Gotrek & Felix: Slayer (34 page)

But Felix had left it with none.

Gotrek sneered, nodding to something in the portal that only he could see. ‘It’s behind you.’

Felix pushed himself up off his chest to watch in open-mouthed horror as the Bloodthirster trampled over Gotrek and ploughed through. The swipe of its axe severed Be’lakor’s outstretched arm at the elbow and bit into his hip, its brazen horns impaling the daemon prince’s chest and sending them both – and Gotrek with them – tumbling into the portal.

‘Gotrek!’ Felix screamed, all three of them disappearing in a flash of light that sent ripples racing each other across the surface.

The lesser daemons throughout the chamber and – inconceivably – still arriving in impossible numbers through the outer door gave voice to a keening lament.

Felix scrambled to his feet, clutching his pistol and his knife close to him, but none of the creatures seemed inclined to attack. There was no telling how long that would last. He studied the portal, breathing hard. He needed only a moment to think. He kissed the ring on his finger and muttered a prayer to Sigmar.

It was simply habit. He doubted the God-King could hear him here.

Then he took a running leap and dived after his friend.

A plain of black glass stretched out for a million miles. In another life, Felix had been a merchant’s son; he knew how to see the curve of the earth in the gradual appearance of a homecoming merchantman’s sail over the horizon. But not here. Here the plain went on until Felix’s eyes could follow it no further. The sky was tormented, riven by flashes of sheet lightning, thunder that mocked the benighted ground like the laughter of gods and daemons. The air tasted bitter on the tongue, like sucking on a coin, and it was dry. Felix doubted there was a river or a lake within… he shook his head and gave up. Whatever measure of distance he could recall or contrive would be inadequate. His long journey had brought him to the one place he had thought even Gotrek would never try to take him.

He was in the Realm of Chaos.

The hot core of the universe.

The home of the gods.

He turned around, partly to reacquaint himself with a mortal sense of scale – six and a half feet, give or take an inch, to the portal – but largely to reassure himself that he could still leave if he chose to. He could see the temple through it, flat and distorted just as this place had been from the other side. He could see the feral daemon-things crowding on the far side. For now they seemed content to stay there, which suited Felix fine though it did rather take a hammer to his cherished thoughts of returning back to his own world.

With a sigh, he drew his long hair away from his eyes and crunched back around. There was no sign of Be’lakor, nor any of the greater daemons that had temporarily united under him with the aim of slaying Grimnir and leading a daemon army out through Kazad Drengazi.

Unless one counted the crimson, severed head that Gotrek was in the process of messily wrenching from his axe.

The Bloodthirster’s eyes were glassy. Its red tongue lolled out from its open mouth. Felix was accustomed to daemons dissipating back into the aethyr upon their destruction and he had to remind himself that he was currently
in
the aethyr. It was not a pleasant thought. From what he had been able to gather of Be’lakor’s self-indulgent monologue, a daemon killed here could stay dead for a long, long time.

The head came off with a slurp and fell face down in the glass.

Felix found that very reassuring. He just wished he could see Be’lakor’s body somewhere out there too.

He beaked his eyes with his hand to shield them from the lightning flashes and searched the distance. The horizon – it comforted him to call it that – seethed like an angry sea. The daemon hordes that Be’lakor had sought to marshal had not gone away with his departure, but it looked as though the combined efforts of Gotrek and Grimnir had driven them back.

Possibly for the first time in ten thousand years.

Was that a cause to hope?

Felix brought his ring to his lips and prayed for it. By every god still standing, he hoped so.

‘Welcome to my home!’ Grimnir shouted, his dwarf blood still hot from an eternity of battle, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. He was closer to normal-sized now, a larger than average dwarf rather than the titan he had seemed through the portal. He wielded an axe in one massive hand. There was nothing overtly magical about this weapon. It was just an axe, but then he required nothing grander. His presence alone was empowering and merely standing in it helped Felix to stand a little straighter and look on the world with more steel in his heart.

‘Gotrek,’ said Felix, wanting to go to his companion’s side and draw him back, but loath to venture too far from the portal lest it somehow disappear or succumb to the warped dimensions of this place. ‘Let’s take the weapon, or the artefact, or whatever there is for us and get out of here. It might not be too late to use it to help Gustav and Malakai.’

Grimnir lowered his face. He smiled benignly as he shook his head. ‘You still don’t understand.
I
am the power, lad. Me. Long ago, I came here to fight the gods and end the threat of Chaos forever. I failed, though not completely. I stand yet.’ He turned to Gotrek with a shrug that on a figure less mountainous might have been construed as self-deprecating. ‘But now the End Times are here and there’s naught I can do to stop it. It’s my time to rejoin the world once again, to fight the final fight as I always intended to – to relinquish my burden to my heir.’

