Gotrek and Felix: The Anthology (46 page)

Halim’s face drained of colour. ‘I will not wear that crown. It is a vile thing.’

‘But in times of trouble, maybe a necessary one,’ said Ghal.

‘No!’ barked Halim. His hands were clenched. ‘No. I will wear the Lion Crown. The true crown.’ He turned to Gotrek and Felix. ‘Ras Karim has two crowns. The first, the Lion Crown, was made by the founder of this city, Karim the Benevolent. It is only a crown. It has no magic. But it is a symbol of just rule, and he who wears it and honours its legacy is loved by the people.’ He shot a glance at Ghal. ‘The second crown, the Serpent Crown, was made for Falhedar by Kaadiq, after the first attempt on his life.’ He sneered. ‘I hear he wears it to bed.’

Princess Yuleh flashed a mischievous grin. ‘I hope you don’t do that, beloved. I would find it very uncomfortable.’

Halim chuckled and squeezed her hand.

Ghal grunted and looked away.

Gotrek and Felix exchanged a glance.

5

On the day
of the attack, smoke rose from a dozen points in the city, and riots and demonstrations choked the streets with people. Company after company of palace guard was dispatched to put down the disturbances.

When Halim estimated that more than half of the garrison was chasing phantoms in the slums, he sent a ragtag army to the front gate, to pepper it with rocks and arrows and generally make a lot of noise.

Gotrek and Felix waited with him and Ghal and Yuleh and fifty armed men in an abandoned house with a secret door in its basement. Strangely, Halim was armed, not with a tulwar, but with an ugly wooden club with sharp chunks of basalt set into the end. The princess wore mannish garb, her hair hidden under a headscarf.

At last, word came that most of the remaining palace troops were engaged at the front gate. Halim opened the secret door and they ran swiftly through a narrow, lightless passage that ended, after more than a hundred yards, in another underground room – a dungeon of sorts, though curiously, all the fetters and whips seemed to be made of silk and satin, rather than iron and leather.

Above this was an opulent pleasure pavilion, a miniature palace of rose marble and satin pillows, of silver tables and tasselled lamps. Through its windows Gotrek and Felix looked with the others across a garden awash with flowers and fountains and exotic trees to an enormous palace that gleamed in the sun like a gilded sapphire. Spires and minarets rose from its every corner, and gold-pillared arcades ringed its upper storeys. There were no guards to be seen, only sounds of battle echoing in the distance.

Halim and Yuleh led the rest at a trot through the endless grounds until they came to a more modest garden, hidden by hedges, where melons and pears and nut trees grew. A genuflecting servant let the interlopers in at the kitchen door and they filed silently through a maze of service corridors until they came to a narrow stair, at the head of which was a stout door.

Halim turned as his men crowded forward. ‘Through that door is the Court of Palms, and beyond it, the throne room. We must cross the court like the wind, for if the guards close the throne room doors before we reach them, we are done before we begin. Are we ready?’

Ghal grunted. The men muttered their assent. Felix drew the scimitar he had been given. It felt alien and unbalanced in his hand.

Gotrek smacked into his palm the iron-shod truncheon he had taken from the jailer. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he growled.

Halim and Ghal crept up the stairs with the others behind them. Halim pressed his ear to the door, then shoved through it at a run.

The others burst through after him into a huge indoor jungle. Palm trees soared overhead under a faceted glass ceiling. Exotic flowers exploded from dark foliage, parrots and monkeys clutched drooping vines. Felix saw the far wall as if looking into a clearing. A towering archway revealed a golden-pillared room beyond.

Ten guards in white and gold stood before it, spears at parade rest. As Halim’s force sprinted from the shadows they cried out, but after that their response was calm and practised. Eight stepped forward, grounding their spears to meet the charge, while the other two began to pull closed a pair of heavy golden doors, richly worked with scenes of war and triumph.

