Gotrek and Felix: The Anthology (20 page)

‘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.’

John Brunner

‘You’ll have a
comfortable trip,’ the landlord of the coaching inn assured Henkin Warsch. ‘There are only two other passengers booked for today’s stage.’

Which sounded promising enough. However, before they were even out of sight of the inn Henkin was sincerely regretting the maggot that had made him turn aside from his intended route and visit a place he had last seen twenty years before. One of his fellow-travellers was tolerably presentable, albeit gloomy of mien – a young, bookish type in much-worn clothes, with a Sudenland cloak over all – and Henkin might have quite enjoyed chatting with him. But the third member of the party was a dwarf, reeking of ale and burdened with a monstrous axe, who thanks to his huge muscle-knotted arms took up far more room than might have been estimated from his stature. Worst of all, his crest of hair and multiple tattoos marked him out as a Slayer, self-condemned to seek out death in combat – a most discomforting fellow traveller!

If only I could pretend I don’t speak Reikspiel, he thought.

The inn’s bootboy, however, had put paid to any chance of that. While hoisting Henkin’s travelling bag to the roof of the coach, he had announced for the world to hear, ‘This here gentleman hails from Marienburg! I’ll wager he can report much news to help you pass away the miles!’

Presumably he hoped the flattery would earn him an extra tip. It failed. Scowling, Henkin handed him the least coin in his pocket and scrambled aboard.

Whereupon the ordeal commenced.

It wasn’t just that the road was hilly and potholed. He was expecting that. But somehow the dwarf – fortunately in a jovial mood – had taken it into his head that no one from the Wasteland had a proper sense of humour. Accordingly he launched into a string of what he thought of as hilarious jokes. They began as merely scatological; they degenerated to filthy; and at last became downright disgusting.

‘…and there he was, over ears in the privy! Haw-haw!’ Naturally, Henkin’s disinclination to laugh served, in his view, to prove his original point. So he tried again, and again, and yet again. Mercifully, at long last he ran out of new – one should rather, Henkin thought, say ancient – stories to tell, and with a contemptuous scowl leaned back and shut his eyes, though keeping a firm grip on the haft of his axe. Within moments he began to snore.

At which point his companion murmured. ‘I must apologise for my friend, mein herr. He has had – ah – a difficult life. Felix Jaeger, by the way, at your service.’

Reluctantly Henkin offered his own name.

‘Well, at least the weather is fine,’ the other went on after a pause. Glancing out of the window, he added, ‘We must be approaching Hohlenkreis, I suppose.’

Against his will Henkin corrected him. ‘No, we haven’t passed Schatzenheim yet.’

‘You know this part of the world?’ Felix countered, his eyebrows ascending as though to join his hair.

Henkin, in his turn, started at the landscape. The road, cut from the hillside like a ledge, was barely wide enough for the coach. Here it wound between sullen grey rocks and patches of grassy earth. Higher up the slope were birches, beeches and alders, last outposts of the army of trees that occupied the valley they were leaving. Towards the crest of the pass they would cede place to spruce and larch. That was a haunt of wolves…

‘There was a time,’ Henkin said at length, ‘when I knew this area better than my own home.’

‘Really? How so?’

Henkin shrugged. ‘I was sent to school near here. To be precise, at Schrammel Monastery.’

‘That name sounds familiar…’ Felix frowned with the effort of recollection, then brightened. ‘Ah, of course! Schrammel is where we’re due to put up for the night. So we shall enjoy your company at the inn also?’

Henkin shook his head. ‘No, by the time we arrive there should be an hour of daylight left. I’ll walk on to the monastery – it isn’t far – and invoke an ex-pupil’s traditional right to a meal and a bed. Yesterday, on impulse, I decided that being so close I shouldn’t miss the chance.’

‘Hmm! Your teachers must have left quite an impression!’

