Gotrek and Felix - City of the Damned Read online

  For a moment, the eddies in the smoke had resembled a figure.

  Gotrek smoothed his thumb around the blade of his axe until blood welled in a scarlet bead. ‘A long time it’s been coming, too. I’m due a half-decent scrap.’

  Felix moved his own hand to the dragonhead hilt of his sword. He gave it a short tug to ease it from the leather grip of its scabbard. Journeying with Gotrek Gurnisson, it paid to be cautious.

  ‘Do you think they’re still inside?’ he said, turning his back with some difficulty on the smoky phantasm and nodding towards the boarded windows.

  ‘Aye, manling. Even your kind aren’t foolish enough to keep a fire going untended.’

  ‘Unless they fled in a hurry.’

  ‘Oh, they’re here,’ Gotrek answered with a grin absent of several teeth. He waved over the abandoned street. Felix took in the boarded windows, the reinforced doors. ‘This wasn’t done in a hurry.’

  Felix looked over the sharply angled slate rooftops to the low hills ranged up on either side. A stretch of dry-stone wall petered out into a pile of rubble about halfway up the rightward slope. The hill on the other side boasted nothing so grand to mark it. Heathers and brambles scratched a living from the thin topsoil. The flora here was not even green, but rather an off-putting kind of purplish brown. Like an old bruise.

  ‘Come out, you beardless cowards!’ Gotrek suddenly roared, making Felix start. ‘We’ll not harm you.’ The Slayer turned to Felix and gave a gravelly chuckle, then muttered under his breath, ‘Probably.’

  ‘Gotrek,’ Felix breathed, stilling his companion with a gloved finger on his arm.

  Gotrek looked up, then followed Felix’s nod, just catching the shadow of movement from behind a boarded window. It had come from the larger, two-storey building that overlooked the far end of the street. Even without any kind of sign or welcome, Felix had enough experience of the taverns of this world to recognise another. Its construction was of the same grey stone that characterised the region with a pair of wide, covered, windows either side of a sturdy oak double door. A quiescent chimney stack poked between the slate tiling of its tall, sloping roof, black tiles that the cawing blackbirds sheltering under its eaves had pebbled white. The street’s cobbles marched directly on that front door before veering around, edging slightly up the rightward hill, and coming about into what looked like a coaching yard at the rear. Weeds choked the cobbles. Felix doubted a coach had stopped here since the road had been laid. If then.

  Gotrek cackled and stomped off in that direction, warming his muscles with a slow swing of his axe. The runes hummed as it bit into the wind. Felix bit his lip and hurried after him. He looked over his shoulder and shivered.

  He could feel eyes on him.

  From the tavern doors, there came the scrape of a heavy crossbar being removed and then slowly, as if acting under great duress, one half of the double door edged wide. A heavy-set man with a bald scalp, dressed in a sleeveless woollen smock and greasy overalls, nudged aside the door on the fat of his left arm. A blond-haired lad in a padded jerkin appeared at his back with a spear and doing his darnedest to look anything other than terrified.

  He was not having a great deal of success.

  Felix froze in his tracks, slowly removing his hands from his belted blade. Held into the crook of the bigger man’s arm was a flared-muzzled handgun of a kind that Felix had not seen outside of the Imperial Gunnery Museum in Nuln. He took a careful step back and raised his hands. If he were to be riddled with buckshot in the middle of nowhere on the Slayer’s latest nihilistic quest, then the knowledge that he had been killed by a weapon at least a century out of date would come as scant consolation. Gotrek kept nonchalantly on, as though he had seen nothing.

  ‘Gotrek,’ he hissed.

  The dwarf took another couple of paces before he stopped too. He swung back his axe to rest against his shoulder, for all the world like a lumberjack at the start of a shift. ‘A welcome as warm as your ale, eh barkeep?’

  Felix saw the man’s bare arms pucker in the wind, the antique blunderbuss trained on Felix before it swung down to target Gotrek. Not that it really mattered what he aimed at, Felix thought with alarmingly sound reasoning. A weapon like that could probably spray the whole street.

  ‘Who are ye?’ The bald man barked in a rough Ostermark drawl.

  ‘Just travellers,’ Felix called back, before Gotrek could contrive a way to get them both riddled with birdshot. Felix thought he saw the man smirk.

  ‘Oh aye? Travellers, yer say?’ He jabbed his blunderbuss threateningly at Gotrek. ‘Travelling where?’

