Gotrek and Felix: The Anthology (15 page)

Felix looked around for something to throw at the mage, as he had done before, but the blocks that had fallen from the arch when the spider had smashed through it were too large. There was nothing the right size.

Then, suddenly, there was.

As Gotrek and Felix slashed at the spider, it reared up to avoid a blow, and its flailing forelegs cracked against the broken arch above them. A fresh course of blocks tumbled down at the impact, and smashed those that had already fallen, sending Gotrek and Felix diving aside to avoid being crushed by rubble.

The White Widow pounced upon Gotrek as he struggled to rise, stabbing at him with its one remaining foreleg, but the
s
layer rolled, and the sharp tip only tore his thigh instead of impaling it. Gotrek grunted and staggered up under the spider, his leg buckling, but right where he wanted to be, and he did not let pain stop him from striking true. He chopped upward with his rune axe and buried it deep in the monster’s abdomen.

The White Widow reared up like a spooked stallion and backed away, ichor gushing from the wound, and for a second time, Felix heard it scream. Gotrek limped after it, slashing at the spider’s legs where they connected to its body, and it cringed back to the edge of the lift hole, its back feet slipping off into thin air.

On the thing’s back, the ratmage was continuing to yank on the lever, still to no avail. Felix picked up a turnip-sized piece of rubble and hurled it, but missed. The White Widow was scrabbling at the edge now, clinging on desperately in the face of Gotrek’s brutal barrage, and the skaven was being jerked around like a puppet.

Gotrek’s axe burst one of the spider’s larger eyes, then crushed a mandible. ‘Come on, you oversized woodlouse!’ he roared. ‘Fight back! Slay me!’

The spider tried, but with the loss of an eye, its aim was off, and its strikes landed wide. Gotrek hacked off a leg and it jerked back, its fat abdomen hanging out over open space. Felix thought that would be the end of it, but its back legs found purchase on the filigree of the lift shaft, and it braced itself over the drop.

Felix saw the opening just as Gotrek did, and together they sprang forward to hack at the White Widow’s three middle legs, spread wide on the lip of the hole. Gotrek sheared through one, Felix cracked another, then kicked it off the edge as it drew back.

The spider listed sharply as its props fell away, and stabbed down with its remaining foreleg to catch its weight, but Gotrek chopped through that one too and it collapsed, its hammer-hard head crashing against the edge, then slipping off. The hooks of its back feet tried to hold onto the lift shaft, but its weight was too great, and they lost their grip. The White Widow fell.

Felix stepped to the edge with Gotrek and looked down as it plummeted away, bouncing and jolting off the walls. The last thing he saw before the spider vanished into the darkness was the skaven sorcerer, still pulling feverishly on the lever of the bomb.

Gotrek spat after it. ‘Interfering rats. Without the weight of that scrap yard contraption on its back, the spider might have beaten me.’

Felix nodded. ‘It would have made a grand doom.’

‘Aye,’ said Gotrek, then turned and started back into the Great Hall of the Jewellers’ Guild.

As Felix followed him, a huge shock jolted the room, bringing rocks and dust down from the high ceiling and stopping dead every combat on the field of battle as the dwarfs and orcs looked up and dodged falling rubble. Felix picked himself up from where the impact had knocked him off his feet, then scrabbled away as a giant block broke from the arch and bounced across the floor. He looked around, heart pounding. A hellish green glow was pulsing from the depths of the lift shaft.

‘Wh-what was that?’

Gotrek shrugged and kept walking. ‘The ratmage finally got that lever to work.’

17

Gotrek and Felix strode back towards the battle, but it was nearly over. Riven with infighting, the orcs had had enough, and were scattering for the promenade with the dwarfs and humans in hot pursuit. Those orcs left on the field were dead or dying under the dwarfs’ thorough throat cutting.

Gotrek ignored it all and continued towards the balcony where Agnar had met his doom. To one side, Felix saw Thorgrin on his back, his helmet off, surrounded by a circle of concerned dwarfs. A dwarf surgeon was tending to his wounds. Gotrek ignored him too, and stumped up the balcony stairs. Agnar lay dead from a score of stab wounds amongst drifts of slaughtered skaven. His legs were buried under the massive corpse of the rat-ogre he had slain, and the rubble of the collapsed doorway, but his butchered torso was uncovered and his face, in death, had a look of peace that Felix had never seen upon it in life.

