Gotrek and Felix: The Anthology (31 page)

He grunted a Khazalid curse, blood and spit spraying from his lips. With a broad, flat boot, he forced the hissing
gromril
to bite deeper, as if he was breaking ground with a shovel. In the space between armoured pauldron and full-face war helm, black, polluted blood squirted from the wound in time with the dying warlord’s failing heartbeat.

The head came free with the wrench of tearing sinew, and his armoured body crashed to the ground.

What happened next, the vision had represented with chilling accuracy.

‘Your warlord is dead!’ cried Felix Jaeger. ‘
Your warlord is dead!’

The brothers did
not even spare a moment’s attention as their puppet died.

They, of course, had abandoned him. Outside the walls, they had listened politely to the demands of Daemonclaw’s heralds to stop the spread of fires within the city. The army had to winter here, after all. Smoking ruins offered little shelter.

Lhoigor had declined in a sorrowful, regretful tone, and with a gesture, their armour became molten slag.

‘Now that Arek’s farce is concluded, have we a plan?’

Kelmain’s rebuke had none of its usual venom. He was almost kindly, as if talking to a dim child.

Of course we do, Lhoigor. We start again.

‘Oh?’

Kelmain gave a shrill laugh. Around them, the brothers’ cabal of lowly acolytes and half-hearted disciples listened with their shaven heads bowed in deference. No one commented on the apparent one-sidedness of the conversation.

As this gaping wound in Kislev scabs over, all we must do is guide another soul along the paths Arek took. Except this time, we shall be careful to study his worthiness more closely, no? We should choose a man who thinks slightly less of himself than this fool did.

Lhoigor dipped his bald head in concession of his brother’s wisdom. ‘If this is the case, I thought perhaps we could alter our route to include the mountains? I would very much like to examine Skjalandir’s carcass.’

Kelmain’s answer was spoken aloud so the acolytes could hear his words.

‘
We travel by swifter means, my brother.’ He showed them his needle-teeth in what looked more like a threat-display than a grin. ‘Would you die for us? We are in a hurry.’

In silent, wordless loyalty, they cut their own throats to power the brothers’ spell. With a thick bang of displaced air, they left the stink of a burning city behind them, and the fleeing hordes that had already begun to fight amongst themselves.

V

‘We saw,’ Kelmain
repeated, almost choking the words from his parched throat, ‘the Slayer.’

Lhoigor shivered. The images were scars in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t banish what the vision had shown. His blinking was rapid.

‘Is he following us?’

Lhoigor...

‘He must have followed us from Praag, Kelmain. You saw what he is capable of.’

If one more fearful muttering passes your lips, I swear by the blood of the Changer I will kill you myself.

Kelmain’s chest rose and fell in anger, as well as fear of his own. Something was wrong. The quality of the vision had been too... violent. Too vivid. Even more than the premonitions they usually endured. And the weakness was passing too slowly.

Tchar’s holy breath, his skull ached.

As he rose to his feet, the trembling of his knees shocked him. With a golden-clawed fist gripping his staff for support, he limped a few steps to encourage circulation. Lhoigor remained where he was, biting his silver claws in fretful thought.

At last, Kelmain sighed. ‘You realise this is an opportunity.’ He used his ravaged flesh-voice. Lhoigor always responded better this way.

‘How so?’ His brother didn’t even look up.

‘Recall the vision.’

‘I... don’t want to, brother.’

‘Lhoigor. Recall the vision. Describe what we saw.’

The silver-clawed sorcerer took a shuddering breath. Kelmain shook his head in wonderment. It was true that the two almost shared souls, that was how fundamental their bond was, but some things remained hidden from each other. Lhoigor never realised that he possessed a fractional superiority in raw talent, where Kelmain refined his own abilities with tight, masterful control.

‘He was walking through the Wastes. He seemed possessed by anger.’

‘No. That isn’t what we saw. Clear your head. This is vital. Recall the vision accurately, Lhoigor. Don’t be afraid.’

As calm settled over the tension of the silver-clawed brother’s shoulders, he began to talk.

Not walking.

Staggering. The Slayer is staggering.

His boots scuff the ashen earth of the Wastes, footsteps trailing behind him for countless leagues. Gurnisson can barely stand. He cackles a madman’s laugh, as if this wretched state of being holds some private hilarity.

The bleakness of cold sunlight catches on his golden armbands. The priceless metal is worn and scratched from a journey that has surely taken months. Every hour of that trek shows. New scars stand out as livid blemishes on pale, tattooed skin.

His presence is somehow diminished. This isn’t the warrior who bested Daemonclaw. It seems that even the axe’s influence can’t – or perhaps won’t – sustain him. He holds the blade out in front of him, swinging drunkenly at enemies who aren’t there.

With the one eye that remains to him, blinking and clogged with dust, he stumbles after landmarks that won’t stay still, mumbling over the sanctity of mountains, cursing the false tranquillity of open valleys.

No anger. No wrathful pursuit of two twin sorcerers.

Just a Slayer fated to find his doom in the north.

‘Let’s kill him
ourselves.’

