Gotrek & Felix: Slayer (31 page)

Grimnir smiled. Felix thought it a uniquely terrifying expression.

The Ancestor held out his hand. ‘Pass it here.’

Gotrek hesitated a moment – understandably so, considering – then mouthed a curse and slapped the weapon down into Grimnir’s waiting palm.

The Ancestor’s fingers closed around the haft, his other hand moving to cover the flat blade. He uttered a word that Felix didn’t catch, whispered it to the meteoric steel through his fingers, then swept his hand aside to reveal a fiercely glowing runic mark square in the centre of the blade that Felix would swear on the very existence of the Empire had not been there before. Felix could feel the power pulsing from it. It was cleansing, like slipping into a hot bath after months of mud and road. The magic inherent in this strange place receded from its proximity, the pillars wavering yet becoming somehow
more
solid. The walls too appeared less distant than they had, standing more-or-less as Felix would have placed them according to the temple’s outward appearance.

‘The Rune of Unbinding was crafted to slay the Chaos Gods,’ said Grimnir, returning the reawakened axe to Gotrek’s grip. ‘You’ll find it useful.’

‘You should have taken it with you in the first place.’

‘Originally I’d planned to. But strong as I felt, I knew there was a chance I’d fail. And if I did then I needed there to be something of me left behind for my heir to follow in my steps. My avatar in the End Times.’

Gotrek snorted derisively.

‘Moan all you want, but there it is.’ Then, Grimnir presented to Gotrek his own axe. It was similarly massive and with the same extra-earthly metal employed in its making. The runes that emblazoned its surface were similar, but even to Felix’s eye noticeably different. ‘The End Times these are, and it’s right that both of my axes should be borne together again by my heir.’

Gotrek examined the weapon and shook his head sternly. ‘I’m no thief. This is the axe of Thorgrim Grudgebearer, the weapon of my High King.’

‘It is Morgrim’s axe, the weapon of my son, and it is mine to give.’

‘How did it get here?’ Felix chimed in, his voice sounding terribly light and obtrusive after the rumbling discourse of the two dwarfs. He cleared his throat and unconsciously dropped an octave. ‘Is it an illusion like the one of Middenheim?’

‘That was no illusion, manling, and neither is this.’

Gotrek nodded his understanding, his voice when it came as hard and sharp as a flint. ‘Then the High King has fallen. Azamar, the ever-rune, has been broken and the kingdom of the dwarfs is no more.’

‘Not quite yet as you might reckon it, but it will. The numberless hordes of Grey Seer Thanquol, and one you’ve not encountered named the Headtaker, yet besiege it. Its doom, however,’ said Grimnir, pushing the axe into Gotrek’s unprotesting grasp, ‘is as written as yours.’

‘Can it not be saved?’ Felix asked, aghast.

If the Everpeak could be toppled then what hope was left for the lands of men?

Grimnir turned a questioning look on Gotrek. If the Slayer seemed at all perturbed by the slow extermination of his people, then he didn’t show it. He gave his two god-like axes a practice swing and grinned horribly.

‘No more tests. I know where my doom lies. Come, manling.’

That last was called over the Slayer’s shoulder as he turned towards the doorway.

‘One last warning,’ Grimnir called after him. ‘That door has stood unopened, guarded by my monks and I for ten millennia. Opening it will weaken the wards that surround this place, make an opening for anyone else that might be waiting for it. That daemon prince that spared you aboard your ship, for instance; he assaults Kazad Drengazi even now.’

Felix cast a despairing look to the door. The knowledge that it no longer led back to the fortress and the men he had left there only increased the impotence of his agony.

Gustav
.

‘Can’t you stop him?’ he asked of the Ancestor.

‘Not once the way is broken. I am but an echo of Grimnir. In truth, I wait for you at your destination.’

‘Let the daemon come,’ said Gotrek.

‘Be’lakor is almost as old as I. He’ll be at his strongest where you’re headed, the very threshold of the Realm of Chaos, and you’ll never get there before he does.’

‘Let him,’ Felix echoed, explaining as Gotrek glanced back in surprise: ‘If he follows us then Gustav and Malakai might have a chance.’

Grimnir smiled and gestured to the door.

‘Sentimental, aye, but brave. May it keep you strong where you go, manling.’