‘They did, they did indeed. Inasmuch as I’ve succeeded at all in life, I owe it to their influence. I don’t mind admitting it now, but I was an unruly youth.’ As he spoke, he thought how oddly the words must strike this stranger’s ears, for today he was portly, well dressed and altogether respectable – ‘to the point where our family priest feared there might be some spark of Chaos in my nature. It was his counsel that led to my being sent to a monastery run by followers of Solkan to continue my studies. At Schrammel I was rescued from danger that I didn’t realise I was in. I often wish I’d been able to complete my education there.’

‘You were withdrawn early?’ Felix inquired.

Henkin spread his hands. ‘My father died. I was called home to take over the family business. But – well, to be candid, I wasn’t cut out for it. Last year I decided to sell up, even though I didn’t get anything like a fair price.’ An embarrassed cough. ‘My wife had left me, you see… If only my teachers had had time to reform my character completely, cure me of my excessive capacity for boredom… At first I hated the place, I admit, because the regime was very strict. How I remember being roused in winter before dawn, having to break the ice in my washbowl before morning prayers! And the sound of a hundred empty bellies grumbling in the refectorium as they brought in the bread and milk – why, I can almost hear it now! As we boys used to say, it made nonsense of the monastery’s watchword – “A Place of Quiet Assembly”!’

He gave a chuckle, and Felix politely echoed it. ‘Of course, they had to be strict. Unvarying adherence to routine: that was their chief weapon against the threat of Chaos – that, and memorising. Memorising! Goodness yes! They stocked my head with lines I’ll carry to my dying day. “Let loose the forces of disorder – I’ll not quail! Against my steely heart Chaos will ne’er prevail!”’

‘Why!’ Felix exclaimed. ‘That’s from Tarradasch’s
Barbenoire
, isn’t it?’

Henkin smiled wryly. ‘Yes indeed. They made me learn the whole thing, word-perfect, as a warning against arrogance. I forget what I’d done, but I’m sure I deserved it… I’m impressed that you recognise it, though. I thought Tarradasch was out of fashion.’

‘Oh, I can claim nodding acquaintance with most of the great works of the past. To be candid, I have ambitions in that direction myself. Oddly enough, that’s partly why I’m travelling in such – ah – unlikely company.’

‘Really? Do explain!’

Felix obliged. After detailing the agreement whereby he was to immortalise his associate’s valiant deeds in a poem, he described a few of the said deeds – thereby causing Henkin to cringe nervously away from the slumbering dwarf – and eventually turned to a general discussion of literature. Thus the time passed pleasantly enough until with a grating of iron tyres on cobblestones the coach drew up outside Schrammel’s only inn, the Mead and Mazer.

‘I’d advise you,’ Felix murmured, ‘to get out first. Gotrek may resent being woken up… Will you return from the monastery to join us for the rest of the journey?’

‘That’s my intention, yes,’ he said with a grimace. ‘I shall be roused in plenty of time, I’m sure.’

‘I look forward to seeing you then. Enjoy your – ah – sentimental visit.’

Having arranged for
his heavy luggage to be looked after at the inn, Henkin set off cheerfully enough with a satchel containing bare necessities. The weather at this hour was still clement, though ahead he could see wisps of drifting mist. He remembered how clammy it used to feel on his fair skin when he and other malefactors were sent on a punishment run. The prospect of being enshrouded in it dampened his spirits. Moreover the passage of time seemed to have made the path steeper than it used to be, and he often had to pause for breath.

Nonetheless, the sight of old landmarks encouraged him. Here, for example, was the gnarled stump of an oak which his school-friends had nicknamed the
Hexengalgen
– witches’ gallows. Its crown was gone, felled no doubt in a winter gale, but there was no mistaking its rugose bark, patched now with fungi that he recognised as edible. Seeing it reminded him how hungry he was, hungry enough to be looking forward even to the meagre victuals on which the pupils at the monastery survived: coarse bread, watery bone-broth and a few sad vegetables. But the teachers ate the same, and they’d seemed hale enough.