  ‘Wherever we bloody well like,’ Gotrek growled.

  For a moment, the man was taken aback by Gotrek’s fierceness, and the weapon drooped slightly before snapping back up. ‘Yer travelin’ nowhere lessen I say so, yer hear?’

  Gotrek thrust out his chin and took a step forward. The blunderbuss tracked him, deadly orifice gaping like a maw to the netherworld. ‘Think you can stop me?’

  ‘Gotrek,’ Felix murmured, a stage whisper that carried. ‘Please don’t get me shot.’

  ‘Hah!’ Gotrek barked. ‘Is that what’s worrying you, manling?’

  Felix eyed the large gun. ‘At present, yes.’

  ‘Shut yer mouths,’ the man said. His finger trembled on the trigger.

  ‘Um, Gotrek…’

  Some itch at the roof of his spine had made Felix turn. The door to the smokehouse creaked open and a large man with red eyes and a soot-stained smock appeared in the doorway. He had a meat saw clutched in one hand, gristle hanging from the teeth. A woman, similarly begrimed, followed him onto the street, a shovel held close to her breast in both hands. Further down the lane, there came the sound of bolts being withdrawn and wooden hinges grinding open, the street slowly filling with silent, drably-garbed peasants, dirty hair ruffled by the wind. There must have been a good dozen, faces blending into a frightened, grimy mass. They said nothing, just afforded each other nods as they advanced, shoulder to shoulder, goat hooks, peat shovels and sticks waving over their heads. They stared at him, blank and afraid, and he stared back.

  Just what we need, thought Felix, forgetting the tavern-keeper’s blunderbuss as his hands dropped instinctively to his scabbard. An angry mob.

  Felix eyed the villagers warily. They held their distance for now, but terror did odd things to a man’s courage and it did not look like it would take much to provoke a charge. He glanced over at Gotrek, the Slayer stood with pursed lips, regarding them impassively. His axe had not shifted from its perch against his shoulder.

  ‘What’s this, Gregor? Found some other way to bring the Beast on our heads?’ The accusation came from somewhere within the mob, Felix did not see where, but the jeers that followed told him it was a conviction shared.

  The man, Gregor, swung his blunderbuss to cover the street. It did not cow them in the slightest. Or rather, Felix thought, they were already far too afraid of something else. The blond-haired boy at Gregor’s back, gripped his spear with white knuckles and pressed closer to the larger man, sweeping the crowd with wide white-filled eyes.

  ‘Back to yer homes,’ Gregor growled. ‘I’ll not tell yer twice.’

  ‘Yer’ll see us all dead!’ shouted the same man. Felix got a good look at him this time, dark hair and dark eyes, goats’ wool jerkin muddy and indistinguishable from any other. ‘Is that what yer want, Gregor? You want this land for yerself, like that witch o’ yers?’ More shouts, even angrier this time. Someone threw a stone, it whisked inches over Felix’s head and struck the wall by the tavern-keeper’s arm, making the large man duck and pull his gun away to shield himself.

  ‘Quiet down,’ said Gregor, the strain of trying to be heard without shouting pulling his voice thin. ‘Yer’ll bring the monster onto us, fer sure.’

  That gave the mob pause, or at least another source of superstitious terror to dilute their attention. Felix felt the tension, like a bowstring ready to be unleashed. They scanned the hilltops with
quiet fear.

  ‘Let’s all be calm,’ said Felix, taking the opportunity to fill the silence with his father’s most reasonable mercantile tone. He was not sure how he and Gotrek managed to walk into these things; he just hoped to be able to diffuse it before Gotrek lost his patience. ‘I fear we’re all the victims of some misunderstanding. We really are nothing more than innocent travellers.’

  For a moment or two there was silence, then a thrown stone struck his wrist. He gasped and clutched it to his belly. That was not exactly the response he had been hoping for. He edged back from the mob, closer to Gotrek and the tavern-keeper.

  ‘No closer, travellers,’ Gregor snarled. ‘We’ve all heard stories of the Beast.’ He regarded Gotrek suspiciously, his eyes hard. ‘And I don’t like the look o’ thissen. He looks wild enough. And if that were not proof enough, the last village we heard hit was Taalsveldt just back yonder way. Maybe he’s the Beast.’

  Felix winced as Gotrek hefted his axe and growled. ‘Pick your next words with care, barkeep, and remember that a dwarf won’t soon forget an insult.’