A thunderous report boomed out from
Unstoppable
’s ventral batteries and a blaze of organ-gun fire ripped into the ruins of the lower wards, churning up men and rubble and screaming horses with supremely indifferent firepower. Gustav’s company, spread out along the wall amongst the monks, gave a ragged cheer and let off a salvo of their own. A short burst of cracks and pops from their more conventional arms sounded like a five-gun salute as the airship yawed to port, bearing away from the temple complex and over the lower wards, maintaining the same punishing rate of fire as it went.

The disciplined marauder formations broke up as individual men went to ground. A handful reappeared atop roofs or high towers to fire at the airship’s gleaming metal belly, but the distances were deceptive and their arrows fell way short.

A steam horn sounded from above
Unstoppable
’s bridge, a signal of some kind, and a moment later her belly opened. The gondola’s underside, something Gustav had considered to be riveted steel as solid as the rest of the hull, turned out instead to be comprised of a series of large hatches concealing some kind of ballast tank. Now those hatches swung out and a stream of dark cylindrical objects dropped in weighted silence to the streets below.

Bombs.

Gustav had read about this in Felix’s book. Just one more thing he hadn’t believed. He hugged the crenel again and braced himself.

Parallel tracks of increasingly violent explosions stamped a path across the lower wards of the citadel, throwing up sky-high pillars of smoke and burning debris as they went. Gustav stared in awe of the airship’s power. Who needed an ancient dwarfish prophecy when they wielded something like this?

This, here, would be the salvation of the Empire – Malakai Makaisson and the aptly named
Unstoppable
!

Already half of the lower wards were on fire, the flames sickly and dark in the thin air, and everything not already flattened teetered on the brink of collapse. Ventral and broadside cannons continuing to pound what little remained upright, the airship began the tortuous process of coming about for a second pass.

‘Nae Chaos-lovin’ wazzock messes wi’ ma airship.’

Gustav smiled, but then, for no good reason he could perceive, shivered. A murmur passed through the Slayer-Monks and he could tell he was not alone. The temperature, already well south of freezing, plunged even further despite the fires. Gustav felt the air in his mouth begin to crystallise. A nascent headache started to thump at the back of his brain.

‘Dark mage!’ he yelled.

A black shape thrashed within the flames, like some giant sea monster tearing free of a net. Gustav’s free company peppered the emanant beast with shot, but nothing made a mark. Makaisson brought up his longrifle with a grunt. A red dot flashed over the emerging shape of a huge, horned head. The high-powered weapon fired with a deafening
boom
and Gustav gripped the wall in anticipation, only to watch the shell ricochet off the daemon prince’s forehead.

Gustav moaned. ‘Be’lakor. I thought Max banished him.’

Makaisson swore and reloaded. ‘Hawd the wall, laddie. It’s joost yin wee daemon.’

Be’lakor burst through the flames, fire licking about his volcanic form as he threw back his wings. A sudden gale arose from nowhere to fill them and shoot the daemon prince into the sky. Gunshots flashed across his frame as he briefly soared towards the fortified gatehouse of the third wall. There, he tucked in his wings and dived.

A Slayer-Monk with a double-bladed quarterstaff hurled himself from the parapet as the daemon prince crashed through the wall of the keep like a cannonball. The fortification slowly began to collapse in on itself. The dwarf clutched his quarterstaff, legs pumping furiously as he dropped, his wall crumbling away behind him even as he did. A deep roar echoed from under the rubble of the keep and for one implosive instant the world was bleached of colour. A shockwave rippled from the epicentre, so fast that everything in the vicinity was caught in a wave of vibrating force. Then the keep cracked open like an egg, a purple fire spearing through the cracks and annihilating everything nearby in a blast of dark magic. The monk was incinerated, just a fraction of a second before the keep and a huge stretch of wall was transformed into a glass-lined crater.

Be’lakor strode through, wings upraised like a halo of black.

‘Alright, sae it’s a big daemon.’

‘
Sihrak. Sihrak Grimnir ha!
’

One of the Slayer-Monks on the inner wall was remonstrating with his abbot, others joining in on both sides to raise what sounded like a heated argument. Gustav turned to Malakai.

‘Ah gather yon abbot has the power tae call doon the wrath o’ Grimnir if he wishes tae.’

