Gotrek and Felix: The Anthology (11 page)

Felix looked up. The stairs were endless. He wondered if he would die from exhaustion climbing them. It was at least a less certain death than fighting a hundred skaven with his back to a bottomless precipice. He swallowed as he realised that he and the
s
layer were parting ways at last. ‘Are you sure, Gotrek? I will not witness your doom. My vow–’

‘Your vow is fulfilled. You know what my doom will be,’ said the
s
layer. ‘Write it well.’

‘Write mine too,’ said Agnar, snarling. ‘And shove it down Henrik Daschke’s throat.’

‘I will,’ said Felix. ‘With pleasure.’

The skaven were edging in from all sides now, the rat-ogres wading through the smaller troops to the fore, and shots were being fired from the back. It was time to go.

‘Farewell,
s
layers,’ said Felix, trying to keep any unseemly emotion out of his voice as he started up the iron stairs. ‘Die well, and may Grimnir welcome you–’

The stairs shook violently, cutting him off. He clung tight and looked up. Was the cage coming down again? Was the scaffolding collapsing?

The skaven edged back from the shaft at the noise, and the
s
layers looked around for the source of it. Then Felix saw it – not above, but below in the darkness, and rising swiftly.

It looked at first like the hand of a giant, though more slim and graceful, climbing up the latticed side of the iron lift shaft like a man might walk his fingers up his lover’s arm. They weren’t fingers, however. They were legs, bone white, and as hard and sharp as sabres, but longer than lances. There were eight of them, extending from a fat misshapen abdomen that glowed with the same grey glimmer as the cobwebs. Eight glassy black eyes looked up at Felix from a hard, hammer-shaped head under which twitched pincers that could have snipped him in half with one bite. There was something round and glowing rising from its carapaced back, but Felix couldn’t quite see it, for a cloaked skaven sat in front of it, riding the gigantic horror as if it were a warhorse.

‘Gotrek,’ said Felix through lips suddenly dry. ‘Your cave spider is here.’

12

Gotrek, Agnar and
Felix dived away from the iron stairs as the White Widow pulled itself out of the hole and slashed its hooked forelegs at them. Its rider, an ancient black-robed skaven, shrieked orders at it and whacked the spider’s carapaced head with an orb-topped brass staff.

Looking at it full on and standing before them, the cave spider was terrifying – a mountain of hard chitin, crusted white with what looked like bat droppings, its bulging abdomen looming twice Felix’s height, and its graceful legs spreading as wide as a merchant ship’s deck. The skaven troops feared it as well, and backed under the rickety scaffolding as it ticked delicately across the floor. Gotrek, however, nodded approvingly.

‘This will be a fight,’ he said.

‘What is that on its back?’ asked Agnar.

Felix looked again at the strange sphere that glowed behind the skaven. It was a barrel-sized globe of brass plates, bound to the White Widow’s thorax with leather straps, and riveted together so poorly that sick green light seeped through the joins and glowing steam leaked from it in a fog. A short brass rod with a pulsing gem fixed to the end sprouted from it like a lightning rod, and a crude lever stuck up beside it.

‘A bomb,’ said Gotrek. ‘A warpstone bomb.’

‘But they’ll kill themselves too,’ said Felix.

‘So long as they win,’ said Agnar. ‘Rat-lords care not if rat-troops die.’

The black-robed skaven shrilled orders at the hundred-strong mob of ratmen cowering under cover of the scaffolds, and they hesitantly began to edge behind the giant spider and run up the iron stairs as it held Felix and the
s
layers off.

Felix cursed. ‘They’ll reach Thorgrin before my warning does.’

‘At least you’ll witness my doom,’ said Gotrek.

‘And share it,’ muttered Felix.

The
s
layer didn’t seem to hear him. He charged the White Widow, roaring a dwarf battle cry. Agnar was only a split second behind him. The cave spider stabbed down at them with its scythe-like forelegs, shattering the stone floor as they dodged past and swung for its body with their axes. It scuttled back on its six other legs and they missed, then had to duck and weave as the forelegs slashed for them again.

On the White Widow’s back, the skaven sorcerer chanted and raised his brass staff, causing flickers of green lightning to play about the orb that glowed at its end. Felix was ready to leave the fighting of the spider to Gotrek and Agnar. As they would say, it was ‘
s
layer’s work’, but he could certainly protect them from being brought low by magic when all they wanted was a good fight.

He scooped up a fist-sized rock from the rubble that was scattered across the floor and hurled it. It missed, but just barely, and the skaven flinched back, losing the rhythm of his chant. He chittered angrily and glared at Felix, then began again. Felix found another rock and flung it. This time it found its mark and mashed the skaven’s furless nose.

With a shriek of rage, the ratman swatted its spider mount between its two rows of eyes, goading it towards Felix, who backed under a low course of scaffolding and searched for another rock.

Dancing under the White Widow’s legs, Gotrek and Agnar struck home as it moved. Agnar’s long axe sent splinters of chitin flying, but didn’t crack its carapace. Gotrek, however, armed with his starmetal rune axe and considerably more muscle, broke through its left foreleg, biting into the meat inside. Black ichor sprayed him and the spider staggered sideways, trying to escape the pain of the wound.

With cries of triumph, the Slayers pressed their advantage, hewing like woodsmen at the shattered limb, trying to widen the break.

The White Widow’s right foreleg stabbed at them, and Agnar did not dodge in time. It knocked him flying, and he skidded to a stop a foot from the edge of the lift hole, half-conscious, blood welling from the back of his head.