Kelmain hid a private smile. Like a child shown the foolishness of his fear, Lhoigor had certainly perked up.

Now you are thinking like my brother again.

They began to walk without paying attention to where they were going. It seemed an illogical thing to do, but it didn’t matter where you thought you were heading in the Chaos Wastes. It took you along its own paths, and guided you into its numerous pitfalls.

I am sorry, brother,
Lhoigor said for the second time that day.
That vision was so strong. I was not myself when I came to.

In truth, neither was I,
Kelmain confessed, his reluctance to admit this obvious in the hesitance of his thoughts.
Normally my wits convalesce swiftly. Not today.

Does it give you pause? The strangeness of it?

Kelmain shrugged his spindly shoulders.
We stand on the precipice of the gods’ realm. We should be surprised that vague abnormality was all we experienced, no?

It is possible that the vision isn’t accurate.
Lhoigor was voicing a concern neither really wanted to face up to.
Perhaps something interfered, poisoning our perceptions with false visions.

Kelmain took a long, impatient breath.
If that is the case, then we will deal with it as it comes. The possibility of destroying this Gurnisson, perhaps bending his weapon to our purposes, is too great an opportunity to pass over.
He added,
You darken my thoughts.

The journey continued in silence, not even with their voiceless communication. Each brother kept his own counsel, perhaps wondering which of fate’s threads would snap with the Slayer gone.
Or perhaps they simply pondered how they would murder him.

He was almost
dead. It quite removed the fun from the situation.

He was far gaunter than the vision showed. His bones were visible on account of the severe wasting of his muscles, the bumpy curvature of his ribcage hiking with each spluttered breath. He couldn’t even stand up.

He cradled his axe on the ground underneath him, as if sheltering it from predators. And the bands decorating his arms seemed too dull to be true gold. Curious.

The brothers stalked around him, as lean as vultures, bent over in their predatory intent.

‘You are ours, Slayer,’ Kelmain teased, the words close to a sneer. ‘Finally, this is the doom that has eluded you these past decades.’

Despite the taunt, neither brother actually moved any closer. The dwarf was dying, but he was still dangerous. Obscured under his bulk, that axe waited.

‘Do I congratulate you, dwarf? In your dim, oafish mind, is this a victory for you?’ Lhoigor sniped. ‘What a life it must be, to have death as your foremost ambition.’

The brothers tittered like hyenas, and the Slayer glanced up at them.

With two eyes.

Both gleamed with madness, even if one was milky with blindness.

‘He should possess only one eye...’ Kelmain began. The thought was finished as the dwarf heaved himself to his feet, brandishing his lethal weapon with the skill and strength of an infant.

‘It is not him,’ Lhoigor breathed. ‘This is not Gotrek Gurnisson.’

They burned him
alive.

When he rushed at them in one final, doomed burst of suicidal violence, his weapon swinging in weak arcs, as worthless as the blade itself.

Realising they had been fooled, cursing whatever entity had fouled their gift, they annihilated the dwarf’s body with acid fire, and watched the emerald flame consume his wasted flesh. His dyed beard and crest went up first, in a spectacular moment of illumination. Then his inked flesh split open under the heat, spattering his boiling blood across the dust.

‘Brother,’ Lhoigor said, after a long time of watching the flames. The blackened husk was a wretched shape, the impression of limbs extended in a plea for deliverance. ‘We should go, now.’

Let me linger a while longer, Lhoigor. Let me scent his scorched bones for just a few more moments. I will have at least that satisfaction.
He growled.
I dislike being fooled.

‘It is over now. He is dead, and the spirit who engineered this has had its fun.’

Kelmain didn’t seem to be listening.

‘Brother? Can you still your temper, just for this small while?’

Lhoigor... come here. Look at this.

A golden claw pointed at the dwarf’s burned husk, where blood had scabbed into the dust.

‘What?’

Kelmain sunk to his haunches, staring intently at where the blood had fallen the thickest.
Do you recognise this shape?

‘I am not sure. It could be anything.’

You have studied more maps than I. I think I have seen this shape before.

Even as they watched, something stirred in the aethyric winds. The scabbed blood reverted to its liquid state, and began to flow of its own volition into a sticky, sanguine pool.

‘Yes,’ Lhoigor was breathless. Excited. ‘Yes, I do know this shape. It even mimics the contours of mountains.’

They locked eyes. Two pairs of crimson orbs widened as they felt the warp and weft of their fates shifting, stretching.

‘Albion.’

Two brothers left
a charred corpse in the dust.

They left side by side, striding with a dark purpose, animated with the exultant rightness of the task that lay before them. The sanguine omen had pointed them to that mist-wreathed isle. As portents went, it was a rather unsubtle thing, but in their eagerness, they gave it little thought.

They gave the Slayer’s blackened husk not even a second glance. It rocked in a gentle wind, the ash that had once been its living flesh flaking off in drifting falls.

And then it sat up.

The
crunch
of
breaking charcoal was like hearing a twig snap in the forest. The head, little more than a featureless stump of blackened flesh, beheld the world without eyes, and scented the wind without a snout.