Gotrek & Felix: Kinslayer Read online

  The priest snorted at some private joke and Snorri bristled. This beardling priest was mocking him. By what Grimnir-given right? Something about being asked the question, though, made his mind go there. His skull ached. The three brightly coloured nails that had been hammered into his head in place of the traditional Slayer’s crest throbbed. Pain threatened to flush his mind of hard memories, but he grunted and willed himself past it. He had made a promise. He owed Gotrek that much.

  ‘Gotrek and young Felix disappeared into a magic door. When Max could not find them he and Snorri went back to Praag to fight Chaos some more.’

  ‘This is Maximilian Schreiber? Your wizard friend?’

  ‘Max is the wisest human Snorri knows. One time Snorri fell asleep in a bucket of vodka and when he woke up Max made his sore head go away.’

  ‘Then perhaps he is not so wise,’ Skalf snapped, ‘for a hangover is Grimnir’s way of making the last night’s fools suffer.’ The priest took a deep breath and went on. ‘What did you and Max do in Praag?’

  ‘Er…’

  Snorri vaguely recalled the following summer as a sequence of disappointing skirmishes with beastmen and marauders with just the one halfway memorable battle with a champion’s warband somewhere upriver. But he could not really remember that either. Then there had been that incident with the daemon-possessed violin that, even after he had sobered up, Snorri had thought sounded rather unlikely. Max was not the sort to make that kind of thing up, though. Not at all like that young rascal, Felix. He remembered being sad to have missed it. Then he remembered something that he had not before.

  ‘Ulrika was there too, Snorri thinks.’

  ‘The zanguzaz?’

  ‘Oh, she wasn’t a vampire then,’ said Snorri, then paused to think. ‘At least… er…’

  ‘Doubt,’ said Skalf with a grim half-smile. He unclasped his hands from behind his back, then laid them flat on the anvil by the stump of Snorri’s leg. He leaned forward. His eyes were a hawkish amber. ‘Doubt is progress, and progress is good. I think you have always wanted to forget.’

  ‘Snorri thinks this priest is stupider than Snorri.’

  ‘Gotrek and his rememberer were unique individuals,’ Skalf pressed. ‘They were possessed of a destiny I cannot pretend to understand. Their quests swept you along, Snorri, allowed you to forget your pain. But then one day they were gone, and you were left alone.’ Snorri tried to pull away. There was a leathern moan and the strap buckle bit into his massive forearm. Of course, Snorri thought miserably, Snorri forgot. ‘Pain is like gold. However deep you try to bury it, someone will always dig it up again.’

  ‘Snorri thinks… Snorri thinks he would like a beer now. Or ten.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ said Skalf. He gestured towards someone that Snorri could not see. Snorri smacked his lips. They would probably be bringing beer.

  Another Slayer strode through the smoke. He wore his hair in two crests, sharp red horns at the front but shaved down to the scalp at the back. His bare, muscular torso was a web of red and black tattoos. It looked like the musculature of a flayed body. But not a dwarf’s though, Snorri realised, as the Slayer’s face emerged from the smoke, painted into the snarling visage of a daemon. Snorri grasped instinctively for a weapon, causing his chair to rattle.

  Acknowledging neither Snorri nor Skalf, the Daemonslayer dropped a large leather bag onto the anvil. It hit with an iron clank. The bag was open and Snorri glanced inside. In amongst the common hammers and tongs of the smith’s craft, there rested an oddly proportioned spiked mace. There were no spikes at the very head of the weapon and there was no grip at all. The end of the handle where it should have been was flat and smooth and skirted with triangular iron flaps that were each punched through with eyelets. But nowhere in amongst it did Snorri see his beer.

  ‘Snorri wants to know what you two are up to.’

  The Daemonslayer laid his palm on Snorri’s shoulder. Burning, bleeding ligaments and sinews crawled across the well-muscled arm, but the touch was not unkind. ‘I owe you a debt, Snorri Nosebiter.’

  ‘Snorri will take your word for it.’

  ‘As you should, for my word is iron,’ spoke the Daemonslayer, retrieving his hand so that he could devote both to removing the mace from his bag and laying it reverently upon the anvil. Hammer and nails followed and the Daemonslayer then positioned the smoothed-flat haft of the mace up against the stump of Snorri’s leg. It was surprisingly warm and was a suspiciously good fit.