Felix stared at the two Slayers aghast, thunder’s laughter ringing in his ears.

‘You mean give Gotrek a portion of your power? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

Grimnir jerked a thumb back around his head to the daemons gathered in the distance. ‘They’ll be back, and someone has to be here to fight them when they do. You’re my heir, Gotrek, if you’ll take it. This is where fate’s been taking you since you first took shelter in that cave and picked up my axe. You’re a Slayer after my own example. I promise you battle, for eternity and without respite, and I promise you doom.’ The Ancestor bared his teeth in a smile. ‘The mightiest doom ever achieved by a Slayer.
My
doom.’

Gotrek looked thoughtful. He glanced to the portal, then ground his jaw and turned towards the daemons that filled the vastness of the horizon. Then he nodded.

Just once.

‘No,’ Felix yelled, striding forwards now and to hell with the portal assuming they were not already lost there with it. ‘We need Gotrek. The world needs him. I–’ His voice caught. His fist bunched over his mouth, then he yanked it away and beat his chest with it. ‘
I
need him. He swore to come with me to Middenheim. He swore!’

Felix backed up again, eyes blurring with the tears he’d forgotten he had. He wiped his eyes and sniffed.

‘The world is dying.’

‘Aye,’ said Grimnir. ‘Maybe it will die, and maybe I’ll die trying to save it. But there are worlds beyond this one, lad. Worlds that will have need of their gods.’

Gotrek’s passing will be the doom of this world,
the seeress in Felix’s dream had told him,
but it may be enough to save the next.

Tears were streaming unchecked down Felix’s cheeks as Gotrek turned to him, blurring his vision and scattering the glare from the lightning flashes so that it appeared the Slayer was surrounded by a silvery corona of light. The Slayer looked him up and down as though committing him to memory, as if the timescales he envisioned expanding before him would tax even the legendary memory of a dwarf.

‘No,’ Felix sobbed. ‘No. He’s not offering some glorious afterlife filled with maidens and wine, Gotrek. There’s not a foul thing we’ve faced together that I’d wish this fate on.’ He extended a hand to Gotrek, but for some reason his feet continued to back him away towards the portal. ‘I’ve lost too much to lose you now too. It’s too much. Come back with me. I’ll fight beside you to the end, I’ll–’

‘Felix,’ said Gotrek, cutting him off gently.

Felix gaped, stunned silent, as Gotrek produced a saw-toothed smile that said all that needed saying. It was carefree, reminiscent of one that had once belonged to a dwarf yet to bear the burden of a never-ending quest. Light was streaming off him and Felix roughly rubbed his eyes dry, expecting the effect to clear with the tears but to his surprise it remained. Too late, Felix recognised the cool touch of the portal on his back. He had backed into it, and the world was turning silver. He resisted the urgent pull of the current, the demand of his native plane, to throw his luminous companion – his
friend
 – one last imploring look.

Haloed in silver, Gotrek raised his axe in farewell, in salute.

‘Remember me.’

CODA

It was dark; the dark of the deep earth, of grief, of the lonely space inside the walls of Felix’s mind. The portal was gone, buried under the same cave-in that had accounted for the daemons and snuffed out the ceiling glowstones under a mountain of rock. Only Felix, it seemed, had been spared, sheltered under the sturdy stone arch of Grimnir’s dolmen. The sole, faint source of light emanated from the ornate runeblade partially buried under a heap of marble. It was Karaghul. It still glowed from its altercation with the Bloodthirster, albeit dimly, and its gradual decline was Felix’s only external confirmation of the passage of time.

How many minutes – or was it hours? – he had spent watching it fade he could not guess.

From somewhere within the collapsed structure, Felix could hear the trickle of water. Whatever pseudo-dimension this place had once inhabited, it was now firmly a part of the mortal realm with the departure of Grimnir’s power. There was another sound too, a scratching, like something tiny digging far, far away. He listened. And were those voices he could hear? It almost sounded as though they called his name. He shook his head.

No. He was alone now.

Out there, the End Times continued, but they would do so without him, and without the Slayer. In short, it no longer felt like his concern.

Aching all over, aching inside, he bent slowly forward to play out the ties that held his mail shirt tight. With his other hand, he reached inside the loosened shirt to withdraw the oilcloth-bound parcel that rested against his heart. He set it upon his lap, carefully unwrapping the protective covering to reveal his leather-bound journal, a quill pen, and a small vial of iron gall ink. He let them be undisturbed a moment more, took a deep breath.