‘Why the hell doesn’t he?’

Malakai cocked his ear to the arguing monks for a moment, then turned back to Gustav. ‘He says oor fate lies wi’ Grimnir’s heir noo.’ He listened a bit more as the abbot continued to remonstrate with his monks. ‘And his rememberer.’

Gustav puffed out his cheeks and readied his sword. It looked like he was going to need it after all.

‘Tale of my life.’

The doorway to the Realm of Chaos parted before Gotrek’s boot, splintering up the middle like so much kindling. What was left flew apart under the attention of Gotrek’s axes. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but the Slayer seemed to enjoy it, an almost childlike glee at the power in his hands shining from his eyes. Felix dimly recalled a similar feeling when, as a boy, he had held a real steel blade for the first time. He smiled ruefully.
Dimly.
He followed in behind the Slayer, moving warily, his own enchanted blade held ready to fend off any ambusher that might have been drawn to such ill-advised destruction so early on in their journey.

‘I have to accustom myself to the balance, manling,’ Gotrek explained, still grinning, wood splinters in his beard.

‘Of course you do,’ Felix murmured.

A great colonnaded hall with a vaulted ceiling stretched out before them. Ceiling glimstones cast out feral shadows to lurk behind great arches that were carved into the likenesses of daemons and the Slayer that grappled them where they met. From the centre of every flagstone a red rune glowed, thousands of them together creating the unpleasant sense of the floor being covered in a carpet of fire. Felix could even smell burning too, a brimstone odour that was rising from somewhere deeper in the temple. He cast his eyes nervously over the sweeping architecture. The halls rang with the clangour of unseen axes. Daemonic screams and dwarfish cries echoed from the ceiling and walls. The columns ran with the faces of the damned.

These were not the Wastes such as they had once overflown en route to Karag Dum, nor more recently trekked through the hinterlands of on their return from Kislev.

This was an antechamber to the Realm of Chaos – the warped realm of the gods themselves.

This was where Grimnir had passed from the Old World and into the domain of the gods. This was where he had made his beachhead, fortified it with rune and stone, and by his own eternal battle and the vigilance of his followers it had stood, an island fort in an endless void of entropy, unchanged in ten thousand years.

It was astounding.

Movement from the corner of Felix’s eye drew his gaze to one of the distant columns. A one-eyed creature of pus and hanging entrails dribbled out of hiding. Another scuttled after it from behind the next pillar along, a fat eyeball from which splayed a mad array of limbs, pincers, tendrils and flesh-whips, oozing stacks stuffed with the harvested eyes of humans and other mortal races swaying above it. Felix tightened his grip on his sword. A hungry moan rasped through the echoing hall. Daemons of every insane imagining of form and substance shuffled, hopped, slithered, oozed and quite literally crawled out of the woodwork, drawn by the scent of the mortal. Gotrek contemptuously hacked a rotting sword-daemon apart, and kicked its dissolving remains clear. A rustle of wings called Felix’s attention to the ceiling.

He swallowed hard.

They were deserters, Felix realised, survivors of an eternal war. As Felix understood it, it was Grimnir’s personal struggle that held the footsoldiers of the Chaos Gods at bay. These pitiful monstrosities here were those weak and insignificant enough to have escaped Grimnir’s axe and fled into this pocket realm between their world and what Felix thought of as the real one. Weak to Grimnir, perhaps, but daemons regardless and more than enough to give Felix pause for thought. He reckoned he could take two or three – assuming he could get them one at a time – but there were already more of them in sight than that.

As a first estimate, one admittedly arrived at under duress: a lot more.

‘Behind me,’ said Gotrek, spinning his two axes before him and blending a feather-robed daemonette without breaking stride. Daemons gibbered and shrieked and Gotrek and his flashing rune-axes waded in with a roar. ‘Keep close, manling. We don’t stop until the end.’

Morzanna died here.

She had lived this moment every day of her life, had felt the heat of the fire on her skin as she had when the Pious burned her home, had heard the screams, the war-cries in a language that she had not until these last few days been able to recognise. She recognised the crumbling of the structures around her as they surrendered to the relentless shelling from above. In her mind and in her spirit she had experienced the might of the one she would call master, watched through her own future eyes as he demolished a building with a swipe of his arm and then pointed towards the final gate.