  Snorri had a very bad feeling about this. He hoped he was going to get his beer sooner rather than later.

  ‘That worm-eaten peg that the humans gave you to replace your leg is hardly fit for a son of Grungni,’ said Skalf, but Snorri was having difficulty focusing on him. His gaze slid to where the Daemonslayer was making a ring of measured little guide nicks around his leg by scoring an iron nail through the meat. ‘Surely the shame of it was the reason you refused your old companion, Makaisson, and remained here while he joined King Ironfist’s throng for the march to Sylvania. Or could there be some other reason?’

  ‘Snorri… cannot remember.’

  Skalf snarled; the wrong answer. ‘The von Carsteins rise again, Snorri. All of the blood-suckers. The king aligned himself with elves, elves, to fight them.’ He looked to the ceiling and presented his open palms in dismay. ‘Many Slayers found their dooms there in that mighty defeat. Even Makaisson did not return.’

  Skalf nodded to the Daemonslayer, who then picked up a nail and threaded it through one of the eyelets at the junction of the mace-leg. It dug into Snorri’s thigh. The Daemonslayer lined up his hammer.

  ‘My name is Durin Drakkvarr,’ he muttered. ‘I owe you my life, and my death. On the lost halls of home I will see that you find yours.’

  ‘This is going to hurt,’ said Skalf.

  ‘Can Snorri not have his beer first?’

  Skalf stuffed a rolled up leather belt into Snorri’s mouth. ‘You have already had too much. That is the problem.’

  From the corner of his eye, Snorri saw Durin swing his hammer. He tightened his eyes, bit down on the belt, and grunted as the Daemonslayer took his time striking nails through the eyelets of the mace-leg and into his thigh. The hammering from the nearby Slayers proceeded unabated. As if they did not hear.

  When it was done, Durin laid a hand briefly on Snorri’s shuddering shoulder, then diligently wiped up the few splatters of blood and put away his tools.

  ‘Tell me of your “Spider Lady” , ’ said Skalf, quietly, pulling the belt from Snorri’s mouth as though nothing had just happened.

  ‘Snorri is going to kill you when he gets out of this chair.’

  ‘There is nothing darker than a kinslayer,’ said Skalf calmly. ‘Even threatening it is enough to earn your name in blood in a clan’s book of grudges.’ The priest shrugged. ‘Lucky for you I have no family. Now answer my question.’

  Snorri tried to think of something else, but couldn’t stop his mind going where it was bidden.

  Woods. Giant spiders in the trees. An old lady screaming.

  ‘Snorri… saved an old lady in the woods. Big spiders… attacking her… Snorri… killed them all.’

  ‘Slow down,’ said Skalf. ‘Take a breath.’

  Snorri did as he was told and found it helped. ‘They stung Snorri a lot and when he woke up, the old lady told him that he would not die yet. She said Snorri would have a great doom. Like Gotrek’s.’

  ‘And this destiny, is it to be found here within the temple of Grimnir?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Snorri, disfigured brow knotting in concentration.

  The old lady in the woods had said more, been more specific than he remembered, but it was gone now. An old lady standing over him. She is sad. You will have the mightiest doom. Even though it made his head hurt he tried to remember. He had made a promise. The harder he tried to remember tho
ugh, the harder it seemed to be, like swatting a fly with a hammer. Thoughts of his supposed destiny always carried him nearer to memories of his shame, as if they were connected somehow. He wondered what Gotrek would do. They had been friends since before either of them had taken the Slayer oath. Perhaps he and Gotrek would both meet their ends together. That would be nice. It would make up for… for… He winced, his crest of nails throbbing in the roof of his brain.

  ‘Snorri can’t remember.’

  The priest stroked his beard thoughtfully, took a considered breath, then directed a nod to Durin Drakkvarr. Snorri watched as the Daemonslayer produced a massive pair of tongs. Durin studied the straps holding Snorri down.

  ‘These will not hold him for this.’

  With a nod, the priest turned and whistled into the smoke. The two nearest Slayers looked up from their anvils, then downed tools and started towards them. Each took one of Snorri’s arms and, at a hand gesture from Skalf, one of them put a hand over Snorri’s brow to hold steady his head. The iron bite of Durin’s tongs approached from behind, followed by a yawning silence, and then a pressure on his skull as the tongs clamped onto the first of Snorri’s nails.