The air tasted stale, used. He had lived half of his life amongst dwarfs, and he had spent enough time underground to know what that meant.

He didn’t have a lot of time left.

Unwinding the string tie that sealed the precious pages of his journal, Felix opened the small book. Its spine creaked, aged beyond its years by disuse. At the same time he unstoppered the ink vial, sharpened a tip into the quill with his thumbnail and dipped it gently in the ink. Then, in the dying light of his sword, he began to write.

Gotrek Gurnisson had found his doom at last.

And Felix Jaeger had an oath to keep.

‘If this journal is found, if the day was won,
then remember this – here a Slayer lies.’

David Guymer
is the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels
Slayer
,
Kinslayer
and
City of the Damned
, along with the novella
Thorgrim
and a plethora of short stories set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Awards for his novel
Headtaker
.

An extract from
Deathblade
by C L Werner

The enemy of your enemy is your friend.

The words reverberated through the drachau’s brain like rolling thunder. Sharp. Persistent. Insinuating. They spoke to him with an intensity beyond that of simple speech. No sound could convey the depths of meaning and suggestion entwined within them.

The drachau stiffened in his throne of polished malachite and hydra-hide, feeling the dried scales of the seat creak beneath his weight. From the corner of his eye, he gazed longingly at the tiny whalebone table and the bottle of dark wine resting atop it. The promise of release was almost too great to resist. A few glasses and he could silence the slithering inside his skull.

Malus crushed down the urge, strangled it before the merest flicker of his desire could betray itself in his features. The wine would indeed ease the turmoil inside him, but the price for such peace was too high. More than the dark presence boiling inside him would be stifled by the brew. His own wits would be dulled, his own senses retarded by the liquor. He couldn’t afford that, not now when he needed every last dreg of cunning his mind could conceive.

Look at it, Malus. Look at that simpering bag of vice and corruption. Listen to it scheme and plot. Is this petty intrigue the best you can aspire to? You who have walked in the realms of the gods themselves!

The drachau’s eyes narrowed as he studied the elf who knelt before his throne. He watched the ripple that passed through the thin spider-silk cape draped across the druchii’s shoulder each time the elf drew a breath. He scrutinised the subtle play of hue and texture in each scale of the elf’s hauberk. He inspected the quality of the swords thrust through the elf’s dragon-skin belt, the craftsmanship of the engraving on hilt and pommel. His nose drank in the smell of exotic spices and perfumes exuding from the elf’s pale skin and long dark hair. His ears deciphered the practised tonalities and courtly inflections laced into each word.

Yes, everything was there. The druchii crouched before him looked, smelled and sounded the part. If there was deception here, it had been very carefully prepared. Not so long ago, Malus would have still entertained his doubts. A clever enemy would take such pains and invest such care into a plot against him. Now, however, he doubted there was anyone within Naggaroth who had the patience for such delicacy of deception. There simply wasn’t the time for such games any more.

Naggaroth was a land besieged, tearing itself apart in the wake of an unprecedented invasion from the north. A tide of human barbarians, beastmen and daemons had exploded from the Wastes and smashed their way through the ring of watchtowers that guarded the borders of the druchii. There had been no warning, the sorcery of Ghrond and Morathi had failed to alert Naggaroth to its peril. The hosts of Chaos had descended, slaughtering all they confronted, despoiling and destroying everything in their path.

The time for games was over. All the craft and subtlety, the scheming and politicking, all of it was over. A new age was come upon the elves of Naggaroth, an age of crisis and cataclysm, an age that demanded actions, not words.

It was a call to action that had been brought to Malus. As drachau of Hag Graef, he was the most powerful of all the dreadlords, his armies second only to those of Naggarond itself. No, Malus corrected himself, the armies that bent their knee to his banner were mightier now than those who served the black flag of Naggarond. To the soldiery of Hag Graef had been added the warriors of vanquished Naggor and the refugees from Clar Karond, to say nothing of entire tribes of shades who had abandoned the wilds to seek sanctuary within the spires of the drachau’s city. As Malus expanded his forces, those of the Witch King had lessened, bled away by constant conflict against the barbarians and monsters seeking to conquer his kingdom. How many thousands had been killed to break the horde of the daemon-thing Valkia? How many more had been lost on that long march to Ghrond to seek a reckoning with the treacherous Morathi?

Your star rises, Malus, but beware. The star that burns brightest is the first to be extinguished.