Gotrek pried Agnar’s axe from his still-clenched hands, then cleared the rubble and the rat-ogre’s corpse from his legs and lifted him up as if he weighed no more than a child.

‘Bring his axe, manling.’

Felix grunted as he picked up the long-hafted weapon. It was twice as heavy as he had expected. He followed Gotrek down the stairs, then to the corridor that led to the stairs to the surface, where the dwarfs and humans were laying their dead. As Gotrek knelt and laid Agnar with the others, Thorgrin, now bandaged and splinted, limped forward with the assistance of his remaining shieldbearer.

‘Well met, slayer,’ he said. ‘I mourn that you did not find your doom as your comrade did, but I thank you for slaying the orc and the White Widow. I – we – are in your debt.’

Gotrek bowed his head over Agnar as if Thorgrin wasn’t there. ‘You have restored your honour, Arvastsson, and died as a slayer should,’ he said. ‘May Grimnir welcome you to his halls.’

Felix stepped forward to lay Agnar’s axe on his chest, but Gotrek took it. ‘No, manling,’ he said, standing and turning towards the door. ‘That axe has a vow to keep.’

Thorgrin bowed and tried again to thank him. ‘Is there any reward we could offer you? Two months’ entry into the hold with the licence waived, perhaps? Lodgings at the Golden Mug?

Gotrek stepped past him and through the door without slowing. ‘Your war isn’t over, brigand. There are still more rats to kill.’

The Grail appeared to be closed when Gotrek and Felix reached it. The front door was locked and barred, and the gate to the stable yard was chained shut. Sounds of frantic activity drifting over the high fence, however, suggested that it was not entirely empty.

Gotrek sheared through the chain with one swipe of his axe and pushed the gate open. In the yard, still soupy with mud from the recent rain, Louis Lanquin and Henrik Daschke were busily saddling and bridling a pair of horses and throwing heavy-laden saddle bags over their rumps. A pack mule was already loaded with satchels and trunks. They looked up at the noise of the gate and froze as they saw Felix and the Slayer sloshing towards them.

Henrik backed to his horse, scrabbling blindly for the reins with one hand and his sword with the other. ‘Ride,’ he said. ‘Now. The dwarf is a maniac. We must not face him.’

Lanquin smiled. ‘And we won’t.’ He drew a pair of heavy pistols from his saddle holsters and aimed them at Gotrek and Felix. ‘You should have taken my gold, dwarf. You might have died as a slayer should.’

Gotrek sneered. ‘By poison gas? That is not a slayer’s death.’

Lanquin’s cool amusement faltered as Gotrek kept walking towards him, undaunted. Henrik clutched the innkeeper’s shoulder.

‘Come on! Let’s fly!’

Lanquin shook him off. ‘I have more saddlebags to pack.’ He thumbed back the hammers on the guns. ‘Stand where you are, curse you!’

‘A loaded gun is no threat to those who are ready to die,’ growled Gotrek.

Felix wanted to remind him that some present were not quite ready to die, but at that moment Lanquin turned both guns on the slayer.

‘Then I shall unload them,’ he said.

Gotrek hurled his axe as the Bretonnian squeezed the triggers. The axe hit first, smashing into Lanquin’s shoulder, and the pistols went off at wide angles as he crashed to the mud, screaming in pain. Felix ran forward to kick the pistols from Lanquin’s hands, but Henrik leapt in his way, slashing with his sword. Felix parried the blow, then raised Karaghul to riposte.

‘Hold, manling,’ said Gotrek.

Felix held, on guard, and glanced back at him. ‘You want me to spare him? After all he’s done?’

‘Agnar Arvastsson swore that this betrayer would die by his axe. It would not be fitting to let a slayer’s last oath go unfulfilled.’ Gotrek pulled Agnar’s long axe from his back and stood before Henrik.

‘Step aside, manling.’

‘You’re going to kill me in cold blood?’ squealed the rememberer. ‘That’s murder.’

‘You have your sword. Defend yourself,’ said Gotrek.

Henrik stepped back, shaking.