  ‘Not those,’ Snorri moaned. He strained against the two massive dwarfs, but they had him pinned. All he could move was his eyes. They rolled up to fix the Daemonslayer with a pleading gaze. ‘Please.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ Durin whispered. ‘But I owe you too steep a debt.’

  ‘Grimnir takes sacrifice in the blood of his Slayers,’ whispered Skalf. ‘Malakai has gone. Gotrek has gone. It has been over a year now, Snorri, and still you cannot or will not recall.’

  The priest nodded to the other Slayers to begin.

  ‘And now Grimnir demands his due.’

  ‘It was for your own good,’ Durin growled over the low murmur of grim talk that permeated the pipe smoke of the Khaza Drengi. He glared straight down into the iron jug of ale that he circled with his hands. Red ink picked out the tendons and black emphasised the shadow. It was as though a daemon of blood and bone sought to crush that tankard with its bare hands.

  The Daemonslayer did not drink and Snorri regarded both him and the dwarf’s ale with equal glumness. Tentatively, he ran a hand across his head. His fingers brushed piggish grey bristle, and he winced as they passed over the scabbed-up punctures where his crest had been ripped out. It hurt as though he had jumped prematurely from a gyrocopter and been scalped by the spinning blades. He glared at Durin, dunking his little finger into the mug of water in front of him and withdrawing it for inspection. His expression soured.

  Snorri was not feeling especially forgiving just now.

  At low-slung tables all around the hall, Slayers sat hunched, locked in conversation over the great battles being fought all over the Old World and drinking with the determination of those for whom tomorrow was an unasked-for concern. The tables were packed and half a dozen dwarfs stood with beers resting on the bar, trading boasts with the bar-dwarf for the day, a leather-faced old Slayer named Drogun in an ill-fitting white apron. At the other end of the bar, a sullen slab of dwarf called Brock Baldursson dished up meat paste and potatoes from a steaming pot. The hall was busier than Snorri had seen it all year and was filled with unfamiliar faces.

  It was a sign of the times that Khaza Drengi was the last hall in Karak Kadrin to house more dwarfs than it had been designed to accommodate.

  Two tables over, a pair of dwarfs built like battlements wrestled arms across the table. Snorri recognised one of them. Krakki Ironhame roared merrily, a large pie in one hand, as he nonchalantly inched his opponent’s fist towards the tabletop. The Slayer’s girth was mammoth, even for a dwarf, and his hair, a natural fiery red, produced a fat, undyed crest. The day the dwarf arrived from Karak Hirn on his way north, Snorri had broken his knuckles on that same ‘lucky’ table. They seemed to be better now, but Krakki did not appear to have got any nearer to Kislev.

  Snorri turned back to Durin. The dwarf had still to touch his drink. It made Snorri angry just thinking about it going to waste.

  ‘If you choose to dislike me, Snorri, I will understand. But I am trying to help you.’

  Snorri scowled into his mug. ‘Tell Snorri again why he can’t have a beer too.’

  ‘Because Skalf would not untie you until you vowed to renounce it, remember?’

  Every word from the Daemonslayer’s mouth sounded blank, emptiness coloured only by the dimmest grey of regret. It was impossible to hate a dwarf that sounded like that. It would be like trying to hate the dark. Snorri rubbed his head ruefully, and then his throat. He could not remember the last time he had been completely sober, but then that had always been the point. Some dwarfs got philosophical when they drank, others belligerent, but not Snorri. It made him numb and that was how he liked it. He shook his head, scratched the grey boar-bristles across his scalp as if he could scour his thoughts from his mind. Then, into that induced emptiness, popped an unrelated thought. He brightened immediately.

  ‘Snorri remembers a human tavern called the Emperor’s Griffon. Human beer doesn’t count, does it?’

  ‘It is still beer.’

  ‘So they say,’ Snorri grumbled.

  The idea of never having another beer made his throat ache like the Arabyan desert, but forever was too big for him to deal with then and there. He wanted a drink now. He glared sulkily over the hard-drinking Slayers. If he could not drink then there was always the possibility of getting hit. The world was an ugly and unjust mistress and always looked better after it had knocked Snorri about the head a few times. Cheered by the prospect, he appraised the Khaza Drengi with a fresh eye. Brock Baldursson had the hard look of an old fighter, and Snorri had once seen Krakki punch out a priest of Grimnir with a set of freshly broken knuckles, but the rest were a disappointing bunch of scrawny-looking shortbeards that Snorri would not bet on in a fight with a goblin. He sighed.