Malus gripped the arms of his throne, feeling the cold of the malachite beneath his fingers. He nodded to the messenger, the highborn emissary who had brought him the most tantalising proposition. In every line of the messenger’s face he could read the smug arrogance of breeding and privilege, the surety of one who has had his every whim obeyed without question. By using such a messenger, the one who had sent him was displaying before Malus the magnitude and severity of what he was being offered.

‘You may tell her ladyship that I will meet with her and her confederates,’ Malus decided.

The messenger raised his eyes, just that little spark of condescension betraying itself at the corners of his gaze. ‘The tzatina was certain her offer would appeal to your lordship.’ He bowed his head again. ‘Is there any message you wish me to convey to her?’

‘I will send my own message to Khyra,’ Malus said. In a single, impossibly swift motion, the drachau sprang from his throne and lunged at the messenger. The highborn was quick, fast enough to raise one hand in a warding motion while he reached with the other for a dagger cunningly sewn into the lining of his cape. Malus drove the black edge of his sword down through the messenger’s hand, the enchanted metal ripping through the elf’s mail as though it were butter. Fingers danced across the floor as Malus brought the Warpsword of Khaine shearing through the messenger’s arm and into the druchii’s breast. As blood bubbled over the dying highborn’s lips, the dagger he’d been trying to free from his cape clattered against the ground.

Malus stared down at the bloodied carrion. Breeding and position counted for nothing now. The time for such frivolities was over. All that mattered was ability and ruthlessness, the vision to see and the power to take.

‘Silar!’ Malus called out as he wiped the edge of his sword clean with his victim’s cape. From the shadows of the audience chamber a tall, powerfully built elf marched into the fitful witchlight cast by the overhanging lamps. Like the recently slain messenger, he wore an elaborate cuirass of steel scales and there was upon his face the similar qualities of breeding and nobility. There, however, the resemblance ended. Silar Thornblood was of Hag Graef and none of the sons of the Hag sneered at Malus Darkblade; even in their innermost thoughts they held their drachau in a place of fear. They were too familiar with the dreadlord’s deeds and the fates of his enemies to harbour any delusions about defying him. The nobles of the Hag might hate Malus, but they would never underestimate him.

‘You wish that to be removed?’ Silar asked, pointing to the butchered messenger.

‘Place him somewhere that the tzatina’s agents will be sure to find him,’ Malus said.

Silar bowed his head, not quite daring to match his lord’s gaze as he spoke. ‘The tzatina will know it was you who killed him.’ It was true. No weapon in Naggaroth left a wound such as the warpsword dealt.

‘She will,’ Malus agreed. ‘That is as it should be.’ With a wave of his hand, he dismissed Silar, leaving the warrior to his grisly task. Soon, Silar was trudging off, the messenger’s body wrapped in the silk cape and slung across his shoulder like a sack of meal.

They offer you the scraps of power. I offer you a feast. Why be content with a mortal’s appetite when you can aspire to so much more?

Malus turned and made his way to the table and the bottle resting upon it. He could feel the wine calling out to him, sense the shudder of longing that coursed through his flesh. Freedom lay within that bottle, if only he was weak enough to take it.

You are weak, are you not, Darkblade?

The mockery crawled through his skull, stilling Malus’s hand even as he reached for the bottle. His hand closed into a fist. With an animalistic snarl, he brought his hand smashing across the table. The bottle shattered against the floor, splashing the precious wine everywhere. Malus stared down at the spilled liquid. In his head, the voice suggested he might still drop to all fours and lap it up like a thirsty dog.

‘Was that wise?’ a disapproving voice called out to Malus.

Malus looked away from the wine. Advancing towards him across the audience chamber with a stately, unhurried step, was an elegant figure bedecked in flowing black robes, her carriage framed in a lacy meshwork of tiny pearls and crushed sapphires, her dark tresses bound in a coiffure of gold and jade. Her skin had an alabaster paleness beyond even that of most druchii, telling of an existence spent without the attentions of even Naggaroth’s sickly sun. Across the harsh beauty of her features was stamped the fiercest determination, the sparks of her terrible will blazing in her eyes. In aspect, the elf presented a vision of both desire and dread.

‘Hello, mother,’ Malus greeted the elf as he stepped away from the shattered bottle. ‘Your health looks as inviolate as ever.’