Halim’s front rank drew recurved bows and fired on the fly. The men pulling the door fell, twisting and screaming, but more ran from the throne room to replace them. Halim’s force was still fifty feet away.

Another flight of arrows and the doors slowed again, but they continued to close.

‘Step aside, Grimnir curse you!’ roared Gotrek.

The Slayer had fallen behind, his short legs unable to compete, but his bellow parted those in front of him, and he side-armed his iron-tipped truncheon toward the door with all his might.

It spun noisily across the floor, scraping white gouges in the green marble. The guards leapt aside as it came, fearing for their ankles, and it slid past them to wedge between the two doors just before they met, keeping them open.

The guards started hauling them apart again to get the truncheon out, but it was too late. Halim’s men crashed into them, overwhelming them quickly and shouldering open the doors. Guards within tried to hold them closed, but they were no match for the fifty rebels outside.

Gotrek snatched up the truncheon and pushed through the widening gap, the first into the throne room. He bashed left and right and the doors opened more quickly. Felix, Ghal and Halim came in behind him, Halim’s men flooding in after to meet a score more white-clad guards. The last rebels slammed the doors behind them and set massive bolts.

Felix stole glances around him as he fought. The throne room was dazzling. White and gold pillars rose above a yellow-canopied dais. On the walls, tall windows alternated with jewel-covered tapestries of hunts and battles and courtiers at play.

On a gilded settee on the dais, surrounded by the motionless, chainmail-veiled red and bronze warriors who had captured Gotrek and Felix outside the Forbidden Garden, a man was rising and staggering back, a trembling hand pointing at Gotrek. He was of middle height and build and age, but magnificently dressed in snow-white robes, with a round, childish face under the golden coils of what could only be the Serpent Crown. ‘The dwarf!’ he cried to Kaadiq, who stood beside him, a hand clutching his silver flute. ‘The slayer of my khimar! Get him away. Protect me. He is a daemon!’

Gotrek looked every inch a thing of the nether realms just then, drenched in blood and brains as he swung his terrible iron-shod club in a humming circle, breaking limbs and smashing skulls.

‘Fear not, your benevolence,’ said Kaadiq, soothingly. ‘He will not reach you. None of them will.’ He called to his mail-masked men. ‘Crimson Ones, protect the caliph. Protect me.’

The red and bronze warriors stepped forward as one, forming a line between the rebels and the dais. Kaadiq began waving his fingers and singing under his breath.

The last of the throne room guards went down under the rebels’ ferocious onslaught. The rebels cheered and rushed forward. The Crimson Ones went on guard and struck in unison, like the pistons of some hellish machine. Though outnumbered more than two to one, the masked warriors repelled even Halim and Ghal with brutal ease. Gotrek fought three. They blocked his every strike. Another drove Felix back with bone-jarring blows.

Behind the rebels, a huge crash shivered the throne room doors. Felix heard cries and orders from without. It sounded as if the palace guard had brought a battering ram.

Kaadiq’s singing grew louder.

Halim turned to Gotrek. ‘Quickly friend, before his enchantments can take effect! You must break through!’

‘Right,’ said Gotrek. ‘Watch my sides, manling.’

Gotrek waded forward, swinging his truncheon two-handed, as Felix fell in behind him and to his left. The Slayer forced two of the mail-masked warriors back a step, but could not break their guard. Another cut at his flank. Felix lunged forward and parried the strike. It was so strong that his fingers stung.

He hacked the warrior across the arm. His scimitar glanced off as if he were encased in gromril plate. Gotrek clubbed one to the floor with a blow that should have caved in his ribs. He sprang up again. The Slayer growled like a thwarted bear.

Felix’s opponent smashed his unfamiliar sword out of his hand and lunged. Felix ducked the tulwar, then slashed at the Crimson One’s eyes with his dagger. The veil of mail ripped away. Felix gasped.

There were no eyes behind it. The warrior’s skull-featured head was carved from grey, weathered granite.