  ‘Snorri hopes he finds his doom very soon.’

  Durin lowered himself to the table until he dropped into Snorri’s eye line. ‘I hope that for us both. I have sworn before the Shrine of Grimnir that you will find a worthy end.’

  Snorri stared acidly at the other Slayer. He was not getting off that easily, not after he had stolen Snorri’s nails and would not even let him have one beer to make up for it. ‘Does that make you Snorri’s rememberer then? Because Snorri doesn’t need a rememberer.’

  The Daemonslayer sat back and picked up his tankard as if considering his words with the care of a gemcutter over a rare stone. He took a sip, swallowing as if it might be his last. Snorri watched every twitch as it went down his throat.

  ‘I am not your rememberer, Snorri, though clearly you need one more than most. I am just a dwarf with a debt.’

  Intrigued now despite a stubborn will not to be, Snorri waded into the murky stew of his memory. He had journeyed with many fellow Slayers in his time, but most had already beaten him to their ends. Rodi Balkisson, although the details of it were hazy, had been slain by Krell at Castle Reikguard while his other recent companion Agrin Crownforger had fallen in battle with an entire beastman herd. Grudi Halfhand had taken the orc that had shamed him to a worthy end at the bottom of an ale barrel. Further back, memories became sharper and came quicker. Bjorni Bjornisson, the selfish bastard, had been cut down by that Chaos warlord during the siege of Praag, cheating both Gotrek and Snorri of mighty dooms while he was at it. Ulli Ullisson had fallen earlier that day. He thought back further. Grimme had been as sour as this Slayer, but the red tattoos and air of horror that clung to this one were wholly different. In any case, Snorri distinctly recalled Grimme being incinerated by a dragon, just moments before that dragon had gone on to crush another Slayer, Steg. Snorri chuckled. That one had made Snorri laugh.

  It had been a good death. They all had. He sighed.

  But not for Snorri.

  ‘I am not surprised you do not
remember me,’ said Durin. ‘And not just because of your problem.’ For a moment, the dwarf’s gaze was distant. His eyes seemed to widen, sinking into the black-inked pits of their sockets. He swirled his ale. ‘There were many of us that you and your companions rescued from Karag Dum that day.’

  Durin looked up to find Snorri staring intently at his face. The daemon’s face he wore twisted into the first smile Snorri had seen on it. It was not, he decided, something he wanted to see again sober.

  ‘The face of the Destroyer,’ said Durin. ‘Like you, it is difficult for me to remember. Like you, I must make myself if I am to follow my true path. How long before that which befell Karag Dum is the fate of all? The Chaos Wastes expand. Already daemons walk freely across the Troll Country.’ Durin’s words were growing louder and his face hotter as he continued. Behind him, there was a crashing of bone into oak and a thunderous eruption of laughter. Durin ignored it. ‘I am leaving for Kislev, with you or without you. I will not be here when Karak Kadrin is caught by the Wastes. And be assured that it will be. I have lived through that once, and daemons will not hunt me through my own halls a second time!’

  Durin was on his feet and panting with emotion. Snorri did not know what to say. He should probably want to punch him for suggesting Karak Kadrin might fall, but even Snorri knew that greater holds than her had fallen before and would fall again. Durin Drakkvarr came from one of them. He shook his head. Tempting as it sounded, he wanted to remember his shame first. He had promised.

  Except he did not want that at all. He wanted–

  He hung his head.

  Valaya’s sweet breath, he wanted a beer.

  ‘Snorri!’ The shout from the arm-wrestlers’ table startled Snorri from his thoughts. Krakki Ironhame thumped on trunk-legs towards them. ‘Grimnir’s britches!’ he laughed. ‘Did you lose a wager or did you just walk underneath Malakai’s Magnetic Rune? Hah! You look old without your crest. I barely recognised you.’ The fat dwarf gave Snorri a mighty smack across the back. Snorri’s nose wrinkled. Even at the best of times, Krakki smelled like sweaty pork that had been left the week to marinate in ale. These were not the best of times. ‘But I like the leg.’