Lady Eldire didn’t allow her son’s remark to bait her. It was only through her intrigue and her assistance that Malus had survived to become drachau of Hag Graef. It was only by her sorcery that he was able to conceal the terrible affliction that gripped him and which, if exposed, would see him torn limb from limb by his own slaves. Her hold over her son was great, but so too was his over her. Lady Eldire was that rarest of creatures, a sorceress who owed no loyalty to Morathi or her convent. She had been a Naggorite, taken from the Frozen Ark by Malus’s father. Only the protection of Hag Graef had kept her from being returned to Naggor or surrendered to Morathi. In placing her son upon the throne of Hag Graef, she had helped to ensure the continued protection of Naggaroth’s second city.

Of late, however, Lady Eldire had been compelled to demand further indulgence from her son. She had discovered her vitality beginning to ebb, the old spells to ensure her youthfulness beginning to slip. The solution had been restorative magic that hearkened back to the forbidden pleasure cults that had corrupted the cities of Ulthuan long ago. Baths drawn from the heart’s blood of elf youths and maidens, the blood of innocence to wash away the stain of age and corruption. Only through the connivance of Malus had Eldire been assured of a steady supply of sacrifices to maintain her vigour.

‘I wish I could say the same for the steadfastness of your mind,’ Eldire reproved him. She smiled at the flicker of disquiet that appeared on his face. ‘You needn’t worry. There are no spies here. I would know if there were.’ She ran her fingers across the curve of her cheek, feeling the silky newness of her revivified skin. ‘As you observe, my vivacity is as keen as ever it was.’

Malus scowled. ‘The Hag pays a high price for your sorcery, mother. I should feel cheated if your powers were not quite as profound as you claim them to be.’ He shook his head and stalked back to his throne. ‘Just the same, I don’t want my… affliction… mentioned in Naggarond. Not even between ourselves.’

Eldire stepped around the shattered glass and spilled wine. ‘I didn’t know you were so afraid of the Witch King. Certainly not after your entanglements with Lady Khyra. A usurper who fears his sovereign has lost before he begins.’

‘Anyone who doesn’t fear Malekith is either mad or a fool,’ Malus returned. ‘No, to have any chance at all, I cannot deny my fear of him.’

The sorceress circled the malachite throne, her boots clicking against the tiled floor. ‘Then you will expose the tzatina’s plot? Forget the chance that providence has given you?’ She leaned close to the throne, her hand closing on Malus’s arm. ‘They are offering you his crown, the Circlet of Iron itself. You would be lord of all the druchii, master of Naggaroth!’

Malus glanced past his mother, staring regretfully at the spoiled wine. ‘I will expose no one. Not yet, at least. I will hear Khyra’s offer, learn how much support I can expect. The killing of her messenger was a warning to the tzatina and the other dreadlords. They must know it is I, not they, who hold the reins of power. They think to make a present to me of something only my strength and the might of the Hag can secure. When they find their highborn messenger lying in the gutter like so much garbage, they will understand that. When the Black Guard fails to arrest Khyra, they will know I haven’t exposed them, that I will listen to what they would pledge to their new king.’

Eldire brought her hand up to Malus’s head, running her fingers through his dark locks. ‘The land is in turmoil. There is talk of treachery everywhere. The noble houses snap at one another’s throats even as the daemons come crawling across their walls. It will take a strong arm to bind them once more to the service of their kingdom. It will take ruthlessness beyond that of the Witch King, savagery unmatched even by daemons, to break their pride and bind them in the shackles of terror.’

Taking hold of his mother’s hand, Malus pressed it to his lips. ‘I have been schooled in the cruelties of Hag Graef, I have endured the horrors of the Wastes themselves. The blood of my own father is on my hands. There is no brutality I would not indulge for the sake of power. You know that.’ The drachau’s grip suddenly grew tight and with a sharp pull, he brought Eldire to her knees beside him, her face level with his own. ‘From the first, I think you foresaw this moment with your magic. Every torture and torment I survived, you saw before it happened. All that I have suffered was known to you, wasn’t it?’

‘And if it was?’ Eldire demanded. ‘If your entire life stood revealed to me while you were still growing inside me, how should that change this moment? Will you curse me for what you have endured or thank me for preparing the way?’

Malus shook his head. ‘Neither,’ he said. ‘The past is done. It is the future I seek. You have brought me to this moment. Tell me what waits beyond.’

The sorceress turned her face, unable to hold the suspicious glare in Malus’s gaze. ‘I have seen this far, but no further. There are rules to magic, boundaries that cannot be defied. This land draws but faintly upon the lighter vibrations within the aethyr and only so much can be achieved with the lower harmonies. Your doom is obscured, but this much I can tell you 
–
the fate of Naggaroth is bound to your own.’