe from the wight’s dead grip and kicked it away. It slid across the stone floor, clattering off between the pillars long after the axe itself had vanished. Krell’s body vanished soon after, disappearing between blinks.

‘The real one was tougher,’ said Gotrek, rattling down a deep breath and then spitting on the ground where the wight had lain.

‘WAS HE, OR HAVE YOU GROWN STRONGER? IN PREPARATION PERHAPS FOR A MEETING WITH ONE FAR GREATER?’

‘Bring it to me, then!’ Gotrek roared, scooping up his axe and clutching it in both hands, bulging like a clenched bicep as he glared one-eyed into the emptiness of rune-lit stone. ‘I thought you wanted to challenge me. Well, look at me, mountain. I stand unchallenged!’