‘Defend myself? Against you? That’s still murder! You know I can’t win!’

‘You should have thought of that before you betrayed the oath you took to your slayer,’ said Gotrek. ‘Now fight.’

‘No listen, slayer,’ whined Henrik. ‘I was wrong, I know that. But you don’t know–’

He stabbed for Gotrek’s throat with his sword, trying to take him by surprise. The slayer was too quick. He knocked the thrust aside with such force that the blade snapped, then buried his axe in Henrik’s chest.

Henrik coughed blood all over Gotrek’s hands as his body went rigid, then his head slumped forward and he sagged to his knees in the mud.

Felix heard splashing behind him as Gotrek pulled Agnar’s axe free, and turned to see Lanquin staggering for the back gate, his left arm red to the wrist from Gotrek’s axe cut, which had laid him open to the bone. Felix leapt after him and put himself between the Bretonnian and escape.

Lanquin held up his hands.

‘Please, I beg you,’ he sobbed. ‘I only want to leave. Take my gold, all of it!’

‘Why would we let you go when we killed Henrik?’ asked Felix. ‘You’re the worst of the lot. You colluded with the skaven to kill the dwarfs. You sent men who had sworn loyalty to you to their deaths. You tried to have us killed in the street.’

‘Yes, but what will you get if you kill me?’ It was a cold day, but the sweat was pouring from Lanquin’s brow like a river. ‘Only what I have here. Spare me and I’ll tell you where I have more. You may have it all. All my wealth!’

Gotrek retrieved his axe from where it had fallen in the mud, then stepped up to Lanquin and cleaned it on his fancy cape before sheathing it on his back beside Agnar’s.

Lanquin swallowed, hope kindling in his terrified eyes. ‘You – you’re not going to kill me?’

‘You don’t deserve a quick death, innkeep,’ rumbled the slayer, then turned towards the stables. ‘Hold him while I fetch some rope, manling. We’ll leave him for the thane.’

Lanquin whined and complained, but a minute later they had tied him to a hitching post and were examining the contents of the saddle bags and trunks as he wept quietly behind them. There was a fortune of gold coins in the satchels, and a treasure trove of jewel-studded crowns, armour and weapons that looked like they had been worn by dwarf kings and princes in the mule’s packs and trunks, items far too fine for the thane to have ever allowed to be taken from the hold.

‘Hmmm,’ said Felix, looking at a jewelled comb that might have bought a townhouse in Altdorf. ‘Take the relics back to Thorgrin and keep the coin?’

Gotrek grunted. ‘It’s more than the brigand deserves, but who wants to lug all that around? Maybe just… this.’

He took a sturdy gold bracelet and slipped it around his wrist, then sealed the saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder. Felix shouldered the other set and grunted to his feet under its weight. He gave Lanquin a sly salute, then led the pack mule out of the stable after Gotrek – where they came face to face with Thane Thorgrin, Sergeant Holdborn, and a phalanx of dwarf constables. A rough crowd of mercenaries and treasure hunters had gathered behind the dwarfs to see what had brought the thane of Skalf’s Keep to the stinking streets of Deadgate.

Thorgrin bowed politely as he looked past them into the yard. ‘It seems we owe you another debt, slayer. You have detained the villain who masterminded this whole false war.’ He nodded to the saddlebags and the pack mule. ‘And I see that you have already chosen your reward. Very good. For all that you have done, you deserve it.’

Gotrek just glared at him, so Felix bowed for the both of them. ‘Thank you, thane. And we have also–’

‘There is the small matter of the tax, however,’ said Thorgrin, speaking over him. ‘As you know, all treasures taken within the confines of Karak Azgal are subject to a ten per cent tax, and if they are of particular historical significance to the hold they may not be taken at–’

‘You mealy-mouthed thief!’ snarled Gotrek. ‘We were bringing it back to you! Here. We don’t want it!’

He took the reins of the mule from Felix and handed them to Thorgrin.

‘It’s all yours.’

The thane stared as the dwarf constables took down and opened the trunks and revealed the great treasures within, then turned back to Gotrek and Felix and bowed again. ‘The return of such important relics is a fine and noble gesture, heroes, and I am humbled by it, but, may I ask, what do you carry in the other saddlebags?’