  ‘They…’ the lad behind the tavern-keeper spoke up, his voice catching. He took a hard swallow before continuing. ‘They don’t look much like beasts, pa.’

  ‘Hush, Thomas,’ Gregor whispered. ‘Ain’t no tellin’ that fer sure.’

  ‘The Beast is taller, Gregor, you big oaf.’ The call came from the crowd, swiftly joined by a babble of others.

  ‘Aye, like an ogre.’

  ‘And its claws are longer.’

  ‘Not an ogre, Heinrich, like a troll.’

  ‘Cold, grey flesh.’

  ‘Eyes of daemonfire.’

  ‘Claws like knives.’

  ‘Grey skin, aye, like a troll I said.’

  Felix nodded, spreading his arms as if a glimpse up his sleeves would offer the final proof of his humanity. ‘It’s true, see. We’ve never even seen your Beast.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ Gotrek grumbled under his breath.

  ‘He said he’s a dwarf,’ Thomas whispered into his father’s ear, eyes fixed on Gotrek. He lowered his spear. ‘Didn’t Father Gramm say to always do right by dwarfs? I don’t want no trouble with the baron.’

  ‘Too right,’ said Gotrek. ‘Now put down that lump of rust. It’ll never fire and everyone here with half an eye knows it.’

  Gregor clutched the firearm so tight that Felix thought it might bend out of shape. ‘This… this is the weapon my ancestors used to purge the moors of Chaos!’

  ‘Should have given it better care then, shouldn’t you?’

  ‘That’s it, Beast!’ Gregor aimed his blunderbuss at Gotrek and squeezed down on the trigger. The villagers took a collective gasp and threw themselves to the ground. Felix went down a half second later, leaving only Gotrek standing. There was a click and then nothing. Gregor shook the blunderbuss angrily, then depressed the trigger twice more, summoning two more clicks. ‘Sigmar’s grief,’ he swore.

  ‘Damp in the powder chamber,’ Gotrek explained. ‘Look at that rust around the lock.’ The man sagged and held up the wheel-lock mechanism for inspection.

  ‘So then,’ said Gotrek, already stomping towards the tavern doors. ‘Now we’re all friends, how about an ale? I’m thirsty and I get irritable when I’m thirsty.’

  The villagers were pulling themselves to their feet, holding to each other for support and glaring hatefully at Gregor and his son. The tavern-keeper backed away from them, pushing the lad, Thomas, through the door and gripping his blunderbuss like a truncheon. He still looked unconvinced that Gotrek and Felix were who they claimed to be, but did not seem to know what to do about it given his useless firearm. He glared at Felix in indecisive fear before the angered murmurings of the mob made his mind up for him.

  ‘Fine. Come on in.’ He took a quick step onto the street to clear the door but sidestepped hurriedly to the left to keep his back to the wall. He peered up at the hilltops. The wind made the heather wave. ‘We’ll deal with this out of sight. And the rest of you!’ This was hissed down to the knot of villagers. ‘Back to your homes. Quick, before you’re seen.’

  The peasants did not move. They stared at the tavern-keeper, and at Felix, with a bitterness born of terror. He did not know what had angered them so, but it would only take the smallest spark to inflame that anger into something more deadly. Felix’s gaze found its way back to the cemetery at the edge of town. The gnarled old stone hammer stood bent in the wind. There was no sign of the goat. He supposed one of the villagers must have taken the opportunity to bring it indoors.

  ‘Hurry,’ urged Gregor with a nervous eye on the crowd. ‘You don’t want to be out when the sun sets.’

  Felix looked first to the tavern-keeper and then to the sky. It was a miserable blue-grey, but sunset was several hours away at least. ‘What happens at night?’

  ‘The Beast hunts.’

  ‘Back! Back, beast!’

  Felix ducked under the lintel behind Gotrek, just as a rough-shaven man made a grab for a sword where it lay on a table. His hand shoved the blade off, sending it across the floorboards with a dull clatter. He swore and staggered from his stool, struggling to pull a knife from his britches while simultaneously tugging on the straps that flapped from his unbuckled leather cuirass.

  ‘Peace, Rudi,’ said Gregor, entering behind Felix with young Thomas in tow. ‘Nowt but a pair on the road.’