Gotrek spun away as the bladed leg swept in again, and chopped into a back leg instead. It was a brutal strike, half-severing the joint, and leaving the limb flopping loosely and trailing fluids. Felix had never heard a spider shriek before. Indeed, he hadn’t known they could, but this one did – a high reedy sound, like violin bows rubbing together.

‘Felt that, did you?’ laughed the
s
layer.

He pressed his advantage as the White Widow reeled sideways, its balance thrown. His axe slashed at the monster’s other legs, splintering them and leaving star-shaped cracks with every impact. The spider swiped and snapped back at him in a frenzy, its forelegs blurring as they tried to lance its prey. Gotrek was swifter, however, and fought within its reach, almost under its belly, making it back up in order to see where he was.

Shrieking with frustration, the skaven sorcerer beat the White Widow mercilessly with his staff, but the monster continued to retreat from the thing that was causing it pain – and into disaster. Its massive abdomen backed into the scaffolding along the west wall, snapping supports and causing the whole structure to groan and shift.

‘Sigmar save us,’ said Felix, as the platform above the spider buckled and sagged.

After that, the outcome was inevitable. Felix had earlier compared the scaffolding to a house of cards, and like a house of cards, when the bottom card was pulled out, the rest went with it. A chain of collapses followed the first, all the platforms and ladders and cross braces slowly folding in and crashing down upon the White Widow and the shrieking skaven.

Gotrek backed away as the first boards and posts began to topple, then turned and ran as the rest came rumbling after. He sprinted to Agnar, just now picking himself up at the edge of the hole, and dragged him aside as the wreckage struck the floor and spread in a tide of wood that spilled all the way to the precipice and sent planks and boards spinning away into the darkness below.

Through the rising cloud of dust, Felix could see that, under the debris, the giant spider still moved, and he thought it might rise up and shrug it off, but then, with a thunderous cracking and splintering, the granite cladding of the ceiling, which the scaffolding had been holding in place, peeled from the roof and crashed down on top of it, burying it completely.

‘Well,’ he said, coughing. ‘I think you got it.’

Agnar shook his head. ‘It might still live. We should dig down and make sure.’

‘There’s no glory in killing a trapped beast,’ said Gotrek. ‘And no time. Thorgrin must still be warned of the skaven and the Bretonnian’s treachery.’

Agnar scowled. ‘The skaven must be halfway there already. We’ll never catch them.’

Gotrek looked towards the lift. ‘We’ll beat them easily.’

‘But the cage is gone,’ said Felix. ‘Henrik took it.’

Gotrek ignored him and walked out onto the iron bridge, now partially bent from the rocks that had fallen on it, and eyed the cluster of cables that stretched down one side of the shaft. Felix followed him out, his heart palpitating.

‘Gotrek, I hope you’re not thinking–’

‘There’s no faster way.’

‘But how will we stop? If you cut the cable, the cage will drop and pull us up, I see that, but we’ll be going too fast. We’ll be pulled through the pulley at the top of the shaft. We’ll come out like sausages!’

‘The cage will stop here,’ said Gotrek. ‘And we will stop just short of the pulley.’

‘How? Are you going to hook your axe into the wall as we fly past? Even you aren’t that strong.’

Gotrek didn’t answer; he just stamped on the iron bridge with a heavy foot as if to test it, then strode to the scaffolding that still stood above the archway through which they had entered the room, all the while craning his neck and looking up at the ceiling.

‘What is he doing?’ asked Agnar.

‘I have no idea,’ said Felix.

Gotrek remained before the scaffolding, stroking his beard for a moment, then at last hefted his axe and started chopping at a particular support post.

‘Gotrek!’ cried Felix.

‘Into the passage, manling,’ said Gotrek. ‘And you, Arvastsson.’

Felix and Agnar hurried past Gotrek into the passage, as, in three deft strokes, he cut the through post and it snapped under the weight. Again the scaffolding above began to fold in on top of itself. Gotrek stepped into the passage to stand with Felix and Agnar as it all crashed down to the floor and spread out across it in a roaring cascade.

Suddenly unsupported, the braces that held up the ceiling fell after it, and huge chunks of masonry began to plummet down and smash the floor below – at first only a few, but then more and more, an ever widening collapse that sent arches and keystones and decorative corbels thundering down to shake the ground. And as they hit, they bounced off the drift of wooden refuse and avalanched towards the iron bridge. The great stones bounded across it and slammed into the front of the lift shaft, denting and tearing it, and the stones that followed the first caved it in even more, until, as the rain of masonry finally subsided, there was a great, concave bulge in the shaft, filled with rocks.

Felix stared as the dust subsided. ‘You’ve pinched it shut.’

Gotrek nodded. ‘Now the lift cage will hit the rocks and stop.’

‘And the cable will stop short of the pulley,’ said Agnar.

‘And fling us against the walls of the cage to be crushed into jelly,’ groaned Felix.

Gotrek shrugged. ‘It might, but we’ll beat the skaven.’

13

‘I should have
seen it,’ growled Agnar, as he and Gotrek hacked through the iron latticework of the lift shaft with their axes. ‘I should have known him for a rogue from the beginning.’

‘Perhaps he wasn’t one at the beginning,’ said Felix, slotting a ladder taken from the wrecked scaffolding through the lattice. Wedged into a corner of the shaft, it made a makeshift platform they would be able to step on. ‘A man might think being a rememberer a grand thing for the first few years, but come to regret it later.’

Gotrek looked around at him, cold-eyed. Felix squirmed under his attention, but went on.

‘A man might get impatient, and want to get on with his life. He might want riches and comforts. He might want to settle down.’

Agnar chewed his lip through his beard as he swung again. ‘He always joked about hoping I’d find my doom quickly, so he might spend all my gold while he was young. Perhaps it wasn’t a joke.’