6

‘Gotrek!’ choked Felix.
‘They’re not men!’

‘I know that, manling,’ said Gotrek, cracking another in the head so hard that its helmet flew off and cracks appeared in its stone cranium. ‘Men don’t get up when I hit them.’

The thing kept fighting.

As the caliph cowered and the sorcerer chanted, the stone men chopped the rebels to pieces. Behind the fighting, the bolts of the throne room doors groaned and buckled. The palace guard were almost in.

The sorcerer’s droning chant began buzzing strangely in Felix’s ears, and suddenly he could hardly keep his eyes open. His arms felt leaden. He wasn’t alone. All along the rebel line, Halim’s men were dying as their arms drooped and the stone men buried their tulwars in their chests.

‘It won’t work, sorcerer,’ growled Gotrek. ‘Not without drugging me again.’ He tripped a stone man to the floor and leapt over it, swinging for Kaadiq.

The sorcerer yelped and dodged behind the caliph’s throne. Gotrek gave chase.

The sleepy buzz instantly vanished from Felix’s mind, and he saw Halim’s men recover themselves as well. It made little difference. The stone men could not be stopped. Swords did nothing. Heavier weapons might knock them down, but they fought on just as strongly.

‘Ushabti!’ called Kaadiq, dancing awkwardly back from Gotrek. ‘Protect me. Kill the dwarf!’

But before the stone men could turn, Gotrek flung his truncheon again. It caught the sorcerer at the knees and he crashed, shrieking, beside the dais.

At the same time, with a final bash of the battering ram, the throne room doors exploded open, and a flood of white uniformed guards poured in, charging the rebels.

Gotrek stood over Kaadiq, truncheon raised, ‘Get in my head, will you?’ he roared, then smashed down. The iron-shod club stove in Kaadiq’s skull like an eggshell. Gotrek laughed evilly. ‘Ha! Now I’m in yours!’

The stone men clattered to the ground like unstrung puppets, all life gone from them. Relieved, Felix and the rebels turned to fight the palace guards, but they were so few now, and the guards so many, that their destruction seemed inevitable.

Gotrek swung his truncheon at the caliph, but it swerved in the air and missed him.

‘No!’ cried Halim. ‘Iron won’t touch him!’ He leapt onto the dais, swinging his basalt-studded club. It caught Falhedar on the shoulder and knocked him from his settee. Strangely, the crown stayed firmly on his head.

Halim leapt on the caliph and grabbed the crown, tugging at it. It wouldn’t come off. In a glance behind him, Felix saw that it was sewn to Falhedar’s scalp – threads going through his skin.

‘Coward!’ Halim pulled harder and the crown came away, ripping flesh and hair with it. The caliph shrieked, his head a ragged, bloody mess.

Yuleh stepped up before him, curved dagger held high. ‘For my father,’ she said, and plunged it into his heart.

‘For my country,’ said Halim, and sank his blade next to hers.

All around the room, the white-clad guards faltered and blinked around, as if waking from a dream. The rebels knocked their blades aside and tore into them.

Halim stood, Falhedar’s bloody crown in one hand. ‘Stop! Friends! It is over!’

The rebels stepped back reluctantly. They did not lower their swords.

Halim addressed the bewildered guards. ‘Loyal men of the palace, the yoke of the Serpent Crown has been lifted from your shoulders. Your wills are your own again.’ He gestured to the bodies at his feet. ‘Caliph Falhedar is dead. The red sorcerer is dead. You need no longer fight to protect them. Instead I invite you to join me and return our land to its former glory.’

He was met with silence. The guards seemed too stunned to respond.

At last a captain of the guard gathered his wits. ‘And under what crown will you rule?’ he asked sullenly. ‘The Serpent or the Lion?’

Halim looked down at the bloody crown in his hands. He seemed to hesitate, then threw it savagely from him. It chimed as it skipped across the marble floor. ‘The Lion Crown,’ he said. ‘Only the Lion.’