  Rudi threw up his hands and gasped for breath. ‘Rhya’s tears, you… you fat old fool.’ He kneaded his temples, as though possessed by the suspicion that some darkness lurked there. ‘What happened to hiding? Hmm? To holding out for the baron?’ The man was raving. The lad, Thomas, ran across to him, but Rudi shouldered past him. ‘You can’t just… you just can’t let strange folk in. What if the Beast has been following them?’

  ‘My brother has seen it,’ Thomas explained, still trying to get close enough to calm him.

  ‘Has he now?’ asked Gotrek, suddenly interested.

  Rudi pulled clear of his brother’s attentions and was struggling to rid himself of his armour, working himself into a state as he yanked at the single fastened tie at his left hip. At last it relented, the whole piece dragging over his head. He let it fall. He crossed his arms, still breathing heavily. He was a strapping young man, hard-earned muscles trembling in departing panic against his woollen undershirt. He glared at Gotrek and, for a moment, Felix feared he was about to do something foolish, but then he sagged. He and Gregor shared a look and, without another word spoken, bent to collect his armour and turned away, heading for a back door.

  ‘Rudolph saw nothing,’ said Gregor as the door eased shut. Felix heard the tramp of feet on wooden slats as the man headed upstairs. ‘Ain’t nobody seen the Beast and lived.’

  ‘I think I like it here, manling,’ Gotrek remarked. Rudi’s fallen blade had tangled between the legs of a stool. Gotrek toed it aside, then dragged the stool back. The snarl of wood on wood worked the tension in the room like a blunt knife across iron. If Felix were feeling less charitable, he would think Gotrek did it on purpose. The dwarf swung himself over the stool and sank down. He rapped on the tabletop with the knob of his axe before setting it down where Rudi’s sword had been with a stamp of metal. He set to unscrewing its chain from his bracer. ‘Ale. And don’t think I’m paying for it after that nonsense in the street.’

  Gregor started at the dwarf’s voice. The man looked anxious, distracted, as if their simply being there was making him nervous. He gave a curt bow and did as he was bid, circuiting around and behind a bar that was ranked with dusted barrels and ran the wall on Felix’s left.

  Felix followed the dwarf to the table, ducking under a crude hammer of Sigmar that had been fashioned from a pair of twisted horseshoes and hung by a cord from the rafters. His passage set it swaying. He stilled it between thumb and forefinger.

  The room was spacious, three or four long tables with stools scattered around them and a couple of private snugs in the far corners. It held
a dank air of neglect, like sour meat and wet fur. And it was dark. An unlit hearth mouldered softly within the back wall. What little sunlight strained through the grey mesh of clouds found its way into the tavern rudely barred as Thomas pulled the door closed and reset the heavy crossbar. Moths butted their heads dumbly at the window boards, their wing beats a staccato stutter as they sought out the slivers of illumination that gleamed between the joins. Slowly, Felix’s eyes began to adapt to the gloom.

  ‘That lot outside don’t seem too fond of you, barkeep,’ said Gotrek.

  ‘They’re scared,’ said Gregor. He had paused under a brass plaque on the wall behind the bar. A pair of hooks protruded from it. He sighed and returned the antique blunderbuss back to its mount. ‘My great, great, great…’ He trailed off and closed his eyes, shook his head when the answer would not come. ‘Blood of Magnus,’ he said, signing the hammer with a pudgy finger. ‘He were a pilgrim, like most folks were back when, settled after the Great War were won.’

  ‘Faster with that ale. And tell me more of your boy’s run-in with the Beast.’

  ‘Poor Rudolph,’ said Gregor with a sigh, rummaging under the bar for a tankard partway clean. He held it under one of the tapped kegs, blew dust from the tap and opened it. Golden-brown froth sputtered from the nozzle, hissing into a shuddering stream.

  ‘Doing good business out here, are you?’ asked Gotrek, eyeing the filling tankard with a healthy distaste.

  Gregor kept his thoughts to himself, half an eye on Thomas as his youngest joined him briefly behind the bar. Gregor closed off the tap and hastened to Gotrek’s table with the dwarf’s beer. He set it on the table and retreated back to the bar.

  Gotrek gathered the vessel into one meaty fist. Shoving off against the table leg, he forced his stool back along the floorboards, kicked off his boots, and planted his bare feet onto the table beside his axe with a sigh of deep gratification. Stretching out his toes, he took a whiff of ale. His face scrunched but he took a swallow anyway. He sat back.

  ‘Orc-spit,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody orc-spit.’