Of course, he was accustomed to finer fare these days. He hoped his digestion would cope…

The way was definitely steeper than he had allowed for. The distance from the oak-stump to the next landmark – a moss-covered rock known as Frozen Dwarf because it bore a faint resemblance to one of that quarrelsome and obnoxious race – seemed to have doubled. How different it had been when he was seventeen!

Nonetheless he plodded on, and the sun was still up when he breasted the final rise. Thence he could survey a peaceful view he once had hated, yet now had power to bring tears to his eyes.

Yes, it was unchanged. There were the buildings he recalled so clearly, ringed with a forbidding grey stone wall. Some were veiled by gathering mist, but he could identify them all. There was the dormitorium, with its infirmary wing that fronted on neat square plots planted with medicinal herbs as well as vegetables for the pot. The kitchen where the latter were cooked was a separate building, separate even from the refectorium, for its smoke and, in summer, the hordes of flies it attracted to the scent of meat, made it a noisome neighbour. Over there was the schola, which as well as study-rooms contained the library… He wondered who now had charge of the great iron keys that used to swing from the cord of Frater Jurgen’s brown robe, keys that granted access to the locked section where only the best and most pious students were admitted, there to confront revolting but accurate accounts of what evil the forces of Chaos had accomplished in the world. Jurgen, of course, must be long dead; he had been already stooped and greying in Henkin’s day.

Then there were the byres, the stables, the sheds where wandering beggars were granted overnight shelter – and finally, drawing the eye as though by some trick of perspective every line of sight must climax with it, the temple, where worship was accorded to the God of Law and none other, the most dedicated and vindictive of Chaos’s opponents. Unbidden, lines from a familiar hymn rose to Henkin’s lips:

‘Help us to serve thee, God of Right and Law! Whene’er we pray to Thee for recompense, Avenge our wrongs, O–’

That’s odd!
The name was on the tip of his tongue, yet he could not recall it. Surely it would come back if he recited the lines again? He did so, and there was still an infuriating blankness. Yet he’d known it when talking to Felix in the coach!

‘Oh, that’s absurd!’ he crossly told the air. ‘I must be getting senile before my time!’

Annoyed, he slung his satchel more comfortably and descended the path that led to the tall oak gate, surmounted by a little watchtower, which constituted the sole means of passage through the encircling wall. Darkness deepened around him at each step. On the hilltop the sun had not quite set, but before he reached the valley floor night had definitely fallen, and chilly shrouds of mist engulfed him even as he tugged the rusty bell-chain.

The dull clang was still resounding when there was a scraping noise from above – a wooden shutter being slid back in the watchtower – and a cracked voice demanded who was there.

Remarkable, he thought. That sounds exactly like Frater Knoblauch who kept the gate in my day! Oh, I suppose each gatekeeper must copy the mannerisms of his forerunner…

Stepping back, tilting his head, unable to make out a fact but discerning the glimmer of a lantern, he called out an answer.

‘Henkin Warsch! I used to be a pupil here! I claim by right a meal and a bed!’

‘Henkin Warsch!’ the gatekeeper echoed in astonishment. ‘Well, well! That’s amazing! I’ll unlock in a trice!’

And he was as good as his word, for the heavy panels swung wide before Henkin had drawn two more breaths. There in front of him, unmistakable in the faint yellow gleam of his lamp, was Frater Knoblauch in person, wheezing with the effort of hurrying down the narrow stairs.

‘But – no, it can’t be!’ Henkin exclaimed. ‘You can’t possibly be Frater Knoblauch!’

‘And why not?’ the old man riposted.

‘I thought… I mean: I left here twenty years ago!’

‘So you expected me to be dead, is that it?’ the other said caustically. ‘Well, I suppose to a boy anyone over fifty seems an ancient. No, here I am, as hale and hearty as anyone may hope at my age. Our way of life is a healthy one, you know – we don’t rot our bodies with drink or waste our vitality by wenching! Come in, come in so I can shut the gate. A bed you can certainly have, but if you want food you’ll have to make haste. It’s after sunset, you know, and we still keep the same hours.’